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magical headphone driver review

Unrelated product: Zalmans 5.1 headphones

or subscribe to widescreen review and sound & vision to start off with... there's a zillion different magazines on the rack that are good starter points...

if you are looking into finding out about the quality of ld, dvd and d-vhs releases you need to subscribe to this magazine: Widescreen Review. it has reviews of just about every release and is for video and audiophiles. subscribers also get access to their website (which isn't the prettiest thing, but it does have a ton of useful information). i can't recommend it enough.

we have a large a/v room in our home with a projection system and a very large projector screen on the wall. crap sources are very evident and the magazine is good for these types of situations where the picture might look fine on a 30" tv, but edge enhancement, jaggies, and poor color reproduction are very evident. they do detailed technical reviews on each movie and note problems with each release. saved us a pile of money on buying poor transfers...

last night i was watching the new extended release of lotr's and was thinking about how nice the transfer was. early dvd's had lots of different problems, from crummy software that caused lots of jaggies and bad color representation to poor bitrate. i started to wonder if the reason why the problems with the css encrpytion may have been a compromise due to earlier size limits to the standard. as i understand it (correct me if i'm wrong) data that is encrypted tends to grow in size compared to the original. if you already are pushing the bounds of the data that can fit on a disc then encrypting it with larger keys will increase the size of the data (again, please correct me if i'm totally off my rocker and have no idea what i'm saying... quite possible). so as a compromise a smaller key was chosen (48 bit) as a compromise between size of data and the storage capacity of the disc (at the time). also a smaller key would mean less chip processing power, meaning cheaper chips, meaning less costly machines (meaning a less secure encryption method). anyway, it's a thought...

Quite a bit of intelligent and deeply detailed writing on this subject (and many more) has graced the pages of Widescreen Review. Their point of view is strongly in favor of waiting for a higher density, higher bitrate DVD formats over trying to rig the existing DVD format for high definition content. They claim the inside perspective is that high definition DVD is at least five (5) years away. They have also provided extensive coverage of the new D-Theater D-VHS high definition consumer tape format that is available right now for people with fancy video projectors and deep pockets. D-Theater doesn't look like it will ever be a mass-market technology, but its apparently a really nice interim technology and it seems to deliver video that truly does rival quality theatrical media. (If your projector is up to snuff, of course.)
The problem I see is that the existing DVD format has become a huge success, with the consumer electronics and movie industries heavily investing in it and heavily profiting in it. Consumers love the format, despite its irritating, customer-hostile feaures (such as region encoding and material the user interface prevents you from fast-forwarding through or skipping). I doubt either industry wants to compromise or confuse such a successful market. (Similarly, gamers have been so happy playing Half Life and its mods that Valve hasn't bothered to release a completely new game product in many years.)

Appeared in the current issue (#62) of Widescreen review. It was with HDNet's Mark Cuban, of the Dallas Mavericks fame. A short synopsis is here. Check your local bookstore for the issue and checkout the whole interview. He's quite against all this crap, and prefers the existing system and chasing down people who records and then sells recordings without licensing first. He actually said in the interview that he wants people to record and give tapes to their friends. Note "give". Anyway, go read it on the newstand and be surprised.

• If you really want to learn more about all of the crap that's gone on, I highly recommend Stereophile Guide to Home Theater. They've done a pretty good job of keeping on top of it, particularly on their website.

How does Stereophile Guide to Home Theatre compare to other audiophile magazines, if you don't mind me asking? That is, I'm quite interested in audiophile gear (in fact, I already subscribe to Widescreen Review), but I just can't agree with some magazines that consider, for instance, a $2,000 subwoofer to be a "budget component".

Granted, I have no qualms about spending a grand on a quality piece, but it's not something I do lightly. And, does SGTHT have a decent number of equipment reviews per issue? After all, that would be one of my primary reasons for reading it (or any other audio mag).

VHS playback always uses only two heads. Four head VCR's generally use their extra heads for still frame/slow motion effects, six+ head VCR's have specialized heads that are used for different purposes (e.g. different heads for recording than for playback, or for EP(SLP)/SP modes.) Perhaps you are thinking of SVHS.

IIRC, VHS has approx. 240 lines horiz. but it's been awhile I could be wrong. VHS color fidelity is horrible, nothing compared to Laserdisc or DVD. VHS quality is much inferior to broadcast NTSC. I think most people don't realize how good broadcast NTSC can look, they never see it, most people have cable with is usually worse than VHS. Oh well...

See:

As reported earlier, SoundScan division VNU Marketing tested the theory by looking specifically at sales in stores near universities. In those stores, SoundScan data shows that record sales have actually dropped 4 percent in the past two years. According to the RIAA, full-length CD dollar value grew 12.3 percent last year alone. "It looks like the RIAA clearly has an impact on sales in the U.S.," said Joe Blow, CEO of a now rich digital rights management firm.

Jack Kirk, who manages independent CD store Dr. Wax near Northwestern University, says the labels are reaping the rewards of their own pricing policies. Cash-strapped students have turned to online music swapping because the record companies have priced the CDs of many popular artists out of students' reach, he said.

"It costs major labels less than $1 to make a Pearl Jam album, but the list prices are nearly $20," Kirk said. "They've precipitated this themselves--it's ridiculous. The major label companies are (run by) extremely evil people; I'm sorry, but there's no other way to say it."

The RIAA had no comment.

"The news is good for CDs, great for DVD, worrisome for cassettes and music videos. On the whole, though, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) found that the near $15 billion market for recorded music, measured by what manufacturers ship to retail and non-retail channels, continued its upward trend in 1999, enjoying moderate growth."

I have a DXR2 in the bedroom. I loath Creatives awful interface. I replaced it with a Hollywood+, which has a wonderful interface...anyone thinking of getting the DXR3 because it's "just the same", don't. It has the same awful Creative Labs interface as the DRX2.

As for the quality, I use the RGB output to drive the projector at 640 x 480. It does a great job of scaling, and the image is brighter as the scan rate is doubled and the phosphors are refreshed twice as often. Also, the Hollywood+ has an AC-3 output, so there is no question of audio quality.

If I was doing it again, I'd probably buy a Digital Connections MPACT2 card. Joe Kane of the Imaging Science Foundation uses one of these for his own DVD viewing, and that is more than good enough for me.

I set the earlier version of this board up on a Sony VHP-D50Q that is also running HD signals, and the 720 x 480 progressive mode playback delivers a picture that will make the pain of waiting for HD quite a bit easier.

Don't let one bad experience with one poorly engineered card turn you off of a whole catagory. Besides, it's far, far easier to remove silliness like "region coding" and "macrovision" on a PC-based player than on a stand-alone. Coupled with the fact that it is, for a little while more at least, the only way to get the true progressive scan image off a DVD