The Blog From Another Dimension: Gadgets & Toys Archives

New DVD Player

I had two DVD players, until recently. One was a Region-1 unit I bought in the U.S. maybe six or seven years back, and the other was a region-free unit I bought at Costco four years ago. Both units had been acting flaky, but after the move, neither one would recognize anything I put into them. So, time to get another player. After advising a friend to look for region-free players in Akihabara, and they reported success, I decided to try it myself.

I was also looking for a feature I'd heard about but not seen: a DivX-playing DVD player. DivX is a "codec," or a method of compressing audio/video data to save space. What it means is that you can download audio and video files from the Internet, and the DVD player will recognize them and play them, just like your computer does.

I found the kind of machine I was looking for, and settled on the Pioneer DV-400VS.

Even better, the player I got has a USB port, so it will recognize files on USB Flash drives, or potentially on USB external hard disk drives. Since I got a 1 GB flash stick just last week, I can now use it to show up to 2.5 hours of video on the player, if I transfer it from my computer--without burning a DVD disk. Cool.

The player can handle DVDs made for any country (they were pretty outspoken about it at the electronics store, after Costco made a deal about how "it's not legal"), and can handle just about any type of CD (Audio CD, CD-R/RW, VCD) or DVD (DVD±R/RW, Video DVD, Audio DVD)--audio, video, or data--so long as it's got some sort of visual or audio media on it. JPEG photos will play as slideshows, audio CDs or mp3/wma/aac files play as music, and lots of data-stored video files (mpg/avi/wmv) will play just fine (but not all, of course).

Better yet, it has an HDMI port and progressive/1080p compatibility (upscaling), so it will work fine with the HDTV I plan on getting in not too long a time.

In short, it'll handle pretty much everything I'll need to throw at it... until it too breaks down in four or five years. Inevitably.

Cell Phone Charging

I am ready to smash my cell phone to pieces, and despair at the thought of having to wait a year or more for an iPhone. The reason: charging the damned cell phone. The phone I have now and the last one I had (the only two I have ever owned in fact) were very different models and designs, but they both shared the same flaw. You put the cell phone in its charging cradle, and nothing happens. You try again, this time pushing it down. Nothing. Wiggle it around, pick it up and breathe on the contacts to moisten them a bit, and then maybe, if you're lucky, the charge light comes on.

But it gets worse. Half the time, the charge light starts flashing on and off, meaning that it's got a contact, but for some reason, is not charging correctly. So you go through the process another 2-3 times until you finally get a solid light, and the phone's LCD screen says that the phone is charging.

But even then, you're not home free. All too often, the phone says it's charging, the charge light stays on for a while then goes off, just like it does with a successful charge--but then, when you pick it up and open it, you see that it has not charged at all. And you usually find this out just as you are ready to walk out the door, and discover that you now have no cell phone for the day.

Is this just me? Am I incredibly unlucky and almost no one else gets this? Because it is driving me up the frakking wall.

Thud

Despite the Zune's slow takeoff, the media hailed it as getting off to a flying start when the player was given the No. 2 slot among MP3 players, coming in second to Apple's iPod. Of course, you had to read down a bit to see that the Zune took 9% while Apple held the No. 1 spot at 63%. Still, it looked impressive to say it was "No. 2" (no pun intended), and less impressive to say that it was not even in the top 50 or so on Amazon.com's consumer electronics top seller list.

The thing is, that was in the first week of sales, with all the huge buzz and hype, when it was bound to sell more than a usual amount. Predictably, the Zune's sales dropped in it's second week--quite a large amount. It fell from a 9% market share to a 2.1% share, and fell from second to fifth among digital media players.

Currently, on Amazon.com's consumer electronics best-seller list, the Zune occupies the #73 spot, just beating out a universal remote control by Logitech. Among other items selling better than the Zune: an iPod travel charger (#58), four digital picture frames (#56, 32, 29, & 28), a 5-pack spindle of CD-Rs (#50), an iPod power adapter (#49), two digital turntables (#44 & 36)--and twelve iPods (7 of which are in the top 15).

Oh, it's only the black Zune which is #73. No other Zune colors made the top 100.

Among MP3 players alone, the Zune came in at #21, with iPods occupying 12 of the top 15. Week #3 should be a blast. It's only uphill from there...

New Watch

So I splurged just a little and got a new watch, one that monitors your heart rate. It cost $105 (¥12,200), what I guess is pretty good price at that, for what it is. I went to Victoria Sports yesterday, but all they had was one cheap-o watch that looked dodgy at best. Today I went to Yodobashi's watch shop, and they had better variety, and better quality for the money. The one I got is a Casio (pretty much every watch I've had since I first got wristwatches has been a Casio), and has all the features I need.

It replaces the last watch I had, which conked out a few years ago, and I've done without for some time because I just used my cell phone clock instead. But now that my foot is more or less healed, I'm starting up on what I hope will be a consistent and building exercise program, and so having a heart monitor was a big plus. This one monitors your heart rate by use of a chest strap that sends the data to the watch by a radio signal. I had heard about watches like this, but had never looked at them. After testing it, it seems to work pretty well.

The watch also happens to match my other wants--it has a stopwatch, timer, alarms, an easy-to-change world clock, and most of all, the thing is not a huge chunk of plastic. Despite its relatively slim form, however, it still feels like it sticks out too much, especially under my jacket cuffs. But it might only feel that way because I haven't worn a watch in over two years.

Not having exercised much in the past, I did not know about the Karvonen Formula. It's a calculation that takes your age and your resting heart rate (the rate you experience before getting out of bed in the morning) and determines your target heart rate zone, or "training zone," which is 60% to 80% of your maximum heart rate (which I presume is just before your heart becomes over-stressed). Maintaining that zone during exercise is best for cardiac exercise and fat burning, which is what I need right now. I've already lost 12 kilos off my top weight by diet alone, but I need to lose another ten or so to get into a healthier range.

After having been more or less immobile for three and a half months with a broken foot, I am way out of shape. Not that I was in great shape before, but now my legs start getting shaky if I walk up four or five flights of stairs. That exertion doesn't get me winded--it just saps all the energy from my legs and leaves me weak-kneed. What better time to start an exercise program and try to make it stick?

Knowing the rate also helps me pace myself for longer exercise. I have an aerobic training machine, one that mimics cross-country skiing motions, with arm sticks and all. I started exercising on that, and found I could not go on for more than a few minutes before I couldn't take any more. With the watch monitoring my heart rate (sitting on the handlebar in front of me so I could keep an eye on it), I was forced to artificially slow my pace to keep my heart rate in the zone--and doing that helped me handle the workout better without tiring out, and allowed me to continue going for a lot longer. Forgive me if any of this sounds obvious or too fundamental; I haven't exercised outside of normal activity for some time. In high school, I was in great shape, having a weight training and aerobics-centered PhysEd course. But back then, we just worked out--no science, and no timing aside from simply going on until the end of the period.

Invention of the Year: TeleCrapper 2000

This guy deserves a Nobel Prize or something. He created a free, slap-together do-it-yourself product that serves a dual purpose: reducing the efficiency of telemarketers while, at the same time, making fools out of them for your sheer delight.

Have you ever received a robotic telemarketer call? The kind carefully designed to fool you into thinking you're having a conversation with someone in your neighborhood, and you don't realize for a while that it's a recording and they're selling something? This guy (whom I found via Engadget) took that idea, juiced it up, and aimed it right back at the telemarketers.

Here's how it works: You start with a pre-recorded conversation with a variety of statements, questions, and generalized utterances. The TeleCrapper 2000 then waits behind your Called ID service with a list of numbers identified as telemarketers. When the phone rings, the Telecrapper 2000 scans the Caller ID against the list. If it's one of them, then the TeleCrapper 2000 picks up after the first ring. It plays the recorded script's first line, then waits for an answer. The TeleCrapper 2000 can detect the silence at the end of a telemarketer's statement, and so it can realistically answer shortly after they finish saying something. The TeleCrapper 2000 then plays the next recorded line, waits for an answer, and so on, and so on. When you hear the conversations it has, it is amazingly realistic, and you can imagine it fooling just about anybody. (Unfortunately, it's more than just the average person can wire together; hopefully, someday someone will sell a ready-made version of it.)

The idea of this, as I mentioned before, is twofold: first, it completely wastes the telemarketers' time by engaging them in a protracted, fake conversation with zero benefit to them. Some of these people go on with the TeleCrapper 2000 for quite some time, even after the TeleCrapper 2000 reaches the point where it runs out of material and just loops the same four or five replies over and over and over again.

The second purpose is that it gives you a great deal of entertainment and sheer joy. You can record, listen to, and share the conversations the telemarketers have with your computer, and laugh yourself silly. The creator of this product, who will surely be rewarded handsomely by God, has put up a dozen or so of these recorded conversations on his web site; scroll down to the very bottom of the page and listen to them. Probably the best of this guy's list is #5, which was turned into a Flash animation on this site. But #9 was a hoot, because the robotic conversation was based on accusing the caller of being "Chris," and the caller was in fact named "Christy" (another called was "Crystal"). #11 was outright hysterical; the robot conversation simulated a confused old man, and trapped the caller into a seemingly endless three minutes of pure, hilarious nonsense.

But that has nothing on the conversation numbered 12, in three parts, where first the caller is fooled for 3 or four minutes, then believes that he's talking to a deranged old man and tries to make fun of him with the office listening, not realizing he's trying to cruelly tease a machine on an endless loop, sounding like a complete fool. Then he calls back and tries again, this time seriously attempting to get the woman of the house before it spins off into absurdity again.

The maker states his desire that many people will do this, and share their own recordings over the Internet. I hope they do.

I tell you, I haven't laughed this hard in years.

PowerMic, SchmowerMic

I haven't had much to complain about with my new Powerbook, but one thing recently has me a bit miffed. That's the line-in audio. By advertising this, Apple knows people will assume that you can plug in a microphone and have it work. That, it turns out, is completely untrue. It's not a mic port, it's a powered sound input port, and practically no microphone you buy will work with it. I tried buying a regular mic, and nothing registered. I then read that it has to be a powered mic, so I got one of those. This registered, but waaaay too quietly--at full gain, the recorded audio was almost inaudible.

Apparently, to record sound, you have to either find a powered mic with very specific specs which Apple does a good job of hiding from you, or buy an adaptor which in itself costs about $40.

Sure, Apple doesn't outright say you can't plug in a mic. But it's a falsehood of omission--they know people are going to assume that's what the audio line-in is for. And I thoroughly read through all the information I could find, including Apple's manual, for any warning of this, and found none. In fact, the Powerbook manual reads:

You can also connect external microphones or other audio equipment to the audio line in port. The audio line in port is a stereo 3.5 mini-phono jack, which does not provide power to a connected device, so you must use self-powered peripherals.

So they're covered on the self-powered part, but I have one of those and it still doesn't work. I don't see any specs about what type of powered mic is necessary, or any other specs on this. If they exist, they are well-hidden.

Bad form, Apple.

Update: Before I posted this, I found a solution--a very messy kludge, but it works: if I plug my powered external mic into my digital video recorder and then plug the sound out from the camera to the Powerbook's line-in port, it works. As I said, messy, but at least I won't have to buy an expensive adaptor.

The Keyboard of the Future?

Every once in a while, a new product comes along that stands to break long-standing paradigms. The GUI (mouse, windows, menus, etc.) is perhaps the most significant example. Cameras going from film to digital is another big one. The kind of change that opens up new possibilities for a piece of equipment, allowing you to use it in a variety of new ways. One that will probably change a long-standing (almost 140 years) keyboard paradigm may be coming soon: the Optimus keyboard, from Russian designer Art Lebedev. The keyboard is designed so that every key is a stand-alone, miniature OLED display:

Instead of each key's function being painted on simple plastic key caps, the function of each key is indicated by the display--which, of course, can change to whatever you want it to show. That means an instant keyboard switch, not just between languages and QWERTY-DVORAK layouts, but also to any controls that any application might require. Playing a game with keyboard controls, but having trouble remembering what key controls what function? It would all be visible, right there on the keys. Want to see all the key functions when you hold down the shift, alt or function keys? Want the key caps on your keyboard to reflect the font you're using? Want to redesign the keyboard completely? This keyboard would allow for that. Below is an animated GIF made from images from the Optimus' site, showing how the keys can change, in this case from English to game mode (for "Quake") to Photoshop and cycling back through:

The OLED technology means that the keys emit light, so they require no backlight. From what I can gather, the keyboard is wireless, but I haven't found out if it uses infrared ports, Bluetooth, or something else. Nor has it been specified whether it runs on disposable batteries, rechargeable batteries, or some other way of keeping the juice up, not how long the charge holds.

Though the keyboard is designed nicely and looks svelte, it is also looks pretty wide (an extended keyboard with extra keys on the left); you might not have the desktop space for it. Then there is the question of how the keyboard feels, an important point for many. And finally, there is the issue of durability: any key that sticks or blacks out permanently could screw up the whole keyboard. Will the keys be replaceable?

On the other hand, the makers are claiming that price will be between $200 to $300, a seeming bargain considering what you're getting; specialty keyboards can already cost much more than that, and even standard wireless keyboards can cost up to $200. So despite the new functionality, the price (which may fall considerably over time) will not break the bank and relegate the new keyboard to the backwaters of super-expensive toys.

Some have claimed that this is not even a real device, even a prototype, but is rather a design presentation, a graphic rendering only. If that's true, then they did a damn good job of it. Even if that claim is true and the product is only an imagining, I would think that it is revolutionary enough to spur production of the real thing. But the site claims that it could be out by next year, and a lot of people take this seriously. We'll see.

One additional note: this also is another step in the direction of Star Trek technology, just like today's cell phones imitate the communicators from the 60's series. In the 80's series Star Trek: The Next Generation, computer controls were portrayed as reprogrammable visual displays; you want to do something different at a work station, the keyboard would change for you. Hmm.

Audacity

A few weeks ago, I went on a bit about how to make a podcast, and I recommended a few audio recording and editing programs. I'm back to say that there's one I missed which outdoes all the others. It is a freeware app called Audacity, and it's a great program--so much so, you wonder why it's freeware. Maybe Peak LE does stuff that pros use which I don't know about, but as far as lay-people using apps to record and edit, this program has Peak beat hands-down.

It works much the way SoundEdit did, perhaps even better, and is a worthy successor. Audacity can open WAV, MP3, OGG, AIF and Sun AU audio files (MIDI import is also possible). THe application can save audio projects as proprietary Audacity files, and can export at WAV or OGG; you can also export as MP3 with the use of a LAME library file. You can also use Audacity to record via a microphone.

Once open, you can view and edit audio files in a variety of ways. In the example below, the left audio track is shown as a waveform while the right track is shown as a spectrogram:

You can split stereo audio tracks and edit them separately, adding or subtracting tracks as you go. You can change the view for or switch channels for each track:

A small control panel (shown at left) allows you to change the cursor mode between selection, edit volume (envelope), edit samples, magnify, move and multi-tools modes. The envelope mode is pretty neat, allowing non-destructive volume changes on the fly which you can edit back and forth without resorting to a dialog box, making permanent changes to the volume.

Another toolbar (shown at right) allows you to cut, copy, paste; crop in and crop out; undo and redo; zoom in and zoom out; and most useful, the last two controls allow you to quickly expand either the selection or the entire audio track to fit the window.

The tracks themselves are easily and intuitively expandable, allowing you to resize the display to whatever is most convenient for you.

The audio-out and audio-in volume are even presented just right (for my tastes at least). Almost everything feels like it was designed in just the right way. Complex enough to please high-end users, but simple and intuitive enough for a lay person like myself.

Furthermore, Audacity has a range of special effects very similar to SoundEdit, including fades, pitch/speed/tempo changes, amplification, bass boost, normalization, equalization, reverse/inverse, etc. etc. It can also generate tones and silence, sometimes useful and usually missing from other apps.

It's also available cross-platform, Mac (OS 9 and X), Windows, and Linux/Unix.

If you're looking for a good audio program and don't want to pay for a professional package, this is your baby.

New iTunes Cell Phone

Apparently the cat is--or might be--out of the bag: three days before an official announcement is expected, Engadget has posted photos and an iTunes screen shot of the new phone. It uses a TransFlash card for memory, the biggest size for that format being 256 MB. The phone appears to have some video function as well. However, the nature of the video function, or even if the phone includes a camera, is unclear. There is also talk about whether this is the real deal, or if it's an older proof-of-concept version of an existing phone model, and not the final product. The same site showed this image of what was then also rumored to be the new iTunes phone. So nothing is certain--except that there will be an iTunes phone, and we'll likely know its real final form by the end of this week.

That's Better

I've been using my new Powerbook with 512 MB of RAM, the pre-installed amount, awaiting the delivery of a new 1 GB RAM module. Just got it this morning, and installed it about an hour ago. Got 1.5 GB of RAM now.

Man, what a difference that makes!

My first test with it was to use Virtual PC, which I could now assign 512 MB of RAM all by itself. With the new 1.67 GHz CPU and max RAM for the app, using Windows XP is damn snappy! On my old TiBook (with half the CPU speed and half the RAM I've got now), I used to have to wait several seconds for the screen to redraw and for windows and apps to open. Now using that particular CPU- and RAM-intensive app is much smoother; I almost don't notice that I'm not using a PC.

Even outside of VPC, I could tell that the memory shortage was slowing me down, causing problems when I had several apps open at once. I knew the extra RAM would make a difference--but was still surprised at how much of a difference it made.

One thing I did notice: Dashboard is eating a lot more memory than it was before. Tiger's new Konfabulator-like widget module feature used to eat maybe anywhere from 2 MB to 13 MB per widget upon opening, maybe averaging at 3-4 MB each. (Though memory leaks in Dashboard would cause some widgets' memory allocation to bloat up to dozens of MB each if you left them on long enough.) But after installing the new RAM, tripling my memory, it more than tripled Dashboard's memory usage. One widget started out eating 30 MB of RAM, and the smallest eater was using 15 MB. Each widget was using maybe 20 MB average.

Not that I can't afford it now; even with Virtual PC eating up nearly 600 MB or RAM total, and with Dashboard, Safari, and Ecto operating, I still have almost 500 MB of RAM free, almost my total RAM amount before the upgrade. I could open up several more apps before memory started getting tight.

I always tell my students that they should, as a matter of course, buy more memory when they get a new computer, and I'd tell the same to you. Computer makers want to offer you a machine at the lowest price they can, and one of the easiest ways to make the unit seem cheaper is to give you the minimum RAM necessary. 512 MB is quickly becoming the new norm, since 256 MB can't really cut it so well anymore.

Of course, it's possible you may not need extra RAM. If you only use one app at a time, if you don't use RAM-intensive apps, and if you don't expect to upgrade the OS or apps on your machine for its foreseeable lifetime, then you will probably be happy with what you get at the outset.

Many people are not like that, though. You may play some games with 3-D graphics, you may do photo or movie editing, or you may use apps like VPC. You will probably be opening several applications at the same time. And you will very likely upgrade both apps and operating system at some time, meaning that in a few years, your computer will be eating more memory than it does now; in this respect, adding RAM will effectively extend the lifetime of your computer, allowing you to upgrade farther into the future.

I have a friend who has a 1 GHz Athlon PC running XP. She called me up at one point and told me that she was experiencing a big problem. If she had MS Word only up and running, the computer was fine; but if she opened up another app, like Internet Explorer, suddenly her computer slowed waaay down. I asked her to go to her "My Computer" window, right-click on the icon at the left side of the title bar, select "Properties" from the pop-up menu, and report how much RAM her computer had. Turns out she only had 128 MB of RAM, and that, of course, was her problem.

Extra RAM may add a few hundred dollars to the cost of your computer, but you should see that as a part of the whole price of buying one.

It's Here!

Got the new PowerBook. And as advertised, it's very, very nice. Transferred all my data and settings from the old TiBook, it was very seamless. So far, it's working brilliantly. It plays the Hi-res Apple Movie trailers quite well, ones which would not play well at all on my old 'Book. And though the unit gets hot, it doesn't get nearly as hot as my older computer would get. And though it's supposed to be .2 pounds heavier, somehow it feels lighter, even when holding both computers at the same time, one in each hand. I haven't had the chance to take it for a real spin yet, and won't see its full effect until the 1GB RAM upgrade gets here next week.

One problem: a dead pixel. Yargh. At least, it's partly dead. As far as I can tell, only the green element to the pixel is dead. But in most circumstances, it makes the pixel look dead, next to the other pixels around it. Anything that's not pure red, blue or purple, anything that's lighter than that, and it shows up. And there seems to be another pixel stuck on blue as well. The good news, somewhat: both are on the right side of the screen, less than an inch from the edge, so they won't be so noticeable. But you always really hope for the screen to be perfect. And Apple's policy is to accept anywhere up to five or perhaps seven dead or stuck pixels on a screen. Won't stop me from taking it to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store in Ginza and seeing what they say and do about it. I doubt I'll get anywhere, but best to try all options.

Confirmation

I received an email from Apple telling me that the PowerBook G4 I ordered last week will be arriving late this week, earlier than they first predicted. They told me it would get here on the 22nd, but now the correspondence says it'll get here no later than this Friday, the 17th.

But that's not the confirmation I'm referring to in the title of this entry. Rather, it's a review of the exact same PowerBook model on a website called "Notebook Review." The article is written by Gabe Lipson, a long-time Windows user who intended to buy another PC, but heard of issues with the model he wanted and quickly was sold on the PowerBook when he visited an Apple Store.

Many parts of the review are comforting especially in light of the possibility of Mactel Powerbooks as early as a year from now. Lipson points out that using a very simple benchmark (calculating pi to 2 million digits), the PowerBook outperforms a range of Pentium-M Wintel laptops running from 1.6 to 1.9 GHz; so despite the lack of a G5, the PowerBook G4 is still fast enough to rank up there in the laptop market. I know that more complex benchmarks will rank things differently, but still we're talking about an equivalent class of computers.

Lipson also compared the PowerBook screen favorably compared to the highly-touted BrightView reflective screen. I've seen these on PCs and they look very nice, but as Lipson points out, the reflective part seems like it could be an annoyance. The PowerBook's screen, he reports, does just as good a job without that down point.

Otherwise, Lipson praises though does not gush about the PowerBook: the size of the computer, the keyboard and the screen is just about right, not too big or small; the speakers do well, the processor performs well, the ports, WiFi and battery all perform as well as can be expected. Lipson likes the backlit keyboard, and admires OS X 10.4.

All of this not bad at all for a notebook computer which has received no significant processor upgrades for the past three years!

Lipson also mirrors my worries and complaints: the possibility of dead pixels (crossing my fingers big-time) and the fact that you never know when a huge upgrade may or may not be just around the corner.

This is what I've become used to hearing from long-time Wintel users who make the switch: pleasantly surprised. It also confirms many of the reasons why I like the Mac.

One more point, while I'm here: there has been a lot of talk in the past week about how Mac users are reacting to the switch to Intel, as if we're all supposed to feel betrayed or something. My reaction has been, "why?" The Mac switched over to RISC and IBM years back, and it didn't hurt me at all then. Apple will likely make this change just as transparent. So what? A new chip is a new chip.

Many Windows enthusiasts have been crowing about this, gloating about how Mac fans have been touting the PPC, and now have to eat crow over the switch to Intel. I don't get that, either. I had great hopes for what IBM was supposed to deliver, and if it towered over what Windows PCs were getting, all the better. But what happened was IBM's failure, not Apple's, so Apple just went with someone else who could do a better job. Maybe if I'd been going on about how crappy Intel chips were and IBM was so superior and that's the way it would be forever and ever and I'm so sure I would bet the farm, then I'd have to eat crow. But even at that, for the present at least, IBM's existing chips are still superior to most of what's out there in the Windows market. This is evidenced by what I mentioned above, that the laptop G4 still compares well to the latest Wintel chip offerings. The problem is that IBM has stalled and had no future promise--and apparently, no interest, either.

The only way that I see the Mactel news as being of any importance is that it seems to signal strong possibilities for the Mac OS to encroach on the Windows market. And even many Windows enthusiasts I see on the web seem to be more biased towards PC hardware, and would be fine with the Mac OS, so long as it could work transparently with Windows software--which is what will very likely happen.

This Is Where It Gets Creepy

See the pretty girl giving the demonstration at the World Expo in Aichi? At first, seeing what looked like a little camera behind her, I thought she was wearing gloves as part of some motion-sensor demonstration. It was only when I read the small print that I found out what I never would have guessed: that's not a girl. It's an android. Specifically, it's the Repliee Q1, developed by Osaka University. As the unit's co-creator points out, when androids get to looking that human, it gets a little creepy.

When you visit the project's home page, the photos there are higher-definition and the android no longer looks as perfectly human as it does in the Expo photo. But well worth watching are the three MPG videos of the android talking, moving, and reacting to someone touching it. Here it's a mixture of the thing looking less human than you thought but at the same time also looking more human than you might have expected.

One thing it suggests: androids indistinguishable from humans are a little less far off in the future than you may have thought. They're not coming soon, but we're farther along the road than I'd have thought.

Taking the Plunge

So I just got off the phone with the Apple Store, having ordered the new Mac. Should arrive in about a week and a half. Got the 15" PowerBook G4 SuperDrive model running at 1.67 GHz, with optional U.S. keyboard (which causes the delivery delay).

Now to order an extra Gig of RAM.

I'm probably also going to order a Bluetooth mouse, though I don't see many out there that look too attractive. But MacAlly has a new model, called the BT-Mouse, which sells for $50 and looks like it's well-put-together. It's full size (most BT mice are minis, which I don't like at all), and has the third button just below the scroll wheel, also where I prefer it.

The mouse won't be available for a few more weeks, but I should be able to get the RAM at about the same time as the computer arrives, which will be nice.

Anyone want to buy a used 800 MHz DVI TiBook?

Easy for Him to Say, Now

Chris Seibold, in an article for Apple Matters, wrote:

Witness the people hauling around first generation TiBooks holding out for the (never to come) G5 laptop. People have been guessing that a G5 PowerBook was just around the corner for two or three years and have waited for it accordingly.  Wouldn’t their overall computing experience have been better if they had gone ahead and purchased a new PowerBook when they first felt the need?

Now, if he'd written that before the Mactel announcement, I would have given him more credit. Right now, it's unmistakably clear in hindsight. So thanks, Chris, for being paid to state the bleeding obvious after the fact.

Close to a Decision

For me, it's harder to say that the Mactel news will slow Mac sales, because that very news has drawn me to decide, or almost decide, to get a new PowerBook G4. Of course, I won't be in a typical place.

Right now I have an 800 MHz G4 PowerBook (the first DVI model) which just turned three years old a few months ago. I have been waiting for a significant upgrade before getting my next Mac 'Book, but the Mactel news has spurred me to move forward sooner than I'd planned.

The model I'd buy now is the 15" PowerBook G4 running at 1.67 GHz, the Superdrive model. I should be able to get academic pricing from Apple Japan on a model with the US keyboard layout, meaning not having to ship from the U.S. and not having to pay high California state sales taxes. The cost would be about ¥245,000 ($2300) including tax. Add another $200 for an extra 1 GB of RAM. It's not a quantum leap over my present computer, considering that it's been 3 years. The new 'Book would have double the CPU speed, but in the past, that's happened a lot faster. However, there are other considerations, including 512 KB of on-chip L2 cache as opposed to 1 MB L3 cache (the former is better than the latter, for those of you who don't know what cache is about), a (slightly) higher bus speed, better RAM, better graphics chip, and several other small points. The big differences would be a faster Superdrive instead of a slower Combo drive, double the size of the HDD (40 GB to 80 GB), built-in Bluetooth, USB 2, and AirPort Extreme to match my base station.

If I wait for the new Mactel Powerbook instead of buying now, I could be waiting as long as 2 years, and will have spent much of that time impatiently expectant of a new PowerBook "any day now," not to mention trying to get along with a much slower computer than I'd prefer.

In addition, most completely new models--not just upgrades, but new designs--have kinks in the system that need to be worked out, and the new Mactel PowerBooks are probably more likely to have such bugs than other models. These bugs get smoothed out, but only after one or two revisions. Which means that when the first Mactel PowerBook comes out, it'll be fast but with the risk of annoying problems.

Getting a Powerbook now means that it'll be three years old (my standard computer retirement time) when the first Mactel PowerBook free of problems rolls out.

The risks: there could be a significant G4 upgrade soon, such as dual-core, that could come out in 3-6 months. If that happened, I'd be kinda pissed. However, the chances of that are low, and by waiting for that much longer, I would be getting started later on the lifetime of my next computer. Also, there is the chance that the first Mactel PowerBook out of the gate could be killer and have no flaws. Again, chances are low, but possible. Were both these things to happen, I'd feel pretty stupid. But I'd also feel like an idiot if I waited till MacWorld SF in January to find the next PowerBook model to be a minor speed bump to 1.8 GHz and little else, followed by a Mactel release in June 2006, 6 moths after buying the speed-bumped G4.

If I buy a new computer this week, I'll even have a good excuse: today was my birthday. Taking time zones into account, it's 2:35 am Japan time on Thursday, June 9.

So I'm probably a day or two away from ordering. Anyone has good reasons to stop me, better chime in fast!

Now Your Dog Takes You for a Walk

An interesting invention here. Do you have a dog, but don't like having to exert so much energy walking the pooch every day, struggling to hold him back? This device takes care of that: strap Fido into the harness, and let him pull you along while you steer.

A movie showing the device in action is also available on the product's site.

This may not be in line with what most canine lovers may accept as doggie-friendly, but it's better than some ideas I've seen before, like one guy I saw "walking" his dog from his car, holding the leash out the window. The makers of this "urban mushing" device claim that it actually gives "identity and pride for your dog," though somehow I'm not fully sure that this is what the dogs are thinking.

If you want to spread the workload of dragging your fat ass around, there's a model of the Dog-Powered Scooter which allows for two dogs. Though frankly, I might not want to be on that scooter when Spot and Rover lay their eyes on Fluffy the Cat and decide to go for it.

Well, That's a Little Disturbing

If you've read this blog for a while, then you know that I got a Toshiba TiVo-like box late last year, one that not only records shows digitally, but then archives them on DVDs.

But in April, the DVD burner started producing multiple disk errors, just as the hard drive filled up. I got it repaired--but now, only a month and a half later, the drive sputtered out once more, again producing disk errors. So I called up, and again, they sent a techie out to replace the DVD drive.

Now, just the fact that the DVD burner craps out twice, once after four months and again after one and a half months, is bad enough. But then the tech guy doing the replacement was kind enough to be honest with me: the drives, he said, are built to last only for about 600 burns. Prior models, he said, could last for 1000, but this one does about 600. And he was giving me a refurbished unit--no way of telling how far along the odometer was. And I burn a lot of DVDs. I could easily run through 600 in less than two years. So that's the lifetime on the unit I bought?

Of course, I could always have the DVD unit swapped out, like I'm having now under warranty. But that costs about $300, adding 50% to the cost of each DVD I burn, from $1 a pop to a buck fifty. In addition to the original cost of the machine, which was over $1000.

Not exactly what I thought I was getting, and I'm none too happy about it. Is this considered the norm for DVD burners?

That's a Relief

For some time now, I've been having problems with my DVR, the Toshiba I talked about a while back. For the past month or so, the DVD burner has been acting up. At first, I thought it was just some bad DVD-Rs I'd bought (some were indeed bad). A new brand worked fine, for about 10 DVDs, but then things went south again, and after trying three or four other brands as well as the two original brands that should've worked, it became apparent that the DVR was to blame.

Now, none of this is end-of-the-world kinda stuff, but I have carefully recording and archiving several shows as they're rebroadcast here in Japan (often commercial-free and uncut), making a cheaper version of the series archives sold by the studios. I got all seven years of Deep Space Nine, for example, for maybe less than $100 worth of DVD disks, instead of paying $640 retail. Sure, it required a bit more work, but it's worth the end cost.

But when my burner cut out, I still had a lot of stuff on the disk, and with no way to transfer the shows off the HDD, room was quickly running out. Fortunately, the Toshiba customer support line was less insufferable than last time--I only had to dial constantly for about an hour to get through--and they agreed to send a repair guy out to my place this morning. Strangely, I got asked--twice--whether I'd bought my machine less than a year before. It must have been some question on a form, because I had identified the machine constantly as the XS53, which was only released some 6 months ago.

I feared, of course, that the repair guy would tell me that it would be necessary to take the machine in for repairs for a few weeks, so I was prepared to start taping shows in 2-hour mode on my antiquated VHS deck (re-using a few of the hundreds of old tapes I'll be able to toss when I get all the shows on DVD), and pray that Toshiba didn't zap my hard drive full of shows during repairs.

To my surprise, however, the repair guy just came in and swapped out the DVD drive. Now it works beautifully again. But it does now make me question the quality of the DVD drives they use....

Not to Overstate It

So there I was at the shop, mulling over which zoom lens to buy. I have a camera with 10x optical zoom, so the 1.6x and 2.2x telephoto converters would, naturally and respectively, make my optical zoom 16x or 22x. You'd think I'd only naturally go with the 22x. However, there are other considerations.

Size and weight. The Raynox 2.2x lens is light, but it's also huge. At five inches, it's twice as long and maybe three times as bulky as the Canon lens. And bulk would be a big down point if I just wanted to hop out the door and jaunt on down to the park. While the Canon is also a bit bulky, at least I can still break it down into small enough pieces to fit into my jacket pockets. And though the Raynox feels lighter (larger items even of greater weight usually feel lighter), it's almost double the Canon--275 grams to Canon's 145.

Flexibility. Both lenses have the black outer silhouette when not zoomed in at all, but the Raynox's silhouette is far more constricting. (See the image in yesterday's post.) You have to zoom in almost to the full 10x before the black outer silhouette disappears; with the Canon, the smaller silhouette disappears at maybe halfway through the zoom. That allows for me to zoom out to get a wider angle photo without having to change lens assemblies. And, as a small point, the Raynox requires an additional adapter to match the adapter you need to latch on to the Canon S1-IS lens assembly. That means adding three extra pieces instead of two.

Price. This was actually closer than I expected: ¥15,000 for the Canon, ¥21,500 for the Raynox (that's roughly $140 vs. $200). Less than 50% more money for effectively double the zoom magnification--though, as you can see from the image below, the 2.2x zoom doesn't really seem as impressive, doesn't seem like twice the extra magnification, when you look at the end result--though that is largely due to the fact that the extra zoom is seen only after the initial 10x zoom--so from 16 to 22 is not really double.

Effect on performance. This is one I hadn't really thought through before, and had on of the strongest impacts on me. When I took the comparison shots, it became clear, even through the S1-IS's tiny LCD display, that the 2.2x lens produced lower-quality images than the 1.6x Canon, and when I thought about it, the reasons made sense. After all, the whole reason Canon's image stabilization is important is because you've got a big zoom lens, and that means that hand jiggle will translate more strongly. So it stands to reason that the more you increase that zoom, the more your hand shaking will overcome the image stabilization--which may be why Canon stopped at a 1.6x tele-converter instead of going for 2.0x or better. Despite the large size of the lens to gather more light, the 2.2x might wind up capturing less light, affecting exposures (though I don't really know that one way or the other). But the bottom line is, the more zoom you get, the higher a price you pay in performance.

And then, there's the overall impression:

Look at those two zoom fields. The 2.2x doesn't really look like like it's all that much more impressive. Yes, technically, you're zooming in more. But it really doesn't seem worth it--more specifically, it doesn't feel worth the size, weight, extra cost and hit on performance. In the end, I just felt that I'd be too often disappointed and unhappy with the bigger lens--so of course, I wound up buying the Canon TC-DC52B 1.6x converter. And so here it is:

By the way, the black part of the lens assembly is not all the tele-converter. From the camera's lens assembly to that first major seam in the black assembly is just the conversion adapter for the S1-IS.

Entry for the Dumb Ideas Department: having just bought the Canon lens, I was heading back to Shinjuku station, and in the back of my mind, I was thinking about the lens. My thoughts wandered to blogging about it (as I am now doing), and one consideration was how to get an image of the camera with the lens. Now, you see above that very photo, but at that point, I had not yet considered it, and hadn't thought it through. I couldn't take a straight-on photo of the camera in my mirror, I realized, because that would only show the lens head-on, the least interesting view.

So here's where the dumb idea came in. Now, keep in mind that I was navigating my way through Shinjuku Station, and looking at people and storefronts along the way, so the front of my mind was otherwise occupied; this thought process I'm describing was only going on in the back of my mind. And apparently, the back of my mind isn't very bright. Because the solution it hit upon was to set the camera's timer to 2-second mode; I would then focus and click the shutter button while looking straight-on into the mirror--but before the 2 seconds elapsed and the camera took the picture, I would turn the camera so as to get a much better angle!

Once my hindbrain came up with this ingenious plan, it alerted my forebrain. At which time, my forebrain considered it for a split second, and then pointed at my hindbrain and laughed uproariously. It was good for merriment for much of the way home.

Not that my hindbrain stopped there. After a bit, my forebrain realized that the thing to do is to get out the old camera (which I haven't used since last December) and take a photo of the new camera with that. "Good idea!" answered my hindbrain. "But won't it be hard to hold both cameras while you're taking the photo in the mirror?"

Zooming In

Well, it didn't take long for me to get to want more than 10x zoom on my digital camera. Not that I'm complaining too much; 10x is pretty good, and if you've been looking at the Birdwatching in Japan series, then you have a good idea of what good quality shots I've been able to get--especially considering that I'm using a digital camera priced just over $300.

But knowing that better lenses are out there, I decided to see what I could find. I went to Yodobashi, and found two candidates: the Canon-specific TC-DC52B 1.6x Tele-converter, and the Raynox DCR-2020PRO 2.2x Tele-converter. Both are priced higher in Japan than in the U.S.; the Japan prices were $140 and $200 respectively. I tried both out on a local target--a shop sign seen out the doorway. Below is the zoom range comparison shot:

The main image was taken with just the regular 10x optical zoom on the Canon. The two interior squares represent the images taken by the camera with the two zoom lenses at maximum optical zoom. I superimposed the 16x and 22x images and then reduced the images until they matched the original image. Each square shows the area covered by each zoomed image; imagine each area expanded to match the original shot, and you get an idea of the magnification. The images are slightly tilted because of the way I held the camera.

The lenses must be used with the camera at a higher zoom setting, or else you get a telescoping black circle around the image; below are photos taken with the Canon and Raynox, respectively, with the camera fully zoomed out:

As you can see, you have less of a field of view with the Raynox; to get rid of the black frame, you have to zoom the camera nearly to the limit. the Canon lens allows for much more flexibility. Both allow you to start zoomed out in order to find the target before zooming in, however, and that is really all that I was looking for.

I've got to go--final exams and all. But I'll be back with more, including which lens I got, some shots of the lens on the camera, and a real humdinger in the "dumb ideas" department!

Super Battery?

Just announced from Toshiba, via Mac Rumors: Toshiba has a new battery, available commercially in 2006, which will be able to attain an 80% charge after only one minute of recharging (total recharge would take "a few more minutes"). Furthermore, it will lose only 1% of its capacity in 1,000 charges.

There may be some caveats there, of course: the lossless capacity is likely tested under ideal laboratory conditions, not real-life ones, and no clear mention is made as to how much energy is stored--will it provide for a longer battery usage time? Or will each charge last only half as long as batteries of a similar size today? Are there other problems with it we don't know about yet?

It has only just been announced and not at all tested; but if its performance can hold up to current batteries, this will turn out to be quite a revolutionary change.

Zooming In

Well, I've had the Canon S1 for a few weeks now, but because of my nosebleed situation, I have not had all that many opportunities to test it. But soon after I got here in mid-December, I did have one chance to test it against the old Canon PowerShot model's zoom lens. The PowerShot S30 I've got has the typical 3x zoom for a digital camera, and that is identical to the zoom on my father's S45. So when we went to the 49ers-Washington game a few weeks back, we took side-by-side photos for comparison.

The grid of four images below represent the extremes of the zoom lenses for both cameras. Due to size restrictions, I couldn't post the full-sized comparison here, but if you click the image, it will take you to the 800x600 original image in a new window.

Of the four images in this grid, the two on the left are taken with the S45, and the two on the right are taken with the S1-IS. The top two images are fully zoomed out, and the bottom two are fully zoomed in. All the images are cropped, and in the full-sized image, are not reduced or enlarged in any way, so what you see is the original image, pixel for pixel. Since the images are cropped, that in itself acts like a zoom, but since I don't want to burden you with four megabyte-sized images each many times larger than your display, this will have to do.

The two key images are the ones at the bottom, which show the difference you get between the 3x zoom and the 10x zoom. These images were shot from the upper deck at Candlestick Park during the pre-game activities. I figure that the 25-yard-line, where the kicker was practicing, was about 60 yards distant from the lens. So looking at the lower-right image of the ball at the kicker's feet, that's a pretty good zoom image. I mean, I'm getting blades of grass and you can almost read the writing on the football.

So until they come up with a 20x zoom in a mid-range digital camera, I'm going to consider this as being pretty cool.

Toshiba RD-XS53 Having Meltdown

You pay $1000-plus for a piece of electronic machinery, you expect it to work. I'm speaking of the DVR I got, and blogged about here.

After two months of use, the machine froze at one point. Not unexpected, it is, after all, a computer with an operating system. You run it that long without restarting--which I did, neglectfully--it will crash. But at least after that, you can expect that upon restart, it will function okay. The first time it happened, I restarted--and a good portion of the presets were trashed. I had to work for the better part of an hour to figure out that the local channel setup had to be reset in order for the schedule screen--and thereby everything else--to work. I found all my programming for shows in place, but with the channels erased, so those had to all be reset. Some other stuff too, but suffice it to say that it ate up 2 hours of my weekend (it always happens then, just when I can't call up support). But at least I figured that if I shut down and restarted the machine properly every so often, I could avoid this from happening.

No such luck. Today it hard-crashed. Twice. Both times as I started to play a file. Once just after I had spent an hour prepping a few dozen shows for DVD burning--only to find after the crash, my edits had been wiped, and I'll have to do them all over again.

What's worse is the prospects for the future. Now I'll be nervous every time I start to view any file I have saved. I'm pretty sure that if I call Toshiba, they will tell me that either I have to re-initialize the hard disk(s) in the machine, or I'll have to send the machine in to them. Both are unsavory prospects. I have so much stuff on the disks that it will take so much time to catalog in DVD form--if the machine doesn't keep freezing or fall apart completely--I will have to spend every moment of free time for a week just clearing the system. And not everything will fit neatly on DVDs at that, meaning some mostly-empty disks. Worse, having to send it in means not having the machine at all for two or three weeks or even more. Unless they send me a loaner--which I doubt--that means a huge hole in my current cataloguing of shows, which is what I bought the damn machine for in the first place.

So, in short, I am becoming less and less impressed by this machine. Either I got a lemon, or the machine is just very poorly designed. And either way, dealing with Toshiba's dismal support system will be a nightmare all in itself.

Next on the "To-Buy" List

My top-rated Canon Powershot S30 is showing its age--and its damage in that I've dropped it on concrete a couple of times. It has served brilliantly over the past couple of years, taking beautiful photos and having the flexibility I really enjoy in a camera. But now the shutter window is kind of messed up from the concrete-dropping (it tends to close shut at the slightest touch and is often difficult to open), and with digital cameras, a couple of years is a long time. So it's time for a new camera.

I am not looking for more megapixels. Really, 3.2 (what the S30 provides) is more than enough if you're not printing 8x10 glossies, which I never do. More megapixels is mostly for print quality--though it could be used as a quasi-zoom, messily--and I use my camera 99% of the time for digital storage, rarely printing images on paper, even 4x6 sized. So I don't mind a 3-megapixel camera. Which is what I'm going for.

In steps the Canon S1-IS (pictured at right). Not new, it's about 8 months old; I've been waiting to buy on the off chance that Canon will introduce a new version, but it looks like that won't happen in time. But the S1 has a lot of what I want.

First and foremost, the 10x zoom with the image stabilization (the "IS" in the name). On far too many occasions I wanted to zoom way more than my 3x S30 will allow. Digital zoom just ain't the same thing. And from what I've read, the image stabilization--a big selling point for such a strong zoom lens--really does work, allowing not just stable long-zoom shots, but also good low-light shots with a relatively fast shutter speed--another thing on my wish list. And the zoom works fast, smooth and silent--allowing zooms to be made during movie shooting.

It still has the wide variety of settings and features that the S30 has, with manual focus, aperture and shutter settings, allowing for special photographic effects like extended exposures and depth-of-field tricks. Improvements include full-frame, full-TV-quality video shooting. Though it takes up lots of space, I intend to buy a 1GB Compact Flash card (I'm glad they're staying with that format) that can hold about 8 minutes of video; as such, it will almost replace my digital video recorder. The longest shutter speed is still 15 seconds (why not 30?), but the fastest has doubled to 1/2000th of a second. And it will work nicely with my Canon printer, plugging in directly so that photo printing--when I want it--will not require the computer to be involved.

I thought the fact that it eats 4-AA Alkaline batteries would be a disadvantage, but after consideration, it beats out the expensive, proprietary battery packs--it's cheaper to have rechargeable AA's, and if the available rechargeables all lose their juice, standard AA's will work nicely.

The down side is the form factor--being a bit bulkier with more protrusions, it will not fit into my shirt pocket like my S30 does--but I can live with that. Maybe it'll still fit in pants or jacket pockets. The lens cap is a nuisance, but can be dealt with. There are a lot of buttons and controls, but not so many that I'll be lost or anything. I also expect the flash and low-light focusing to be sub-par--a common failing among Canon cameras, but well-made-up-for by the image quality and feature set.

Finally, the price is right: about $320 to $350. Though I have to buy it in the U.S.--ironically, the cameras are quite a bit more expensive in Japan, at $510--even with the 15% point-card "discount," it's still a big chunk of change cheaper in the U.S.

I plan to order in the next couple of weeks so that it will be delivered to my folks' house before I arrive for Christmas vacations. The 49ers-Washington game my father's taking me to should provide a good test for the zoom.

How To Be a Professional Couch Potato

I recently purchased of the Toshiba RD-XS53, the TiVo-like HDD/DVD recorder, and am quite satisfied with how it's turning out. After a steep initial learning curve, I got it all programmed and am now training myself through the various procedures, which are lengthy--the thing has countless options, which can be both good and bad. If you're not interested in techy, gadget-oriented home video kind of stuff, you may want to go on to the next post. Otherwise:

Essentially, this is like a TiVo or ReplayTV machine, but with added features. Like other DVRs, it records video on a hard disk in the MPEG-2 format (the same as on DVDs). Because it's digital, it can then be manipulated in a variety of ways.

There are a variety of Toshiba machines that do similar things, but the RD-XS53 is the only one that has the ability to work with SkyPerfecTV. Although that connection is limited to turning the tuner on and off and changing channels, that's really all you need, at least right away. The SkyP connectivity is important if you're living in Japan and want to record a good amount of English-language video. Unless your local cable has a good selection of channels and its tuner can work with a DVR box, the SkyP-Toshiba combo is probably best. The machine can also get the "BS" satellite feed as well, and of course can record off of local broadcast stations. You can also record any video input, like from a DVD player, a VCR, a video camera (there is a Firewire/iLink port for digital video cameras) or from the video-out on a PC. Want to make a DVD of a demonstration on your computer? This will let you do it.

Also, the RD-XS53 (at least in Japan) has a whopping 320 GB of hard drive space, allowing for up to 570 hours of recording at the lowest quality setting--144 hours at "high." That's more than enough to have a great deal of video saved up before archiving is necessary--and that's where the DVD recorder comes in handy; more on that later. The large hard drive also allows you to record all your shows while you're on vacation, and it even claims (though I have yet to come close to figuring it out) that you can set programming by remote control using your cell phone, sending a text message with coded instructions that the machine will receive via the Internet connection.

The RD-XS53 does fall short in a few areas, such as ease-of-use, as evidenced that sharp learning curve I mentioned. There are four different main special activity areas, dozens of preferences screens, and so many menus that I can't count them. And not all processes are easily performed; deleting commercial breaks, for example, requires you to go to the editing area, going through a process of determining "chapters," and then going back to the recorded-shows area, and deleting the vaguely-titled chapters one by one, each time having to navigate back to the recorded-video area. Another problem not really Toshiba's fault is the inability to record "bilingual" shows in English on Fox or Disney channels--they have a unique bilingual mode which must be set by hand each time.

But if you can put up with little stuff like that, there is a lot of compensation. You can access an Internet-based program schedule with the next week of programming included, with search options available. You can surf the programming schedule area, up and down for channels, left and right for times, with all the available broadcasts shown on the grid. Unfortunately, it's all in Japanese (if you can't read at least Katakana, then you shouldn't get this), though the SkyP box can show you the same grid in English for reference if you want. The programming has to be done on the Toshiba, though.

Once you find a show, you can reserve it for automatic recording. You're given the flexibility to change the exact time it starts and ends, which days it will record the show (every Tuesday, or every Monday-Saturday, for example); you can set the recording quality exactly on a 1-9 scale or use presets, and you can direct the recorder to save the show in a specific folder. Unlike most VCRs, which only allow 8 programmed recording times, this machine can keep a large number of pre-set recordings. I don't know if there's a limit--I have 21 set at present.

The machine also has two tuners/encoders, so it can record two shows at the same time--though only if they are on different inputs. For example, you could record two shows simultaneously if one is on SkyP and the other is on local antenna, but you can't do that if both shows are coming from SkyP.

Like most DVRs, this one has "Timeslip," which allows you to "pause" live TV. This comes from the ability to both watch and record at the same time. When you hit "Timeslip," the DVR starts recording the show on the hard disk, and at the same time plays back the file it is recording, but pauses it at the start. The show can keep on recording for as many hours as you like, and you can come back any time and then play the recording from the beginning, going forward or "rewinding" or pausing or skipping around to your heart's content, until you "catch up" with the live picture.

My father uses this on his ReplayTV to avoid endless commercials in football games. He sets the Timeslip, then keeps it on pause and does something else for half an hour. Then he comes back and watches the part of the game that was just recorded (as the recording continues), skipping through commercials until he catches up with the live game. Then when a live commercial rears its ugly head, he pauses and goes away for a half hour again so he can come back and skip through the commercials again. But this feature is handy in other ways, too--have you ever been settling down to watch your favorite show and the phone rings? Just pause it, and pick up where you left off.

While the file system is a bit clunky on the TV display, because this machine connects to your computer network (in order to download the programming information) it is also visible from your PC. The Toshiba people did a pretty good job of creating a browser control interface for the machine. Just find out which IP Address the machine was designated (e.g., 192.168.0.5) and type it into the browser's address box, and you get the machine's control interface. You can program recordings, create and title folders, see the recorded show titles and view and alter their information (titles, show info, assign chapter titles, etc.)--and most handy, you can author DVD titles and menus.

For example, I recorded Groundhog Day as a test. On the RD-XS53 directly, I then cut off the excess recording before the start and after the end so it was just the movie. Then I broke it into chapters, like on a DVD, and for each one set the thumbnail image. Then I went into the browser interface and viewed the thumbnails, giving each a title (it is so much nicer to type that than to use the cell-phone-like remote control typing feature). Then, also on the computer, I searched the Internet for a nice photo from the movie. I found a few, patched them together in Photoshop, and saved it as a BMP image, which I could them export to the RD-XS53. Also using the browser controls, I set the exact color scheme for the titles, then went back to the RD-XS53 and went through the DVD authoring process. After recording the DVD, I had the equivalent of a commercial DVD of the movie, with menus like this:

Granted, it's a bit of a chore, especially at first, but if you don't mind it or even enjoy it, you can build a pretty nice library on your own.

The DVD recording features are very nice--with them, you can archive any number of shows or movies. It is still a little pricey--the cheapest brand-name DVD-Rs I can find are ¥150 ($1.35) apiece. In high-quality mode, you could save three episodes of a one-hour TV show on one DVD, costing perhaps ¥1200 (about $11) for one season--but considering the $40 ~ $130 cost of these seasons on commercial DVD, this is an acceptable price. Record enough stuff like this and the machine pays for itself, in a way. The RD-XS53 can also record on DVD-RW or DVD-RAM media, for those of you who don't keep permanent copies of your recordings (I usually do, so I stick with the cheaper DVD-Rs).

There are a lot more features, some too insignificant to explain, others I haven't discovered or figured out yet. But as you can tell from the length of this post, I am sort of getting into it. One thing I'll admit, it's not gonna be good for my health; I am turning into a veteran couch potato!

Toshiba Support Sucks

As I mentioned before, the manual for the $1,000 machine I just bought comes nowhere near being informative enough to tell me how to operate the thing. After hours and hours of translating, reading, and fiddling around I worked out maybe half of the bare minimum to get the machine to function. So I have to resort to the support line. Except there's a problem. I've been hitting "redial" every fifteen seconds for 45 minutes now, and every number Toshiba has for support--three different numbers--have been solidly busy since opening time. And when I called the main support line over the weekend, the same person answered each time, suggesting that they only had one person on staff to answer the phones. You plop down that much money for a machine, you'd think that they'd either put more effort into writing the manual, or hire a few extra people to answer the phone...

I don't suppose there's anyone out there with an RD-XS53 who could give me some tips?

It Reads Like Stereo Instructions

So I broke down and went out and bought the Toshiba RD-XS53 HDD/DVD Recorder. That's the (supposedly) TiVo-like machine which works with SkyPerfecTV (which I just got), recording whatever you like and doing all the programming work for you. Or not.

In order to get enough time to set up the gadgets that I buy, I usually get them Friday evening on the way home from work, or on Saturday afternoon (like this time); that'll leave me the weekend, before I have to go back to work, to fiddle with the thing and get it just right.

And every time I seem to forget what happens every time before--the manual is frustratingly confusing, and the 24/7 telephone number is for pre-sales only--tech support won't open till Monday at 10 am, by which time I have to go to work. Yargh.

One of the main features--and they advertise the spit out of the machine as having this very feature--is that it can control the SkyP tuner box through a control cable, turning it on and off, changing the channel, switching the bilingual mode. But just try getting it to do that. The "easy setup" manual is unforgivably lacking in detail--it only explains a portion of what you have to do before you can even do the most basic of tasks--and in order to get things to work right, you have to reference the thicker manual, without prompting from the "easy setup," and, well, you get the picture. I could rant on, but I doubt you'd want to read about it.

Short story: I have figured out enough after a few hours of reading, fixing the settings, arranging the channels manually and so on, to get the thing to simply record whatever I manually set it to. Which will hold me, I suppose, until the tech support people come in from the weekend.

Spiffy features I hadn't known about: you can divide any recorded show into DVD chapters, and delete any chapter you want--which can be used to separate out and then delete commercial breaks, if you want to take the time to do that. That I could figure out, though I wouldn't even have known about it except that the Yodobashi Camera sales guy showed it to me. Another nifty feature is the ability to manually set the compression. Instead of just having "regular" (4.6) or "long" (3.2), you can set the quality from 1 to almost 10, so a DVD could hold anywhere from 1 to 8 hours of programming, depending on the quality you select. My current task is to figure out how much DVD play time is added by going up or down each step in compression so I can set the quality just right for X amount of video to fill up a disk.

One drawback: the DVD recorder will produce only Region-2 DVDs, so if you want to send homemade DVDs--even self-made things, like home movies--to anyone outside Japan, they'll need a region-free DVD player to view them. And there is copy-protection, so you can't just pop in a rental DVD, save it to disk, then record back onto a DVD-R (unless you have a pirate box that defeats the DVD protection).

I'm sure there are quite a few other ups and downs to come... And if anyone in the U.S. is interested in this kind of a machine, it'll be released there next month, at about $700. I presume it'll be geared to hook up to American satellite systems, and will probably have equivalent features.

Japanese TiVo?

Right now I'm considering switching from cable to satellite TV, but that's not the main topic of this article. One piece of technology I've been waiting for is a TiVo-like easy-programmable device.

For those of you who don't know about TiVo or its poor (but superior) cousin ReplayTV, these are hard-disk-based video recorders, belonging to a new category of home electronics, the "DVR" (Digital Video Recorder). Instead of saving recorded shows to VHS or even DVD, they save the video to a hard disk. The advantages are many: you can "pause" ("Time Slip" in Japanese) live TV while the digital recorder saves the ongoing programming into the hard drive; you can save up to a couple hundred hours of programming on the disk, no need to keep them on tapes and wonder what tape is free, what tape has what programming and other hassles; you can access any part of any recorded show very quickly; but best of all, the service usually includes an interactive program guide.

The program guide (called "EPG," or "Electronic Program Guide" in Japan) is kind of the like the "what's on" channel on cable TV in the U.S. On a grid displaying time horizontally and channels vertically, it allows you to access any part of the schedule. But with the HDD recorder, you can use that guide to program the recording of a show. For example, go to the program guide and find the "West Wing" slot, hit "program" and tell it how often, and your DVR will handle the recording of that show from then on--often including information such as episode title, summary, and whether or not it's a repeat. My father uses this in the U.S., and I've been more than a little envious.

For me right now, well, I've got cable TV and pretty crappy cable at that. Not too many channels, and the channel can only be changed directly via the tuner. Which means that if I want to record a show, I not only have to set the VCR to tape the show, I also have to set the cable tuner to jump to that channel at that time. And aside from the extra work, the cable tuner is hard to program and de-program. Unlike a VCR which will only record from programming if switched off, the cable tuner will always switch to programmed presets, whether the tuner is on or off--which means that unless you de-program the cable box, it will skip to the programmed channel even if you're watching another show. In short, it's a huge hassle.

Hopefully, not any more, though. Toshiba now makes a machine (the RD-XS53) which, through a "control cable," will control the satellite TV tuner as well as its own recorder functions. So like with TiVo or ReplayTV, you just have to go to the channel guide, choose a show, and then forget about it (you can also program the recorder from your PC). But it has some other very nice features as well: it can record two different shows simultaneously (so long as they don't require the same tuner), and it has a built-in DVD-R/RW/RAM recorder, so you can save anywhere from 1 to 8 hours of programming on a single DVD-R (depending on the recording quality). So just leave the DVR to record a few months' worth of shows, and for the ones you like, compile them on $3-a-pop DVD-Rs, which now cost about the same as, and record just as much as standard VHS tapes. You can watch these DVDs in your DVD player, or on your PC, if it has a DVD drive. Alas, it is not possible to directly put the video files on your PC, despite the network connection--copyright issues, I'm guessing. No biggie, though.

The major drawback, and possibly a deal-killer for me right now: the Toshiba machine costs ¥148,000 yen (about $1350). There is a lower-end model for ¥104,000 ($950), but it lacks the ability to mesh with SkyPerfecTV. For a while I thought the low-end model could do the satellite TV control, since the guy at Yodobashi and the sales guy at Toshiba both seemed to indicate that was possible when I asked about the two models together. But after my first call to Toshiba, I did more studying, noticed a small asterisk, and called again--and found out, sure enough, only the more expensive machine could do the satellite TV interface. Major difference there. The Toshiba guy was downright sheepish in admitting it to me.

So I might just go with the SkyPerfecTV for now and wait for the Toshiba models to get upgraded and priced down in 6 months or so. But it's tempting, I have to admit.

One other problem for me, though--to get SkyPerfecTV, which is necessary for the cool programming features (not to mention far better programming than my local cable TV outfit), you need to have a line-of-sight to the satellite, which is relatively low in the southwestern sky--and there's a building smack in the way from my apartment. However, at the east-most window ledge of my apartment, the SkyPerfecTV satellite map seems to indicate that I juuuuust might be able to peek around the building, just enough to catch the satellite. So, out goes the call to the local electronic shop's technician, to tell me if I am go or not on the satellite.

And yes, I am a bit much of a couch potato and electronics geek, so no need to tell me so via comments.

---

Update: I went to Kojima Denki, and they had the high-end model on sale for ¥120,000 ($1090) or thereabouts. The actual standard selling price for the model is ¥135,000, but Yodobashi sells at suggested retail and "gives" you the extra hundred bucks on your point card, so you'll spend it there. Kojima had it listed for 135, but with a kind of red writing diagonally over the price--which is an old Akihabara thing which means you ask the sales staff, they'll tell you the real discount price.

120 Puts it back into my ballpark, but only if I feel extravagant... which I might, if I can get SkyPerfecTV.

Japanese TiVo?

Right now I'm considering switching from cable to satellite TV, but that's not the main topic of this article. One piece of technology I've been waiting for is a TiVo-like easy-programmable device.

For those of you who don't know about TiVo or its poor (but superior) cousin ReplayTV, these are hard-disk-based video recorders, belonging to a new category of home electronics, the "DVR" (Digital Video Recorder). Instead of saving recorded shows to VHS or even DVD, they save the video to a hard disk. The advantages are many: you can "pause" ("Time Slip" in Japanese) live TV while the digital recorder saves the ongoing programming into the hard drive; you can save up to a couple hundred hours of programming on the disk, no need to keep them on tapes and wonder what tape is free, what tape has what programming and other hassles; you can access any part of any recorded show very quickly; but best of all, the service usually includes an interactive program guide.

The program guide (called "EPG," or "Electronic Program Guide" in Japan) is kind of the like the "what's on" channel on cable TV in the U.S. On a grid displaying time horizontally and channels vertically, it allows you to access any part of the schedule. But with the HDD recorder, you can use that guide to program the recording of a show. For example, go to the program guide and find the "West Wing" slot, hit "program" and tell it how often, and your DVR will handle the recording of that show from then on--often including information such as episode title, summary, and whether or not it's a repeat. My father uses this in the U.S., and I've been more than a little envious.

For me right now, well, I've got cable TV and pretty crappy cable at that. Not too many channels, and the channel can only be changed directly via the tuner. Which means that if I want to record a show, I not only have to set the VCR to tape the show, I also have to set the cable tuner to jump to that channel at that time. And aside from the extra work, the cable tuner is hard to program and de-program. Unlike a VCR which will only record from programming if switched off, the cable tuner will always switch to programmed presets, whether the tuner is on or off--which means that unless you de-program the cable box, it will skip to the programmed channel even if you're watching another show. In short, it's a huge hassle.

Hopefully, not any more, though. Toshiba now makes a machine (the RD-XS53) which, through a "control cable," will control the satellite TV tuner as well as its own recorder functions. So like with TiVo or ReplayTV, you just have to go to the channel guide, choose a show, and then forget about it (you can also program the recorder from your PC). But it has some other very nice features as well: it can record two different shows simultaneously (so long as they don't require the same tuner), and it has a built-in DVD-R/RW/RAM recorder, so you can save anywhere from 1 to 8 hours of programming on a single DVD-R (depending on the recording quality). So just leave the DVR to record a few months' worth of shows, and for the ones you like, compile them on $3-a-pop DVD-Rs, which now cost about the same as, and record just as much as standard VHS tapes. You can watch these DVDs in your DVD player, or on your PC, if it has a DVD drive. Alas, it is not possible to directly put the video files on your PC, despite the network connection--copyright issues, I'm guessing. No biggie, though.

The major drawback, and possibly a deal-killer for me right now: the Toshiba machine costs ¥148,000 yen (about $1350). There is a lower-end model for ¥104,000 ($950), but it lacks the ability to mesh with SkyPerfecTV. For a while I thought the low-end model could do the satellite TV control, since the guy at Yodobashi and the sales guy at Toshiba both seemed to indicate that was possible when I asked about the two models together. But after my first call to Toshiba, I did more studying, noticed a small asterisk, and called again--and found out, sure enough, only the more expensive machine could do the satellite TV interface. Major difference there. The Toshiba guy was downright sheepish in admitting it to me.

So I might just go with the SkyPerfecTV for now and wait for the Toshiba models to get upgraded and priced down in 6 months or so. But it's tempting, I have to admit.

One other problem for me, though--to get SkyPerfecTV, which is necessary for the cool programming features (not to mention far better programming than my local cable TV outfit), you need to have a line-of-sight to the satellite, which is relatively low in the southwestern sky--and there's a building smack in the way from my apartment. However, at the east-most window ledge of my apartment, the SkyPerfecTV satellite map seems to indicate that I juuuuust might be able to peek around the building, just enough to catch the satellite. So, out goes the call to the local electronic shop's technician, to tell me if I am go or not on the satellite.

And yes, I am a bit much of a couch potato and electronics geek, so no need to tell me so via comments.

---

Update: I went to Kojima Denki, and they had the high-end model on sale for ¥120,000 ($1090) or thereabouts. The actual standard selling price for the model is ¥135,000, but Yodobashi sells at suggested retail and "gives" you the extra hundred bucks on your point card, so you'll spend it there. Kojima had it listed for 135, but with a kind of red writing diagonally over the price--which is an old Akihabara thing which means you ask the sales staff, they'll tell you the real discount price.

120 Puts it back into my ballpark, but only if I feel extravagant... which I might, if I can get SkyPerfecTV.

And the Printer Works Well

So the HP All-in-one printer (HP PSC 2450 PhotoSmart All-In-One) got here as promised Sunday, and I've been working with it since then. Most everything works just great. I set up the software on both the Mac and the PC (both included English language versions of the software), and the functions mostly seemed to work just fine out of the box; the drivers do a good job here. Without any serious fiddling around, I was able to print very nicely.

One of the most impressive things--and not just for the all-in-ones, but for ink jets in particular--is the photo printing. Although a few printouts had noticeable banded lines running through lighter areas of the picture, most photos I printed (3.5" x 5") came out amazingly clear and sharp, pretty much indistinguishable from photos printed by a photo lab. And that's using the cheaper photo paper, not the good stuff, and not at best printing resolution. I haven't tried an 8x10 glossy yet, but will at some point. Most people who see the photos can't believe they were made by an ink jet.

What impressed me as much was the copy feature. I took out a map book and put it on the scanner glass, and hit "copy"--and the copy came out very nicely. Even on regular paper at normal quality, it came out with quite acceptable clarity and accuracy. This will work much better than carrying a big map book around next time I want a street guide. Apparently, using photo paper at high quality, it can effectively reproduce a photo you place on the machine to copy--which I haven't tried yet but can believe. I also haven't tried to fax yet, nor have I tried the

The photo printing worked as promised--take your flash memory card out of your digital camera, stick it into the slot in the printer (there are four, for different types of media), and the images come up on the 2.5" LCD screen. Select the one you want, change the settings for paper size, quality, etc., and off it goes.

The downside: so far I can't even find the OCR program which is promised in the documentation. It is supposed to come with something called "ReadIris," but it seems to not be included in the installation, which would be a big disappointment. HP's customer support has been a mixed bag--their first reply came a day later than promised and was a canned response, which I hate (canned responses almost never accurately address the specific problem you have, and this one did not either). When I wrote back asking for a real person to answer, I got a prompt reply which was quite long, but boiled down to "call customer support by phone." Yargh.

Another shortfall is the lack of network capability--I would have had to pay an extra $200 just for that one feature--so I have to suffer with a USB switching box, and will have to set up my Powerbook in the living room and plug it in there whenever I want to print from my Mac.

Midterms and the Printer

Sorry, no full-blown blog today. I will be back in full bloom tomorrow, with luck. I have been spending all night figuring midterm grades; I just got through the last of them, and now I have to create about 50 emails and send them off to each student--each email with an itemized list of grades, including the midterm class grade. So I'll be up a few hours still.

But one thing of personal note today--I finished my evaluation period and bought the HP all-in-one printer, the one I mentioned before. Had them do a little presentation for me, printing some photos, going through the functions, et cetera. I decided it was pretty easy to use, made nice photos, and for about $300, was a fairly good deal (as you can get in Japan). Figured that it wasn't going to change between now and next week, and I knew about as much about it as I would without having it.

So I took my old, noisy, troublesome Epson printer (only good for use on my 6-year-old 500 MHz PowerMac MiniTower G3 anyway, as it was an old-style serial-cable printer, not USB), and, not knowing if it even worked anymore, tossed it into my closet. The new printer/fax/scanner/copier/yaddayaddayadda is due to arrive by express delivery Sunday morning. I will talk more about it then, I am sure.