Xigga

It’s been a while since I lasted posted.  Samsung has released the 8 and 9 series in the some parts of the country.  They’re going for a high price right now.  Thought I don’t see a difference between the 8 series and the 7 series.  The only difference is that the 8 series is thinner.  The contrast ratio is the same and the other specs are the same too.

The 9 series is definitely a winner.  It’s got LED SmartLighting, which gives 2,000,000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio.  It also has a blue/gray Touch of Color.  The 6, 7, and 8 series have red.  The thing I don’t like about it is that they don’t have a 52″.  They only have a 46″ and a 55″.  For the 55″ the price is $4,200!  If it was a 52″, it would’ve run at about $3500.  I do love the 55″ size.  The LN55A950 is the successor to the 57″ 81F series that was released last year.  The 81F was 500,000:1 DCR.  There were some problems with the LED SmartLighting, which should be fixed now.  Not many people have the 9 series, so I haven’t heard of anything yet.

Also Samsung has come out with some newer models of the 5, 6, 7 and 8 series.  The original models ended with a 50, like 550, 650, 750, and 850.  But now they have 560, 760, and 860.  I did some research on them and they aren’t any better than the 50’s.  My guess is that they changed some of the internals of the TV.  Maybe they got a new motherboard or new panel manufacturer.  The only noticeable difference from their specs online is that they have less analog inputs.  So if you’re looking to buy a Samsung and can’t decide between the 50’s and the 60’s, get the 50.  It’s cheaper and it’s the same as the 60’s.  Why does Samsung have to create new SKUs?  It’s already complicated enough having so many series of LCD TVs.

To emphasize my point about the 8 series, it’s NO DIFFERENT than the 7 series.  They both have the same specs, except the depth of the TV.  I would not buy the 8 series over the 7 series.  There is no quality difference.  If you want something better than the 7 series, go up to the 9 series.  In the 9 series, you will only find two sizes: 46″ and 55″.  The price difference is huge from 46″ to 55″.  It’s about $1,800.  If the 55″ price seems too high for you wait until November-December.  That’s when they will have the big sales and you should see some good prices drops.  This goes for all products, not just TVs.  Hope this shed some light on the new Samsungs.  Again, the 8 series is just for filler.  They needed a reason for the huge price increase for their premium TVs, so they added an 8 series, and made their premium TVs the 9 series.

Hello Everyone,

I just did a major re-write to my library. The code is very optimized now. Before I had a lot of unneeded functions, objects, and buffers (OMG!). I was able to knock out a lot of stuff. The only CPU intensive aspect of the library is detecting the MPEG Audio Info. For those of you who don’t know what it means, MPEG Audio Info contains information about the actual audio stream, like bitrate, sample rate, channels, duration, etc. That information is not part of the ID3 tag. Since MP3’s are stream based, each audio sample has its own MPEG Audio header. The trouble is detecting if the data is MPEG Audio Info or if it’s just the audio stream. What I am doing right now is, I’m parsing the whole MP3 file and reading all MPEG Audio Info patterns and doing a complex check to see if it’s a valid MPEG Audio Info header. This is taking up most of the CPU time. It’s all done in memory, but it’s still a big hit to performance.

I’m going to continue finding a better way to detect valid MPEG Audio Info headers without doing a cross check with the other headers. Also I’m ignoring all MPEG Audio Info headers if they say anything other than MPEG 1 Layer 3. Some people may have MPEG 1 Layer 2, or other combinations. So my library won’t work with that.

Other good news is that it will read the ID3 information very fast! My library currently sits at 52kb. It only reads ID3 tags, but it reads all the versions. My next step is to make it write ID3v2.4.0 and ID3v1.1 tags. I’m not going to add support for writing ID3v2.3.0 or ID3v2.2.0 tags. I may allow the option to append the ID3v2.4.0 tag, instead of removing the old one. That’s just a thought. I would rather have the older tags be removed and just have ID3v2.4.0 and ID3v1.1.

I know a couple of you guys out there are eager to try out my library. I would say I’m at version 0.5. It’s easy to parse TEXT tags, but binary tags, like the Image tag, I don’t have support for decompressing the JPEG or any other format yet. I’m definitely not going to write my own image decompresser. If there’s code already available, then I’ll just use that, if not, you will still have access to the raw byte array of the JPEG image in memory, so you can use your own library to decompress/compress it.

Once I have tested my current build (0.5), I will release the library and I’ll provide some sample code on how to use it. It’s pretty simple. You can read all the tags/information with just two lines of code. Hopefully, I’ll get done with my work project so I can work on this more.

The FCC has mandated that all analog broadcasts be stopped by Feburary 2009.  How close is that?  About 7 months!  That’s half a year.  So for those who have standard definition TVs, you will be out of luck as you will not receive any signal to watch TV.    This was supposed to happen in 2007, but they realized that not a lot of people had HDTVs.

I heard about this in 2005 when I was working at CircuitCity.  The reason why they want to stop all broadcasts is to free up some of the air-wave frequencies.  Digital signals need a smaller frequency range than analog.  This way they can make better use of the unused frequencies.  So what if you don’t want to buy an HDTV?  Well you can buy a set-top box which will down-convert the digital signal to analog and you can watch your silly SDTV.

If you have cable or satellite, you won’t need to get an HDTV just yet.  It’ll be a few more years before they stop putting analog outputs on their boxes.

Before I went to Wal-Mart I had never even heard of that name. I stepped foot inside Wal-Mart after 3 years, because it opened up close to my house and they obviously had lower prices for some things. So I walked into the electronics section, as I always do when I go to any store. I was like “Vizio, what the hell is that?” I thought it was some cheap brand that will die out in a couple months.

I was wrong! They would’ve died if it wasn’t for Wal-Mart. When Vizio picked Wal-Mart to be their retailer, they had a reason. Wal-Mart has the biggest market. They get tens of millions of customers each day. Vizio has been gaining speed fast. They are catching up to Samsung and Sony for the biggest LCD TV manufacturer. But Vizio still has some more to go with quality. They are priced lower because they have slighly lower quality. They’re not horrible though. If you want to see horrible take a look at any American brand TV (RCA, Polaroid, etc). Vizio is American, but it’s good. It just needs to keep getting better.

Vizio has become a threat to other retailers. BestBuy is selling their private label Insignia HDTVs in direct competition to Vizio. Goto BestBuy.com and search for Vizio. You will get a nice little notice that says “we do not carry Vizios, but we do carry Insignias”. I saw several Vizio’s at Costco the other day and they looked as good as the Sonys (Samsung still the best!).

If you’re looking for a cheap HDTV, so you don’t have to worry about buying a new one (because it was cheap), go with Vizio. It is good for a secondary HDTV somewhere in the house. If someone breaks it, no biggie. I’d like to know what Vizio has planned for the future. My guess is that they are working on a QuadHD panel, or one of the bigger players will give Vizio the contract to manufacture the panel for them.  I’m thinking Sony, they always contract stuff out to the little guys.

There quite a lot of ruckus going on with Quad HD. More and more people are hearing about it and they are going crazy! Everyone’s wondering when Quad HD is going to come out. One site (don’t remember which one) said that it will debut in 2015, which is too far in the future. It’s about 7 years from now. All the major manufacturers have developed prototypes and some are even selling it right now for a hefty price. Westinghouse is selling a 46″ and a 52″ QuadHDTV to businesses who need them, like research labs and businesses that require highly detail 3D modeling to do analysis.

Samsung has created an 82″ prototype also. Wonder how much that sells for? My estimate is that QuadHDTVs will be available to the masses in 2011-2012. That’s a much better estimate. The current 1080p sets have matured and there are only a few kinks that need to be fixed. LCD prices are dropping 15% (average) every year. This past year it has been around 20%-25% with Vizio undercutting the market. Vizio has a huge market and is catching up to Samsung and Sony. Sony will fall shortly, if they don’t drop their prices. Vizios are sold in Wal-Mart, BJ’s, Sam’s Club, and Costo.

QuadHD’s will run at about $4,000 for a 52″. Technology is moving at a fast rate. 1080p has only been around for 2-3 years and they are already prototyping and selling 2160p TVs. In 4-5 years they are bound to hit the market.

Don’t let your HDTV go to waste.  Use it as a monitor.  You can hook up any laptop or PC to your HDTV.  HDTV’s are better monitors than the specially designed monitors for the PCs.  You get higher contrast ratios and a bigger screen!  You can play your videos games, or watch movies.

Your laptop/PC will either have a VGA or DVI connection.  Newer PC/laptops have DVI, older ones (2+ years old) will most likely have VGA.  HDTVs older than 2 years had DVI, but they dropped it and now only have VGA.  DVI was dropped because of HDMI.  Hi-end laptops and PCs will have HDMI, in that case you just need to get the a HDMI cable.  If you HDTV has VGA and you laptop/PC has DVI, then you should’ve been given a DVI-VGA adapter.  If not, then you can find it cheap online.  It’s also possible that your TV has VGA and your laptop/PC has DVI.  You use the same adapter!

Watching movies on the PC is the best thing because they can play any format.  Some of you may have Windows XP Media Center Edition.  You can tell by going to Start > All Programs > Accessories > Media Center.  Just start that up and you have a nice little media center.  You PC may also have a SP/DIF or optical audio connection.  You can hook that up to your receiver and get 7.1/5.1 surround sound.

No need to burn DVDs or CDs anymore.  Hardrives are very cheap these days.  You can get drives that are $0.20 per gigabyte.  Just search around on the Internet.  You’ll find very good prices, and if you’re not in one of those “weird” states, you won’t have to pay taxes.

You can also play HD movies on your computer if it can handle it.  Bluray drives cost about $350-$500 for your computer.  Put one in and you got yourself a Bluray player.  You need a dual-core system to play Bluray movies.

Within a few years HTPC (Home Theater PC) will be the new thing.  It’s puts everything into a nice little box.  But HTPCs don’t have special “technology” to make it better for your HDTV than your current computer.  If your computer has SP/DIF or optical out, then you are good to go.  A decent video card would make it better because HDTVs are 1920×1080 @ 60hz.  The new HDTVs are 1920×1080 @ 120hz, so if you want to get the best of the best, get a good video card that can handle that resolution.

FED stands for Field Emission Display.  It’s very similar to SED technology, except FEDs use diamond crystals in the panels.  First, we are using gold to gold plate all the contacts on electronic equipment, like cables, memory cards, PC cards, etc.  It’s only a tiny bit of gold per component, but there are millions of components out there and I’m surprised we haven’t ran out of gold.

And now they want to use diamonds for TVs?  That’s going increase the prices of diamonds like crazy.  On this planet you’ve got two kinds of people, (1) those who want to wear diamonds, and (2) those who want to grind the diamonds to dust and stick them in a glass panel to watch high quality TV.  I prefer to be in the latter group.  I don’t care much for diamonds.  They look like a piece of glass, and you can’t tell much of a difference between a real diamond and a fake diamond.  Diamonds have great physical qualities, but you can’t do justice to them by just wearing them.  So I’m all up for putting diamonds in TVs.

The sad thing is that one company, called Candescent Technologies, tried to develop the FED technology to use another material for the panel instead of using diamonds.  They failed, but not because of what they were doing, it was because so much money was being put into LCDs that FED could not develop in time and they ran out of money.  FED is still being developed.  We could expect it in 2010 or later because LCD has too much support and investment.  Sony tried to join Candescent’s bandwagon, but didn’t want to fully commit to it.  Candescent filed for Bankruptcy in June 2004 (four years from today).  The company’s remaining assets and patents were sold to Canon for about $10.75 million.  Let’s see what Canon does with it.

As I was totally unaware of FED technoglogy, I had to do some research one it and I’m still read about it to understand how it works and if it will ever be a reality.  Stay tuned…

There’s an easy way to get your local channels free in HD. Just get a HDTV antenna. Instead of paying $5-$10 extra per month to get local channels, just invest in a HDTV antenna. The HDTV antenna isn’t for everyone. If you are too far away from the broadcasting station, you will have trouble picking up some or all the channels.

I like the Terk HDTVi VHF/UHF HDTV Indoor Antenna. It’s cheap and it’s good. But it’s up to you, you can read the reviews and decide for yourself. You can also look at the other antennas they have. If it doesn’t work then you can return it. The antennas are mainly good if you are in a city, since that is where most broadcasting stations are. Spending $20-$40 on an antenna is better than paying your satellite/cable company for it. The charge you at least $5/mo. for local channels.

This was a short article. I just wanted to get it out because not a lot of people know of this option. Enjoy your sports in HD!

SED stands for Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display. Pretty long name, so lets just call it SED. SED technology is going to compete with LCD and OLED technologies. Plasma has no chance, read my previous article to see why. SED was created jointly by Canon and Toshiba.

LCD is good, but you don’t get a high contrast ratio (yet). Even though we have Samsung out with a 500,000:1 conrast ratio, it’s not static. It’s dynamic contrast ratio. Read my article on contrast ratio here. High contrast ratio will be the biggest advantage for SED TVs. To find out why we first need to know how LCDs work.

LCD TVs have pixels that are arranged in a nice grid. Each pixel can be any color, but the pixel doesn’t have it’s own light source to control the brightness of the color. Behind the grid panel, there is a light source called the back light. When LCDs first came out the backlight was a powerful tubelight. Now they have LEDs for the backlight, but it’s still one light source for all the pixels. So the pixels can only have a small contrast range. If one side of the screen is all white and the other side is black, the black side will look washed out, because the backlight is at it’s full brightness.

Before I explain SED technology I need to explain CRT. CRT is the old picture tube technology that has been around for more than half a century. CRT stands for Cathode Ray Tube. CRT works by shooting an electron at a phosphorus screen with an electron gun. When the electron is shot at the screen it goes through a mask which allows the electron to hit only specific locations on the screen. when the electron hits the screen, it light’s that section up. The electron gun shoots electrons one by one in an orderly fashion. It starts from the left of the screen and goes all the way to the right, then it moves down to the next line and repeats the process until the whole frame is drawn. This happens very fast, so you don’t notice it at all.

SED brings the best of both worlds together. In a SED TV each pixel is like a small CRT television. Each pixel has an electron gun and it shoots straight. In a conventional CRT, the electron gun shoots an electron, but since it has to draw on the whole screen the electron is deflected with a magnet at whatever angle it needs to be to hit the exact point on the screen. With SED you only need to shoot straight because you are using a grid of CRTs to display a picture. So in a SED TV, we have a grid of pixels, but the pixels are tiny CRT’s. This gives us the benefit of a higher refresh rate, because CRTs are fast at changing colors. LCDs are slow compared to CRTs. If you play videos games you will notice a ghosting effect in fast moving scenes. You can also notice this in movies with fast-motion scenes.

With SED we also get higher contrast ratios because each pixel will have it’s own brightness. When an electron hits a phosphorus screen it emits light. And the light can be any color you wish and brightness. So SEDs don’t have a backlight, they don’t need one. An electron hitting a phosphor creates light! Simple put, an SED is like a LCD, but each pixel is a tiny CRT.

You may think that we are moving backwards because CRT is old, but that’s not the case. CRT had some limitations, such as a maximum screen size it could shoot the electrons on. You can only change the electron’s trajectory so much. That’s why you never saw a 60″ CRT.

Will SED make LCD obsolete? It’s possible, but LCD is always being improved. Let’s not forget Sony and how they like to push their technologies. When VHS was coming out they were pushing their Betamax, they lost. For the HD media they were pushing Bluray, and they won. Sony is going to be pushing OLED technology against SED. OLED is similar to SED, but instead of having tiny CRTs for pixels, it uses (Organic) LEDs. That’s all I can say about OLED for now. I’ll leave that for another article.