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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Saturday May 30, 2009
- Tech News
- Guests
- Hour 1
- Hour 2
- Hour 3
- Steve, High Desert, CA - Remotely controlling his PC
- Kevin, High Desert, CA - New hard drive
- Barbara, Irvine, CA - Applications with 64 Bit systems
- Lon, Los Angeles, CA - Live Background Image
- Matthew, Alberta, CAN - Updating his Intel Chip
- Larry, Loreno Valley, CA - Can’t open MP4 files
- Alley, Riverside, CA - Bad reception from his Nextel phone
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Edited Audio | |
Tech News
Google steals Redmond’s Thunder
Microsoft announces a new search engine called BING. It’s more than a search engine, Microsoft calls it a “decision engine,” to help choose stuff.
But the irony is, it gets completely eclipsed by Google’s announcement of Wave. A collaboration tool which Google wants to use to replace conventional email. It’s social media meets email.
Palm Pre arrives next Saturday
The big day is fast arriving. The Palm Pre, Palm’s hail mary to survive in the smart phone world, will launch on June 5th.
Video of Sony’s new PSP accidentally released
A Video of Sony’s new PSP, dubbed the PSP Go was accidentally released by SONY this week.
Guests
Scott Wilkinson, Ultimate AV Magazine
This week, Scott went to Samsung’s QA Labs for a demo on some new 240Hz LCD screens! These aren’t out yet, since we just got 120hz LCDs, but Scott loves being able to see what’s on the horizon.
One thing about the new higher Hz sets is the “hyper crispness” of the image. Makes movies look more like live video, rather than the richness of film. So, there’s a tradeoff between watching action movies or sports, where the high speed action needs to be interpolated better and that’s what the sharpness of the high Mhz can do.
Back to the 240. Scott says Samsung laid out a 60Hz, 120Hz, and a 240Hz right next to each other, playing the same footage. And the difference was obvious. 240Hz interpolates the signal by either placing three additional frames in between each frame to interpolate the action, or it can “flash the backlight” of each frame. Scott also got to see several models that have LED backlighting. Scott got to see how they look behind the screen and was surprised how far apart these LEDs are - and there are about 1,000 LEDs behind each screen. It can do this because the LED light is diffused. And the irony is that the more LEDs you have, the slimmer you can make the TV thanks to fewer diffusers.
Scott loves LED back lighting because you can dimm LEDs that are in dark parts of the picture and amp up the bright areas. This makes the image far richer than regular LCD screens. But the downside is that there may be a “halo effect.” And because there aren’t enough LEDs, scifi films in space can have darker backgrounds blotting out stars that just can’t get enough LED back light to show them all. Plasma has the advantage there.
Sunday, June 7th, Scott will be in studio for a home theater marathon here at Tech Guy Labs. Tune in with your home theater questions!
Hour 1
Q Mark, Santa Ana - Changing channels w/ DIY TIVO
Mark built his own TIVO and with the new digital handover, his IR Blaster won’t change the channels. Some boxes have a serial connected that will communicate with the DVR. The other way is the IR blaster, which Leo calls a “kluge.” It’s like a wired remote that replaces the DCs infrared remote control because it’s wired directly to the TIVO. Leo says there are probably some digital converters work with IR Blaster, but Mark’s appears not to be one of those. Luckily, the digital converters aren’t that expensive.
Q Bruce, Long Island, NY - Lens recommendations for sports
Bruce just got a new Canon XSi, and wants a lens recommendation. Leo says you’re going to want at least a 200mm or even 400mm zoom lens to be able to get into the action of sports events. If on a budget, you can get the 200mm, and then add a 2x teleconverter to boost it to 400mm. But that makes your lens a little slower, so there are tradeoffss.
But the longer the focal length, the heavier (and more expensive) the lens, so you’ll also need to get a monopod to hold it up and keep it steady.
Q Dean, Palm Desert, CA - Setting up a home network
Dean wants to set up a home network with an old computer as a file server. He downloaded a trial of Network Magic and got it working. Leo isn’t much of a Network Magic fan because it does strange things to automate and if you have to troubleshoot, it’s hard to pin down what the problems are. And with multiple OS with MAC and Windows, it’s harder to use, much less print. Leo suggests rather than rely on an old computer to be a print server, use a router that has a print server built in.
One place you can go to get answers on Network issues is PracticallyNetworked.com. Great tutorials, How Tos, and more.
Hour 2
Q Scott, Westminster, CA - Time machine backup w/ hard drive
Scott wants to take his 1TB External hard drive and use it as a network backup for his different computers. Leo says you can do it by partitioning it for each computer, but a more efficient way to do it is with Air Disk and ChronoSync, and you back up to a common directly for music, stills, etc. ChronoSync be able to see what data you have an not duplicate it from partition to partition. It’ll make your 1TB drive a central source.
Also Scott wants to know if the Blackberry will sync with Mobile Me. Leo says that using Google Calendar is much easier to use and free. You can sync to it as well.
Q Tony, Inland Empire - Video equipment recommendation
Tony has been tasked at church to create guidelines for upgrading the existing video projector. Pastor wants a new one, administrator says too expensive. He needs a “spec.” Leo says that a more expensive home theater projector will look great, but it depends on your needs and your budget. Another issue is how far away the screen is from the projector and how large the screen is. A few thousand lumens is more than sufficient. Contrast ratio - higher is better, especially for movies. But for business, you don’t need a high CR. 1000:1 is good. The “throw” is key. How far back can you go? DLP Projection will give you better home theater quality, while LCD projection will save you money. Leo also suggests that in addition to visiting Ultimate AV mag, go to PC Magazine and check out their reviews of business projectors. Also, make sure the inputs will give you SVideo or HDMI.
The Epson EX70 is the one that Leo uses.
Q Jan, Los Angeles, CA - Loves her iPhone
Jan loves her iPhone. Thinks it’s the best gadget ever. Leo can’t argue. He says it’s strength is the apps store. 35,000 apps. She hopes the 3rd Gen iPhone will have better camera. Leo hears it should have a 3.2 mp camera and hopefully, video down the road.
Jane also loves her Eye-Fi SD card. Leo says the Eye-Fi is incredible. It has wifi built in and uploads directly to flickr and a variety of other photo sharing sites. Turns any camera into a wifi capable upload camera. Very innovative.
Q Kevin, CA - Dual Booting Vista & XP
Can Kevin put both Vista and XP on his E-Machine and dual boot? Leo says you can. There may be some driver issues, but it’ll work fine. But if there’s no reason to use Vista, format your drive, set the BIOS to boot to CD, reboot and install XP.
And if you have an older machine with a new giant hard drive, it may not see it all because of the controller. Make sure the drive is formatted with NTFS. Worst case, you have to make two partitions. One for the data, one for the OS. That way, if you have to reinstall the OS, you’re data is safe.
Hour 3
Q Steve, High Desert, CA - Remotely controlling his PC
Steve has three computers placed all over his house, including the basement. He wants to control them while he’s at the other ones. Leo says you can do the media center extender to control each media player.
Leo says it’s best not to get the Internet involved here. Leo says that using Windows remote desktop is a good option, except the host computer has to be XP Pro, not XP Home. Remote access is built in. Then you can log in from any Windows machine. Another option is VNC. It’s free, but a tad slower.
Q Kevin, High Desert, CA - New hard drive
Kevin got a new hard drive for his computer. Does he need to change the boot order? Leo says that you have to check the jumpers and select master/slave (primary/secondary). Windows is dumb and will only work on the Master drive. But Win 7 let’s you put it on the secondary drive.
Best cloning hard drive program? Leo says there’s a ton of options like Norton Ghost - but there’s issues with Ghost that you have to work in DOS while using Ghost. Acronis allows you to image your hard drive with TruImage. Steve Gibson recommended Drive Snapshot, but he’s changed his tune and the best now is ImageforWindows by TerraByte Unlimited. Leo says he’d prefer, however to have a bootable ISO. On the MAC, Super Duper does that.
From the Chat Room is talk of a free disc imager that makes a bootable ISO. Runtime Drive Image XML.
Q Barbara, Irvine, CA - Applications with 64 Bit systems
Barbara got a new 64 Bit system and her Adobe Flash won’t support it. Leo says that you need to upgrade flash to support 64 Bit. Older software may have trouble, but download and install the 64 bit version of Flash 10.
The Chatroom also chimes in that 34 bit Internet Explorer doesn’t work well with Flash, but the 32 bit version of IE does. So you can install that. Leo recommends Firefox, it supports the 64 bit version of flash.
But should she return her computer and wait for a Windows 7 version? Leo said that Vista struggled at first with compatibility issues. But with the new SP2, most of the huge problems with Vista have been fixed. But it is a processing Hog. Windows 7 is Vista, but cleaned up, polished up, and sped up. Leo recommends to just download and install Windows 7 as an upgrade when it comes out. Leo bets that Microsoft will offer very affordable upgrade options to make up for the morass that was Vista.
Q Lon, Los Angeles, CA - Live Background Image
Lon wants his iMac to have an “Active Desktop” type utility. Can that be done? But that’s a Windows utility. One program called Hyper Cube does something similar.
Q Matthew, Alberta, CAN - Updating his Intel Chip
Matthew wants to know if the Intel 9300 processor is worth upgrading to. Leo says it’ll give you a huge improvement. Overclockable. Quad Core processor. Very attractive. Fairly cool. Good choice, and with it’s at the end of it’s production life, you’ll probably get a great deal on it.
The I5 is coming out in September and will probably cost about the same. But if you don’t want to wait, teh 9300 is a good choice.
Q Larry, Loreno Valley, CA - Can’t open MP4 files
Larry has been recording video that records in MP4 and he can’t open them. Leo says what you need is the video “codec” to play it. A codec is a decompressor which can open the play your video files. MP4 is best played back from Quicktime. And it’s free. Another option is VLC Media Player.
Q Alley, Riverside, CA - Bad reception from his Nextel phone
Alley just moved into a new place, but his IDN PTT capability is terrible now. Leo says to call Sprint. They’re sure to have a solution since they bought Nextel.
See you tomorrow!
