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My "Last Minute Mostly Non-Obvious Tech Holiday Gift Guide" for 2007 has been posted over at LiveDigitally. (Also, AT&T Tech Channel interviewed me and pulled excerpts out into four video segments: 12/10/07 – Power, 12/12/07 – Web browsing and music, 12/14/07 For the videophile, and 12/17/07 – For the road warrior. A mirror of the text can also be found at Greengart.com.) Happy shopping, -avi
Last Minute Holiday Gift Guide 2007 Read MoreUsually the invitations you get from PR firms are either a) inflated and non-specific or b) specific, but require a non-disclosure agreement. For an example of Type A: "come see how we will revolutionize the digital music industry." I actually got an invitation with this exact wording this year. Since it didn’t have any details or come from a company with even an outside shot at revolutionizing anything, it mostly served to amuse me for a second before I hit "delete." I can’t provide an example of Type B, for obvious reasons, but many vendors will give you a preview …
CES 2008: Vizio to launch 50″ 1080p plasma for $1499 Read MoreI’m setting up my CES 2008 schedule, and, as usual, my focus will be on mobile devices (my day job), not home theater. In addition to the usual press conferences and meetings, I’m moderating the CES GPS session this year. Still, some of the larger consumer electronics companies have product lines that span both mobile devices and home theater, so I often get a chance to see new displays, projectors, and sound systems while I’m at CES by default. Which brings me to Panasonic: I just realized that I happened to select Panasonic products for both of the new displays …
CES 2008: Do I Really Want to Know? Read MoreLike most people setting up a home theater, my front projection choices are limited by room placement and budget. When review units come in, I typically set them up on a short table for as long as I have the device, but for my personal unit I want to ceiling mount it out of the way. My ceiling is extremely low (7′), so projectors with extreme offset angles (the image ends up projected several feet below the lens) – like some of Optoma’s recent DLP’s – simply won’t work. The new crop of budget LCD 1080p projectors look like good …
Front Projection: Decisions, Decisions Read MoreI hit up six different stores recently trying to pick a 50” plasma to replace my 52” JVC LCoS rear projection 720p HDTV which is now three years old. The goal is to regain a foot of space in the room and then move to a larger front projection system (the screen hangs in front of the TV); the TV is used for broadcast material with the lights on, while the projector is used for movie watching with the lights off. I could have asked vendors to send over review units and then buy whichever one performed the best, but …
Shopping for a New TV Read MoreSometimes all you need is a simple product that does one thing, and does it well – at an affordable price. If you have an HDTV with only a single HDMI input and multiple HDMI sources, you need an HDMI switcher. New displays may have multiple inputs, and A/V receivers are beginning to provide HDMI switching as a matter of course, so if you’re building a system from scratch, you may be able to consolidate your video switching in your reciever or display rather than buy a separate component. Finally, if you have just a single HDMI component, you won’t …
Product Review: XTremeMac HD Switcher Read MoreThe Leichtman Research Group (an ex-Yankee Group analyst) put out a press release with some interesting stats on consumer HD awareness. LRG claims that over 75% of HDTV owners believe that they are watching HD programming, but LRG estimates that "about 53% of all HD households are actually watching HD programming from a multi-channel video provider (cable, DBS or a telco), and about 4% are watching HD programming via broadcast-only – leaving about 20% of those with an HDTV erroneously thinking that they are watching HD programming when they are not." That may actually be better than previous studies, which …
Consumers Still Think They Have HD When They Don’t Read MoreI’ve been trying to catch up with my reading – nearly a year’s worth of home theater magazines have piled up. One thing I’ve noticed is an increased emphasis on flat panel TVs – no surprise there, as that category accounts for an enormous amount of sales activity. What I found odd was the sheer amount of coverage mobile devices now get in these publications. Sure, I expect convergence in Sound & Vision, which has steadily moved in that direction for years. But Home Theater Magazine? Aside from the odd TV with an SD card slot, what do digital cameras …
When did my day job kill my hobby? Read MoreNow that we’re done fixing up the home theater after the April flooding (new paint, new trim, new flooring) and a tree that fell (new siding and external cable connections), I’m buying all new gear and hope to start writing more formal equipment reviews. But first, it’s time to revisit an old review. It’s been 2 1/2 years since I first wrote about LG’s LST3510A combination HDTV tuner/upconverting DVD player, but post-flood I’m using it differently – as a "free" HDTV cable box. Some background: In Northern NJ, Cablevision sends out its basic HDTV channels unscrambled using the QAM format …
Update to an Old Review: LG LST3510A Read MoreEngadget just posted a nice wrap-up of their CEDIA coverage. (I was not able to attend CEDIA; after Nokia’s big London event last week, I went to RIM and Motorola events this week and even had to follow the Apple announcements from afar due to scheduling). The big news both at CEDIA and in the press last month is around the HD-DVD Blu-ray war; HD-DVD gained a studio just when it appeared Blu-ray was pulling away with software sales, and both Samsung and LG have new dual-format players coming to market demonstrated at the show. Back in January at CES, …
State of HD Disc War Read More