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New moms and dads, as well as any other gearhead who has recently purchased a high-end camcorder, will be glad to know they can now share high-definition home video over the Web. Motionbox, which used to seem like just another video-sharing site, now stands apart with its HD-video hosting service that allows for privacy (only people you've given access to can view your videos).
Continue reading "Broadcast Your Own HD Channel at Motionbox" »
If you live in an eco-conscious city, you may have heard something about “earth hour” over the weekend. In various locales, public awareness campaigns were conducted for the March 29 at 8 p.m. holiday from electricity. National landmarks went dark, as did a few candlelit restaurants, and so did Google, which flipped its white homepage to black for the occasion. The idea is to raise awareness about the effects electricity consmpution has on climate change.
If you were at home at 8 p.m. on Saturday night (hey, that's movie night at many homes) and knew about earth hour, did you make a concerted effort to scale back your electricity use and turn off your home theater?
One of the difficulties in swallowing Microsoft's home theater PC concept is the ugliness associated with plopping a boxy tower anywhere near your sleek living room set-up.
This post is neither the time nor place to discuss the merits of HTPCs and Windows Vista Home Premium, but if you've made the decision to go that route, here's a fashionable box that can minimize the eyesore factor: Norwegian company Mesiro's Merium.
Continue reading "Earn Style Points with this Home Theater PC" »
If you've got an eye for crisp video, surely you've wished the high-definition signal being pumped into your living room was even better. The signal quality appears to have good days and bad days, and you may have even wondered if the same HD channel looks better on cable, satellite, or FiOS.
According to one man's test, the differences in quality can be extreme. Ken Fowler, an HD-enthusiast and frequenter of the AVSForum site, compared screenshots of Comcast HD cable service and Verizon HD FiOS service in Virginia. The shots were taken at the exact same time and the same channel. The pixelated, blurry picture shown here is of the Comcast version of the Music HD channel (the Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist).
Now that bean counters have a sense for consumer Blu-ray appetite when HD-DVD is out of the picture, it looks like 15 million of the high-def discs will sell in 2008, according to HMR Research. From mid-2006 (Blu-ray's launch) until the end of 2007, 9 million Blu-ray movie discs were sold in the U.S. But from January 2008 until the mid-March, 3 million sold. Only 12 million more to go!
At a seminar in Japan this week, Matsushita plasma group manager Susumu Tsujihara didn't say a word about subsidiary Panasonic's plans to manufacture plasma panels for Pioneer's high-end Kuro line.
But everything he did say sounded like very good news to any plasma-fanatic worried about Panasonic's ability to keep Kuros looking fine. Tsujihara ushered in the arrival of Matsushita's “Fifth Wave” of plasma production. This likely has something to do with the company's fifth plasma plant, which will open in May 2009.
This plasma stuff might burn you up with jealousy, but don't try this at home, electrical engineers. At least wait until you get back to the lab. Everybody else should simply enjoy the YouTube videos in safety.
Gizmodo posted two videos of one man's experiments with plasma speakers — you know, the kind that rely on ionized gas to produce sound rather than a magnetic field that moves paper and plastic drivers? In these speakers, the intensity of the plasma varies and creates compressions in airwaves which we hear as music.
In the decades-old gender battle
for the remote control, it appears women have begun to wrangle the
device at a higher rate then men, especially when there's a digital
video recorder involved.
According to a new study from Solutions Research Group, American women watch TV using the DVR 9.3 times a week, while men only use it 8.3 times per week.
If audio is recorded without the intention of being listened to, is it still a recording? American researchers in Paris are getting philosophical about a piece of etched paper they found which may contain the first ever piece of recorded audio.
The soot-blackened paper was etched in 1860 by a machine called a phonautograph, a full 17 years before Thomas Edison recorded "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on a tin foil cylinder, which was, until this month, considered to be the first audio recording in history.
How is Toshiba managing to mourn the painful and expensive death of HD-DVD? Well, with a little bit of R&D therapy, it seems.
Perhaps spending bucket-loads of cash on an adorable 11-inch robot of limited utility will soothe Toshiba's angst. The company is currently testing ApriPoko, a 5-pound home theater bot that can learn to mimic your remote control's infrared signals when you instruct it to.
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