Music on Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD

Yes, high-def fans, there is music on those formats. There just isn't much of it, relatively speaking. Back in the January 2007 issue of Sound & Vision, I rounded up the first batch of titles in a review called Found What We're Looking For! Concerts Go High-Def on Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD. That clever headline referenced the fact that the star title was U2's Rattle and Hum, which showed up on both formats.

Since then, I've gathered another batch of releases, and I've tried — really, I have — to find the time to watch them, listen to them, and review them. But oh, where does the time go? (Today, it goes to . . . writing blogs!) I was hoping to tackle them this month, but I'm already falling behind. (Yessiree, folks, you get True Confessions here at Bitstream!)

So I figured that, in the meantime, it would be helpful to at least share a list of those recent titles.

Asia, Not Minor

One of the things we’ll be doing regularly here in da Bitstream is discuss music and DVDs we’re otherwise unable to get to in the magazine proper or cover over in the website’s Entertainment review section. (Ken Richardson has more on that manifesto below.) I hope to chime in on stuff I’ll call, for now, “Those That Got Away” a few times a week. First up for me is Fantasia Live in Tokyo, a double live album from the reunited Asia, on Eagle Records. I never saw the original Asia live even though I was a HUGE fan of their 1982 S/T album. Had an album flat of that classic Roger Dean cover up on the wall in my room back then, and I recall doing a watercolor of it In one of my art classes. So I was thrilled to be able to see the original four — John Wetton, Geoff Downes, Steve Howe, and Carl Palmer — at the Nokia Theatre here in NYC last September 9. And unlike many reunion shows, the ticket prices were quite reasonable: $40 a pop.

Gadget Mania

For those who are camping out all night waiting for an iPhone (they go on sale tomorrow at 6 pm), I say save your money. Check out suckbusters.com and read more.

And if you do go ahead and get one, drop me a note and let me know what you think.

Jamie Sorcher

Another View of Music

The view here, as you can see, is merely of the top of my head. Yes, it’s your humble Entertainment Editor with his humble Reporter’s Notebook, covering the 2006 South by Southwest Music Festival. And who are those two tykes? They’re band members, mind you — namely, John and Dion (now age 13), the guitarists from the Flairz, an Australian outfit that played well beyond its green days. (Thanks to Erich Schlegel for the photo. And by the way, the logo on my T-shirt reads: Awful Arthur’s Oyster Bar, Kill Devil Hills, NC. Although I don’t care for oysters, I can highly recommend much of the rest of the seafood at Arthur’s. But I digress . . .)

I returned to Austin this year for SXSW 2007, my 10th straight time at the festival. All in an effort to keep you, dear music-fan reader, informed.

Which brings me to this blog, and my first contribution as music editor.

36 Films That Need To Be On DVD

You can watch it in France, you can watch it in Spain but you can’t watch one of America’s greatest masterpieces on DVD in America — not unless you import it and buy a multi-region player too. Where the heck is my The Magnificent Ambersons DVD?

Always Worrying About the Wrong Thing

Not always, really, but a lot. So I like it when people start talking about something I consider important but largely overlooked — color, for example.

Maybe we take color for granted, or maybe it’s just too vague. The things people get hung up on in audio or video usually have numbers attached to them: TIM (percent), slew rate (volts per microsecond), jitter (picoseconds), phase shift (degrees), and so on and on. That’s just a short list of audio-related items that never actually mattered much, if they ever mattered at all, yet got tons of ink at one time or another. The perennial hot topic in video has been resolution. In the dark ages before HD, TV manufacturers touted lines of horizontal resolution, the more the better. So you would see TVs spec’d at, say, 800 lines of resolution, which was fine, except that there were no sources that delivered even half that. Now the buzz-spec is 1080p — not exactly the same situation, since we do have 1080p sources available, but when you see what a gorgeous picture you can get on a truly huge screen with a good 720p front projector you start to think perhaps it’s not the most important thing in the world, especially on something like a 32-inch LCD.

Snakes & Arrows on Vinyl: It's Here!

The 180-HQ vinyl version of of Rush's Snakes & Arrows arrived on my doorstep yesterday. Yee-hah! Can't wait to do a listening session.

HDTV and DVRs Expect Major Growth

USA Today reports that PricewaterhouseCoopers is predicting that HDTV sets will be in 59% of homes in 2011, up from 12.7% at the close of 2006. As for DVRs, 39% of all homes will have 'em in 2011, up from 11.8% in 2006.