Visiting elsewhere

Posted on March 23, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

That’s naughty of me. I’ve been hanging around elsewhere over the last ten days or so. Primarily here.

That is a site for gathering detailed statistical information on Blu-ray content. I’ve contributed some information on a few discs, thanks to a superb tool called BDInfo, currently at version 0.5.2. This scans Blu-ray discs and gives extraordinary insight into what’s on them. If you have a Windows PC and a Blu-ray drive and a sense of curiosity, check it out. Perhaps contribute to the forum as well.

Posted in Admin, Blu-ray, Testing | Leave a comment

Overseas Blu-ray purchases

Posted on March 12, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Today I received a copy of the Japanese Anime movie Akira, which I ordered on Blu-ray from Amazon. Reason: the Japanese 5.1 channel Dolby TrueHD sound track is encoded at 192kHz and 24 bits: the maximum supported by the format. Already, the first Blu-ray player I’ve tested this with — and it works fine at decoding Dolby TrueHD 7.1 channel 96kHz 24 bit material — collapses to two channels if called on to decode this. Of course, what you do is simply pipe this out to your receiver as a bitstream. My Yamaha RX-V3900 seems to work fine with it.

Anyway, if you are considering purchasing Blu-ray from overseas, may I suggest that you check out the ‘Blu-Ray Region Code Info‘ site. It has region code info on hundreds of discs. Remember, you cannot trust the region coding shown on the back of the box.

As a rule, anything released by Paramount, Warner Bros and Universal is safe to buy from overseas. Sony seems to be abandoning region coding. Twentieth Century Fox seems to be sticking with it, while Disney is a bit all over the place.

UPDATE (Thursday, 12 March 2009, 11:23 am): Just having a look at Akira now. The disc is 38.6GB in size. More than half is sound. The video bitrate seems to be averaging about 8-9Mbps (can get away on this because of the inherently simple nature of the animation, and due to many frames being repeated intact, or almost entirely intact). With the high resolution track engaged audio is ranging from 11-17Mbps.

Wow!

Posted in Audio, Blu-ray | Leave a comment

To Bookmark, or Not To Bookmark?

Posted on March 12, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

A lot of Blu-ray discs come with a book marking facility. Such facilities have appeared over the years on a number of DVD players. Most were utterly useless, since the moment you popped the disc out your bookmarks were wiped. However my first DVD player, the Sony DVP-S725, had a persistent bookmark feature. It maintained a bit of non-volatile memory in which it kept the status of the last two hundred discs that you played, including any bookmarks you cared to insert.

That was at the hardware level.

Blu-ray bookmarks at done at the software level. Of the 113 Blu-ray discs I have examined exhaustively, 28 have a bookmark facility, and 85 do not. Although the implementation is in software, persistent storage built into the Blu-ray player is used. Even grace period players are required to have 64kB of this. So if you save a bookmark on a suitably equipped Blu-ray disc, you will be able to come back to that point weeks or months into the future, despite having played other discs in the meantime.

But it comes at a cost. Because it is implemented in software, the player needs to load in a chunk of BD-Java programming code as it’s starting up. I’m not sure if this is necessarily the case in theory, but in practice Blu-ray players are incapable of restarting from the same place in a movie as where they were stopped if BD-Java code is loaded. Instead, all such discs must go through the entire boot up sequence again, including trailers, copyright warnings and so on.

An easy restart from where you stopped is nice if you have a remote control that allows you to accidentally stop a movie too easily. Hit ‘Play’, and you’re back into the action within a few seconds. But that restart point isn’t retained over time.

I think I prefer bookmarks, but it doesn’t come without cost.

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Do these cables support HDMI 1.3?

Posted on February 27, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

On lots of Internet forums there is discussion about suitable cables for home theatre. In particular, people frequently ask about HDMI 1.3 cables. The problem is, despite labels on some cables, their capabilities aren’t as clear cut as simple versions would suggest.

The wiring of all HDMI cables is identical. Different HDMI versions don’t have a different number of conductors in the cables, or different pin arrangements. The only thing that you need to pay attention to is whether the cable will carry the necessary bandwidth.

HDMI 1.3 does indeed bump up the bandwidth requirements from 165MHz to 340MHz, or 4.95Gbps to 10.2Gbps. So if you want your cable to handle everything that HDMI 1.3 or later may throw your way in the future, get a cable labelled ‘High Speed’ or ‘HDMI 1.3’.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, what does HDMI 1.3 mean in the home theatre context? There is only one thing that HDMI 1.3 added that would increase bandwidth over earlier versions for currently existing systems, and for systems likely to exist in the near future: ‘Deep Color’ support. HDMI 1.0 to 1.2a support up to 24 bit colour, HDMI 1.3 and later support 48 bit colour. Some current Blu-ray players (and the PS3) support 36 bit colour. That could add some demands to the video bandwidth required of a cable.

But if it causes problems, go into your Blu-ray player’s menu and switch off ‘Deep Color’ support. Because Blu-ray discs do not support ‘Deep Color’! (Note, the PS3 does with compatible games.) So there is no need for Deep Color with a Blu-ray player.

HDMI 1.3 adds higher resolutions, including 2,560 by 1,600 pixels. Nice, but nothing to do with home theatre. The highest bandwidth video available from a Blu-ray player is 1080p60, and that was supported way back with HDMI 1.0.

HDMI 1.3 also added bitstream support for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. Guess what: the maximum audio bandwidth for all versions of HDMI, including 1.3, remains the same. Because even HDMI 1.0 supported 8 channels of 192kHz, 24 bit LPCM. All forms of TrueHD and DTS-HD make significantly lower demands on bandwidth than that (they are compressed formats that typically require about half the dataspace of the LPCM streams that they carry). The change to allow these formats had nothing to do with bandwidth, but with the electronics at either end of the cable recognising these formats and dealing with them appropriately. Same as when DSD bitstream support was introduced in HDMI 1.2, and DVD Audio support in HDMI 1.1.

So, to summarise, if you have a cable that properly supports HDMI 1.0, it will properly support HDMI 1.3 as experienced in the real world of home theatre. Conversely, if you have one that doesn’t work with HDMI 1.3, then the cable is defective and probably won’t work with some material as transported by HDMI 1.0. The only division between the two could be if you have 36 bit colour switched on in your Blu-ray player.

As always, you should be aware of quality and brand reputation. Over two years ago I found that one of my cables wouldn’t even support the full HDMI specification. It carried 1080i video fine, but fell apart with 1080p. So choose carefully, but looking specifically for ‘HDMI 1.3’ isn’t the way to do it.

Posted in Cables, How Things Work, Rant | Leave a comment

3626216940

Posted on February 26, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

In the last item on today’s ‘Best of the Web Today’ column in the Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal, the writer draws attention to a gaffe by the US Vice President in which he made reference to ‘a website number’. Presumably, that’s what most people would refer to as a website address, or even a URL.

At the end of this item the writer has a link to what he claims is the website number which, he says, is 3626216940. If you hover the over this link (either here or in the WSJ piece), you ought to see on your browser’s status bar an address: http://216.35.173.236. But what is actually in the link is http://3626216940.

Of course, the 216.35 etc is the fixed address of the website in question (recovery.org). But what’s 3626216940 all about?

The way we specify URLs in numerical terms is a weird hybrid of hexadecimal and decimal notation. In the AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD format, each of those AAA etc is the decimal form of a two digit hexadecimal number. A more sensible representation of the address using actual hexadecimal numbers would be D8.23.AD.EC. Since a two digit hex number can encompass only an integer range from 0 to 255, that’s why you never see an Internet or network address in the hybrid dec/hex format with a value of greater than 255 in any of the four slots.

You can convert this address format to a fully decimal number by adding the least significant (right-most) number, to the next least significant multiplied by 256, to the third least significant multiplied by 256 and again by 256, and so on. Let’s do it:

236+173*256+35*256*256+216*256*256*256

Copy and paste that expression into a suitable calculator and you will see that the answer is 3626216940, the number mentioned in the WSJ piece.

What I found surprising is that a browser will treat this as a decimal representation of URL.

Posted in Computer, General Tech | Leave a comment

Disclosures and subjectivity

Posted on February 24, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

This morning my attention was drawn to my disclosures page on this site (click on ‘Disclosures’ above). Having more or less forgotten about it, I went and had a read. Two things struck me. First, it was woefully out of date (last updated in August 2004!) Second, I still agree with most of it.

Anyway, I’ve brought it up to date. And now I want to quote a little of it:

There has long been a trend towards high fidelity mysticism. Sometimes it is dressed up with a pseudo-scientific facade, but in the end it boils down to unadulterated subjectivism and is based on the silly notion that the listener’s ears and heart are calibrated, stable, measuring devices. Else, how could they be so certain that amplifier A sounds different in some way to amplifier B, when the listening takes place days or weeks apart….

The honest reviewer will approach his or her task with humility, and a proper understanding of the variability of all humans. That a particular recording causes one to tap one’s foot with the music today, using System A, unlike yesterday, using System B, says much more about the reviewer’s mood on those two days than it does about the differences between the systems.

That brought to mind a little visit I made to Sydney last week. Epson flew me up for the launch of two of their new home theatre projectors, the TW4000 and TW5000. These bump up the dynamic contrast ratio of Epson’s three panel LCD technology to a claimed 72,000:1. Interestingly, the ‘native’ contrast ratio they now put at a very impressive 6,000:1. They also add frame interpolation, which generates intermediate frames between the actual frames of the signal, smoothing motion. This sort of technology has been around for years in some Philips and Loewe TVs, and in recent years has appeared in Samsung, Sony and Panasonic TVs. But the only front projector I’m aware of in which it has previously appeared is the near $20,000 Sony VPL-VW200 projector.

Anyway, the venue was Audio Connection in Sydney, a high-end audio and home theatre specialist. While waiting around at one point I spied lots of exotic and interesting sound gear, but one that had me puzzled was a CD transport (ie. digital out only) from C.E.C. which claimed to be ‘belt drive’. This was obviously an expensive and audiophile piece of equipment, but I must say I had a chuckle over it.

I figured that this was one of those faddish things and that this was probably an old model that had been traded in. But I checked.

Here’s a review from 2005 of the C.E.C. TL-51XZ Belt Drive CD player. Turns out they’ve been around for years.

From this point, my draft of this post continued for another 800 or so words. Then I decided that I really ought to try to sell it as an article. So consider for yourself, what do you think I could have found objectionable about the review to which I linked? Clue: it starts at the words: ‘I would submit …’

Posted in Audio, Equipment, Rant, Video | Leave a comment

WALL-E Blu-ray vs PAL DVD screenshots

Posted on February 23, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Here’s my comparison between the two formats for WALL-E. The most startling of the six comparison shots is this one (DVD bottom left, Blu-ray bottom right, full frame top):

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

More Blu-ray vs PAL DVD screenshots

Posted on February 22, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Classics this time: Bonnie and Clyde (1967) (made slightly topical by Faye Dunaway’s meanspirited dismissal of Hilary Duff soon reprising the Bonnie Parker role – we all have our doubts, but perhaps this will be a breakout performance, proving Duff is seriously good) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).

The latter has two sets of comparisons, one with the original lousy DVD release from 1999, and the other with the greatly improved 2002 Special Edition.

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

Whacky WALL-E

Posted on February 21, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Well, that has been a struggle. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment has sent me both the Blu-ray and DVD versions of the most recent Pixar animation: WALL-E. So I set out to do a Blu-ray vs DVD comparison. There were some interesting things the process revealed.

First, instead of Disney packing the entire movie into one large 20GB+ file on the disc, as generally happens, it split it up into twenty-ish smaller files, ranging from about half a gigabyte up to over six gigabytes in size. I ended up having to write a DOS batch file to automate the extraction of the shots from these files.

Second, the Blu-ray seems to be region coded for B and C, but not for A. That’s a bit weird, and the first one of those I’ve come across.

Third, the DVD seems to have layers upon layers of protection. When I inserted the disc in the computer, it trashed around for ages before it did anything useful. Here’s what AnyDVD HD eventually reported:

Media is a DVD.
Booktype: dvd-rom (version 1), Layers: 2 (opposite)
Size of first Layer: 2072144 sectors (4047 MBytes)
Total size: 3912832 sectors (7642 MBytes)

Video DVD (or CD) label: WALL_E_LIC2_D1
Media is CSS protected!
Video Standard: PAL
Media is locked to region(s): 2 4!

RCE protection not found.
Found & removed structural copy protection!
Found & removed invalid cell pieces!
Found & removed bogus title set(s)!
UDF filesystem patched!
Autorun not found on Video DVD.
Found & removed 9 potential bad sector protections!
Emulating RPC-2 drive with region 4!

Checking the disc using Windows Explorer, it was reported to have a size of 7.46GB. Opening up the disc and checking the contents of the VIDEO_TS folder, I found claimed contents of 61.7GB. The main *.VOB movie files seemed to be listed under different names eleven times! It seems the studio has screwed around with the disc table of contents. I copied one of these to the hard drive, but despite several applications of ‘Quickstream Fix’ by Video ReDo Plus, attempting to play the resulting file crashed VideoReDo Plus. That’s the first time Quickstream Fix has been unable to produce something playable for me.

Fortunately, the disc working happily in PowerDVD so I was able to get me comparison shots, albeit in a tedious way.

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

Alex Proyas’ Dark City on Blu-ray

Posted on February 16, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Reel DVD has released Dark City on Blu-ray. In addition to providing a ten minute longer Director’s Cut version, the Blu-ray offers amongst the greatest picture quality improvement I’ve seen from the format over DVD.

UPDATE (Saturday, 21 February 2009, 11:16 pm): I forgot to mention: rather than using seamless branching, the two versions of the movie are both encoded entirely separately onto the disc. That’s why there are so many commentary tracks: two are for one version and three are for the other.

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