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HOME ---- [contact me] My Blogger Profile View my photo galleries. Listen to my radio station. Currently ReadingThis is an Ottawa blog (Ontario, Canada). Cool blogs: McWetlog wood s lot La Tribu du Verbe Wil Wheaton Darren Barefoot Lectio.ca Blogger profiles in Ottawa Other good sites: Slashdot Wired News Mark Morford's Notes & Errata This page uses Extreme Tracker which is determining your referrer by running some JavaScript. The commenting system was Reblogger. |
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Pom Poko
So if you're a North American, you're thinking hey, racoons, saving their forest from humans, should be fine family fun. But this is made by the Japanese. Who are um well from our perspective Ok so the racoons are shapeshifters, quite a lot of individuals get killed on either side, there is quite a lot of incomprehensible dancing, singing and such, and oh, by the way, racoon testicles have extra bonus magical powers and can be expanded to e.g. form handy parachutes. I am not making this up. The only thing that cheers me up is imagining thousands of middle Americans renting this and being totally freaked out. It's called Pom Poko. I'm going to go watch BG 2.6 on the W2600 widescreen now. Thursday, August 18, 2005
W2600 TV and card reader
The Dell 26" W2600 LCD TV has a digital photo option: Dell W2600 Digital Photo Card Reader (Can$110) This is not an external reader, it's a module that integrates directly into an expansion slot on the side of the TV. It's completely integrated as well with the TV menu system - it shows up in the list of possible video sources, and you control the slideshow etc. through the on-screen menus. The Picture-in-Picture / Picture-outside-Picture / Picture-beside-Picture can combine any two video sources, including the two built-in TV tuners (they both tune from the single cable input). There are many, many inputs: composite, s-video, VGA, DVI, composite (there are multiples of some of these). The dual-picture modes work well for avoiding commercials, e.g. you can channel surf in the main picture while checking the 2nd to see if the show you are watching is back on. The main drawback is that there is no quick way to escape dual-picture mode. You can't just exit to a single screen (as far as I can tell). You have to cycle through the different picture modes before it goes to single screen. The display is ok, but not fantastic. It has a bit of a processed look. CSI on Spike actually had some problems, maybe because of the low light levels. There were serious display artifacts. UPDATE 2005-08-20: I'm not convinced this is a good TV if you just have an analog signal or a 480i DVD player. This surprises me, because the Dell 2000FP monitor I was using as a TV (via VCR composite connection) displayed fine. Now the 2000FP monitor is higher resolution (1600x1200 vs the 1280x768 of the W2600), but I would have expected the W2600, being an actual TV, to have all sorts of fancy image processing to improve the image. From what I read on the net, it's great if you have digital input (digital cable or 480p - progressive from your DVD player). And it will do HDTV 720p natively, including the ridiculous HDCP content protection. For HDTV 1080i, it will have to scale the image down to fit the screen resolution (1080i is 1920x1080). But for good old basic analog cable, which is what I have, the image really looks quite processed to me. The 480i from the DVD player looks fine, but I gather it would be better if it was 480p. In analog it is watchable, but there are visible effects just watching a regular show, basically there is a grainyness to the images. You know the kind of stepping effects you can see on a screen that doesn't have enough colours to display a smooth shading gradient? That's kind of like what I see sometimes. Basically, where I would expect smooth tones, I can actually see some grainyness or colour transition. You're probably safest going to a store and asking to see the display from ANALOG cable. Unfortunately of course with Dell there are no stores where you can go in the area. UPDATE 2005-Oct-23: There is also strong vertical banding when I use it as a monitor, and sometimes I see a horizontal band when I use it as a TV. I found it quite challenging to find some actuall Dell W2600 reviews amongst the Internet sales noise, I had the best luck searching 26 lcd review I find if you search on any kind of brand name or model number you get ten bazillion sales hits and no review hits. The conclusion from the reviews appears to be that you have to run the signal through a computer to get a good DVI input for the TV. It may be a good TV for digital inputs. Given the state of the LCD TV industry, I can't recommend that you buy sight unseen. Some other annoyances: It has great viewing modes, but no way to set them and jump in and out. If I want to get to PIP mode 3, I have to cycle through mode 1 and 2 every time. Also the manual is not that useful. It doesn't tell me what the difference between "wide", "full screen" and "standard" viewing modes are (they all look the same to me). Here are some reviews I found useful: CNet 5.8/10 Tom's Hardware: 26" LCD TVs
CNet UK Dell W2600 review
The rest of these reviews are fairly positive: tv.about.com PC Magazine Trusted Reviews Infosyncworld BIOS Magazine Tom's Hardware: LCD TV Fall 2005 Preview (does not cover the W2600)
moxy
Went to new Moxie's (cookies and Flash required) at Gloucester Centre (a slight ways across from Silvery City). I had the tandoori chicken pizza. It was good. They have hired quite the cohort of attractive female wait staff. Sunday, August 14, 2005
island life
I wrote before about the guy who bought one of the Five Islands. He has called it (I am not making this up) Dick's Island HOME - |