 | |  | |  | |  |
Copyright © 2008 itsonlysteam.com
| The Valve ... Gadgets in Play February, 2008 |
February is almost over and where I live you can almost imagine spring is in the air. One
of my juvenile habits is to dress light and 'force spring' to come ... silly but maybe it gets
the brown fat a bit of a burn before it really gets warmer.
In the electronic gadgets world that is my house there have been a few changes. Today
we recycled our last CRT monitor and now only have one CRT left in a pre-HD HD-TV that
we use for gaming. That one is going to be hard to get rid of with its quick response and
bright look. When we experimented and hooked the XBOX up to a 1080p display, the field
of vision in wide screen was actually degraded. Instead of the sides being expanded, the
top and bottom were cut off and on top of that the 480p on the old HD-TV looked better.
of my juvenile habits is to dress light and 'force spring' to come ... silly but maybe it gets
the brown fat a bit of a burn before it really gets warmer.
In the electronic gadgets world that is my house there have been a few changes. Today
we recycled our last CRT monitor and now only have one CRT left in a pre-HD HD-TV that
we use for gaming. That one is going to be hard to get rid of with its quick response and
bright look. When we experimented and hooked the XBOX up to a 1080p display, the field
of vision in wide screen was actually degraded. Instead of the sides being expanded, the
top and bottom were cut off and on top of that the 480p on the old HD-TV looked better.
This month Toshiba announced it was ceding the HD format war to Sony. This made
my HD DVD player obsolete and my small collection of HD videos an issue on what step
I would take next in my home media empire. The pictures don't really tell the story, but
it gives you an idea about the subtlety in the improvement of HD video over properly
presented DVD's on medium sized displays (30" to 50"). The most obvious
improvement was in the text quality in the start sequences and menus. Regardless it
does not give me a lot of impetus to run out and replace my HD player with a BD player.
I think I'll just revert to DVD's and a few clearance HD DVD's until the dual format
players become inexpensive.
my HD DVD player obsolete and my small collection of HD videos an issue on what step
I would take next in my home media empire. The pictures don't really tell the story, but
it gives you an idea about the subtlety in the improvement of HD video over properly
presented DVD's on medium sized displays (30" to 50"). The most obvious
improvement was in the text quality in the start sequences and menus. Regardless it
does not give me a lot of impetus to run out and replace my HD player with a BD player.
I think I'll just revert to DVD's and a few clearance HD DVD's until the dual format
players become inexpensive.
| Scene from "Planet Earth", one is upscaled DVD and other is HD |
Another adventure embarked upon was with a couple of EEE PC's which I reviewed.
One we kept the Xandros Linux system on and the other I went straight to Windows XP.
My final conclusion is Linux is so close yet so far with the owner of the Linux machine,
after fighting to get Putty installed, wants to move to XP. On my machine, I can't say
enough good things about the little beast.
One we kept the Xandros Linux system on and the other I went straight to Windows XP.
My final conclusion is Linux is so close yet so far with the owner of the Linux machine,
after fighting to get Putty installed, wants to move to XP. On my machine, I can't say
enough good things about the little beast.
| EEE PC with Linux |
Also notable this month is the impact
the relatively new wireless router has
had on the household. It was
purchased because my wired router
quit working with XBOX live. Later I
discovered that this was an XBOX live
event caused by the Christmas rush.
Despite this, I am glad I finally went
wireless. The security is now good,
the reception is good, and it is easy
to set up and see who is using it with
the software that comes with newer
routers.
So older devices in the house like the
Wii, and the Ipaq to the left suddenly
have new functionality beyond the
Nursing Software.
Also, for newer devices like the Ipod
Touch discussed last month or the
EEE PC's, we were ready for them.
len
the relatively new wireless router has
had on the household. It was
purchased because my wired router
quit working with XBOX live. Later I
discovered that this was an XBOX live
event caused by the Christmas rush.
Despite this, I am glad I finally went
wireless. The security is now good,
the reception is good, and it is easy
to set up and see who is using it with
the software that comes with newer
routers.
So older devices in the house like the
Wii, and the Ipaq to the left suddenly
have new functionality beyond the
Nursing Software.
Also, for newer devices like the Ipod
Touch discussed last month or the
EEE PC's, we were ready for them.
len
| HP IPAQ RX 1950 |