Home Entertainment

Star Trek Season One Boxed Set on HD DVD

November 21, 2007

Star Trek fans will be ecstatic that the first 29 episodes (Season 1) of their favorite TV show are finally available on HD DVD - perfect timing for Christmas, but they might be a little peeved at a few "improvements". Some of the special effects of the original Star Trek episodes have been edited to make them more realistic. For instance, they redid the show's intro, with a CG Enterprise and planet. Personally, I think messing with the original special effects is sacrilege.

Posted in Home Entertainment, Reviews

HDMI over CAT5 Network Wire Receiver Works up to 50m!

November 19, 2007

HDMI was limited to roughly 6 meters or 20 feet, which limited your home entertainment hookups. Who keeps all their home entertainment equipment just 20 feet away? This is especially true if you have multiple rooms and you want to share HDMI components across multiple rooms or floors.

Well, a solution to this problem just launched today. Tributaries Cable, provider of high-performance cables, accessories, and installation solutions for audio, video, and custom-install systems has come out with the HXC5 HDMI over Cat5 system.

Posted in Home Entertainment, Video Hardware & Software

AT&T U-verse DVR Throughout the Home

November 5, 2007

AT&T U-verse customers have been complaining about lack of DVR (Digital Video Recorder) support that works throughput the home. Sure, you can get a single DVR box, but you can't view the recorded (or paused) content in the rest of the house. Part of AT&T's promise with U-verse was that you could watch digitally recorded content stored on a single DVR on any TV in the home. Sadly, this hasn't been the case, but from what I hear they're working on it.

Posted in Home Entertainment, Video Hardware & Software

Skype and Logitech offer High Quality Video Conferencing

October 30, 2007

Skype and Logitech have teamed up to offer high quality videoconferencing. Skype 3.6 will be required and will increase the resolution from 320 x 240 to 640 x 480 (VGA). High Quality Video will also require Logitech QuickCam software, version 11.5. It will support up to 30 frames per second (fps) to people using a broadband connection.

Posted in Home Entertainment, Polycom, Skype, Video Hardware & Software, VoIP

BabelTV integrates VoIP, YouTube, TV, iPod, Video, and more

October 26, 2007

BabelTV is a set-top box that integrates TV and Web access to allow you to tune into and record Freeview TV and radio broadcasts, stream video clips, browse the Web, and even make VoIP calls. BabelTV also features PVR functionality to pause live TV, rewind, fast-forward, etc. BabelTV also lets you browse and view all the content on YouTube and any other non-proprietary video content. You can also copy videos from your digital camera and watch them on your large screen TV.

Posted in Home Entertainment, VoIP

Disney Censoring God

October 19, 2007

I'm against censorship in all its forms, so I was shocked to learn that Disney, specifically Radio Disney is censoring the word God from its advertising promotions of their soon-to-be-(today) released movie, The Ten Commandments. Disney has always been about good, wholesome, family fun. Heck, their first PG-13 rated movie wasn't until Black Cauldron in 1985. I guess God must not be wholesome enough to qualify as "Disney family-friendly."

"Our BS&P [Broadcast Standards and Procedures] said Both scripts need to include the studio mention and omit the following line: CHOSEN BY GOD....

Posted in Home Entertainment

Grand Cinema C3X 1080 Projector or Ferrari?

September 28, 2007

SIM2 just released the Grand Cinema C3X 1080p Projector. I don't know whether to project this thing or drive it - damn thing looks like a cheery red Ferrari. SIM2's Next Generation Grand Cinema C3X 1080 3-Chip DLP is one of the first to utilize Texas Instruments DLP Product's latest DarkChip chip to integrate superior contrast plus benchmark-quality 1080p video display with the functions and features required to power today's sophisticated home theaters, all within the dramatic industrial design for which SIM2 is justly famous. It delivers astonishing performance from its compact design.

SIM2's new Grand Cinema HT30000 HOST system pairs a surprisingly compact projector showcasing the stunning cabinet designs for which the company is famous, with a discrete outboard video input processor that connects via SIM2's proprietary, three-line optical-digital High-Definition Optical Signal Transfer (H.O.S.T.) system, which is able to link the two over distances up to 750 feet (250m).

It includes 2 x HDMI-HDCP compliant digital inputs, one S-Video input, one composite video, one RGBS-YCrCb (RCA) input, and one RGBHV input.

Posted in Gadgets, Home Entertainment, Video Hardware & Software

Toshiba gigashot A100F 100GB Full HD camcorder

September 25, 2007

Toshiba announced their gigashot A and K video camcorders. The gigashot A100F features a 1.8-inch shock-resistant 100GB disk with 1/3-inch CMOS sensor. It features full HD video (1,920 x 1,080 or 1080i) recordings at 60fps with 16bit/48kHz Dolby digital stereo audio.

It uses high-quality MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video and will give you about 12 hours of video recording at the highest quality setting and around 23 hours in standard mode. You can also take 2 megapixel still photos.

Both the gigashot A and K series feature SDHC expansion, 3-inch LCD, 10x optical zoom, HDMI mini and component out, and USB for PC connectivity.

Toshiba brags that its 78.1 x 135.4 x 79.0-mm measurements make it the world's smallest "Full HD" camcorder with a built-in hard disk drive.

Posted in Digital Cameras, Gadgets, Home Entertainment, Video Hardware & Software

VoIP on the Nintendo DS Video How-To Guide

September 18, 2007

Just last week, I wrote about how pjsip's open source embedded SIP stack and media stack (written in C) was used to power VoIP on the Nintendo DS using the SvSIP client. Well, the pjsip blog now has a post including a Youtube video that shows how it's done. I'll include the video embedded here as well, but go check out the post since it includes overall impressions of the "VoIP on Nintendo DS experience"!

Posted in Gadgets, Home Entertainment, Video Games & Gaming, VoIP

Microsoft XBox 360 - No Linux for You!

September 4, 2007

Microsoft quietly released a security update to the XBox 360 that closed a security hole that enabled hackers to load Linux onto the XBox 360. Essentially, the hack used a method to inject data into non-privileged memory areas, allowing a hacker with physical access to an Xbox 360 to run arbitrary code such as alternative operating systems with full privileges and full hardware access. Sorry Linux fans, Microsoft closed this security hole.

No Linux for you!

Posted in Home Entertainment, Linux, Microsoft, Video Games & Gaming

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