Monthly Archives: February 2010

Efficiency of Audio Codecs

Posted on February 17, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Elsewhere it was pointed out that in my earlier post I was counting in the bitrate of Dolby TrueHD the standard Dolby Digital core, and that this is strictly not necessary for TrueHD. The reason I do that is that … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Codecs, Compression | Leave a comment

Disastrous Giveaway

Posted on February 15, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

In 2008 a spoof too far was released. Called Disaster Movie, it now resides at #22 of the Internet Movie Database ‘Bottom 100‘. Now you, too, can share in the joy of this movie (not having seen any of them, … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Giveaway | 3 Comments

XKCD and the Weird Ways of Windows

Posted on February 12, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

My weekly visit to Yet Another Weird Science Fiction Fan brought me to a link reminding me of the cartoon XKCD, which I haven’t looked at in quite a while. Naturally I flicked through ninety or a hundred of them. As … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer | Leave a comment

The Same Encode, But Different

Posted on February 12, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

While coverting old posts to the new blog, I happened to re-read one I did on Superman Returns, back in July 2008, called ‘Wasting Digital Real-estate‘. In this I theorised that ‘it looks like an identical encode was used on … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Compression, Disc details, HD DVD, Video | 1 Comment

New Posts, Old Posts

Posted on February 12, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

I have been gradually adding old entries from the old blog to this one. As you can see to the right, the Archives now extend back to June 2008. I still have five more years to go to get back … Continue reading →

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A Letter to a PR Company

Posted on February 11, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Today I sent an email in the following terms today to a PR company for a large TV manufacturer: Meanwhile, I know you guys have just started this account, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to make a suggestion. … Continue reading →

Posted in Admin, Equipment, Rant, Testing, Video | Leave a comment

Black to Grey

Posted on February 10, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Hmmm. Jez Ford has drawn my attention to this article on CNET, which says that the black levels of Panasonic plasma TVs become less black over time. It’s all a bit vague, but it seems to be saying that the … Continue reading →

Posted in Equipment, Testing, Video | 2 Comments

Australian Teletext Long Gone

Posted on February 9, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Last few TVs I’ve reviewed haven’t seemed to be able to access Teletext. For good reason: it has gone. Apparently since 20 September 2009. I should have researched this earlier. I can’t say I’m surprised. It never had a big … Continue reading →

Posted in DTV, Equipment, HDTV | 5 Comments

More bitrates

Posted on February 9, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

In my post below I noted that The Box has both DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD encodes. I added The Broken as well. In both cases, the TrueHD encode seemed more efficient space wise: significantly in the case of a … Continue reading →

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

The Box – Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio?

Posted on February 4, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

… or both. The latest Richard Kelly movie, The Box, will be appearing on Blu-ray in Australia from Icon Film Distribution on 10 March 2010. Last night I examined the disc and found it to be the first disc I … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Blu-ray, Disc details | 8 Comments