Standard Def’s Last Stand (In Dave’s Bedroom)

I may doubt the necessity of 1080p and HD DVD at these prices and with limited content, but the fact is I’m down to a lone standard definition setup (the 9″ kitchen TV doesn’t count) holed up in the bedroom. TV I picked up this 32″ JVC about 6 years ago when Consumer Reports recommended … Read more

Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD1 Review

Guest review by Thaed, a tech enthusiast from Cleveland, Ohio.

Can a video camera be the greatest piece of technology available today? I can tell you this is the type of wonder that this device instills in me. It’s almost like I bought something from the future. It seems that sophisticated. The button on the right starts recording in HD (720p) and the button on the left takes 5 megapixel pictures. The switch in the middle zooms in and out. The zooming mechanism is the only moving part. The camera writes its data to an SD card. I bought a two GB version. The viewfinder is the clearest I’ve ever seen and the camera is light and fits perfectly in my hands. The combination of ease of use and portability make it easily the best video camera and digital camera I have. It is a first in so many categories. It’s the first digital video recorder that got the still camera part right. It’s the first HD camera I’ve ever used. It’s the first tapeless video camera I’ve had. It does things like allowing you to make panoramic pictures by sweeping the video or extracting decent stills from video. It has a long battery life and it will use the new four GB SD cards.

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PC Mag Reviews MovieBeam (Innovative But Pricey)

PC Mag chimes in with a 3.5/5 review of the current iteration of MovieBeam. It’s not as critical as HD Beat’s take, but it’s probably also not as accurate focusing on convenience while discounting HD compression issues. MovieBeam is making a retail push as you can see from the pic I snapped yesterday at Best … Read more

Best Buy Unveils HD DVD (And I Don’t Care)

The first HD DVD player is now for sale at my local Best Buy (Washington, DC), though they have no DVDs to go along with it. In fact, they didn’t even have a sample HD disc in the demo unit. The Toshiba HD-A1 is pretty bulky, even larger than the initial batch of first gen DVD players, but the remote is sexy. At $499 with a questionable improvement in picture quality, potentially restrictive HDMI requirements, and unhacked copy protection I’ll be on the sidelines for at least a year. By the time I get onboard, perhaps dual HD DVD/Blu-ray players will exist or maybe one format will have been decided upon… Yeah, right!

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1080p Over Rated?

Here’s an interesting article which summarizes 1080p, provides a few set reviews, and defines wobulation. It’s a good read, especially if you’re considering a big-ticket HDTV purchase in the near future. They pretty much conclude unless you’re sitting very close to a large screen and have perfect vision you may not notice much difference between … Read more

Space Shuttle Launches in HD

HD Beat is reporting Mark Cuban’s HDNet will broadcast upcoming Space Shuttle, and some expendable rocket, launches in HD through 2010. Very cool! Well… very cool if the Shuttle ever gets off the ground again.

MovieBeam Reviewed (Not Very Good)

Ben over at HD Beat got his hands on a MovieBeam and doesn’t come away impressed. The bottom line seems to be a limited selection of content with poor picture quality. Granted, both these faults could be improved without requiring a software or hardware upgrade — sign more partners and use less compression. But it’s … Read more

XM Portable Video Player?

So is this a fanboy Photoshop job or a leaked prototype? I’m voting Photoshop, though XM has partnered with On2 for video distribution. At the moment it appears they don’t have the bandwidth or content partnerships to beam multiple feeds of video, but what’s to stop them from creating a bring your own video (BYOV) … Read more