Jeremy Toeman – Page 53

Polite Thieves?

Posted on July 15, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

Here’s an interesting little story for you. A bit over a month ago, I walked to my car early one morning prior to my 45 minute commute (hate it). Before I got in, I noticed something was… off. I couldn’t quite figure it out, so I got in, and drove away.

Four inches later, I felt something very wrong with the wheel. I thought, perhaps there was something under the car, causing a drag or something. So I got out, looked around. Didn’t see anything, got back in, and drove off.

Five inches later, I knew something was very wrong. I looked closely at a wheel and noticed the lug nuts were loose. A second later I realized the hubcaps were missing! I recall thinking, “what is this, Detroit circa 1974???” When I went to the trunk, I couldn’t find the jack kit, but I thought maybe we had accidentally moved it into the apartment. Luckily another Civic driver pulled up a few cars away, and he let me borrow his to tighten the lug nuts.

I decided at first not to bother with insurance, figuring new hubcaps would just get stolen again.

About a week ago, my wife took the car in to get the tires rotated. When I took the car in the evening, I noticed a massive pull to the right. I asked my wife about it, she thought it needed to be ‘broke in’ a little bit (much like her shoes), but I assumed the rotation had messed up the alignment.

Earlier this week we dropped the car off for a wheel alignment, but the dealer informed us immediately that it was not an alignment problem. The problem was the fact that the wheels were not the ones that come with the car!

The fact that thieves stole my tires is somewhat surprising, as I live in a decent residential part of San Francisco.

The fact that thieves stole my tires and left other tires in their place, not to mention the lug nuts, is just plain weird in my book. Looks like I got hit by the most polite thieves around…

Demystifying some HDTV technology

Posted on July 12, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

With roughly 20 million homes in the US today owning “HD-ready” TV sets, HDTV (High Definition Television) has become a bit of a catch-all acronym for roughly anything that is not standard definition (SD). Along with any new standard or technology comes the inevitable onslaught of abbreviations, acronyms, buzzwords, and otherwise cryptic terminology. For example, there is “over-the-air” HDTV content (used by the ATSC standard) – most people aren’t aware that a simple antenna bought at radio shack can potentially deliver a better quality HDTV signal than the latest digital cable box or satellite receiver! Want a better one? A recent study showed that of these HD set owners, roughly 25% had them connected to SD sources, and did not know they were not watching HDTV content!

Another key element to HDTV is the cables that are used to connect between a source and a display. Someone can buy the latest 61-inch top of the line Pioneer Elite plasma display and hook it up to a brand new Toshiba HD-DVD player and see a worse looking picture than on my $99 Samsung DVD player. Why? The cables. While it is technically possible to connect a player and a display using RCA or S-video cables, many buyers are aware that they need at least component video cables (they are red, blue, and green) to get an HD signal. Even then, however, it’s only an analog HD signal, and doesn’t compare to higher quality digital cable connections, either DVI or HDMI. The DVI (Digital Visual Interface) standard is slightly older and quickly becoming outdated by HDMI, its newer counterpart, although both offer the same video quality (and are compatible with each other). DVI connections are most commonly found today on monitors, as opposed to home theater environments.

HDMI cable HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) connections are able to carry both the audio and video signal from one device to another, which is easy for hooking up devices, and also much cleaner from the living room perspective. HDMI is relatively new, and only became commercially available in 2005, but has become the effective standard for most newer digital cable boxes and DVD players, and is even featured in the Xbox 360 (well, probably). Now there is already another standard being proposed to replace both DVI and HDMI, called UDI (Universal Display Interface), although it is primarily focused on the PC market. There is a new standard for HDMI (version 1.3) ratified just this past month that supports new audio formats included in HD DVD (and Blu-Ray) players. One other good thing to be aware of for digital cabling is that, unlike analog cables, there is a limit (typically about fifteen meters) to how long a cable can transmit a signal. It’s probably also worth mentioning that even a 2 meter long cable can cost upwards of $50.

It may seem unusual to have such flux in cables and connectors, but the real drivers for such change have nothing to do with picture quality, it’s all about DRM (digital rights management). Even with CDs and DVDs, the audio/video quality presented to the consumer was highly compressed, but in the HD landscape, the quality is so pure (though typically still somewhat compressed) that content owners have much more to lose than ever before. If a user has a perfect quality version of a movie, they could make infinite perfect (or degraded) copies and it would be virtually impossible to differentiate a ‘professional’ edition from an ‘amateur’ copy. All this wonderful looking and sounding HD content needs new protection, and it is coming in the form of HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection). Most new digital cable boxes, satellite receivers, and HD-DVD players use HDCP on all content emitted on HD outputs (MovieBeam too).

Now it’s time to put this information all together. The HDCP-protected content will not output on a display that does not include HDCP unlocking. This means if you hook up an HD-DVD player to your plasma display with component cables, everything will look fine. But when you hook it up with HDMI cables, if your plasma doesn’t have HDCP support, nothing will play at all (whereas if it does have HDCP support, it will look better than the component cables). The good news is most consumer-grade LCD and plasma displays sold in the past few years have HDCP support built-in, and everything should work fine.

With the next-generations of media PCs, cable boxes, satellite receivers, DVRs, DVD players, and game consoles all offering HDTV services, the future has literally never looked so good. While there is no real winner or loser in the HDMI/DVI space, it seems extremely likely that HDMI is bound to be the dominant cable format for the next few years. Especially because it supports up to 10.2 gigabits per second throughput (that is a LOT of data) and has built-in HDCP support for the content industry. Although with all that fancy technology inside, the nicest part for consumers is finally having the convenience of only making a single connection from device to device!

Getting off the grid

Posted on July 9, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

JT with a beer and a steak I spend about 12-16 hours a day connected/online. That time is spent doing email, surfing the Web, researching various topics for work, browsing products, blogging, and the rare game of Hearts or Spades (okay, very rare). I’ve spent 4 of the last 7 days totally off the grid, and it’s an interesting dichotomy with my regular life.

Normally I get frustrated when I can’t use my PPC-6700 to get an EVDO connection and am stuck at 1x. I had no signal of any kind at either Lake Sonoma (loved it) or Costanoa (nice time, but it was very windy and totally overpriced).

I tend to check email at worst every 10 or so minutes (and that’s without owning a blackberry, which I refuse to use when in North America). I came home to hundreds of emails to read through. Been 2 days, still deleting the ones I don’t need to respond to.

While traveling, I always use my Slingbox to watch something (recently lots of World Cup soccer), typically from my DVR, before going to bed. I watched no TV whatsoever, even though Costanoa actually had wifi access in their main cabin, but I didn’t even have the laptop with me! Funny thing was the Costanoa camping areas even offered power outlets at each ‘site’. I’m proud to say I didn’t use em.

I used exactly three gadgets this week:

My digital camera (lowly Canon SD100 – anyone have a spare SD450?) – here are the pix we took (including our visiting friends, the Arnowitz family).
My PPC-6700 to play solitaire before going to sleep (in between good books right now)
My Nuvi 350 GPS receiver (review coming soon!) to help find a few spots along the way

Bottom line: get yourself off the grid for a few days this summer, it’s a good feeling. No matter how many emails you have to sort through when you are done.

In a podcast…

Posted on July 3, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

Techlore logo I must fess up an say I don’t really listen to podcasts. I know they are supposed to be great and all, but I just listen to too much music. I have a Pioneer in-dash receiver capable of playing WMA files, so about 10 CDs keeps me fresh with about 60 discs worth of music. I have Sonos at home with a Maxtor NAS, giving me access to the 800 or so CDs I ripped a couple of years ago. I generally listen to Rhapsody or now Pandora when at work. Leaves me very little podcasting time.

But, it’s fun to be in a podcast! Matt Whitlock at TechLore (if you don’t know Techlore.com, they are a great resource to check out if you want to learn how to maximize the use of your consumer electronics gear) did a great roundup of portable television, and you’ll find me there around the 11 minute mark. I do sound like I am using a cell phone from 1987 and inside a wind tunnel somewhere near a train station, but there I am in full digital glory.

I'm living in perfect Harmony!

Posted on June 28, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

I first saw the Logitech Harmony remote back when they were a small Canadian company, demonstrating it at a trade show a couple of years ago. Their initial demos focused on giving EPG functionality to a LCD screen on the remote, but thankfully they made a switch into offering what I will have to call the best damn remote control on Earth. Then Logitech bought them, and 2 years later they’ve managed to not screw it up! Is the Harmony 880 perfect? Nope, but it’s as close as I’ve seen.

In my mess of living room devices are the following:

Sony AV receiver
Syntax Olevia LCD TV
Motorola HD DVR cable box (DCT-6412 Mark III)
Moviebeam
Samsung DVD player (with HD upscaling)
2 Slingboxes
Xbox (no 360 yet)
Sonos
Gefen 4×1 HDMI switch

I have a lot of remotes – 6 of them to be precise. I’ve connected the video for the Moviebeam, DVD player, and DVR to the Gefen switch, which is connected to the LCD. All audio runs directly through the Sony receiver. Changing inputs requires 2 remotes, and then I need the actual device remote. As of about 2 hours ago, I only need one remote now, the Harmony 880.

The Harmony is shipped in Logitech’s signature green packaging (with a nice bubble exposure to show the actual unit), although I almost lost a finger trying to open the thing. it comes with a docking station, a rechargable battery, a USB cable, a quick start guide, and the setup software. After the initial charge was complete, I moved right into setup.

First step was to download and install the Harmony software (easy, but I’d rather not have had to register just to do it). A few minutes later I followed the very intuitive step-by-step setup wizard, and within about 10 minutes everything other than the Gefen switch and Moviebeam were in my devices list. You may be wondering why I was using my laptop to configure my remote control, but trust me when I say it’s worth it. I’ve tried many many different programmable remotes over the years, and they are all awful (yes, especially including the horrific Pronto from Philips). Whether its entering bizarre 4-digit codes or worse yet, pointing two remotes at each other and pushing buttons in odd sequences to ‘learn’ functions, the experience is always bad. Enter Harmony and the PC.

In the PC setup wizard, you simply identify the devices you own by category: TV, DVD player, DVR, etc. All you need to know is the make and model, they have it in their database (although I’ll explain later what happens if they don’t – but don’t worry, they do). The software then uses USB to automatically program the appropriate infrared signals into the Harmony for you. Done. Game over!

And that’s when Harmony starts getting cool. They also have the concept of ‘activities’. An activity is “watch TV”. When I push the “watch TV activity” on the screen of the remote, it automatically performs a macro (a series of commands) to turn on my TV (if its off), switch it to the right input, turn on my Sony receiver, switch it to the right input, and turn on my cable box. Automatically. Best part is this: at the end of the macro, the remote asks you if it worked properly, and if it doesn’t, it helps you get it working right! The on-screen instructions take you question by question to identify the problem (which can happen if you don’t leave the remote pointed in the right direction long enough, something I did a few times while getting used to it). The screens below reflect the key steps in an activity:

Also nice in the system is the ability to rename devices, create channel shortcuts, and have discrete volume control (when I push volume up or mute, it affects the Sony receiver, not the Comcast cable box). Altogether a great experience.

With all of the glowing remarks above, I will say it’s not without it’s faults. While I didn’t have the same problems as Steven did, I found the PC software has a lot of clunkiness to it. When setting up the ‘activity’ to control Moviebeam, for example, I couldn’t get it to accept the concept that my Samsung DVD player doesn’t need to do anything for Moviebeam to work (I did eventually find a manual override, but it was buried deep within the user interface). Also, integrating the Gefen 4×1 HDMI switch was much harder work than it should have been (not due to Gefen, but because Harmony doesn’t have the concept of separate audio and video switching). Finally, the software requires a lot more confirmations and clicking ‘next’ a lot than I think is really needed – I would like to see an ‘advanced users’ version that gives you more direct control over the system (obviously this should be an optional mode, but it should be there somewhere).

There are also a few snags in the physical design of the 880. For example, the playback controls are not distinct in shape, size, or layout, so until you learn that ‘play’ is the upper right button, you’ll never go there instinctively (but the backlight ‘glow’ effect of the remote almost makes up for this). Also the volume and channel change buttons are a little tricky to get comfortable with. Finally, there’s no ‘cancel’ button to exit out of the help or other interactive screens.

But these complaints are really just minor nuisances. If you own 3 or more living room gadgets, grab a Harmony. Think I’m the only one who likes it? Check out Bombippy, Keith, and DigitalGrabber for some other reviews (nope, don’t know any of em). Without any further hesitation, I’m declaring the Logitech Harmony 880 absolutely LD Approved!

Super Talent MP3 Player review: nano or no-no?

Posted on June 25, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

To call the iPod the “market leader” is an understatement. Ars Technica recently reported the iPod is so popular that beer sales on college campuses are decreasing as a result! Personally, I’ve never owned one (although I had a free one which I never used and eventually dumped on Craigslist), and I remain surprised that nobody can best them still. In fact, I must say I tend to jump at the opportunity to try other MP3 players when I get the chance. When the Super Talent “MP3_4-2GBK” arrived, I hoped from the start it would be impressive. And impressive it is, but it is unfortunately no David to Apple’s Goliath.

Continue reading →

Sony Vaio VGN-SZ160P review: function meets form

Posted on June 19, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

So I’ve been hooked on laptops since 1996, when I got my first Toshiba Tecra. It weighed about 15 pounds and was a total desktop replacement (meaning it had about all the power of a desktop PC, and virtually all the weight as well), which was perfect for my needs. I went through two more Tecras over the years, then somehow managed to migrate through an HP, a Gateway (it wasn’t bad, really!), and settled on a Dell Latitude for a few years until it died (a bit young in my opinion). I set out to replace it, and settled on the Sony Vaio VGN-SZ160P. It’s been a few months, and I like it quite a bit. Cutting to the chase: if you can afford it, it’s probably one of the best laptops on the market at present. Read on if you want to know the details of why I think so.

I am very happy with the performance. It’s a zippy dual-core Centrino laptop, and easily outperforms my last one, which sported a Pentium-M chip (The good kind that came out 2 years ago, not the crappy one from 3-4 years back. Thanks for the clever naming there, Intel). I am a constant multi-tasker, and at present have 4 IE browser windows open, Windows explorer, Outlook 2003, Outlook Express, AIM, Flickr, MSN Messenger, Word 2003, and Photoshop CS. I can swap between them with ease (unless of course Outlook is synchronizing, in which case it absolutely brings this, and all other, PC to its knees), and rarely notice any delay in launching applications.

Continue reading →

Moviebeam update and more thoughts

Posted on June 17, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

It’s been about 6 weeks since I first reviewed Moviebeam (add another week or so for my HD follow-up) and there are a few updates which I felt were worth sharing.

First and foremost, as Dave Zatz reported, you can pick up a unit for $49 instead of $199 by using an online coupon (enter PR49B at checkout). If you were even borderline before, for $49 I don’t know what would stop you from picking it up. Dave also did a video review that you can see if you are on the fence, or just want to see it in action (Ron at Techlore did a review as well).

Next, Magnolia Pictures recently announced they’d supply movies into the system (thanks HD Beat). I’m curious to see where this goes, as I don’t think the real strength of the product is about niche programming. Personally, I think the mainstream movies are key to building their user base right now. And I have a little story to share as to why I think so…

My wife and I wanted to get a movie the other night, and ended up at our local, sigh, Blockbuster. We walked around the new release section, with our autofilters to block out Martin Lawrence, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson films (which actually only left three movies in the entire section!). We saw movie after movie that we recall seeing ‘coming soon’ with Moviebeam, and skipped all of these, despite them being high on our want-list. Mid-browse we decided on ‘stupid comedy’ as our category, and beelined it for JIm Carrey’s remake of Dick and Jane (lousy, and Tea Leoni needs to hang up the acting for doing husky voice-over work, she’s much better at that). Bottom line for us was: we won’t pick something up at the store if we think/know we can just watch it with the m-beam.

I watched Aeon Flux (not as horrible as I was expecting) and Glory Road (continuing to reinforce the statement that all sports movies are good, but none are better than Hoosiers) today, the first in standard definition, and the second in HD. I could be wrong, my contacts might be fuzzy, or it might just be to the long summer days, but the picture quality looked a lot better than before! When I spoke with one of the execs at Moviebeam last month he mentioned that the first few HD titles they had were not the best the system can do, and after watching Glory Road, it looks promising. It’s still not quite as remarkable as the Comcast signal, but it’s much better than the last time I looked at it! If this keeps up, I will have to go do a real side-by-side comparison in the coming months.

Now I’m just waiting for the Ethernet port to activate so I can remove the 25-foot-long phone cable running through my hallway and hook it up to my Buffalo wireless 4-port bridge (also connected to my Xbox, Sonos, and Slingbox). I’m also really hoping that with Internet access comes new features. First and foremost I’d like to see community features incorporated into a Web site as well as the product. I’d like access to some Internet-based content too (maybe Akimbo-based or even Youtube).

I believe the future of the set-top box includes a combination of broadcast services (cable or satellite), datacasting (Moviebeam or …), and Internet access. With this combination comes the ultimate in on-demand, personalized television. Now sprinkle it with placeshifting and DVR services, toss in a great EPG with contextual search and a good recommendation and collaborative filtering engine, and then I’m a happy happy boy.

Other than the fact that I still won’t be able to watch any more Arrested Development, that is…

Welcome(s)!

Posted on June 16, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

Well, June 15th unofficially spontaneously became Introduction Thursday here at LIVEdigitally. I want to start by personally welcoming our handful of new writers on board, and thanking them in advance for their future contributions. This is actually my second foray at bringing in some external folks to participate here. The first time out we ended up with Jonas, Ryan and Ameer, all of whom were really great to have around. Unfortunately, it happened in a timeframe where I got so overwhelmed with the six jobs I held at my company that I pretty much vanished for a long while, and they decided to take on new things (which seem to go quite well, way to go guys!).

At Sling we finally expanded to have a large enough team that I could cut down to only working 3 or 4 jobs at a time. This, combined with my basic desire to write, got me kicked back into gear to pump some life back into the LD. And as my traffic reports show, a few folks out there noticed and the readership has grown. So I felt it was good time to build up the site a bit more, and to do that, I need some help. And while both my mom and dad have written a few comments on some of the articles I’ve written, it wasn’t quite enough for me.

So, it’s a long way to say “welcome aboard”, but I am (always) optimistic about increasing the breadth, depth, and quality of the content you find here. Expect a lot of new product reviews from the team, as well as their own individual rants and raves on the technology around us. I hope you enjoy their writing, and let’s see what they have to say!

ps – do you know how hard it is to find a picture of actual lemmings (the animals) on a cliff? couldn’t find anything that didn’t look like this:

Creating a Rumor: Gates to join Scoble?

Posted on June 15, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

So it’s all over the news already, Bill Gates is stepping down from his post at Microsoft in 2008.

Now last week, Robert Scoble left his position at Microsoft to go join, uh.. some podcasting company or something. Here’s a link to Scoble blogging about Gates leaving as well.

Robert Scoble

What if, and I’m just musing here, but what if Gates is joining Scoble??? I think it would look a little something like this…

Gates and Scoble on a beach

Getting my blob on

Posted on June 13, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

Saw an interesting Web tool recently called blobber (yup, www.blobber.com), which (like all Web 2.0 “technologies” is of course just in beta right now) allows people who visit the same site to interact with each other, chat, and see “information and alerts … in real-time”. Which I think is important for all our readers.

The only real negative comment I have at present is I find their interface for setting up what should be an extremely simple tool is overly complex. I had to cut and paste just a single line of HTML into my Web site to activate it, but 10 minutes of reading instructions later and I still have no idea how to do any useful customization.

I honestly have no idea if this is a good idea or just wasting a little time, but it took me all of 14 seconds to incorporate it into the site. And now I have the key to Internet success, you know, chat.

Updated: Blobber is now gone from the site. It wasn’t working well when it did work, and ‘crashed’ too many times for me.

Slappa Velocity Pro Spyder review

Posted on June 11, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

Slappa is a company who provides cases promising to protect your CDs, DVDs, laptops, and (of course) iPods. One of their lines of laptop cases is called the Velocity Pro, a well-lined backpack designed to carry laptops, small and large (up to 17″ screens). I’ve tried it out on my recent 5-week trip to NYC, Toronto, London, Tokyo, and Beaverton, Oregon (one of these things just doesn’t belong), and, to save you the rest of the read, it’s a pretty good laptop case. If you’re interested in the why, read on… Continue reading →

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