All PVR

LG Electronics released an all-in-one home theater in South Korea.

With no word on a US release, you’ll just have to admire it from afar. This “Chocolate” inspired Theater-in-a-Box, has a touch screen along with 1000 watts of amplification for 5 of it’s 5.1 speaker system. The “.1″, or subwoofer, rates at 155 watts. The speakers may be somewhat bland for the home theater crowd, but the machine is refreshing.

Along with a touchscreen, here are some features:
1. Upscales videos to 1080p
2. Contains both HDMI and USB ports
3. Plays MP3s, WMAs, JPEGs, and DivX videos, as well as playing and burning capabilities of DVDs and CDs.

If LG can hit a certain price point in the US, it might do well. Unfortunately, all-in-one theaters don’t sell well in the arena of serious home theater lovers. What will the future hold for this boxed Chocolate Home Theater?

Found on Coolest-Gadgets

Also check out Athusa and Limited Edition Foods

From Teleglass comes the T4-N Limited Edition Video Glasses. The glasses create a simulated 45 inch screen (as if sitting from six feet away), with a resolution of 640 x 480. Coolness abound, you can focus and adjust each monitor to reduce eye strain. As you can see by the picture above the audio comes from frame-mounted earbuds.

Just connect any NTSC viseo player and enjoy. They look stylish, unlike the competition, and it’s hidden components reside in the frame and nose-piece. Word on the street is that they cost $1150 per pair, but you’ll have to hurry, because there’s only 500 available.

Pink Tentacle via Teleglass

And now for something completely different… Athusa and Backyard Birding

The “mythical” Traveling Terabyte Gear

In reference to an entry published on Sept. 23 (“Hacker Sends War-Tough Marines a Befitting PVR�?), I have received a generous update about the Traveling Terabyte Project. Go to www.travelingterabyte.org for all the official information.

This is an important project that connects us to our beloved Devil Dogs (Marines). It provides them a care-package that we can all share in to show support. Hopefully it gives the soldiers a bit of home when they’re abroad, and keeps them grounded when they’re in hell (Ooo-Rah!).

They are not yet taking donations (as this is a grassroots movement stemming from the generosity of one person, Deviant Ollam), though there should be something set up soon.

And, as a big fan of this project, I will also be posting updates and hopefully finding more supporters, at Athusa.net. Let make it work.

Very, very special thanks, and American gratitude to: AST Cell. As well as to all the people involved with this project.

In keeping up with this week’s “mini-theme”, Western Digital also offers a 500 GB DVR expander for Scientific Atlanta, models 8300 or 8300HD DVR’s. It stores 60 hours of HDTV or 300 hours of standard-def TV (SDTV). It’s plug-n-play, utilizing a SATA (eSATA) port. It’s also super quiet, designed with no fan and a quiet hard drive. The LED used is also low-light as not to be annoying when in use.

“Deviant Ollam” is a New Jersey hacker/network engineer who saw fit to create the Traveling Terabyte Project (TTB). A program in which he sends hard drives, filled with popular movies, television shows and music, in Pelican cases, to Marines in the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan.

Deviant said this about his revelation, “I’ve got this extra storage and thought ‘what could I do with it?’. It didn’t really make sense to put the disks into my already hugely ridiculous raid array.�? So, why not send them to a few Leathernecks? Everyone needs a little inspiration (even tough-guys). But, shipping the drives to a war-torn country could’ve been an obstacle, “You can’t really put the drives in bubble wrap and throw them in the mail,�? So he instead packed the equipment into the olive-drab cases with international power adapters and USB cables.

Once Marines receive the cases they often add their own files customizing and personalizing their gifts (becoming a snapshot of our modern heroes lives). And, like any grassroots movement, these drives have become a small overseas urban-legend. Eventually being delivered to the American embassy in Dushanbe Tajikistan, just to prove they exist.

Hopefully the Traveling Terabyte Project will get legs. I’m still searching for a donation website. If anyone knows of one, please comment. Anything we can do to remedy some of the stress of being in a war zone, is something we should do. They’re heroes.

From one American cyber-geek to another, thank you, ‘Deviant Ollam’.

More thanks to TG Daily for getting the word out on this project.

Need an external hard drive for movie storage? Look no further, Western Digital has come to the rescue. Introducing “My Book Essential Edition 2.0″, a hard drive the size of a paperback book. Contained within it’s cover is 1 TB of disk space, and a 2.0 USB port. It’s a plug-n-store device for all your PVR needs, and it costs $349.

The Diamani DUO line of LCD’s from Viewsonic has been launched. It’s a unique hybrid of TV and computer monitor. There’s a 19″ version for $349 and a 22″ version $399. Both sporting slim, sexy HDMI inputs, as well as HD tuners. They’re also equipped with VGA inputs. And to address your analog desires, there’s component, RCA, and S-video inputs. It’s the “be all to end all” of TV’s… I mean monitors… I mean… where was I? Oh yeah, It’s fine time someone tried to invent something useful for the practical man.

Electronista

At HGTV Marketplace, they’re offering a 4 seat spa with a motorized 61″ LCD HDTV. It’s a custom order through Catalina Spas, so there is no price listed. But, I’m sure if you have a vivid imagination you could conjure up a price close enough to what they’re asking. Who says the US economy is bad?

For a one-time activation fee of $40.00, you can utilize an external hard drive with your Dish Network setup. Connect your HDD to your DN receiver via USB and voila, endless storage for your favorite shows.

Zatz Not Funny! Archive.

Creative’s Wide Screen Zen Vision is an excellent 30 GB little unit, with high resolution screen and all the features you’d ever expect from your portable media player.

Of course it plays MP3s and WMAs, with Creative’s known excellent sound quality, but the kicker feature is undoubtedly video. Check out the impressive supported codecs list: MPEG-4 SP, XviD, DivX 5.0, DivX 4.0, MPEG-2, MPEG-1, Motion JPEG, WMV.

With this impressive list, chances are you won’t need to transcode any of your existing media, just copy as is and it plays!

Rumor has it that Microsoft’s Zune is going to get a wide screen edition in the future, but why wait? Another rumor has it that if you connect this or Archos unit to one of the newer DishNetwork DVRs, it will recognize it and let you copy your recorded shows onto it.

Just $199 after two rebates (yea, I hate rebates too, but I love saving money!).

zen-vision-w, creative, deal

Ok, it is Confession time for me…

Until now, I only saw Tivo’s at friends place and such. Our own household had the DishNetwork DVR, which we have been enjoying for many years.
However, my recent dispute with DishNetwork’s unfair pricing practices for existing customers versus new customers ended our relationship.
So, we switched to local Cable, and our household seemed to enter dark depressing times. Not so much because of any troubles with the Cable, but because of lack of DVR!!! While I do have a computer based DVR, I wasn’t happy with the recording quality (of all things).
And so we got a Tivo, which I was busy installing and configuring throughout last week.
More on Tivo later, but what was really interesting for me is how much entire household was impacted by the loss of DVR.
I really thought we could get away without it for a few months, while I figure out our new entertainment strategy, but everyone seemed to become depressed. My daughter gently kept asking things like - ‘How do I pause this?’, or ‘Where is the rewind button?’, and I kept trying to explain that we don’t have DVR any more…
But now we are a Tivo home, and I must say, transition has been hard. I guess I had high expectations, seeing how Tivo is supposedly easy to use. But since we were all so used to DishNetwork’s PVR, it wasn’t easy at all.
It seems to me that Tivo doesn’t try to be your home PVR at all, but instead wants to take over TV viewing habits altogether. I haven’t decided if it’s good or bad, it’s just different, for now.

Meanwhile, in order not to bore you to death, here are some exciting news from BBC archives. It looks like BBC is planning to have their entire archives online, for viewing, and searchable, I presume. I say this is another excellent step in the right direction for personalized TV.

dishnetwork, tivo, bbc archives

No, you don’t need 3 expensive HDTV DVRs to do this, in fact, you only need One amazing one.

Which one? The excellent ViP622 from Dish Network.

It is capable of recording 2 HDTV broadcasts off the satellite along with 1 over-the-air HDTV broadcast.

Too good to be true? A friend of mine confirmed that his ViP622 had no troubles recording all 3 of those, while they watched 1 of the shows being recorded (with time delay, of course).

This is really amazing, considering how much data needs to be stored for each HD quality show, and to store it concurrently is quiet an achievement.

But, should you worry about getting Dish Network due to problematic Tivo lawsuit? I myself think the patent system is broken and we really should rethink the whole thing.

As always, comments about your experiences or thoughts on lawsuit are welcome.

All you sport lovers out there — Check out this exciting announcement from Dish Network.