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VIEWPOINTS 6 Editorial 7 Editorial Notes Can All That Counts Be Counted? A Forum Begins… Janet’s Index (A footnote to “Keeping It Real: Producing Classical Music Videos,” Issue 25) MUS IC & M U LT I M E D I A 55 I Want My DVD! Major Labels’ Plans for Classical Music on DVD – Heidi Waleson 57 Upscale Pop (on DVD) – Thom Duffy 9 Letters The Problem with DVD: Digital Artifacts…Targeting 14-Year-Old Boys?…Down the Primrose Path…What Not To See on DVD…Electronic Cinema 59 Made for DVD: Puccini’s Turand
E D I T O R I A L Follies & Frolics .......... Let it be said, at this the half-way point of summer (as of the writing), the neighborhood multiplexes find themselves wishing they could either get rid of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace or at least move a surviving copy of it to one of their lesser screens. Most of you probably know the terms that George Lucas stuck the exhibitors with: (a) a 12-week minimum run and (b) on their biggest screens.
E D I T O R I A L I: Can All That Counts Be Counted? A Forum Begins We are running Charles Hansen’s response to Issue 24 as the beginning of a forum in which we explore how we will blend the observational and the empirical (tests and measurement programs) in our video and audio sections.
L E T T E R S The Problem with DVD: Digital Artifacts Editor: I have subscribed to your revival of The Perfect Vision, and not being familiar with the original, I can only say you seem to be off to a strong start. Your style feels more academically, intellectually driven than some of your competition, and I welcome this. I’d like to address one point that Mr. Pearson makes in his Viewpoints editorial. “And we shall push, push, push for the highest quality images, either from an ‘enhanced’ DVD...
Down the Primrose Path Toward Perfect Vision Forever? Editor: I’ve been with TPV since the first issue, and was thankful, even delighted, when you covered the remaining issues on my subscription from five years back. That’s perfect honesty. Now that you know my credentials, here’s my wish list, which I hope will help you keep your focus on the perfect vision: 1. Reviews must be brutal in their criticism of any company whose film transfer falls short of DVD’s promise.
transition (I’ve said this before) and the film section is far from its final form. There will be a “mix” of reviews, short to long, with more material being cov ered, but I’m not running a cata log of quickie impressions. Other magazines, as you so helpfully noted, do that. 3. No problem here. We will talk at some length about the differences. (Another reason why the percep tion of movies ought to be taken into account in our reviews, thus adding to their length.) 4. I remain unrepentant.
A U D I O Death to Convention ............. When we embarked upon the re-launch of The Perfect Rather than teaching us the law, our professors taught us how to think about the law. There are too many “rules” for Vision, I envisioned the experience as a great any student to sit down and absorb them all – just as there adventure – an opportunity to explore uncharted are too many audio products for any reviewer to cover. And, territory in home entertainment.
V I D E O We’ve Got What It Takes for Home Theater ............. tuned, but it won’t be long before DirecTV and the Dish NetIVX Dead! Enough said. Too much was written about work will be delivering HDTV via their satellite systems. it when it was alive, so we don’t need to talk more Unity Motion will have to find some sort of niche to make about a company that just didn’t get it. another run at it.
M U S I C & M U L T I M E D I A The Vexed Question of Multimedia… ............. fun to look at, and Wenders simply left them out, a pardon…is it just a random mesh of sight and sound, or does someable decision cinematographically, but not an accurate picthing really new emerge? This gets another look in this issue ture of what he surely saw.
O U T O F T H E B O X Video Travels ............. A certain fascination tags along with any complex technology when it penetrates a new area of our lives. This is true in part because we get to see familiar things in unfamiliar places. And in part because of the sheer amazement that these new forms of technology work at all. Making a technology portable frequently triggers this sense of awe.
D E S I G N C O N C E P T S The Human Interface ............. I recall as a seven-year-old switching on the system that my father had designed, made, and housed in a meticulously crafted and veneered cabinet. One satisfyingly large circular knob served as on/off switch and volume control, another selected between radio (wireless!) wavebands, and a third tuned the radio. All immediately obvious to me and everybody else in the household, and as a result, the radiogram received constant use.
J O U R N A L INFOCOMM When most people hear “Orlando, Florida” they think of Disneyworld, Universal Studios, palm trees, and flamingos. They don’t usually think of darkened, carpeted convention halls filled with flashy images projected onto huge screens. But that’s almost all I saw in Orlando when I visited last June to attend INFOCOMM International 1999.
in the world of displays. As with many trade shows, the city hosting Infocomm changes each year. But the general organization of the show remains much the same wherever it occurs. This year it was the huge halls of the Orange County Convention Center that were filled with manufacturer’s exhibits. The largest booths, some threatening to scrape the ceiling, were those of the projector manufacturers.
to recreate the theater experience in the home. The dominant display technology today for home-theater screens larger than 40” diagonal is CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) projection. It is used in almost every rear-projection TV and most HDTVs just recently introduced. But it is an old technology near its limit and its days are numbered.
based on DLP with a native resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels (16.9). Hitachi and Mitsubishi have signed agreements to develop consumer HDTVs based on this technology for sale in late 2000. The image quality of the prototype was, to my eyes, excellent. If the consumer versions can match it, and do so For t he f irst t ime, t he Shoot Out included a high-def init ion affordably, we may not have reason to mourn the passing of CRT for long.
J O U R N A L What d o e s a f i l m e d i t o r d o ? A nd w hat e f f e c t d o e s t hi s hav e o n t he f i nal v e r s i o n N OT E S F R OM T H E C U T T I N G gives it shape and rhythm. The screenplay has a structure, as ometimes I think that every position on a does each scene; and in most of the scenes, the director has moviemaking crew comes with its special privibuilt tempo or range of tempos. But these things have no real leges, its perks, as it were.
there appear to be a movie here at all? Sometimes technical problems develop – shots go out of focus, the director loses the light at the end of the day and doesn’t get some angles he fears he needs, the negative gets damaged in the lab. When this sort of thing happens, it is imperative that the director see the scene cut together as soon as possible so he can determine if additional shots are needed or, perish the thought, the entire scene needs to be rescheduled.
guess, in working with this kind of director only once. Most of the time I get few, if any, notes, and the directors seem to trust me to use my abilities to select the takes and structure the sequence of shots. (On at least two projects I had put the films into first cut before I ever met the directors in person.) This makes the job more difficult because more challenging, but also more rewarding because more creative. Different editors also work differently.
the emotion, the mood, the action, the transformation lead the cut, rather than the other way around. I don’t like to let picture cuts fall on hard consonants, as that emphasizes a cut. I enjoy prelaps to pull the narrative along – that is, starting an incoming line of dialog over an outgoing scene – provided it doesn’t become a mannerism.
audience for the first time. There are always surprises. Things you worried were unclear the audience tracked perfectly; things you never imagined would be a problem turn out to require a lot more thought and work. Previews were useful for studios, too, helping them determine the kind of movie they had, the more effectively to market it.
A U D I O F E A T U R E D P R O D U C T Lexicon MC-1 Controller Sonic Flavors To Slake Every Thirst ......... DACs and analog circuitry (which increased the signal-toexicon is unique among companies building multi-channoise ratio from 98 dB to 110 dB), a “broadcast spec” video nel digital controllers (see “What You Should Know board, and the unit will receive and decode 24-bit/96-kHz About Controllers,” which follows this review). Rather input signals.
ment. A “Bass Split” feature takes bass information filtered from the center channel (assuming you have a small center speaker) and directs it to the left and right channels. Inside, the MC-1 uses AD converters and DACs from a company called AKM. Both are delta-sigma devices that are supposedly better performing than the converters used in most controllers.
over, detail resolution in the surround channels was excellent. Moving next to Logic 7, Lexicon’s process for deriving 7 channels from 2-channel or 5.1-channel sources, I found the effect worked remarkably well on film soundtracks. (Logic 7 enhancements can be combined with some THX processing on discrete 5.1-channel sources such as Dolby Digital and DTS.
should mention that my loudspeaker array is less than ideal for assessing Lexicon’s surround modes. The side loudspeakers are bi-polar (the Revel Embrace set to bi-pole for music surround, di-pole for films), and the rear speakers were the point-source Mirage Reference Monitors. Lexicon recommends seven timbre-matched loudspeakers in an acoustically absorbent room. Nonetheless, I got a good impression of what each surround mode was doing. (I’ve also heard these modes in Lexicon’s listening room.
Controllers ......... nel musical experience. Other controllers can be considered No product better exemplifies the fundamental shift in true High End preamplifiers that also offer surround-sound home-entertainment technology than the controller. Also decoding and video switching. This diversity of products on known as a surround-sound processor or audio-video prethe market lets you choose a controller that amplifier, the controller is an entirely new parallels your priorities.
nal had to be encoded as a radio frequency (RF). If you don’t want to immediately replace your cherished laserdisc collection with DVDs, you’ll probably need a controller that can decode those RF-encoded Dolby Digital discs. If your controller doesn’t have an RF digital input (typically labeled “AC-3 RF”), you’ll need an external RF demodulator box. This device converts RF Dolby Digital to bitstream Dolby Digital, which can then be fed to one of the controller’s standard digital inputs.
process takes about eight minutes, can be performed with the AVP installed in your system, and doesn’t erase your set-up and configuration settings. New software can add capabilities such as DTS or MPEG decoding (by changing the DSP code), refine the user interface (by updating the operating system), or configure the unit to accept formats not available when the product was designed (by changing the input-receiver software).
Keeping low bass out of smaller loudspeakspeaker systems. For example, if you have five ers confers large advantages in the speaker’s small loudspeakers and a subwoofer, you tell power handling, dynamic range, midrange clarithe controller to filter bass from each of the ty, and sense of ease. When the woofer doesn’t five channels, and to direct it, in sum, to the have to move back and forth a long distance trysubwoofer.
copy-protection problem), DVD-Audio and SACD players will have six analog outputs for reproducing multi-channel music discs. Unless your controller has a discrete six-channel analog input, you won’t be able to play high-resolution multi-channel music through your system until the copy-protection dust has settled. The six-channel analog input approach has its drawbacks: You’re paying for six DACs in the DVDA or SACD player and for six DACs in the controller.
REVIEWS Revel Ultima Speakers – From 2 to 7.1 Channels Episode One: The Ancient Enemy t is a conflict as old as good vs. evil. It is the war that came before wars between peoples. It is the battle between humankind and its environment and it is being fought to this day in your house. While not so noble as a life and death struggle between a Jack London hero and the elements, your battle to extract good sound from the room in which you listen to music and watch movies is as challenging.
Now that your head is swimming, choose your dimensions. The actual dimensions you select based on a ratio such as those listed below will determine the exact frequencies at which the modes will develop. Jim Thiel, the engineering brain behind Thiel speakers, calculated the following set of ratios: 2.5 1.39 2.33 1.9 2.5 by 1.6 by 1.14 by 1.6 by 1.3 by 1.5 by 1 by 1 by 1 by 1 by 1 2.18 by 1.6 by 1 1.54 by 1.14 by 1 1.9 by 1.4 by 1 2.1 by 1.6 by 1 1.59 by 1.
letting Room Optimizer search out different solutions (just hit “start” and go get a beer, or two). Room Optimizer is concerned only with the low-frequency characteristics of your room. Its search is based upon the frequencies from 20 Hz to 300 Hz. It is possible to set the high and low points within that 20-300 Hz range. Thus, you may seek an optimal location for a full-range speaker or a main speaker that will be crossed over to a subwoofer.
established now that dead flat 20 kHz treble response in your room is an unpleasant experience. I’m not sure if that’s because 20 kHz flat is just too much treble or too much distorted treble. I find that treble distortions are the most pernicious throughout the entire chain from recordings to speakers. The Salon’s treble seems well balanced as a part of the musical whole. I do, though, hear slight treble limitations within the highest harmonic structures of instruments.
direct radiator) to bloated. The Salon’s soundstage combines the best attributes of both types. It has better image specificity than most dipoles, though it doesn’t render pinpoint images. There is a natural sense of size and weight to images generated by the Salon. The soundstage itself seems huge and encompassing on material such as that recorded by Keith Johnson for Reference Recordings.
cians often use emphasis in the intensity of notes to build rhythmic structures within the measures of the music – it’s one of the things that separates artists from technicians. Bass that won’t get out of the way (and other distortions) mars the fine artistic emphasis applied by the musician, denying us access to the performance’s inner architecture. Finally, the presence of deep bass, accurately reproduced, informs our perception of the music’s physical presence.
I have one minor sonic criticism of the Sub-15. Until the volume is advanced to higher levels, it doesn’t resolve the sensation of air moving in the recording venue. This is a sensation that exists in the concert hall and I have heard it reproduced by the Audio Artistry dipole subwoofers. The Sub-15 gets the pitch, timbre, and timing of the music right, but the environment in which the music takes place is a shade to the dry side.
LINN-AV5103 AKTIV Multi-Channel System In Search of the Mythical Beast: I he gleaming white livery of the Fed-X truck splintered the morning calm with a fusillade of gravel against the stone griffins sternly guarding the massive oak front door. Upon the FedEx man’s announcement: “Two items,” the door opened to reveal a man who might well be a stone Griffin himself, his face bearing a stern and raptor-like stare. “What do they weigh?” Looking down at his clipboard, the Fed-X man replied: “800 pounds.
was withdrawn from its shell and consigned to its whirring drawer mechanism. Messages darted again over the screens, followed by music that materialized throughout the room, a large gentle beast trembling the wooden floor, stalking along the walls, palpating the window panes.
again that this instrument was the first attempt at a full-range home music center, a range rarely captured or replicated by electronic devices today. All systems are biased in some way, and the three principal biases are toward time coherence, phase coherence, or tonal production. It is not possible to have all three unless you also factor in the room, which acts as a filter affecting all three.
appears on the displays when the “surround” button is pressed while playing an AC3-encoded source. Also useful would be a last-source-selected memory. Now if you play a disc and adjust one of the speaker level controls, then hit “Play” to start the track again, you will discover you have to press the relevant source button before regaining use of the transport controls.
that are DD compatible. There are preamp outs for all five channels. Build quality in general seems up to NAD’s usual fine standards. Also included are the NAD Link jacks, which allow other NAD components (with NAD Link) that are not remote controlled to be driven via the T770’s controller. Very clever if one intends to stay within the NAD family. But since the remote is not of the learning variety, the user is penalized if he chooses to consider a competitor’s offerings.
plished with gain biasing to the surround channels, either. I set up the speakers fair and square. But clearly, the T770’s steering in DD mode is precise and smooth. Finally users are going to have to decide for themselves which features they can and can’t live without. At its suggested list price, the T770 faces some stiff competition from AVRs with higher stated power ratings and prodigious features. Now I’m not a big bells and whistles fan.
M U S I C & M U L T I M E D I A I Want My DVD! Major Labels’ Plans for Classical Music on DVD ......... f you’re looking for DVD movies at the Lincoln Center Tower Records in New York, there’s no problem: Just head down the escalator and there they are – banks and banks of them. Classical music video on DVD is something else. Those are buried deep in the classical department upstairs, in their own small rack in the opera room. Small is the operative word.
in a home theater, don’t toss that VCR or laserdisc player just yet. Ken Crane’s, a DVD consumer sales website address, a subsidiary of Image Entertainment, and one of the medium’s distributors and licensees, lists 3,759 titles (everything from pornography to operas from Milan’s La Scala opera house) and climbing. Of the 325 music titles, 41 are classical music, 21 more are opera.
Kawakami says. “The greater number of channels is useful in directing that enveloping ambient sound.” Kawakami says that producers are more conservative with the surround sound on classical than they are with pop. “Few orchestras or classical producers want to take liberties – they’re not going to have the instruments coming from behind you. They’re trying to recreate the feeling of sitting in the hall, in the best possible seat, with a wide and deep soundstage, with the instruments placed accurately.
for classical music at BMG, explains, “We decided to do it because the format had become standard, and projected volume of hardware for last Fall was so high. This was an elaborate joint venture between various Bertlesmann companies. We were shooting it in high definition, with multiple cameras, and a documentary was going to be made. It was an opportunity to put a product on the market that we felt would have the highest level-capability of features for the format.
Made for DVD ......... Puccini: Turandot (at the Forbidden City of Beijing). RCA Victor Red Seal 74321-60917-2. ’m inclined to be kind to the lavish RCA Turandot, and not just because – as I sample a smorgasbord of available bigname classical DVDs, in this and a succeeding review – it’s the only one seriously crafted for the medium. In fact, let’s give it full credit.
dramatic confrontation, in the second scene of Act Two. Princess Turandot of China suffers from an icy heart, and a jones toward men. Any male of royal blood may woo her, but must answer three riddles. If his answers are correct, she marries him; if they’re wrong, you guessed it: He dies.
dot’s looks. Maybe, on a deeper level, he senses her own need to shed her obsession, but all we hear from him is that she’s beautiful. Maybe in the 1920s, when Puccini composed the piece, a preoccupation like that made more sense, but now it sounds silly. “Jeez, Cal! I know you like bimbos, but stay away from this one!” Still, this is all we have to go on, and when the singer in the title role is dowdy, without even the star-power that can override mere looks, Turandot as drama falls apart.
A (Classical) DVD Sampler ......... Verdi: Attila (La Scala production), Image Entertainment ID4360PUDVD. Cilea: Adriana Lecouvreur (La Scala production), Image Entertainment ID4362PUDVD. ˇ Dvorák: Symphony No. 9, “From the New World” (Herbert von Karajan conducting), Sony Classical SVD 48421. Vivaldi: The Four Seasons (Herbert von Karajan conducting), Sony Classical SVD 46380. New Year’s Concert, Vienna 1987 (Herbert von Karajan conducting), Sony Classical SVD 45985.
ing the language of written text), it seems to violate the spirit of the DVD interface to provide no way to pick a language once, and stick with it. The Karajan discs also let you choose surround or standard audio. But I’m not impressed with the sound either way, or with the sound of the Scala discs, which also offer 5.1 surround, but (and this applies to Karajan, as well), not convincingly. Yes, it surrounded me, and provided a momentary high.
for heart-stopping moments. There are a few of Paging through the chapters is an eerie experience. At the these in this opera, most of them familiar start of each one, there’s Karajan on screen, his face excerpts, like the soprano’s two arias, “Io son l’uinscrutable, a mask of – what? He projects, at best, a statuemile ancella” and “Poveri fiori,” or the tenor’s like institutional persona, “Herr Music Director of All two.
Surrounded! Roger Reynolds: Watershed (Mode 70, DVD) ......... Jargon ere we have a first that needs attention – “the first music DVD [the package says] designed to totally utilize the medium’s full 5-channel capability.” I just wish it were better, and less pretentious. The composer, Roger Reynolds, is (as he probably won’t forgive me for saying) one of the earnest, gray modernists of a past generation, a specialist in electronic music who teaches at the University of California in San Diego.
reasonably elementary sort – you know, like saying, “Hey, attention only if you care to give it some. I admit I’m skeptiwow, Kenny dies in every South Park episode.” Anyone can cal about the need for so much commentary. Shouldn’t the understand that this might give the show some continuity; music speak for itself? But then maybe the techniques really nobody claims it’s any kind of South Park syntax. are so new that we all need orientation.
can print out large sections of the Watershed score.) wandering, questing wiggles to a pulsing, stylized sun, all The other items aren’t as striking, and to judge from the choreographed to the music, but far more gripping. (Imagblurbs on the back of the DVD package, which don’t menine a dance with choreography more interesting than the tion them, are essentially there to fill out the disc. First we musical score.
Pop With a Twist ......... Alice Cooper: Welcome to My Nightmare. Rhino 74469. $19.99 (DVD). alvador Dali saw his paintings come alive in it. Groucho Marx said it was great vaudeville and the last chance that burlesque had of surviving. Disney designed its costumes. It combined elements of A Clockwork Orange, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, Dracula, James Bond, and Zorro. When it closed, the likes of Elton John, Michael Jackson, Kiss, and David Bowie borrowed its concepts. No, it is not Cats.
creatures surround him, place him in a wooden coffin, but suddenly, to our surprise, he bursts out, runs through the screen, and lands on stage, while the dancing spacemen remain in the film. Soon, the aliens locate Cooper, and one by one they smoothly jump from their places on film to the stage. Before “Escape” concludes, Cooper and his pursuing predators jump back into the film and onto the stage once more, and the spacemen seize Cooper on stage.
reviews scrolling across the screen, and the many images of endless pavement, tunnels, and indistinct automobile headlights vaguely glowing from neon-lit gridlock. Much rock journalism might as well be printed in a tabloid, because of its sensational pursuit of rumor and hype.
practicing its independent philosophy before “Internet” was even part of our vocabulary. By remaining true to its standards, Fugazi is, without question, in a league by itself. Champions of free speech, free thought, the homeless, minorities, AIDS research, and the elderly, the group rejects violence, racism, homophobia, war, alcohol, drugs, and slam dancing.
most are dressed down, some gussied up in rock show. Furthermore, Fugazi’s principled way of being a business suits. And when you look at their rock band doesn’t tend to appeal to the kind of people (i.e. scarred faces, dim eyes, spiked hair, and pierced frat boys, wanna-be’s, rednecks) who attend rock concerts in lips, you may be quick to label them as punks, order to get high or smashed or both. delinquents, or losers, because they fit these One thing Instrument does not provide is a sense of stereotypes.
A Close Encounter Voices of Light/The Passion of Joan of Arc ......... rom the moment of its rebirth two issues ago, The Per fect Vision has addressed itself squarely to the difficult concept of “multimedia.” Essays from Greg Sandow and HP in Issue 24 sought to define what multimedia is and is not, and to imagine its possibilities. Sandow, in a piece that touched on unfolding technical developments, offered the computer game Myst as a “domesticated case of true multimedia.
Is this achievable with multimedia involving music? Can the whole be greater than the sum of its parts? On a Monday evening in May, I attended a production that was certainly a close approach, one that suggests interesting prospects for multimedia’s future. The occasion was a performance of Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light, along with a screening of the silent film masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center.
Einhorn has emphasized that Voices of Light is not a film score for The Passion of Joan of Arc, and he feels that any attempt to compose one would be folly. As he told me a few weeks after the Avery Fisher performance, “There have been some 30 scores written for the film. This figure comes from an article I’ve read; I’ve been able to document about 17. All of them, according to my informants, are awful. The reason is obvious. The movie is about as complete as it can be.
V I D E O VIDEO INSIGHTS GREG ROGERS ......... An Introduction to Digital Video Part 2: Video Color Concepts olor is critical to the performance of any home theater. Most of us instantly recognize the problem with our neighbor’s TV, orange faces that look painted for Halloween or dull washed-out colors in a parade.
V I DEO normalized in the diagram. We are actually about 20 percent more sensitive to the green curve than the red, and about 40 times less sensitive to the blue curve. As the wavelength of light varies, the probability that a cone will absorb that light depends on its spectral response, but all light absorbed by the same cone contributes equally to its response regardless of wavelength.
V I DEO Commission on Lighting) was created in 1927, and in 1931 established a colorimetry system to describe colors using a simple system of numerical coordinates. I won’t delve into the details behind that system other than to say it is based on the tristimulus response principles discussed earlier and experiments that were done with human observers. A result of their work was the creation of a two-dimensional (x,y) chart called the CIE Chromaticity Diagram.
V I DEO Table 1 SMPTE C Color Bars White Yellow Cyan Green Magenta Red Blue x 0.3127 0.421 0.231 0.310 0.314 0.630 0.155 y 0.3290 0.507 0.326 0.595 0.161 0.340 0.070 is that colors created by following the video signal’s “recipe” for mixing light from the red, green, and blue primaries will result in wrong colors. Hence, the colors from consumer monitors must be wrong! How wrong is a function of their deviation from the standard, and I’ll look at how to measure it below.
V I DEO are used in some circumstances. Remember that although the signal levels are the same, the actual brightness of light from each primary is not the same, that is determined by calibrating the reference white color to D65. Changing the signal levels of all primary colors together does not change the CIE (x,y) chromaticity of a color. Color bars with 50 percent signal amplitudes would have the same (x,y) coordinates as color bars with 75 percent signal amplitudes.
V I DEO linear will be discussed at another time, but with the availability of digital signal processing, such transformations are practical, but expensive. Some approximate corrections can be made more simply on consumer displays. 7. Color and Hue Adjustments I have shown that color accuracy is a function of grayscale and phosphor accuracy when a monitor is driven by RGB signals. However, no video sources produce RGB signals directly.
REVIEWS Sony VPH-G90U Multiscan Projector he ultimate in home-theater display devices are the 9” CRT projectors. Size matters in CRT projectors because it enables higher resolution and brighter images. Sony’s new VPH-G90U has entered this elite market at an attractive $35,000 price to do battle with existing products from home-theater specialists Runco and Vidikron, priced as much as 50 percent higher.
The G90 comes with two manuals. One is an operator’s manual that describes the basic user controls and the other an installation manual. The manuals are reasonably good but they could have done a bit better job explaining the basic memory system concepts. The service manual also left out a key point, failing to note that the status mode must be on before a specified series of keystrokes will enable the service mode. I began setting the G90 up on a Saturday and was stymied by this omission.
ter or a motion-adaptive 3-D comb filter when using the composite input. Performance My overwhelming first impression of the Sony G90 was its razor-sharp image clarity. The 9-inch CRT technology reveals the resolution limits of projectors with smaller CRTs. I suppose it was even more impressive that the first things I looked at were HDTV pictures. But the differences in detail between the Sony G90 and the excellent but smaller CRTs of the Runco IDP-980 Ultra, were also noticeable on DVD.
Runco DTV-930 Multiscan Projector for the higher resolution computer graphic display capabilities of the IDP980 Ultra. It doesn’t affect video performance, where the highest bandwidth requirement is a flat response to 30 MHz for HDTV. The only other change from the IDP-980 Ultra is the deletion of a scan-line dithering board, a feature I never used anyway.
to accommodate the three lens assemblies and input connectors, and then slopes gently downward toward the rear. There are no handles or other means for lifting the projector so it can be quite awkward when lifting to a ceiling mount position. The three lens assemblies are recessed into the case with just their rims exposed on the front bezel. The entire top cover is hinged at the rear and swings open to mechanically aim and focus the CRT-lens assemblies.
formats can be selected directly from the remote control. The entire 100 picture formats can be selected by an on-screen menu that shows the memory number, name, video source and date created. When a memory is selected the source is switched and the display is setup with all of the individualized calibration settings for that picture. The memories can be copied, moved, deleted and renamed for selection convenience or to expedite creating new entries.
horizontal and vertical scan frequencies and other source information can be displayed at any time. A phosphor saver function is provided to periodically shift the horizontal and vertical image position on screen to avoid a CRT burn. This function can be turned off if desired, although I believe it is a worthwhile function to use. If a very slight overscan is added to the picture the effect of this screen saver function will not be noticed. Performance I used a Runco IDP-980 Ultra for this evaluation.
IEV Turboscan 1500 Line Doubler Any home theater that uses a CRT front projector capable of graphics- or data-grade resolution needs a way to reduce the visibility of scan lines and remove interlace artifacts, which become painfully unpleasant on a big screen. Until recently the devices (line doublers) for doing this with credible quality have cost over $7,500. For my own modest home theater, with a 7-inch CRT front projector and 6foot wide screen, this price was beyond budget.
film sources but doesn’t match the quality of inversetelecine deinterlacing. Performance My primary source for evaluating the IEV was a Sony DVPS7000 DVD player, using its composite, S-Video, and component outputs to test the various Turboscan inputs. I also used a Pioneer CLD-97 laserdisc player with its composite and SVideo outputs. As a progressive video reference, I used a 3Dfusion PC video card with an Mpact-2 processor decoding from a DVD-ROM drive to produce RGB output.
the red bar. At the horizontal edge between the cyan bar and magenta patch (or the magenta bar and cyan patch) on the VE disc color bars, there were two or three dark blue scan lines; these were partially broken up into rows of jiggling dots above and below the transitions. There was also some bleeding of the left magenta block into the white block beneath its left corner. Furthermore the color bars displayed some video noise, especially in the green.
put). From the setup menus, you also select whether you want 16.9 formatted video output. This is called “wide,” which might not be self-explanatory but the on-screen graphic makes the meaning clear. You can also select whether you want the digital audio output to be 24 bit/48 kHz or 24 bit/96 kHz, the latter available only on some DVDs. Older outboard DACs and digital preamps or receivers will not accept 96 kHz bitstreams, so it is important to pay attention to this.
ly, the remote of the DVL-91, like that of the Theta Voyager, has no back lighting. Given the small size of many of the buttons, it is easy to hit the wrong one in the dark. Like all of Pioneer’s recent combi players, the DVL-91 has a small drawer on the front to pick up CDs or DVDs and a larger drawer for holding LDs. Fascinated by the whooshes and whirrs of sliding trays and turning gears (reminiscent of Dark City), I opened up the DVL-91 and found an engineering work of art.
players mentioned have a similar flat-frequency response to 4 MHz with a rapid fall-off at 5 MHz (seen as a weak image in the 5 MHz band on a multiburst test pattern, e.g., on the Video Essentials laserdisc). There is a strange moiré or rainbow color in the 5 MHz burst on the DVL-91 that I haven’t seen before. I couldn’t find any examples of this in real-world images from laserdisc playback, possibly because few laserdiscs have any content at this frequency.
Celebrate Film. Edinburgh Intl.
F I L M & M O V I E S Classic Comedy’s Second Coming: Roberto Benigni o many Americans, Roberto Benigni and his film Life Is Beautiful materialized out of nowhere.
Though a number of films in which Benigni appears have not reached the US, many of his earlier efforts have been available for some time on home video in this country. As of this writing, none of his films have been released on DVD (with the exception of the just released Seeking Asylum – see sidebar).
persona, it is the second that gives us a glimpse of his remarkable chameleonic abilities as an actor. While comical, gangster Johnny is also a menacing figure and one to be feared, even if not taken completely seriously. This basic premise is not unlike that of the little known Buster Keaton film, The King of the Champs-Elysée, a 1934 French comedy in which Keaton plays both a variation of his usual screen character and a ruthless gangster.
original Pink Panther film – go figure). Sad to say, though, the film just doesn’t work. The dramatic plot of international intrigue (the kidnapping of the Princess of Lugash played by Debrah Farentino) is murky and uninteresting. The comic plot with which it is intertwined – that of Commissioner Dreyfus’ (the great Herbert Lom) discovery of a bumbling yet dedicated Gendarme (Benigni) who causes the return of his familiar paranoia and accompanying facial tick, is an inspired concept.
......... Special Editions: Kubrick and The Space Monsters he fanatics among you will know, by the time you read this, that the long-awaited Stanley Kubrick boxed set of seven films, released through Warner Home Video, is a great big disappointment. I am, at the time of this writing, just experiencing that first wave of anger and incredulity.
hanced) that came from UA/MGM some months ago, with all the flaws of that release, including the image “sharpenings” that leave everyone, from man to apes, outlined by fine miniature halos. The picture is soft and the colors a bit on the pink side (on both my viewing devices). I doubt that 2001 should ever be seen on home video, no matter what the size of the screen.
Alien Resurrection – we find each at its correct aspect, 2.35:1 for all save the James Cameron-directed Aliens, done here at 1.85:1. All are enhanced for widescreen displays. All are in Dolby 5.1 surround, which, as we shall soon learn, is not always an unmixed blessing. And all have value-added features, ranging, at the simplest, from Resurrection’s making-of featurette, to the chock full of goodies on the original Alien, now in its “20th Anniversary” edition.** The bad news? The sound on Alien is stinko.
goes beyond the film itself, since through video we have come to, essentially, the preservation of film history. But is, for instance, The Last Starfighter really all that historically significant in the pioneering of digital effects as its liner notes proclaim, as does an included documentary? Do I really care, I ask myself, hoping by the asking I can pump up some enthusiasm for the subject? Nope, not really and truly. But then again, sometimes I do.
– opportunity to run riot with the colors and they do. Dreams has some of the most beautiful visuals you’re going to see short of the next world and this transfer does them full, full justice. It is one of those rare instances where high-tech movie reproduction in the home is fully justified by the visual content of the film you’re seeing. Which only makes me the angrier at whoever did the casting (they needed a star for box-office gross; that didn’t save the investment in this case, just the opposite).
SECOND RUN ......... Biopics: Three British Royals Elizabeth. Shekhur Kapur, director. With Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth), Joseph Fiennes (Leicester), Geoffrey Rush (Walsingham), Christopher Eccleston (Norfolk), Richard Attenborough (Cecil). 1.85:1 Widescreen. Dolby 5.1. Polygram Video. Enhanced for 16.9. Mrs. Brown. John Madden, director. With Judi Dench (Queen Victoria), Billy Connolly (Brown), Antony Sher (Disraeli). 1.85:1 Widescreen. Dolby Four-Channel Surround. Miramax Classic Widescreen.
you regularly hear on ER, all of whom act as if they were in a Tudor version of The Godfather – is to turn high drama into high kitsch. Director Kapur’s florid, melodramatic visual style only makes bad matters worse. Kapur dotes on short, punchy, MTV-like takes, in which he typically ratchets up the foreboding (the one effect he seems to have mastered) by shooting in very low light from lots of quick, “arty” angles.
ing a number of successful mainstream films such as Waterloo Bridge (1930), Showboat (1936), and The Man in the Iron Mask (1939). But it is his wildly popular horror films – Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) – for which he is chiefly (and rightly) remembered. (The title of Gods and Monsters is taken from a scene in Bride, in which Frankenstein’s assistant, Dr.
and the Monster in one, he killed off the poor, undereducated outcast he was born and – using pieces of other lives real or imagined – reconstituted himself as the sophisticate he always wanted to be. The only vestiges of the old “Jimmy Whale” are found in his films, which, like the patchwork monsters they’re about, turn the bits of horror, loneliness, and alienation that Whale repressed from his past into an art that was quintessentially about death, loneliness, and the pain of not belonging.
Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut ......... yes Wide Shut is one of those films that has the mainstream movie reviewers (I don’t dare use the word critic in this context) in cloud cuckooland, with their assessments reading more like Rorshachs than having much to do with Stanley Kubrick’s last film. If you’ve seen the picture, reading the reviews can be a bucket of fun, especially if you have an idea of what’s really going on in the film.
From Art to Cult ......... The Seventh Seal. Ingmar Bergman, director. 1957. B&W; 96 minutes; 1.33:1; Dolby Digital Monaural. Criterion DVD. he Seventh Seal was the film that made Ingmar Bergman internationally famous. After The Seventh Seal (and Wild Strawberries, which appeared later that same year, 1957), Bergman the brooding Swede was an international succès d’estime, instantly elevated to the top tier of the art-house pantheon alongside Fellini, Antonioni, Kurosawa, Truffaut, Ray, and Buñuel.
whose existence he can no longer quite believe; the cynical squire has learned to take life as it comes, without the prop of divinity.
feelings breaks through the allegory with moving power. The great set piece on the hillside, where the knight and the squire share “communion” – here a bowl of milk and a plate of strawberries – with Jof and Mia has a beauty of spirit and gorgeousness of language that are as deeply moving as Bergman intends the scene to be. In spite of a few false notes (the Plog/Lisa/Skat subplot, the knight’s “confession” to Death), a good many of the tableaux are equally touching or horrifying.
What The Perfect Vision Is About: The Perfect Vision positions itself as “The Journal of Digital Audio and Video.” We cover major facets of the home entertainment arena: video equipment (HDTV); audio equipment (speakers, digital power amplifiers); convergence technology (DVD drives, digital-signal processors); multimedia and music software; films (laserdiscs and DVDs); emerging technologies in audio, video, and digital processing.
Aerial Acoustics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 2 www.aerialacoustics.com Meridian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Cover IV www.meridian-audio.com Alphasound & Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 76 www.alphasound.com Nordost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 54 www.nordost.com Audio Products International . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 60 www.
VISION WATCH EVENT EXPERT A EXPERT B First consumer Dolby EX products go on sale Q4 1999 Q4 1999 Q4 1999 1 High-resolution, multi-channel digital audio output on DVD-A and SACD players (IEEE1394 or Universal I2S) C: Important to achieving formats’ sonic potential.
