Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

About two months ago, I purchased a Canon HF100 high-definition video camera to replace my ageing but still totally sweet Canon GL2 (that thing has such great optics!). It took me a while to re-create my template in 16:9 format, but I did and published my first two HD videos to YouTube...and I was quite disappointed with the results. YouTube only offers a 4:3 aspect ratio player, so 16:9 videos look pretty tiny with those big black bars on the top and bottom. I set out to find a better solution for embedding videos on Thoughts Media sites, and I think I've found one: MotionBox.

I say "I think" because while the video quality is utterly fantastic, and for $20 per year they offer a lot of value, I've been seeing some problematic playback issues today - sometimes the video will start right away, other times it will take 30+ seconds before it starts, and sometimes it won't start at all, instead showing a black box. And sometimes it will just "break" and stop playing. These are obviously serious problems, but I don't know if MotionBox is just having a bad day, or if my bandwidth Kung-fu is weak today. So check out the video below and report back what you find - does it play back OK? Any problems or glitches?

"Comcast high-speed Internet customers in parts of Oregon and Southwest Washington will have a much-faster option starting in December. The cable provider is rolling out its Extreme 50 service, which has download speeds of up to 50Mbps. Called "wideband" by Comcast, but officially known as DOCSIS 3.0, the high-speed service seems like a bandwidth hog's dream. That is, until you realize that Comcast's 250GB monthly download cap remains in place. Keep to the cap, however, and the benefits are obvious. Extreme 50 customers should be able to download a high-def movie (6GB) in about 16 minutes, Comcast says."

If you're willing to pay an eye-popping $139.95 USD per month, Comcast's Extreme 50 will give you 50 mbps downstream and an even more impressive 10 mbps upstream. Being in Canada this isn't a service I can take advantage of, but to get 10 mbps, I just might pay that much. I'm with Shaw, and paying for their Extreme service: 10 mbps downstream, and a pathetic 1 mbps upstream. I rarely complain about having to wait for downloads, but uploads take forever. The good news is that when I benchmark my connection (which I do on a regular basis, being the geek that I am), I routinely see speeds in the 22 mbps range...but never more than 1 mbps upstream. The hard truth? People running bittorent clients and leaving them on 24/7 make my ISP scared to give me more than 1 mbps upstream, because if they do, it would get abused by the torrentheads. A nice compromise would be 5 mbps upstream speeds for 60 minutes at a time, but I doubt that will happen either. At any rate, my hope is that Shaw will be releasing a DOCSIS 3.0 system and perhaps I'll be rocking 10 mbps upstream before long...

"If our overly fannish announcement post didn't give it away, we're pretty excited about the HP Mini 1000. It has little to do with the specs -- the drop in screen resolution from the 2133 is a little disappointing, plus we would've liked to at least see what one of these netbooks could do with a VIA Nano under the hood -- and everything to do with the fit and finish HP is bringing to this pricepoint ($399), in both hardware and software."

Looks like HP found the right balance of features to still make an very nice netbook for a lot less than the very well received 2133. The keyboard looks especially nice even thought they used the same odd touch-pad button placement as on the Acer Aspire One.

"Earlier this year SanDisk introduced a new format to deliver music called slotMusic. This is simply a 1GB microSD card with DRM-free digital files on it. This format is backed by some of the major record labels such as EMI, Sony BMG, Universal, and Warner. To go along with this new format SanDisk has introduced the slotMusic player. This memory-less and screen-less player relies solely on microSD for music playback. The idea is that non-tech savvy users will be able to swap out their purchased slot music albums. I don’t believe that slotMusic will revolutionize the music industry, but may do well in certain niche markets. Aside from the new music format, the player itself is an interesting story."

Given that there are similar flash based MP3 players with 1 GB of storage for around the same price, the market seems pretty limited. This looks more like an MP3 player designed for people without a computer. But if you are into hacking hardware, check out the article. From the hardware side, it actually looks pretty well made so there might be some interesting DIY projects based on this in the future.

"Photographs, by definition, capture and immortalize a small slice of life. There is little for the viewer to infer what happens before or after that moment. However, there are images that need to communicate motion. For example, you may want to capture a dog running, a train barreling down the tracks, or trees that are blowing in the wind. Each of these scenes can come alive within your photographs if you learn how to convey motion properly. Today, I'll describe how you can use different shutter speeds and panning to capture motion in your photography. I'll also explain a potential issue you might experience along with tips to resolve it."

Motion blur photography is a fun way to experiment, and also a great way to capture beautiful images that impart motion, speed, and time. This is a great article on some of the basic steps to taking these types of images. And if you want to see how beautiful motion blur photos can be (beyond the samples on the article page), check out these 45 great examples.

This is my review video of the Dell Inspiron Mini 9, Dell's first step into the world of low-cost netbooks. The Mini 9 that I ordered has Windows XP, a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom CPU, 16 GB solid-state flash storage, 1 GB of RAM, a 4 cell battery, and an 8.9 inch at 1024 x 600 resolution. The Linux-based versions start at $349 USD, and the XP-based versions start at $399. If you get the XP-based version with every option, it's about $480 USD.

There's a lot to like about the Dell netbook, but it's not without significant shortcomings from my perspective. On the plus side, the build quality is top-notch. In fact, I'd venture to say that it's the best-built Dell notebook I've ever had my hands on. It feel very solid and durable, with a fit and finish that's light years above other netbooks. Considering how cheap most other netbooks look, you might think that's not saying much, but holding the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 in your hands just feels...good. The keyboard is a bit on the small side, but that's not unusual for a netbook with an 8.9 inch screen. Read more...

"Apparently the shroud of secrecy that surrounds Windows Live and Wave 3 doesn't extend to help files, as our friend Picturepan2 at LiveSino.net discovered as he was snooping around doing some investigative reporting. While Microsoft has maintained that FolderShare would continue on, even in the face of what seems to be redundancy with Live Mesh, those outside the company have been wondering what would become of FolderShare. FolderShare was acquired when Microsoft bought ByteTaxi in 2005, and offers file and folder synchronization between computers with a web interface component. Folder synchronization between Windows and Mac computers is possible. However it does not offer "in the cloud" storage, or work on the FeedSync RSS underpinnings that power Live Mesh (at least in its current configuration)."

Live Sync? Meh. I'm not feeling that name - FolderShare is a descriptive name that Joe Average can understand - it's something that allows you to "share folders". Sync is a geek work that has virtually no meaning in the realm of non-geeks. Names aside, what I really care about is whether or not FolderShare is going to continue to survive. As Live Mesh improves faster and faster, and FolderShare seemingly stays the same, I worry that FolderShare isn't going to be allowed to survive much longer. Of course, if Live Mesh reaches feature parity with FolderShare, it might not matter.

This is an unboxing and first impressions video of the Dell Inspiron Mini 9, Dell's first step into the world of low-cost netbooks. The Mini 9 that I ordered has Windows XP, a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom CPU, 16 GB solid-state flash storage, 1 GB of RAM, a 4 cell battery, and an 8.9 inch at 1024 x 600 resolution. The Linux-based versions start at $349 USD, and the XP-based versions start at $399. If you get the XP-based version with every option, it's about $480 USD. Check out the video below, and watch for my review to follow shortly.

[click through to YouTube to watch it in higher quality]

As a side note, this is the first video I've uploaded from my new Canon HF100 HD camera - unfortunately YouTube has no option for 16:9 wide-screen videos, so you'll be seeing ugly black bars on the top and bottom. If you have a YouTube account, do me a favour: email YouTube and encourage them to offer a 16:9 player for wide-screen content. Also, rate the video and subscribe to our channel. Thanks for your support!

"Microsoft just announced the availability of a number of new and updated online applications in its Windows Live suite: Windows Live Photos, Profiles, People, and Groups. In addition, Microsoft also announced that it will allow its users to integrate content from a large number third-party services, including Flickr, LinkedIn, Pandora, Photobucket, StumbleUpon, TripIt, Twitter, and Yelp. Microsoft will begin rolling out these new services to U.S. customers in the coming weeks and expects them to be available globally in 54 countries by early 2009."

Starting to look a lot like Facebook. They are pretty wise to allow integration of third party services, but again, something Facebook already has. This is clearly going to be an uphill battle, as most people go to a social networking site that their friends are already on. Speaking from personal experience, I only started using Facebook, Twitter, and LiveJournal as a result of my friends already using them. Hopefully the competition will bring innovation. I'd like to see them possibly integrate their social networking effort with the Xbox and Zune, then we could really see a deal changer.

"We have done a lot of studies on the return rates and haven't really talked about it much until now. Our internal research has shown that the return of netbooks is higher than regular notebooks, but the main cause of that is Linux. People would love to pay $299 or $399 but they don't know what they get until they open the box. They start playing around with Linux and start realizing that it's not what they are used to. They don't want to spend time to learn it so they bring it back to the store. The return rate is at least four times higher for Linux netbooks than Windows XP netbooks."

That's a quote from MSI's Director of Sales, Andy Tung, and it doesn't surprise me in the slightest. The average consumer tends not to embrace change very well when it comes to their computing experience - many people don't conceptually understand how software works, so they rely instead on rote memory, essentially memorizing through repetition how to do things. When you change the user interface, these types of computers users tend to become easily lost and frustration ensues. Just look at the reaction to Windows Vista and Office 2007 - with the people I've spoken to, when I drill down on their complaints, at the root of them all is the same thing: things were moved, things were changed, and now they don't know how to do anything. Linux on Netbooks is a great example of this principle in action: they think they're going to like it, but when they realize how different it is from Windows XP, they're no longer so excited about their netbook and back it goes.