KELSCI's ELECTRONICS AND HOME THEATER NOTATIONS

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Location: Florida

see interests, AGE 63-2010 CONTACT: kelscientific@hotmail.com

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Comments on BLU-RAY,HD-DVD,A/V RECEIVERS-DENON,PIONEER,ONKYO

Bob and I wanted to test some some receivers in a soundroom. He and I did not like the sound from a Pioneer 1016 nor a Onkyo unit. He did not think a Denon was that good, but I wholehardedly disagreed. The Denon's sound was clean and natural. If I were using a receiver today, I would go Denon.

I saw a $3000+ Samsung 1080P tv playing. Damm that plays good. It looks like you are looking through a glass window. I have never seen video displayed with a nature such as that. The Samsung hits me as a kind of "realism" that I feel in my senses, more so than the other brands playing. A $3000 Sony was also playing, quite well in fact. The color was very natural. I am not a Samsung lover, however they have become a leader IMHO of these new TV sets. ALL IT TAKES IS MONEY TO GET THE HONEY. The digital domain has brought extroadinary things to sound and is now bringing it to video.

As some of you may know, there is a format war going on with two high definition dvd players and discs. I would like to comment on the Blue-Ray format, the more expensive of the two. Some early releases did not look so hot. I have to commend 20th Century Fox for the current release of X-Men 3. The reason is that the early releases on this format were using MPEG-2 which is used on standard DVDs. Since MPEG-2, research has come up with supposedly better for the term VIDEO CODECS, one of which is DIVX and another AVC. I believe AVC has been used on the HD-DVD format with great success for vg to exc pict. quality. X3 is the first Blue-Ray disc to use AVC. A reviewer recommended that all studios drop MPEG-2 video and immeadieately go to AVC for the excellent picture quality that he witnessed. Fox has done another thing. The soundtrack is in HD-DTS audio 6.1 ES. Unlike standard DTS on a regular dvd, this audio is supposedly equal to the studio MASTER sound track. The reviewer did not make any audio test on this disc. I do have this disc on standard dvd with the standard 6.1 DTS-ES discrete 735kbps audio and it can knock your socks off.