Illegal Aliens or Terrorists?

They crossed over the border on foot.  Unlike the undoubtedly many others who had managed to pull such a stunt, they got detained by the border patrol.  At first, due to the color of their skin (and their clothes), it was assumed that they were not the usual undocumented migrant worker.  Later, when their nationality was known, they were labeled as spies and terrorists.  Right wing factions wanted them interrogated (using any means possible), and then locked up, with the key tossed away – after all, they were a threat to National Security and the homeland.  The liberals meekly suggested that these were innocent adventurers and should be treated with respect and dignity, and yes, swiftly returned to their nation.

The right wing ridiculed the “hiking tourist” explanation, cited terror attacks, the conspiracy of one religion to wipe out another, and God, as an excuse to treat these detainees as enemy combatants – undeserving of any rights.  The right wing also seized the opportunity to attack the left, calling them enemy sympathizers and weak on the war, going even as far as accusing the left of being hateful of the homeland, and pining for its destruction.

The right wing, whether here or there, both operate the same way, using the same tactics, slogans and excuses.  This was just the sad story of Joshua Fattal, Sarah Shourd, and Shane Bauer, three Americans detained in Iran for an illegal border crossing.

My response to John Mackey’s Alternative to ObamaCare

From: John Mackey: The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare – WSJ.com

With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people’s money. These deficits are simply not sustainable. They are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation, or they will bankrupt us.

Just because the $1.8 trillion deficit is mentioned on the same line as Medicare and SS, we should be aware that those two programs are, in fact, healthier than most IRA/401K portfolios and a better alternative to health care packages that are available to now laid off people.

We’ve had some years of warning about the direction of the economy. Instead of heeding those (and there are plenty of economists who were labeled as left-wing hacks for sounding warnings), we chose to increase spending, and decrease taxes.  The deficit was not the result of any health care reform, nor SS or Medicare or any other social programs. And just because we have a deficit doesn’t mean that health care reform shouldn’t happen.  Imagine if we decided to drop our entire Defense program because of the deficit?

Now, in the US, a HUGE portion of our tax dollars goes to defend the country. Do you ever hear that our defense budget is going to go bankrupt? Why not? And since your contribution to the defense fund goes to protect everyone, even the unemployed and the lazy couch potatoes, why do we not rail against socialized defense? Are we going to run out of other people’s money to pay for everyone else’s defense?

The difference is that the two industries, defense and health care, make their profits in different ways. Defense can only survive if the purchases are made by a single payer. You, as a citizen, aren’t going to go through a menu of choices and decide how many missiles you want pointed East, or how many armed people should defend your neighborhood. The decision has to be made by one entity, and those in the defense industry hope that that entity is friendly to their cause, or scared enough to spend your and my tax dollars extravagantly. (Expensive toilet seats, anyone?)

The health care industry, on the other hand, does best when the purchases of health care packages are done by more individuals. In fact, they’d even like it better if they could cut out businesses and go direct to people, because they’d rather not have customers large enough to be educated in the choices and options or who could actually throw their weight around. The fewer people making decisions on which insurance company to utilize, the more the insurance companies have to be competitive. If the government becomes the single-payer, then insurance companies would get squeezed.

Given the amount of profits involved (the CEO of United Heathcare made $3.2 million last year with stock options worth $700M+ and at one point, for every $700 spent on healthcare, he made $1!), you will see a lot of outrageous claims made to scare us from making changes that threaten them.

Now back to defense vs health care. You, me, our parents, siblings, children, are more likely to die of cancer than an attack from Eastern Europe, yet we spend more on combat readiness against Eastern Europe than on eradicating cancer. This year, 250,000 Americans will die of cancer. 65,000 will die of breast cancer, and those are mostly women around and younger than our age. It is a fallacy that we don’t have enough money to fund our health care, when we spend quite a bit per capita, every year, to makes sure bombs don’t fall on us. I say we should treat each death prior to the age of 65 (I picked a random number) as being the equivalent of a victim of foreign aggression or terrorism. How many years of 250,000 person deaths will we put up with if they were dying (horribly, and painfully) because of something that an imaginary country, say, Iraqistan, was doing?

And I’m not even going to get into the dangers of epidemics when diseases fester and go unchecked, and how that disease will seek out everyone, especially successful business people who jet around…

Although Canada has a population smaller than California, 830,000 Canadians are currently waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment, according to a report last month in Investor’s Business Daily. In England, the waiting list is 1.8 million.

It is sad that the CEO of one of my favorite stores uses these tactics to make his point. First of all, setting aside the context, let’s not mistake supply issues with a program’s merits. I could create a hugely successful toy company, yet be unable to meet the demand, despite profits. There may be waiting lists for my products and customers who actually grow up and move on while waiting to get one. Does this mean that my company is a failure? I probably want to do some fine tuning to make the company better, and reduce my supply – maybe by paying more for that supply.

Canada and England, and many other countries, and to some extent the US, have a shortage of doctors. Doctors in the US have, for at least the past two decades, seen their income shrinking, and it’s not because of health care reform – which hasn’t happened yet – but because of health insurance companies shifting the money from the doctors to their own pockets. When an insurance company denies a claim, the company makes a bit more of a profit, the doctor makes less money and the customer who’s already out the money, has to forgo treatment. The end result is that money that would have made it to a doctor, went into an insurers pocket. Don’t forget, these health insurance companies have been posting multi-billion dollar profits.

To change the supply, we need to pay doctors better. And we need to take those brilliant pre-med and medical students, and give them scholarships or trade their loans for work where the supply is least. The pharma industry could use reform too.

Now, as for stats. 45 million Americans are currently waiting to get insurance coverage, so they could see a doctor instead of waiting till the need is dire and going to an emergency room, risking a bigger infection, or possible bankruptcy from the hospital bills that ensue. That is about 15% of the US population. 830,000 Canadians are 2.5% of their 33,744,000 population. 1.8M British are about 3% of their 61,612,300 population. Now you tell me which stats are better. And keep in mind, there are people in the US with insurance who are waiting to get treatment or admitted to a hospital too. I personally remember a battle my dad had years ago with Kaiser over his treatment. I don’t understand why people seem to think that these things only happen in Canada when we in the US all have had some interaction with insurance companies who have denied or delayed coverage. If our current health care system was perfect or close, then I’d say, “yeah, those in Canada are sooooo screwed!”. Frankly, while I am lucky to have good health care coverage, there are 45 million with no insurance and many of them could use, and be well served by a system like Canada’s.

Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That’s because there isn’t any. This “right” has never existed in America

Same with water. Yet we’ve decided as a society that water should be provided in a manner that isn’t meant to profit, or cause hardship. The individuals who work for the water company get paid according to their skillset and local rates. Yet, somewhere along the line we decided that since doctors made a nice chunk of money after years of hard work and study, that we should create a system that would leach off of them and in fact, bleed them and the “customers” dry. There is no intrinsic right to feed off the misfortune of others either. Yet some do it and fight hard to make it seem like they deserve to continue.

At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund. Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit preferences very clearly—they want supplemental health-care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an “intrinsic right to health care”? The answer is clear—no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K.—or in any other country.

Neither does the “right to be terrorism free”. Yet, I bet few of Mr Mackey’s employees want to spend their supplemental dollars on gas masks and kevlar vests. What he doesn’t say is what the employees use those supplemental dollars for. Braces? Full-body scans? Cosmetic surgery?

And yes, even with a future universal health plan in the US, his company could provide the option of supplemental health dollars. Why is that a problem? If basic health care covered the basics, then supplemental health care could provide braces, or removal of unsightly birthmarks, treatment for ED or balding, or… Even today, for someone like myself who has a good health plan, it can take me two weeks to see a doctor. I now hear that there are doctors who charge outside of plans in order to give some patients earlier appointment times. You see, you don’t have to look to Canada to complain about health care. Ours sucks way more.

We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health.

Those are wise words, as long as all companies can be like Whole Foods, where workers are not getting laid off due to poor business decisions which they had nothing to do with. You see Mr. Mackey, when a company lets someone go, no matter how responsible and wise, that person loses their health insurance. In an economically thriving society, we could expect that person to find another job with similar health care benefits. In the reality of today’s environment that individual may remain unemployed and, that individual, and the individual’s similarly responsible spouse and children, will go uninsured. Personal Wellness Accounts or tax breaks aren’t going to replace the lost health care.

Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society.

One of the biggest challenges to the American society IS the fact that 45 million and more each day go without insurance. Mr. Mackey must have gotten out-of-touch with what American society really is about. In fact, one of the single biggest and fastest rising expenses for corporations is the health care costs. Automakers are citing it as a reason for their impending doom. Our small company has endured year after year of 20%, 30% or 40% rate increases, which we have reluctantly passed onto employees, first as an increase in dependent fees, then in deductibles and co-pays, etc. In fact, for many this increase has negated any tax reductions that they got during the Bush era. And frankly, at small or large companies, it is the healthy who pay for the health care of the others – in other words, “other people’s money” is paying a good portion of a company’s health insurance bill.

Removing the health care dilemma will, in fact, make it easier for more Americans to focus on what they do best: create success and wealth and happiness.

Next up: I respond to a CEO who claims that there is no intrinsic right to education and each child should pay for their own education, instead of having “other people” pay.

Canon EOS 5D Mk III – My wishlist

Having played with the EOS 5D Mk II for over two months now, I am starting my wishlist for the successor to the 5D MkII.

1. Name: Call it the 6D or the 4D not the 5D Mk III or the 5D MkIIs.  I realize that you have painted yourself into a corner with the past decade’s of digital camera naming, but it is time to break with the madness.  Or maybe it is time to drop the D?  Call the next camera the 5-III?
2. The camera strap attachment point is lame.  Anyone with a lens bigger than an 85mm will notice that the camera wants to hang with the lens pointing downward not out, and the camera strap is stressed in that position.  The old-fashioned swivel attachment points would work better.
3. A rubber eyepiece cover?  Are you kidding me?  You can’t go back to some of your older designs with a small lever next to the eyepiece that would block light from entering the eyepiece?  Come on Canon!
4. Do NOT add any more megapixels!  Focus on making the camera better without adding power and memory hogging megapixels.  For now, 21MP is plenty.  Instead, give me 10 fps shooting rates.  Noiseless 5 digit ISOs.  Some real programming in Tv and Av (and M).
5. When I use the camera attached to a computer, let the USB connection provide the power to the camera too.  Maybe this means replacing the USB or adding FireWire order to have the right voltage to power the camera.  Also nice would be charging the camera using the same connection.  That means I would only need one cable when I go on a trip with my computer and camera, and I can skip the camera’s charger.
6. When I select Custom White Balance, have the camera ask if I want to take a picture in order to set the WB.  If I respond affirmatively, then the next picture I take is used to set the Custom WB.  Conversely, if you select a Custom WB photo via the menu, and select a photo, then don’t force me to select Custom under the WB setting too – do it for me!
7. Build the Wireless Flash Controller right into the body.  There is no reason why the 580 EX and other flashes shouldn’t be controlled by the body without a clunky hot-shoe attachment.  Nikon does it.
8. Auto-focus during Live View needs much work.  It is currently slow and inaccurate.  In fact, I think Live View needs much work, period.  How about installing a CMOS sensor (a small low-rez one above the pyramid that can split some of the light from the viewfinder to provide LiveView?
9. I’m not a big fan of the HD video (see my previous post about this).  To make it interesting, how about a slow-motion capture mode?  Or a time-lapse HD video – as in 1 frame per second/minute so you could do a day long time-lapse video in HD?
10. When taking Manual photos, on Automatic ISO, don’t hold the ISO at 400.  Let me specify an Av and a Tv value, and find the right ISO to make it work – don’t force me to change the ISO from “A”.  If I am determined to shoot at f22 and 1/1000, go ahead and give me ISO 3200, and if I go for f2.8 and 1/60, then give me ISO 100.  As a matter of fact …
11. … add ISO 25 and lower to the range.  (I have some plans for long exposure daytime shots.)  Otherwise I will have to get a $300 Variable ND filter.
12. In most modes, let me specify preferred ranges for the ISO.  Or preferred Av or TV ranges.  Why?  I might want depth-of-field, but not at the price of an underexposed shot.  So let me specify a range of, say, f22-f8, favoring f22, and if the setting permits, shoot at f22.  If not, go as far up as f8.  Or maybe I want a high-speed action shot.  I want the fastest Tv possible, but not any lower than 1/500, and certainly not at the expense of DoF or noisy high ISO settings.  This would help if I wanted to combine a high-speed shot with depth-of-field.
13. If you’re going to give me a battery grip, then why not give me extra storage at the same time too?  Make the battery group handle extra CF cards.  And with the battery grip, I expect the fps on continuous shots to go up to by a few shots per second.
14. To help me level a tripod, can I have a built-in motion sensor so the camera could display a bubble level on the LCD?  Something in the camera already detects its orientation – why not use that to drive an electronic bubble level?
15. I think I would prefer having two Date/Time values stored with photos, a UTC one and one adjusted for a set time-zone.

15 items.  For now.

Thanks Canon!

Canon Powershot G12 – What I’d like to see in that camera…

Given that Canon is probably well-along on developing the successor to the Canon Powershot G10 (the G11 I presume), I thought I would go ahead and outline my thoughts for what I would like to see in the next camera, the G12.

1. Move the circular controls on the back to a different spot.  When held, and due to a lack of a grip, that control is inadvertently pressed by the palm of the hand.  I often find that the size and quality settings get changed while simply holding the camera.  I don’t have unusually large hands, but I do find that the grip is too small for my grip.
2. Get rid of the electronic zoom and replace it with a manual zoom, controlled by the left hand.  The zoom is too slow and the other hand could do a better job of zooming while the trigger finger is ready to take the shot – besides, using the trigger finger for zooming and shooting isn’t very usable.  Of course manual focus would be a nice addition, but I’d like manual zoom more.
3. Do Not Add More Mega-pixels!  At least not until you can speed up the camera, from the autofocus to the shot-to-shot delay.
4. Allow power to be provided to the camera via the USB connection.  Being able to charge the battery through the USB connection would be also great as it means that I can leave the charger at home if I happen to have a computer handy, or a small USB charger or car adapter.

The Great Megapixel Race!

The race to build the best digital consumer cameras will not be won by the camera with the most megapixels. This competition to provide more and more megapixels is distracting the camera manufacturers from what’s most important – the picture quality.

This is a problem that is plaguing digital consumer cameras, regardless of whether it’s a mid-range point-and-shoot, or a range-finder style of camera, or a consumer SLRs. Cameras are being sold with the megapixel ratings emblazened on the packaging, consumers are buying based on that,yet the pictures seem to be no better than the ones produced by the cameras they replace.

You see, and I am sure most of my readers know this, but as megapixels grow, there is more and more crowding on the sensor chips, and that leads to heat and to noise. This is most noticeable when the camera needs to strain the sensor in order to make up for low levels of light – in the case of some cameras, that includes any picture taken indoors! (This noise is visible as grains in photos, sometimes just gray, or colored.)

I have owned, or tested, quite a few digital cameras over the past 8 years, and frankly the low-light performance of consumer cameras seems to have stayed stagnant or barely improved (and in some cases declined) with each release. The megapixel count has, however, increased at a brisk rate. My first real digital camera was an Olympus 2020 purchased in 1999, boasting an impressive 2 megapixels (impressive at the time) – and it took pretty nice indoor photos, yet limited in how large those prints could be. Today I own cameras that are fast consuming my disk space with their 12 and 21 megapixel files.

One camera style I have been following is the digital rangefinder cameras from Canon, the first one of these being the PowerShot G7 (that’s when I started paying attention). I put off purchasing the G7, and G9 (I wonder why they skipped the G8 ) due to firsthand testing that revealed grainy pictures whenever the camera had to increase its ISO to 200 or above. Here is an independent review of the latest in the series: 

The G10 leaves that lingering question. Just how good could this camera have been, had Canon taken a more conservative approach to resolution and put as much effort into optimising image quality as it did into making such an impressive camera body?

(via Canon PowerShot G10 Review: 24. Conclusion: Digital Photography Review.)

Canon’s not alone. Nikon’s competing model is similarly plagued by noise. Other manufacturers are suffering similarly in this same crazy race.

I urge the manufacturers (Canon are you listening?) to exercise some restraint on the megapixel bloat, and to focus on picture quality and camera performance. We can all live with slightly smaller than wall-sized prints in exchange for beautiful photographs. (The majority of us will probably never print anything greater than an 8×10.)

-mz

Long Tail theory contradicted?

The following article states some stats on digital music sales and quotes people who question the Long Tail theory:

The internet was supposed to bring vast choice for customers, access to obscure and forgotten products – and a fortune for sellers who focused on niche markets.

The idea that niche markets were the key to the future for internet sellers was described as one of the most important economic models of the 21st century when it was spelt out by Chris Anderson in his book The Long Tail in 2006. He used data from an American online music retailer to predict that the internet economy would shift from a relatively small number of “hits” – mainstream products – at the head of the demand curve toward a “huge number of niches in the tail”.

However, a new study by Will Page, chief economist of the MCPS-PRS Alliance, the not-for-profit royalty collection society, suggests that the niche market is not an untapped goldmine and that online sales success still relies on big hits. They found that, for the online singles market, 80 per cent of all revenue came from around 52,000 tracks. For albums, the figures were even more stark. Of the 1.23 million available, only 173,000 were ever bought, meaning 85 per cent did not sell a single copy all year.

I think the article, and the critics, missed a few points:

1. It still takes marketing for people to know how to find a particular track or album. Just because there are hundreds of thousands available, doesn’t mean that potential customers know about them (or have had time to stumble upon them). Social marketing, such as Amazon’s or iTunes’ customer recommendations, will help but only as the data gets populated and catches up with ever-increasing inventory.

2. On a lighter note, face it, there are bad tracks and bad albums. Even on albums from artists that I adore, I can find tracks that have me rushing to press the ⇥ (FF) button of my Shuffle. While there may be people who like music I dislike, there probably are universally accepted “bad” songs.  (William Shatner comes to mind).

3. Lastly, and most importantly, there were 52,000 tracks that accounted for 80% of the revenue? If I recall correctly, 80% of the revenue before the Internet was coming from Billboard’s top 40 (or was it Casey Kasem?). What did that translate to, about 300 new tracks, at best, per year? Something like 40 or 50 new albums per year making up the 80%? Seems to me that digital music sales are proving to be a Longer Tail than what we had prior. It is a mistake to compare sales to the inventory, rather than to historical sales. (Especially when the inventory can languish without rot, perish, or inventory costs).

Read the original article at:

Long Tail theory contradicted as study reveals 10m digital music tracks unsold – Times Online .

Canon 5D can do beautiful HD video. Why?!?

The newly released, and much unavailable, Canon 5D Mark II can record beautiful 1080p in H264. That sounds really cool. But why?!?

Ok, I know like most people out there, I would love to be able to carry one device that is my camera and my camcorder, to take high quality photos and high quality video. I currently own cameras that take high quality photos, and low quality video, and two camcorders that take high quality video, (one of them HD) and low quality photos. Would I like to carry one camera that can do both? Yes.

I also realize that being able to use a full-size sensor, with real lenses, can create much nicer videos, with dramatic depth of field options. And up until now, only high end pro camcorders could handle that. If at all.

However, I understand the limitations of a camera/camcorder hybrid. And Canon, with the 5D Mark II, has not addressed those.

In my mind the limitations are twofold. Ergonomics and functionality. Cameras, most SLRs that is, are used with two hands. One to support your lens, and allow you to zoom (and focus if you’re into manual focusing) and one hand to change settings and use the trigger finger. With cameras, you’re used to freezing your arms and yourself, and even holding your breath, while taking most shots. Shooting video is different. With video, especially these days, you may want to be moving while you shoot your footage. And you will want to have a comfortably padded eyepiece to soften the bumps to your brow or an LCD display that is articulated to handle your shooting angle. You also probably want the camcorder/camera to be operated singlehandedly. Unless you’re a filmmaker and have a huge pro video recorder, and have a dolly or camera crane or boom, you will probably be moving with the camera, and expect one hand free to help you maneuver, hold your kid’s hand, or play with your subject. Two-handed video camera operation is passé.

With a smaller lens, you may be able to get away with handholding the camera, but that assumes that you won’t be doing any zooming. (I’m assuming that most people leave the focus to the camera’s autofocus, although some cool foreground to/from background focus changes are neat). And more on the ergonomic front, the 5D requires that video be started and stopped by hitting the Set button on the back of the camera, not with your shutter finger. Bad.

On to the technical issue, and one that I have sort of touched upon, zooming in video recorders is almost always done smoothly. Everyone knows that motion picture recorders are equipped a W and a T button that allows for variable-speed and smooth zoom changes (Even those old Super-8 film cameras had them). With the 5D, zooming is only as smooth as your hand is. Even if we all could zoom smoothly, this issue forces the two-handed usage requirement of the 5D.

While it is nice to get a feature like this thrown into the 5D for free, I sort of wish Canon wouldn’t resort to the kitchen sink mentality just to match a competitor – who’s just as clueless about the usefulness of such a feature(I’m looking at you Nikon!). (As it is, I am worried that the digital camera one-upmanship is producing cameras with far more megapixels than we need at the expense of noisy pictures in low light, and slower picture taking and processing. Give me lower megapixels but fantastic and fast low light operation, faster shutter recycle times, tens of exposures per second… )

Now, if Canon could make a full-frame HD video camera that could also take 12+ megapixel pictures like the 5D, then I might be happier (I prefer the one handed, on-the-move, streamlined form factor of camcorders to the boxy two-handed camera). However, I don’t think I will ever expect to use my nice Canon L lenses on that camcorder as, again, there is no support for electronic zoom control, plus I am not sure if it make sense to use a lens that is designed to illuminate a 4:3 sensor, to illuminate a sensor that does HD.

The day will come where you can take any frame of a video, crop it, and use it as the equivalent of today’s 15+ megapixel still. For now, the 5D won’t replace my HD video camera.

—

Update: Here’s another blogger questioning Canon’s decision to add video.

Review of new video center

We recently upgraded our family room’s video setup. The old setup was a Sony 27 inch CRT TV, a trusty DirecTivo upgraded to 700GB, a Sony DVD player and an AppleTV (not connected to any of the above due to a lack of component or HDMI inputs). Recently, the audio on the 27″ TV began to crackle, and a smaller 20″ Sony was moved from a bedroom to replace it. The 20″ was definitely too small for the space, and a larger screen was sorely needed.

The setup was very highly utilized, in a built-in cabinet, in a large room that is a combination kitchen and family room (sometimes referred to as a great room). The DirecTV Tivo was programmed to record so many programs that it seemed to be recording off of one or both of its tuners, almost non-stop throughout the day and night. Between the kids’ shows and ours, we had over 600 hours of recorded programming on the Tivo. (I had over 300 episodes of Star Trek and ST spinoffs, with episodes getting added faster than I had time to watch).

This AV center was never meant to be a “home theater” nor utilized for playback or distribution of music (we have a perfect setup with 3 Apple Airport Expresses with iTunes on various computers utilizing AirTunes for music playback and distribution). However, quality of audio and video was still pretty important when decisions were made about revamping the whole cabinet.

The first decision was the size and type of the television. Given the depth (and height of the TV area) of the cabinet, there weren’t a whole lot of CRT or DLPs that could go into the same space, and give us a screen much larer tan 30″. With the width of the cabinet at 43 inches I had the choice of many good 37″, 40″, 42″ and even a few 46″ plasma or LCD TVs. The 46″ TVs were a tight fit, and even some 40 and 42 inchers, had too large a frame around their screens to fit comfortably.

The decision was made to go with LCD, partly due to my opinion that LCDs may handle the higher usage better than plasma. I ended up buying two TVs, a 42″ and a 40″ and later returning the 42″ since the picture was a bit nicer on the 40″, and the UI a bit more elegant. (UI on these TVs are pretty sad, and that’s also the case with the other components, and I will cover that later).

The new TV is the Samsung LN40A750:

• 40-inch LCD screen
• Auto Motion Plus 120Hz™
• HD-grade 1920 (H) x 1080 (V) pixel resolution
• Built-in digital tuner (ATSC/Clear QAM)
• Picture-in-Picture
• 4 HDMI (3 rear/1 side), HDMI-CEC
• 2 Component video inputs (rear)
• Wiselink Pro® (USB 2.0)

The first thing we noticed after installing this TV was that the digital channels provided by Comcast looked good and the HD programming was awesome, but many other non-digital channels looked quite awful. In addition, almost anything coming off of the DVD player and the DirecTivo was really sad looking. It seems that anything of poor quality that the Samsung’s scaler has to scale to HD size, suffers even more. In contrast, the picture the AppleTV provided, whether it was doing a photo slide show, playing an iTunes purchased movie or a video podcast, looked beautiful.

In fact, the quality of video from the DVD player and the DirecTV Tivo was so bad that I was compelled to upgrade both. For a replacement disc player I went with a Samsung Blue-ray player, the BD-2550 (The BD-2550 seems to be the same as the BD-2500 except that it is only available from BestBuy). I chose Samsung in order to be able to use the TV’s remote to control the BD player, and vice versa. I did not realize this fully at the time of purchase, but the Samsung opens up a new option in on-demand playback, via NetFlix, which is a bg plus.

As for DVR, I had a harder time deciding whether to stay with DirecTV or to switch to Comcast. I was leaning towards Comcast, mainly due to the fact that Comcast’s standard definition programs looked sharp and bright, while DirecTV’s look overly compressed, and muted with motion artifacts and background shimmer. What made me stay with DirecTV, and upgrade this particular location to their HD DVR, was that DirecTV boasts more HD channels than Comcast. Plus the fact that we had DirecTV DVRs in three locations in the house already, and I wasn’t too keen on switching all those to Comcast compatible hardware.

I had been resisting upgrading to HD mainly for one reason: All DirecTV HD DVRs, up to and including the HR22 that I now have, are unfortunately not powered by Tivo. Therefore the UI that I know and love is not there, and instead there is a poor knock-off of the Tivo UI. I understand that Tivo has been tapped to power the next HD DVRs from DirecTV due out mid-next year, so I may get my Tivo UI back after all.

A couple of notes on the HD DVR: First, and again I did not realize this, but the HD DVR opens up yet another option for on-demand programming. Second, the HD DVR has an eSATA interface on the back that allows for the connection of an external hard drive. Unfortunately, any external drive, when attached and recognized by the HR22, is used as the main drive, and the internal drve is then ignored. In other words, you lose the storage capacity of the internal drive when you attach an external one. If, for example, you wanted to increase the HR22’s storage from the standard internal 500GB to 1.5TB, you actually have to hook it up to a 1.5TB drive and not just a 1TB drive. The fact that you don’t have to open the DVRs and void the warranty in order to increase storage is great, however, I don’t understand why they couldn’t utilize the storage capacity of both drives. Why DirecTV, why? (By the way, the AppleTV also has a USB connector on its rear panel. One would think it would be perfectly suited for hard disk additions via that USB port, but unfortunately, unless you want to hack the OS, that USB port is not hard disk friendly. Why Apple, why?)

To sum up the contents of our video cabinet, we now have:

• a new LCD TV
• an AppleTV
• a BD player
• a HD DVR

In addition to their “traditional” or “native” content, the AppleTV, the BD player, and the HD DVR all support different on-demand programming sources and material.

The AppleTV can get its material from your computer, whether it is music, photos or videos in different formats including SD and HD. It can also get videos from YouTube, although the quality is pretty limited. Another source is the iTunes store where you can get podcasts (of varying qualities), movie trailers, TV shows and movies. While there are occasional free TV shows and movies, there is typically a rental or purchase charge, plus an additional charge when you opt for the HD versions of the programs.

The BD player gets its on-demand programming from NetFlix. Most NetFlix subscription plans will allow the subscriber to access NetFlix’s Instant Queue, and to play those movies on the BD player. All you have to do is to fill up your Instant Queue by browsing NetFlix’s “Watch Instantly” category from your computer and selecting. Once you’ve done that, all the movies in your Instant Queue are accessible from the BD player. Upon the selection of a movie, the BD player seems to test the connection speed to the NetFlix server and pick the best quality for the connection speed and streams across the movie. This works pretty well, and makes the NetFlix subscription quite a bit more attractive than anything else. However, there are a few caveats:

1. Since the movies are being streamed, and not downloaded in their entirety, you may experience instances where you can not complete watching a movie, if your Internet connections suddenly gets too busy.
2. Again, due to streaming, the simple action of rewinding back a few seconds to catch a bit of missed dialog can turn into a minute or more of waiting.
3. There is no HD content available through the Instant Queue (although you can specify that NetFlix always try to mail you the Blue-ray version of a movie if there was a Blue-ray release, instead of the standard DVD).

The HD DVR also has access to on-demand programming. While much of the better, and HD, on-demand programming is Pay-Per-View, you still have access to hundreds of free programs, some even in HD. Unfortunately, the UI for selecting a show from the many hundreds is tedious, despite their attempt to break it all down into “channels” such as the Showtime channel, MTV channel or the Food Network channel. Once you select a movie to watch, you will have to wait a few minutes to tens of minutes or more for enough of the movie to download so that you can watch it uninterrupted. If you have a slow or unreliable Internet connection, this works better than the NetFlix option above, as you can start a download hours or days prior to watching the program, and not having any networking issues to worry about. And since the downloaded files behave like other recorded DVR content, rewinding or fast-forwarding works pretty well.

There is one new addition to the video center I have left out. An Ethernet switch. All of this on-demand functionality requires a connection to the Internet, for each of the devices. I suddenly had the need for four Ethernet connections in this cabinet, from not needing a single one before. I could have utilized wireless Ethernet, with WiFi USB adapters for all but the AppleTV (which has WiFi built-in), but I opted for a single Ethernet link to a 4-port switch inside the cabinet. Why four? The TV also has an Ethernet port, through which it can gather and then display weather information, news stories, and stock updates, or access a Windows PC for other source material. (Unlike the BD player which has already received and installed two firmware updates over the network, the TV can’t utilize the network for firmware updates, and I had to do the update manually using a USB memory dongle. They both, and the AppleTV, set their clocks by getting the time over the network.)

I am very happy with this setup. It provides us with a decent amount of programming, and there are days when all we watch are HD programs (all except for the Daily Show that is – Come on Comedy Central!). There are some minor issues which I will try to quickly go through.

DirecTV compresses its non-HD programming a bit too much (and, unfortunately, some of its HD programming). This ends up making pictures look very unnatural. Some channels seem to get compressed more than others, and this lower quality does nudge one to watch channels with less compression. I realize that their bandwidth is limited, but I would rather have fewer channels, with more pristine pictures.

One annoying issue with the TV is that switching video source can sometimes take 20 seconds. I am not sure why that is, it might be the HDMI handshake, and it is pretty annoying. This isn’t always the case, and it can be switching to any source that is delayed, not just a particular device. All the devices are attached using HDMI cables, and I have thought of trying to connect using component video cables to see if that makes a difference (I’d probably sacrifice auto-resolution detection if I did that). This sort of thing makes it harder to program a remote, like the Harmony, when the result of the command takes a variable amount of time to complete.

I am still not quite used to the TV’s audio. I am not sure whether this is because the speakers fire downward and the cabinet interferes, or whether I need a better speaker system, but I do find that for some TV shows, like Law & Order, the dialog is more enhanced and background noises are more muted. I am considering adding a sound bar type of product to provide better audio, aimed at the viewer, but again, this is not meant to be a “home theater” setup, and I really didn’t want to invest much more time or money into it.

UI Issues abound:

• PIP is one of my favorite technologies, yet it has to be done right. Samsung blew it with their implementation. Not only is the scope of PIP limited to Cable or Antenna, but there is also no “quick flip” button that can take the PIP and exchange it with the main picture. At the very least, there needs to be a button that allows you to switch the audio between the big picture and the PIP. And ideally you should be able to put any of the inputs, HDMI, or otherwise, into the PIP so you could monitor say news from the satellite DVR while you watch a disc. Samsung, can you please fix this in firmware and provide a free update? This actually is a big disappointment.
• Any disc or video playback device should support a 10-second quick rewind: how often do you miss a sentence of dialog and you want to jump back and re-listen? The BD player does not have this functionality, and it handles rewinding pretty poorly, both when it plays a disc and also when it plays back a streaming NetFlix. The DirecTV DVR has this functionality but it is not imlpemented as nicely as Tivo.
• Speaking of Tivo, I had gotten very used to their sound effects when navigating to and fro in a program. The audio FX became quite useful as confirmation that the remote control’s signal was received and having different audio tones made it even more useful. And I don’t understand why the DirecTV can’t provide the same program information that the Tivo does. Why not display the actors names, or even a rating (Metacritic, Rotten Tomato)?
• The BD Player needs to remember where a disc has been stopped and to restart replay at the same point. If we hit Stop instead of Pause, or we want to watch the rest of a movie another time, it then takes a while to queue the video back to the right point. This is very frustrating. Both the AppleTV and the DVR will give you the option of resuming play where previously left off.
• Why would any video player, disc or otherwise, need a play and a pause button? Can’t there just be one button that toggles between those states? I got three remotes that have both Play and Pause buttons. The simple Apple remote is the only one that combines the two.
• Anytime any device returns program information, it should allow a cross-reference to Metacritic or Rotten Tomato. If not, then maybe allow your customers to create ratings themselves – which always seems to be a good mechanism for customer retention. Why change providers when all your preferences are stored exclusively at the current provider, and you’re also quite used to and familiar with the taste of other users and heavily relay on them for decisions on what to watch? Looks to me that all but NetFlix seem to miss the community aspect of TV watching (keep your eyes on http://beta.intelevision.com)

Another expected feature would be auto-detection of input signals. If the TV is on a source that is not providing a signal, and another input goes live, then the TV should auto-switch the source to that input. The TV currently does not do that. Although, if you insert a disc in the BD Player, the TV will switch to the BD PLayer, which is expected given that the TV and the BD Player are supposed to be linked via HDMI-CEC (or as Samsung calls it, Anynet+). However, this last feature wreaks havoc with programmable remotes like the Harmony.

Funny thing. With hundreds of channels, lots of discs, four (don’t forget YouTube) or five (video podcasts) sources of on-demand programming, it’s harder than ever to find something to watch. It’s sometimes easier to just watch something random, rather than spending tens of minutes or even an hour, trying to choose.

I hope this review proves useful to some of you. If you have any questions, use the comments section and I will answer any as best as I can.

-mz

Science Tats

While some people’s tattoos salute their mother, their lover, a favorite artist or artwork, a lifestyle, their religion or …, scientists’ wear their science.

My favorites:

Mobius Strip - one of my favorite shapes growing up.

The Periodic Table - I wonder if he can look at his arms during exams?

Shouldering the Risks

Tuning In - I used to make these little radios when I was a kid!

Older Than Dragons

Quadratic Vertebrae - Exercise for the reader: Use this equation to find how much a spacecraft's mass increases as its velocity increases.

Hidden Biology - For the shy, here's an invisible option.

Galactic Bearings - Heres a map to find your way home, if you happen to get that lost.

That About Covers It - "The Tree of Life--carbon, glucose, light, DNA, and the golden rectangle"

See the whole lot at:  The Loom | Discover Magazine.

New technology to steady unsteady cameras?

Whoa! Ok, who implanted stabilization hardware into this rooster?