House of Opera DVD's

[Simon Pietraru]

This is not meant to start another flame war about House of Opera, or
pirates, but to my astonishment they started selling DVD's of
performances previously available on VHS, and unavailable at this
point (to the best of my knowledge) from any other source on DVD. Any
information or feedback? Is this the beginning of a trend? They have a
huge selection of DVD's that suddenly popped out of nowhere.

Simonel

[Richard Loeb]

I guess they,um, got a DVD recorder????
"Simon Pietraru" <simonelv...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:6cfa82f8.02071...@posting.google.com...

[Evelyn Vogt Gamble (Divamanque)]

Is it now possible to buy DVD equipment that records as well
as plays? (If so, that would probably be the answer -
record all your VHS tapes onto DVD, and offer them for sale
as new product.)

[Jeffrey Friedman]

I ordered a few, out of curiosity. They are mostly Euro TV
broadcasts, converted to NTSC on various equipment (some okay,
some totally wretched), put onto DVD using a Panasonic E10 or
E20. I recognize the lame menu structure from my own
Panasonic E20 burner. They have not even bothered to
label each "program," leaving the default menu listing
with the time of the burn instead of a program name.
You can skip 5-6 minutes ahead with the >>l jump button,
also a Panasonic feature. I do not know whether they
burn each one to order or dupe them on one of those
stand-alone Microboards duppers or the cheaper clones
that are now appearing, using the Pioneer A04 burners.
They do use Mitsui DVDR blanks, which seem to work well
on most DVD machines.

I have burned some PAL and SECAM tapes to DVD using
multisystem players like the JVC5700 and a decent ComWorld
converter, and gotten MUCH better results. Lousy original
tapes or lousy conversions to NTSC are not improved by
transfer to DVD.

Jeff

In article <6cfa82f8.02071...@posting.google.com>,
simonelv...@yahoo.com.au (Simon Pietraru) wrote:

Jeffrey F. Friedman
je...@friedman.com
j...@ix.netcom.com

[Jeffrey Friedman]

In article <3D38CBB1...@earthlink.net>,

"Evelyn Vogt Gamble (Divamanque)" <evg...@earthlink.net> wrote:

>Is it now possible to buy DVD equipment that records as well
>as plays?

See my answer to the original question. I have the Panasonic
E20 (now being replaced by the E30 and so marked down to about
$600), there is also a Philips machine. The Panasonic also
does DVD-RAM for using like a VCR (or really more like a HD
machine like Replay or Tivo) to record direct from TV, but
DVD-RAM will not play back in ordinary DVD players.

Good blanks run $6, junky ones (some of which work in
most machines) under $1. DVD is where CD was about 4-5 years
ago, from a home-brew point of view. Except you can not
copy commercial DVD releases easily (you can defeat macrovision
and go analog to avoid CSS, but are limited to 4.7 Gig).

Jeff

[Matthew B. Tepper]

Jeffrey Friedman <j...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in news:ahamr4$fth$1
@slb2.atl.mindspring.net:

> I ordered a few, out of curiosity. They are mostly Euro TV broadcasts,
> converted to NTSC on various equipment (some okay, some totally
> wretched), put onto DVD using a Panasonic E10 or E20.

Which ones are okay, and which are wretched?

--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
Top 3 worst UK exports: Mad-cow; Foot-and-mouth; Charlotte Church

[Jeffrey Friedman]

In article <ahan5...@enews4.newsguy.com>,

"Matthew B. Tepper" <oyþ@earthlink.net> wrote:

>Jeffrey Friedman <j...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in news:
>

>> I ordered a few, out of curiosity. They are mostly Euro TV broadcasts,
>> converted to NTSC on various equipment (some okay, some totally
>> wretched), put onto DVD using a Panasonic E10 or E20.
>
>Which ones are okay, and which are wretched?
>

I ordered 4 DVDs, reflecting my interests and selected to all
date from the 90s so as to maximize the chances of a good
sharp picture and good sound. The Brussels 1996 Cavalli
Calisto was okay, as was the infamous London 1992 television
adaptation of Marschner's Vampyr, but the 1998 Innsbruck
Cavalli Giasone was unwatchable and the 1998 Warsaw Halka
was poor. The Giasone looks like either a 20th generation
VHS copy or a PAL-NTSC conversion via washing machine. The
Halka may represent a poor broadcast signal. You can do
better by having some European friends with decent VHS
machines and a good buddy with a Panasonic E20 willing to
transfer (preferably with a DVD cloner to make both of you
copies). As far as I can see, there is no way to tell which
H of O DVDs will be good and which not, and at $25-35
a pop I'm not likely to try more for a while, unless someone
reliable tells me an item is really good.

Jeff

[Richard Loeb]

I have had problems with their Cds as well - on the topic of recordable
DVD - isn't there a format war going on, just like the old VHS vs. BETA
battle??

"Jeffrey Friedman" <j...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:ahaq86$18e$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net...
> In article <ahan5...@enews4.newsguy.com>,

[NBPalmer1]

>>Which ones are okay, and which are wretched?

No idea, but I have just ordered the 1996 Amsterdam "Werther" in the hope that
it won't be completely wretched. If it is OK I shall buy a few more.

Cheers, NICK/London

[Jeffrey Friedman]

In article <1lb_8.282553$vq.15...@bin6.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com>,
"Richard Loeb" <loe...@comcast.net> wrote:

>I have had problems with their Cds as well - on the topic of recordable
>DVD - isn't there a format war going on, just like the old VHS vs. BETA
>battle??
>

Yes and no. DVD-R, once "finalized," will play on most existing
DVD players. The format wars are mostly over the equivalent of
CDRW. DVD-RWs that are finalized will play on some DVD players,
DVD-RAM will NOT, though it will work in computer drives (and
Panasonic, who pushes this technology, also has a portable
player that will play DVD-RAM movies) and is supposed to be
more robust than the other re-recordable formats. The +R
and +RW formats are not as compatible as -R with existing
players, but have other advantages. I find that I no longer
use CDRW disks for audio at all, with blanks as cheap as they
are and systems at the current degree of reliablility I make
few coasters. I guess I just assume DVD-R will be as popular
in 4-5 years as CD-R today. If they can get blanks like the
$6 Mitsuis as cheap as the less reliable ones now available
cheaply, I am happy with the format.

[David Enos]

I got three of their Gwyneth Jones Strauss operas: the Elektra from Orange, as
well as performances of Salome and Die Frau Ohne Schatten. The video on all of
them is hideously bad; the audio is basically listenable. I am still very
happy to have the Elektra, especially- this performance is truly fabulous. I
certainly would like a copy with decent video quality, though.

David

[Giacomo]

Jeffrey Friedman <j...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message news:<ahc590$g6u$1...@slb5.atl.mindspring.net>...

Can anyone tell me about home recording of DVD-audio?
Can one record in the new 24bit, 96khz format?

[Jeffrey Friedman]

In article <a56a08d9.02072...@posting.google.com>,
j...@mailcity.com (Giacomo) wrote:

>
>Can anyone tell me about home recording of DVD-audio?
>Can one record in the new 24bit, 96khz format?

This is just beginning to be doable. I have heard of
some success using newer computer software and computer
DVD burners (no standalone audio DVD burners yet). People
who use laptops to tape at 24/96 have just begun reporting
success at offloading these to DVD audio. Discwelder is
the software getting some good reviews, it runs about
$500 and is for Windows platforms. It burns 24/48,
24/96 and even 24/192 on two channel, and 24/48
in 5.1. I have no experience with this myself, but
my guess it that it will be more common in a year or two.

[Evelyn Vogt Gamble (Divamanque)]

Since half of what you guys are saying might as well be a
foreign language to me, is there any site where us
know-nothings can learn enough about what's available in the
way of DVD players and recorders to make something
approaching intelligent decisions, before buying them (and
learning the hard way)?

[Jeffrey Friedman]

Try rec.video.dvd.tech or rec.video.desktop on Usenet,
and the Yahoogroups list laptop-tapers (where the
review of Discwelder appeared last week). For DVD
players there's also a rec.video.dvd subgroup on
consumer electronics products I think.

Jeff

In article <3D3B6708...@earthlink.net>,

"Evelyn Vogt Gamble (Divamanque)" <evg...@earthlink.net> wrote:

[Sergio Henrique M. da Silva]

I guess you could but if the master is a CD recording there would be no
advantage. To make it a true worthwhile DVD-Audio recording you would need
the master to be one of the original tapes (studio tape) of the recording.
It could be advantageous though if recording from the Internet which
sometimes broadcast on a higher resolution than CD currently supports.
DVD Audio is more complex to record than SACD though, so a SACD recorder may
come first. Remains to be seen ...
"Giacomo" <j...@mailcity.com> wrote in message
news:a56a08d9.02072...@posting.google.com...