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$5.95 US • $7.95 CAN

Sony G90

Size D o e s M a t t e r !

New Products From Runco, Revel, NAD, Pioneer, Linn & Lexicon

www.theperfectvision.com

Summary of Contents for G90

Page 1: ... 5 95 US 7 95 CAN Sony G90 Size Does Matter New Products From Runco Revel NAD Pioneer Linn Lexicon www theperfectvision com ...

Page 2: ...ding at Austin Texas and additional mailing offices POSTMASTER Send address changes to The Perfect Vision Subscription Services Box 3000 Denville New Jersey 07834 Printed in the USA Absolute Multimedia Inc 7035 Bee Caves Road Suite 203 Austin Texas 78746 512 306 8780 Fax 512 328 7528 absolute_multimedia msn com T his was a hard issue Our third time out and maybe three s a jinx maybe we got a littl...

Page 3: ...ical Music on DVD Heidi Waleson 57 Upscale Pop on DVD Thom Duffy 59 Made for DVD Puccini s Turandot Greg Sandow 63 A Classical DVD Sampler Greg Sandow 67 Surrounded Roger Reynolds Watershed created for DVD Greg Sandow Barry Rawlinson 71 Pop with a Twist Bob Gendron 77 Multimedia A Close Encounter Voices of Light The Passion of Joan of Arc Andrew Quint V I D E O 81 Department Video Insights An Intr...

Page 4: ...s within 20 minutes or else There is a cast of characters whose paths she crosses or doesn t during each run and as the camera pauses to con template each you see a rat a tat barrage of still photographs of each s future which changes according to the circum stances of the encounter with Lola There are additionally two beautifully done bridge passages after the first and sec ond runs which show sl...

Page 5: ... gross differences and defects in measurable performance parameters just as in audio equipment of the 1950s As these measurable defects are corrected thanks to the feedback provided by the measurement capabilities of Convergence Labs meaningful differences in the observed performance of video equipment may or may not still exist At this point I lean toward the last possibility as most likely This ...

Page 6: ...r DVDs rushed to market to make a quick buck and some DVD players that were ques tionable in terms of MPEG artifacts and D A converter output stages Your char acterization would have applied to them But MPEG encoding on major stu dio releases is generally quite good today and MPEG decoding and signal processing in players is excellent That said there are still plenty of video quali ty problems on ...

Page 7: ...heater experience in the home it s rele vant to know what the theater standard really is For those inter estedin film as film there are other magazines An example of irrele vance would be his own favorite film scenes How does that help achieve the perfect vision 5 As we go once more down the primrose path toward another technological bait andswitch TPV can t be too critical when any manufacturer v...

Page 8: ...vies that don t have Star Wars in the title might not lend themselves quite this well to digital projection Of course we re showing this off to a generation of filmgoers whose stan dards have been systematically lowered by a lack of even a token effort at 70mm exhibition and poor quality 35mm the atrical prints It s no wonder that with no 70mm blow ups for comparison s sake lots of folks think thi...

Page 9: ...ed in Faced with this limitation I found myself in a situation not unlike my first year of law Rather than teaching us the law our professors taught us how to think about the law There are too many rules for any student to sit down and absorb them all just as there are too many audio products for any reviewer to cover And like the law the results obtained from an audio product are to a degree fact...

Page 10: ...re but needed programming for success The key was HBO and Unity Motion just couldn t seem to get together with them and make something happen We ll stay tuned but it won t be long before DirecTV and the Dish Net work will be delivering HDTV via their satellite systems Unity Motion will have to find some sort of niche to make another run at it How about an all HDTV sports network Movie Trivia So mu...

Page 11: ...rous imported during the years when the Soviet Union was Cuba s ally They re no fun to look at and Wenders simply left them out a pardon able decision cinematographically but not an accurate pic ture of what he surely saw But the wonder of the Buena Vista film apart from the sheer delight of watching it is how it changed my hearing of the music I should note that it s shot in grainy video but sinc...

Page 12: ...Panasonic DVD L50D PalmTheater With the advent of DVD truly portable video solutions suddenly abound I ve been using a notebook computer with built in DVD for about a year and have found it very useful for watching movies when traveling At the roughly 24 view ing distance that feels comfortable with a computer my 14 1 screen is actually quite large and the latest 15 screens are even better At this...

Page 13: ...lence upon ourselves all this reliant upon context a questionable assumption founded upon the premise of a common culture This may explain why irony is emerging today in American culture to the degree it has long been apparent in the older more homogenous European cultures Now if you are not sure of the con text within which your recipient will receive the message you can build into the message an...

Page 14: ...nd for vendors of presentation products An estimated 25 000 people attended the show this year most of them information and communications professionals but some consumers as well More than 450 exhibitors were on hand many to introduce new products The most excit ing such products were displays cutting edge projectors and direct view monitors While most of these are designed for the needs of audio...

Page 15: ...ber of these were introduced this year at INFOCOMM almost all of them scalers Unlike simpler line doublers or quadru plers which output progressive signals with either double or quadruple the number of lines in each original inter laced video field scalers offer a range of progressive output formats and scan rates to better match the characteristics of a given dis play device The new products this...

Page 16: ...jector rated at 1000 ANSI lumens a number that is now quite common looks brighter on video images than a typical 9 CRT projector One area where CRT projectors still have the edge is black level Despite years of steady improvement neither LCD nor DLP has yet managed to achieve on small screens the deep blacks achievable with CRT That is reason enough for some to choose a CRT projector for their hom...

Page 17: ...tion PDP was intro duced at the show This year five were introduced which is a good indication of the way this technology may be matur ing NEC s PlasmaSync 5000W was the standout This 50 diagonal 16 9 panel with a resolution of 1365 x 768 had the best looking image I ve seen yet from a PDP While PDPs are unquestionably getting better they still have problems One of the more notable is a tendency t...

Page 18: ...ythm The screenplay has a structure as does each scene and in most of the scenes the director has built tempo or range of tempos But these things have no real cinematic existence until they leave the editor s bench One of the most continually exciting and personally rewarding aspects of an always interesting job is that first time I run a scene after I ve cut it Suddenly as if by magic I m looking...

Page 19: ...ut I ve never found them convincing Anyone who has spent any time on a film set soon finds out there is little feel for the story to be picked up there not with production assistants camera crews sound recordists costumers assistant directors service people and the countless other crew members necessary to the making of a movie milling about And if the editor is hanging out there he plainly isn t ...

Page 20: ... shots the over the shoulder angles going progressively tighter until you conclude with the close ups And when you get close in stay close in You see a lot of cutting like this especially in older movies and quite a bit of television It s certainly a serviceable way to edit movies it works and it s not likely to get you into any trouble But it doesn t necessari ly make for terribly exciting or dyn...

Page 21: ...atch es they manage to get away with What experienced editors care most about matching is the mood and emotion of the per formance from one shot to the next Even a volatile perfor mance that swings between extremes must have the integrity of its changes Neophytes usually worry about quite trivial matters how much of the cigarette was burned away in this shot as opposed to the previous one The seco...

Page 22: ...ing medium so that home viewers will have decent picture and sonic reproduction This cannot help but affect the way movies are made I can t recall that I ve ever cut with anything other than the atrical viewing in mind but just the other day something happened that gave me pause I wanted to end a particularly intimate scene by dropping back to an extreme long shot that Ron Shelton had filmed I use...

Page 23: ...as more inputs better DACs and analog circuitry which increased the signal to noise ratio from 98 dB to 110 dB a broadcast spec video board and the unit will receive and decode 24 bit 96 kHz input signals The MC 1 is an eight channel device with line level out puts for the usual left center right surround left surround right and subwoofer signals plus additional outputs for rear left and right sig...

Page 24: ...des are divided into two categories ambiance extraction and ambiance generation In the latter modes the MC 1 generates new signals reverberation that drive the side and rear speakers In the extraction modes the MC 1 simply recovers ambiance information from the existing sig nal for reproduction by the side and rear speakers The extraction modes are much more subtle and in my view more musically ap...

Page 25: ...S to the MC 1 Granted a 5 995 multi channel processor should be no match for a 7 995 two channel DAC but the comparison put the MC 1 s performance into perspective The MC 1 s sound quality in this evalua tion was only fair The MC 1 overlaid the music with a grainy texture with a darkening of the upper midrange that resulted in a less palpable rendering The MC 1 s treble was a bit hashy and the sou...

Page 26: ...d hear exactly the effect s contribution to this unique recording The MC 1 s reverberation generation was exceptionally clean and smooth producing an almost convincing impression the recording was made in a real hall Overall the MC 1 s music surround modes were more suc cessful on some types of music than on others Most of the time I preferred two channel reproduction Nonetheless I found some musi...

Page 27: ...he two chan nel musical experience Other controllers can be considered true High End preamplifiers that also offer surround sound decoding and video switching This diversity of products on the market lets you choose a controller that parallels your priorities The movie buff will have very different requirements from the music listener who wants a little surround sound when he occasionally watches ...

Page 28: ...ormat on DVD and laserdisc and has been chosen as the surround sound format for HDTV Even inexpensive A V receivers sport DSP chips although they have vastly less comput ing power than those in High End controllers Consequently High End controllers offer bet ter implementations of surround sound decod ing more flexible features and higher sound quality more powerful DSP chips allow greater precisi...

Page 29: ...ure See the side bar to the Denon AVR 5700 review in Issue 25 for more on surround decorrela tion Timbre matching makes it possible for sounds arriving from the sides to have the same perceived timbre as sounds arriving from the front This makes pans movements of sounds from front to rear more realistic because the perceived timbre doesn t change with movement You can easily demonstrate for yourse...

Page 30: ...this function the greater the likeli hood that you can achieve the best results with your speak ers and room Keeping low bass out of smaller loudspeak ers confers large advantages in the speaker s power handling dynamic range midrange clari ty and sense of ease When the woofer doesn t have to move back and forth a long distance try ing to reproduce low bass the midrange sounds cleaner and the spea...

Page 31: ...with the path of a sig nal from input to output and the wide variety of turns between But how the user operates a controller with all these features is just as important as the raw technology that makes the magic A controller can be easy to set up initially and a joy to use on a daily basis Or it can be a confusing nightmare that makes you feel lucky to get any sound at all from your speakers neve...

Page 32: ... the dimensions Start with the realization that no set of dimensions is perfect The perfect room does not exist Revisit Robert Greene s What You Should Know About Bass in Issue 24 Every room has modes that arise from its dimensions The most obvious and the most significant are the axial modes These are the fun damental acoustic resonant modes and their harmonics that are created between two opposi...

Page 33: ...ls and back wall The Rule of Thirds is derived from a superficial understanding of modal room characteristics This approach which seems to work with dipole loudspeakers is less than optimal for dynamic coil designs There is no predictable location that works optimally for all speakers and all rooms the variables are too numerous Indeed finding the absolute best location for a certain speak er in a...

Page 34: ...ion I used a variety of pro gram material as I moved the speakers to and fro listening to the extension and smoothness of the bass as well as its blend with higher frequencies As I will discuss later in this series matching the performance of the two channels as closely as possible is instrumental in attain ing outstanding soundstaging performance Thus symmetrical location within the room is highl...

Page 35: ...ative and more complex There is a legitimate weight to the sound of instru ments through the Salon that is natural sounding and intoxi cating Consider for example the ride cymbal front and cen ter at the start of the Conspiracy Theory soundtrack TVT 8130 2 Through the Salons it is possible to hear the sus tained fundamental in the instrument s metal while the sizzle rides cleanly in the overtones ...

Page 36: ... you to think that the bass in my room was seamless and free of resonance I wish Using a wide variety of recordings I can draw a map of the disaster area called the bot tom three octaves Don t forget this is war I mentioned the pronounced bump around 50 Hz Listening to the bass guitar tracks on Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach s Painted From Memory Mercury 314538002 2 was like riding a roller coa...

Page 37: ...rtion with no audible doubling If it is barnstorming in the basement it does so cleanly Ultimately I could play The Vikings from Pomp and Pipes Reference Recordings RR 58CD at lifelike volumes 94 dB peaks without a hint of strain in the Sub 15s And the Sub 15 is clean enough to blend seamlessly with the Salons which means it should blend just as well with any other speaker you choose unless their ...

Page 38: ... the excellence of the Revels You will have to wait until Episode Two for a full report on the T1100 but I will share this now The changes it wrought improved not just the tonality of the music but the dynamics and space as well If you want to know more right now dig out your old copies of The Absolute Sound Issues 113 and 109 and read Robert E Greene s comments on the SigTech Episode Two A War On...

Page 39: ...e AV5150 subwoofer 26 inches high 18 5 inches wide and deep sits between the television and one of the Tukans A Quadraspire rack contains the five AV5105 power amplifiers the AV5103 system controller and on the top two shelves the Linn Karik CD player and Numerik digital to analog converter The shelves are finished in cherry veneer to match the loudspeaker cabinets The price of systems based aroun...

Page 40: ...zine writ ers and editors are compelled to pull back the curtain of magic and witness the act itself For this article we will sit back and watch the show In the next issue though we want to work the controls The sound of the Linn system has mutated through three distinct phases to date When first set up the sound was in my room a bliz zard of razor blades a room problem for my walls are plas tered...

Page 41: ...amic capabilities reflect that It is implicit in such a system that there is a crossover filter upstream of each amplifier For now the crossover functions except for the bass manage ment are performed in plug in modules that are installed in the AV5105 amplifiers It would be much better to move the crossovers even further upstream to the DSP engine where it can be performed elegantly in the digita...

Page 42: ... of the Linn illusion applied to music and movies And we ll take a much closer look at how it all works LINN INCORPORATED 4540 Southside Boulevard Suite 402 Jacksonville Florida 32216 Tel 904 645 5242 Source Manufacturer loan Prices 5103 System Controller 8 495 5150 Bass Reinforcement Loudspeaker 4 195 4 395 in cherry 5105 amplifier for front left and right 3 590 each 5105 amplifier for center 3 5...

Page 43: ...ite as rich and extended But neither is it muddy or ill defined It s just a little rolled off The heart of the T770 is its competence in decoding Dolby Digital soundtracks Intelligibility of dialog is paramount not only to understanding but to conveying nuance and atmos phere One of the easiest ways to test for this is to find sound tracks where narration occurs The Tennessee Mountain nar ration o...

Page 44: ...inment industries through peer review publications seminars at CEDIA NSCA the Audio Engineering Society and the Acoustical Society of America Over time it became apparent that despite the progress we have made in room acoustic design sound diffusion and absorption technology recording studios and residential hi fi and home theater communities were still at the mercy of the location of the loudspea...

Page 45: ...new medium to come down the pike Just ask the folks who are pro moting it Statistics from the DVD Video Group an industry nonprofit aimed at getting consumers to sign on to the format tells us that two years after the introduction of the VCR there were 877 000 of them out there Now two years after the intro duction of the DVD player there are two million to say noth ing of the 16 million DVD drive...

Page 46: ...ee review up close and personal Only one planned for next spring is an opera Karajan conducting a 1987 Vienna per formance of Mozart s Don Giovanni with Samuel Ramey Leslie C Cohen vice president business development at Sony Music is decidedly bullish on the potential of DVD and is jubilant at the demise of Circuit City s DIVX competitor Sony Music supports DVD Each of our labels Columbia Epic etc...

Page 47: ...panies look at music videos for the home market It s almost reinvented the business now that we have a system that delivers a high quality picture and high quality audio says John Beug senior VP film video produc tion and marketing for Warner Bros Records Not to cast aspersions on VHS but the audio quality stinks and the picture quality depends on who is duplicating it Music video programs on DVD ...

Page 48: ...e re still con quering technology issues Moorhead says Most of our repertoire is from Europe and it s expensive to remaster it to the US Japanese standard If these do well we ll do more We have a great video catalog It doesn t look as though Atlantic is going to be rushing to market with classical concert videos however It s the age old conflict Things intended for the stage like theater ballet an...

Page 49: ...5 minutes or so It s a beautiful distinctive unusually artistic pro duction no surprise considering it s directed by Zhang Yimou China s leading film director auteur of The Story of Qiu Ju To Live and Shanghai Triad but what was clear from the start was that the most telling artistry comes from the staging along with costumes and Chinese dancers all of which make a com pelling even thoughtful fram...

Page 50: ... a careful breath then with equal care they sing their lines No drama no music no atheleticism just abstract performance as if the two had been bred in a tank of nutrients and trained to accomplish this task with no idea that anything raw and human was involved The Liú soprano Barbara Frittoli was miles better a singer fully equal to the human vocal and musical challenge of her role the one member...

Page 51: ...uch I ve said but here he does not have to the aria is sung alone on stage for what seems to be his favorite dramatic partner himself And his voice rings out I have to admit that I m suspicious of that ringing sound because the entire sound of the performance is artificial It had to be the event took place outdoors in a huge open space Obviously the singers are miked and the making of shows us exa...

Page 52: ...es offstage Now the baritone arrives he s an ambas sador from imperial Rome and he s here for formal colloqui es with Attila the bass But the new CD track wouldn t begin with his entrance No it starts only when the baritone and bass begin the melodic part of their duet If you want to hear their recitative or in other words if you want to start the scene from the baritone s entrance its natural beg...

Page 53: ...me of real music There are won derful pop production sonic moments one involving a bass drum on the Vienna disc that made me feel that I d descended to the roots of all the earth But a bass drum would never sound that shivery and intimate in a live concert If you have any taste for live orchestral music the sound of these DVDs will be at best severely puzzling I might say as much for Karajan s per...

Page 54: ...of stew Cilea was a minor com poser of Puccini s era the early Twentieth Century with a gift for heart stopping moments There are a few of these in this opera most of them familiar excerpts like the soprano s two arias Io son l u mile ancella and Poveri fiori or the tenor s two Everything else is empty boilerplate and one principal character the vengeful mezzo soprano princess has no real musical ...

Page 55: ...it ought to be sand wiched around the actual compositions as it is on the DVD or placed in its separate section for G R E G S A N D O W Experiment in a New Medium Because I ve been exposed to far too much featureless mod ernistic music and might be jaded coming anywhere near what looked to be new example of it I thought I d ask Barry Rawlinson to listen to this too A non professional ear s reactio...

Page 56: ...ceive things are two examples When Schick the sober well meaning and certainly skilled and sensitive percussionist referred to his practicioning I was ready to throw the DVD out the window In the course of my prac ticioning he said I ve found or words to that effect What he means is not much more than When I play my percussion gigs or to stretch things as far as pos sible in his favor maybe When I...

Page 57: ...own I kept waiting for it to end I imagined changes that weren t really there like the sound getting more and more vague That s how the piece played with my expectations I myself became a participant and I think any listener would Here for once we had something that lived up to the high artistic claims made for Eclipse and Watershed something that really did change my percep tions This in a word w...

Page 58: ...rade that began with Cooper s original vision The performance we see on DVD begins with a film another rock concert first that depicts Cooper waking up and rising from his bed in a cemetery Dressed in pajamas he plays the role of a little boy who realizes he is interactively immersed in an unshakable nightmare From the moment the concert begins we experience the dream s dementia and its humor via ...

Page 59: ...und and layers of excessive keyboards supersede his usual shrill edge slicing guitars He also drops his familiar diabolical snarl in favor of a warm purr a transformation that strips his music of its adventurous edge The team who assembled the box set seem to recognize this they included just 12 songs from the six albums all of them out of print in the US that Cooper released during these years Af...

Page 60: ...iny film with more vibrant stock combines with multi perspective angles many shot with a minicam in creating a stimulating A V presentation that DVD with its digitally clear resolution and seamless flow best allows Sonically the DVD has 5 1 channel and AC 3 surround sound that serves us well Since Meeting does not focus on concert footage but is instead a col lage of events and experiences it s ap...

Page 61: ...and sensa tionalism With scenes shown in non chronological order Instru ment gives us a seething mix of images MacKaye erupts into the microphone like a shark expanding its jaws before it devours its prey Picciotto plows his right hand into the gui tar s scuffed body as if he were punching a hole through a plaster wall Lally plugs his bass as he staunchly stands like a marine waiting for his super...

Page 62: ... old some white some black some brown most are dressed down some gussied up in business suits And when you look at their scarred faces dim eyes spiked hair and pierced lips you may be quick to label them as punks delinquents or losers because they fit these stereotypes But really this audience embodies diversity It s a slice of ragged Americana an assortment of folk not imagin able at most rock or...

Page 63: ...Beach and Glass score for the film Koyaanisqatsi These were I m sure intensely sensuous experiences Still for many listeners the repetitive nature of much of Glass cleverly constructed music doesn t demand attention on a moment to moment basis and can induce a nearly physiologic contemplative state that I think allows a listener to focus more keenly on whatever else is before him on the stage or s...

Page 64: ...argely tonal with dissonances applied sparingly There are elements of minimalism but these are subtle components of the musical texture and the work has a fairly conventional dramatic shape with a strong sense of forward impetus Einhorn cap tures well the relentlessly claustrophobic quality of the movie all but the very end is filmed indoors Joan s vulnerability and spiritual core and the viciousn...

Page 65: ...writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez Although the composer doesn t insist upon amplification for all performances of Voices of Light it was certainly his origi nal intention It gave the music a hallucinatory quality that I thought was entirely appropriate for a represen tation of Joan of Arc It was also a sounding ana log to the visual displacements that are a hall mark of the visual style of Dreye...

Page 66: ...olor Perception In the human eye light enters through the pupil and forms an image on the retina which has photoreceptors that con vert light into signals that are processed by the eye s neural circuits which then transmit information to the brain Vision in normal lighting depends on photoreceptors called cones Our vision at night depends on photoreceptors called rods that have no color discrimina...

Page 67: ...ion screen In direct view monitors phosphor dots or stripes of the primary colors are arranged so closely together that the eye perceives the light coming from a single location The eye s visual acuity ability to see detail to color is related to the separation of the cones on the retina Luminance Luminance is a measure of our sensation of brightness It depends on the spectral sensitivity of human...

Page 68: ...roperties of the CIE diagram is that any color created by mixing two other colors will lie on a straight line connecting them The distance along the line where the new color appears is inversely related to the proportions of the two colors Since all single wavelength visible colors lie on the Spectral Locus all visible colors must be inside the locus Further more it follows that all colors made fr...

Page 69: ...more blue white of 7500K in the middle of the brightness range then colors will be seen with a bluer hue than desired when they appear at that brightness level So we have seen that two conditions are necessary to achieve perfect display color accuracy The grayscale must maintain a perfect D65 color temperature across the entire brightness range of the display and the CRT phosphors must match the S...

Page 70: ... the coordinates of the phosphors and white point The x y coordinates for each color in the color bars based on the SMPTE C phosphors and the D65 white point is shown in Table 1 We can measure the x y coordinates for each color in the test pattern directly from a display using a sophisticated electro optical instrument known as a color analyzer or a spectro radiometer and plot the results along wi...

Page 71: ...al levels of the primaries with out changing their levels for the white color It is adjusted until the signal levels of each primary alone matches its sig nal level and therefore brightness in white The Hue control varies the relative signal levels of the primaries to each other except in white so that the brightness of any one pri mary is the same in two complemen tary colors For instance the bri...

Page 72: ...e control sensor Above that the huge 9 inch lens assemblies protrude several inches in front of the angled bezel proudly pro claiming that this is one serious projector Just behind the lens es the top panel swings open to allow an installer to make mechanical focus and one time aiming adjustments of the CRT lens assemblies This is particu larly nice since the main cover of the case remains closed ...

Page 73: ... ver tical tilt of the CRTs to alter the focal plane with respect to the lens assemblies This provides optimum focus at all edges of the picture After all of the mechanical focusing is complete an extensive array of electronic magnetic focus adjustments are made from the remote control for nine sep arate screen areas Sony s new hexapole focus adjustments produce the small spot size and round shape...

Page 74: ...lor over the screen Fan noise on the G90 wasn t nearly as loud as might be expected from a projector drawing 1050 watts I measured 51 dB C weighted at three feet from the unit The fan noise is not high pitched but has a rushing air sound that is often masked by the music and dialog in a movie It may be accept able in a ceiling mount application without additional attenu ation but I wasn t able to ...

Page 75: ... 980 Ultra bandwidth was specified as 100 MHz but this difference was only significant for the higher resolution computer graphic display capabilities of the IDP 980 Ultra It doesn t affect video perfor mance 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 use...

Page 76: ...eir projectors A professional installer should mount the projector and do the mechanical adjustments which consist of setting two knobs on each lens assembly for the correct projection angle and screen size aiming the CRT lens assemblies to converge at center screen and adjusting focus rings for best center and edge focus for each CRT From that point all other calibration is performed elec tronica...

Page 77: ...the CIE diagram 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...

Page 78: ... The latter can render black levels gray and dynamically reduce the contrast ratio of the picture These attributes are a function of good high voltage power supplies for the CRTs Some products particularly RPTVs and direct view monitors suffer size or geometry changes as the average picture level APL varies Examples include static changes when a bright object enters a dark scene or momentary effec...

Page 79: ... nector which also includes my 3Dfusion progressive DVD player and pass that through without dou bling For laserdisc I use the S Video input and for cable TV via a VCR tuner I use the composite input The front panel of the Turboscan is clean showing only a small LCD panel and a touch panel control with left right up down arrows The menu commands displayed on the LCD panel or on a simple onscreen b...

Page 80: ... segment on Video Essentials is one The vertical cables of the bridge break up badly as they move horizontally with the camera pan In other cases the filter reduces but doesn t eliminate some residual arti facts such as jaggies in the hair of the pink T shirted girl with the bicycle I used the Video Essentials DVD and the Dolby Labs DVD DVD TEST1 to explore other aspects of the Turboscan per forma...

Page 81: ...ple They will play just about every home the ater optical media available automatically adapting for the size and format and moving the laser into the appropriate position But why would anyone buy a combi player given the increased complexity of the mechanical and electronic sub systems Well you may have a laserdisc collection or a near by rental store that still carries LDs There are also many mo...

Page 82: ...esponse like theTheta Voyager is excellent to 4 MHz 320 TV lines per picture height but then falls off rapidly at 5 MHz 400 TVL Frequency Response dB MHz MHz 0 5 1 0 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0 DVL 91 DVD YPbPr 0 0 1 0 4 0 3 0 6 2 4 Voyager DVD YPbPr 0 0 0 1 0 4 0 4 0 3 2 0 DV 09 DVD YPbPr 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 2 0 3 1 9 DVL 91 LD S Video 0 5 1 0 1 4 0 8 0 8 10 9 Voyager LD S Video 0 3 0 6 1 2 0 9 0 9 9 0 CLD 97 LD S...

Page 83: ...on In the opening scene of Goldeneye MGM 906035 where an air plane flies low over a dam the top of the dam has two close ly spaced horizontal lines On the Pioneer and Theta Voyager these lines twitter a little but are sharp on the Sony they are stable but with a slightly softer focus This is a common dif ference between downconversion algorithms stability with softer focus or sharpness with aliasi...

Page 84: ...plaining about on some DVDs but it is more than I wish to see The NTSC decoder in this product has a wide range of hori zontal bandwidth settings so it would be a benefit if DVDO turned this peaking back down or somehow provided user control A slightly softer picture is preferable to edge outlin ing Otherwise the iScan Plus would be the line doubler deal of the century players mentioned have a sim...

Page 85: ...l September 17 September 24 1999 Athens Greece Independent Feature Film Market September 17 24 1999 New York NY Bangkok Film Festival September 17 26 1999 Bangkok Thailand Drama Short Film Fest September 19 25 1999 Drama Greece Aspen Film Festival September 22 26 1999 Aspen CO South Bronx Film Festival September 23 25 1999 Bronx NY Manhattan Short Film Festival September 24 1999 New York NY New Yo...

Page 86: ...emory of their field goes no further back than say Monty Python or the original Saturday Night Live Rober to Benigni has been drawing from the well of the pioneering masters particularly the silent ones Charlie Chaplin Buster Keaton Harold Lloyd There are also shades of Laurel Hardy the Marx Brothers Jacques Tati and Peter Sellers throughout his work Fans of silent and classic comedy have been dra...

Page 87: ...ose of Stan Laurel Like a child he is cautious of yet curious about his new friends He studies them attempts to make conversation and tries to learn better English from them While they are at first reluctant to befriend him Rober to manages to bring them out of their shells In doing so he serves as the glue that gradually brings these two surly self ish brooding American rebel types together While...

Page 88: ...that really can t be fault ed considering how much of this film takes place in dark cabs at night lit by the streetlights of the different environments The VHS retails for 15 while the laserdisc is one of the most sought after out of print titles around Son of the Pink Panther 1993 93 minutes Let s face it when the great Peter Sellers died he took the key to the Pink Panther series with him The fi...

Page 89: ...hey put the unknowing Loris under surveillance and as they misconstrue every innocent move he makes they become progressively more convinced that he is the murderer Obsessed with catching Loris red handed and finding out what makes him tick the police psychologist splendid French star Michel Blanc enlists the assistance of a policewoman named Jessica again the enchanting Braschi to go undercover a...

Page 90: ...best What we were told by Warner was that Kubrick designed the package and approved its contents In which case double the mystery and double my doubts about cer tain of Kubrick s judgments None of the discs are anamor phically enhanced which is a crying shame And most of the transfers have been done at relatively low bit rates which results in too many cases in soft pictures even on a standard mon...

Page 91: ...ter It suggests Kubrick approved or no that the package evidently originally intended to accompany Eyes Wide Shut s July release was pretty much thrown together from existing transfers We get zilch in the way of special fea tures save for an interview with Arthur C Clarke on the 2001 disc and a Vivian Kubrick directed documentary about the shooting of The Shining on that disc Otherwise nada That s...

Page 92: ...he d pop up next ought to be killing but Cameron doesn t once take advantage of this inherent license to scare the remaining wits not much these days judging from what s making money at the box office out of the audience These discs are available separately to be sure So you might save a buck or more by cherry picking the best of the series I don t recommend the Alien disc and won t short of a rem...

Page 93: ...hance their transfers for widescreen viewing on a 16 9 sized screen It started out with enhanced releases then abandoned the practice now enhancement is back on their recent releases including most notably The Ten Command ments I believe than fans of this early Peter Weir movie fea turing a baby faced Mel Gibson will be in hog heaven with this release The movie is exquisitely beautiful in this tra...

Page 94: ...me called The Last Starfighter The object is to shoot down alien spaceships What he doesn t know is that upon becoming the highest scorer he will actually get a chance to do just that in fact It s a recruiting tool Lotsa digital effect of the sort Disney pioneered in Tron which was the film of genuine historical importance for these kinds of special effects Nice widescreen transfer if a little sof...

Page 95: ... to the throne to quote Richard Attenborough s weak kneed Cecil The wounds of the War of the Roses only 75 years past were not yet healed the cultural economic and religious divisions that would throw all of Great Britain into Civil War a mere 40 years after Elizabeth s death were setting Englishman against Englishman Yes there were court intrigues Yes there were plots against Elizabeth s life and...

Page 96: ...years long depression While she sat in Windsor and mourned her country was left virtually without a monarch giving the crown s enemies in the House of Com mons Gladstone and the Liberals room to maneu ver and giving her son Albert the opportunity to promote his own regency In an attempt to revive her spirits and head off a constitutional crisis some of the Queen s advisors decided to call on John ...

Page 97: ...u know it s coming it says something about the wit and subtlety with which the film was made And without doubt that wit and subtlety and yes Condon s overriding metaphor pay off emotionally I have rarely seen a film in recent years that is so intricately crafted to such powerful effect Gods and Monsters begins in 1957 after a series of mild strokes has already begun to take a heavy toll on Whale p...

Page 98: ... us the most remarkable sequence in the film a wordless dream like fantasy in which Clay dressed as the Creature leads Whale to his rest to sleep beside his long dead lover in the death filled trenches of Passchendaele It is the movie suggests the place in time that Whale never really got beyond and it is one of the saddest scenes I ve seen on film There is yet another sequence at the film s close...

Page 99: ... s end will try to explain away much of what has threatened Cruise as a charade The film s central tableaux is a ceremonial sexual rite set in a mansion in Glen Cove Long Island which drew huge laughs at the local theater and it is more frightening than anything in The Shining with the possible exception of the baseball bat sequence All of the guests Cruise being the party crasher who is about to ...

Page 100: ...ll crafted photo album that coheres as a gallery of effects rather than as a nar rative whole and even at that is never as disturbing as Bergman meant it to be This is hard but not altogether unfair The Seventh Seal is an episodic film built up of groupings and tableaux like church art or tapestry It does move us more by the power of its imagery and often by the poetry of its lan guage than by the...

Page 101: ...llegory begins to break down here and something more personal to make its way in To begin with Jof is scarcely a holy personage He is an acrobat a singer a performer albeit a bad one a charming and persistent liar a writer of sweet quasi religious love songs a bit of a thief a childlike braggart and a self professed seer blessed with second sight although no one else truly believes in his visions ...

Page 102: ...here is another artist in The Seventh Seal the church painter Gunnar Olsson whom the squire encounters paint ing the very terrors that Bergman used to ponder in his youth By means of the painter Bergman says I present my own artistic conviction The painter insists he is in show business To sur vive in this business it s important to avoid making people too mad 3 To believe Bergman s witticism just...

Page 103: ...newals Subscriptions to The Perfect Vision are 32 for 6 issues in the US second class mail In Canada a 6 issue subscription is priced at 36 US funds only for 6 issues via airmail Foreign subscriptions are 65 US funds only for 6 issues via airmail To subscribe you may use any of three methods 1 call our subscription office at 888 475 5991 in the US or 973 627 5162 elsewhere 2 fill out the form on t...

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Page 105: ...xpert C disagrees C Multi channel editing infrastructure not yet in place two channel SACD set for September 1999 launch with 50 60 titles Universal DVD V DVD Audio CD SACD players available Q4 2000 Q4 1999 Q4 1999 3 B Important for the ultimate market success of high quality multi channel music recordings C Matsushita Panasonic will launch two Universal players this fall probably without SACD pla...

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