Archive for the “Home Video” Category

UPDATED: Almost 3 years ago (on 2/18/06) I spent WAY too much $$ for an HD DirecTV TiVo. Then a few months later on 4/8/06 (1000 days ago) we moved into a new house and the TiVo was no longer connected to a phone line. I expected that, like the Series 2 TiVo’s, it could use an internet connection to get it’s programming information – but it can’t. I’ve tried several times over the past few years to get it to connect but it’s never been able to. Not in this house anyway.

The good news is that since it’s a DirecTV TiVo it gets it’s programming information from the satellite signal and doesn’t really need to make a call. Yet every day it gives me a message that ‘The Recorder has not made a successful call for the past XXX days’. I suspect that DirecTV wants it hooked to a phone line so they’ll know if I’ve watched any PPV that they don’t know about. Well, we’ve been counting down to today to see if my HD DirecTV TiVo will sucessfully roll over from 999 days to 1000, or if something bad will happen. Read… »

Here is my bottom-line advice on home theatre projector screens: depending on your setup you’re probably better off not having one. Save your money! When I wrote my review of the Sony Bravia SXRD 1080P VPL-HW10, I knew my opinion on projector screens would draw some criticism. I only covered it briefly in that post, but I’ve decided to talk about it in more detail today.  Read on and get ready to have some intense debate… Read… »

Yesterday in Part 1 I covered the unboxing and reported that the HW10 is awesome. Today I’m going to continue the review and talk about my home theatre setup and show some high quality photos of the amazing 1080P picture projected on my wall. Read… »

Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas indeed!

For the past 3 or 4 years I’ve had a Sony Cineza HS-51 front projector and loved it. There’s something special about having a movie theatre in your living room. The HS51 is 720P, which from mostly NTSC upconverted sources, has been sufficient. With HD-DVD and Bluray I got to see the quality of 720P HD but wondered if 1080P would be noticeably better. A few months ago the lamp started going and I ordered a replacement. It was like having a new projector – bright and clear. However, about a month later I got home from a trip, turned it on and the screen had blue splotches all over it. Something failed, probably the LCD panel.

Which brings me to the VPL-HW10… I have to say that I have the coolest wife in the world because since the failure of the HS-51 she’s been on board to get a new projector as soon as we could swing it. Friday I ordered the Sony Bravia SXRD 1080P VPL-HW10 direct from Sony, but this time I added the 5-year warranty. So let’s get on with the unboxing…

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Look what Santa brought!

Tuesday my new Sony Bravia SXRD 1080P VPL-HW10 arrived. I’ll have the complete unboxing, review and comparison to my previous 720P projector, the HS51, ready very soon. I’ve been working on that post all day but it’s not complete and we’re about to sit down to a screening of The Dark Knight. Look for the post hopefully tomorrow.

If you are one of the dozens of people like me who early adopted HD DVD over Blu-ray, you might want to head over to Fry’s Electronics. Tonight I stopped at the one here in Las Vegas and picked up the HD DVD box sets of Battlestar Galactica Season 1 and Heros Season 1 for $14.99 each.

I have been keeping my eye on Battlestar, waiting for it to come down in price on the dead format. I heard that it was $20, but at $14.99 it’s a steal of a deal – even knowing that it will eventually be coasters. It’s a 6-disc set containing the 2 part mini-series and all the season 1 episodes – over 12 hours of HD content plus commentary tracks and other bonus features.

I also couldn’t pass up Heros.  It has over 16 hours of content for the same $15.

While I rarely go out to the movies (because of my awesome home theatre setup), I did see Cloverfield in the theatre. Like many others, I wasn’t a fan of the extreme shaky-cam which literally left me nauseous. I need to start with my opinion on the camera shake choice – because it’s relevant to what’s happening with the bonus features: I feel that they could have toned down the amateur-home-video-shake and still conveyed the cinéma-vérité “real found footage” feeling. I loved the idea of the movie and was impressed with the execution, but hated the over the top shaky-camera work. It made the movie very difficult to watch and therefore less fun. However, it was an artistic choice on the part of the filmmakers.  Whether or not I agree with it’s necessity and/or effectiveness – it was technically correct.  It was their choice.  And even though I found that choice very annoying, I still looked forward to getting the movie on Blu-ray to get more info about the cloverfield mythology and see all the bonus features.

Well, the bonus features are harder to watch than the movie – and this time it was NOT an artistic choice…

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I got an email today from SlySoft, the makers of the DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray “backup” software called AnyDVD HD, stating that they are changing their business model. Starting Jan 1, 2009 they are moving to a yearly subscription fee for software updates.  No information is available yet as to how much the subscription renewal fee will be, however they did say that current owners of the software will continue to get free updates.  The new policy only applies to customers who purchase after the end of this year, and they are offering a 20% off incentive to purchase now and get a lifetime of updates.  Here’s what the email (and their website) says: Read… »

Ok.. I’m fairly certain that in 25 days this thing is just going to say “The Recorder has not made a daily call in 1000 days.” But what if it doesn’t? Gotta keep counting down the days just in case.

As a coder I would say that it’s more likely for it to choke at a more ‘binary-based’ number, like 1024. OR to really think it through, maybe at the maximum value of a integer. We know that it didn’t stop at 127 or 255, so it’s more than an 8-bit value. A 16-bit SHORT INT would max out at 32767. But it’s rare for a coder to use a short, I always use ints. Obviously, I didn’t write the code, but first of all we know this is Unix based. It could be C, C++, or maybe Java. Either way, most likely the value for the number of days is calculated fresh every day from the date of the last phone call sync to today.  This is how I would do it… Read… »

Back when I first started this blog I had the theme of “out with the old and in with the new” and it started with the upgrade of my old G5 to a new Intel 8-core PowerMac. In that early post I mentioned the Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP because it has loads of inputs including the new DisplayPort connector Apple has sort-of recently embraced. I believe that the writing is on the wall that DVI will eventually be on the outs and any monitor I invest in these days needs be ‘future proof.’ So during the black days after Thanksgiving I ordered one and it arrived today!

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