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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. posted by Richard at 21:36 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

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

Video Quality

Unfortunately, things became a little less idyllic here. The video quality of Dell's LCD TV was acceptable, but no better. The picture sometimes showed an unpleasant line effect when screening DVDs via the S-Video interface, a problem we didn't encounter on any of the other models tested. It's a shame, because there was very little sparkling. On the other hand, a lot of jaggedness showed up on images from DVD sources. What that means is that if you choose this model, you'll really need HDTV content to get the most out of it. A little latency was visible in movies, but the viewing angles were good.

Interpolation And PC Mode

The poor quality of the interpolation we'd observed with movies got worse with Xbox games. They were playable, but only in 4:3 mode - as soon as we extended the image, the result was disastrous.

Using a PC as the image source eliminated the jaggedness we'd noticed in movies, and the Dell proved to be a very good screen.

CNet UK Dell W2600 review

Performance
While the design of the W2600 punches above its weight, the video performance is more indicative of its budget roots. The torture test for any LCD is giving it a plain old analogue TV signal and then finishing it off with some Freeview programming, and with these odds Dell's effort didn't fare too well. The 25ms response time just isn't fast enough to deal with swift camera pans and moving images, and the 500:1 contrast ratio can't reproduce any detail when you're viewing a dimly lit movie. These sort of problems will affect the viewing pleasure of even the most undemanding viewer, so if you've got your heart set on an LCD, you'll have to spend up to £1,000 more to bag something comparable to a CRT from low-quality sources. However, there are ways to get round this, albeit expensive ones. If you use a Media Center PC with a Freeview card, the results are much more polished, with less of that horrible MPEG artefacting that results from the analogue conversion process.

It's ironic that after it nailed AV connectivity so well, we have to advise you to use a PC with the Dell W2600 to get the best out of it. However, the W2600 is still a solid starting point for the company. It impresses in design but delivers exactly what you should expect for the price on performance.

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)

Labels: lcd tv, w2600

posted by Richard at 22:15 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

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. posted by Richard at 22:04 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

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 posted by Richard at 18:23 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

bg 2.5

Holy Moly.
Battlestar
with the Cylons
and the love

Labels: battlestar galactica

posted by Richard at 00:49 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)