Another long break from updating the blog. Yes, I know. I’ve been researching and writing this massive article about 3D at home for Hifimaailma magazine, and it’s finally done, out of the gate. Off you go, version 1.0 of the copy, ready to be savaged and brutally torn apart by the folks who actually put the magazine together. I have a nasty feeling I haven’t seen the last of you yet…
And wouldn’t you just know it: I’ve now been hired to write an article about 3D for another magazine. Luckily for me I need to approach the subject from a slightly different point of view for the 2nd article, so it’s not going to be a simple re-hashing of the first one. Not that I wouldn’t mind that at all; it would save a bit of time. Maybe. Or more likely not.
Anyhoo! I’ve had a whale of a time doing research for the article(s) and I’ve learned a lot of new things. It’s what makes life living for, I’d say. I’m well chuffed about the whole 3D lark, to be honest. Can’t remember the last time something got me quite this excited! You see, I’ve learned not only how to shoot, edit and post 3D, but I’ve had a number of rather intriguing ideas and, dare I say, epiphanies. And I will do my best to share them all with you, once I get my hands on a few missing pieces of information, hardware and software.
So, prepare yourself for a series of long-ish blog posts about what you can achieve with a remarkably small amount of money and carefully scavenged knowledge. Coming soon… ish.
Lots of cool gear came in today. Philips BDP9100 Blu-ray player is supposed to be able to change the placement of subtitles on the screen, so I just had to ask Philips for a review unit.
Took delivery of Leadtek’s WinFast PxVC1100 MPEG-2/H.264 transcoding card last week (thanks, Dacco!) but have been way too busy to install it… until a few moments ago. I had a bunch of problems trying to install a Canopus Firecoder Blu transcoding card (equivalent to PxVC1100, but 2.5x more expensive) into my new video editing PC as the card refused to work on a GigaByte motherboard. More accurately, the card refuses to work in any other slot except PCI-E 1x — which on the GigaByte mobo is blocked by a tall-ish heatsink. In the end the only solution was to re-purpose another PC and build it as the new video editing PC. Its Abit mobo had no problems with Firecoder Blu once the card was installed in a PCI-E 1x slot.
Leadtek’s card has the same CPU (a Toshiba SpursEngine, based on the Cell CPU) but the card’s design differs slightly from Canopus’ effort: Leadtek’s card needs additional power fed in via a 4-pin floppy drive connector to power a cooling fan which is missing from Canopus’ card. The PC I decided to install the card into had another GigaByte motherboard, but with two PCI-E 1x slots. For shits and giggles, I first attempted to install the card in a PCI-E 8x slot. No way, no how. Mobo wouldn’t even see the card. Yanked the card out and placed it in the 1x slot, and hey presto, mobo found it and Windows started whining about drivers. Next step: install drivers, Pegasys TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress and TMPGEnc SpursEngine plug-in.
Update #1: First test running on a 64-bit Vista SP2. Source is 1080i 29.97fps MPEG-2 and has a length of 1h27min. TMPGEnc is outputting 1080p 29.97fps H.264 (video only, audio will be muxed in separately) and reports the process will take 61 minutes. Note that I don’t have an Nvidia graphics card in this PC so TMPGEnc is not using CUDA. It wouldn’t speed up the encoding in this case anyway as TMPGEnc uses CUDA for filters (color correction, sharpening, re-sizing etc.) only, and I didn’t use any. TMPGEnc lists deinterlacing under its Filters tab, however, so that might have profited from CUDA. It seems deinterlacing is now being done by the CPU. Quad Core utilization this very moment: 2%, 34%, 12% and 57%.
Update #2: It worked like a charm. TMPGEnc churned out an .MP4 file which I muxed with a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio from source file (demuxed with tsMuxeR) using MKVmerge 2.2.0. MPC-HC played the resulting .MKV perfectly and even lip sync was spot on. Next up: what TViX 6500 thinks of the file.
After some rather promising word-of-mouth I went and purchased LG’s latest Blu-ray player BD370. I won’t tell you where I bought it from, but it cost me 215 euros shipping included. I had previously tested LG’s multiformat player which supports both HD DVD and Blu-ray, but I have nothing good to say about it.
BD370 is a different beast altogether. It’s a surprisingly solid product in almost all respects — and it’s got a bunch of very interesting features I’ve yet to see in its competitors. Taking all that and its low price into account, it’s easy to make the following judgment: BD370 offers currently the best bang for buck as far as stand-alone Blu-ray players go. View full article »
I can finally cross out Paris, France from the list of European capitals I haven’t yet visited. Indeed, I spent a few days in Paris last week, seeing a very small slice of the city and taking in a very modest portion of its sights. The reason for my visitation was PEVE 2009, a conference for the international home entertainment sector. Basically it meant two butt-numbing (literally) days in a lecture hall, listening to speakers and panelists from all around the world talk about DVD, Blu-ray, digital distribution and piracy. On the whole, it was quite an educational conference, though it will be days before I’ve digested all the information.
I’m also happy to report that yours truly managed to shock the entire conference by making a very audacious question during a Q&A session. In reply, a representative from Macrovision tried his hand in damage control by giving incorrect information and the organizers killed the session very quickly after that. Chris Deering, former CEO of PlayStation Europe, leaned over and said, “That was a good question. You nailed them.”
I might post more pics and thoughts about the conference, time and stamina permitting.
Here’s a list of region codes on Blu-ray Discs, as discovered by yours truly. Discs are tested with various players from regions A and B. (Updated 29.07.2008) View full article »
I’ve just received news that the mod chip for Panasonic BD30 actually works on the Panasonic BD50 as well. So now you know.
As promised, a yarn about how the mod chip for a Panny BD30 got installed. View full article »
Region codes, you gotta love ‘em. Hang on, no you don’t! Region coding is one of the silliest inventions Hollywood has ever created to burden us, the consumers. View full article »
One of my absolute favourites among independent home video publishers, Blue Underground, has finally made an announcement listing some of their forthcoming Blu-ray releases. View full article »
