Home Technology Articles
Why Boxee may Devour Google TV and Apple TV?
Internet TV Streaming device wars!
What is Boxee you say? OH you are going to be happy after reading this. That is if you want to stream internt TV to your gigantic 110" projection screen or say your LED 40" too.
Boxee is a brand new streaming device that could take over the world. Can you tell I am really excited about this one? Why is it better than Apple TV or Google TV?
Well it's not limited like apple TV is to itunes and little else you don't have to focus on renting shows. And it is not blocked by all of the broadcasting stations like Google TV is.
An Awesome Remote. Seriously have you seen the google TV remotes they are rediculous. The Boxee Bxo remote is double sided and has very simple buttons and a track pad on one side while on the other it has a qwerty keyboard just like a cell phone would. easy to use for searching, etc.
It looks cool
Let's face it the goolge tv thing a ma jig by Logitech look like a plastic peace of junk. this thing is intriquing. It sits sort of tilted back as if to say yep I rock.
A lot of Content
Yes you can stream thousands of TV episodes from the internet such as Hulu.
Plus great movie selections like Netflix (who doesn't get netflix nowadays) but you can get VUDU (brand new release HD movies with surround soundand) and MUBI (Foreign film website) Plus you can add apps that give you even more like NHL, Pandora, MLB, plus flicker, facebook, twitter, the list goes on and on.
Watch Later
I'm a busy websurfer I don't have time to watch every video right now when I find it or if a friend suggests it to me. Well Boxee is your best friend with their wonderful Watch Later button, you can surf the web and automatically mark things to "watch later" that will allow you to pull it up next time you sit down infront of your TV with your new firend boxee connected to it. How sweet is that?
It's Social
This is one feature I think many will really enjoy more than they realize it now. Of course web 2.0 is all the craze, and boxee capitalizes on this. So with Boxee you can watch things that friends on facebook are watching or have watched and with the touch of a button you can broadcast what you are watching to social sites too.
This may sound funny but if you've never sat and streamed Hulu on a TV before you may not realize how lazy we TV viewers really are. This is why Leanback via Youtube was invented. Once your show is done that you sit down to watch you may find yourself saying ok what should I watch now. This is usually when your cable provider would through another tv show at you. But with Hulu it stops, sure you could get up and get some sleep or clean or something but come on. Why not just look at what a friend you are following just finished watching. You may want to block your mom from following you though.
Great Price and Easy to Find
Yes $199 is a price I'd be willing to pay for all this. Plus Boxee has partnered up with DLink so they will be carried all over, best buy, computer stores, target etc.
The bottom line is if you are in the market for an internet streaming device it's worth taking a look at boxee. www.boxee.tv
As always we'd love to hear your feedback and comments.
Streaming Internet TV: Google TV vs. Apple TV
Are you streaming internet video to your TV? What an exciting time to be living. We've seen VHS BETA wars, Blu-ray vs. HDDVD, now is it google TV vs Apple TV? There are so many options out there right now It's hard to know which way to go. Luckily the investment is not to high Apple Tv is only $99 although I feel it is very limited. I really don't see the point in buying something just to be able to rent per episode TV, on on demand movies. Google TV is well versed as it does some web browsing, and can get other channels, Although the networks have mostly blocked it currently from their internet content. The idea of apps is sort of interesting but most people are looking for a way to stream video content not look at twiiter, facebook, etc on their HDTV.
Boxee Box
One interesting new player is Boxee. If you haven't heard about it and you are looking at getting involved with streaming I'd recommend at least investing sometime into researching it. Boxee is a internet streamer with very similar hardware specs to Google TV. It differs because it has a twist with social media and friends etc. I also like the idea of marking various content as watch later! Keep your eyes open for this.
Play On
What I am currently doing is using Play on software running on a computer that streams various internet content directly to my internet connected samsung TV. Looks good. With this software I can stream Hulu (which is basicially all I need ) but it can do a lot more by adding in plug ins etc. I don't really see this as being a mainstream solution as it is a little geeky but maybe that's why I like it.
We'll be coming back later with more indepth information about all of the various ways to stream video to your TV.
In the mean time let us know what you are doing ofr if this is even something you are interested in.
How do you find the best speaker placement for a subwoofer in a Home Theater installation? We'll outline a very simple method that anyone can do.
Remember that there are many things to consider when placing speakers. Obliviously sound is one of them but also we have to think of how it looks in a room. Many times the best place to put a speaker is determined to also be the ugliest by our spouses. :-) This leads us to compromise. That being said lets talk about Sub woofer placement.
Make sure you have a CD in hand a receiver and a subwoofer with a long cable connecting your sub and receiver. Do you know where you are going to sit? I hope so. If so take your sub and place it right by your prime seating location. Then crank up your CD with the sub booming away walk around the room and listen to where the bass sounds the best. Mark a couple of your favorite locations with painters tape on the floor.
Then move the sub to another main listening location and do the same thing again.
After you have done this 3-5 locations you should have a good idea of the best place to get the bass to sound the best in the room. If you are more concerned about your prime listening locations in your Home Theater then you can take that into consideration when placing your sub.
This is a quick and easy method that anyone can do. The thing to remember is that everyone has their own listening preferences so where you would place your sub is not the same that your neighbor wood.
I'd recommend going for a placement that allows the bass to blend in smoothly with your other speakers too.
I hope that gives you a great starting point for your Home Theater.
3D TV for your Home Theater System
Wow it seems like just yesterday we were talking about the future of using 3D TV in Home Theater Systems with our customers. It’s hard to believe time has flown by so fast. Well today I just saw the latest Samsung 3D TV the LN55C7000 an HD 1080p TV at 120hz. It was amazing! I had recently seen Avatar in the theaters and the first thing I noticed was this is much sharper and more vivid. The reason the new 3D TV’s are so much better than the movie theaters are they use an active method of giving you 3D TV.
The 3D glasses you wear are called shutter glasses. They have to be made to work with the particular manufacture of TV you are watching. What happens is they have small shutters inside the lenses that open and close at 60 hz. Or 60 times per second. So your HD shutter glasses are being opened and closed for you in a sense at the same time the two images on the screen are alternating. So the glasses you wear actually have a little power button. As you watch the show the TV sends ir signals to your glasses just like a remote sends signals to a TV to power it on. This communication to the shutter glasses times the alternating shutters to correspond with the images on the TV. This active shutter technology gives the viewer a much crisper and clearer image.
I was watching a demo of monster vs. aliens and it was awesome. I was standing about 4 ft away and at one point the main character was using a paddle ball. The paddle ball popped right out at me so fast I actually jumped. At points I started to walk around the room to see what the experience would be if I was further away and from the sides. As I walked back it actually got neater, obviously because I was not standing so close to the 3D TV my entire vision was not the TV, but the parts of the image that came out of the TV at me came further out because there was more room for the image to extend. Things really seemed to float in the air. All I can say is WOW! As I moved to the side I noticed people almost crawled out at one point it seemed like one of the characters was peering out of the TV. But once I got to far over the image started to lose the 3D effect. Keep in mind I was fairly far over, further than most people would be watching their TV’s from. All in all my feeling is if you are in the process of buying a new HDTV for your Home Theater System I would highly recommend paying a little extra for the ability to watch things in 3D.
Some TV’s will upscale existing content to 3D. This is not quite the same effect as when content is filmed and displayed by a 3D Blu-ray player. In the up scaling the image will seem to have 3D depth back into the TV, which is really cool, but images do not come out at the viewer past the 3D TV. We will be talking soon about the requirements, available and upcoming 3D content, and various 3D TV’s in the near future. If you have a question as always we love to hear from you.
Until then I’ll leave you with one last parting thought. Can you imagine playing Wii in 3D?
LED vs LCD HDTV
LED is the latest and greatest HDTV technology out there. So that means it's what I need to have right?
There is no doubt the new LED TV's have a lot of neat advantages. The most noticeable is that they are a lot skinnier than LCD TV's. I just can't stand those deep 2.5" LCD's anymore. Well not quite, but it is interesting that a big part of what we look for in a TV is not only how the picture looks but what the TV looks like even when it is off. This being said LED TV's because they use LED lights instead of traditional lamps in the background are much thinner around 1.5" depending on he particular brand of LED HDTV you are looking at.
Another advantage of LED HDTV's is that they use less energy and last longer than the traditional LCD HDTV's. Just like lamps in flashlights that use LED's.
You may be surprised to find out that LED TV's are LCD TV's. The only difference is that the LED TV's use LED lamps to create the light in the background. The LCD's then open and close to let the varying amount of light come through as needed.
So are LED HDTV's better than the traditional LCD HDTV's?
This is very hard to answer generically, because there are many types of LCD and LED HDTV's. Just like you can not compare the entire line of Toyota and Ford Cars.
The higher end of LCD's have a higher quality image processing engine than the Low end LED TV"s. One thing to be aware of when you are buying TV's is that the manufacturing companies like to use the "new technologies" to sell TV's. So they will just make LED backlit TV's and people buy them even though the LCD TV in the same price range has a superior picture.
The high end LED HDTV's do have a better picture, and this is because they are locally dimable. What this means is that if a part of the picture needs to be black they can actually turn the LED's in that section of the TV off. Of course there is nothing darker than no light? The TV's that have this technology are much more expensive, but if you are going for the best picture money can buy, it is what you should look for.
Please let us know if your feel this information has been helpful either by commenting or through our facebook fan page. www.facebook.com/KasperConnections
