February 22nd, 2007 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
With all the hype and attention that the iPhone announcement got last month at Macworld, the introduction of another new Apple product got less limelight than it would otherwise have enjoyed… Apple TV. The Apple TV (formerly known in development as iTv) is a small media box that connects not to your computer but to your living room TV, home theater or wherever you kick off your shoes and stare at a screen for entertainment. It uses the latest flavors of media connections including HDMI, component video, optical audio and analog (2 channel only) audio. It also had an Ethernet socket and built in wifi… READ MORE
January 22nd, 2007 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
Our house is a three level home including a finished basement that, while not a ‘walkout’ does have full windows on two sides, the other side being built into the side of a small hill. My studio is one corner room, and the other corner with two windowed walls for years was the kid’s rec room AKA disaster area. Whenever I saw pictures on the news of some town torn up by a tornado I always did a double take, wondering at first how those pictures of our basement got on TV. The floor might not be seen for weeks on end. Four kids worth… READ MORE
January 11th, 2007 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
Tuesday at the MacWorld Expo, Steve Jobs announced the latest Apple products including a new Airport Extreme wireless networking solution using 802.11n, the Apple TV for wireless playback of iTunes content in your living room, and the hotly anticipated iPhone cellular telephone. I’m not that enthusiastic about Apple TV… I find it hard to believe you are going to get a true high definition quality picture from a downloaded file. Popping a disk into a drawer and pressing ‘play’ just doesn’t seem that much work to me to enjoy a movie, nor does the process of renting or buying said disk. I think true on-demand… READ MORE
December 20th, 2006 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
A few weeks ago a wrote this post about the high definition DVD format war and how it’s shaping up. Briefly, two competing formats are trying to become the next DVD standard. In one corner you have Blu-Ray, backed by Sony and numerous other hardware companies and movie studios. In the other corner you have HD-DVD backed by Toshiba, Universal and a few others. Sony is the main backer of Blu-Ray. They pioneered the technology and are the driving force behind it’s marketing and roll out. In case you aren’t familiar with Sony, they have been down this road before. In the mid-seventies Sony introduced… READ MORE
November 25th, 2006 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
I’m getting imaptient and just might take the plunge in December and get a high definition DVD player for the home theater. I’ve been waiting for prices to come down, second generation hardware to come out (less bugs) and more importantly to get a grasp of who is going to win the format war. For those who aren’t AV geeks out in cyberspace, there is currently a format war raging with respect to the next generation of DVDs: high definition DVDs. Most people have heard of “high definition” TV, which is broadcast via special antennas and on cable/satellite systems. Regular TV resolution is 640 x… READ MORE
