Watching HD TV’s

While I was in Grenoble I used some time to look at HD TV's. Luckily at the Fnac they had some really HD TV's. However I noticed that you never know whether you look at HD signal, or just upscaled video's. So one must be very wary of that. Luckily they showsed a Philips HD-TV with it's own signal and I must say that it was impressive. Naturally I stood pretty close to the TV (50 centimers or so) and then the resolution was really good to see.

Categories: Computing
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Wii Web Browser

This morning I downloaded the Opera web browser for the Wii. It seems to work pretty well, I did not check with many web-sites. Still have to figure what kind of things are supported and not. One thing that is clear is the resolution problem. Normal fonts on the web are very hard to read. Really a lack of resolution. So that will imply that one really needs a large screen in order to view Internet on TV. I think we are mainly talking vertical resolution here, so 1080 would be more convenient.

We can not wait for all web-sites are visible on TV with a specific CSS style. What happened with webtv by the way? They promised to change that.

By the way, why is the Wii Web Browser not yet on Gizmodo @ 17:18 CET 22-dec-2006?

Categories: Computing
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MacHeist bundle

The Mac blogosphere has been buzzing with the offering of MacHeist. In this offer users can buy a set of 8 apps for only 49 dollar. And when the proceeds access certain limits this offer will be extended with 2 additional apps. The buzz has been mainly around the question whether the developers of these apps got a good deal or not. For me it looks like an experiment and the developers knew what they got into. Probably they will want other and better deals in the future.

But, shall I go for this bundle? Let's have a look at the apps:

• Delicious Library - a nice application to manage your library. I have looked at the app before. Unfortunately I do not manage my library, so I do not have a large need. And I missed access to french, english and dutch catalogs. There is only access to Amazon catalogs, which makes it a limited app;
• FotoMagico - an app to create advanced slideshows. I do not use this within iPhoto either, so probably not much interest in this app. By the way, there are download problems with this app;
• ShapeShifter - an app to change the loook and feel of MacOSX. No thanks, I like the way it works at the moment;
• DEVONthink - an application to mmanage your information. Sounds interesting. I think I tried it in the past, but was then not to my liking. It might warrant a second look. At the time I chose NoteTaker and bough that app;
• Disco - an app to burn disks. I do not burn much and when I do, I use the MacOSX internal burning or iPhoto. And when that does not work, I will use Toast, but I will be glad to get rid of the latter;
• RapidWeaver - an app to create websites. Not much interest here. At some stage I dismissed RapidWeaver and I went for the now defunct SiteStudio. And now I chose Sandvox as my app of choice. I had a look at RW and I like Sandvox much better;
• iClip 4 - an app for improved copying and pasting. I use (and bought) copy&pasteX now, which works OK. However I could use a better app. This app is not yet available;
• Pangea game - is always nice to have. I bought Enigmo in the past and I like the demo levels of Enigmo 2. Nanosaur 2 is probably not what I want, I did not finish version 1. The same for Bugdom;
• Newsfire - another newsreader. I did not like this one and I already bought and use NetNewsWire;
• Textmate - no thanks, I am already using SubEthaEdit;

So in summary only Disco, DEVONthink, iClip and Enigmo sound interesting to me. Are they worth 49 dollars? I think they are, but the apps are not filling a current need for me. So I went ahead and bought the bundle. And with the current dollar to Euro rates it is not a bad deal. So all in all I probably use only 2-3 of these apps in practice.

Categories: Computing
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Anthikythera mechanism

The analysis of the Antikythera mechanisms is again a big step further. They think now that it has been used for lunar and solar eclipses and possibly also for the predicting the movement of the planets. In order for this reconstruction to work they needed 72 gears. And interestingly they incorporated a solution for ellipticity of orbits. I find the most interesting however that the fact that this device was created some 100 years BC. This kind of knowledge only resurfaces may centuries later. It is a very complex device and it surely can not be a one off. Probably there are centuries of knowlegde behind this. Very intriguing.

Categories: Science
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HD useful?

I am starting to wonder whether HD at 1080p is useful at all. Most site say that it is useful for very large screens and then they talk about 1 meter diameter or so. But it all depends on the distance you sit at, so it is better to talk about angular resolution, but nobody seems to do this. I wonder what the best pixel angle size is.

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Asteroid impacts

It seems that meteor impacts are more common than previously thought.

Categories: Science
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Current TV’s

Yesterday I had a look at some flat screen televisions. The first thing I noticed that their resolution stops at 768 pixels vertically. I am not sure whether I should call this HD, as it is only 150 pixels more than current TV at 625 lines. One of the advantages is of course the width of such TV's. We are no longer at 4:3 but at 16:9.

I wonder however what am I seeing on those TV's. Are these true 768 resolution images? Or are they 'upgraded' 625 line images, which are somehow nicely interpolated. For the moment I was not impressed.

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Electricity breakdown

Saturday evening we had an electricity breakdown for an half an hour or so. It started at around 10 in the evening. No problem for us and our guests. Candles go a long way.

This morning I read that this breakdown due to a problem in Germany. I am however amazed that a problem there has consequences for us. It shows that I really live in Europe and not in a separate country.

Categories: World Affairs
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HD television

Unlike the VS HD television is not very popular in Europe. I found a few channels that broadcast in HD on an experimental basis, but that will not be the readon to go HD.

Categories: Computing
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Blu-Ray or HD-DVD?

That is an important question. Another reason for having a HD monitor is that it can display HD movies. Then the question is which format one should have. There are two competing formats: HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. There is no winner here yet and at the moment there seem to be more movies on HD-DVD. We have a typical chicken egg problem here. There are very few HD players out there, so there is no need for the discs. I assume that this will change a lot with the coming of the PS3, as suddenly millions of devices come on the market. So I assume that the format that Sony has chosen, Blu-Ray, will also be the winner. The XBOX-360 has a HD-DVD add-on, but I am not sure how many people will buy that add-on, as there are very view movies available. With the XBOX-360 you buy the add one, because you want to view movies. With the PS-3 you have no choice. It comes with the package.

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HD

I started thing about HD, video that is. Alwin is very interested in the upcoming PlayStation 3. And that indeed seems to be a very powerful machine. And one of the features is the High-Definition Video. Games can be played in very high definition. This means that it handles a resolution on 1080 pixels vertical and 1920 pixels horizontal. So buying the PS3 really implies obtaining a HD television monitor as well. This however turns out to be not very easy and expensive. In the latest Inmac catalogue I received there were only two systems that could handle this resolution. Which also means that the PS3 is ahead of its time. I will look around for other monitors, but I get the impression that we have to wait a bit and wait for the prices to drop. To be continued.

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Fon installed

I received my FON access router on friday. I installed it right away. Did the necessary registration stuff, etc. On my new computer it works like a charm. Although I do not always see both SSID's. Have not figured out the problem there.

However on my old computer I had a problem. I could only access through the open network and not through the private network. I changed the access control from Mixed WPA/WPA2 to WEP. And the problem was solved.

So I got a pretty cheap WiFi router works works good. The throughput is the same as my DSL connection. I can throttle the public access, but did not do that yet.

Categories: Computing
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Captcha

I now added captcha's to each weblog. Thus I will be certain that only humans enter comments to my blogs. I hope this will cut down the spam attempts on my blogs. It just got to time consuming. Until now it works well.

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Stonehenge reloaded

This is a great video of a guy that intends to rebuild Stonehenge on is own. He has actually found a technique to do this. And it is very simple, no ropes or complicated stuff. Very impressive.

Categories: Science
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Annoying

I clicked a link to Google spreadsheets. But then the service complained that my browser was not compatible. I hate that. It is something for me to decidce, not for them. As probably my browser works just fine, but they just did not test it. Very annoying.

Categories: Internet
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