Monthly Archives: January 2011

Blu-ray region codes

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Stephen Dawson

I’ve been asked about whether region coding has been abandoned for Blu-ray, and I reckon it’s worth revisiting the topic briefly. So here’s my take. No, unfortunately region coding hasn’t been abandoned. But there have been changes. Basically, Universal, Paramount … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Region Coding | 1 Comment

Apples and Oranges

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Stephen Dawson

I must say, as soon as I saw ‘The Biology of Home Entertainment‘ tweeted, I thought I’d be reading something interesting. It promised to explain ‘How your senses influence your level of enjoyment!’ That makes a great deal of sense. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Rant, Video | 2 Comments

Australian Audio Show set for October 2011

Posted on January 27, 2011 by Stephen Dawson

On behalf of the Chester Group, organisers of the renowned National Audio Show in Britain, Sound+Image, Australian Hi-Fi and nextmedia are proud to announce The Australian Audio & AV Show 2011. The first such show for many years! Melbourne, Friday … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Equipment, Misc | 1 Comment

Digital TV video bitrates – January 2011

Posted on January 24, 2011 by Stephen Dawson

Time to update the video and audio bitrates for digital TV again in the light of the introduction of the new channel ‘Eleven’. (The last update was in October last year.) To gather this data, on 18 through 20 January … Continue reading →

Posted in Codecs, DTV, HDTV | 4 Comments

Another thing to blame scammers for

Posted on January 24, 2011 by Stephen Dawson

The ten billionth person to download an iPod ap from the iTunes store got a phone call from the vice president of iTunes, telling her that she’d won a $10,000 iTunes account. She hung up. Fortunately Apple rang back later.

Posted in Misc | Leave a comment

Roadshow releasing Proyas classic on Blu-ray

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Stephen Dawson

Roadshow Entertainment has been pretty sharp in getting content out onto Blu-ray, and it’s good to see that it isn’t overlooking the older catalogue. On 3 February 2011 it is releasing Alex Proyas’ The Crow. This is particularly welcome because … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray | 2 Comments

Everything online all the time

Posted on January 15, 2011 by Stephen Dawson

The Gadget Guy reports that 200,000 pre-WWII recordings have been donated by Universal Music to the US Library of Congress, which will convert them to a digital format and make them available for free online. I reckon this is a … Continue reading →

Posted in Analogue, Audio, Music | Leave a comment

Keep those fingers under control

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Stephen Dawson

Since I got the iPad I’ve been using this really cool facility called dropbox.com to keep the articles I’m currently working on in sync between the iPad and the main computer. You get 2GB of storage for free, and it … Continue reading →

Posted in Admin, Computer | Leave a comment

Why we like music remains a mystery

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Stephen Dawson

In a comment to an earlier post Treblid linked to an interesting article in Discovery News called ‘Why Music Makes You Happy‘. The article relates a study in which the brain function of a number of people was analysed during … Continue reading →

Posted in Music, Rant | 3 Comments

I hate proprietary disc formats

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Stephen Dawson

I’m testing a PVR on which you can apparently record to external hard disk drives as well as internal one. So I plug in a 1TB hard disk to test it out. Unit won’t recognised it. Plug it into the … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer, DTV | 4 Comments