I previously reported that Sony and MGM studios would not be using the Image Constraint Token (ICT) to down-rez HD movies played back on BD (Blu-ray Disc) players. The AACS standard allows studios leary of the analog outputs to cause the player to downrez the signal to a quarter of its original size, to 960 x 540. The ICT is what they would use on the disc to do this. But the ICT is optional - studios don’t have to use it. Sony/MGM previously said that they wouldn’t be using it, thus allowing full HD out of the analog component video outputs. This is great for owners of older sets, like my friend Joshua, who don’t have DVI/HDCP or HDMI inputs.

Now Dan Ramer is reporting that Fox, Buena Vista (Disney), and Paramount have all said they won’t be using ICT either. Now Warner Brothers is the only major BD supporting studio not to forgo the use of the ICT.

Mr. Ramer points out that the studios may be doing this because BD discs have another anti-piracy measure, BD Mark. That can still be used to determine if a disc has been illegally copied. And BD Mark is not something that the HD DVD format has, and that might be why no HD DVD supporting studios have forgone the use of ICT.

Interesting times.

DVDFILE.com - Analog Reprieve Grows

Okay, I have to ask the question: does Toshiba want HD DVD to fail? Does it see the writing on the wall? The winds blowing against it? Does it think that HD DVD is doomed, but they’re going through the motions anyway to try to save face?

Video Business Online is reporting that some retailers are now starting to take pre-orders of Warner HD DVD movie titles, but that it’s difficult to do. As well, retailers aren’t ramping up for a major launch like they normally would be at this point.

“Things keep getting pushed back, so I don’t think we want to play our cards too early,” said one source. “Usually, we would be talking about [a major new product] at this point, but we’re not. It’s a little odd.”

I’m not marketing expert, so I don’t know what Toshiba is trying to accomplish here. But I have to think that launching with a bang is better than launching with a whimper.

Video Business Online - Retailers pre-order HD DVD titles

It seems like I’ve been seeing a lot of displays with odd resolutions these days. This one is no exception, and Audioholics has a review of this 1280 x 768 DLP projector. While this resolution is odd, it’s quite common in DLP circles. I don’t know why they don’t just use 1280 x 720 and make things simple on themselves.

This projector is 1300 lumens bright and has a contrast ratio of 3500:1 (full on-off) and 5000:1 in AI mode. It uses a 7 segment 4x colour wheel. It has an HDMI input as well as a DVI/HDCP one. The MSRP is two grand, which isn’t bad for a projector like this. The zoom lens on this projector is only a 1.2x lens, which doesn’t give the flexibility other projectors in this price range offer. Neither does it have a vertical or horizontal lens shift, though it does have digital keystone correction, a poor replacement.

The good news is that this projector has quite a good image processor. Its scaling and de-interlacing perfomance was quite good. The projector did have problems with noise reduction though. The blacks and dark greys this projector produced were very good. Though again, noise in dark scenes was a small problem. The projector rendered colours very accurately.

Conclusion? “The Optoma HD72 projector produced incredibly sharp, well-defined images. It also has some of the best colors and black levels we have seen in a projector under $3500. The projector’s input flexibility, impressive feature set, and styling are things normally found on projectors at much higher price points. Optoma’s impressive two-year warranty and no dead pixel policy make this an easy recommendation. The lack of lens shift may be a consideration for those who cannot mount the projector precisely within a home theater environment.”

Optoma HD72 DLP Projector Review

Canon knows how to make a beautiful projector, even when it’s turned off. HD Beat is salivating over it too. Canon’s new projector is a 1400 x 1050 LCoS design. It boasts 3500 lumens of light output and a 2000:1 contrast ratio. The projector even includes colour correction.

But what’s up with the weird resolution? It means that every source being pumped into the thing will need to be scaled. This thing better have a really good scaler in it!

HD Beat - Canon’s sweet new LCoS projector

c|net reviewed the rather inexpensive Vizio L32HDTV LCD television. This baby is quite affordable at about a grand. But Vizio has had to cut some corners to get the price down that low for a 32″ HDTV LCD set. It has a resolution of 1366 x 768, so the scaler will need to be good. But the set does have an HDMI input, as well as two component video inputs.

Even after calibration, though, the colours on this set were off. c|net says “we were disappointed in the panel’s tracking; depending on brightness, the color of gray fluctuated from too reddish and even brownish near black to greenish in the midbright tones.” Black levels weren’t that great either: “Blacks weren’t nearly as deep as those we’ve seen from other LCDs, such as Sharp’s LC-32D4U, and we didn’t see as much detail in shadows as we would’ve liked.”

c|net’s conclusion? “Overall, the Vizio L32HDTV is a solid performer if you’re looking to watch primarily TV and HDTV in high-ambient-light situations. LCDs with superior picture quality are definitely available, but so far we haven’t reviewed any that can approach the price of the L32HDTV.”

c|net - Vizio L32HDTV Review

It looks like us Canucks will get things just a bit later than our American neighbours once again. This time it’s Sony’s BDP-S1 BD (Blu-ray Disc) player.

he BDP-S1 is designed to deliver 1,920 X 1,080p resolution, and supports various video codecs, like MPEG2, MPEG4-AVC, and VC1. Analog component output for 1080i has been included so people who own HD-capable televisions without HDMI can enjoy the Blu-ray Disc experience. It is compatible with standard DVDs, with the added feature of 1080p upscaling through HDMI; and BD-Java interactivity has been incorporated, allowing for the design of advanced interactive features.

The player offers uncompressed multi-channel linear PCM digital audio output via HDMI, and has optical digital audio out and 5.1 channel decoding capability for backward compatibility with existing receivers. It also has a separate audio circuit board, “finely tuned” audio components, rigid beam chassis construction, drive brackets and off centre insulator feet.

Canada will be getting this player in August.

Marketnews.ca - Sony’s First Blu-Ray Player Makes Canadian Debut in August

Need a way to record HD programming on your Mac computer? Here’s a cool little device that lets you pause, record, rewind, and watch HDTV on your Mac.

Powered by Elgato’s award-winning EyeTV software, the TV MiniHD allows you to watch live TV on your Mac, record digitally to the Mac’s hard drive, pause your viewing, edit recorded shows and archive your favourite viewing to watch on traditional DVD players or to export to an iPod or PSP.

To use the TVMini HD, you’ll need a G4/500 or higher Mac with USB 2.0 and Mac OS X 10.4 onwards.

Tech Digest - Record HDTV on your Mac

Another batch of HD trailers from Apple (on their QuickTime site) for you.

First, there’s Trust the Man.

A smart, sophisticated comedy about the challenges of love and marriage among modern day New Yorkers, TRUST THE MAN features the romantic escapades of two couples: a successful actress (Julianne Moore) and her stay at home husband (David Duchovny); and her slacker younger brother (Billy Crudup) and his aspiring novelist girlfriend Maggie.

Apple - Trust the Man

Little Miss Sunshine

Tells the story of the Hoovers, one of the most endearingly fractured families ever seen on motion picture screens. Together, the motley six-member family treks from Albuquerque to the Little Miss Sunshine pageant in Redondo Beach, California, to fulfill the deepest wish of 7-year-old Olive, an ordinary little girl with big dreams.

Apple - Little Miss Sunshine

United 93

An unflinching drama that tells the story of the passengers and crew, their families on the ground and the flight controllers who watched in dawning horror as United Airlines Flight 93 became the fourth hijacked plane on the day of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil: September 11, 2001.

This one seems like a bit much for me - obviously trying to make money from a human tragedy.

Apple - United 93

Mr. Doherty of Microsoft and AACS LA pointed out an interesting fact about 1080p versus 1080i as it relates to BD and HD DVD players. Studios will mostly be putting their movies on BD and HD DVD discs in 1080/24p format. Then the player will put out a 1080/60i (or whatever) version of that movie. Mr. Doherty pointed out that though the first HD DVD players from Toshiba won’t put out a progressive 1920 x 1080 signal, the full movie resolution can nonetheless be extracted from the 1080/60i signal.

The vast majority of all HDTVs delivered so far do not know how to communicate at 1080p,” said Doherty, “so Toshiba in their very first players has made a design decision that can be changed in the future, and in fact, could likely be changed on existing players…by a firmware update to support communication over 1080p.”

“Because [the signal] originally came from a progressive source - 1080p/24 on the disc - and was communicated in a digital form,” Doherty reiterated, “it can be completely reconstructed in its native, original form.”

In response to statements from Blu-ray proponents that its first-wave support of 1080p places it automatically ahead of HD DVD in the format war, Doherty classified their argument as “a big red herring.” The current, new generation of so-called “smart displays” for HDTV, he said, whose maximum output is 1080p/60, should be capable of re-compositing the signal most appropriate for displaying film or video encoding from any high-definition disc. “So a very smart display,” he said, “could take a connection in any format - whether that be 1080p/24, 1080i/30, or 1080p/60 - and reconstruct the appropriate and best-looking display for the display that you’re looking at.”

The problem is that your 1080p display’s video processing circuits might not be that smart. Many video processors take one 1080i field, line-doubles it, and displays it. What it should do is get the next 1080i field (taking into account 3:2 pulldown), integrate it with the previous 1080i field, and then put out the full resolution 1080p image.

TG Daily - Next-gen HDTVs may hide first-gen HD DVD limits

Ultimate AV has some detaiils about the BD (Blu-ray Disc) format that I found interesting, and may not be common knowledge. I especially appreciate the info on sound formats and movie resolutions. Cool stuff.

1. BD will support much more elaborate menus than DVD. Not only that, but many of these menu features will be accessible while watching the movie. So you can go into the menu and change the subtitles or soundtrack or whatever, while the movie is playing or paused, which I think is pretty cool. And as far as I know HD DVD will support this kind of thing as well.
2. Sony has confirmed that movies will be encoded on BD discs in 1080p/24. The user sets the player to put the movie out in the format they want for their display, like 1080/30i, 1080/60p, or 720/60p.
3. Sony will use MPEG2 as their compression method. Interestingly, “Sony says that they have performed comparative tests between MPEG-2, VC-1 (based on Windows Media Video 9 and formerly known as VC-9) and AVC (often referred to as MPEG-4, MPEG-4 Part 10, or H.264). Sony’s tests reportedly show that VC-1 (Video Codec 1) and AVC (Advanced Video Coding) may surpass MPEG-2 at data rates below 20Mb/sec, but MPEG-2 was superior at the rates Sony plans on using for Blu-ray (variable, but up to a maximum of 30Mb/sec). Sony did concede, however, that future improvements to these other codecs might well allow them to exceed MPEG-2 at all data rates.”
4. Worth mentioning again is that Sony has no plans to down-rez HD signals on the analog output to 960 x 540. This is an option studios can use (via the ICT - Image Constraint Token).
5. All Sony and MGM titles will use standard DD and DTS soundtracks for now, like those used on DVD discs. That is, they’re not using the new DD+, DD TrueHD, or DTS HD formats.
6. However, the Sony and MGM discs will include 5.1 channels of uncompressed PCM audio. Since there’s no way to transport these signals digitally, you’ll have to use 6 analog connections from your BD player to your prepro or receiver to make use of this feature.

Ultimate AV - Blu-Tech

Davis Freeberg gives a rundown of his experiences with his two year old Sony Wega RPTV.

The picture quality on the big screen varies depending upon whether you are watching HDTV or standard definition. HDTV definetely looks great. It may just be my imagination, but sporting events seem to look the best on this set. It could just be the larger screen size, but sports always seem to look especially crisp. It’s hard for me to get a true sense of how good the picture quality really is because the KF-60WE610 model that I bought only supports 720p resolution. For most of the public I think that this is clear enough, but in retropsect, I do wish that I would have purchased the more expensive 1080p KDS-R60XBR1 model instead. In reality, I probably couldn’t tell the difference between the two, but psychologically I’m sure that I would think it looked better.

He seems pretty happy with the set, though. But personally, I think he would have noticed the difference between the KF-60WE610 LCD HDTV and the KDS-R60XBR1 SXRD HDTV. Maybe not because of the resolution difference (though who knows?) but because of the quality of the components and the different display technology (LCD vs SXRD).

Thomas Hawk - The 60″ Sony Wega - Why Davis Freeberg Doesn’t Go to the Movies Anymore