Monthly Archives: November 2007

Remastering pays off

Posted on November 30, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

Some months ago I did a comparison spread for Sound and Image magazine on the differences between Blu-ray and HD DVD picture quality. To be frank, some of the BDs I compared with rather disappointing. One such was The Fifth … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Disc details, DVD | Leave a comment

Check, Recheck and Triple Check

Posted on November 30, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

One of the tasks involved in doing reviews on equipment is identifying faults with that equipment. That may seem easy, but it isn’t always. If you have a lousy picture while watching HDTV, is it the HDTV receiver that’s the … Continue reading →

Posted in DTV, Firmware, HD DVD, HDTV, Testing | Leave a comment

I Know Who Killed Me – the ultimate love-it-or-hate-it movie?

Posted on November 27, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

I have not yet seen the new Lindsay Lohan movie, I Know Who Killed Me. But it was being advertised on some of the web sites I was visiting today, so I toddled over to the Internet Movie Database to … Continue reading →

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Weirder Blu-ray

Posted on November 25, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

I didn’t actually watch Die Hard 4.0 (known to Americans as Live Free or Die Hard) the other day when I received it. But on Friday I spoke to Pioneer about this Blu-ray disc’s behaviour in its BDP-LX70A player. I … Continue reading →

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Greenery

Posted on November 23, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

Recently I purchased a power meter. What with environmental concerns, and the Australian greenhouse agency making noises about banning certain TVs that fail to use sufficiently small amounts of power, I figured that it was something I really ought to … Continue reading →

Posted in Power consumption, Testing | Leave a comment

Blu-ray blows, or how to let the opposition win

Posted on November 21, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

I must confess that in the Blu-ray vs HD DVD stakes, I’ve been somewhat partial to Blu-ray. I think it has been because of the larger capacity of the disc than HD DVD, at least in their first incarnations (HD … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Firmware, HD DVD, Region Coding | Leave a comment

Hitachi, ALIS, 1080p and 1080i

Posted on November 14, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

In the post immediately below this one, as explained in the update at the foot of the post, I talk about 1080i and 1080p issues which are not particularly relevant to the current fuss involving Smarthouse and Hitachi. It turns … Continue reading →

Posted in Equipment, How Things Work, Interlacing | Leave a comment

Is 1080i true high definition?

Posted on November 12, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

Over at Smarthouse, David Richards seems to have set the cat loose amongst the pigeons over the issue of Hitachi advertising its TVs as ‘Full HD’. Richards argues that because these TVs accept only a 1080i signal, not a 1080p … Continue reading →

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What is moire?

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

From time to time I mention moire as an artefact of video systems, often due to poor deinterlacing of progressive scan material. See for example here, and here, and here (near Figure 2). Here’s a real world demonstration from my … Continue reading →

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Scale once, not twice

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

Your home entertainment display probably has a fixed physical resolution due to the pixel structure of its LCD, DLP or LCoS panel(s). Many modern DVD players and HD set top boxes can output the video with a vertical resolution of … Continue reading →

Posted in Scaling, Video | Leave a comment