I have just stumbled across the website of UK firm Eureka Video, which has over the years released some truly high quality DVDs of superb movies. It turns out it is now doing the same with Blu-ray in its Master of Cinema series.
It already has nine titles listed, including M and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, two of the greatest movies of all time. I wonder if they distribute these in Australia.
From another old post, but I thought I’d actually include the picture this time, since the source website says ‘These checkershadow images may be reproduced and distributed freely’.
The squares marked A and B are the same level or brightness as each other, regardless of what your eyes are telling you. Copy and paste into some graphics software and check for yourself if you don’t believe me.
Or from the same site, see an animated example showing the same kind of thing. First, go to the Lightness Perception and Lightness Illusions site, then click on ‘download the PDF version’, making sure you have popups allowed. In the resulting window, scroll down and choose ‘The Koffka Ring’. This is perhaps even more starling, especially the ‘shifted’ version.
One advantage of having to manually load all the old Blog entries into the new platform is that I rediscover some of them. For example, back in August 2005 I wrote about the reduction in price of a 40 inch NEC LCD TV from $9,999 to $5,499. That’s a 1,280 by 768 pixel model with a claimed constrast ratio of just 600:1 (yes, six hundred to one!)
Now, of course, you can buy a 40 inch LCD TV, full HD (1,920 by 1,080 pixels) with an active backlight delivering subjectively satisfying black levels for less than $1,600.
Actually, two discs because it is the 2 disc special edition version. These are ‘Testmold’ discs, which means they don’t have proper labels and so forth, nor a proper Blu-ray box, nor a slick, but they work just like bought ones.
The discs are region free, but I’d prefer to only pay for postage within Australia. First request in comments scores them.
Data: Audio is Dolby TrueHD, 16 bits, 48kHz @ 1,390kbps. Core is only DD5.1 @ 448kbps. Main feature is 175 minutes long, uses the MPEG4 AVC codec @ 24.44Mbps. There is a BonusView PIP element, BD Live access and bookmarks. Other features are: BD-Live CineChat; ‘Unlocking the Code’ Interactive BonusView PIP (480p24, MPEG4 AVC @ 1.39Mbps), DTS Express 24/48 2.0 @ 192kbps); A First Look at Angels and Demons/Trailer for Angels and Demons (1080p24, MPEG2, DD5.1 @ 640kbps – 7 mins); 27 Select Scenes Commentary with Ron Howard (1080p24, MPEG4 AVC, DD2.0 @ 192kbps – 38 mins); 7669 Test Patterns (1080p24, MPEG2 – 1 min); 17 Disc 2 Featurettes (1080i60, MPEG2, DD2.0 @ 192kbps – 168 minutes); 3 Trailers for other movies (1080p24, MPEG2, DD5.1 @ 640kbps – 5 mins); Booklet
I quite stumbled upon this today: Oppo Digital has a new lower cost Blu-ray player available, the BDP-80. It is not as bulky and drops the Anchor Bay Technology VRS video processing, the dedicated stereo analogue outputs and the IR in out, but otherwise seems much the same as the BDP-83. Details of the differences are here.
Available in Australia through Merlin Audio Design in a region adjustable version for $AUS775. Merlin has taken to distributing Oppo Blu-ray players through a number of quality retailers, so you ought to be able to check out the player somewhere in your capital city.
It has been a while since I’ve done one of these, but go here for the comparison for this fine movie. I’ll be reviewing the Blu-ray for the next issue of Smart Home Ideas, so I watched it again last night. Pretty good picture quality in general, but there were a few brief, but rather jarring, insertions of file footage. These had completely different colour balance and were much lower in resolution, such as:
And here’s a sample from the comparison:
On Tuesday I went to Sydney, courtesy of Sony, to see Sony’s latest launch. I’ve written about it for Monday’s Canberra Times, with particular attention to the introduction of a 3D product line up in July this year.
But a couple of things didn’t fit in. First, of the 26 TV models announced, 18 of them use LED’s rather than CCFLs (cold cathode fluorescent lamps) as backlights. But only two models use a LED grid array for variable brightness control in different parts of the screen. All the rest use Edge LEDs to allow thinner panels, although three of these have some form of differential control for different edge banks.
The super thin 9.9mm model has gone, as have the other models which used a separate TV tuner and switchbox, and wireless communications between that and the TV. I suspect that this wireless stuff was a solution to a non-problem.
One of my editors asked if I could include The Deer Hunter in my next batch of Blu-ray reviews since it was his favourite movie ever. I’m happy to oblige, of course, and his request prompted me to start ripping frames from the disc for a Blu-ray vs DVD comparison.
We chatted briefly about the movie’s director, Michael Cimino, who I accused (unfairly, I suspect) of being bit of a one hit wonder. However my editor pointed out that with that one hit, he achieved far more than most people do.
Point taken.
Meanwhile, I’ve just remembered: John Cazale was in this movie. In fact, he was dying of cancer as it was being filmed, and died six months before it was released. Cazale was only ever in five movies (plus a comedy short way back in 1962). Those five were released between 1972 and 1978, and all five are all in the IMDB top 250. Two of them are in the top 3. How’s this for a career:
Recently I’ve looked at a couple of Blu-ray players where they appear to be sticking to the old consumer electronics model: put a finished product on the shelf and have nothing more to do with it until it breaks.
That simply won’t work for Blu-ray players. They are programmable devices, with the programs residing on Blu-ray discs (usually in the form of BD-Java code). New discs are being released all the time, pushing further the boundaries of what discs are supposed to do. They can’t be tested on every player out there, so the players have to be updated from time to time to ensure compatibility.
So we, and CE manufacturers, are going to have to get used to the idea that consumer electronics is no longer a ‘final product’ as it’s sold, but is subject to firmware revisions. To that end, the most recent firmware needs to be readily available. Much of the industry already has automatic firmware updating directly from the Web for their BD-Live Blu-ray players: Panasonic, Sony, Samsung, Oppo etc. When you switch any of those on, they query home, so to speak, to see if a new firmware is available and ask you if you want them to update themselves.
Normally this is just to ensure disc compatibility, but entire new capabilities can be added. For example, a Samsung player added to itself YouTube access in an automatic firmware update.
So the days of finding out what firmware is installed by going to a specific place in the setup menu, then typing in a seven digit access code, are, or should be, long gone.
I’ve just been going through the most recent Sound and Image magazine, available right now. It has a great stack of my reviews of Blu-ray players. That includes the Toshiba BDX2000KY (which isn’t listed on Toshiba’s Australian website for some reason).
I see my editor has unkindly given this review the headline: ‘CAPITULATION’
