News and Views From my kids accomplishments, to my heretical perspective of the world

Now that I’ve got an HD TV, my old Tivo seems very deficient. I can’t record any of the HD signals, and the defects in the picture from the Tivo show up much more on the high-def screen.

What to do, what to do? Tivo hasn’t said much about when they will introduce an HD version (other than the DirecTivo).

Besides the Tivo, I’m missing the few programs that my satellite provider broadcasts in HD since my satellite receivers are only SD.

The solution seems to be Dish Network’s new “VIP622” DVR. It is quite similar to the DirecTivo that Richard and Don (?) have in that it is a satellite receiver and DVR (like a Tivo) in one. Nice features are that it can record 3 HD or SD programs (2 satellite and one OTA — over the air), and play back to two separate TVs, all at the same time. It seems to have most of the features that I love on my Tivo, though I’m sure I’ll find things that I will miss.

They are on back order, so it’s three weeks out. I’ll publish here after I get it with impressions.

In the mean time, anybody want a Tivo with a lifetime subscription and upgraded hard drive?

I got my SXRD TV for my birthday last week. I am both ecstatic and disappointed.

It’s a 60″ Sony HDTV using “LCOS” technology (a kind of microdisplay rear projection similar to DLP or LCD Projection). At its best, the image is astounding, jaw-dropping. The local PBS station broadcasts full HD (1080i) travel, cooking and gardening shows that I have been watching just because the picture is so amazing. It’s really almost like looking out of a window. Color, clarity, definition is just about perfect.

However, it suffers from a defect common to all microdisplay rear projection TVs: something called the “silk-screen” effect. One way to describe it: it’s as if the image is being projected on a frosted glass surface (which might be near the truth). Most of the time you are not aware of this surface; you’re looking through it at the image behind. But sometimes with a light-colored moving surface such as a cloud you’re suddenly aware of the texture of the surface that is standing still as the image moves over it, and it can be distracting.

I think that most people don’t notice this effect, or if they do it doesn’t bother them. I’m afraid that I’m not in this majority. I’ve decided to give it another week or two and see if I get used to it. If not, I may have to take it back.

I’ve considered Plasma (too expensive, poor contrast, burn-in problems) and LCD (too small), DLP (I don’t like the picture as well as the SXRD, and they also suffer from the silk-screen effect) and Front Projection (too dim). There are other technologies coming out in the next few years (SED looks very promising), but nothing else available now or in the near future that looks any better.

So here I sit, both ecstatic and disappointed.

The newest Intel CPU (due out in the fall) leap-frogs AMD in performance. See here.

It has 20 – 40% better frame rates on games than the AMD chips, and outperforms generally across all tests. This is very good news for Intel — AMD has been kicking their butts for a couple of years, especially on games, and Intel has been losing market share.

Of course AMD could surprise by announcing a new chip next week that will take back the crown, but it doesn’t seem likely at this point.

Here’s a cool extension for Firefox: IE Tab

There are a few web pages that don’t work right in Firefox, and you have to open them in Internet Explorer (IE). IETab will open them in IE embedded in a tab in Firefox. Furthermore, you can tell it once when a site needs to use IE, and in the future it will always open that site in an IE Tab. The result is seamless browsing where you can do everything in Firefox, but IE will automatically be used when you need it, though you won’t even have to know it.

I love the FoxIt PDF reader; it’s much faster and cleaner than Adobe Acrobat. However there were a few printer bugs in the version I have been using — some things didn’t scale or rotate correctly.
Foxit Software has a new realease out (still version 1.3, but build number 1413) that seems to fix the printer problems.

Download it and replace the existing version. Note that they took the space out of the name (FoxitReader.exe instead of Foxit Reader.exe), so if you just replace your old one programs won’t find it. Either spell it the same as it was, or run it once to activate it.