DVD vs Blu-Ray picture quality
I never quite believed I’d see much of the difference between DVD and Blu-Ray on an 80cm (32 inch) TV. But with brand-name Blu-Ray players now below $100, and releases such as the complete set of Star Wars movies out on Blu-Ray, this past Christmas seemed like the right time to jump in and try it.
One of the presents I got was the Blu-Ray of Tron: Legacy, which also included the original Tron movie. Since I already had the DVD of the former, I’m able to compare the DVD against the Blu-Ray versions.
The scene from Flynn’s arcade had a lot more detail on the Blu-Ray, but you can’t really see it in a photo, so I won’t post it here. Jeremy and I looked carefully at this scene and were able to identify the names on some of the machines, for instance, which is impossible using the DVD.
More stark is the difference in this shot from the lightcycles scene, first on DVD:
(See it bigger)
…and on Blu-Ray:
(See it bigger)
There’s a lot more contrast in this scene on the Blu-Ray version. I think it’s not just a format question, it’s also that they’ve taken a lot more care in remastering the video. But the resolution being better also undoubtedly helps, and this is particularly noticeable (on the TV, perhaps not in the photos) with the grid lines.
Things to keep in mind:
- The DVD was from before the sequel movie was made, and it’s entirely possible that not a great deal of care was taken in the mastering. In comparison it appears they took a lot of care on the Blu-Ray version. It’s entirely possible that the current edition DVD is better.
- These comparisons were snapped off my TV with a camera, with the blinds drawn to reduce light. The snapshots were not taken under ideal conditions. (I don’t currently have any Blu-Ray drives in a computer, so I’m unable to grab a Blu-Ray image directly.) As noted above, it’s difficult to convey the difference seen on the TV in a photo.
- I’ve used the freeze frame, which may impact the picture.
There’s no denying the higher quality of Blu-Ray, even on an 80cm screen.
Question is, which movies or TV would I consider worthy of upgrade, and at what cost? I can’t see myself shelling how lots of money for discs of movies I already own. But for future purchases, I’d certainly lean towards the newer format if the price is not prohibitive.
(I did find The Life Of Brian on Blu-Ray, with lots of extras, for $8 yesterday at K-Mart.)
- MichaelDVD review of Tron DVD
- MichaelDVD review of Tron on Blu-Ray
- MichaelDVD review of Tron:Legacy on Blu-Ray
Tags: Blu-ray, DVDs, films, television
11 comments
Gunzel heaven: Parallel run
If there’s anything that gunzels get excited about, it’s a parallel run — two trains running in parallel.
It must take an enormous amount of work to organise such a thing: running two heritage trains on two tracks in the same direction (only possible in specific locations), and having them overtake each other repeatedly so that everyone in each train gets a good look at every part of the other.
Of course, it happens regularly with, say, conventional suburban trains, such as this stretch between Caulfield and Moorabbin on the Frankston line.
This section has three tracks. The third track was built in the mid-1980s, and allows peak-hour express trains to overtake stopping trains.
But until quite recently, this had been woefully underused. Inspection of the 2008 timetable shows only 2 express trains overtook stoppers in the morning, and 5 in the afternoon.
The June 2010 timetables finally changed that, with current schedules showing 7 trains overtake in the morning peak, and 13 in the afternoon, thanks to more consistent (mostly) stopping patterns and express trains scheduled well into the evening shoulder-peak period.
But triplicating rail lines is now out of fashion. Because there’s very little stabling in the central city, morning trains need to be shifted back out to the suburbs after the peak, and in the afternoon trains need to be brought back in, resulting in fairly even traffic — so two tracks in one direction and only one in the other doesn’t really work.
Back in 2006 the proposal was to triplicate the Dandenong line. But following a great deal of debate and consideration, now it’s all about making better use of the existing two tracks, by standardising stopping patterns, evening out frequencies and spreading peak loads onto different trains.
And future track expansion is likely to be another pair of tracks, for instance the “Melbourne Metro” tunnel. No doubt when eventually they look at expansion further out, it will also involve an extra two tracks, not just one.
Epic
Now, if a Siemens overtaking a Comeng is a bit routine for you, and you want to see an utterly epic triple parallel run, check this video from the 1988 Aus Steam event near Melbourne, featuring Australian steam engines together with the visiting Flying Scotsman.
(By the way, any of you budding Wikipedia editors care to clean up the Aus Steam article? The grammar is terrible.)
Tags: gunzels, public transport, trains
8 comments
Insulation is back in my roof (just in time for winter, it seems)
Well, I’m getting there.
Last week I had a ceiling fan installed in the livingroom. It’ll help on hot days, and because I have ceiling ducted heating, also helps distribute heat better on cold days as well.
To do this, the old light fitting was removed. I’m hoping it might be worth something — I was never that keen on it, but it does appear to be an original, making it about eighty years old. There appears to be a reasonable market for such things.
In contrast, I really like all the other (antique) lights in the house — except for the kitchen. Of course, now I’m realising that I should have arranged for the kitchen to have a ceiling fan installed as well. And while I was at it, I could have got them to install the heat guards for the down lights in there. They were switched from halogen to LEDs, so not as warm, but still worthwhile to assist with the insulation.
Speaking of insulation, that got done yesterday morning. The old loose stuff had been removed last year. The very hot day or two last week was unbearable. Winter last year wasn’t much fun either. My estimate is that in a weatherboard house with no roof insulation, the temperature would drop by at least a degree per hour if it was cold outside, which made a big difference to the gas heating bill.
So I finally got around to booking insulation back. This document from the Victorian Department of Sustainability reckons the recommended level of insulation for ceilings in Melbourne is R2.5, but I decided to go for R4. (Confusingly, I subsequently found this Federal government web page which recommends R4.1. Hmmm.
The material they used was something called “earthwool” — which unlike conventional glasswool doesn’t cause irritation if handled without gloves.
The installers appear to have done a good quick job, but it was a tad irritating that they’d booked in for 7:30am (necessitating everybody being awake and dressed early) but didn’t show until 10am. Not to worry; I think it’s already made a difference… after they’d finished, I turned the heat on (damn it was cold yesterday).
Gaps were left around the down lights, with spare earthwool to fill in the gaps once I’ve had the electricians back in to install the heat guards.
So, hopefully having insulation back in the roof will make a big difference, and it means the various housey things I’ve been meaning to get done are progressing.
Other projects in progress:
- Sort out the spare room for Jeremy’s use, once the drainage issue at the back of the house is solved (water leaks in the window during very heavy downfall)
- Solar panels on the roof (I already have solar water… hopefully there’s enough north-facing roof space for PV panels as well)
- Fix the rattling laundry window
- A nicer, heavier rug for the livingroom
- Consider external blinds for some north/west-facing rooms to further reduce heat
- The constant tidying and reduction in clutter… have made good progress over the break, but there’s still a lot to do
Memo to self:
- Light globe for ceiling fan: GE Tiny Spiral, 15 watt CFL (75 watt equivalent) x 2, E27 screw
Tags: house, insulation, light bulbs, weather
2 comments
Hidden meaning in route numbers
There’s hidden meaning in some of Melbourne’s tram and bus route numbers.
Below 150 is all trams, for a start. Above is buses.
I suspect trams will move to 1 or 2-digit numbers in the next few years, to accomodate the new “a” (altered) and “d” (depot) suffixes in the displays (most of which are limited to 3 characters). This is a good move, as it’ll remove some of the uncertainty around mystery route numbers.
It shouldn’t be too hard to move to 2-digits, as there are only two 3-digit route numbers: the 109 (formerly mostly known as the 42) and the 112 (formerly known as the 10).
150 to 199 used to be school bus routes, predominantly in the eastern suburbs. Does anybody know if they still run? I couldn’t find any trace of them when I went looking.
200-399 are mostly ex-tramway bus routes, now run by Ventura (National Bus) following privatisation in the 1990s. Some of them partially match old tram routes, either electric services since removed (such as the 246 from Elsternwick to Point Ormond, and the 220 and 223 both of which cover parts of the ex-Footscray tram network) or cable trams (such as many of the Lonsdale and Lygon/Rathdowne Street routes).
300-350 are mostly Eastern freeway routes, though a number of these have been renumbered into 90x Smartbuses.
400s are mostly in the western suburbs.
500s are mostly in the northern suburbs.
600s are mostly in the eastern suburbs.
700s are mostly in the southern suburbs.
800s are mostly in the south-eastern suburbs
…01 is emerging as the numbering for express high-frequency shuttles (401/601), though there are others like 201 and 701 which don’t fit into this model.
900s are the Smartbus routes, apart from the 703 which is only partly implemented.
940s to 980s are Nightrider services. The main routes are even numbered, and extension/shuttle services are odd-numbered, so the main Nightrider to St Albans is 942, and its extension to Melton is 943.
It should be emphasised that all of these rules are informal, and often broken, and thus should not be trusted. For instance, some south-eastern routes seem to have crept into the 92x range, for reasons unknown.
And there are enormously illogical route variations, such as the notorious 600/922/923 route split. It used to be simply the 600 (another ex-tram route), but then it merged with parts of route 822 and 823. The result is one of Melbourne’s most confusing route structures, with a common/frequent section between Beaumaris and Sandringham, but different/infrequent routes through Brighton to St Kilda and parts of Cheltenham. What were they thinking?
Others have probably discerned other patterns in the numbering. Comment away!
- Human Transit: What if route numbers signified service level?
Tags: buses, public transport, trams
15 comments
Is this Melbourne’s narrowest bike lane?
Is this Melbourne’s narrowest bike lane? What exactly is the point here?
I wonder if it actually offers cyclists any safety if they have to move out into traffic every time there’s a parked car?
I’m not sure that it inspires me as a prospective cyclist.
Pic from Brewer Road, Bentleigh. I thought Neerim Road in Carnegie had some narrow bike lanes, but those are wider than a parked car.
Tags: bicycles, roads
25 comments
How much ground level parking is there in Melbourne’s CBD?
What’s the ultimate waste of space in a city centre? Ground level, single level parking.
Along with the access space required to get cars in and out, it’s wasted space because apart from perhaps $20-30 per day in revenue, it isn’t used for anything.
This post from Gordon Price compares a few cities — the contrast between Houston and Toronto is particularly stark. (There are more in this discussion thread at Skyscraperpage.com.)
How would Melbourne stack up? I’ve had a go at it, by plotting the red onto a Nearmap image, and scouring Nearmap at high resolution, then checking Google Streetview to see if a carpark was ground level parking, or a multi-storey (which at least piles cars on top of each other, meaning more efficient use of the land — even if it is still parking and is fugly) or parking on top of buildings.
I’ve only done within the Hoddle Grid. Have I missed any, or made any errors? Leave a comment.
You’d have to say that in summary, there’s not much. The tiny carpark near Lonsdale/Elizabeth Streets that I used to watch from on-high has vanished, and is being developed.
The parking at the back of The Age building (Lonsdale Street, behind Spencer Street) will, I’m told, vanish when the whole property is re-developed in the nearish future. The back of The Old Mint building (Latrobe/William Streets) is the other prominent area.
There’s a small amount of parking in front of the William Angliss Institute building. This is a perfect example of why it’s such a waste of space. Ten cars accommodated, taking up about half the open/garden space in front of the building.
Apart from that, the remaining surface parking is mostly in the grounds of churches — St Paul’s, St Francis, Wesley Uniting. (Scots Church and others have multi-level parking.)
And of course… there’s street parking, particularly along the non-tram streets such as Lonsdale, Russell and Exhibition.
See, in a city centre that has around half-a-million people a day visiting it, you can’t afford to have lots of people bring their cars. If you try and find space to leave hundreds of thousands of vehicles, that doesn’t work — not to mention the traffic congestion it creates. Bringing them in by more efficient means (particularly mass transit) is the only way it can work.
PS. Thanks for suggestions. The map has been slightly modified.
Metro Trains and their Twitter feed
Amidst the outrage about changes to Metro’s Twitter feed, there are claims that it used to include train cancellations.
This was not so. They did not tweet individual train cancellations or diversions. These only went out on SMS to subscribers, and on the web site.
(Alas Metro have now deleted the evidence of this that would be in their favour.)
But what they did tweet was disruptions/delays (whether minor or major) to multiple trains. Since this week, they’ve held back on most of these.
Metro argue that people don’t want to be swamped by tweets of limited relevance to them. But the 10,000+ followers didn’t seem phased by that — perhaps because Twitter is such that (within reason) it’s pretty easy to skim through tweets as they’re posted. If you see one that doesn’t apply to a train line you use, you can easily not read it.
Of course, it might have been a problem if the Twitter feed had included individual cancellations. That might have swamped people with too many updates. But as I say, these weren’t posted on Twitter.
So the real issues with the change are:
1. Many disruptions previously posted to Twitter are no longer tweeted, such as on Wednesday when what was described on their web site as “major” (eg more than 15 minute) delays on the Craigieburn and Ringwood lines went unmentioned on Twitter — likewise this afternoon’s “Minor Delays … outbound (earlier train fault at Parliament). Delays up to 15 minutes” affecting three lines (Craigieburn, Sydenham and Upfield), visible only on the web…
2. And that they instead post messages that claim all is running smoothly, even when there are cancellations or “minor” delays on some lines — such as this morning’s effort: “Train services running smoothly so far this morning. We’ll tweet any major disruptions if they occur. #MetroTrains” — when in fact there had been at least three cancellations.
They are recommending people sign up for SMS alerts, which can be quite good (and give people’s personal station times, rather than what the web site does, which is make you work out what time a cancelled train would have passed your station) and genuinely alerts you, even if you’re not looking at Twitter or the web. But it’s a bugger to sign up to, especially if your regular travel times vary… and it’s costing them a bomb to send out all the alerts. Oh, and there’s the minor detail that it doesn’t work after 8pm or on weekends.
What they should probably do is what V/Line have done, and set up individual Twitter feeds for each line. These could list every cancellation, disruption and delay (as per the web site) — in fact like this unofficial set of feeds* (which scrapes the web page). Then Metro can go ahead and use the main MetroTrains account for just feedback and major disruptions. People can then follow what they want, and get information pushed to them as they need it. Everybody wins.
More broadly, once the PTDA starts up (and subsumes Metlink), it would arguably be better to put all operator updates under their umbrella branding (whatever that will end up being) — provided the information can be posted quickly and efficiently, of course. That’s what Translink South East Queensland does (though at first glance they don’t appear to be posting bus updates).
By the way, Metro deserve credit for actually engaging with people on this issue on Twitter. Hopefully they’ll move to continue providing the information people want to see through Twitter (and through other avenues). There’s no reason they can’t be both informative and chatty.
*This list is linked from the PTUA Twitter account, but not run by the PTUA
Also on the blogs:
Tags: Metro, Twitter
3 comments
Pondering: Why aren’t MetroTrains promoting the hell out of their ten minute services?
(I’m at home today awaiting two tradesmen, so I’ve been a little creative.)
Here’s what I can’t figure out: since late-2010, the Frankston line has run every ten minutes between the peaks. In 2011 they tidied this up and made all those trains run direct to Flinders Street, and then through to Newport, with alternating trains going to Williamstown and Werribee.
Seriously, every ten minutes, Frankston, City, Newport, all day. That’s good enough that you can explore, hop on, hop off, and not worry about a timetable, between about 7am and 7pm Monday to Friday. It’s a model for all their lines.
So why aren’t they promoting the hell out of this?
This is my quick mockup. It’s far from perfect. I’m not a graphic designer, nor a copywriter, but you get the idea. They should start with posters on their own stations; that’d be (almost) free.
Trains every 10 minutes is a good product, worth promoting
The Frankston to City to Newport service may not be perfect, and the bus connections to properly connect to it are particularly problematic at some stations, but this is one of those examples where an investment has been made in upgrading the product offering to a level where it’s actually good, and there’s been virtually no promotion of it.
It’s also a prime example of where Metro should be trying to grow patronage — during off-peak periods — because the infrastructure and fleet has been provided to meet peak demand, so any more passengers you get on board during off-peak is a bonus, providing you cheap revenue for little extra cost.
To be fair, they are promoting off-peak travel a little bit. But they appear to be ignoring which lines have the good service, and instead promoting the destinations — even when the trains run to a mediocre 20 minute frequency.
I suspect a promotion needs a mix of both service and destination to be successful. And oddly, apart from ads in MX, the only place I’ve noticed their “Toorak” posters is at Toorak station… shouldn’t they be placed at least on every station on that line, if not network-wide?
(I’d be interested to know how many people have noticed Metro’s Neighbourhoods promotion.)
Meanwhile, online
Meanwhile, apparently Metro’s publicity department are busy tinkering with Twitter — making the popular (10,000 followers) feed no longer useful by stopping posting service updates to it — though they now seem to be saying they will post major (multi-line) disruptions.
An odd decision. Metro’s Twitter feed was informative (but not chatty). Now it’s getting chatty (but not informative). There’s no reason it can’t be both.
(Picture credits for the mockup: Frankston — avlxyz on Flickr; Yarraville — awmalloy on Flickr; Spotswood — Wikipedia/Mick Stanic)
PS. I’ve remembered that Yarra Trams actually has adverts/signs along some of its tram routes promoting upgraded frequencies. I’ll see if I can find a picture. And to clarify Peta’s comment, yes, I’d say put posters like this on stations from Frankston to Newport; not necessarily other places on the network — not until those also got upgraded frequencies.
