Hey, variable chapters

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

I’m checking out the Blu-ray of the epic disaster movie 2012 and exploring the special extras (more on this later). One of these is a Bonusview PIP commentary feature. You have to select this specially to play, rather than just switching back and forth within the movie. One unusual feature of this is that while the movie itself has only 16 chapters, the PIP version has 39. Checking a bit more closely, I discover that the chapter markings for the PIP version align with the PIP segments. Jump to a chapter and a couple of seconds later the PIP window will appear and the discussion will start.

This is really good thinking since the PIP content only runs for about about half this version of the movie.

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

Oppo benefits from Lexicon’s discomfiture?

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Presumably Oppo makes a nice dollar or two out of selling  the guts of Oppo BDP-83 Blu-ray players to Lexicon, to which the latter affixes aluminium fronts and backs and resells for seven times as much as the BDP-83.

But yesterday when I asked Jez Ford from Sound and Image magazine whether he’d like a review of Oppo’s BDP-80, he made an interesting point in agreeing. He said that Oppo ‘is now a brand of some reputation after the Lexicon debacle’.

Home theatre geeks have long known about how good Oppo products are, but we are a small market. Reputation performs an important role in the market: it provides information to those who are not the ‘geeks’ in that area, who have to take other people’s words for how good or bad something is. If a brand which is universally regarded as high end, has been around for nearly forty years, and which sells all its products for ridiculously high prices, says that a product made by Brand X is good enough for them, that has to help Brand X’s rep.

But how can you market that? Somehow I don’t think we’ll see advertisements from Oppo saying: ‘The Oppo BDP-83, the core of the competition!’

Note: I have a BDP-83 on long term loan, and I still think it is the best player on the market.

Posted in Blu-ray, Equipment | Leave a comment

S-Video, going the way of the Dodo

Posted on March 16, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

I’m presently reviewing the new Yamaha RX-V2065 home theatre receiver. One of the first things I do, before even plugging in a receiver, is put it on my desk and count up the inputs and outputs and other connections. I’ve just noticed the absence of one kind: S-Video. It has none.

I’ve noticed this over the last year or so in sub-$1,000 receivers. It has been part of a general re-design of them to take into account the increasing dominance of HDMI as the connection standard. This receiver is no exception, with five HDMI inputs and two HDMI outputs. But it is a premium model, selling for nearly $2,500.

I think that this truly does mark the beginning of the end for S-Video.

Posted in Cables, Equipment | 1 Comment

Blu-ray layer rot?

Posted on March 16, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

The other night one of my daughters wanted to watch The Godfather: Part II with a friend. All was going very nicely until 1:42:32 into the movie, when it became a stillie. The picture froze for a minute or so, and eventually jumped to 1:58:30.

I was using the Oppo BDP-83, which is seemingly impervious to disc problems. I pulled the disc and inspected the surface, and it seemed clean, so I put it in an Oppo BDP-80 which I’m checking out at the moment. Same problem. So I put it in a Playstation 3. Same problem.

My records show that I got this disc back in October 2008. I have watched the movie all the way through with no problems at all at least once. I scanned it all the way through using BDInfo on 26 May 2009, no problems. But since then it has ceased to work. I’ve given the disc a gentle clean, especially around the edge — since the problems are halfway through the movie and this dual layer Blu-ray disc’s contents come to 45.35GB, of which almost all is the movie, suggesting they are near the edge (Blu-ray discs read, like DVDs, from the disc centre towards the edge and then back again in the case of two layers).

All this is somewhat reminiscent of DVD rot which was a problem some years ago.

Update (1:12pm): Treblid in comments has some links into discussion of this problem on various forums, so I’m not alone. It seems to afflict UK discs primarily, but as I demonstrate here, the UK and Australian discs seem to be the same.

I am making enquiries with Paramount about what arrangements they have in place for replacement discs. It seems to be quite consistent: if the disc is faulty it will stop playing about 1:41:30. Just jump to 1:41:00 and wait to see what happens.

Posted in Blu-ray | 4 Comments

Digital TV Station timers

Posted on March 15, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Over the past week or so my PVR has been showing incorrect times on its display. That means that it has an incorrect time in its memory, which in turn means that it will fire itself up to record stuff at the wrong time.

Why would this be?

Last night I bounced around through the different stations with two different PVRs, and it seems that whenever I went to WIN TV (or the other channels broadcast on the same frequency: GO! and WIN HD), the ‘Info’ time was wrong, showing several hours earlier than it ought to have. When I changed to a different station, the time reverted back to the correct setting.

We really are in the hands of the TV stations when it comes to recording, and not just because a station’s broadcast times might be incorrect. If its embedded clock is incorrect it can wreck your other recordings.

Update (10:33am): So it wasn’t just me.

Update 2 (10:55am): Okay, as I write this sentence it is 10:38am on Monday 15 March. On the Topfield 7100 WIN TV is showing 7:58pm on Sunday 14 March. I switch over the ABC and the time is now 10:41am today. I switch back to WIN and after about 20 second, the time resets to 7:57pm yesterday. I go to SC10 at its 10:41am. Prime TV is 10:42am. SBS is showing 10:43. GO! on 88 is okay for about 20 seconds, and then resets back to 7:57pm.

Using a Beyonwiz DP-P2 ABC2 is showing 10:45am. SC10 HD is also showing 10:45am. WIN HD is showing 10:46am. With the Topfield, WIN HD switched back to 7:57pm yesterday.

This is odd, because it was the Beyonwiz that was showing the incorrect time. It could be that it polls the station for a time update less frequently.

To check that I’ve just switched off the BW and then switched it back on. I figured it would do a time check as part of the startup. Sure enough, within a few seconds of starting on WIN, the time reset to 7:57pm yesterday.

Final update (11:04pm): I’ve just checked with a Sharp digital TV and it is acting in the same way, showing the correct time on all stations except for the WIN ones, and then resetting to 7:57pm on 14 March with those.

All fixed update (6:16pm): I rang WIN TV in Canberra this morning to report this. The girl on the phone said that they were aware of the issue and expected it to be fixed soon. It seems to have been okay all afternoon.

Posted in DTV | 2 Comments

Homeopathy vs Science

Posted on March 15, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Nice optical illusion. Nice discussion. Nice bit of web programming. Definitely worth a look.

Via Yet another weird SF fan.

Posted in Imperfect perception, Mysticism | Leave a comment

DVD on Demand

Posted on March 14, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

I just received an advertisement from Amazon.com for the DVD of The Strange Love Of Molly Louvain. Pretty expensive at $US26.99. But it turns out this isn’t an off-the-shelf product. It is supplied on DVD-R. If you purchase it, they burn the disc, print the slick, put them together and post them to you. Apparently they do the same for music.

Has the potential to deal with the real long end of the purchasing tail.

Posted in CD, DVD | Leave a comment

Dog Day Afternoon: Blu-ray vs DVD

Posted on March 13, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Another top notch movie from the 70s, the Blu-ray is a little grainy, but kills the DVD for what’s happening on the screen. Go here for the comparison, and here’s a sample (DVD to left, Blu-ray to right):

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

Computers – then and now (kind of)

Posted on March 13, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

I just found this table, which was an accompaniment to a piece I wrote for a magazine back in 2004. Obviously seven years later the ‘Now’ computer has improved even more, although not that much in raw clock speed.

Year 1982 2003 Factor
Brand Dick Smith Taiwanese bits and piece  
Model System 80 P4 2.4GHz  
Price (2003 $) $2,250 $3,000  
Processor Zilog Z-80 Pentium IV  
Bits 8 32 4x
Clock speed 2MHz 2.4GHz 1,200x
RAM 16kB 512MB 33,000x
Non volatile storage One data drive (audio cassette) 2 x HDD (120GB)
1 x CD-RW
1 x DVD-ROM
1 x 1.44MB floppy		  
Expansion Proprietary, virtually nil PCI-bus, USB  
Printer support Nil Parallel, USB  
Display 12”, monochrome text 80 x 25 characters 19”, 24 bit colour, 1,600 x 1,200 pixels  
Operating system Cloned Tandy TRS-80 OS Windows XP  
Communication Nil 10/100 networking, 56k modem  
Audio Nil 96kHz/24 bit six channel audio card  
Pointing device Nil Mouse  
Interface Text only WIMP  
Posted in Computer | Leave a comment

Is there anybody out there?

Posted on March 12, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

To use a line from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Would readers be so kind as to whack in a tiny comment to this post, just to say something like ‘I do.’ So far I know of only about six or seven readers. Of course, you can write more if you want.

Update (Thursday 18 March 2010): I’d like to thank everyone for dropping in comments. It is nice to know that there are readers out there, and some of the remarks were really nice. I’ll leave this as a sticky for another few days, and then let it resume its proper chronological place.

Posted in Admin | 30 Comments