Audio Visual Blog

I built a HTPC about 5 years ago, and its starting to show its age. It an older Celeron, with about 512MB RAM, and a Haupaunge cap card, running XP Media center and SageTV. It can’t do HD, and it chokes on a lot of XVID and DIVX movies these days. Since then, I’ve got a nice Dish Network HD dual tuner box, so I don’t need TV recording.

This week, Costco sent out a coupon book, and my wife asked about one of these:
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Produc…Prodid=11277556

I’m still weary of Iomega, <CLICK CLICK CLICK, DEAD>.

Any opinions on this item? I’d like it to have DIVX6 support, and a network interface, but for $160, I’m willing to give it a try.

Any other “HD multimedia drives” I should look at?

A maximum resolution of 480p doesn’t seem that great to me. Plus, like you said, Iomega doesn’t have the best reputation in the world.

One option might be to upgrade the HTPC. It shouldn’t be very expensive, especially reusing components. This Gigabyte 780G mobo, one of AMD’s new low-power Athlon X2s, and a couple gigs of RAM comes out to just over $200. Reuse your hard drive, case, peripherals, OS license, and such, and you’ve got a system with a new lease on life. It should have enough power for most XVID-type stuff, and the onboard video has decoding acceleration for H264.

If this should go in the iPod megathread, please let me know and I will close this immediately.

My dad’s birthday is coming up and my mom and I want to get him some portable speakers for his iPod. Everything I’ve looked at so far seems to be ~$150 or under, which is fine. I’m sure that the sound quality of any of these will be shit, but I don’t think he’ll be able to tell the difference or care. What I’m looking for is anyone’s experience with a speaker dock that is reliable, simple to use, and of decent build for the money. I’m also interested in models that would be available in brick-and-mortar stores like Best Buy, the Apple store, etc. I’d order something online to save a little bit of money, but I’m not confident it would get there in time.

The best source of reviews for iPod speaker docks is http://ilounge.com/

I have the Logitech Pure-Fi Elite, which isn’t portable but sounds pretty good for (at the time) $120. It’s $142 now on Amazon.

I recommend getting the Logitech Pure-Fi Anywhere, which can be run from the wall or the rechargeable battery. It’s $55 after rebate on Amazon, just get 1 or 2 day shipping and you’re set.

I’m currently looking for a video camera as we are expecting and aren’t sure where to start.I’d ideally like something that is HD (720p is fine) with good sound pickup and is lightweight/handheld. As far as storage medium, battery life is where I am most lost.

I appreciate any information or recommendations as to specific cameras.

The new Sonys are pretty nice. There are hard drive, mini DV and direct-to-memory stick versions.

Amazon.com has them all and at decent prices.

For small size, nothing seems to beat the memory stick models, as there essentially are no moving parts other than for the lens focus and zoom. Obviously, a hard drive uses up battery power, as does tape transport. On the other hand, the compression is a bit more lossy on the memory stick models than on the mini-DV.

If you want some sample footage from the new HD camcorders I found this website http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/d…21/vcam2008.htm. Just click on the japanese text below the camera names instead of the actual camera name. They have samples of both indoor and outdoor footage. From what I’ve seen the canon and the sony are both really good while the panasonic and jvc aren’t that clear.

I have googled and everything to try to find the right term, but with no luck. Basically my picture from my TV is cut off by an inch or 2 at all sides. It is a 52 inch Sony, rear projection. I am afraid I bought it second hand and don’t know alot about it more than that. It was fine at first but it has gotten worse over time. It seems as though the projection is for a 54 inch TV, when the screen is 52 inch. I hope I am explaining this correctly, but this is all I got. For instance, text in the bottom right of the screen generally has a few characters cut off.I googled calibrating and maintence, but this all seems to just deal with color calibration. Is there something I can do to fix this? Hire someone? Its becoming more and more annoying.

You have what is called overscan and it is normal on all rear projection sets, it can be especially bad if its a crt rear projection. If you really want to do something you will need to have someone come out and calibrate it but they will probably never get you to zero overscan. You can mess with it yourself but you run the risk of really screwing stuff up.

Not sure if you goons have used this before, but hopefully you guys will be able to help me out here.
Anyway, to give some background information.
I mainly use a Logitech Z-5500 for my console gaming. But you as know, apartment, wargames, late night gaming, just don’t go well with anyone. So I have been plugging my ATH-900 headphone into Z-5500 decoder at night.Now that I read about the SU-DH1 system, I have a few questions.
First of all, I am no audiophile to start with (I cant tell differences in sound quality when it comes to high-end stuff)
With that out of the way, will I be able to get a large improvement when I upgrade to SU-DH1 system? i.e. when compared to having the headphones plugged directly into Z-5500’s decoder. Also, how do ATH-900 and SU-DH1 combination usually sound in comparison to a real 5.1 system?

Also, is audiocubes the only retailer to acquire this device if I am located in Canada?

Lastly, is this set up: SU-DH1+ATH-900 a good idea to start with? or do you guys have any superior recommendation for an alternative set-up at this price range?

I don’t know how it’s done, but DHP is pretty well regarded. Here’s a demo, and an episode of MacBreak Weekly recorded in DHP.

Sounds pretty good to me.

Kind of related, this reminded me that I haven’t used any kind of headphone crossfeed since going back to Winamp. Searching around, the Bauer stereophonic-to-binaural DSP sounds the best to me. It would be interesting to compare this to DHP for stereo listening as Dolby adds ambient room information to the mix.

I’m thinking about buying one of these for my mother-in-law. Does anyone care to share their experiences with the products since I know nothing about them?

tons of them are widescreen, which makes no goddamn sense for photos (most digital photos are a 3:2 ratio). But hey, slap WIDSCREEN all over the box and it will probably sell better. I would love to see a 3:2 digital photo frame, but such a speciality LCD would likely cost a good deal more.

I was shopping for these last Christmas; what I did was load up a memory card with some sample photos and actually tried out the frames on display at Best Buy, CompUSA, etc. Best Buy had the greatest variety of frames on display and running. I had some full-size (10 megapixels in my case), resized, portrait, and landscape photos on the memory card. A lot of frames render large photos very slowly, but this can be remedied by only putting resized photos on the frame. Be sure to put some photos on that will test the color fidelity of these frames, as you don’t want a nice sunset photo to be ruined by harsh color banding.

Be sure to look at what transition effects are available, randomization (some frames can only display photos sequentially!), and cropping options (black bars or blow up the photo to fill the frame, which cuts off edges).

The new Sony frames are awesome. We’re carrying them where I work, and they blow the only other decent one’s - Kodak’s - completely out of the water. It may sound silly, but they just seem…better. Even the build on them is nicer - the Sony logo gently glows white, and the frame has a nice hefty weight to it. I know the 7″ has a resolution of 800×600.

If you’re looking for a big monitor but are on a tight budget, then look no further than the Optiquest Q22wb 22″ widescreen LCD computer monitor.  This is one big, sexy, quality piece of computer equipment.  The best part is that you won’t sacrifice performance due to the price with this LCD display.  The Viewsonic Q22wb combines high brightness and an amazing 900:1 contrast ratio with and incredibly fast 5MS video response rate for strikingly crystal-clear,  totally blur free video, graphics and text. With the ViewSonic Q22wb, it’s easy to operate in two applications or documents side-by-side, which will naturally improve your productivity levels. It also comes with an integrated power supply and VESA® wall-mount so you can reduce clutter and free up that ever-valuable desktop real estate. If you share workspace, then you can lock in your screen settings with the OSD lock and prevent theft of your prized monitor with the Kensington® security port.  Retail price is around $260.00.

Specifications