Digital Video

See also:

• Digital Video Software
• DVD Recorders
• Building Computer-based DVR (PVR) Systems
• DVDs

General Information

• 2010-May-21: Google released their VP8 and WebM video system in May'10 and within days there was discussion of patent issues. [9123] [1]
• 2010-Jan-09: Building a DVD Server talks about putting together a storage and playback system for a DVD collection, unRAID (which I highly recommend) gets put to use as the storage server and software from Cinemar gets used to display the DVD catalog and control playback. [8906]
• 2009-Dec-05: Now that CableCARD systems are finally becoming more accessible it looks like the FCC is admitting CableCARD is a failure. [8822]
• 2009-Nov-23: Microsoft's Windows 7 Media Center now supports digital cable tuners, so if you have CableCARD you can record on your PC. [8790] [1]
• 2009-Sep-26: Windows 7 Media Center will get support for the Copy Freely flag. This will go well with CableCard (such as the multi-stream tuners from Ceton Corp) being made available for the end-user to install. DISH Network may also be bringing out a tuner, which might be hooked up via a LAN connection. [8567]
• 2009-Jun-01: Some reviews and sample footage from the Canon VIXIA HF200 (a HiDef 1080i/p capable camcorder with SDHC flash card storage).
  • Low light indoor test
  , this got down converted to SD. Probably about 300W of incandescent to illuminate a kitchen and dining area.
• Day and night, this was shot with the HF20 (which is the same thing as the HF200, except with some built-in flash storage), the day time shots are in a cactus garden, so there is a lot of sharp detail visible. It also gives you some idea of the depth of field on closeups. The night time views were probably shot during and after sunset. So provide a range of lighting levels. There also appears to be some use of the built-in video light to illuminate a child in the foreground of some of the shots.
• A discussion on low light performance on the AVForums.
• A positive review from infoSync. This one likes the low light performance:

  Not only were video clips sharp and highly detailed, but noise levels were also minimal across the board, even in low light. In fact, there were some instances where we preferred the Vixia HF20's low light performances to the formidable Canon Vixia HF S10's.

  and provides a few still samples of the low light performance.
• Camcorderinfo.com's review finds low light performance to be poor. It appears that the previous model (HF11) had a larger sensor and could reach 50 IRE in about 1/2 the illumination of the HF20.
[8060]
• 2008-Jul-13: Build your own backyard movie theater, just make sure to invite your neighbors. It has an interesting suggestion of using a mirror painted over with a coat of grey acrylic paint to make a projection surface. [6515]
• 2008-May-03: DViCO's PCIe FusionHGTV7 is a dual HDTV tuner card with support for regular video too, priced at $140. [6036]
• 2008-Apr-25: monoprice.com has a lot of video and computer cabling and they will ship outside the USA using the postal service. [5959] [1]
• 2008-Jan-08: The cable TV industry is looking to introduce a new standard for communications called Tru2Way to replace their set top boxes. [4607]
• AVS Forum has a large bulletin board of articles about audio-video systems. [5880]
• Zap2It is an online TV Guide. [5731]
• HDTV standards are still twisting and turning, maybe this time will be better for the consumer [5730]
• Replacing videotapes with CDRW technology [5729]
• This article: Everything you ever wanted to know about video codecs, contains a brief history of video codecs, some basic background information and a number of comparisons between the more popular ones. It gets further discussion here on Slashdot. [3534]
• The Unofficial DVD Specification from dvd-replica.com [3533]
• Projectors are getting pretty small these days [3532]