Posts filed under 'High Def'
This light weight (.8 lbs) bad boy can achieve up to 6 hours of full HD recordings on its 16GB internal flash memory. Unfortunately, the battery life maxes out at 3 hours and I’m not sure if that takes into account use of the flip out 2.7″LCD. If 16GB isn’t enough it also sports a SD/SDHC memory card slot for increased capacity. Other features include 12x optical zoom, HDMI out, built-in electronic lens cover, built-in video light, 3.1 megapixel photo shot, and more.
Available here in May for $1099.
March 14th, 2008
Tubestick Hybrid, by Equinux, enables you to receive and record terrestrial HDTV and NTSC television programing on your Apple computer. Even cooler you can view the recorded material on your iPhone or iPod touch (part of the TubeToGo feature which costs extra). Believe me I’m skeptical about the iPod Touch and iPhone capability. Included in the package is an antenna to receive the signals and Equinux’s proprietary software. Plug the antenna into your computer and launch the software and you’re in business. I should note that the antenna’s USB plug is designed such that it won’t intrude on the Macbook’s other inputs. Using the software you can record, watch and view upcoming shows. Through their web based application you can also set your computer to record shows. If you’re so inclined, you can also chat with other watching the same shows. In order to watch shows on your iPod Touch or iPhone you’ll need to publish your recordings to an FTP or .Mac account and access them through the web based application (aka TubeToGo) - be interesting to see how the quality is. Available at Amazon and other major retailers come February for $129.95 with a one month trial of TubeToGo.
Additional info here and here.
January 25th, 2008
Late last week I noticed what I perceived to be a Firmware update to my Time Warner HD box. The indication came in the form of a font change in the Moxi enabled box’s windows
. Then I realized that the navigation windows weren’t appearing, but were in fact ‘popping up’ ala Apple style. Even niftier was the doubling, if not tripling in speed I experienced while navigating from menu to menu, or deleting a show. Prior to the update the Timewarner Moxi boxes stalled when entering the guide and often experienced a bottle neck effect when scrolling through the channels. They’ve also updated the menus and one of the more notable features is to view all upcoming shows in a vertical (sports, kids, etc) by a particular time. In the past you had to scroll through each channel’s time slots which is was a mind numbing and annoying task. Dare I say they’re more on par with Tivo then ever before…at least from a speed stand point? I might just snap photos of the new updates - that is assuming I can’t find any online.
October 15th, 2007
According to an article on Ehomeupgrade, ripping Hi Def Blu-Ray movies and PS3 games is as simple as typing a line of code into the ‘terminal’ of the Playstation 3. Apparently, this requires the PS3 to be loaded with a Linux OS and can actually be done on any computer running Linux with a Blu-Ray drive - its just ironic that you can already rip PS3 games on the system.
Hit up Ehomegrade for more details.
December 3rd, 2006
According to an article in Adweek, Microsoft will begin selling and renting TV shows and movies from MTV, CBS, Turner Broadcast and Paramount via Xbox live. Microsoft claims to have over 1,000 hours of content in store, and plans to include HiDef movies to Xbox360 users. Not sure when the service will be available, but expect a rollout sometime shortly.
November 21st, 2006
According to Engadget, Japan will be the first to receive the HD DVD player add on for the Xbox 360. The HD DVD drive should emerge over seas sometime in November (17th or 22nd) of this year and sport a $170 price tag (this is Japan pricing but US pricing should be comparable). Stil no word on when we’ll see the add-on in the US, but we expect it some time shortly after its release in Japan. In more Xbox 360 news, Microsoft will provide a software update that will allow for 1080p resolution although we were under the assumption that the TV market didn’t currently have any sets that could actually display this resolution (I have a SXRD Sony TV that lists 1080p in it specs but according to numerous reviews it lacks this feature).
September 20th, 2006
So who would’da thought that the forever looming HD DVD versus Blu Ray war wouldn’t, I repeat wouldn’t be the hottest story with the arrival of HD DVD players this month. The ManRoom got their mitts on the Toshiba HD-A1 HD DVD player and took it for a test drive. What was discovered will cause grown men to cry, and tech enthusiasts to turn a pale sick white – so get your tissues and vomit buckets ready.
The manufactures and the damn movie studious have limited resolution output on some discs depending upon type of cable used to hook the HD DVD player to the TV. HDMI, which is known for its supposed copy protection schema, will provide the highest resolution of 1080. A component hook up on the other hand may be limited to 480 or 720, ultimately defeating the purpose of HD DVD as this is the native resolution of regular DVD. As eHomeUpgrade points out, numerous older Plasma and HD compatible TVs lack the HDMI hook up, thus requiring a sizable investement in not only the already expensive HD DVD players, but a new television.
Update (the above post has been in question):
From the HD-A1 manual according to the ManRoom: “HD DVD and DVD video disc creators have the option to include copy protection instructions in their discs that prohibit the output of some standard video or high definition video (original 720p or 1080i or up-converted 480i or 480p) from the COMPONENT OUTPUT jacks. If such instructions are present in the disc you are playing, you must use the HDMI OUTPUT jack to view the disc in a high definition format and the COMPONENT OUTPUT jacks, if activated, will output video only in 480i or 480p resolution.”
We also discovered this past weekend that Comcast HiDef boxes also require a HDMI hook up to access full HD resolution, where as Adelphia does not.
April 20th, 2006
Microsoft announced a partnership with Paramount that will bring HD movie content to XBox Live. The deal will include HD trailers for “Mission: Impossible III” and “Nacho Libre.” The hope is that this deal will eventually lead to full length movie released. Of course that would require a bigger XBox 360 hard drive than 12 GB.
The deal between Microsoft and Paramount will also include the XBox Movie Showcase. This will allow customers to apply a movie theme to their XBox Live interface. Also note-worthy is that gamers will be able to play online games against Paramount’s movie stars like Jack Black. I’d totally frag his ass.
April 13th, 2006
Netflix has added support to rent HD DVDs to their system today. You can access the setup from under Your Account. From there you can enable HD DVD movies, which will add a new column to your Queue entitled Format. Under format, you’ll find DVD and HD-DVD now. Blu-ray will be added later this year.
However, according to hackingnetflix.com, not one of his 330 movies was offered in HD DVD. I would blame this of course on the new format as opposed to Netflix.
The coolest part? Enabling HD DVD movies on your account does not cost a penny more!
Netflix Adds HD DVD Rentals [Hacking Netflix.com]
March 13th, 2006
Looking to build a home theater room with a nice projector? Not in the mood to run cables all over the place? Then the Toshiba et20 may be the projector for you. This all-in-one projector features a DVD player and built in 5.1 surround sound system.
The projector is supposedly pretty good quality to. It will project a 39-inch image from 27-inches away, or 78-inch image from a mere 39-inches away. It’s got a HQV image processor that promises HD quality output out of standard definition DVDs.
I wouldn’t expect that much out of it. But for $1,900 you do get a movie theater in a box.
Toshiba’s et20 all-in-one 5.1 surround DVD projector [Engadget]
March 10th, 2006
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