Which HDTV should I buy?

Here's a question I have been asked before. "Which 40 inch HDTV should I buy? It's a great question and the answer really depends on too many things to just give one answer.

I have found a website that will help you narrow the list. It's fun to play with the advisor settings to see what products they recommend. Be sure to answer-- usage, price and size.

Where to buy the product is another issue, although the website does offer some online suppliers. I would probably narrow the search to a few models, then go to my favorite store(s) and look at the products, then decide where to purchase one.

PC World HD TV Advisor

LEGO

I have read that today is the 50th anniversary of the day the patent was approved for the LEGO brick. Lego is celebrating their anniversary and they have over 100 new items. Their website is fun and they have some hard to find items.

Lego turns 50

Here is a time lapse video of a man assembling the "Ultimate Collector's Millennium Falcon" Lego kit. It has 5195 pieces. He captured one frame out of every 150, so it took him 150 times longer to build the kit than to watch the video. It probably took him 7.5 hours to build it. I think it would be fun to put that one together.

Ultimate Collector's Millennium Falcon construction from Boing Boing

Virgin Galactic

Richard Branson is a taking a risk and in a capitalistic society, risk is rewarded. The first people to ride with Virgin Galactic will pay $200,000 per ticket. That is a lot of money to pay for a short ride into space, but it is the cost for being one of the first space tourists. Its six passengers will experience five minutes of weightlessness. They will also have a great view of the earth. I think that even if they doubled the price, people would still pay it.

I will only say this, they should donate to Feed My Starving Children to soothe their consciences.

Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic

Bionic Eye

University of Washington engineers have for the first time used manufacturing techniques at microscopic scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights. Interesting combination of biology and electronic application.

The researchers are developing techniques that would find a useful purpose and they are trying the lenses on rabbits at the moment. Cost will be an issue at the beginning but as the technology matures, this could be used as a visual aid to help vision-impaired people I think its a good idea, I hope they are successful in going from the lab to the streets.

Contact lenses with circuits

Batteries get a boost

It seems like everything we have runs on batteries. On Wednesday, Stanford researchers announced they have made a significant breakthrough that could increase the battery life of rechargeable batteries by ten times.

Current lithium batteries are often made with graphite-based anodes, which expand and shrink through use, "wearing" them out by fractures that form. The discovery is to use silicon nanowire anodes which can hold more lithium ions (more power) and do not fracture during the charge/discharge cycle.

People are discussing their favorite use for the new battery, longer battery life for their notebook computer or their music player. But what we are missing is the biggest effect will be on the things that don't currently exist because batteries are too large, heavy or don't last long enough. Think about an extremely small battery powering a remote sensing device used by doctors inside the body. Or a battery that would last ten years in wireless CO detector. It will be interesting to see where this battery technology ends up.

Stanford University researchers' discovery from C-Net news

Gesture to get your point across

First, we thought people using wireless headsets were talking to themselves, now high tech devices are getting gesture reading abilities. Give them a wand and they will be looking like Harry Potter. What will they think of next?

Nokia patents gesture user interface (from Gizmodo)

According to patents, Nokia has developed a user-interface that goes beyond multitouch, and into the realm of tracking hand motions in three-dimensional
space. The gestures look complicated, and I'm worried it might take longer to learn than Palm's Graffiti writing, but I'm willing to start with the one-finger commands (select, rotate, delete) before moving on to the two-fingered stuff (zoom, resize, etc.).

Nokia Patent (Gizmodo)

Tech devices respond to gestures (from Yahoo news)

Several new gadgets make it possible for users to control them just by using hand gestures. Similar to the popular bowling video game for Nintendo's Wii console, two new cell phones sold in Japan offer a bowling game that responds to users swinging their phones by detecting the movement through a camera and springs. One new PC tracks different finger signs, so a user can thumb left to scroll left. One prototype TV lets users gesture, plus snap or clap, to change the channel or adjust the volume.

From Yahoo News

Krampf's Science

Here is a science teacher's website that shows many interesting things. A man that has a one million volt Tesla coil has to be a little crazy. Check out his videos, I like: 3. Heating a Balloon and 5. Crushed Can.

His most recent video, 42. Ice and Soda is nice, explaining the famous mentos and diet coke phenomenon.

Krampf's Science Videos

Sony HDD Video camera HDR-S12

Sony HDD (hard disk drive) Video camcorder

Last CES article. I selected this item today because it is a new video camera and it is at the high end of the consumer price range. The point is, when you are going to buy a camcorder, you should know the upper limit of current technology.

It's not realistic for me to recommend this $1400 camcorder, but perhaps a smaller sibling would be interesting. Probably in about nine or ten months you should be able to find an HDR-UX10 High-Definition DVD Handycam Camcorder for less than $500 or a DCR-SR65 40GB Hard Drive Handycam Camcorder for $250.

Sony HDR-S12 on Gizmodo
Sony's 2008 camcorder lineup

What's after 1080p?

From CES..
82-inch Sony prototype display 2160p (or 4x)

I have wondered and people have asked me, "OK, what comes after HDTV 1080p?" This question is about screen resolution, currently the best resolution for HDTV is 1080 lines on the screen updated progressively. I found that Sony and others are showing screens with 2160 lines.

2160p is also called "Quad HDTV" since it displays four times the number of pixels of 1080p. Quad Full High Definition (QFHD) is the next step in high-resolution display technology.

To avoid the technical stuff, its better than HDTV, like HDTV is better than standard TV (which has 480 lines). It may take ten years before its affordable, but it sounds cool.

Sony shows 2160p prototype

Motorola’s Mobile TV DH01

More from CES - Motorola’s Mobile TV

This is a new type of product. This device is a personal media player that extends the TV experience to anytime and anywhere for live TV, on-demand clips and programs saved on an SD memory card. It is a progression of the current technology available on PC's.

This is a 4.3" screen TV picking up a digital video broadcast just for handheld devices. This is like carrying a TV and a DVD/VCR with you.

Motorola’s Mobile TV

Micro Nuclear power

Toshiba Builds Micro Nuclear Reactor

At first I thought it wasn't true, but I think it could be some kind of test marketing program. The market for this product has to be small. I don't think they would let me put a nuclear reactor in my backyard. To the city council: "It's OK, its fail-safe and totally automatic and will not overheat." Just think of the paperwork if it did.

What's the opposite of going green, is it brown? I think Toshiba found brown. Also, think about the possibilities if this gets in the wrong hands...

Toshiba should stick to laptops, TV's and medical imaging.

Toshiba's nuclear reactor

Mac Pro with eight processor cores

Another annoucement from the CES Show...

Not a starter PC, this high end mac is twice as fast as the previous Mac Pro. When you put it in your cart, it initally costs $2799.00. You can add 32GB of memory and a terabyte hard drive into each of the 4 drive bays. It's pretty impressive, but I'm probably not going to get one.

Apple Mac Pro Site
Macworld's Mac Pro article

OK - something not so techy

Apparently batter will stick to almost anything. Here is an artist who makes 'fritters' out of non-edible things. I did see something techy in there, none of it made me hungry...

FRITTURE 2007

Blu-ray vs. HD DVD

I'm going to start with a slight digression as background to this article.

The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is a trade show held each January in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is a trade-only show and is not open to the general public. At the show, many previews of products are introduced, or new products are announced.

The 2008 CES started today, and a battle of the current format war (Blu-ray vs. HD DVD) is being waged in this year's show. One Studio, Warner Bros. currently produces their movies in both formats. Warner Bros said on Friday that it would abandon the competing HD DVD format in May and distribute all film and television discs in standard DVD or Blu-ray.

Now, only two major U.S. studios support HD DVD: Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures, which also owns DreamWorks SKG, and Universal Pictures, a unit of General Electric Co.

Intel, Lenovo and Toshiba are in the HD DVD camp. Microsoft also has a bit invested in the HD DVD format, selling an add-on player to its XBox video game system that is HD DVD.

This is a pretty big deal and tips the scales to Blu-ray. Sony, HP, Dell computer and Sun Microsystems and all the other studios are in the Blu-ray camp.

That whoosing sound you hear is a Blu-ray disc whizzing past an HD DVD.

Warner Brothers sides with Blu-ray

Standard definition DVD Authoring

I have made many CD's and DVD's using various tools. I haven't created anything in high definition yet. I have used Roxio, Ulead and Nero,

For creating DVD's I have been using the DVD MovieFactory from Ulead. I have used it to store TV shows and home movies. I used it to create a still picture slide show for my parents. I think its pretty easy to use. I know that Nero and Roxio get better ratings, but for the things I use DVD's for, I recommend Ulead's MovieFactory.

Ulead MovieFactory

Wydea

Here is a pretty fun website, full of simple, line drawn cartoon videos. They are all good, you can get your physics lessons without knowing it in "How do Airplanes Fly?"
wydea.com

Compact Digital Camera

We got a digital camera for Christmas. I will walk you through some of the things that we were looking for and what we ended up buying.

We are casual picture-takers - weddings, graduations, birthdays, Christmas, soccer games, not very many every-day pictures unless there is a nice sunset or something. We needed a camera that was small with a good zoom for those shots from far away.

We have a 3 mega pixel Kodak camera. Things that we didn't like about it: no zoom, the loss of quality when enlarging pictures and the long delay between pressing the shutter button and the taking of the picture.

I took a look at Kodak, Sony and Canon cameras. The Sony was a little expensive and had a 3x zoom, the Kodak also had the 3x zoom and had the same slow shutter as our current camera.

When I looked at the Canon SD850 a saw a nice feature rich camera with 4x zoom and quick response, so we bought it!

Canon SD850 at Amazon

Enjoy!

$40 coupon for a digital TV converter

Here is a question I wanted to answer before people started asking. How does the federal "Digital-to-Analog Converter Box Coupon Program" work?

From the U.S. Department of Commerce:

How can the public obtain a $40 coupon toward purchasing an eligible converter?
All households in the United States and its territories are eligible to request coupons on a first-come-first-served basis. A maximum of two, $40 coupons per household will be allowed to help offset the cost of a converter, which is expected to cost between $50 and $70 when it hits the market in 2008.

Consumers may call 1-888-388-2009 (1-888-DTV-2009) between January 1, 2008 and March 31, 2009, or go to http://www.dtv2009.gov/ to request coupons. Coupons will expire after 90 days.

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/dtvcoupon/DTVarticle1.html

So, if you have cable or satellite TV, you are fine until they change to all digital broadcast. If you have a TV that uses an antenna to get a TV signal, request a coupon. Remember the coupon will expire in 90 days.

I haven't seen any converter box retailer information yet. The link below will help you locate a converter box retailer near you and apply for the coupon.

Coupon website:

http://www.dtv2009.gov/

If you have a question you would like answered, ask it in a comment!

Starter PC Laptop

Happy New Year!!!

My friends and family ask me about many things. But when people ask me, "I need to buy a laptop for my son, which one should I buy? I usually respond with, "Let me take a look around and I will see what I find. " This is what I look for --

- priced around $600
- a dual-core processor
- 2GB RAM
- 15.4" 1280x800 widescreen LCD
- 160GB hard drive
- dual layer DVD burner
- 802.11g wireless

Seems like a lot of capability for $600 and it is. It is possible to find this PC. Looking through the systems available today, I find a system I can recommend. Its a Dell Vostro 1500, and its $579 (get 2GB of memory.) We recently got a Dell laptop for our son. This is a sweet deal!

Dell Vostro 1500

Enjoy!