Monthly Archives: October 2010

Cricket in HD!

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

WIN TV (and presumably Channel 9) is broadcasting the Twenty/20 Australia vs Sri Lanka cricket match in proper 1080i50. Looks wonderful!

Posted in DTV, HDTV | 10 Comments

Alien and more released, without region codes

Posted on October 30, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Over at the AVS Forum the specifications for the Blu-ray release of the Alien/Aliens etc boxed set have been posted. Looks like they’ve got a healthy ~26Mbps MPEG4 AVC transfer. Two points of interest: although a Fox title, they are … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Disc details | 3 Comments

Blu-ray frame rates

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Last night I received a question by email, and I thought I might as well deal with it here. David writes: I’m a big fan of blu ray’s 24p mode, because it eliminates two bug-bears of DVD transfers from film; … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Video | 4 Comments

To spam, or not to spam!

Posted on October 24, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

There are various spambots out there that look for blog commenting facilities to which they can add advertisements for some or other crap. By definition whatever they are advertising is crap, or they wouldn’t use such underhanded methods. Since I … Continue reading →

Posted in Admin | 6 Comments

Speaking of 2.0

Posted on October 21, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

As Anthony points out in comments, Two Hands only scores 2.0 audio. Which is probably due to the movie producers keeping the budget down. The title presumably wasn’t big enough for Icon to spend a lot of money redoing the … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Blu-ray, Codecs | 2 Comments

One hundred Blu-ray vs DVD comparisons

Posted on October 20, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

In the last couple of days I’ve put up Blu-ray vs DVD comparisons for Donnie Darko and Two Hands. Both are fine movies. The results for Donnie Darko (go here for the comparison) are somewhat disappointing, primarily due to the … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Disc details, DVD | 5 Comments

Blu-ray vs DVD comparison: Beauty and the Beast

Posted on October 16, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

On Blu-ray, Disney’s classic — and I reckon the best of all its animated musicals — Beauty and the Beast is available now. I see that as I write, EzyDVD seems to have sold out. I can see why: the … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Disc details, DVD | 1 Comment

Subtracting colours

Posted on October 15, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Yesterday I got my hands on a sample of a projector that will soon be released. It worked beautifully yesterday but, as is often the case with samples, it developed a problem which appeared in fits and starts today, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Equipment, Testing, Video | Leave a comment

Edith Piaf lives!

Posted on October 14, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Well, kinda. When I went to see Inception at the cinema a month or two ago, I recall thinking at one point: is that Edith Piaf singing? I was ambivalent, because while it sounded like her, it also sounded too … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Blu-ray, Cinema, Giveaway | 3 Comments

Foxtel disabling RF output? Apparently not.

Posted on October 14, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

My brother emailed this link the other day to a forum discussion in which it was alleged that Foxtel had been performing firmware updates on its various set top boxes which, for unaccountable reasons, were disabling their RF output. Obviously … Continue reading →

Posted in Pay TV | 6 Comments