Australia is an odd market for home entertainment equipment. We are small (20 million) but the market here has mixed and matched the standards used in the US and Europe, each of which are huge (300-ish million). One example is that we use the PAL TV system that is widespread in Europe, rather than the NTSC system. But the majority of DVD players sold here have component video outputs rather than the SCART RGB outputs common in Europe.
With new products we often get the Europeanised versions. So most standard definition digital receivers have SCART outputs, and quite a few DVD recorders are also European oriented.
The big players, like Panasonic, Pioneer and Philips, usually perform some localisation of their products, but many others don’t. So when I was recently reviewing some DVD recorders, I applauded the inclusion of the somewhat user-friendly G-Code* timer recording system on models from Panasonic and Pioneer, and was slightly critical of its absence on the Toshiba D-R1.
Only slightly, because I personally don’t find using G-Code much more convenient than simply keying in the time, date and channel for timer recordings. I prefer to allow a little slack at the top and tail of a programmed recording, just in case the TV station isn’t running exactly to schedule.
However, my criticism of the Toshiba was wrong it turns out. It has a European timer recording convenience called Showview, and I am now informed that Showview and G-Code are one and the same, differing only in name. So if you’re a G-Code fan, don’t let the absence of the G-Code logo put you off. Just enter the same code into Showview.
* In the G-Code system, rather than entering the start and stop times and channel for the program you want to record, you just key in a seven digital number printed in the TV program guide. This maps across to these parameters, entering them for you. You must, of course, have your TV stations numbered in accordance with the way the G-Code system expects.
In this case, my focus was on the DVD 30’s sub-$1,000 price and real, honest-to-goodness ability to properly process DVD Audio surround tracks. This it does superbly, providing real 
Far more important is the sound quality of CDs from the analogue output. Something is wrong with it. When you play back CDs using the analogue outputs, every 17 to 19 seconds it produces a short noise, like a digital hiccup (ie. it seems to skip a few samples or something, producing this noise). This noise is quite loud enough to be clearly audible on most CDs. Yet it does not do this if you feed out the PCM signal to an external decoder.
Now why would I buy a DVD that I already have? For better picture quality of course. I am all too aware how DVDs are sometimes mislabelled, particularly with regard to aspect ratio and running time. So I inspected this DVD’s cover very carefully indeed. As you can see, the information box for this DVD is more wrong than right. For example, the time of the movie is shown as 172 minutes, when it is actually 165 minutes (PAL movies run 4% faster than the original theatrical presentation). The aspect ratio is shown by the icon at bottom left and the text to its right as 1.85:1, when it is nominally 2.35:1. But I focused mostly on the next marking to the right: ’16:9′. This is shorthand for 16:9 enhanced (or anamorphic). Whereas 4:3 is used for non-enhanced. So I was very hopeful.
It has taken forever, seemingly, but the release of the first three (in chronologically filmed-time terms) Star Wars movies onto DVD has been announced. The date is set for September this year. Here’s part of what the press release has to say:
Philips is, of course, behind the ‘+’ family of recordable DVDs: DVD+R and DVD+RW. In conjunction with this announcement, Philips says that it is releasing two new DVD recorders. But one of these is not just a recorder. The Philips LX9000R is a DVD/CD etc system with speakers and the works. And it also records DVDs. I think we can expect to see more such systems in the future.