Monthly Archives: March 2010

Unusual region coding

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

I’ve just been looked at a forthcoming Blu-ray title from Roadshow Entertainment: The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans, directed by Werner Herzog and starring Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes. This title comes from Roadshow Entertainment and has two … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Disc details, Region Coding | 9 Comments

‘I’ frame rate

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

MPEG2, VC1 and MPEG4 AVC are all video compression systems that work both intra-frame, and inter-frame. Intra-frame is like JPEG (or like DV for that matter). Each frame of the video is treated as its own independent entity and compressed … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Codecs, Compression, How Things Work, Video | 4 Comments

Old, old music

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Got a yen to hear some acoustic recordings? That is, music from the early decades of the 20th Century when musicians sat before a horn attached to a cutting stylus. No electricity involved, except possibly to power the motor of … Continue reading →

Posted in Analogue, Misc | Leave a comment

Blu-ray reviewing – verity or result?

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

In comments on an earlier post, Peter draws attention to another negative review of The Fellowship of the Ring. This gives 3/5 stars for video quality. The other review suggests 2.5/5. Once again, the finger is pointed at digital noise … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Cinema, Rant, Testing | 6 Comments

Don’t Crush at the White End

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Crushing is what happens when you have the ‘brightness’ control of your TV turned down too low, or the ‘contrast’ control turned up too high. Ignore the names. The brightness control does control the brightness … of the black levels. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, How Things Work, Video | Leave a comment

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – Blu-ray vs DVD comparison

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Last night I put up a Blu-ray vs DVD comparison for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.  The picture on this one is clearly much sharper than that on The Fellowship of the Ring. Here’s a sample from … Continue reading →

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

12 Monkeys Blu-ray vs DVD comparison

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Apparently back in January I ripped ten thousand frames from the Blu-ray for 12 Monkeys, and then forgot all about it. I stumbled across it the other day, so it made doing a comparison relatively easy. I’m hoping I won’t … Continue reading →

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

LOTR Picture Quality

Posted on March 28, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Peter comments on the previous post that the picture quality of The Fellowship of the Ring has been criticised at blu-ray.com. That site seems especially critical of what it claims to be digital noise reduction applied to this movie. If … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray | Leave a comment

Lord of the Rings month

Posted on March 28, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

April 2010 is the month in which the three Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies appear on Blu-ray. At this stage they are coming out as three separate discs, but I’m told that there will be a trilogy pack … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Disc details, DVD | 4 Comments

Resurrecting Polaroid, but don’t knock digital

Posted on March 26, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating article about how an enthusiast has acquired the last Polaroid factory in Europe and started producing instant film again (monochrome now, colour to follow). Great stuff. But I would note that the piece … Continue reading →

Posted in Analogue, How Things Work | 2 Comments