Recent content by Arron

In that price range, better reviewed will simply be better. You're not going to get perfect sound, just better sound. As you're buying used, rather than specific model, suggest you concentrate on either local seller who will let you listen or a seller who will accept returns.

By far the best "cure" is to learn how to set up your system properly. Unless you spend several weeks learning how to do it as a pro would do it, all you're doing is spending money for the sake of spending money. When you can set up an audio system as a pro would -- particularly speaker...

The normal way to figure out the best sub placement is to put the sub where your head will be in the listening position... put on a test track... wonder around the room... put your head in places that might be good for a sub and listen to where it sounds best... then put the sub in that location...

Long history of firms making them then getting hardly any sales. Don't think anyone bothers any more ☹️ On the up side, there are plenty of videos on YouTube to help. This one is by far my fave for getting stereo imaging perfect. Get it right and you don't need a centre speaker because it'll...

Depends on the production team and expected return. The vast majority of discs are bought by people who will put them through a TV speaker and the teams know that. So if the expected return is low, the concentration will go to the LCR portion of the mix. You're right that big budget stuff is...

Wouldn't bother with the sub... most satellite package speakers are available individually if you're patient for a week or two on Ebay. If you want really small, maybe have a look for Mission M-Cubes or Cambridge Audio Minx. You can hook them up directly to your amp and setting them to Small is...

We got our first colour TV second hand from a neighbour. Trust us to be different :rolleyes:

You can see the difference using VLC on a computer. It has a way to turn the upscaler from effectively off to reasonably high quality -- which is what I did. VLC > Tools > Prefernces > Video > Show Settings All > Video > Filters > SWScale Bicubic is its best quality -- not as good as the one in...

No, your hypothesis is bunk. Your A1 and B1 will have no visible differences except due to the quality of the panels. Both A1 and B1 will look like my left-hand capture. There is no visible problem with the a simple stretch of DVD resolution to a 4K screen. You can just about see the effect if...

What I did was intercept the bitstream between the player and a 4K TV. Kind-of your scenario A but not exactly. DVD ----> Player ----> --[intercept]--> TV Your A1 and B1 will look the same — both will look like my left-hand image capture. Your A2/B2 is what was in my right-hand image capture —...

They're the image that gets sent to the TV from the player.

Yes, the one on the right is the 4K. The disc is on my Plex Server so I put it through a program where you can switch the upscaler on/off.

Attached is a zoom on Peter Fonda's jacket from the Easy Rider DVD. One in native and the other an upscale from it to 4K. Exactly the same disc; one without upscaling and one with. It's what happens with bicubic upscaling. There are mathematical reasons why it appears to find detail where none...

Then you did something wrong or your upscaler was broken somehow. Most upscalers use bicubic interpolation at a minimum and it is mathematically impossible for it to look worse.

Almost certainly just an individual bad disc :(