Monthly Archives: January 2010

Cable Controversy Podcast

Posted on January 31, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Well, it isn’t really a controversy, but I never was very good at headlines. Anyway, ages ago I downloaded a Quick Hitts Podcast entitled ‘Audio Insanity’, with a tagline of ‘You may think you’ve got a great audio system, but … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Cables, Equipment, Mysticism | Leave a comment

iPod weirdness

Posted on January 30, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

After my rave about the iPod a couple of posts ago, I should note something rather weird that happened this morning as I undertook my morning stroll. I’ve gradually been working through an interesting series of Podcasts called the Skeptics Guide … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Portable | 2 Comments

Comments welcome

Posted on January 30, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Just to make things clear, I invite any readers to leave comments on posts. Even old ones if you’ve not seen them before, or have been long irritated by something I’ve said. I’ve backloaded my posts through 2009 and am … Continue reading →

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The amazing iPod, shrinks and expands simultaneously

Posted on January 29, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Eventually someone will sue Apple Inc in some kind of ‘anti-trust’ action, just as Microsoft has been sued in the past. It will be because Apple produced such a great product that it has come to dominate the market. That … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Portable | Leave a comment

The Whole Tangled Mess

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Go into any number of specialist home entertainment equipment retailers and you can easily spend hundreds of dollars on high quality cables to carry digital audio from your DVD player to your home theatre receiver. It is alleged that these … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Cables, How Things Work | Leave a comment

How’s the Ticker going?

Posted on January 27, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Recent Universal Blu-ray discs have a ‘Ticker’ feature on their menu system. Sort of. The ticker is a bar of text in the top right part of the screen and it is supposed to display some messages that came with … Continue reading →

Posted in BD-Live, Blu-ray, Disc details | 1 Comment

A New Blog

Posted on January 26, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Well, I’ve decided at last to move to proper Blog software – WordPress. Over time I shall migrate in all the old stuff (the last couple of posts are here already), add proper links to the right and so on. … Continue reading →

Posted in Admin | 3 Comments

Badge Engineering

Posted on January 18, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Well, it turns out that high-end brand Lexicon has released a Blu-ray player which is really the Oppo BDP-83 with Lexicon cosmetics. Audioholics makes a pretty convincing case here. Nothing wrong with that, necessarily, except that Lexicon insists that it … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Value | Leave a comment

Upscaling – even the professionals get it wrong

Posted on January 15, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

I was just clearing some old stuff off my computer and discovered a video clip that demonstrates that competent upscaling can be elusive even for professionals. The clip is six minutes long, which I recorded from the Prime TV HD service … Continue reading →

Posted in Interlacing, Video | Leave a comment

Paternalistic Protection Partially Averted, but high sensitivity earphones a’comin

Posted on January 4, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

In December it was widely reported that the European Union is to require that MP3 players have a default maximum level of 85dB. Whatever the hell that means. 85dB average? Peak? A-weighted? C-weighted? Apparently some kind of over-ride will be … Continue reading →

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