OTHER TECH

Lose the Previews

Q. Some DVDs I rent or purchase won't let me fast-forward through sections like previews or the FBI warning. Are there any players on the market that can fast-forward through these? I want the disc manufacturers to know that I'll continue to return any DVDs I purchase that have this limitation! Mark Bills Portland, OR

A. Al Griffin says: That maddening procession of FBI warnings, copyright notices, logos, and previews that creep by at the beginning of a DVD without you being able to fast-forward through them are the result of User Operation Prohibition (UOP), a common feature on commercial discs. How heavy-handedly UOP gets applied is up to the individual disc producer, which is why some DVDs let you skip right to the menu, while others make you endure seemingly endless warnings and other junk first. Some software DVD players for the PC - RioDVD, for example - claim to let you circumvent the UOP restriction, while others can be modified to bypass it via free software patches floating around on the Web (similar options exist for Mac users). You can also dig up some modified, UOP-free DVD players for sale by doing a Google search. (Just don't tell the feds that I told you.)

How High-Def?

Q. How much better will HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc look on a 1080p TV that has an HDMI input than a current DVD played on a progressive-scan player? It sounds like you'll need a 1080p screen in order to see much improvement in picture quality. Shawn Horton VIA E-MAIL

A. Al Griffin says: The short answer is that picture quality from HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs will be substantially better than what you get watching DVDs with a progressive-scan player. And though you'll see the greatest difference on a 1080p-rez HDTV, you won't necessarily need one to see a difference since improvement will also be visible on sets with 1080i or 720p native resolution. The main reason is that both new disc formats store video at 1080p resolution - a substantial increase over DVD's 480-line interlaced format. New, advanced forms of video compression and an increase in encoding bit rate afforded by the generous data storage capacity of both HD DVD and Blu-ray also help make pictures in both formats look more solid, stable, and noise-free than with DVD.