This is a little off topic (so what else is new?). I'm interested in
your opinions of the quality of DTS and THX.
DTS (Digital Theater Sound) is Spielberg's standard and involves special
decoding as I am sure most of you know. While THX is belongs to
Lucasfilms and is a standard rather than specifically encoded
information.
There is now also THX-EX which adds an addition matrixed surround
speaker and can be set up with a separate 2 channel amp as 7.1 sound
(I've never heard this set up yet).
I don't see a mass growth of DTS even though the price of receivers
which have DTS decoders keeps dropping and the number of units with them
increasing. I only have a few DVDs that are DTS encoded and have not
been personally blown away by their sound.
I am actually more impressed with THX (I have a THX certified receiver).
I still find it amazing that the defunct quadraphonic sound of the 70's
has found a rebirth since the advent of the home theater.
To get on topic. What do you see the future of MDLP as? This is just
my humble opinion, but outside of Japan I really don't think it will
catch on. It's a matter of too little too late. To me MDLP seems to be
a desperate attempt by Sony to compete with the extremely long playing
time of an MP3 CD or player.
There has been enough criticism (unjustified in my humble opinion) the
loss of sound quality do to ATRAC as it is. To further increase that
loss seems pointless to me.
I wonder if MD would have stood a better chance if Sony had "gotten it
right" the first time around and not released the Mini Disc until it had
the quality of at least their ATRAC version 3.5.
Sony is one of the biggest marketers of planned obsolescence. When they
first came out with their original Beta Cam (which was a record only
system-you had to use a separate VCR to be able to play the tapes) auto
focus was already popular on the 2 piece VHS cameras.
But Sony intentionally left it off of their first version. I guessed
correctly that when they introduced their second version a year later it
included this feature at no additional cost.
I'm not a big fan of Sony. I am frankly resentful of how they grabbed a
major portion of the US music and film industry. I realize that the
greed of the American industry had something to do with allowing that to
happen though.
What really bothers me is that Sony is not capable of making better
music or movies than Americans are. They still use all of our American
talent. They just own the company. If Sony had to depend upon it's own
talent to create they would have been out of business in a week.
Unlike the auto industry where the Japanese "killed" the US in quality,
(the US has been spending years trying to catch up to the Japanese) the
Japanese do not have the creative talent of Hollywood.
While I am on the subject, do you realize how much revenue and jobs (not
so much the high end/high paying directing, writing and acting as the
poor technical people like electricians) the US is losing to Canada
because of the tax breaks that the Canadian government gives US
companies to produce their programs and films in Canada.
It's too bad that it is the "little people" being hurt by this. Canada
has lost hundreds of their most talented actors to the US over the years
and lost the taxes they could have collected from their incomes.
So if Canada had started it's own Hollywood with their own companies and
started getting talented American actors to move to Canada from the US,
that would be justified. But they are using our talent and high pay
people.
An actor can afford to spend months making a movie in Canada and coming
back to the states to be with their family as often as they want. But
the production people can't afford to do that. And I don't think Canada
wants them to. They want to use American companies to gain employment
for Canadian production people.
Wiseguy, Millennium, Highlander (when they weren't in France), The X
Files (until their 4th season when they began shooting in LA) and dozens
of other "American" TV shows are filmed in Canada.
Just my ten cents (inflation).
Larry
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