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last night i went to my bosses house since he just got galaxy quest on d-vhs. first off i have to say i had no idea that d-vhs looks exactly the same as any normal vhs tape. identical. you could accidentally return it to your video store. the only difference is on the back of the case, like dvd info, there's a box that says 1080i (too cool).
i don't think i'm gonna review the audio side. it sounded just as good as anything i've heard on dvd, but my boss (who i shall now refer to as "chris") has his room in total dissarray (he's re-wiring). the mains were totally not aligned and one was right flush with one side of the tv (a 51" widesceen tosh) and the other was in front and to the side... the rears were more to one side of the room... i think the sub was too loud (when i first heard his system, his room was shaking from the begining of t2... not the opening battle, but the very first shot where you're just watching traffic on the l.a. freeway)...
chris' system consists of the toshiba 51" widescreen tv (this years model i think), a nad t752 receiver, small boston acoustic speakers, and the sub.. i'm not sure of the make... it's a 12" sub tho.
i think that the best way to sum this up is the cheesy old "it's so film-like" statement. film grain is very apparent (i don't know what the dvd transfer of galaxy quest is like, i wish we could have compared) and the image is SUPER detailed. it had this softness that didn't feel digital at all. actually i almost didn't like it 'cause i had watched parts of episode 2 the night before which is so clean and sharp feeling and in comparison this almost felt like a bad transfer.
actually there were a couple points in the movie where there was dirt on the elements they used for this transfer. i would have expected that things like that be cleaned up before transferring to d-vhs.
back to the "softness" of the transfer... i think this is more of a characteristic of film and made the transfer that much more "true." ep2 in comparison, while wonderfully clear, just felt more digital than anything. i think that d-vhs will have a pretty stong niche market... but too many people are all about dvd now.
i personally would never own one of these decks. with only a 40" tv, i think that the resolution would be lost on me. with chris' 51" tv, it became more worthwhile, but i don't think i'd want to own anything hd, unless i had a tv that big or larger (or front projection which i feel it's best suited for).
of course some of the cooler things you can do is archive all your laserdiscs on a tape. chris has started to copy the star wars trilogy from ld to tape. you can easily fit all 3 on 1. plus, someone wrote some drivers for windows xp which lets your computer recognize the jvc deck as an external tape drive. you can then copy hidef through your firewire ports to the deck. for our purposes, it's nice to be able to render out our vfx shots in hidef and transfer them to the deck and bring them home and watch them the same day rather than waiting for filmouts or watching crappy quicktimes.
i don't know. i'ts got it's ups and downs. i'd say wait for hd-dvd. i don't want a tape based format again.
matt
i don't think i'm gonna review the audio side. it sounded just as good as anything i've heard on dvd, but my boss (who i shall now refer to as "chris") has his room in total dissarray (he's re-wiring). the mains were totally not aligned and one was right flush with one side of the tv (a 51" widesceen tosh) and the other was in front and to the side... the rears were more to one side of the room... i think the sub was too loud (when i first heard his system, his room was shaking from the begining of t2... not the opening battle, but the very first shot where you're just watching traffic on the l.a. freeway)...
chris' system consists of the toshiba 51" widescreen tv (this years model i think), a nad t752 receiver, small boston acoustic speakers, and the sub.. i'm not sure of the make... it's a 12" sub tho.
i think that the best way to sum this up is the cheesy old "it's so film-like" statement. film grain is very apparent (i don't know what the dvd transfer of galaxy quest is like, i wish we could have compared) and the image is SUPER detailed. it had this softness that didn't feel digital at all. actually i almost didn't like it 'cause i had watched parts of episode 2 the night before which is so clean and sharp feeling and in comparison this almost felt like a bad transfer.
actually there were a couple points in the movie where there was dirt on the elements they used for this transfer. i would have expected that things like that be cleaned up before transferring to d-vhs.
back to the "softness" of the transfer... i think this is more of a characteristic of film and made the transfer that much more "true." ep2 in comparison, while wonderfully clear, just felt more digital than anything. i think that d-vhs will have a pretty stong niche market... but too many people are all about dvd now.
i personally would never own one of these decks. with only a 40" tv, i think that the resolution would be lost on me. with chris' 51" tv, it became more worthwhile, but i don't think i'd want to own anything hd, unless i had a tv that big or larger (or front projection which i feel it's best suited for).
of course some of the cooler things you can do is archive all your laserdiscs on a tape. chris has started to copy the star wars trilogy from ld to tape. you can easily fit all 3 on 1. plus, someone wrote some drivers for windows xp which lets your computer recognize the jvc deck as an external tape drive. you can then copy hidef through your firewire ports to the deck. for our purposes, it's nice to be able to render out our vfx shots in hidef and transfer them to the deck and bring them home and watch them the same day rather than waiting for filmouts or watching crappy quicktimes.
i don't know. i'ts got it's ups and downs. i'd say wait for hd-dvd. i don't want a tape based format again.
matt
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