Though I have been with you for only a couple of months, it was definitely fun.

See you ’round the tubes!

–Christopher Swenson

Post from: EveryJoe

Last post for now!

Hulu has been trying to increase their “real” HD offerings of late.

Really, the only thing of substance (other than 5-minute documentaries and trailers) that interests me is Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, which they now have in HD, and still for free!

Don’t expect the free to last much longer: go watch it now if you haven’t already, or even if you have!

To Hulu: offer more stuff! A handful of mid-season television episodes from mostly shows I don’t watch doesn’t get me excited about your HD offerings.

Post from: EveryJoe

Hulu: Sort of in HD

CDs sample 44.1-kHz audio at 16 bits per sample. Considering the standard was defined back in the early 1980s to be played with state-of-the-art technology back then, you’d think this is far inferior to what we could cough up now, right?

Not really. For starters, 44.1 kHz allows the audio to accurately represent any waveforms below about 22 kHz (due to the Nyquist-Shannon theorem). Well, human hearing only extends to about 20 kHz, and less so as you get older. Basically, 44.1 kHz is plenty for high-def audio. DVDs standardized their audio sampling rates at 48 kHz, probably so they have nicer, rounder numbers to work with.

So, do these mega-high-fi 192 kHz do you any good? Nope. Not really at all. Due to the logarithmic nature of human hearing, going that high really does very little for your listening experience.

Don’t believe me? Well, see how well you can hear by trying out the so-called mosquito ringtones. These ringtones are made for teens so that adults can’t hear their phone ring.

So, what about 16-bit? Surely 16-bit means terrible, right? Well, not really. I mean, how bad do your CDs really sound? Granted that 16 bits are quite enough to represent the gamut of sounds that humans can differentiate (16 bits give you about 65,536 levels of sound to play with). Newer systems support 24- and 32-bit audio samples, which should definitely top out humans ability to hear on both ends.

But really, 16 bits are plenty for most people. For one thing, the quietest sound you can possibly hear is about 0.00002 Pascals and the loudest sound you probably ever want to hear (a jack hammer) is about 2.0 Pascals, giving you approximately 100,000 different sound levels between them. 65,536 levels can still put you to the point of hearing loss while allowing you to hear sounds an order of magnitude quieter than the softest whisper.

So, really, 16-bit, 44.1 kHz audio really is pretty decent. Anyone who tells you that you need 192 kHz 64-bit sampling is pulling your leg.

Post from: EveryJoe

Do we care about “high-def” audio?

You see, to reduce flicker, television shows played at standard definition transmitted a half frame at a time: your CRT television would trace half of a frame, and then the other half. This way you get a smoother picture. Often, DVDs are encoded in this manner as well, causing some funk line patterns to show up, like this:

This interlacing would look fine on a standard-resolution CRT television, but looks cruddy on modern, HDTVs. The solution is, when you are ripping it, to turn on some amount of “de-interlacing”. Typically, it will give you many options, but it is best to pick the slowest method (often this is “linear blend”), since it will look the best. Like so:

If you don’t have this option, many decent video players will let you de-interlace as you watch. For example, in VLC, you can access various de-interlacing methods from the video menu:

Post from: EveryJoe

Video Interlacing: Enemy of the peoples

The latest to the list is the LG BD300. Consumer Reports wrote up a brief post on it, as well as many other blogs, but the skinny is that it will cost something less than $500, and playback Blu-ray and Netflix Instant Watch.

While this interests me, I can’t help but wonder if Sony will follow this up with Netflix support for the PS3, their flagship Blu-ray player? I can only hope, seeing as how I don’t need another Blu-ray player.

Post from: EveryJoe

Another Netflix player! The LG BD300

Well, first off, the HD does not stand for “high definition” (it seems to stand for nothing — it’s just a marketing ploy), and it doesn’t provide anything like HD quality. The second most important part is that you have to have a special receiver to get these, which are still a tad expensive and aren’t standard equipment on much of anything yet.

What does it give you? It gives you the potential for a 300 kbps audio stream. In reality you get little more than 100 kbps of total capacity, which is often split up into multiple channels.

So, there are some goods here: we can cram two or three FM-quality broadcasts in some of the extra bandwidth around current FM transmissions. There is also pressure for these stations to remain commercial-free for a bit longer to increase adoptions, but it won’t last: the service is intended to be free, like current AM/FM stations, so it will have to be ad-supported in the future.

There are a lot of “buts” though:

• It’s proprietary. The only way to make or receive the transmissions on equipment is to pay a royalty to the company that owns the technology, iBiquity.
• It has all of the faults of terrestrial radio. The same problems you have with AM and FM stations will stay with these HD Radio stations. HD Radio is supposed to be some sort of response to satellite radio providers, but is still limited to your local area and whatever music they decide to put on.
• There have been some complaints that the HD Radio signals are incredibly weak, faint, and interfere with other signals because of the way they are transmitted.
• Quality isn’t much better than satellite. I was an XM subscriber for a while, and their audio bitrates were typically 40 kbps for the popular music channels, and less (8–24 for stations like news, etc.). Although HD Radio has the potential to exceed this, the providers are more likely to just populate the bandwidth with more channels, giving about the same quality as satellite providers.
• No one knows about them! If no one figures out or cares enough about them, then they will just die.

Personally, unless iBiquity can get HD Radios into every new car that comes out, I don’t see it as being a lasting business: DOA. Satellite is better in almost every way, and is already an installable option in many vehicles nowadays.

And it certainly isn’t HD.

Post from: EveryJoe

Who put the “HD” in “HD Radio”?

I’m a font snob, so I loved it. If you can tell the difference between Arial and Helvetica, if you hold strong opinions about comic sans, or even can just appreciate the art of typography and fonts, then this is a movie that you will enjoy, too.

However, I don’t feel that watching the movie in Blu-ray really added much. Since most of the movie was interviews with various people involved with or who hold strong opinions about Helvetica, very little is added with it being in high-def.

But, the interviews are great (one of my heroes, Hermann Zapf, gets a segment, as well as an extended scene in the bonus features), and the shots of the font used in every day life are attractive and well done. Overall, an excellent documentary on a fascinating topic.

The last time I checked, it was available on Netflix Instant Watch as well.

Post from: EveryJoe

Helvetica (Blu-ray) Review

When configuring your PS3, for example, you’ll get several confusing options like “Super White” and “x.v. Color”, as well as choosing between “RGB” and “YPbPr / YCbCr”. What does all of this mean?

All of the above options have to do with color on your HDTV or monitor. Some people never notice any problems with color, and to some people, it can be pretty critical.

First, let’s start off with an easy one. RGB vs. YPbPr vs. YCbCr. RGB is what computer monitors speak: they have Red, Green, and Blue parts that are illuminated to show you colors on screen. YPbPr and YCbCr are analog and digital, respectively, color systems that separate information into brightness (Y), and then differences to derive the blue channel (Pb / Cb) and the red channel (Pr / Cr). It represents the intended color with a different system that has different properties: for instance, it can be more easily compressed. It can represent just about the same information.

Now, since HDMI is digital with an uncompressed video signal, it means a dedicated number of bits are allocated for each channel. For older systems, this is typically limited to 24 bits per pixel, giving you about 256 shades of red, green, and blue that can be mixed in RGB, for example. Newer systems support up to twice this color resolution, with 48 bits per pixel, with 65,536 shades of each component. This is often called Deep Color. Naturally, this will have better color than non-Deep Color models. But really, the difference between 24-bit and 48-bit color is pretty negligible for most people, and many HDTVs don’t even support more than 24-bit color anyways (some older models only support 18-bit color, with a mere 64 shades of each color &emdash; this is pretty noticeable to many people).

What is this “Super White”? The PS3 seems to support it, but doesn’t seem to define what it is, exactly, or how to tell if your HDTV supports it. What it really seems to do is to use a slightly better color space: the original YCbCr color specification was tailored for analog CRTs with an NTSC color model. In other words, they were old and had poor color, so the standard took advantage of this by not allowing colors that were impossible (like bright whites and dark blacks). HDTVs have a wider color gamut, so can use an enhanced color model. “Super White” seems to refer to using this slightly improved color model, which should give you some richer colors. Chances are, it does, so you should turn it on and see if it makes a difference for you.

Finally, there’s xvYCC / x.v.Color. These both refer to an even better color model that is capable of displaying nearly any color that humans can see (unlike the previously mentioned models, like NTSC’s, that do not support all colors). The term “x.v.Color” simply means that the product carrying that moniker will support the xvYCC color standard. This is, in general, a good thing, and is required of HDMI 1.3. Turn it on if your TV supports it.

I hope this clears up some of the confusion surrounding the crazy color terms floating around HDTVs these days.

Post from: EveryJoe

HDMI Confusion: 24/30/48-bit sRGB YPbCbPrCr Super White xvYCC/color WHAT?

In addition to HD content, Vimeo is trying to get in on the social networking market: it’s trying to put the “sharing” in “video sharing”. For example, you can subscribe to other people’s HD content, much like you might subscribe to people’s blogs on RSS. It imports your contact information to assist you in finding content you might like, and has various other community interaction options. If you want social abilities beyond other video sharing sites’ “Others are also viewing …” kind of features, check it out.

Putting back on my HD junkie hat: overall, the video quality on there is pretty great. I was getting download rates at 10 Mbps downloading from the site, which is probably due to the fact that they use Amazon S3 for their back-end.

However, I was a bit disappointed with their site’s responsiveness: moving from page to page was sluggish, and really dragged down my experience. With the fresh Web 2.0 interface, I typically expect snappiness and quick responses. This is a bit disappointing considering the high-quality video streaming. Another small gripe is that there never seemed to be more than a handful of videos on any page: looking for videos seemed to involve lots of browsing between pages. Normally, this wouldn’t be so bad, but the site being sluggish made this a bit much.

Overall, I think anyone who wants to share HD video on the Internet, or is interested in a more social video experience, should take a look at what Vimeo has to offer.

Post from: EveryJoe

Vimeo: Free HD Video Sharing

While watching it, I noticed that it’s hosted by Hulu. I’ve come to watch a bit more Hulu recently, especially since I noticed that they have complete movies on the site. Who doesn’t love free movies?

Even better is if you just go to their RSS Feed page and subscribe to the Recently Added Movies feed, so you can keep track of all of their new releases.

And, of course, while you are watching, note that there is an option (after you start it) to switch to a higher-resolution (480p, in this case) mode. Not HD, but better than nothing.

Post from: EveryJoe

Dr. Horrible and Hulu