Category: General

The HDTV Upgrade Domino Effect

I admit it, I pretty much had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the brave new world of high definition television. I was happy with my 19″ SDTV, and frankly all the information the average consumer has to absorb to make even the most basic informed decisions was a little off-putting.

Last week, however, I decided to celebrate my birthday by upgrading to a larger television. After looking through my choices, I finally broke down and settled on one of the less expensive 32″ LCD HDTVs.

I like the television, while not as feature filled as others it does what it does well for the price. The problem is that this one purchase has placed me at the start of a chain of related purchases because of the upgraded technology.

HDTVs, for example, can actually make regular broadcast video look worse than SDTVs by their very nature of displaying a higher video definition. Any compression artifacts from digital broadcasts that are smoothed out due to the lower definition of an SDTV become crystal clear on the HDTV.

So that means I’m looking at an HD receiver to replace the regular one from DirecTV. Of course, it also means that I also need a HD DVR to record HD televion, such as the HD Tivo or DirecTV HD DVR. The former is still expensive, while the latter is on severe backorder.

And of course, now that I have an HDTV, any excuses not to get an XBox 360 due to not being able to see the performance difference on an SDTV have melted away.

When will the upgrades end?!

Remember Thanksgiving?

Driving around town I’ve seen a number of houses that have had their Christmas decorations for a few weeks already. Going to stores, you’ll see most of the Halloween decorations removed and replaced with Christmas products by October 20th.

It’s almost as if Thanksgiving doesn’t really exist anymore, other than as the day before Black Friday. No one decorates for it, stores tend to shift gears from Halloween to Christmas days before the former has ended and generally there seems to be a lot less interest in the holiday.

“Wii Would Like to Play”

The first Nintendo Wii commercials are now hitting the US airwaves and they are amazingly good pieces of marketing for the new video game console.

The “Wii would like to play” tag works really well, turning a name that most gamers have raised a skeptical eyebrow over into a catchy slogan that promotes the social gaming aspect of the system. Even the inclusion of the two japanese gentlemen is a great little play on the ii’s in the name.

With such a really strong marketing message, combined with the lowest price tag of any of the new game console, as well as hardware that isn’t going to make you feel the need to spend more money on an expensive HDTV, the Wii has made even a staunch Nintendo skeptic as myself interested in the system.

How to Lose Control of Your Computer in 6 Days

This report from Denver News Channel 7 should send chills up the backs of parents who willingly let their kids download music and movies from free file sharing tools such as Limewire and Kazaa without current and updated antivirus and antispyware protection.

In the clip, a computer forensics expert places a computer protected with an antivirus program onto three free peer to peer file sharing networks and allows it to sit passive for six days, never downloading or uploading a single file. Six days later, malicious software is found on the desktop.

The video goes on to recommend that owners can protect their computers by adding an up-to-date antispyware program in addition to the antivirus program, as well as a protective firewall.