Put another prawn on the Barb-b

Posted on June 29, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

Icon Film Distribution Australia has been releasing a number of interesting titles on Blu-ray, including Alpha Dog, Black Sheep and We Were Soldiers.

Plus 30 Days of Night. This last was shot in New Zealand and features Australian actress Melissa George. The Blu-ray includes an audio commentary in which, about 17 minutes into the movie, she is being gently ribbed about her Australian accent. At this point somebody tosses in a ‘put another shrimp on the barb-b’, and she rightly comments that in Australia we call them prawns. But she doesn’t seem to know how the saying came to be. In fact, this originated in a series of Australian tourism advertisements run in the United States in the early 1980s, fronted by Paul Hogan. Much to my surprise, there’s even a Wikipedia entry on it.

This is followed by Ms George enlightening us upon the sad history of Lindy Chamberlain, whose baby was thought to have been taken by dingo back in the 1980s. Ms George relates in the commentary: ‘You know she got out of prison twenty years later because the guy said “I saw what happened and had proof, and she went away for twenty years”‘ She shares this with a remarkable tone of certainty. Only problem is, the baby was taken in August 1980, Chamberlain was convicted of murder in October 1982. In February 1986 she was released after some of her baby’s clothes were found. There had been some disquiet raised over the soundness of her conviction over the previous few years. So, all in all, she served less than three and a half years, not twenty. Her conviction was formally voided in 1988.

Incidentally, Icon has this movie listed as having a duration of 108 minutes on the back cover. In fact its duration is 113 minutes (and 5 seconds if we want to get specific). Likewise, Black Sheep is listed as being 82 minutes, when it is actually 86, and We Were Soldiers as 133 minutes, when it is actually 139. This is an interesting reversal. PAL DVDs run four per cent faster than the original film, and NTSC DVDs. The reason is that each film frame is transferred to a PAL DVD frame. But there are 24 film frames per second, and 25 PAL DVD frames per second. This ensures superb picture quality, but a slightly quicker running speed.

Many PAL DVDs have been released over the years which incorrectly state the film duration rather than the DVD’s duration. Now this is being reversed. Blu-ray discs run at the same speed as the original movie (24 frames per second), so the original duration is what should be quoted.

Posted in Blu-ray, Cinema, DVD | Leave a comment

Australians: do not buy a full high definition Sony Bravia TV …

Posted on June 26, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

… until 1 July. Sony will, from that date, be giving away a free Sony Playstation 3 console with each full HD Bravia TV sold. 35,000 of them.

You have been warned.

Posted in Equipment, Value | Leave a comment

‘Home theaters will soon be able to show 3-D’

Posted on June 20, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

So sayeth Kevin Maney at Portfolio.com. It’s in the context of a discussion about how Hollywood is producing a spurt of improved technology 3D movies. Apparently Hollywood sees 3D screenings as a way to get people back to theatres, just as they introduced widescreen in the early 1950s, colour became the norm over that decade, and surround sound appeared in the 1970s. The problem for them is that the time period between technology appearing in the cinema and, later, in the home is diminishing. I read through the first two and a half pages of this article before finding an acknowledgement that this might not achieve their aims for this reason:

Bringing in 3-D will boost the quality of the experience, but it still might not be enough to lure butts out of living rooms and into cinemas. Home theaters will soon be able to show 3-D. I visited a Kodak lab where a team is working on a 3-D display, and the images rivaled what I saw in Walden’s screening room. ‘It will be three years before the price and package are appropriate for consumer applications,’ says Kodak researcher Patrick Cosgrove.

I suspect that Hollywood is just going to have to get used to the idea that much of their profit will be derived from media sales for home theatre use, not public display rentals.

Posted in 3D, Cinema | Leave a comment

Terms and Conditions

Posted on June 18, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

There is no real fixed system for obtaining gear for review. It’s all over the place, with different companies and relationships. Do I get to keep the stuff I review? Unfortunately, no. Otherwise I would be a very wealthy man. So it all has to go back.

There is a great deal of trust involved in the system. I ring up my contact in some company or other. We chat. I say I want to review product X for such and such publication. They courier it to me. A couple of weeks later I give them another ring and they arrange for a courier to come and pick it up. But increasingly, of late, trust has begun to be replaced with paperwork. In the last two days I have sought review products from two companies I have been dealing with for years. Neither has previously had any ‘loan agreement’. It has been a pretty good arrangement. But in these last two days both have required one.

Most of the items in a loan agreement aren’t a problem, and are understood anyway. They still own the product. If it gets stolen, smashed, etc, while it’s here, it’s my responsibility. I have to give it back when they want it. But some things just won’t work with what I’m doing. With one of those agreements, I had to exclude two of its items.

The first was a paragraph which said:

You will at all times operate the product in accordance with operational instructions provided with the product and/or specifically recommended by [The Company].

But this is not appropriate for a review. I may find it necessary, in conducting the review, to do unusual things. Run it excessively loud with broadband pink noise. Take to it with a screwdriver to find out something or other (I almost never do this!) The purpose of the review is to describe the product to my readers. However, I should note that I don’t think I have ever actually damaged any of the equipment I’ve tested, beyond normal wear and tear, during the two thousand plus reviews I’ve done. In fact, on several occasions I’ve performed minor repairs (a crossover in a high-end pair of loudspeakers come to mind — with the company’s permission, I resoldered the wiring since the thing had come adrift during transport so the loudspeakers wouldn’t work).

If there are difficulties or problems with the Product please contact [The Company] on the details of this letter and we will endeavour to solve the problem as quickly as possible.

There are two kinds of difficulties or problems I encounter with the products I review. Some are clearly such things as the product being damaged or otherwise operating incorrectly. Of course I contact the company about those problems. I had one of those just a fortnight ago: a home entertainment system with an add-on module for wireless rear speakers. The transmitter and receiver in the add-on didn’t match. I called the company. We nailed down the issue. They sent a matching transmitter and receiver by overnight courier. The next day I continued doing the review.

The other kind are areas of inadequate performance or difficulties in operation due to what I judge to be design flaws. These are the kinds of things that are supposed to be brought out in the review, and should generally not be disclosed to the product supplier prior to publication (since there is the potential for some unscrupulous suppliers to attempt legal action to prevent publication).

Having said that, if I judge that a design or performance flaw may be able to be fairly easily corrected, then I often do contact the supplier. I am working on a review right now, and am shortly publishing another review, where there were problems correctable with firmware upgrades.

Still, what I’m saying is that this has to be my choice.

I suspect that I’m going to have to come up with my own ‘Loan Agreement’, because I’m spending too much time writing lengthy emails explaining why I exclude certain parts of their agreements.

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On the scrounge again – Sony Playstation 3 to the rescue

Posted on June 17, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

Today I found a package behind the screen door of my house (a remarkable number of couriers seem unable to read the ‘Stephen Dawson, Writer, Office at Rear’ sign on the house). Within was a ‘Testmold’ Blu-ray from Sony Pictures of Men in Black. So what? This is, as SPE says, ‘the first BD-Live enabled Blu-ray title outside the US Market’.

But that is a problem. BD-Live means the disc has what I am going to persist in calling ‘Web-enabled features’, even though that is a term I lifted from a specific HD DVD. To give an idea of just some the things that may become available on Blu-ray, here is what I wrote about that HD DVD (complete with screen shots).

As for Men in Black, apparently the BD Live feature is the ‘BD Live Interactive Trivia Game’ wherein ‘Fans will be able to play each other over a network as they answer trivia questions’. While I can’t say this sounds especially exciting, I do have great faith that Blu-ray disc producers will eventually come up with some fascinating stuff using this technology.

All this leads to a problem. How do I test discs? Until recently I was using the Panasonic DMP-BD30 Blu-ray player, followed by the DMR-BW500 Blu-ray recorder. Both are excellent units, but neither does BD Live (although both remain, as I write, the only non-games BonusView Blu-ray players on the Australian market). In any case, Panasonic weren’t interested in a long-term loan and wanted both units back.

There is, as I write, only one Blu-ray player on the Australian market that I presently feel fully comfortable recommending, and that is the Sony Playstation 3. It does 1080p24 output via HDMI, it handles all audio standards including DTS-HD Master Audio since the 2.30 firmware, and it is fully BD-Live compliant!

Three things would make it better for my purposes:

  • A proper disc tray – I still cringe a little on devices that draw discs inside. It’s the old man in me, I suppose, who was brought up on the surface vulnerability of vinyl,
  • A box shape so that it fits in with everything else, and
  • The ability to deliver the new audio standards as bitstreams as an alternative to internally decoding them.

Of those, only the last one is important in my view, and that’s only because I need to test the decoding capabilities of home theatre receivers. There are, in fact, good reasons why internal decoding in the player is preferable to that, to do with the dual audio streams required for both BonusView and BD-Live.

Fortunately for me, and for my Blu-ray disc reviews in Sound and Image magazine, Sony Computer Entertainment will be lending me a PS3 for a while. This constitutes my usual disclosure. But just so you know, it was I that approached them, after having considered all the options available for review equipment. As it is, I also have here the 30 Days of Night Blu-ray, which has a BonusView special feature, but which, since it arrived after the Panasonic players departed, I cannot fully report on until I receive the PS3.

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

HiFi funnies of the day

Posted on June 17, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

[Via Transterrestrial Musings]

I have huge respect for the brand Denon. Its range encompasses decent, reasonably priced stuff (nothing really mass market) through to some seriously high end gear. But I do have to wonder how it can bring itself to market a 1.5 metre Ethernet cable for over $US500.

You know, I was originally just going to pile on as well and join in the fun, and I will in a moment (after all, I’ve been dumping on silly cable theories for a long time).

But first, on reflection, I’d like to offer a rather weak defence of Denon. This cable’s purpose is not for actual Ethernet connectivity (even though recent Denon home theatre receivers do in fact have Ethernet ports). Its actual purpose is for the ‘Denon Link’ feature available on some of the better Denon gear. Denon Link allowed the digital delivery of high resolution multichannel audio signals (up to 5.1 channels at 96kHz, 24 bits) from DVD Audio and SACD discs, using Denon’s players. This was a proprietary solution to a problem created by the original designers of DVD Audio and SACD. As first released, both of these were limited to multichannel analogue outputs, forcing the signal in many cases to go through an unnecessary D/A, A/D cycle. So Denon Link was a very useful feature. These days you achieve the same effect using a HDMI connection, if your player supports SACD and DVD Audio (I use Oppo Digital DVD players, which do). I suppose Denon used RJ45 connections and Ethernet cable for this proprietary link because it was available. Had they chosen proprietary plugs of some kind instead, then this issue would never have arisen.

Ethernet is, of course, a packet-based communications system. The transmitted information is broken up into packets which are sent down the wire, through the network or whatever. The delivery order doesn’t matter. The odd lost packet only slightly impacts performance because the receiver notices that a packet is missing and requests a resend. I don’t really know the intricate workings of Denon Link, but I’m fairly certain that it is a serial system. That is, the data has to be sent down (presumably with some error correction redundancy built in, but since it’s proprietary, who knows — perhaps the system was so poorly designed it has very little error correction built in, requiring a more robust link than usual). Okay, the volume of data (up to six channels at 24 bits and 96,000 hertz sampling means less than 14Mbps) should be no stress at all to a regular Ethernet cable over such a short run.

So if this is regarded as a dedicated high-end audiophile digital cable, then it is merely commonly, rather than uniquely, stupid. It is commonly stupid in that high end ‘audiophile’ HDMI and DVI and optical digital audio and coaxial digital audio cables also exist. Even if you grant that ridiculously expensive audiophile cables do make a difference for analogue connections, it is exceedingly difficult to see the mechanism by which digital cables could improve things, at least over the short distances for which they are normally employed.

Golly, what was going to be a short, light-hearted post turned into a respectable defence of Denon.

Anyway, the reason I started in the first place was to draw attention to the Amazon.com customer reviews. These are hilarious! Not unintentionally, either, so I’m not poking fun at the clueless. Both the ‘positive’ and the ‘negative’ reviews are brilliant. For example, from a four star review:

Thank you Denon. I suffer from a rare R/F allergy which makes it nearly impossible for me to leave my lead lined sarcophagus (unless there is a power outage). Generally i can only listen to music on an accoustic gramaphone and hence my library consists entirely of John Phillips Suza. That all changed when i got the Denon AKDL1 dream maker. No random photons here! I’ve integrated the cable into a bucket i’ve lined with tinfoil and now my library has already expanded to include Count Basie and Sir-Mix-Alot. Life is once again worth living.

and from a one star review:

I installed one of these cables between my gigabit ethernet switch and my Canon Pixma 6700 color printer. I know it’s not a sanctioned use, but I was looking for the ultimate in speed and fidelity. I’m freaky that way.The first time I downloaded a picture to the printer over this cable, the bits moved so fast the printer collapsed into a naked singularity, right there in my office.

Since then, I can’t find the cat, and my entire set of VAX/VMS 4.7 documentation (DEC Will Rise Again!) (Mmmmm, orangey!) has gone missing.

Posted in Audio, Cables, Equipment, Mysticism, Rant, Value | Leave a comment

HD Olympics 2

Posted on June 17, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

Much of the Olympics will, as I mentioned in the previous post, will be broadcast in Australia on Channel 7 (Prime TV in regional areas) in high definition. Some of the overflow will be carried by SBS, as agreed between the two broadcasters.

SBS will not be changing its broadcasting equipment, or broadcasting standards, prior to the Olympic Games. Consequently SBS will be showing its part of the Olympics in 576i SDTV — its low bitrate, lousy quality version thereof. Presumably it will also be showing in 576p, deinterlaced I suppose from the 576i feed.

Note, when I check a couple of years ago, the MPEG2 bitrate of SBS HD (ie. 576p) was actually less than that of Prime SD (ie. 576i!) However, I really ought to update my figures.

Posted in DTV, HDTV | Leave a comment

HD Olympics

Posted on May 21, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

The principal broadcaster for the Olympics in Australia will be Channel 7, (Prime TV in regional areas). This time around we will be getting it in HDTV (1080i) in addition to SDTV. There is an interesting problem with the live broadcast of HD sports to an international audience: do you capture the image at 50 or 60 hertz?

Naturally, we in Australia would prefer 50 hertz. That makes for a nice clean signal that will produce the highest picture quality that Australian TV is capable of. Americans would prefer 60 hertz, because then it feeds straight into their equipment without any frame rate conversion.

The Olympics is coming from China. China is a PAL country: that is, its internal TV network uses PAL, which is a 50 hertz system. The good news is that initial word from Channel 7 is that the TV cameras will be operating at 50 hertz, so we ought to get the best possible picture quality.

More as it comes through.

Posted in DTV, HDTV | Leave a comment

Paramount returns to Blu-ray!

Posted on May 15, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

Those with longish memories may recall that when Blu-ray and HD DVD started, two studios were open minded. Warner Bros eventually (ie. this year) decided to go Blu-ray only, while Paramount was allegedly paid a significant sum last year to become HD DVD exclusive.

The collapse of HD DVD earlier this year made it clear that Paramount would have to return to the fold, and now it has … in a big way. I’ve just received a press release in which it states that it will be selling Blu-ray in Australia from 31 July 2008. It will start with four titles. First will be The Spiderwick Chronicles, which will be a day and date release with the DVD, No Country For Old Men, Cloverfield and Shooter.

That’s pretty good, but the news gets better. The press release closes:

Thursday 31st July also marks the start of the studio’s day-and-date Blu-ray strategy with all new release titles from this date forward receiving a dual Standard and Blu-ray release. A list outlining the impressive non-stop avalanche of Blu-ray titles leading into the Christmas period will be released soon.

Looks like Paramount has resumed Blu-ray in a big way.

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

Denon DVD2500BT Blu-ray player – the way of the future?

Posted on May 5, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

Rear of the Denon DVD2500BT Blu-ray transport Earlier today I emailed Audio Products Group, the Australian distributor for Denon, along with other brands, about whether it would soon be releasing the Denon DVD2500T. Despite the name, this is actually a Blu-ray player.

Or not.

In truth, Denon call it a ‘Blu-ray Disc Transport’. This became apparent when I looked at the brochure they emailed me and inspected the picture of its back. There on the back was an RS-232C serial port, an IR in and an IR out socket, and a HDMI socket. That’s it. No component video outputs. No S-Video, analogue audio or even digital audio. This unit delivers the contents of a disc (CD, DVD Video, Blu-ray and various computer formats) digitally, and that’s all there is to it.

Is this the way that Blu-ray players will go? I suspect that it’s likely. I think that in the end all the outputs other than HDMI will be shed. However, some more internal processing will be required. In particular, it will necessary for a full set of audio decoders to be included — ones capable of decoding two streams at once — two support the highest quality primary/secondary audio output. This unit offers bitstream output but, as I understand it, no internal decoding.

APG expects the Denon DVD2500BT to be available in Australia in September, selling for around $1,899. It is a full Final Standard Profile unit and uses SD as its storage medium. The pricing reflects the premium nature of the product, which weighs a massive 9.2 kilograms.

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