Geek with Family

Though never on my agenda, we ended up at Best Buy twice this weekend. The first visit was to buy my wife some time to shop at Old Navy across the parking lot; the second was to check the look and feel of the Panasonic DMC-FX01S 6MP Compact Digital Camera (it’s the size of a thick wallet, but somehow has a 28 mm lens).

On both visits my 27 month old daughter couldn’t be torn away from the Guitar Hero demo. Best Buy has a PS2 attached to a 42″ flat panel TV and two of those cheap bucket video game seats but only one Guitar Hero controller.

Continue reading Guitar Hero - Toddler_o_Geek Rocks and Head Bangs

Popularity: 13% [?]

I feel good about my home theater set up when I can go into a high end dealer and feel unimpressed with their demo rooms. I watch the usual African savanna HD stream projected onto a 120" diagonal fixed screen by a $30,0000 Runco front projector and line doubler combo and sigh. I know what I have at home is better for a fraction of the cost because I’ve tweaked my front projection system to a higher level than intended by the manufacturer.

I also lose confidence in mainstream home theater magazines when a casual reviewer pans my projector for flaws that are easily overcome with a color correction gel filter, a Colorvision Spyder2PRO monitor calibrator and careful manipulation of user and service menu settings. The magazine’s editorial dogma may skew their opinions toward the lowest common denominator (L.C.D.), Joe-Best-Buy, but it doesn’t speak to me.

Continue reading Sanyo PLV-Z3 LCD Projector Settings

Popularity: 28% [?]

At Frye’s over the weekend I saw two half shelves worth of HD-DVD software. This is only remarkable because I had not been to an electronics superstore recently to see such a display. I know they’ve been out for weeks or a month or a I don’t care.

The HD-DVDs were grouped at the end of the anime section just before the nature and historical videos. I can’t remember the first weeks or months of DVD’s launch but it was probably just as pathetic (I remember only seeing Eraser and Twister DVDs for a year before I cared about DVD as a source of entertainment). The discs were packaged in the same clam cases as normal DVDs, the "HD-DVD" banner at the top was the only tip-off. Blockbuster!/must buy! titles included: Rumor Has It, The Chronicles of Riddick, Van Helsing, Swordfish, Doom.

Continue reading HD DVD Launch - Top Titles that Geeks Wish They Could Buy

Popularity: 8% [?]

I stayed up until 3 a.m. Friday night running between my computer and listening rooms. I was trying to push a high bit, expanded frequency WAV music file from my Mac Mini’s iTunes to my Airport Express’s connected to my hi-fi set up. This experiment failed but I learned something that will make me pursue a new experiment that I always thought silly before.

Continue reading PSP + Airtunes + Coverbuddy = Dance Party - Update - 24-88.2 Upsampling

Popularity: 9% [?]

Curious to find any electronic mods for the Airport Express, I ran across this tip for improved iTunes fidelity on a Mac: switch your MIDI controls to 24 bits.

On a Mac, launch the Audio MIDI Setup.app from your Utilities folder. Change the Audio Output controls on the Audio Devices tab to 88200.0 Hz/2ch-24bit for all sources as in the screen shot. You can actually switch the settings while iTunes is playing for A/B comparisons.

Continue reading PSP + Airtunes + Coverbuddy = Dance Party - 24-88.2 Upsampling

Popularity: 6% [?]