Fred Manteghian Blog

I think there were nine stories in this store in Tokyo's Electric Town area. One floor had a Tower Records on it. Another floor had musical instruments, toys, and yet another record store. If you can't find it here, you can't find it anywhere.

When my favorite work lamp (relegated to laundry room duty – harrumph!) bit the dust electrically, I pulled it out of the trash and set it aside as a future project. But last weekend when I was out to replace the Grado Reference Sonata cartridge, a cartridge whose interaction with my VPI Aries turntable motor is legion, at least in my mind, the lamp lent a helping hand. I'm about to embark on a series of blogs about converting vinyl to various forms digital, I couldn't have any hum. Or buzz.

Toshiba can offer you an HD-DVD player with a full terabyte of data, the ability to burn HD-DVDs, Japanese hi-def and NTSC tuners, oh yeah, and the user manual that will have you scratching your head until your credit card bill comes. $3,100.

I'll admit, when Circuit City proposed, and then shoddily implemented, something called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX_(Digital_Video_Express)" target="new">Divx</a>, as an alternative to the just born and still struggling DVD format, I did wish things upon them that only Johnny Carson's Carnac the Magnificent could have imagined. You know, things like "May the fleas of a thousand camels nest in your shorts." Divx discs were designed around the rental model, except without the hassle of a return. Buy them for $4 and you could watch them for 48 hours after the first play. You could buy a few more days at a later date, or convert them to "silver" for some other higher price. In the end though, they would be unplayable landfill. Of course such Tom Foolery required a dedicated Divx player which, if you were foolish enough to buy one, would now join the discs at the landfill. I've never seen such corporate "hey-that's-a-great-idea-nah-forget-it"-ism before. In about six months, Divx had come and gone.

A few weeks ago, I reported the Plasma Display Coalition (PDC) paid consultants to test their plasma sets independently (see <a href="http://blog.ultimateavmag.com/fredmanteghian/061406torment/" target=new>Tormenting the Plasma</a>). This week, I got my hands on the actual report and the results are fascinating. Just a bit of background. Everyone I know that buys an LCD TV says, when I ask why not a plasma, that the LCD won't "wear out," "burn up," or words to that effect. Turns out, debunking that myth was only one of the study's goals.

Here's a BluRay drive you can stick in your computer. At $Yen 99,800, less the 10% the store was offering you if you opened up a charge account (I'd be lost reading my monthly statement!), you can have it for about $750. It burns single and dual layer Blues at a 2X rate that'll have you saying, "Wow – this sure is slow!"

Some of my friends, otherwise upbeat and keen journalists to the man, have started passing around the Prozac. No, it's not some general malaise, but the news we hear on the sidelines about the disparity between Blu-ray and HD DVD sales. I can't get into specifics, so let's talk hypothetically.