When my dad purchased a complete sony home theater system with the big screen tv,i turned into a sound freak with a lust for good quality dvd’s with exceptional sound.Even though sony is not considered to be  the best sound brand,i would consider it to be satisfactory because the details of the sound is considerably good.I would often play around with the audio menus which is normally made up of two major types of sounds namely the dolby digital and dts.

 Naturally, DTS advocates are in the winning position because they can say that they have heard a difference. The poor old Dolby Digital defenders look like they have cloth ears. But before we delve too deeply into the debate, let’s look at what the two formats are, and where they came from.

Neither was developed for DVD. Both were intended to provide 5.1 discrete channels of digital sound cinemas on 35mm film while remaining fully compatible with standard equipment. Dolby placed its digitalsound track as optical marking on the edge of the film, between the sprocket holes. This left Dolby with a bandwidth of around 400 kilobits per second. Six channels of uncompressed CD-quality digital audio requires ten times this capacity, so Dolby developed AC-3, an MPEG-type ‘lossy’ audio compression system.

Dolby Digital’s first appearance was in 1992’s Batman Returns, slightly pipping Jurassic Park’s 1993 premiering of DTS.     The DTS sound track isn’t on the film at all, but on a separate CD, synchronised with SMPTE time code markings on the film. Since CDs output around 1,400 kilobits per second of digital audio, DTS was designed to use this bandwidth (actually, due to different error correction techniques, full DTS produces 1,536 kilobits per second). This had the additional advantage of allowing easier distribution of other-language sound tracks, without the expense of having to prepare new film prints with dubbed dialogue. In their DVD incarnations, Dolby Digital and DTS are similar systems. Both use a lossy compression system and in their 5.1 varieties, each offers the DVD producer two bit rates. Most Dolby Digital DVDs use 384kb/s but some use 448kb/s, which Dolby says is the maximum possible on a DVD. DTS can come at the original rate of 1536kb/s or the half-rate of 768kb/s (eg. Gladiator, Santana: Supernatural Live and all of Columbia TriStar Superbit DVDs).

So which sounds better?

That’s where the controversy arises. Dolby and DTS are only of slight help in this. They have been sniping at each other for a while. DTS says that of course it sounds better because its compression isn’t as lossy as Dolby’s. Dolby says that you can’t draw any conclusions from the raw compression figures because it all depends on how well the codec (compression/decompression system) is designed. This makes sense. Sony’s ATRAC3 sounds better than MP3 at similar compression rates. Still, we are talking about a big difference in compression levels here.

Dolby also says that the DTS 0.1 channel rolls off the bass by a few dB at the top end of the range. DTS counters that Dolby Digital’s 0.1 channel imparts a huge phase shift due to its brick-wall low pass filter. Dolby says that the half-rate DTS ‘maxes out at 15kHz’ (later amended to a 3dB attenuation at 15kHz) while 384kb/s Dolby goes to 18kHz and 448kHz reaches 20kHz. DTS responds that the higher level Dolby system mixes the channels above 15kHz, and the lower level one as low as 10kHz.

Dolby says that it organised listening tests with professionals who preferred its system. DTS says that the tests ought to be independently conducted.

Dolby says DTS tracks often play louder than Dolby Digital ones due to the latter’s dialogue normalisation feature (which is often set to reduce the playback level by 4dB) and an alleged 0.6dB boost in DTS’s encoding of broadband material. DTS says that there is no 0.6dB boost.

And so on.

Reviewer opinions are varied, however the range is from DTS-is-better to they’re-pretty-much-the-same. The more carefully conducted the trials, the greater the attention paid to removing non-codec related variables, the more equivocal the findings.

As for me, I find that there is very little, if any, difference. If you hear a DTS sound track sounding obviously better than a Dolby Digital one, you can be fairly confident that a different mix was used. For identically sourced audio, changing from Brand A of speakers to Brand B will change the sound a lot more than changing from the Dolby Digital to the DTS audio track.

Cost
The destination charge is a standard charge for transporting the vehicle from its point of origin to the dealer. It costs about the same to get the Accord to the dealership as the Toyota Camry. In terms of gas mileage, the Toyota Camry bests the Honda Accord. Regarding MSRP, the Toyota Camry costs significantly less than the Honda Accord.

Utility
The Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord can accommodate the same number of passengers.

Convenience
The Honda Accord’s fuel tank will need to be replenished more often than the unit in the Camry.

Comfort
Taller drivers will markedly enjoy the extra head room in the Accord’s front cabin compared to the Toyota. The Toyota Camry is not particularly more spacious for your passengers than the Honda Accord.

Dimensions
The Honda is a tad more ponderous than the Toyota Camry. The Honda Accord’s tank is roughly the same size as the Camry’s, though the Camry’s is a tad more capacious. The Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord compete for the same parking spaces.

Performance
The Toyota Camry is likely to feel somewhat slow because of its high horsepower-to-weight ratio compared to the Honda Accord. With its very low horsepower-to-weight ratio, the Honda Accord will knock you back into your seat when you accelerate.

Handling
The Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord have about comparable tires. With their similar turning radiuses, the Honda Accord and the Toyota likely handle about the same into and out of tight spots.

Drivetrain
The Honda Accord has a bigger engine than the Toyota Camry. Note that smaller engines typically get better gas mileage, but smaller engines can be stressed more. Torque equals pickup, and the Honda Accord will have picked up and gone by the time the Camry finally gets moving. Torque is roughly equivalent to acceleration, and in this respect, the Honda Accord is substantially more powerful than the Toyota Camry.

Overview
The Honda Accord and the Toyota Camry have the same basic warranty.

 The verdict
The Honda Accord seems a little bit more superior to the Toyota Camry.Most people would definitely buy these kind of cars for performance , and the Honda Accord has the slightest of advantages over the Toyota Camry.

I occassionalyl download Opera to see what is new with that browser, and I know alot of somewhat security aware windows users prefer Opera over firefox, and I am sure there are plenty of Linux users who prefer Opera to Firefox. My question to all of you Opera users is simply what advantages does it have over Firefox if any? I personally don’t see any and I was hoping some Opera users could enlighten me about some of the wonders of Opera that I might be missing.

Recently i was so into  piloting that i was starting to look for piloting jobs and ive still got my spm to come.Anyway,due to my sudden interest,i decided to download the Microsoft Flight Simulator using Limewire….Due to previous experiences downloading pragrames using limewire,i was confident there will not be any infected files….I was so wrong!!!

I downloaded a zipped file and scanned the file if there were any viruses.The scan showed the file was virus free and so i extracted all the contains within the microsoft flight simulator.When the extraction was done,i realized there was only one file present and it contained a windows media player logo.I clicked on it and soon i discovered i have done the biggest mistake.All my  songs were gone and the auto virus scan keeps popping up and shows adware purityscane .Even i when delete the virus,it comes back each time i on the computer.

If any of u have any previous experiences,please guide me…..