Greater Satellites

For a long time, I’ve considered going the route of scooping up a fairly recent, possibly refurbished Intel Mac mini and using it as my DVD player, DVR, audio streamer, DivX player, and all around Home Theater PC. There are even several friggin websites dedicated to helping people set up their dream system.

That dream was shaken at the core when I bought a PS3, which plays Blu Ray movies, upscales DVDs, and handles most video formats I’d want to play on it with the most recent firmware upgrade. Sony recently released a bad little MF’er by the name of PlayTV, which is an additional component for a PS3 that allows you to watch and record television directly to your console. This is pretty friggin sweet. What’s more is that the files it records (in high def or standard def) are DRM free. That’s right — you can record ‘em on your PS3, move them over to your computer to re-encode them for an iPod/iPhone, or burn them to DVD with no icky rights management debacle. What’s the catch? It’s currently unavailable in the US as it’s only compatible with PAL. You can bet your ass I would scoop that up the minute it’s available here in the states.

On a kind-of related note, there a really interesting media server being announced by a company called Conceptronic. The specs seem pretty decent and if the price is right, maybe this will grace my home entertainment setup:

• Built in analog tuner (blah, but I’ll take it)
• 1TB internal storage (saweeeet!)
• Component, composite, and firewire inputs
• HDMI (woot!), component, and digital audio out
• Optional networking adapter
• Codec support: DivX, XviD, WMV9, SVCD, and VOB

Hopefully the price will hit the sweet spot.

I’m my never ending quest to have one of the sweetest, most future-proof home entertainment setups I can afford, here are a few things that I’ve been doing in preparation before I take the plunge:

• Research… Then Do Some More Research: This is the most obvious, but also the most important. You should know what you want to be capable of doing, then follow thru with research on whether something you’re eyeballing has the capacity to perform. Want to be able to watch Blu-Ray movies at the highest possible quality? Then you’re going to need a TV that is 1080P capable, which leads me to my next point…
• Know Thy Terms: Do you know what the “P” in 1080P stands for? Do you think that Plasma is just something the green poltergeist from Ghostbusters was made of? These are things that are important to know, and can be explained pretty easily on Wikipedia, Consumer Reports, and even just general tech sites. I wouldn’t trust retail outlet explanations, just like I wouldn’t trust their prices. Oh, speaking of which…
• Shop Around: Say you scoop up a PlayStation 3 and want to reduce cable clutter, so you opt to buy an HDMI cable. If you go to Best Buy, you can expect to pay a pinch over $72 for a 4′ Monster Brand HDMI Cable. After following thru with the previous two steps, you’d know that there’s nothing really unique about that Monster Brand Cable when you compare it to, say, a 6′ Monoprice HDMI Cable for the low, low price of $5.24. A side-by-side comparison of these cables would render the picture virtually identical. Your wallet will thank you.
• Don’t Buy Brand Spankin’ New: I know it’s tough not to scoop up seven new things each year right after CES, but it’s better than paying the early adopter tax. Technology tends to get better first, then smaller second; so once a TV is packed with all the features that would make it competitive, the only thing to do would be to make it smaller, thinner, sexier. Usually when you look back at the model that’s being replaced by a newer one, you’ll find that the aesthetics are the biggest refresh of them all.
• Check Reviews Online: Amazon, Froogle, Best Buy, Circuit City, Newegg… The list goes on and on of sites that offer people the ability to rate and review their recently purchased products in a variety of different ways. Be sure to read thru a few reviews from various websites to ensure that whatever you’re looking to buy meets the high standards you should be setting for your gear.
• Don’t Be Afraid To Spend: This one seems pretty obvious, but it really isn’t. If you’re going shopping for your new TV at Kmart, don’t expect too much out of it in any sense. Conversely, you don’t have to spend an exorbitant amount of money at places like Tweeter either. Sometimes your best bet is to find what you’re looking for in person and then purchase online for a discounted rate.
• Don’t Get Locked Into One System: Sure, a HTIB is a total package, and priced to sell, but don’t think for a second that you’ll have many options in the field of expandability. Sometimes it’s better to custom tailor a solution that you can upgrade piece-by-piece in the future. For instance: buy a receiver, speakers, DVD player, etc as a separate package and you won’t ever have to worry about being behind the curve because you can just upgrade one component at a time.

Follow these few simple guidelines and you’ll be well on your way to owning some versatile electronic audio-visual-computing equipment.

I write about whatever tickles my fancy and recent news about Blu Ray exclusivity deals with studios was too good to pass up…

Let me preface by saying that I hate Sony as much as the next knowledgeable techie. I’ve owned three different Walkmans in my day, and have purchased every iteration of PlayStation up to the current monolith. I’ve made those purchases knowing that Sony products are often overpriced, sometimes cheap (paradoxical, no?), and the company itself has a record of poor customer service. In their defense on that last issue: any company as large as Sony is bound to have a few highly vocal, extremely unsatisfied customers — it’s science.

In recent months, though, I have taken notice of Sony’s product lines and I must say they seem to be genuinely trying to set themselves apart from the crowd with exceptional product quality and design (see: BRAVIA line of TVs). PlayStation 3 isn’t making them any real money yet, but they continually develop for it and it has seen 4 different variations in the 14 months since its initial launch. I know many disagree, but I think it’s a pretty sexy console. Add that to all the things it is capable of beyond just playing games, and $500 for my 80GB version didn’t seem like such a bad deal. It’s a product line AND format (Blu Ray) that Sony has engineered which is elegant and actually makes sense to use.

This has not been the case for Sony since the CD. Talk a brief walk down memory lane with me before I get to my point (I promise I have one):

1. Betamax - Whoops! This was the same format war we’re fighting now, only 80’s style (which I assume means the war paint was way more colorful, the hair was bigger, and the soundtrack was gayer). Why did Betamax fail? We can cut this down to two basic reasons: 1) It was more expensive and 2) Sony didn’t know what their customers wanted. They made a product that, in terms of sheer quality, was better than the rivaling VHS. But they didn’t invest any time doing research into features that people ultimately wanted in a video cassette player/recorder and so it faded into obscurity.
2. The Minidisc - Was supposed to be the successor to the CD and failed miserably… In the US, at least. I hear it did well in Japan. Again, I think the problem here was that Sony didn’t ask themselves “What does the customer want?”. What would’ve been my reason for trading in CDs, which were ubiquitous at the time, for a format that needs a specialized player and, in a few cases, software to work. Answer: there isn’t. Bye bye Minidisc.
3. ATRAC - Cool! Sony’s answer to the MP3. The only problem with this was that MP3s worked on ALL devices that supported them, not just shitty Walkmans.
4. Memory Stick - This wasn’t as unforgivable as the past three in terms of failure. Sony makes, well, pretty much every kind of electronic under the sun, so it makes sense for them to create a small Flash-based storage system that would work well between devices. Like all of the aforementioned Sony attempts, this died a fairly quick death at the hands of the other, more popular storage formats (SD, CompactFlash, etc).
5. Blu Ray - Wooooaaah. Hold the phone. A quality format from Sony backed by almost every other major player in the game except Toshiba and Microsoft? Way to go, Sony. What’s that? You’re going to incorporate the technology into your latest gaming console so that it can penetrate two markets simultaneously? That’s a pretty good idea. It’s also awesome that your proprietary discs hold about 10GB more than the competing format. I’m sure the pirates of the digital world won’t be too happy with all the layers of security, but I bet that helps sway the favor of movie studio in your direction. Sony, I’m proud of you. ::pats Sony on the head::

That’s right. It took them almost two decades, but I think Sony finally got it right. In the coming months, over 75% of movies coming to High Def formats will be exclusively Blu Ray. For once in the history of Sony making products, I hope they come out as a winner.

Well, it’s that time of year again, when the Consumer Electronics Show hits Vegas with a vengeance. I simultaneously love and hate it because, on one hand, the new technologies coming from every manufacturer there are oft breathtaking. On the other hand, though, I hate the fact that a majority of the new technologies that are so incredible a) often times don’t get released for months (or in some cases, years) and b) I don’t have the money to buy it all up immediately.

This is the only time of year that I get antsy when it comes to electronics because it’s such a great time of year for all of us, the consumers. The profits earned by manufacturers from Black Friday until December 31st, 11:59 are reinvested into the companies in the form of R&D, design & branding, and general product awareness in various forms of advertising.

After consulting with my crystal ball, I sense two things are imminent:

1. I’ll be broke relatively soon, due to the upgrading of my AV equipment (I’m currently accepting donations for this beauty)
2. I’ll be the most popular kid on the block and everyone will want to play video games with me!

This is perhaps the most innovative use of 18,500 gallons of paint EVER.

http://www.bravia-advert.com/paint/thead/full

I’m sure the aesthetic change is quite apparent, but some of the behind-the-scenes stuff going on at Blogger are really impressing me. It’s incredibly easy to customize your page layout, colors, and content. You don’t even need to know HTML anymore, it’s all WYSIWYG. They’ve also added a pretty keen tagging system, which I can use to label similar posts. I’ve gone back in time a few posts to see just to tag some posts accordingly and I’m pleased with the results. Innovations in others sparks creativity in myself, so you can expect many more blogs from now on. It is my deepest hope to write in here at least every other day, even if it’s the most mundane detail of my life. Practice makes perfect, and writing in here will certainly help me out with some of my other projects.