DVDs

The idea of an improving DVDs has always piqued my interest. When I first saw the improvement over VHS I was amazed. I soon read that the very wealthy could buy processors from pro video companies like Faroudja for about $25,000 (in 1990 dollars) that could make a DVD look almost as good as a motion picture, especially when projected with a $65,000 three-gun CRT projector. Out of my league, but it’s nice to dream!

Now we have HD DVDs and Blu-ray players that do deliver high definition. But what about your library of regular old DVDs? OPPO is one of a new breed of DVD players that claims to deliver near-high-definition quality—sharp, crisp images; true-to-life colors; and clear details even on the big screen. Technically, it is an “upconverting” DVD player which takes a standard DVD’s 480 horizontal lines of resolution and bumps it up to 720 or 1,080 before sending it to a HD set, using advanced technology to enhance the picture in many other ways in the process. In short the result is a sharper, richer picture. Read more

Digital Video Essentials is the ideal calibration disc for both the novice television viewer and the more sophisticated home theater enthusiast. The program provides a multitude of tools necessary to receive the best possible picture and sound from your home entertainment system.

Digital Video Essentials not only enables the optimization of audio/video systems, but also tests the room for proper acoustics. Really good equipment can look and sound poor in a bad room, just as inexpensive equipment can do much better in the proper room environment.

While consumers around the world have enjoyed burning their own DVDs for a few years now, the inevitable question of “what’s next” is now upon the industry. Certainly blue laser technologies such as Blu-Ray will one day become affordable and prevalent; however consumers today are still very much in love with DVD. The DVD format is mature, high quality content is widely available, and players are low cost and now installed in approximately 53 percent of U.S. households.

Double Layer DVD technology is not new. Commonly called “DVD9,” Hollywood has been churning out major motion pictures on stamped Double Layer DVD Discs for years. How else could they include the full length movie plus all the bonus materials commonly found on today’s DVDs? Because Double Layer technology has always been part of the DVD specifications, Double Layer DVD Recording on the desktop is the natural progression of single layer 4.7GB recordable technology. Read more

In the early ‘90s when the first CD-R disc was introduced manufacturers said the media had a data life in excess of 40 years. In the late 90s when the first DVDR discs appeared on the scene producers proclaimed a data life of at least 100 years. Throughout that time and even today the press will “discover” that the media is susceptible to CD or DVD rot that will eat your information – audio, video or data – in as little as two years after it is written.

Because CD and DVD media – in 2005 more than 10.65 billion CD-R discs and more than 3,454 million DVDR discs were made and sold -- is used to archive nearly everything today it does make you worry. Especially when these discs are the only place you have precious, irreplaceable family memories – photos and movies – as well as vital family, personal and company data/documents. Read more

“This is my boat. I got it the way I like it. You take up space and you slow me down.” – Mariner, Waterworld

The future never gets here fast enough until it’s the past. It is certainly true of optical storage and right now blue laser technology.
Self proclaimed experts have been declaring each (BD, HD DVD) is winning and each is losing for months. Others proclaim that it will be DOA.
Let’s put this in perspective: Read more

• the orb we live on is about 4.5 billion years old
  
• homo sapiens have been wrecking it for about 200,000 years
  
• no new technology has ever been introduced in the PC, CE industry without 2-3 or more views of the right approach
  
• no new technology has ever entered mainstream as fast as we projected (hoped)

So often, the phrase “the book was better” is uttered about movies with big budgets that lack proper storytelling. Many modern movies seem to be lacking the reason behind the big explosions or ballet-like fight scenes. James McTeigue’s V for Vendetta is one of the recent exceptions to this rule, doling out a 1984-inspired plot with witty and intelligent dialogue that seems to have gone extinct in the current era of action films.

McTeigue’s dystopia features many of the ideas breached in George Orwell’s classic novel, including a larger-than-life tyrant, brutal police raids and government sanctioned torture. But the real beauty of the film is in the way that the hero, inspired by historic acts and the belief that people should rule the government and not the other way around, begins a rebellion against a cruel dictatorship. Read more

"Me? I'm dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It's the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly...stupid." – Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Sparrow was right! Honest people do/say stupid things. Reviewers said the sequel - Dead Man's Chest - would be a bomb. It racked up record ticket sales in its first 10 days... $258.2 million. MPAA said pirates stole more than $70 million from them in the same period.  Their solution -- put the biggest, baddest safe around their treasures imaginable with double, nay triple locks to keep the low-lifes out.

At the same time, honest people are telling us: Read more

• content will soon be virtual and on demand, when and where you want it
  
• the better the DRM control the more people will enjoy the content because they will be protected from themselves
  
• the disagreement on formats is killing the next generation technology so no one will buy it anyway

RiData Is One of First to Be Sold in US

It seems the demand for HDTV just continues to pick up speed! RITEK Corporation, which just happens to be the world's largest optical media manufacturer, is one of the first optical disc manufacturers to introduce the new HD DVD-R medium in the United States. The first RiData disc supports up to 15GB of capacity on a single-layer. Availability is scheduled for late July, concurrent with the introduction of many hardware products designed to support the new format.

Taking advantage of its highly developed manufacturing process skills, RITEK was able to develop both an organic dye and inorganic dye type of HD DVD-R. Using a flexible manufacturing process, the company can quickly respond to customer's demands in this fast moving market. The company leverages its strength into a competitive advantage in order to provide the newest products at affordable pricing, and to continue its leadership role in the optical media industry. Read more

Aside from wanting to know what we consider to be the best product in a given category, occasionally readers will also ask for help in locating hard-to-find items. Out of print movies and DVDs are among the most frequent requests. And some of the movies and TV shows you would expect to be easy to find are the hardest. Two recent requests are for Hawaii 5-0 and Amos and Andy.

Hawaii 5-0, despite its great success over many years, has never been released on DVD However; it was available from a major video distributor on VHS tapes for a while. Today you can find many other less successful TV shows (many of which you probably never even heard of) almost anywhere. This makes no sense, but no luck so far on Hawaii 5-0 high-quality DVDs. Read more