In order to close a support case with Toshiba (concerning the lack of HDMI–DVI functionality with the HD-A3 and my TV), I replied to their previous e-mail and told them that I had returned the player and gotten a Blu-ray one due to the news from Warner Brothers. This was their response:

Thanks for writing!

Robert
Toshiba Customer Service

That was a rather cordial response, especially since I really expected no response to my e-mail at all. I have nothing against Toshiba or the HD DVD format; I just didn’t want my Christmas present to become a doorstop.

As a side note, I deleted my Blockbuster Online cue and filled it with Blu-ray selections.

You may want to read this. With Warner dumping HD-DVD in favor of Blu-Ray, that will leave HD-DVD with only about 25% of the market. I’m pretty sure the remaining studios will follow suit.

Immediately after reading the article, I went searching Circuit City’s web site for a Blu-Ray player; I found a Sony BDP-S300 on sale for $299.99. I unhooked my Toshiba HD-A3, boxed it up, and headed to the store. They returned the HD-DVD player no problem (with an additional $100 for the price difference). As as a matter of fact, they even exchanged the HD-DVD version of Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix I had for the Blu-Ray version free of charge.

The Blu-Ray took a while to first start up, as was indicated in the manual. Lo and behold, I got a picture using the HDMI–DVI connection, something I never got with the Toshiba (mentioned in the blog entry noted above). I quickly set it to 1080i, and all is well.

Too bad I hadn’t seen that artilce earlier, as I could have also returned the optical–coaxial adapter I bought, as well. This player has both optical and coaxial outputs, but since I can use this player to upscale regular DVDs (since the HDMI–DVI connection works), there is no need to have two players connected (also mentioned in previous blog entry—my receiver shares the optical and coaxial inputs labeled “DVD”). This player also has 5.1 channel outputs, so if I wanted “true” Dolby Digital Plus, I could connect it to my receiver via the 5.1 analog inputs, but I would lose my back surround channel.

As an FYI, another reason to go with Blu-Ray: Blockbuster only rents Blu-Ray; no HD-DVD.

A father gave his 10-year-old daughter a Christmas present that would make Santa blush. Now Daryl Hill wants to know why an MP3 video player he bought at a Wal-Mart in Sparta was preloaded with pornography and explicit songs.

Hill bought three of the players as Christmas presents for his children. He said one of the devices had apparently been returned to the store from a previous owner who loaded sex clips and songs with lyrics about using drugs.

“Within 10 minutes, my daughter was crying,” Hill said Thursday. “I wish I could take the thoughts and images out of her head.”

Hill questioned why Wal-Mart Stores Inc. would sell used merchandise as new, which he said violates its own policies.

A company spokesman said in an e-mail to WSMV-TV of Nashville that stores are not supposed to return opened packages to the sales floor and that the matter was under investigation.

Hill said he declined Wal-Mart’s offer to replace the MP3 player. He said he has already bought his daughter a new one and is hanging onto the controversial one until he talks to a lawyer.

I don’t blame him, Wal-Mart needs to do a better job at checking their returns!

Great video showing the Sansa TakeTV from Gear Live at http://www.gearlive.com/news/archives/P8020/
You can find out more information on Sansas at the SansaCommunity.com

“Does size matter?” is a question that has created quite a lot of controversy over time, whether we’re talking about intimacy-related issues or the dimensions of television sets. Furthermore, it seems that the old habit of measuring whose “member” is bigger has gone beyond the premises of the locker-room and into the big world of consumer electronics,
because the most important manufacturers involved on the TV sets’ market are constantly competing against each other in order to create the world’s largest displays. And it looks like the “best-endowed” player might be none other than Panasonic, or at least a future plasma model coming from the Japanese company.

The Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, says that Matsushita has managed to top the world record in the field of plasma displays, as it plans to roll out at CES 2008 the widest device, surpassing its own previous record (an 103-inch model). Furthermore, this particular PDP promises to be the world’s largest display, surpassing even Sharp’s 108-inch LCD panel prototype.

However, as you might imagine, there’s a twist to this whole story. Thus, if we take into consideration the fact that the 103-inch PDP from Panasonic retails for around 6 million yen (53,000 US dollars), you can only imagine just how expensive the 150-inch behemoth will be! Actually, if we speak only in terms of dollars per inch, the new PDP should sell for at least…80,000 US dollars…

As usual we were hopping around the internet and came to a site I had never seen before. They have quite a few videos that you won’t see on YouTube or other places.

No, I am not talking about Porn or adult videos, just videos that I thought were funny and that I would like to share with my friends.

The place I found was funnyjunk.com they have quite a few funny and interesting videos.

I came across this video and thought that it would be nice to send it and share it with my friends and also to save to my computer and my Sansa. Unfortunately they don’t have anything to allow me to download the video into some kind of Windows type format.

After a little research, I found a way to do just what I want and with very little effort.

The first thing I needed to do was download the video to my computer. I did this using a site called ClipNabber. This site allows you to paste the URL of the site that has a video you want and then you can download it into your computer.

It’s very simple to make this happen. All you have to do is, once you see a video you want, go to ClipNabber and paste into the site the webpage of the video you want.

In my case it was http://www.funnyjunk.com/movies/1152/Floating+Cigarette+Trick/ Once you have pasted the address in, you just click on “Nab Video” and the site will give you the download link to the video. Simply “Right Click” and “Save As” and you now have the video on your computer.

The only problem with this is that most videos you download from sites are what’s called an FLV file or a Flash Video. Most computers and Windows Media Player, will not play a FLV file. To do this you need to convert it to something Windows likes more, like an AVI or WMV file.

But no biggie, all we need is a FLV Converter. A program to convert the FLV file into an AVI. As a bonus it would be nice if it was free. Welp, we came across this one, the Free FLV Converter

The Free FLV Converter, not only does this but you can search youTube, dailyMotion, google, metacafe videos without opening your browser and you can even watch the videos using the built-in video player.

The software can convert the videos to Avi (xvid, DivX), Ipod, Iphone, 3GP and Psp format (MPEG4 and H.264).

Also as a bonus, this software can also convert all your videos (divx, xvid, mpeg, dvd, avi) to FLV video (Flash video) with an automatic HTML page creation. You will only have to place the files on your website to share your videos with the entire world.

So, once installed I simply ran the Free FLV Converter and converted my Cigarette video into a new AVI file. Now I can send this video to anyone I wish and they can watch it without having to go to a specific website and I can put this on my Sansa if I wish.

You can also convert your new AVI file to just about any other video format, just grab the audio and other things using MediaCoder. But we will save that info for next time.

We have been making quite a few slide shows out of photos for Christmas this year. Using Nero Vision we have been making the slide shows and then burning them to DVD.

This is a great way to give out nice presents without much of an investment. But depending on the length of the show, the resolution if the photos and other things we have found that the preview function is just not enough to rely on. You really need to see them on the TV, especially with the larger TVs now available.

The only problem is that is for some reason you want to make a change and you already have created a DVD, you have to trash it and make another. This can get expensive.

So, instead of burning to DVD, testing it out, changing things, burning another, etc, we decided the easiest way to test them out on the big screen is to create the video and, using TiVo to Go, transfer them to the TiVo.

Here is how we do it.

After creating your show with Nero Vision, you burn the video to your hard drive. Just select “Write to Hard Disk Folder” instead of Burn to DVD.

This creates files exactly as it would for a DVD. So you will end up with a VIDEO_TS folder and inside it the VTS_01_0.VOB and other files.

Simply rename the VTS_01_0.VOB file to something like Myslideshow.mpg. Move the file to where you store your TiVo files, go to your TiVo and select the Myslideshow.mpg file and download it onto your TiVo.

Once copied you can watch it and note any changes you desire. If you need to make changes, go back to Nero Vision, make the changes and repeat again.

The best part though, is if the slide show is good to go, all you have to do is run Nero Express and burn the complete VIDEO_TS directory to a DVD. You don’t have to render the show all over again.

Also, now you have the slide show on your TiVo, to watch whenever you want and the DVD as your present.

IBM may no longer be making personal computers, but it’s still selling them.

The company is clearing out stock of some older, refurbished models of its desktops and laptops, and is throwing in a free MP3 player.

Buyers who order a certified, used PC from IBM’s Web site will receive at no extra charge a SanDisk Sansa 1.0-Gbyte MP3 player that can hold up to 16 hours of music. IBM says the offer is good while supplies last.

All desktops and notebooks are on sale at a 10% discount, plus they ship with a pink SanDisk Sansa® m200 1.0GB MP3 Player that can play up to 16 hours of MP3 music. This player will ship automatically with your PC purchase and comes with headphones and instructions.

They say you need to hurry, this offer is good only while supplies last.

You can find their specials here.