After months of anticipation, speculation and mastication (What, you didn’t eat in the last few months?), the Apple TV has finally been unveiled. If there’s one thing you can say for Apple’s reveal, it’s that the new Apple TV is better than the old Apple TV. Then again, that’s not saying much at all.
I don’t know how the weather is where you live, but we’ve been having a heat wave here in Boston. Even if the temperature itself may not seem so bad (generally 80s to 90s), the humidity has made everything gross and sticky. It’s the kind of weather where you don’t want to leave air conditioning for a minute. That’s becoming a real problem for me, because the air conditioning in my apartment doesn’t extend to my home theater room. As much as I’d love to fire up my gear and watch a bunch of movies and TV shows, the thought of it is practically unbearable. Does anyone else have this problem?
Remember when all home theater hook-up consisted of was the need to screw the pointy RF coax cable from the VCR into the TV? Sure, the picture and sound quality were crap, but we didn’t know any better at the time. We’ve come a long way since then, haven’t we? (Well, at least some of us have. My mother, not so much.) Through the evolution from RCA composite cables to S-video to Component video, we learned the benefits of separating out the various portions of the picture and sound signals to their own separate carriers. Then with HDMI, we learned how to combine them all back into one cable again. Now, an alliance of manufacturers has developed a new A/V connection called HDBaseT that it hopes will give HDMI the boot, and become the new all-in-one connection standard for home video and audio equipment. The question is, do we really need it?
Remember ‘Minority Report‘? After that movie came out, tech developers seemed to lose track of everything that wasn’t a fancy hands-on interface. This started out simply enough, with an increase in the amount of touchscreen phones hitting the market. But the new range of motion control products takes it too far.
A web site called televisions.com has compiled an interesting list of The 20 Most Common Mistakes in the Home Cinema. The article has a lot of worthwhile tips and advice, and points out many errors in home theater design that I see all the time.
Ah, memories… This really takes me back. Back to the wild and woolly days of the high-def format war. When did that end, two years ago? It feels like an eternity. I’m reminded of this, strangely, as a direct result of my current home theater crisis. While my HT room is in disarray, having all of its water damage and mold patched up, I’ve needed to transfer files from my main computer that resides there to a laptop. So I went digging through some drawers for a USB stick, and this is what I found – a USB stick branded with the HD DVD logo. And that got me thinking back over the events of the last four years.
Do you dream of having a Pip-Boy strapped to your wrist detailing your vital statistics, streaming communications, and – Why not? – playing video and audio files to your heart’s content? Hey, that’s fine with me; you can want whatever you want. Just don’t sign me up for your crazy future. I like my business and pleasure separate, thanks very much.
The official announcemnt of the Google TV platform left me doing a lot of thinking. An internet connected television isn’t a new idea, and attaching a PC to a television isn’t exactly novel either. So why is it that I find Google TV so interesting?
We spend all day talking about high definition content, or, to be more accurate, writing about it. We tell you what we think, how we watch our TV and movies, and we’d love to hear back. Do you get everything straight from your cable box, or do you go with a less orthodox method? Is Blu-ray your format of choice or would you rather stream? Are you willing to shell out for high quality downloads or do torrent sites do the trick? Hit the jump for the poll!
As the guy from ‘RoboCop’ might say, “I’d buy that for a dollar!” Some crafty devil has made a miniature theater for an iPhone out of a shoebox. It has seats and curtains, and even a tiny usher. Do-It-Yourself kits are available for sale, if interested.
I know that many home theater snobs are opposed to the idea of ever watching a movie on a phone or portable device. I don’t have a problem with it. I have a subway commute every day, and I enjoy using that time to watch movies on my phone or iPod. Better that than staring at the scary people around me on the train. I wonder what kind of looks I’d get for shoving my face in a shoebox the whole ride. It might just be worth it.
[via Gizmodo]
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