All PVR

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.

“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?

Dave Zatz put up a nice confessional about using BitTorrent to download and catch up on a show. His reasoning is that it helped convert him into Live TV viewer, since now he wants to watch the latest episode of the show as it first airs.

Personally, I prefer Vuze client. With recent addition of paid content, and their extensive free content library, it’s an excellent choice. Moreover, the original and solid bittorrent implementation is still there, sitting under the shiny new exterior. In other words, it can download any torrent of your choosing.

Dave, kudos on being brave, and putting it out there. I do agree that a lot of people using alternate means to catch up on shows and end up as additional live audience, ultimately aiding the studios. And then there are those that will never watch live, either because it conflicts with another show they prefer in that time slot, or they just never get enough time to catch up on the whole season of shows. Finally, a lot of BitTorrent sharing is happening from outside USA. Often our shows get to other countries late, and Web viewer on ABC.com and others is blocked from abroad.

Have You ever done it? And what do you think about AT&T new war on it’s customers? Will they try to sniff out people downloading plain TV shows? The same TV which is normally available freely over-the-air, in HDTV quality?

I certainly hope AT&T will wake up soon and reverse their decision. Otherwise, the public relations nightmare will turn into major storm, something they don’t need while they are trying to position themselves as your friendly up-and-coming Everything provider.

bittorrent, vuze, at&t

I have been trying out Vuze in the last week or so. Azureus bittorent client, which is a basis of Vuze, is something I have been enjoying for a very long time now. However, their venture into legal DRM’d downloads definitely needs a more work…

As you log into Vuze, you are greeted by a nice Guide, which attempts to seamlessly integrate Top Choice/Featured titles, yet still gives you the flexibility to navigate to specific channel or choose shows that are Shorter or Longer, for example.

Only very small amount of paid content is offered right now, but I hope this changes in the future once Vuze is out of beta and big content providers become more comfortable with the service.

If you do decide to purchase or rent something, the Vuze software acquires the license for you. It also does something that it calls ‘verifying that content can play on your system’, which in my case proved to be non-sense.

The paid media that I selected was downloaded without a hitch, but when it came time to play — no such luck. The DRM’d media requires Windows Media Player and apparently the version that I had (or something) on there wasn’t compatible.

But, overall, Vuze service is recommended. Just be sure to try it first with inexpensive or free DRM’d media (most paid shows offer first episode as a Free preview) before purchasing more, to confirm that it will work on your system.

How is this PVRs related, you ask? As promised, I really see increasing convergence of digital video, whether over the Web, via Cable, over Satellite and other means. Software like Vuze gives you the choice of getting the shows You want to watch delivered to your TV, that is if your Media Center is hooked up to your TV, like mine is. I haven’t tried this personally yet, but Vuze DRM’d media should have no problems playing on Media Center PC and on Media Center Extender, such as XBox 360, for example. And last but most important, there is plenty of High Definition content, most in 720p and some even in 1080p. Just make sure your computer is powerful enough to play it back without hiccups and Enjoy!

Vuze, Media Center, Media Player, Xbox 360, Media Extenders