Buyer's Guide - room for improvement? (1 Viewer)

[Greg Robinson]

Hi gang,

As you loyal readers know, every DVD ETC and HDTV ETC features a buyer's guide towards the back of each issue. Is it helpful? What works? What doesn't? What would you change?

 

[Ken Smith]

You could delete the players that are now unavailable. You could also do testing like "Secrets" does. Your reviews of dvd players sound like someone reading the spec sheet that the mfg. puts out. If you list things things like chroma bug, macroblocking, Y/C error, layer change times, etc. this would be helpful. For a magazine named DVD your reviews come up way short. IMO.

 

[Greg Robinson]

Ken - what you may not realize is that our Buyer's Guide, though assembled and laid out by us, is actually POPULATED by the manufacturers themselves. We leave it up to them every month to add/remove product info and while we try to double-check this as much as possible, some things get missed. Removing gear that is no longer available should definitely be a priority and I will double our efforts in that regard.

As far as the other data you asked about, I refer to my previous statement. We are essentially passing on the specs the manufacturers provide us with. Re: the chroma bug issue, we try to make a point to address it in each DVD player review we write. As a matter of fact, our own Manoj Motwani wrote a feature article about this annoying artifact just last year.

 

[gene c]

First off, thanks for asking. I would like to see the SACD and DVD-A columns next to each other. Easier to tell if it's a uni player. And how about putting your rating in there somewhere for the players you have reviewed in the past. Maybe the issue number as well. Gene

 

[Greg Robinson]

hi gene - thanks for the input. just the kind of thing I was looking for. good call on the SACD/DVD-A columns. The review comment I already had on my To Do list.