The other day Rogers called me up to tell me that my SA8300HD PVR wasn’t working properly. I told them that it was working fine, but they asked that I tune to channel 100, a VOD (Video On Demand) channel. Sure enough, it didn’t work. A little lightbulb turned on in my mind, because the VOD Treehouse channel never worked either. So they tell me to bring in the PVR for one that works. Great! I did that, but still have the same problem. ** SIGH ** If Rogers used TiVo, I betcha that wouldn’t happen.

And that seems to be the thinking behind Charlie White’s overviews of the Scientific Atlanta 8000HD and 8300HD (I have that one) PVRs. It gets the job done, with two tuners at that, but they’re still not TiVo’s. But for me, TiVo is not an option - not available in my country. So I’ll just continue living with my SA8300HD until I finally get a choice.

Digital Media Net - HD Digital Video Recorders by Scientific-Atlanta

Matsushita’s Panasonic sits on the hill surveying its domain. Yup, life is good at the top. Panasonic is the number one plasma maker in the world. But plodding up that hill with a determined stride, Korea’s LG Electronics is opening another plasma display panel plant. Once online and producing well, LG Electronics will be making 350,000 panels per month by the end of the year. This would put LG on top, toppling Panasonic off its perch.

Personally I find numbers like this hard to believe. Just one manufacturer making 350,000 panels a month. That’s a lot of panels. Who buys these things? I don’t know anyone with a plasma. The only one I see regularly is in my foyer at work.

EE Times - LG aiming to be largest PDP supplier, say reports

If you’re new to HD and would like IGN’s opinion on getting started in HD, then check out IGN’s “Entering the World of High-Definition”. They even mention what’s coming next after HD: UHDV. 7,680 x 4,320 resolution and 22.2 channel sound! Believe it!

GEAR IGN - Entering the World of High-Definition

Personally, I’m a Bruce Willis fan. After all, he starred in one of the best action flicks of all time, Die Hard. (Did you know they’re making Die Hard 4?) So on September 17th I might just check out ABC for their broadcast of Armageddon in 720p HD. I probably won’t end up watching the whole thing (commercials, you know), but I’ll want to see what it looks like in HD.

Ooooh! It also includes 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound.

Mickey News - “Armageddon,” Starring Bruce Willis, … September 17

What has four HDMI inputs, two component inputs, two S-Video inputs, two composite inputs, and sundry other inputs and outputs, including an HDMI output? No receiver or preprocessor that I know of. But there is a video processor/switcher that does, and it’s the DVDO iScan VP30. It can accept any video signal input and output it as anything from 480p to 1080p. What’s that? 1080p? Yup, it’s starting to become popular.

DVDO’s website, of course, thinks this thing’s the best:

The DVDO® iScan™ VP30 is the next generation high-resolution video processor and A/V switcher that sets a new standard for up, down, and cross-con-verting all of your video sources. Whether it’s your 480i cable feed, 480p DVD player, or 720p or 1080i HD set-top-box signal-the iScan VP30 scales your video output to perfectly match the optimum resolution of your display, up to 1080p! Plus, it’s HDCP compliant over each of the 4 digital HDMI inputs, and accepts any legacy 480i/480p analog sources.

Serving as your complete A/V hub, the iScan VP30 provides simultaneous audio/video switching with “any rez in - any rez out” video conversion and one clean wire to your display. Add the iScan VP30 to your home theater today and prepare to be visually Captivated!

audio|video REVOLUTION - DVDO Reveals New HD Video Processor
DVDO - iScan VP30

Philips has another DVD player that upconverts the signal to 720p or 1080i. We’ve seen this before, and it’s a technology that’s starting to become pervasive. Reading the press release, though, one little line grabbed my attention.

Philips is promising high definition standard picture and sound quality with the launch of its most advanced DVD/SACD player to date – the DVP9000S. By utilising sophisticated video processing technology, the DVP9000S will let you enjoy DVDs in 720p or 1080i high definition via HDMI or YPbPr connection, while incorporating sophisticated internal circuitry and DSD upsampling to guarantee excellent audio performance.

Did that just say “720p or 1080i high definition via HDMI or YPbPr connection“? Unfortunately, I’ve only got a second-hand source for this press release, as I couldn’t find it on the Philips website. But still, if this is true, it is a truly liberating thing for those many people out there with older HDTVs. Previously, all upconverting DVD players that I know of only allowed upconverted 720p and 1080i signals to go out on the DVI or HDMI output. Only 480i or 480p signals were allowed on the analog connection.

Can anyone confirm this?

CyberTheater.com - Philips launches new, highly affordable HD upscaling DVD player

Every time I learn of a new codec, I’m surprised. I always get that feeling that I should have heard of it before. And I got that feeling again when I learned of a new codec to be used by the Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) called JP2K. JP2K is short for JPEG2000, and it does not process several video frames for compression at once like MPEG2 and MPEG4 do. Since JP2K processes each frame individually, it is better for real-time HD encoding than MPEG, and has less obvious and objectionable artifacts as well. Not only that, there are no licensing fees, nor is it as difficult to implement in hardware than MPEG. And it’s highly scalable, with one bitstream being viewable from a cellphone up to an HDTV.

Seeing all these JP2K advantages makes me wonder if it will be used by HD-DVD or Blu-ray one day. There doesn’t seem to be any obvious benefit for BD-ROM, but for BD-R and especially BD-RE, it looks like a great codec.

ultimate AV - HDTV Conference 2005, Day 1

ultimate AV has a review of the Optoma H79 DLP projector. The H79 contains Texas Instrument’s DarkChip3 technology, for better blacks. It includes an 8-segment 5x-speed colour wheel, and has a resolution of 720p. The H79 has a contrast ratio of 4500:1 and puts out 1000 lumens of light. It has a DVI connector, but no HDMI.

It is a quiet projector, which is great news for those who might end up sitting near it. It has a vertical lens shift feature, which is great, but no horizontal lens shift. Lens shift allows you to place the projector higher or lower than the middle of the screen and still get perfect screen geometry.

Mr. Stone seems to like it:

To my mind—and eyes—the H79 qualifies as the first single-chip DLP that delivers acceptable home theater performance. Not only can it produce a stunning, virtually noise-free picture through its DVI inputs, but it does so without inflicting visual fatigue even after more than five hours of continuous critical viewing. Sure, it occasionally displays rainbow artifacts, and it doesn’t have as black a black as a good CRT projector, but its wide contrast range, exemplary shadow detail, superb color delicacy, and extremely low mechanical noise level make it hard to deny its seductive allure.

ultimate AV - Optoma H79 DLP Projector

Canon and Toshiba have begun trial production of SED displays. Canon and Toshiba hope to start selling SED displays in the first half of next year. Consumers should enjoy their relative thinness (like plasma) and picture quality (like CRT). On the way to mass market availability, these panels need to be produced, and a test production was to have started recently in Hiratsuka City. Initially about 3000 panels will be made per month on a test basis, though they could eventually be sold.

IT world - Canon, Toshiba to start SED production this week

And in other SED news, Canon will acquire an NEC subsidiary for in-house production of SED panels, Tech-On! reports. The subsidiary is Anelva Corp., which manufactures vacuum apparatuses. This looks like a move by Canon to be an SED player. Canon and Toshiba are allies in the SED space, but it looked like Toshiba was in the driver’s seat. Maybe Canon thinks that it should be a larger player as well.

Tech-On! - Canon to Acquire NEC Subsidiary for in-House Production of SED Panels

The HDTVexpert not too long ago wrote an article about 1080p. It was a cautionary tale, pointing out, among other things, that there is no 1080p content being broadcast anywhere. Rather a bummer when it comes to getting a 1080p display, no?

Well, Mr. Putman received a lot of e-mail because of his interesting article, and responds to much of it in a new article. Both these articles are great reading, but I’d like to discuss the second one.

First of all Mr. Putman goes to great lengths to point out that “there is no 1080p acquisition, production, and broadcast formats using a fast picture refresh rate (50 Hz or 60 Hz) equivalent to the 720p standard. None.” And he’s right. But there will be, and he even mentions a Sony camera. But there’s one true 1080p source coming down the pike that will be sold to millions of homes worldwide - the PS3! And for those of you out there planning to get a PS3, then 1080p sets are something you should be looking at. Well, you should if these sets could actually import a 1080p signal, which most of them can’t.

Also, he points out that the new 1080p DLP sets aren’t really native 1080p devices. They’re really 960 x 1080 devices that shift the tiny little mirrors slightly to produce the other 960 x 1080, which together makes 1920 x 1080. Just a factoid to keep in mind when buying these sets. Investigation is still underway to see if this makes any real-world difference over a theoretical 1920 x 1080 DLP device.

HDTVexpert - 1080p - Time for a Reality Check!
HDTVexpert - 1080P - A Follow-Up

We knew that plasma prices were heading for a downturn, and now we know by how much.

Matsushita will start selling a 1080p plasma display in Japan for less than one million Yen, which currently converts to about $9,000US. Sets will go on sale in Japan starting November 1st. This severely undercuts competitors’ prices in the 1080p arena, so we’ll have to see what they’ll do.

Yahoo! News - Matsushita to sell 65-inch TV in Japan from Nov
Times of Oman - Matsushita takes on Sharp with 65-inch plasma TV

My third child is busy being born.

[Update: My son Grayson Heinrich Hoffmann was born on Thursday August 25th at 3:27pm weighing 7 lbs 13 oz. He and his mom are both doing well. He’s so cute!]

DIRECTV will no longer be selling TiVo-based PVR’s to their customers, but will be going it alone come this fall. So the question is: can DIRECTV do better than TiVo? Can it match TiVo? Can it even come close to TiVo?

Well, TVPredictions thinks it’ll give the old TiVo a run for the money with some cool new features. Like a 90 minute rewind buffer, 3 times the norm. Frame-by-frame advance, which is great to catch those little details. Bookmarks, to return to certain parts of shows again later. And the on-screen program guide will tell you if a show is broadcast in widescreen or not, which is great.

Now, from reading a manual it’s pretty hard to tell how easy a device is to use, and that’s one of TiVo’s main strengths. So hopefully DIRECTV’s future PVR customers get a nice machine.

The DIRECTV PVR subscription will be $5.99/month, not including the hardware.

TVPredictions - Exclusive First Look: The New DIRECTV DVR

If you want to store lots and lots and lots of stuff, rent a storage locker. But if you want to store lots of television programming using a PVR, then 1TB of disk space might be a better place to start. And yesterday Hitachi announced a PVR/DVD player combo device to include that 1TB of space. They will also offer models with storage of 160GB, 250GB, and 500GB (that’s 0.5TB if you’re going with the new nomenclature).

Hitachi said the new models would be the first on the market able to simultaneously record two high-definition programs, and it hopes this will be a key selling point given the spread of terrestrial digital broadcasting in Japan.

The recorders will go on sale in Japan from next month. They are expected to retail from about 130,000 yen for the cheapest model to 230,000 yen for the one-terabyte recorder, which stores data on two 500 gigabyte hard disk drives.

Reuters - Hitachi unveils world’s first terabyte DVD recorder

I bet you thought CableCARD was the thing to get to futureproof yourself with your next HDTV purchase, didn’t you? Well, you would have been sorely disappointed to find that not many cable companies actually support CableCARD, probably because it’s a one-way only thing. You can’t buy VOD or PPV programming using CableCARD.

Hence, OCAP. (OpenCable Platform.)

I’ve mentioned Samsung efforts in this area before. But now it seems all the more official because “Samsung Electronics has achieved Certification status for an OCAP(TM)-enabled interactive digital television set in a recently concluded test wave held at CableLabs.”

Said Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian L. Roberts: “With Samsung and other consumer electronics manufacturers, cable continues to lead the entertainment industry into its digital era. We are a significant step closer to having advanced devices capable of receiving and displaying advanced cable services such as program guides and video-on-demand (VOD) without requiring other boxes. Just as we stood a few years ago with modems, we are poised to offer consumers more advanced services than ever.”

This is all very well and good, but do I still get to record my shows if I have an OCAP HDTV?

Yahoo! Finance - Samsung Electronics Gains CableLabs(R) Certification on 2-Way Digital Television