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In: Home Theater, Reviews
With: 2 Comments

I just unboxed and installed my Vudu XL evaluation unit, connected it to the flat panel TV in my family room, and started played around with it.  Here are my initial thoughts: This is a very nice looking set top box; possibly the most attractive design I’ve seen, with lots of glossy, high-quality plastic. The bottom of the unit even has a nice textured pattern on it. It’s unexpectedly heavy.  This is not a thin sheet metal enclosure with a tiny circuit board inside.  It feels solid, dense, and well constructed. It passed my easy of installation test: I didn’t need to consult the installRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 11 Comments

I installed the Windows 7 beta (32-bit) on my wife’s MSI Wind netbook with great success.  In fact, it was flawless.  So I decided to give it a try on the second Media Center computer (HTPC) that I just finished building using the 64-bit version.  My results were as positive this time.  Here a summary of why Win7 Beta didn’t work for me on my HTPC: Drivers. The drivers for the motherboard (Nvidia 9400) wouldn’t install from Windows Update and were over a month old.  (At least I was able to install the latest drivers on the Nvidia website.) Lockups. The PC locked up twiceRead More →

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In: Reviews
With: 5 Comments

After a couple of years of searching for a great deal on HermanMiller Aeron chairs, my wife finally found one, and we’ve been enjoying them for the past 8 months. Unfortunately, her chair developed a crack in the back (most likely due to mis-assembly by the store.) I feared an expensive repair, but started searching for parts anyway. I came across the website ChairMD.com and found out that it might be possible to have the back replaced under warranty. All HermanMiller chairs are covered by a 12-year warranty. So I filled-out the warranty request form on their site. They provided a diagram chair so thatRead More →

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In: Reviews
With: 2 Comments

Like Dave Zatz and Matt Miller, I made the leap into the netbook pool with a new MSI Wind. Technically, I guess I really made my wife take the leap. She has been in disparate need of her own personal laptop as I am just too overprotective of and particular about my ThinkPad T61. What I really wanted to buy her was a top-of-the-line MacBook, but we just couldn’t justify the price.  (Even with the Live.com cash back, the lowest price I could find was $1,300.)  After reading several blog posts and listening to a couple of podcasts, I got the idea to purchase aRead More →

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In: Tech
With: 4 Comments

I think Microsoft should be given credit for single-handedly stimulating the economy. Consumer spending is down, most of the Black Friday deals are lame, but I’m purchasing things that have been on my Wish List for years.  Why?  Because I can get 25% cash back if I purchase an Ebay Buy It Now item and pay for it using PayPal. This is such a good deal that I’ve I installed the Live.com search Add-on for Firefox and replaced Google as the default search engine.  I’ve found the search results to be just as useful as the Google results.  Live.com earned bought my loyalty. 🙂 HereRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 8 Comments

To get the best video quality playback possible for movies in a home theater, it’s necessary for the refresh rate of the source component to match the refresh rate of the display. One of the most common problems stems from the fact that most movies are 24 frames per second while most televisions are 60 frames per second (approximately.)  It’s not a simple mathematical conversion to get 24 fps to scale to 60 fps. There are processing fixes (reverse telecine) to overcome this problem, but the frame rate of the source material must be properly detected and the proper correction applied. The best solution isRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 4 Comments

Note to readers: this information was current as of early 2010. Since then, ATI, Intel, and Nvidia have all released video/audio solutions to allow bitstreaming of the original Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio streams with the use of playback software such as Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre. The below content, from early 2010, is for historical reference only. If you’re a home theater enthusiast, you want the highest-quality audio and video possible, and that means Blu-ray with lossless audio (Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio) and the best video compression codec (VC-1 or MPEG-4 H.264 AVC HP.) Most people would choose a Sony PlayStation 3 orRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 2 Comments

I just finished reading an interesting article by Amir Majidimehr (former Microsoft VP, video compression) in Oct 2008 issue of Widescreen Review.  I was surprised that there are 4 different, incompatible versions of MPEG-4! Here are some facts from the article; I recommending picking up a copy of the magazine for all of the details and background. MPEG-2 was created in 1993 and gave great improvements of JPEG. Real Video and Windows WMV-9 were alternative compression codecs created for internet video streaming and are about 200% to 300% more efficient than MPEG-2. The MPEG association wanted to get into this segment and created MPEG-4 (laterRead More →

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In: Reviews
With: 8 Comments

I’ve been searching for some wireless headphone to use while watching video on my iPhone when on the treadmill. My objective is to not have a cord connected between me and my iPhone – I don’t want to accidentally knock off my iPhone and damage it. After comparing options, I was excited to try the Jaybird JB200 Bluetooth headset. So I headed to my local Target and purchased a pair. Here are my findings: Pros: Wireless design Smallest wireless headphones on the market Does not completely block outside noise (so you can still hear traffic if you’re running/biking) Lifetime guarantee against failure from sweat intrusionRead More →

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In: Tech
With: 0 Comments

About a year ago, I somehow happened upon a request from computer case manufacturer CoolerMaster to browse their new website and provide feedback on areas where improvements were needed.  In short, the site was terrible, with coding errors, navigation issues, and worthless search capabilities. I provided feedback thinking that they would actually value it and make some improvements. They didn’t. Even worse is the fact that I was signed-up for their newsletter in the process. I have one of their computer cases and thought the newsletter may be of interest. It turns out it wasn’t, so I used the unsubscribe link and unsubscribed. I recievedRead More →