Video Asylum

Posted by cfraser (A) on March 29, 2015 at 08:20:22

In Reply to: RE: a THX question.. posted by cloudwalker on March 27, 2015 at 10:57:35

Carrying on from what Joe said, I also have some older THX-certified gear, not in my main system. They kept adding new levels of THX cert. for AVRs/amps/etc., higher and lower levels. Some so low that it backfired (it's mostly just marketing after all) and THX cert. became almost meaningless. It *did* mean something, but what exactly got murky over the years. Many manufacturers of higher-end gear dropped the cert. even though they didn't change their designs, just to prevent having to pay the THX licensing fees. I also recall that having a cert. for a piece of gear gave the manufacturer less flexibility to make (minor?) changes, they'd have to re-submit for cert. in some circumstances.

Common DVDs that were THX cert. are many from Disney (especially the animated stuff) and their subsidiaries, and also from Pixar long before it was part of Disney. Perhaps other common THX DVDs are the Indiana Jones, Alien, and Star Wars series. Some of the same title BDs are still THX cert. too (Lucas stuff), but it's pretty rare for Blu-ray and I'm guessing it'll disappear now that Disney owns Lucas, since Disney pretty much already dropped it.

There are often audio and video test patterns/sequences on THX DVDs, sometimes hidden.

I don't know if there are/were any THX-cert. DVD players...

Yeah, there are lots of kinda crappy THX cert. DVDs, which didn't help THX cert.'s rep.