Category: Consumer electronics
March 20th, 2008
HDMI survival guide for home theater
There’s a lot of money to be made in the HDMI cabling and switch aftermarket and unfortunately that means a lot of consumers are getting tricked in to paying outrageous prices. I’ve spent quite a bit of time helping my friends set up their home theaters recently and I thought I’d share that knowledge with my readers. If you’re tired of paying high hundreds of dollars for HDMI switches and HDMI cables, read on.
What is HDMI?
HDMI is a high speed digital interface for the transmission of high quality digital audio and digital video. So if you plug your DVD player, your PlayStation 3, your satellite or cable TV box, or even your computer up to a modern HDTV with a single HDMI cable, then the sound and picture will all work. The HDMI plug only has a single small connector so it’s nice and simple. Before HDMI, you had to hook up three separate connectors for just the video and two additional RCA plugs for stereo sound. Instead of the two RCA plugs, you could also use an S/PDIF optical cable for the sound but it still adds a lot of cable complexity and clutter compared to a single HDMI cable.
Why are there different HDMI types?
There are 4 basic versions of HDMI. You have 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 and you can get a quick summary of the capability of each version here. The easy answer is the higher the number, the better. If you’re shopping now, try to stick with the HDMI 1.3 devices if you can.
Do I need monster HDMI cables?
No, HDMI monster cables are simply a monster rip-off. If a cable is HDMI certified, it will by definition offer you a perfect digital signal. Despite the fact that the electrical signals traversing an HDMI cable degrade as a cable gets longer, it will still offer perfect digital transmission so long as the signal loss or distortion is within a certain tolerance. Analog cables might benefit from extra thickness and insulation because there’s not much you can do to fix analog signal loss or distortion other than to amplify and maybe filter the signal a little to mitigate the bad side effects. But when it comes to digital technology, the signal is either all there or it isn’t. There is zero measurable difference in the digital signal quality between the $6 HDMI cable and the $60 monster HDMI cable.
Where do I buy cheap HDMI cables?
There are lots of online vendors that can be found via a quick Google search of “HDMI 1.3 cable”. These cables suppliers have always been reliable in my experience and they’re many times cheaper than the local retailer. Here’s a few examples I compiled.
- 3 foot HDMI 1.3a cable $5
- 15 foot HDMI 1.3a CL2 rated cable $24
- 25 foot HDMI 1.3a CL2 rated cable $42
- 30 foot HDMI 1.3a cable $64 (bought for friend’s project)
- 60 meter (197 feet) HDMI 1.3a CAT5e extender kit $199
<Next page - Can I split or switch multiple input/output HDMI sources?>
March 11th, 2008
Building the 200 inch 1080p HDTV
Yesterday I helped my friend build his 200 inch 1080p HDTV for his entertainment room and it was a beast of a task. But when it was all said and done, I think he was quite happy. Pictured above and below is me standing in front of the display. [See gallery for larger images.]
In the photo above, you can see how I’m dwarfed by the characters on the screen by the life-like images from the movie “300″ (HD DVD format).
Using the $2700 street price Panasonic PT-AE2000U 1920×1080 projector, we worked hard to mount it on to the ceiling. Pictured above is the projector with the mount installed on the bottom. [Update 3/14/2008 - Note that the special paint used for the reflective wall and the undercoating used cost around 300 Euros. I would imagine that the prices in the US are a little cheaper though. I should also point out that the universal projector mount costs around $150.]
Pictured above is our handy work in mounting the thing. It wasn’t easy but we got it done. Drilling through that solid concrete material destroyed 2 drill bits and it wasn’t easy until we got higher quality drill bits and a powerful drill.
This is the front of the projector hanging upside down from the ceiling. You can use software control to flip the image upside down so it’s right side up.
On top of the projector (or below in this case) are two optical lens shift dials that allow you to optically shift left/right 40% and up/down 100% without any keystoning effects or resorting to ugly digital keystone adjustments.
Here’s the back of the unit with just the power cord and HDMI 1.3 cable plugged in. We purchased a good 30 foot long HDMI 1.3 cable off a Google search for $50 and it works quite wonderfully. Remember, digital is digital is digital so long as it works. Too many people spend $150 on even shorter cables and it’s a big scam.
March 2nd, 2008
Intel christens Silverthorne as "Atom"
Intel has officially announced its new branding for the “Silverthorne” processor and the “Menlow” platform. The Silverthorne processor will be called the “Intel Atom”. The Menlow platform will be called “Intel Centrino Atom”. The Intel Atom processor will be used in the Intel Centrino Atom platform. The new Atom logos are shown below.
Intel released technical details of the new Silverthorne processor last month at ISSCC 2008. This latest announcement gives Silverthorne and Menlow their official branding and their official logos. Intel also released high resolution die shots at the right hand side of their press release. A cut down rotated version of the die shot is shown below.
Here’s a summary of the new “Atom” processor:
- Equivalent on single-threaded performance to original Pentium M “Banias” processor. Faster if SSE3 instructions are used in the application or if multiple threads are involved.
- 0.6W TDP (Thermal Design Power) to 2.5W TDP
- Up to 1.8 GHz and DailyTech says sources inside Intel are saying that the 500 MHz version goes down to 0.6W TDP.
- Idle power consumption can drop as low as 0.01W to 0.1W
- Deep power down C6 state
- Optimized register-file and cache 6T bits cells
- CMOS mode on quad-pumped FSB IO
- Split IO power supply
- Single CPU core 2-issue in-order pipeline
- SMT (Symmetric Multithread) architecture
- 25mm^2 die size (2500 CPUs per 300mm diameter wafer)
- Can achieve 2GHz core frequencies at 1.0V
- Intel VT (Virtualization Technology)
- Intel 64 architecture (formerly EM64T and compatible with AMD64)
Intel’s press release also mentions the processor codenamed “Diamondville”. DailyTech reported some leaked information that Diamondville would be released in a single and dual-core version at 4W and 8W TDP. Diamondville will be soldered on to an Intel 945GSE chipset motherboard and judging from the photo, it looks to be a replacement for the D201GLY and D201GLY2 developing market platforms. The Intel D201GLY2 uses a lower power Celeron 220 (Core Solo architecture) with a TDP of 17W so Diamondville is a huge boost in energy efficiency. The current D201GLY and D201GLY2 also utilizes a third party SIS chipset which doesn’t support S3 sleep/suspend states while the Diamondville 945GSE platform will.
Given the fact that it’s highly unlikely (too expensive) that Intel would design a whole separate CPU for this type of a solution, it is very possible that Diamondville is simply a soldered-on-motherboard derivative of Silverthorne and the dual-core version is simply an MCM (Multi Chip Module) version of Silverthorne. AnandTech’s Anand Lal Shimpi seems to agree with this theory and goes on to explain that the slightly higher TDP with slightly lower 1.6 GHz clock is simply due to a higher voltage allowing for much higher yields. Since this is for the low-cost value market segment, that theory makes a lot of sense.
At present time Intel seems to be hinting that Diamondville will also carry the “Atom” branding but they’re vague on the specifics. What is certain is that the emerging market will enter in to a whole new level of energy efficiency and the appliance/embedded do-it-yourselfers like me are drooling over Diamondville’s power specifications.
February 19th, 2008
One year till death of analog TV in USA
Analog TV will no longer be broadcast one year from today on February 19th 2009, are you ready for the conversion to digital TV? This may or may not affect you so here’s what you need to know to avoid losing TV reception!
The first question to answer is whether this government mandated change to over-the-air digital TV will affect you. If you have any older TV that depends on rabbit ears or external UHF/VHF antennas for analog TV reception, you will no longer get any TV reception a year from today. If you’re already using cable or satellite for TV reception, you have nothing to worry about. If you have a newer TV that supports the ATSC standard for either standard definition and/or high definition reception, then skip the coupon section below to the antenna section.
If you have an older TV that relies on analog TV signals, there is good news for you but you better act fast. The US government has a $40 coupon program that can either cover some or all of the cost of a converter box. You need to apply for it here and each household is entitled to two coupons but there are a finite number of coupons so you need to act before they run out. Once you’ve obtained the coupons in the mail, you can buy one of these certified converter boxes priced between $40 and $70. Update 7:15AM - There are a total of 33.5 million coupons available and as of right now for this update, roughly 3.3 million coupons have already been ordered. Last week the count was 2.9 million ordered.
You’re not home free yet since your existing rabbit ears on your TV set won’t work anymore. At the very least you’ll need an indoor passive antenna or a powered indoor antenna like this Philips amplified UHF/VHF antenna which sells for as little as $20 online or $48 at Circuit City. If you already have one of these antennas you can hook it up and give it a try as soon as you get the coupon and converter box and see if you can get all the digital TV channels you want.
Ideally, you need an outdoor UHF antenna which typically sell for $40 to $80 but the hard part is running the coax cable from the roof to the TV. You’ll typically need around 100 feet or more of RG-6 cabling to attach the outdoor antenna to your TV which costs around $20 online. If you already have a roof antenna and the cabling in place, you’re really in luck. AntennaWeb.org has some great information on choosing antennas and others pointed out that http://tvfool.com is great too. With a good antenna in place, it will allow you to receive free standard definition digital television over the air. You can even get high definition digital reception with any of the HDTVs sold in the last year for as little as $400.
February 19th, 2008
Cracking open a Toshiba HD-A30 HD DVD player
Updated 3:00AM - By now the news is out that the end of HD DVD might be near since Toshiba is considering its options that may include the possibility of stopped production on HD DVD products is confirmed dead. There are more than a million HD DVD owners, two exclusive HD DVD studios, and the adult movie industry who are now left holding the bag on an optical disk format with no future.
While it may be a sad day that the more affordable and fully-baked format lost, I know many friends who bought one of these sub-$150 players as a great 1080i or 1080p up-converting DVD player which happen to come with 7 HD DVD movies. A common consensus is that while Blu-ray may have “won” the format wars, a lot of people aren’t in the mood to jump over to the $300 Blu-ray set-top boxes that can’t be upgraded to Blu-ray profile 2.0 next year and they’ll be left with another obsolete high definition player.
Since I have the opportunity to review my friend’s Toshiba HD-A30 which is the pinnacle of HD DVD set-top boxes and might be the last production HD DVD drive ever, I thought I’d crack it open and take a look inside. See higher resolution gallery here.
This $150 1080p up-converting HD DVD player comes with 2 HD DVD movies (300 and Borne Identity) out of the box. It also has a coupon offer for an additional 5 free HD DVD movies. Given the fact that a discount HD DVD movie goes for $15 while the newer ones are $25, this seems to be worth at least $105 in HD DVD movies. The fact that existing DVDs look great on it when played on a 1080i or 1080p display seems to be a nice bonus.
Just what we need, another remote control to add to my collection of dozens of remote controls. This remote seems to be a simple and straight forward infrared remote with no backlighting and it works well enough. The menus in the HD DVD titles are fairly responsive and they work and overlay the main feature while the movie is playing.
Here’s the Toshiba HD-A30 unit sitting on a table and it’s fairly small and light weight. I measured idle power consumption to be around 22 watts and peak consumption around 28 watts during HD DVD playback which is a vast improvement over the first generation HD DVD players which consumed around 60 to 80 watts. Boot times still seem a bit disappointing at one minute long and there’s no low-power sleep state with instant wake but this seems to be a problem with the Blu-ray set-top boxes as well.
After popping off a few screws on the Toshiba HD-A30, the cover came off. You can also see what the back looks like. It comes with an RCA audio/video standard definition output, an HDMI HDCP output, an analog component HD output, and a S/PDIF digital audio output. The Ethernet port is standard on all HD DVD players for future upgradeability and interactive features.
Here’s a topside view of the Toshiba HD-A30 with the covers off. It’s a fairly simple device with an embedded motherboard with CPU and graphics processors on the right, an HD DVD ROM drive on the left, and an open frame power supply on the lower left. The very first Toshiba HD DVD drive used a Pentium 4 2.4 GHz processor while this one uses something that has much lower power consumption with passive cooling. Since the CPU heat sink was glued on, I didn’t want to rip it off and damage my friend’s unit so I didn’t see what the chip was. The memory, GPU, and CPU are all soldered directly on to the motherboard. In theory, this would make a decent $150 media extender that hooks up to any high-definition monitor if we could put in a hacked operating system. In theory it could be turned in to a computer but it lacks USB ports for hooking up input devices.
The Toshiba HD-A30 seems to be using a miniature 40-pin PATA IDE connector for the optical drive and a small 3.5″ floppy drive power connector. You can see the thin 40-pin ribbon taped down to the chassis.
This is a close-up of the motherboard.
February 11th, 2008
Are AVCHD camcorders the next HD lie?
When I wrote “Don’t believe the low bit-rate ‘HD’ lie” with a comparison, I had no idea that these compromises in quality would apply to the latest consumer HD camcorder format called AVCHD as well. When I first read about the AVCHD format with its use of MPEG4-AVC (H.264) video compression at a maximum of 24 mbps versus HDV which uses the older MPEG-2 format at 25 mbps, I was very excited about the new format. My enthusiasm dampened when I read the fine print that actual AVCHD implementation only uses 13 to 17 mbps MPEG4-AVC for compatibility with cheaper storage devices and it completely sunk when I read this excellent in-depth review from camcorderinfo.com. Take a look at the screenshots below and it pains me to see how much detail is lost in the newer HD format.
| Comparison of HDV versus AVCHD Image credit: camcorderinfo.com. Lossless 1:1 crop. |
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| Canon HG10 Bitrate: 13 to 15 Mbps MPEG4-AVC aka H.264 AVCHD camcorder format 1920×1080 60i |
Canon HV20 Bitrate: 24 Mbps MPEG-2 aka H.262 HDV camcorder format 1440×1080 60i (anamorphic) |
The reason this comparison is so significant is that that both cameras have the same 2,960,000 pixel 1/2.7 inch CMOS sensor. The only difference is the video compression, the bitrate, and the storage medium. This flies in the face of conventional wisdom that says that MPEG4-AVC H.264 video compression can use 25% to 50% less bitrate to achieve the same quality level as MPEG-2 compression. I’ve always suspected those numbers were inflated as an excuse to get people to believe that low-bitrate HD is the same as high-bitrate HD if better codecs where used, but even I didn’t think it was this bad.
It’s gotten so bad that I’ve seen whitepapers from vendors that try to push the idea that 4 to 6 mbps using MPEG4-AVC H.264 is equivalent to 18 mbps broadcast MPEG-2 HD video. The problem is that these loose definitions of “equivalent” only compares perceived level of artifacts and not the loss of detail. Now I’m perfectly willing to acknowledge that the above comparison may be partially attributed to a poor implementation of H.264 video compression, but the bitrate has to be a huge deciding factor. The article from camcorderinfo.com also seems to suggest that they haven’t found a single AVCHD camcorder that doesn’t have low detail.
AVCHD is the second consumer HD camcorder format designed for DVD, Hard Drive, or SDHC flash memory recording designed as an alternative to the older HDV format which usually records to miniDV tape. Because DVDs and flash drives are often capacity and write-throughput constrained, AVCHD camcorder makers have typically stuck with 13 to 15 mbps bitrates. While Class 4 SDHC flash cards have write throughput of 32 mbps, cheaper Class 2 SDHC flash cards have a write throughput of 16 mbps and the camcorder makers don’t want to exclude Class 2 SDHC flash cards. Longer recording times on 8 or 16 GB flash cards obviously played in to the decision process.
It would seem logical that camcorder companies like should offer a max quality mode but perhaps they’re gambling on the fact that most consumers will never know the difference. This is really a shame since AVCHD random access storage is a much friendlier consumer format with drag-n-drop simplicity when transferring videos to the PC. You simply put the SDHC in to your card reader on your computer or you hook up a USB 2.0 cable to the camcorder and you merely drag the files to your computer between 30 to 200 mbps.
With HDV, you have to deal with the hassles of something like Windows Vista Movie Maker which forces you to rewind the tape to the beginning and stream the video over in real-time at a fixed 30 mbps. Buying an alternative video editing package will at least let you pick and choose what you want to record, but it doesn’t solve the speed problem. The other problem with miniDV is that it’s very hard to preview what you’ve shot since you have to rewind the tape. Sometimes if you don’t put the tape in the right position, you can accidentally wipe valuable footage. It’s really a shame that AVCHD camcorder makers have botched the implementation because the format has real potential in the consumer market.
Note: JVC seems to at least be avoiding the low-bitrate pitfall with their hard drive based models like the GZ-HD7 which offers a high-bitrate MPEG-2 format. This is essentially an HDV format for hard drive instead of a miniDV tape and the 60 GB hard drive provides approximately 4 hours of recording versus one hour on miniDV tapes. This seems to be a good compromise since you get high-bitrate HDV format with the benefit of random access storage and fast drag-n-drop video transfers. Camcorderinfo.com reviewed the GZ-HD7 here with quality lower than the best HDV camcorders but better quality than AVCHD camcorders. While the recording format was better, the low light performance wasn’t great.
One saving grace that’s less applicable to the consumer space is the HDMI output on newer AVCHD camcorders. For small independent filmmakers, they can hook up a computer with a $250 HDMI capture card with very fast RAID storage capable of 1.5 to 3 gigabits per second and capture raw uncompressed HD video. In this application, the recording format in the camera is irrelevant since the PC records the video uncompressed. But when you’re shooting at this level of quality, you’re probably going to use a much more expensive camcorder than a cheap $1000 consumer variety. The kind of HD video quality you get these days with relatively cheap equipment is unparalleled in the history of the video industry. High quality video equipment is no longer cost prohibitive to independent filmmakers and the only thing that limits quality is imagination and talent.
January 25th, 2008
Turning any monitor in to a 3D VR display
After seeing the above video sent to me by Justin James, I only have one thing to say: Give Jonny his PhD! Johnny Lee is a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University who took a standard Nintendo Wii remote and turned a monitor in to something special. You can check out the video above and actually find a sample program here on his website. You can find Wii Remotes for $40 at places like Amazon.com and you may also need a Bluetooth USB dongle for $10.
This is one of those things that you just have to see to believe, it is that amazing. Forget those silly looking 3D glasses that mimic stereoscopic vision, this is way better and I want it on all my computers yesterday!
One thing that I’d like to see is a webcam version of this and I’m going to send a note to Mr. Lee. My Logitech webcam already has software in it that can track bare eyeballs so it removes the need for funky eye glasses with infrared emitters and you can just sit in front of any monitor with a webcam and use it as a 3D portal. I just salivate at the mere thought of playing any 3D game in front of this thing but I’d love to be able to do it without wearing anything on my face.
If you check out some of Mr. Lee’s other projects, he has some pretty cool stuff in there like turning any display in to a multi-touch display. The man is now my new hero and he is a stud amongst geeks.
January 18th, 2008
Here's what fake HD video looks like
After this morning’s piece “Don’t believe the low bit-rate ‘HD’ lie“, I thought I would follow up and show you want crappy HD looks like. The following is a sample from AVSForum user Xylon who digitally ripped some images from DIRECTV and Dish Networks satellite service 1.5 years ago. Note that both of these are delivering less than half the 19.2 bit-rate of ATSC over-the-air broadcast HD so neither example is all that great. I linked to the forum and cropped out the image at 1:1 size and posted the samples for a side-by-side comparison below but you can click to see the full-size images.
| DIRECTV HD @ 8.25 mbps | Dish “HD” @ 9.10 mbps |
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Source/credit: Xylon @ AVSForum
Apparently, DIRECTV switched from 1920×1080 resolution HD video to highly compressed 1280×1080 so they can shove a lot more channels on to their service which users not-so-lovingly named “HD Lite“. As you can see above, the DIRECTV image to the left absolutely stinks compared to the not-so-great sample from Dish on the right. This apparently angered a lot of DIRECTV customers and one such customer Peter Cohen actually filed a class action lawsuit.
Even the Dish example on the right above sucks compared to broadcast HDTV and that the hair is blurred and blended in. But everyone’s rushing to announce their “100 channel HD” service when all they’re doing is squeezing twice as many channels down the same pipe. Now imagine what happens when you try to cut the bit-rate down by a factor of 4 like Apple’s iTune HD rental service or you try to cut it down 10 times like some websites. Granted the usage of higher-end codecs like H.264/MPEG4-AVC or VC-1 can lessen the losses in quality, but no compression technology in the world can handle fast changing video with low bit-rates without severe degradation. People often hear MPEG-4 and the knee-jerk reaction is that it’s automatically better than MPEG-2 because they see a bigger number but that’s only true if it’s at or almost the same bit-rate.
In light of the fact that 8 mbps 1280×1080 video gets you sued, you have to wonder what Steve Jobs is thinking when he says Blu-ray and HD DVD will get killed by download services such as his newly launched 4 mbps 720p “HD” iTunes movie rental service. I guess if consumers believe the lie that you can do HD with these low bit-rate downloads, then Steve might be right. But with cheap 42 inch 1920×1080 full 1080p LCD and Plasma panels coming out spring this year at less than $1400, consumers are going to be in for a surprise when they see the difference between the free stuff coming over the airwaves versus the crap they actually pay for coming from Satellite and download services.
Video quality reference table from best to worst:
(Some data might be outdated, missing, or approximate but I will update)
| Source/service | CODEC | Resolution | Bit-rate |
| Blu-ray | H.264 or MPEG2 | 1920×1080 1080i/p | 40 |
| HD DVD | H.264 or VC-1 | 1920×1080 1080i/p | 28 |
| ATSC HDTV | MPEG2 | 1920×1080 1080i/p | 19.39 |
| Digital cable | MPEG2 | 1920×1080 1080i/p | ~ 16 |
| Verizon FiOS Video on demand |
MPEG2 | 1920×1080 1080i | 15 |
| DISH HD | MPEG2/MPEG4 | 1440×1080 | < 10 |
| DIRECTV HD | MPEG2/MPEG4 | 1280×1080 | < 10 |
| IPTV | H.264 | ? | < 10 |
| Xbox Live Video | VC-1 | 1280×720 720p | 6.8 |
| DVD | MPEG2 | 720×480 480i * | 8 |
| Apple iTunes | QuickTime/H.264 | 1280×720 720p | 4 |
| Web “HD” downloads | H.264 | 1280×720 720p | 1.5 |
* Can up-scale well up to 1080i or 1080p because of reasonable bit-rate.
January 18th, 2008
Don't believe the low bit-rate 'HD' lie
Update 6:00PM - Here’s what fake HD video looks like.
Last week at CES, Comcast announced their “HD” video on demand download service over its future DOCSIS 3.0 that allows 4 minute downloads of entire HD movies. Attendees at MacWorld this week were told that disk-based HD formats like HD DVD and Blu-ray are essentially obsolete because you can simply download “HD” movies from your Apple TV 2.0 box on demand. Microsoft started offering HD downloads for the XBOX360 starting in late 2006. You can even watch “HD” videos from ABC right from the web. There are even YouTube competitors that offer user uploaded “HD” content. There’s just one minor little problem, it’s not HD.
As I’ve tried to educate my readers last year with my blog “Why HD movie downloads are a big lie“, these so-called HD movies use very low bit-rates compared to even standard definition DVDs let alone something like HD DVD or Blu-ray DVD. Raw uncompressed 1080p video at 60 frames per second is about 3000 mbps so even HD DVD’s 28 mbps needs to be compressed about 107 to 1 with the H.264 or VC-1 codec. By all reasonable standards this needs to be the minimum bit-rate for acceptable loss in quality on 1080p video.
Updated 4:30PM - Standard definition 480i DVD movies are typically 5 to 8 mbps (megabits per second) MPEG-2 whereas these so-called HD wannabes weigh in at a pathetic 1.5 to 4 mbps of 720p H.264. Apple’s new HD service is capable of 4 mbps which simply isn’t enough to be considered HD. XBOX360 downloads are 6.8 mbps 720p VC-1 so they’re semi-decent borderline HD. Marketing will push the nicer sounding “720p” aspect of the video but they don’t tell you it’s way too compressed to offer good video fidelity. Blu-ray has a maximum bit-rate of 40 mbps while HD DVD offers a maximum of 28 mbps. Over the air broadcasts can be up to 24 19.38 mbps.
Modern video compression codecs like H.264 or VC-1 can hide these compression artifact problems much better than MPEG-2 video compression but there’s only so much it can do. At best you might get away 50% more compression over older compression technology but 1.5 to 4 mbps H.264 will not be better than 8 mbps MPEG-2 under most video complexity requirements. The only time 4 mbps 720p will look better than 8 mbps 480i is when the video on the screen is almost entirely stationary or it’s a low-complexity video such as animation movies. Under most normal circumstances, the low bit-rate 720p so-called “HD” video will be inferior though many companies are betting that consumers won’t know any better.
So the bottom line is that so-called “HD” video from Microsoft’s XBOX360 HD download service and Apple’s new Apple TV service or any other web download service is simply not HD by any respectable definition. These companies cannot and should not use the “HD” name with video that is lower fidelity than standard DVD. As for Comcast, there’s not much detail on it but I highly doubt it’s more than 4 to 8 mbps even on DOCSIS 3.0 because its 160 mbps total capacity is divided between 50 to 400 customers. Only FiOS technology with its massive 620 mbps per 32-user capacity and possibly U-Verse (but slower than real time) has sufficient last-mile capacity to deliver true HD movie downloads at the quality of HD DVD and Blu-ray technology.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t buy these services from Apple, or other services that offer low bit-rate 720p video downloads, but consumers must be aware of the fact that they’re slightly worse than a 1080p up-converted DVD. Microsoft’s XBOX service is border-line HD that is slightly better than DVD but nowhere near 1080i over-the-air HD broadcast quality.
January 11th, 2008
Lesson from CES: Wait a few months for new gadgets
Updated 12:10PM - If you’re in the market for new gadgets, wait a few months for the new gear shown this year at CES. You’ll see items like the pocket sized Panasonic 3CCD 1080p (24p) camera at this end of this quarter as will many other items. The last thing you want to do is buy something only to see something better for the same price a month later.
Another product that really caught my eyes were the small OLED displays on devices like the $350 Samsung NV24HD digital photo camera that also doubles as a 720p digital H.264 video camera. While I didn’t get to examine the photos from the device, I saw the 2.5″ AMOLED and it shined like a jewel with the vivid contrast ratios and wide color gamut. I can’t wait to try one of these things out in photo and video mode. Update: Janice Chen notes that Kodak has a similar model that also shoots 720p for $250. It lacks the AMOLED display but it has a 3.0″ touch screen. The price makes it sound like a great choice if you can do without the more vivid preview display.
Panasonic isn’t about to cede the big screen plasma HDTV market to LCDs without a fight. Its new line of Viera Plasma displays feature true native contrast ratios of 30000:1. These new plasma displays cut power consumption by 30% while raising brightness by 30%. So instead of a 50″ plasma hogging 500 watts of power while displaying white, it now only hogs 350 watts of power in peak mode. These displays will be released around the end of this quarter.
LCDs on the other hand are catching up in the contrast ratio department but they have the advantage of better brightness and lower power consumption especially when dynamic contrast technology is included and in use. All the new large screen LCDs are coming out with 120 Hz capability and inter-frame interpolation.
January 10th, 2008
Sharp shows off true 100K contrast ratio LCDs at 1" thick
On day 3 of my CES experience, I saw two prototype LCDs at Sharp’s booth that absolutely knocked me on my behind. The two one inch thick LCDs at 52″ and 65″ diagonal size stood prominently at the middle of Sharp’s massive booth showing off 100,000 to 1 contrast ratios and a massive NTSC color gamut of 150%. If I had to describe to you what this level of color gamut means, it’s like looking at backlit film slides.
When I first read the specifications on the sign, I thought it was simply some another one of those inflated contrast ratio scores and perhaps this is why the press has largely ignored these two displays in their CES coverage. Everyone simply got use to those figures since LCD and Plasma vendors slap these ridiculously inflated dynamic contrast ratios of 100,000 or even 1,000,000 on their wares. But when I spoke to Sharp’s product marketing, they explained that 100,000 to 1 was the true native (static) contrast ratio. This was hard to believe since most LCDs have native contrast ratios between 800 or 1500 to 1. I asked how this was possible and Sharp simply explained that this was their brand new technology. By comparison, Panasonic’s latest Plasma technology due later this year “only” has a native contrast ratio of 30,000 to 1 which was absolutely amazing in its own right.
Then I looked closer at the video of planet earth in the pitch black space and indeed the blacks were pitch black while the earth glowed brightly. The contrast ratio in conjunction with the super wide color gamut made the picture absolutely stunning. Never mind that these were approximately 1″ thick displays; I would have been fine if it were 10″ thick if I could get this kind of color and contrast ratio. I guess everyone was fixated on the massive Sharp 108″ LCD that these sub 70″ beauties were overlooked.
The power consumption of this LCD wasn’t given, but LCDs are relatively efficient compared to their Plasma counter parts at a given size. When this technology could be made in to a product isn’t clear. I was initially told that it would be available later this year but the product marketing person later declined to say when it would be a product. As far as I’m concerned, I hope it’s sooner rather than later.
January 9th, 2008
Plasmas giving way to LCD technology at CES 2008
It seems like where ever you go at CES 2008, LCD technology dominates the show floor on everything from tiny 1″ LCD photo chains to massive 108″ LCD HDTVs. I checked with China-based Konka (OEM as Insignia at Best Buy) and they have given up on Plasma technology and are focusing exclusively on LCD. Their 46″ 1080p LCD HDTV will cost distributors around $800 so the prices continue to plummet.
Meanwhile, Plasma technology is being pushed in to the ultra high-end with exotic beasts like the Panasonic 150″ Plasma 4000×2000 pixel display. As LCDs increase in size, plasma displays will continue to lose ground in the 40 to 56 inch mainstream arena. Since plasma displays are power hogs, that might be a good thing.
January 9th, 2008
This ad brought to you via Bluetooth
I spoke to Tiffany Burns from iSign Media Corp at a CES party last night which offers some interesting if not controversial technology. This technology will send you spa, I mean advertisements to you via Bluetooth technology. Ms. Burns touted the fact that these ads were free since they weren’t eating up any cell phone time or racking up messaging charges, but my immediate reaction was what happens if the user doesn’t want to see the ad. Burns’ responded that the user can simply hit no on the yes/no dialog but I asked what if the user doesn’t even want to see these ads ever, not even the prompting. The response was to turn off Bluetooth which didn’t make me any more comfortable since people may not know or may not want to shut off Bluetooth on their cell phone.
Now I have my personal feelings about this technology but I want to hear what you have to say about this so I put up the following poll. Please feel free to comment in the talkback section too.
Loading ...January 8th, 2008
Panasonic's sub-$800 3CCD 1080p camcorder
Update 8:15AM - Note that 1080p is only in 24p mode.
Panasonic will release two new true (1920×1080) 1080p 24p 3CCD camcorders in March 2008 for a list price of $800 and $1100. That means both models will likely be under $1000 which illustrates how fast prices come down on new technology. Both models will have SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) flash memory slots but the larger model will also have a 60 GB hard drive built in. Both models shun the traditional IEEE 1394 Firewire port for standard USB 2.0 ports.
The smaller HDC-SD9 pictured below will be a flash only model allowing the use of SDHC flash cards of 4 to 32 GBs.
The slightly wider HDC-HS9 pictured below will house a 60 GB hard drive in addition to the SDHC slot.
Both models will continuously buffer 0.6 seconds of video as soon as the unit is powered on so that when you finally do shoot, your footage begins 0.6 seconds before you actually hit the record button.
Consumers may be confused by the lack of a Firewire port used by all digital video camcorders but this is actually a good thing. The older miniDV tape drive camcorders used a high speed 400 mbps firewire port but only allowed you to export movies at a snails pace of 28 mbps in real-time. These USB based units on the other hand essentially let you mount a drive as soon as you connect it to a PC and simply drag and drop the file over at up to 240 mbps sustained throughput if the camera and the storage device can keep up. Even if it doesn’t keep up, it will still be much faster than the old real-time method of copying tapes.
The random access nature of SDHC and Hard Drive storage also means you won’t need to worry about accidentally wiping out precious footage because you forgot to forward the tape to a point where you haven’t recorded yet. All these features and the price point of these new 1080p 3-chip camcorders are going to make 1080p video mainstream. If these two models live up to the specifications, it will be a compelling product. I’ll see if I can get a hands-on review.
December 23rd, 2007
How LCD makers inflate their contrast ratio scores
If you’ve ever wondered why contrast ratios claims of LCD monitors can swing so wildly from product to product, here’s the explanation:
There are “dynamic contrast ratios” and then there are “static contrast ratios”. Static contrast ratios is defined by the ratio of the brightest part of an LCD screen to the darkest part of an LCD screen that can be simultaneously displayed on the screen. Dynamic contrast ratios are measured by the darkest dark from one image to the brightest bright from another image being displayed at different times.
This is achieved by dynamically altering the brightness of the entire screen or darken the entire screen when scenes are mostly bright or are mostly dark. This increases the “blackness” of the screen during dark scenes and it increases the brightness of the lighter scenes.
This effectively allows LCD makers to claim a larger dynamic contrast ratio of “3000:1″ as oppose to a static contrast ratio of “800:1″. While this technique can definitely improve the video quality for some mostly bright scenes or mostly dark scenes, you can’t actually get that level of contrast on the screen and the actual contrast ratio is not altered.
So when you see these inflated contrast ratio scores, you’re not being lied to but the numbers are confusing. Having an LCD that dynamically shifts brightness is a desirable feature but it isn’t a substitute for true contrast ratios.
December 19th, 2007
Hitting 50W peak on a dual-core desktop computer
The 50W no-compromise dual-core commodity desktop PC is now a reality!I have some great news for the green computing world. The 50W no-compromise dual-core commodity desktop PC is now a reality! It all started a few months back when I looked in to the possibility of building a main stream dual-core desktop computer that can drop under 50 watts idle but now I’ve answered that question beyond all expectations. Using a 220W Sparkle SPI220LE “80 Plus” efficient power supply, an Intel E2140 1.6 GHz dual-core CPU running at lower-than-spec 0.95 volts, and a Gigabyte G33M-DS2R motherboard, the system comes in just under 50 watts at *PEAK* CPU load generated by WPrime running 2 threads. If I could only find a smaller 100 watt 80 Plus power supply and hit the optimum 50% loading at peak power consumption, then it might be possible to get peak system loads down to around 45 watts.
At idle the system uses 41 watts which is actually one watt higher than my sub-$400 All-in-One LCD PC with an ECS 945GCT-M motherboard and an Intel E2180 2.0 GHz dual-core running at stock speeds and voltage. It turns out that this G33M-DS2R board with E2140 CPU running at stock speeds and voltage has an idle system power of 46 watts which is 6 watts higher than the ECS board with E2180. This was surprising to me since the new G33 chipset has a more energy efficient memory controller than the 945 chipset.
Possible explanations are the fact that the G33-based motherboard was running the memory at 400 MHz base clock (DDR2-800 memory) whereas the 945-based motherboard was running the memory at 200 MHz. One other factor is the fact that the Gigabyte G33M-DS2R Intel G33-based motherboard has a 6-port SATA ICH9R RAID controller along with a few more memory and PCI ports. This leads me to think that the combination 2x the memory clock and more components translates to an additional 6 watts of power consumption.
The following idle/peak power consumption charts are from data I collected.
* SPI SPI220LE 220W 80+ PSU
** No system fan which saves 1W power
Gigabyte with Intel CPU = G33M-DS2R motherboard
Gigabyte AMD CPU = MA69GM-S2H motherboard
MSI with AMD CPU = K9AGM2-FIH motherboard
December 18th, 2007
Capital One customers experience data corruption
My colleague Justin James has issued a warning to all Capital One customers about data corruption in his blog titled “Capitol One: What’s in your database?“. If you’re a Capital One customer, I would highly recommend reading this so that you can save yourself some headaches.
But, at the end of the day, Capitol One committed more than one of the top 10 “thou shall not’s” in IT with this incident.
- It allowed data to be severely corrupted.
- It deployed code without an appropriate rollback or backout plan or path.
- It did not notify its customers despite that the mistake is costing its customers to have late payments, resulting in fees and credit history problems if uncorrected.
- It did not properly prepare the customer service team to handle the situation.
- It allowed the user to see that data had been corrupted, which has destroyed all trust in the system.
December 17th, 2007
How LCD makers lie to you about viewing angles
I was in a large computer store looking at computer LCD monitors and a lady was asking about which one was the better one to buy. A man (presumably her family) told her that the ones which indicated TFT (Thin Film Transistor) were the ones to buy. I then interjected that everything was TFT and it’s been that way since the extinction of those ugly STN passive matrix LCDs 8 years ago they use to sell with the cheaper laptops. Of course this invariably invited more questions as to which LCD was the better buy and better quality so I spent a few minutes showing them some of the shortcomings to many of these displays.
The first thing I noted was the poor viewing angle of every LCD on the display with the exception of a single model. To see this in effect, simply lower your head a few inches in front of the monitor and you will see the brightness of the entire display dim dramatically. Looking at the display from the bottom makes the image almost darken to the point of being black with some weird hues showing. Many of these displays don’t even look right when viewed at a slightly down angle since the color will change drastically. Case in point, look at the photos below of a typical LCD monitor which uses the most common TN (twisted nematic) technology.
Photo credit: Vincent Alzieu of BeHardware.com (quality review)
What’s extremely frustrating is that the manufacturer claims that this display has a vertical viewing angle of 160 degrees. Yet the image above came from a photograph shot at 50 degrees above and below which indicates a 100 degrees spread. If we wanted to be extremely generous, we could say that the top-down view pictured bottom left is barely acceptable (it isn’t as far as I’m concerned), but the bottom-up view is flat out atrocious and there is no way in hell you can tell me that’s an acceptable image at this viewing angle.
In reality, the usable viewing angle of this display vertically is about positive 35 degrees to negative 10 degrees at best and that’s being generous. But looking at the vendor specifications, there is no way that you as the consumer would know this when you’re making the purchase. Now I don’t have a problem with the actual specs at the price they’re selling it at, but I do have a big problem with the deceptive advertising.
Only one of the LCD monitors out of about 30 models being shown on the show floor was viewable from all angles and it was most likely using PVA (Patterned Vertical Alignment) technology but it was about 30% more expensive than other displays of comparable size. It looked like something like the image below which is actually quite viewable at any angle. Furthermore, these displays typically offer true 8 bit per color or even 10 bits per color whereas the TN type displays are limited to 6 bits per color.
Photo credit: Vincent Alzieu of BeHardware.com (quality review)
So the old adage that you get what you pay for holds true when it comes to LCD monitors, but manufacturers need to be honest with their customers. I purposely avoided singling out any single manufacturer because they all do the same thing, but this kind of deceptive advertising needs to stop.
Loading ...December 11th, 2007
Updated Skype patches critical and brings high quality video
After the long and embarrassing Skype global outage in August, you would think Skype would want to avoid further PR disasters. But now we find out that Skype patches high-risk flaw but didn’t warn the public for a month. Skype is a killer-app that is here to stay in the home and even business world and it is still the best-of-breed VoIP and video conferencing applications on the planet, but the public wants full transparency on these incidents. Covering up these things just turn a minor disaster it to a big one and it’s going to hurt Skype in the long run.
On the bright side, I’ve updated my version of Skype to 3.6.0.216 and I was pleasantly surprised by improved video conferencing quality in the update. To get improved video quality, you must have a dual-core processor, minimum 384 kbps upstream/downstream Internet, and a premium Logitech camera like the QuickCam Pro 9000 (I am an impressed owner).
Update 12/13/2007 - Skype updated to version 3.6.0.244 yesterday. It’s getting hard to keep track of these updates one after another.
November 29th, 2007
Updated sub-$400 all-in-one dual-core LCD PC images
I’ve put the top and bottom lid on my new sub-$400 all-in-one dual-core LCD PC and mounted an 802.11 b/g USB adapter to it so I can use the computer anywhere in the house. To keep the chassis cool, I drilled 5 large holes on the top board. I am still waiting for my female USB socket connectors that hook up to the USB leads on the motherboard so I’ve temporarily used one the venting holes to mount the USB Wi-Fi adapter. I also need to paint the thing black to match the color of the LCD and sand some things down. [See gallery, A computer's place is in the kitchen, for larger photos.]
The AIO computer is sitting on the corner of my kitchen dining table and there are no bulky ATX towers sitting on the floor or table.
This particular power strip is a bit bulky so I’m looking forward to finding something thinner that I can bolt to the bottom of the PC chassis. Having the extra power sockets right there on the computer is really nice to have.
When the computer isn’t being used or if it’s being used as a movie playback device, I can tuck the mouse and keyboard away taking up less room than a laptop sitting on the table.
To put this in to proper perspective, here’s the entire kitchen table with the AIO computer sitting at the edge of the table. It hardly takes any room and the table is wide open for eating. I finally had the kids eating at the kitchen table for once since I had a movie playing. Once I get an HDTV ATSC USB tuner dongle, this will also act as an HDTV with PVR capability along with wireless connectivity to a DVD library.
This is what the back looks like. It will be a lot less noticeable once it’s sanded and painted all black.
If you want to see what the insides look like, see the original image gallery.
Update 11/30/2007 - I’ve bolted a slimmer power strip to the bottom of the wood box and it’s a lot cleaner since I no longer have a loose power strip to worry about. It gives me extra AC ports for things like speakers or anything else that needs power.
George Ou is Technical Director of ZDNet. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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