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Blu-ray Player Reviews
Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray Player
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Oct 14, 2006  |  0 comments
The war begins. . .with a whimper.

With more than a little excitement, I hooked up the Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray disc player. Here it is, the first Blu-ray player to hit the world. I put it right on top of the Toshiba HD-XA1 HD DVD player, which I'm sure the Blu-ray people would love to hear, and the HD DVD people not so much. I ran the HDMI cable to the virtually reference-quality Yamaha DPX-1300 projector, put in my old standby The Fifth Element (of course), and sat back, ready to enjoy. The disc started up promptly (take that, Toshiba!), and, within seconds, there was Blu-ray. It only took a few seconds more before I uttered something along the lines of, "What the hell?"

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Audio Video News
Bling and Fling your iPod Thing
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Oct 14, 2006  |  0 comments
It's hard to believe, but more iPod-related stuff is on the way. Soon to be available are kiddie cases from ifrogz, a company started by the same guys who developed Reminderband custom silicone bracelets. (And how many times haven't we all wondered how the world existed before those came along?) The new company's Tadpole line of video iPod cases are made specifically for children ages one and up - but they do not come with sedatives or tension relieving headache medicine for adults of child-rearing age.
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Ears On
Disc Maker to Test Chipped DVD
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 13, 2006  |  1 comments
A company that stamps out half a billion DVDs a month has developed a way for movie studios and other software makers to track discs from factory to store to your home. The strategy is yet to be tested but the underlying technology is nothing fancy. It's RFID, or radio-frequency identification, the same chip-based system increasingly used in driver's licenses, U.S. passports, stores like Wal-Mart, and the EZ-Pass booth on toll roads. RFID can operate in a range from two inches, like the new credit/debit-card readers, to 69 feet. In this case the range for "chipped" discs will be six meters, or just under 20 feet. The RFID reader can be built into players, which would shut down when fed discs with the wrong regional coding. The AACS system built into the Blu-ray and HD DVD formats already allows copyright holders to shut down players in the home, but thanks to RFID, it will soon be possible to do the same in existing DVD as well. Developers of the new technology are iPico, an RFID specialist, and Ritek, whose U-Tech subsidiary manufactures discs for Disney, Fox, Warner, and other studios in factories all over the world. The first RFID-enriched discs will be made in Taiwan and tested in Australia.
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Audio Video News
Warner Cuts Back Blu-ray and HD DVD Sales Projections
 |  Oct 12, 2006  |  0 comments

Earlier in the year rose-colored glasses must have been somewhat in style when Warner's Steve Nickerson was <a href="http://ultimateavmag.com/news/081006sopranosHDDVD/">quoted</a> as saying that Warner, which supports both Blu-ray and HD DVD, expected consumers to spend "between $225 million and $500 million during the fourth quarter (of 2006)." He also predicted that by the end of 2006 that there would be 500,000 Blu-ray and HD DVD standalone players sold, plus two to three million game consoles and two to four million computers with HD DVD or Blu-ray capability.

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Audio Video News
Better Buttons on a Better Remote
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Oct 12, 2006  |  0 comments
It may not seem logical, but Logitech believes that 670 comes right after 659 - when it comes to remotes, that is.
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Ears On
Slow Growth, Combis Seen for Next-Gen DVD
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 12, 2006  |  0 comments
The future of HD DVD and Blu-ray is neither boom or bust, according to The State of Home Video (11th Edition) from Kagan Data Services. Kagan sees the two new formats together grabbing 13.9 percent of the market by 2009, 53.7 by 2012, and 68.7 by 2015: "The first wave of high-definition DVD homes will consist primarily of those homes with non-dedicated players, such as PS3, Xbox 360 and PCs.... We estimate the balance will shift in 2009 as dedicated player prices drop and the dust from the format war has settled." However, revenue growth in hard-copy software will be slowed by downloads, Kagan said, citing CinemaNow. Meanwhile, obstacles to the long-awaited combi player have continued to fall, most recently with NEC's announcement of a video processing chip that handles both formats at no extra cost. Ricoh had already announced a pickup lens that reads the disc at two depths, to accommodate the differing demands of each format. With NEC shipping the new part in 2007, we might see a combi by the end of that year. Maybe. But don't hold your breath waiting for a recorder.
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The House That Jim Built Video Tour
 |  Oct 11, 2006  |  0 comments

Report for 10/13/06:

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Other Tech
Inner Workings: Inside a Liquid-Crystal Display (LCD)
David Katzmaier  |  Oct 11, 2006  |  0 comments

The granddaddy of fixed-pixel technologies, LCDs first appeared in pocket calculators in the early 1970s. LCD technology is amazingly versatile, able to power front projectors, rear-projection TVs, and flat-panel displays.

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HDTV SetupHDTV Tech
Are You Getting All of the HDTV Resolution You Expected? Round 2
Gary Merson  |  Oct 11, 2006  |  0 comments
Earlier this year, we tested 54 2005 HDTV sets to learn how they process all the detail contained within 1080i high-definition signals. The results were disappointing. Slightly less than half of the models tested failed to properly deinterlace a 1080i high-definition signal, resulting in a loss of picture resolution. Thanks to our readers' response to dealers when shopping for high-definition TVs, a number of manufacturers took notice.
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Ears On
NY Times Discovers Surround Sound
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 11, 2006  |  2 comments
"A Full-Blooded Approach, with Surround Sound," promised the New York Times headline of a piano-recital review. I knew I wouldn't be able to resist quoting it when the concert venue, the Frick Collection, was described as "perfect for the iPod generation, offering intense surround sound, minus the hearing damage." I thereupon combed the Apple website for hours looking in vain for the new surround-capable iPod before realizing that critic Vivien Schweitzer was, quite reasonably, designating surround sound as a virtue lacking in earbud-tethered devices. She praised British pianist Leon McCawley for his performances of the Mozart "Sonata in D," Rachmaninoff's "Études-Tableaux," and the "Suite for Piano" by Hans Gál, with its "Debussy-like harmonies, Schubertian lyricism, echoes of Brahms and Prokofiev and a hint of atonality.... The listener, meanwhile, was enveloped in an acoustical cocoon of bright, passionate sound." If you think the sole purpose of this blog is mockery, think again. Chamber and symphonic concertgoing offers an all too rare chance to build an acoustically pure frame of reference, unmediated by electronics, that can be applied to gauge the quality of equipment. I treasure my experiences in the Vienna Musikverein and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. You'll never hear better surround sound than in the right seat of a first-class concert hall.
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