In This eNewsletter:
• CRT Projectors in a Digital World by Thomas J. Norton
• The HD Puddle by Shane Buettner
• DVDs of the Month by Thomas J. Norton

By Thomas J. Norton

A reader recently asked:

Will the implementation of AACS prevent me from playing back HD DVD and Blu-ray content through the Faroudja VP-400A line quadrupler and ElectroHome 9500 CRT projector that are the backbone of my home theater system? I am certain that you are familiar with this hardware and I am wondering if they must be replaced with an upgraded video processor and digital projector. It's unlikely that this reader is alone. There are probably still thousands of folks out there with home theater installations built around CRT front projectors and screens (this discussion does not apply to one-piece direct-view or rear projection CRT televisions). Folks who in many cases must be wondering if their investment will serve them much longer in the brave new world of digital video.

Most of these enthusiasts have CRT projectors that can accept only analog video sources. Nearly all of these projectors were designed to accept an RGB input (with sync). Some of them, though not many, can also accept analog component. The Sony G90, for example, can accept either RGB with sync or component YPrPb, (480i only), the latter scaled internally by the projector's own DRC deinterlacer/scaler. But built-in deinterlacing and scaling, virtually universal in digital projectors, are rare in the CRT projector world. Most CRT owners use external video processors for this operation.

The AACS copy protection used on both HD DVD and Blu-ray includes an option that gives the releasing studio the ability to insert a flag in the data stream that will limit the component output to a resolution of 960x540p. This flag is called the Image Constraint Token, or ICT. With an ICT present, high-definition from that disc would be available only from the player's HDMI digital video output.

As long as the studios do not include the ICT on their HD DVD or Blu-ray discs you will be able to get component video output from the players in full high-definition. And, in fact none of the HD DVDs released so far use the ICT, and the indications are that it will not be present on Blu-ray Discs either—for now. To make use of the 720p and 1080i HD outputs on these new format players you will need, at minimum, a setup on the CRT projector for 1080i and perhaps 720p as well. Some CRT owners may already have such setups for use with other HD sources. In that case, appropriate switching for the new HD DVD or Blu-ray player is all that would be needed, along with a device called a transcoder to convert the component YPrPb signal to RGB/sync if the projector is RGB only. If there is already a transcoder in the system, it must capable of functioning not only with standard definition 480i/p sources but HD sources at 720p and 1080i as well.

For standard definition material, CRT projector owners will almost certainly already own an external video processor, like the letter writer's Faroudja. This processor upconverts 480i/p sources to some higher scan rate. If this processor is more than a few years old, however, it might accept only 480i sources, scaling them up to whichever scan rate is selected from the processor's option list. The processor may also have an HD bypass input. But if it doesn't, a way to switch between the HD sources (which can be fed directly into the projector without processing) and the processor's scaled and/or deinterlaced output (derived from standard definition sources) will also be needed.

And there's a further complication to the switching setup with the Toshiba HD-DVD players (we don't yet have experience with Blu-ray machines). Pop in a conventional DVD and the player's component output provides only 480i or 480p. So to use this player for both HD DVDs and standard DVDs, a way must be found to route the player's single component output to both the video processor for standard definition discs and to the projector directly for high-definition ones.

Alternately, it may be preferable to scale/deinterlace all analog video sources up to a single resolution component output. In that case, the projector need only be set up for that one resolution. That resolution might be 1080p (if the video processor will provide it). But only the best CRT projectors—generally those with 9-inch tubes—can deal with the scan rate required by 1080p. A better scaling option for lesser CRT projectors might be 720p.

But note carefully: Many scalers, and particularly older ones like the Faroudja in the letter, will not scale and/or deinterlace 1080i or 720p to 1080p—or to any other resolution, for that matter. In fact, they will likely not even respond to any source higher than 480i and perhaps 480p.

From these scenarios it's obvious that while it's certainly possible to configure a CRT front projection system to operate with the new HD disc formats, it isn't straightforward and for many owners it will require the services of a custom installer.

And the above description addresses the simplest situations. It can get even more interesting. Blu-ray players (though not HD DVD machines in the first generation) will also output 1080p either in full 3/2 pulldown form (1080p/60) or in the native form recorded on the disc (1080p/24 for film-based programming). Both may offer some advantage over 1080i, though just how much is still an open question for another day.

The theoretical advantage of 1080p over 1080i is a reduction in possible deinterlacing artifacts and higher resolution. The theoretical advantage of 24fps without 3/2 pulldown is that it provides slightly smoother motion by avoiding the judder resulting from converting the 24fps of a film source to the 30fps requirements of most video displays. But a native frame rate of 1080p/24 is unusable without further processing; it will create too much flicker. Film projectors get around this by flashing each frame twice (in rare cases, three times). For material transferred to video at this frame rate you will need a processor that can frame-double the 24fps original to 48fps, minimum.

But the information we have to date indicates that 1080p/60 and 1080p/24 will not be available from the analog component outputs of a Blu-ray player, only from the HDMI digital output. And the first generation of HD DVD players will not output 1080p at all, even though the discs are encoded at 1080p.

All of the above discussion assumes a projector limited to analog video inputs. But is there any way to use HDMI, or its kissing cousin, DVI, with a CRT projector? There is, apparently. There is a website that offers DVI input boards for some CRT projectors, including Electrohome and Sony models. The site has a sort of back-alley feel to it, but was recommended to us by a reliable source who claims it offers good products that do what they're claimed to do, do it well, and are surprisingly reasonable in price. Ultimate AV has no experience with these products, however, and therefore cannot vouch for them in any way. And while they are said to be HDCP compliant, you're on your own both with respect to the effectiveness of this feature and any possible legal/copy protection issues involved. Caveat emptor.

The Electrohome 9500, and its derivatives (projectors from such companies as the old Vidikron—not the present Runco-owned Vidikron—and Reference Imaging) is in my judgment, and that of many others, the best CRT projector that has ever been made or ever will be made. Advocates of the Sony G90 and Barco 9-inch projectors (the two others that also jockey for first place) will disagree. But owners of any of these projectors are likely to be in no hurry to replace them if they're in good condition, bright enough, and not trouble prone. If you are the lucky owner of one of these beautiful beasts and need to replace the tubes, be careful; there are indications that the original tubes for the Electrohomes are superior to the reconditioned tubes that are now more widely available. And a complete re-tube job on one of these babies can run to $10,000 or more—a price that will buy a complete, top-of-the-line, single chip 1280x720 DLP projector.

By Shane Buettner

On April 18th, 2006 it happened! HD on a 5" silver disc hit retail shelves when the HD DVD format was officially launched on that date. While it's difficult for me to restrain my overall enthusiasm at having 1080p on little discs in my home theater, the fact is that what's being called a first "wave" of discs and players is really more of a puddle.

Officially scheduled titles for the release date numbered exactly three, and of those only two made it to stores. Warner's The Last Samurai and Phantom of the Opera were in stores at launch, and Million Dollar Baby and Universal's Serenity followed a few days later. Most stores had a handful of copies of each title.

In addition to the paltry number of titles and the skimpy numbers of copies shipped to stores of each title, the HD DVD players themselves were shipped in short supply, and Toshiba declared victory for selling those players out in less than two days. Reports vary wildly with Toshiba claiming that 10,000-15,000 players shipped to around 3,000 store fronts, and skeptics claiming a number closer to 6,000 players shipped and sold. Even taking Toshiba's numbers at face value means 2-3 players to each of those 3000 stores, which doesn't exactly represent a massive rollout.

The vast majority of players were reported as being the $499 HD-A1, but Toshiba claims their more upscale model, the $799 HD-XA1, shipped in small quantities as well. I received Ultimate AV's review sample of the HSD-XA1 within days of the April introduction (no, not before) so I can vouch that at least one of those was manufactured and shipped right around the launch.

Before getting to my quick first impressions of the format and the HD-XA1 player, let me just note that more titles are trickling out every week and our sources tell us that Warner will be releasing at least two titles per week in perpetuity. Check back with UAV frequently and look at our Next-Gen Discs Release Calendar. We'll be tracking all releases on both HD DVD and Blu-ray. The latter is scheduled to hit stores next month.

So far my impressions of HD DVD are thus: I'm enormously impressed with the picture and sound quality, which is, by a substantial margin, the best I've seen and heard at home from a video source. And for me, it's good enough to tolerate the stops and starts, quirks and jerks of the Toshiba HD-XA1, which leaves enough to be desired on the ergonomic front to be considered a wide open door to Blu-ray.

First the good. As TJN reported in his first look at the HD-A1 (which is virtually identical in critical parts and construction to the more expensive HD-XA1), the picture and sound just amaze. The image is strikingly detailed, utterly devoid of a number of artifacts that have always plagued the DVD format, and in a word, just awesome. In addition, the sound is fuller, richer, and more dimensional, and yet also sweeter and more sensationally dynamic.

Before moving on, Toshiba also gets points on pure performance with standard-def DVDs. While corners were certainly cut to get these players to market at these prices, Toshiba for the most part put its emphasis on pure picture and sound quality with upconverted DVDs and HD DVDs at their native rate.

On the ergonomic front, all the early reports of terrible remote controls and players that hiccup and freeze are certainly true. Although the HD-XA1 uses the same remote as the $499 HD-A1, it upgrades the remote, to an extent, by adding backlighting that's vibration activated. Pick it up and it lights. Still, a number of oft-used buttons are similarly sized, too small and too close together. On top of that, the player responds so slowly that you're sometimes tempted to repeat a command, which can cause the player to be so confused that it needs a time out. And by that, I mean have its plug pulled out of the wall briefly until it can regain its senses. And on a couple of occasion it has also frozen during a movie and required the full "cold boot" too. (This appears to be a fault only with some samples. So far, knock wood, my HD-A1 hasn't yet hiccupped during the actual playing of a disc.—TJN

And that cold boot term is more appropriate than you might think. The players are in fact more like a computer than a standalone player. Each is built on a motherboard with a 2.5Ghz Intel Pentium 4 processor (a mothballed design in the computer world but suitable for this application), a gig of RAM, and an NEC computer-grade disc drive. Some reports have pegged the players' as being the equivalent of a 2003 vintage PC. Older and slower than today's desktops, in other words.

While using an older, discontinued CPU allowed Toshiba to cut some corners to hit its price point, another reason for the slow disc access and poor reliability may be beyond simply improving the computing horsepower. The authentication jigs that the players have to go through in order to protect Hollywood's intellectual property are substantial, and the players also have to determine on disc boot-up whether it's playing a current standard red laser DVD, an HD red laser DVD, or a blue laser HD DVD. They also have to lock and load for any of the three different video compression codecs in use, and they have to manipulate audio and video bitsreams that are larger than those in current DVD by several orders of magnitude. It's really a whole new ball game.

Still, these widespread reports of HD DVD's ergonomic shortcomings allow a big potential advantage for Blu-ray right out of the gate. The Blu-ray players are expensive enough that it's doubtful they're built on antiquated parts to cut pricing corners. If BD players are faster, slicker and more polished that could really cast a strong negative light on HD DVD.

On the picture and sound front, while we're all aware of BD's theoretical advantages, seeing is believing. HD DVD looks and sounds so excellent that BD has no margin for error. It's been all but confirmed at this point that the first BD discs won't be dual-layer 50GB discs, but single-layer 25GB instead. HD DVD has come out of the gate using 30GB dual-layer discs. Blu-ray is using MPEG2 in average data rates that are said to be in the 20Mbps range, and Sony and MGM's first discs will feature uncompressed multichannel PCM soundtracks. BD can't afford for those bitrate intensive soundtracks to compromise the image quality. The HD DVD titles we've seen so far are reportedly running in the neighborhood of 20Mbps on the video alone, and using Microsoft's VC-1 compression, which according to some industry experts, including Joe Kane, is superior overall to MPEG2 in performance. Next month when BD comes out, we'll see!

Munich

Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Ciaran Hinds, Mathiew Kassovitz, Geoffrey Rush. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (anamorphic). 164 minutes. 2005. R. Dolby Digital 5.1 (English and French). Universal Studios Home Entertainment 21823. $29.98.

Picture 4.0* (out of 4*)
Sound 4.0*
Film 4.0*

Munich begins with the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. But that's just the starting point. The story director Steven Spielberg is most interested in telling here is the Israeli response to that massacre. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir decided that the only fit response was to hunt down and kill all of the terrorists responsible. Apart from a few opening scenes of the Olympic killings, and key flashbacks to them scattered through the rest of the film, it's the hunters and their search for the perpetrators that fills most of the film's 164-minute running time.

The film is based on the 1979 novel, Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team by George Jonas, and apparently follows that book (which I have not read) very closely. In his introduction, Spielberg admits that the only details of the actual operation known for certain are that the Olympic massacre did take place, Meir did order that the terrorists be hunted down and killed, and more than half of those known to have been involved in the massacre and/or its planning were put away by the team(s) assigned to the task.

But the individual details in the film (and in the book as well) are largely fictional, or at least cannot be corroborated. So the author (and screenwriter) are free too put whatever spin they want on the events, characters, and conversations that flesh out the story. Was the CIA involved in some way, as one character suggests? No one really knows for sure, but the writers couldn't resist taking a swipe or two at their favorite whipping boy. Was the assassination squad—or at least its leader—plagued by guilt or doubts as the film strongly suggests? While some accounts deny it, who really knows?

There is a real danger in taking a real historical event and embellishing the few sketchy facts known about it into a film or novel. The gullible viewer/reader (who probably slept through history class and gets most of his or her knowledge of the past—or present—from the movies, MTV, or Comedy Central) accepts the movie as fact—down to the tiniest detail.

The most controversial aspect of the film is that it appears to be drawing a moral equivalence between the terrorists and those who hunt them down and kill them. It's a popular argument, but in the real world the situation is far more complicated. Ponder it too deeply and it can lead to a paralysis that can get you killed by an enemy who is convinced of his cause and not at all reluctant about taking any action needed to destroy you and yours. Ultimately, the latter consideration was what pushed Israel to retaliate in the way it did.

Controversies aside, however, Munich a gripping film, shot in convincing locations from Malta to Brooklyn with a superb cast, a literate script, and solid direction. And apart from the typically high contrast photography that's a trademark of Spielberg's longtime Director of Photography, Janusz Kaminski, you'd never guess this is a Spielberg film if you didn't already know. Even John Williams' score is uncharacteristically sparse.

Despite its Oscar nomination for Best Picture, this was one of Spielberg's least successful films at the box office. It really deserved a wider audience, but was probably too grim a movie for the 2005 holiday season. It's also extremely violent. Take its R rating very seriously.

The video transfer is stunning. Despite the difficult (but not grainy) photography, the DVD is sharp and crisp throughout. The colors are subdued, but there are no visible artifacts or edge enhancement. The critical shadow details in the film's many dark scenes are superbly rendered. If all DVDs were this beautifully produced, high-definition on disc would be a less compelling proposition.

The sound is equally outstanding. There are plenty of realistic effects—drenching rain, explosions, and at least two passages with some of the most powerful bass you'll ever hear from a DVD. They don't last long, and they're designed for atmosphere rather than to support specific action on the screen. But you'll know them when you hear them as your subwoofers cry for mercy.

Apart from Spielberg's introduction, which you can opt not to watch (I choose to skip it and view it after the film), the extras on this one-disc release amount to zip. Nada. But that's okay by me; it seems wrong somehow to surround a film like this with lighthearted "making of" features.

But if you do want such features, including multiple supporting documentaries, there is apparently a two-disc set scheduled for release. But as of this writing, it is apparently not yet available and I haven't seen it.