Devices View – Page 13 – a Techsponential Company

CES 2008: Do I Really Want to Know?

December 18, 2007 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

I’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 …

Displays / HDTV

Front Projection: Decisions, Decisions

December 16, 2007 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

Like 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 …

Displays / HDTV / Industry

Shopping for a New TV

November 26, 2007 - by Avi Greengart - 3 Comments.

I 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 …

Accessories / Audio / Displays / HDTV

Product Review: XTremeMac HD Switcher

November 15, 2007 - by Avi Greengart - 3 Comments.

Sometimes 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 …

Displays / DVD / HDTV

Consumers Still Think They Have HD When They Don’t

November 14, 2007 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

The 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 …

Computing / Industry

When did my day job kill my hobby?

November 7, 2007 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

I’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 …

HDTV

Update to an Old Review: LG LST3510A

October 9, 2007 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

Now 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 …

DVD / Industry

State of HD Disc War

September 9, 2007 - by Avi Greengart - 2 Comments.

Engadget 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, …

Computing

Revisting Vista

August 10, 2007 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

My former colleague Joe Wilcox wrote a fairly damning column on Microsoft Vista yesterday, and I generally agree with his overall analysis. I have also written here in the past that I simply could not get Vista running reliably as a media center upgrade. And yet, somewhat surprisingly, my Vista box is now running well: no crashes, no problems connecting to peripherals, no problems. Four things have contributed to the updated (and happier) state of affairs: I reinstalled a fresh copy of Vista. That’s never a good solution, but my alternative was reinstalling XP (or trashing the box altogether), so …

Accessories / Computing

Logitech MX Air Blends HT and PC

July 13, 2007 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

Logitech introduced a new "mouse" yesterday, and I put "mouse" in quotation marks because it’s an interesting product that blends a PC mouse with a gyroscopic sensor (think Nintendo Wii’s controller and you have the right idea) and software that can be used as a remote control for watching media content on a computer. There have been products like this in the past, notably from Gyration (a company that got bought by Thomson in 2004). A bunch of years back when I was heading home theater research at JupiterResearch I wrote a report where I recommended their Media Center accessory …