Electronics shopping

Overall command

These Christmas had trouble serve some HTPCs because no localizábamos command aa distance. We spent long recommending commanding Microsoft MCE but September, Microsoft decided stop sell that command. Less mal we buy few to endure but andalusia final us ended.

Commanders imon never convinced us entirely besides that increasingly costs more achieve solos without accompaniment a box. Although with new command Mini imon seems that are improving (am preparing a entry sombre command Mini imon). Andalusia final us liked command Trust CERs 2400 and assemble more thereof successfully.

But andalusia final us remained Subject pending see manage all commanders we remaining lounge. Rioja normal is have command HTPC The TV and system sound. Then if besides we projector another TV, Console, air conditioning stereo, reader DVD, blinds, awnings … pues the Follonica of remotes is total.

So hare weeks decided ask an command Logitech Harmony. Went andalusia basic model than anything because want offer with HTPCs rather is question costing plus command computer.

El chosen was the Harmony 525. When arrived rioja first we drew attention was quality command. Perfectly finishing good presence thought we would be something weakest. Comes already with piles placed and furthermore brings another game spare good detail. Imagino that shall because since blister that brings, can prove rather is question that client see no Batteries …

Configuration is simple once a understands mechanics appliance. Connects andalusia PC by an cable USB also comes in box. Installs software from CD and there register at web Logitech. But first os recomiendo take role and pencil and aim brand and model apparatuses want controlling command. Andalusia configure us will asking brand and model each appliance want handle command. If finds was brings Internet configuration. Failure finds apparatus can use command original appliance indicating andalusia Harmony commands and latter the memorizes.

Once we indicated all apparatus we in salon, program us recommend activities. This concept is curious but very potente. An activity is something do more appliances. An example will be clearer. In my event the first activity me recommended was seeing vídeos. For it we indicated that wanted viewing on television LCD, told Channel HDMI where connected HTPC then told constant program wore in PC to see videos, where loudspeakers wanted heard where wanted functioning control sound … and was fantastic. Now if pulse button watch videos command; Lights TV its carcase loudspeakers its carcase opens MediaPortal in PC, Module seeing vídeos … most buttons command are MediaPortal but if pulse volume, acts on loudspeakers Dolby …

Activities are very potent can indicate we want lowering blinds andalusia see vídeos or ambient light goes off or air conditioning take a temperature … rioja we happen.

If use as replicator knobs must an option called devices “with which doubling commanding each device we configured.

Yo takes about 10 minutes Configure and stayed perfecto. Mi socio took more but him has more things her salon I no got and had to help andalusia knob Logitech commanders your appliances, I had luckiest.

On summary one device totally recommendable if use one command in lounge everything.

3D movies at home in three dimensions

This weekend we celebrated the birthday of my son. So I invited some friends home. The menu, as pizza was the only food that has not received any veto by the guests. As time is not accompanied, as they needed entertainment indoors.

The first was clear, great competition for Wii, and when one of the gifts that my son has received has been a sports kit for the console command: racket, gun, baseball bat, golf club but had to think … more. My wife wanted to carry a movie. But of course, we needed two cars and we did not have special chairs for everyone, so we discarded idea. But leaving out of the house, not the movies.

I wonder what my son wanted to watch movie with friends, and told us that “Journey the Center of the Earth in three dimensions. And the adventure began here this weekend. Getting the movie was not difficult, but it turns out that we needed six pairs of glasses that could see it all right.

Well, I said what the glasses, because this film comes with a playback system in three dimensions, which requires having a few glasses with colored glass to see it well. The film is shot with an imaging system anaglifo that when using a special glasses to see it, get a three dimensional reproduction of the images.

So we go down a model of glasses to make them at home. Passing the model to the cardboard, cut and paste had no misterior. Worse was what the colors. Normally these glasses used red and blue crystals, but this movie uses images magenta and green. So we had to make several tests. In the end, no acetate colors, we had to resort to tranparente type cellophane paper color. On the green side, we had to get three papers, and on the magenta, magenta, and two red. With this combination, though the film we see in 3D.

The experience is very curious. We need to get glasses and wait half a minute to get used to, and above all that we do not think. When we, the stereoscopic vision appears alone. And the effect is really fun, think we can play the movies, the characters feel that they are in the room with us. On the negative side, with these glasses at home, we lose many colors of the film, the colors are very off. But the late film was entertaining with kids, that if I spent more time preparing popcorn watching that film.

But I am clear that this technique with polarized glasses instead of colors, will be an encouragement to see movies. In fact, this year announced premieres of many films in 3D. And not only that, but we already have monitors that display the 3D games, but that’s for another day.

Entries in Blogoff

I have posted two new entries in Blogoff on HTPC cases.

In the first review and some cartons barebone rate in the second we already small horizontal boxes.

It will be cold

We have a few weeks in which the rate of breakdown of hard drives has soared.

The truth is we were spoiled and have a few bugs in the devices, but this month I was not more to do with hard drive problems. On the one hand, the teams tested at the store before delivering to customers, and come with a higher failure rate than normal. Here is the problem of delays in delivery and to repeat our work, installation of operating system and PC configuration.

But many faults occurring in equipment already delivered to customers. And here there is not a clear pattern in the failures. Do not focus on one size or model or brand of disc. No team is going with veterans and PCs a few months. In these cases, the bad, the customer data. And the problems are growing at the rate at which hard drives are getting bigger. Prior broke a 20-gigabyte hard drive and could lose a lot of information. But now, break a 1000 record by clear and gigas is 50 times more information we can lose. Besides that, before a backup of a disk of 20 GB could be done in a few DVDs, and now a copy of a record 1,000 gigabytes are more than 200 DVDs.

The causes of such failure, then imagine you must be a streak that has caught. I have the title to be cold, because it is the only thing we have these days and that would not normally have. And there may be some of that. For hard drives, but what they feel are the changes in temperature, ie cold and be warmed rapidly and vice versa. And maybe these weeks with this cold with us. discs are affected more cycles of sudden change of temperature and temperature difference more than before.

The conclusion, as always back up what is important to bear in a single disk. And as always there are two ways of looking at it with hard drives becoming bigger and cheaper, and almost have to buy them in pairs to have the data safe.

New version of the Antec Nine Hundred

Antec has presented in the CES Nine Hundred II. A box that has been quite successful, and as always, Antec, retains the name and resemblance, and takes the version 2. With the Sonata this policy is working because you are on version three.

Back to the Nine Hundred II, see it as a cross between the Three Hundred and Twelve Hundred, and I think we lost some aggressiveness, I do not know, I see more domesticated. Still no problems, still for sale Nine Hundred original, for those who like me, still prefers the first model. And if the price continues to fall, it may be a good buy for all who seek a well-ventilated box, original and comprehensive.

No feet, no hands and teeth

The Kings have been very good to me, I have given away a Wii Balance Board for Wii.

And he was preparing an article on intearctuar with games and applications with their feet (we’ll talk about this another day) and I find an excellent analysis of this Hispazone:

The device is an OCZ Nia, consists of two parts, a box that connects via USB to a PC and a headset that we have to put in the head. This headband detects neural impulses and after our training, is able to execute orders think on the PC. It would be gradually susituyendo the mouse and keyboard for this.

It is a device that he had heard before, but gave no importance, I thought it was vaporware. But I read with amazement the article Hispazone works. Yes, that seems a bit slow, perhaps an old brain like mine are not used, but this works. And one begins to see the uses of the peripheral and the list is huge. Of course good uses and bad uses, as more of a head like a headband they put all their guys in the head to see where they are thinking.

Come on little by little opening doors to new digital life, where ever we are most ourselves that we are in the machine. So this together with glasses carrying a computer screen and put in your shirt pocket … and we already have computers wareable say that the Saxons, come on wearable computers that we would say. And the hardware is here, now need to get some prices and we have to get software from.

And in four days will have the reverse path, we will receive information directly via neural and that if it became difficult to separate the human side of the machine …

HTPCs to play big

This Christmas we’ve assembled a few HTPCs in addition to fulfilling the missions of these classic machines, were designed to play well.

I am clear that the star device for playing in the lounge is the console. But we must not forget that there are many customers who like to play with the PC and are accustomed to them. So I am out to these devices, which integrate all the digital entertainment into a single device in the living room. The experience of playing with the big TV with speakers the Home Cinema is … amazing. There are games that seem to others. My games such aircraft simulators and car, I call attention to the normal PC, but in the TV lounge, I appear to others, we, seem real.

At the time of assembling a PC for the living room, we must consider as always, we need a box that can be installed in the lounge, which has a good sound and size that allows us to install large graphic cards. And speaking of video cards, need graphics power, but with silence. The teams we have assembled, it seemed enough, but were not equal, the configurations were more or less like this:

• Caja : Antec Fusion Max 160 XT or Zalman. These boxes are beautiful (I have only two entries devoted to them, and publish to finish) and a height slightly higher than normal. Besides supported graphics cards longer and somewhat higher than normal. They also allow us to install power supplies with passive cooling.
• Power : Xilence 600W. passive. We provide sufficient power and stability to feed the graphics processors and we are going to mount and at the same time we eliminate a source of noise.
• Processor : here Intel Core2Duo 8400, Core2Quad 8200 and Core2Quad 9300. All passively cooled with a Tritón 75
• Motherboard: Asus P5Q Pro or P5Q Pro L, modern chipset, good temperature control and energy, digital audio output.
• DVD ReWriter : most came with rewritable DVD and Blu-Ray reader and always have the door open to enjoy movies in this new format.
• Graphics Card : two models, both of Gigabyte, the nVidia 9600GT with passive cooling and Ati 4850HD with passive cooling. The Ati is more powerful, but both provide enough graphics power to play almost everything that happens to us.

At the end we got some very quiet and HPTCs able to move the modern games at high resolutions. Of course, with these settings had more than covered the basic needs of the HTPC. And if you are a follower of the blog, you’ll see that the settings are consistent with other previous posts we’ve been writing about this topic.

What happened to the 30 GB Zunes?, There were

The other day, cerrábamos the year, with the news that the Zune 30 GB of Microsoft were blocked all at once. We had no way to implement any of them.

For more blogs and websites (here for example FayerWayer) there is the technical explanation of how that failure has occurred. I recommend reading these articles, but we have something better, we have a collection of facts, let what happened three years ago when it was preparing the launch of the Zune to the market, the real explanation of why something was made and sales …

It all started when burdened because Microsoft programmers did not have enough to finish the Zune software and Windows Vista, decided to hire Tildenrone company as they develop programs Zune. Tilderone is the development and deployment of enterprise software, the world’s largest global, was a guarantee of quality and that everything would be fine.

But the project began to jam. When the team found evidence that Microsoft to raise or lower the volume of the Zune, had to press six buttons, Tilderone claimed that the only functional that he had to lower or raise the volume with some keys and said nothing of he had to hit. So the Zune’s development budget was running out to solve these things.

To provide more flexibility for testing, Microsoft has hired another big company, specialized in project monitoring: Adenis. They sent their best technicians with its application star, the ePWoman, a management program testing. Test equipment from Microsoft, could not prove what they wanted, but they had assigned tasks in ePWoman and in the days they have indicated. So, some weeks were spent playing the Xbox, and I could not sleep ..

As the departure date of the project, missing only three weeks for those leaving, there appeared a veteran of Microsoft partner. This was lunch with the testers and told them the batallitas that took effect in the year 2000. So one of the testers, the test again, put the Zune in the day December 31 2000. And that was extinguished.

The tester of Microsoft did not understand anything. So I went to ePWoman and gave a high incidence. But after half an hour, had been rejected, because the developers fail to Tildenrone had been correct. The tester for Microsoft, again and again to repeat the test to fail, so I reopened the occurrence. The Tildenrone again rejected, arguing that they work well. Andalusia the final reunion between gerifaltes weekly, the subject was brought up. The Adenis, found that what was still wrong and asked for explanations Tilderone … said that in these last days of 2006 and that they failed.

A group of testers from Microsoft entered the video and discovered that the failure was caused by a loop that did not take into account leap years. In fact you could play by putting the December 31, 2004 or 2008 … asked the developers to change the status output of the loop.

Tilderone presented a draft change software (CNPS from now) and appreciated the effort of change in 1134 hours, 31 minutes and 16 seconds. Dollars spent, was a cost for the project of $ 1,300,000. Microsoft heads met and decided to pay the order and to undertake the CNPS. But it was only a week for the Zune out of the market. Programmers Tilderone, CNPS others had to do that week and did not have enough programmers to everything. So they scheduled a reunion at a high level, attended by Steve Ballmer, the chief Tilderone manager and project leader Adenis …

The head of the draft Adenis, made a presentation with 46 PowerPoint slides, in the end the conclusion was clear, had to choose between two CNPS (software change):

• The pressing of the play listening music
• Fix shutdown on the last day of the leap year.

Steve Ballmer called statistics. And they are presented. There was a leap year every four, only 27% of users turned the MP3 player every day, while the play button, press it needed all year, every year. The choice was clear, to get out on dates, it would make the leap to CNPS year second phase. It was a schedule for the two months of the release of Zune, a patch was sent to the buyers with the code of the leap year fixed.

But since leaving the Zune, was fixing other Tilderone CNPS and nobody remembered it’s leap year … until December 31 of 2008.

But this time, Steve Ballmer, and was chairman of Microsoft, the project manager of Tilderone, was supersocio, the manager of Adenis was CEO of another company who cares …

Well, if anyone cares, the files were sought for the project and said goodbye to Microsoft andalusia tester who discovered the bug in the year 2006 ….

Four cores on the laptop

Intel has introduced a new quad-core processor designed to be mounted on portable computers, the Q9000.

This processor has a frequency of 2.0 GHz, 6 MB cache a TDP of 45w. It also presents other mics in the same saga that still have a lower electricity consumption, with a TDP of only 35W.

And Acer has already sold (currently only USA) equipped with a notebook processor on the new Aspire 8930G-7665 belonging to the saga Gemstone family of multimedia notebooks Acer, we are very pleased. We sold the last few months and always with great result.

So you have four cores in a notebook. And I was hallucinating, because today we have sold a Q9300 with a Toshiba 14 “, and in just two kilos in weight there was an incredible power, and of course I see this …

Configuring MediaPortal for AVCHD videos

Santa Claus has been good with my wife and has brought a new digital video camera. In my home we have separated the roles, I’ve done all of the photo my wife took the video.

He had a Sony camera with analog tape 9 years of life. So now I have a Sony HDR-SR11. Pointing the camera at the moment and good manners and will dedicate another entry to it. But now I will discuss how to integrate the camera with my new HTPC.

At home we use a program as the playback of multimedia MediaPortal. That is what we use for video, for music and photos. The great thing about is that my wife and my kids only care about a remote control and a uniform interface for different content. But the files generated by the new camera was not able to reproduce the MediaPortal. There is an option in the software that Sony provides, to convert files to MPG2 and then MediaPortal and could play, but with loss of quality, so I discarded.

So let’s see what to do to see the new high-definition home movies through MediaPortal. These cameras recorded hard drive or memory card and use a compression codec called AVCHD.

The first thing is to see the MediaPortal files generated by the camera. Under How to import files to your PC, files in the camera, will have extension *. *. m2ts or mts. We must tell MediaPortal to play. To do this, open the setup MediaPortal, go to the Movies section (the third) and then to subsection Movie Extensions. If we do not see these menus, activate the expert mode of the program by clicking on the top right of the window, the text: “Switch to expert mode” or diciéndoselo andalusia andalusia boot program (depending on the version of installed MediaPortal ). We see this window:

In the upper right, write m2ts and then press the button that says “Add”, repeat the operation with the text mts and then again on “Add.” Now if we go to the directory where we MediaPortal andalusia movies recorded with the camera as we see them, but I imagine that it does not play.

To play these files, you can install ffdshow or CoreAVC. At the moment I am giving my best, second, and so we continue with it. We can install a codecs pack to bring the ffdshow video. I have installed the shark007 function in Vista as in XP. We’re going to ffdshow configuration menu, through the Windows menu, the option of Vista Codecs and then to ffdshow video decoder. A window like this:

Here, we now the Deinterlacing. In my case, the deinterlacing method that has given me the best result is the ffmpeg deinterlace. You can test several more seeking a compromise between image quality and playback speed.

Now, we must return to MediaPortal to tell, we want to use ffdshow to play our high-quality video. Open it, go back to the Movies section and now the Movie Player. There, where it H264 videodecoder, select the drop in ffdshow. We will see an image like this:

Here are OK and we can enjoy our quality AVCHD video from MediaPortal and, like the rest of our media.

Canon EOS 1000D

Canon EOS 1000D is a camera that, while his release was a few months worth mentioning features.

The EOS 1000D is a camera with features and can be found at very reasonable prices, ranging from the market 355 Euros to 542 in some shops, some of the benefits this camera are as follows.

• LCD 2.5 inch with Live View mode.
• Sensor CMOS 10.1 Megapíxeles
• Accepts memories SDHC and SD
• Integrated Cleaning System

Also note that EOS 1000D is a portable camera and comfortable, easy to use and suitable for professional and amateur photographers people.

You can find more information on this product TestFreaks a site that collects information about various products and also collects the profiles of users with the products, therefore before buying any product technology and head toward Test Freaks check user feedback or share your own experiences with a particular item.

Link: Canon EOS 1000D | TestFreaks

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Samsung Tobi

Samsung is making pets?, No, what if this is making phones with name of pet, and Samsung is the new name is Tobi’s best human friend, but leave out the name and how important enfoquemonos. < >

The Tobi is a Samsung phone that is not what it seems, because despite its design gives the impression of being for children 5 years, the Tobi

is focused on a younger audience more than one it was enjoyable and that their characteristics are quite acceptable.

Display
• 1.9 inch with a resolution of 177×144 pixels

House

• 1.3 MPX

Internal Memory

• 15MB

8 GB memory expandable to

• Bluetooth 2.0

• USB 20

Playing video and audio in various formats

85 grams

It’s not as bad as at first I thought, so if you think that is bad is the availability of colors, where we will miss the colors are

Orange, Pink, Green, Light blue, dark silver and . < >

Via: Point Geek

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Escape Clock

Today we can not talk about the desperate as the typical object is a clock with a bell to get ugly when we get up to a heart attack kills by shock, no no, we can now find a vast amount of clocks from the callers to your contacts to the most geeks like this alarm clock shaped like a key escape.

As you can see the alarm clock that has a touch Geek INEG we will recall a typical day with Windows where it is always necessary to press the escape key (not just Windows but Linux is the same), undoubtedly an excellent accessory for our room.

Via: Geekets

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Cowon O2, complete multimedia player

Cowon o2 is one of those gadgets that I would have simply because I feel great, this device is a complete multimedia player that has a touch screen with a resolution of 480 × 272 PX, 16 millions of colors and brightness of 400 cd/m2 .

Audio

As for audio, o2 reproduced in various formats which are MP3, WMA, AAC, AC3, FLAC, OGG and Monkey .

Video

As with the audio player that accepts several formats, which are VI, WMV, MP4, MKV, H.264, DivX and XviD , we can display pictures JPG, GIF, PNG, TIF , BMP, and RAW .

The autonomy of the o2 is 8 hours of video playback and 16 hours of audio playback, it comes in three versions with capacities of 8, 16 and 32 GB which cost 219, 249 and $ 299 < > respectively, are currently only sold in the United States.

Via: Blog and Technology

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Sony Ericsson W700 Walkman

The Sony Ericsson W700 Walkman is one of the last series of Walkman phones from Sony Ericsson is the first of this series to have WiFi .

The features of this phone are:

• Display LCDde 2.4 inch
• House 3.2 Megapixels
• WiFi
• PlayNow
• Shake Control , with music control movements of the wrist
• SensMe playlists according to mood
• Memory 4GB
• FM
• Google Maps

This mobile has several benefits that make it stress, mainly the WiFi, despite all that, I do not buy the phone, I find that the design is a weakness, but still very good esya. (via: Geekets)

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