Blog entries from December, 2011

A few months ago I conducted an ad hoc comparison of two 3D televisions.

The equipment involved included:

• my 40″ Samsung 200Hz television
• Hamish’s 40″ Sony 100Hz television
• my Sony Bluray player
• Hamish’s Playstation 3

This resulted in three test setups:

• Sony television and Playstation 3
• Samsung television and Playstation 3
• Samsung television and Sony Blu-ray player.

For each setup we compared:

• a car racing game in 3D
• a scene from an animated 3D movie

The car racing game was observed to be less jerky on my television than it was on Hamish’s. The output from the Playstation was 720 at 60Hz. In this situation the higher refresh rate of my television is what gave the better result. We don’t know exactly how fast the 3D runs, does a 60Hz signal result in a 120Hz output once it alternates between eyes? If so then it is clear why 100Hz was not as smooth.

Watching the animated movie was different as we didn’t notice any real difference between the televisions. In this case the output was 1080 at 24Hz. If it was really outputting 48Hz, that is well within the 100Hz of the Sony.

What was quite surprising to us was that we noticed an improvement when the same scene was played through the Sony Blu-ray player instead of the Playstation 3. Is the Blu-ray player handling the playback better in hardware than the Playstation was handling in software?

Of course none of this really matters as I have not yet and I don’t have any plan to actually watch a movie in 3D. It has also been a long time since I have played games, but even then that would be on the computer, not on a console.

One year ago today was settlement day, the day that I picked up some keys and took possession of my place. Within two weeks from then I had moved in, but in the almost year since then I have been working through a todo list. A list that is seemingly endless as items are added at around the same rate that they are completed.

The completed things (mostly in order of east to west through the property) include:

• new television
• mounting said television on the wall
• new shelves to fit in the alcoves on either side of the television
• additional antenna socket in the study
• network cabling between the television and the study
• a two seater couch and two armchairs
• a number of my photos mounted on the walls in 16×20″ frames
• all sorts of kitchen utensils, cutlery, crockey and appliances
• swing out rubbish bin under the kitchen sink
• two stools for the kitchen bench
• new deadlocks and entrance sets, including the garage
• remote opener for the garage door
• additional towel rail in the bathroom
• shelves within the cupboard in the study
• cutting down trees and removing stumps from the front garden
• digging over front garden beds
• removing bamboo along driveway
• taking down unused curtain rail hooks

The larger items currently on the todo list include:

• put up venetian blind (currently on order) in kitchen
• get quotes for new screen doors
• finalise new line for edge of the garden beds and put in concrete mower strip
• rug in the lounge and a new coffee table

Here’s to another year…