Recent Comments:
The editor-in-chief giveaway: Win Ryan Block's video games {Engadget}
Aug 24th 2008 11:17AM 2436th comment woohoo!
NuVo Renovia delivers whole-home audio over powerline {Engadget HD}
Aug 23rd 2008 12:04PM I think you really have to consider what you get with a Nuvo system. I looked at all the whole house audio systems on the market and nothing comes close to the nuvo, everything else is more expense and/or more complicated or simply so far below the nuvo, especially the grand concerto, that its not funny.
I picked up my nuvo system (GC) off of ebay for $3100 WITH 6 sets of speakers (new). Compare that to the other whole house audio systems. Installation was a breeze, and the expansion capabilities are decent. I have about $5800.00 tied up in my system now with the nuvo expander and I have 12 zones, 12 rooms plus two sets outdoors wired up with really decent background music. The six sources are AM/FM/XM, plus 4 different virtual MP3 servers (casatunes software running an m-audio card all in one PC), and a dedicated channel that allows me to monitor any of the television channels from two different PVRs (pace HD set top boxes).
Adding music is very easy. I am using windows media center which auto-rips my cds, and casatunes (www.casatools.com) as my control software, it completely supports the Nuvo system right out of the box. From any internet connected devices (two PCs, an iphone, and three macs at the house or from work or anywhere else) I can see my entire music library, dial up any track, album, playlist etc and send the audio to any one of 12 zones. (still have 4 spare zones).
On the video side I am using windows media center extenders (read xbox 360) which double as game machines. The output is pumped through an HDMI matrix and HDMI extenders (75 foot run) which allows each TV in the house to choose between two HD PVRs and two xbox 360s. All media is served by the same media center system. With the video side included I have about $7K in my system (not counting TVs).
Compare that to my neighbor across the street who has a crestron/kaleidoscope system which is restricted to standard definition and three audio sources. Yeah, he can control his curtains and the doorbell mutes his audio, but he has more than $70K in this system (12 zones, 16 rooms, three touchscreens,some home automation). Our systems were finished around the same time, when he saw ours he just about had a fit. Our keypads are more intuitive (Nuvo OLED), we have more options for music sources, the whole thing is easier to use and more flexible, and it sounds and looks better (HDMI 1080p vs component 1080i). His comment was.. I spent $60K more so my wife didn't have to twist a rod on the blinds, which just about sums it up.
getting back to the original post.
The hardest part of the entire installation was wiring it into the house and believe me, that can take days if you are doing it prior to the walls going up and a week or more if you are adding into an existing house. Being able to extend the system over powerline would be a HUGE timesaver and well worth it to anyone who is interested in adding whole house audio.
just sayin..
Pioneer Elite BDP-09FD Profile 2.0 Blu-ray player leaks out {Engadget}
Aug 23rd 2008 7:57AM 16 bit color is used to further refine the technology which removes money from your wallet.
While the h.264/AVC spec allows for 16 bit color the reality of production only allows 10 bit color in theory but in practicality we will be looking at 8 bit for quite some time. As of today, there are no 10 bit encoders (h.264 engines) for blu-ray mastering so all releases are 8 bit. Would a studio release a 10 bit version any time soon? Not likely since it may break many players out there, and nobody has anything to test the files with.
Just because the hdmi spec allows it doesn't make it a better solution. (or even worthwhile).
SoundSense unveils sophisticated Noise Cancellation System for audio purists {Engadget HD}
Aug 1st 2008 12:06PM I have a hard time believing that this works. I am an audiophile and I HATE external noise when I am listening to music but I have a hard time believing that this could work. because..
Sounds emanating from two different sources will behave differently (reflection, refraction) depending on where (both in distance and space) you are relative to the source. For instance just moving around a room will cause the sound to change.
The concept of noise canceling is simple, generate noise (sound waves) that are identical in amplitude and frequency but out of phase with the original sound and the two will cancel each other out.
But, if you have two waves and they wave start from different source points, then the fact that they are identical but out of phase will mean that they will only cancel each other out when coincidence allows them to have matching reflections/refractions. At any other point in time/space they are just going to act like separate sources of noise (think echo).
So.. the external sounds which bother you while listening to music, which are coming from multiple sources, cannot be canceled by a speaker and its point source emission of sound. The only place that this thing will cancel the sounds is probably right at the microphone input.
The reason that noise canceling headphones work as well as they do is because they replace the sound you would have heard (the ambient noise) right at the outside (or inside) of your ear canal, almost but not completely eliminating the external source.
Forbes tells the inside story of how the format war was won {Engadget HD}
Jul 29th 2008 4:51PM It all came down to Warner, and in Warner it really came down to one influential guy who just before Warner made its decision, accepted a job at Sony. Previous to this he was the clearest and loudest proponent for HD-DVD at Warner. His position.. CTO, Warner Films his name, Chris Cookson.
Chris leaving for Sony sent a clear message to the HD-DVD camp in warner.. game over, sony won.
See: http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6516798.html
and
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/01/warner-bros-goe.html
the announcements are three days apart.
Tata's Nano to begin production this Fall, eco-friendly version on the way? {Engadget}
Jul 3rd 2008 1:54PM The design for the eco friendly version is already up on instructables
http://www.instructables.com/id/Toddler-Flinstone-Car/
Dyson actually not looking to build electric car, just a wicked fast vacuum {Engadget}
Jun 28th 2008 10:43PM Honda first made motorcycles back in the 40s, then cars, then lawn equipment in the mid 70s. The first lawnmower didnt' sell in the US until 1978. Honda had already won its first F1 race back in 1965 so no, they did not start out in lawn equipment then cars, it was much the other way around.
Dyson actually not looking to build electric car, just a wicked fast vacuum {Engadget}
Jun 28th 2008 12:40PM Can we stop with the Dyson stories already. Their vacuums are nicely designed but they simply are not the greatest thing out there. I have three neighbors all of whom have switched to Miele vacs after owning Dysons, one of whom switched after only a week of owning the dyson. They do suck, but not in a great way :)
ZeeVee's ZvBox streams your PC to your HDTV over coax {Engadget HD}
Jun 23rd 2008 11:15AM
Since it is using QAM (encapsularting ATSC) the signal is (most likely) compressed using MPEG-2. It would be very interesting to see the quality of this and what it does to a PC screen. Too much compression and the edge artifacts are going to kill the picture quality. Also, not all MPEG encoders are created equal and even with the best ones, the settings used for encoding make a huge difference in potential quality. For isntance you would not use the same settings for sports as you would for news
Because it is MPEG-2 it is never going to rival the quality of Blu-Ray (h.264). Playing back your local media (Blu-ray drive on the PC) will cause some loss of quality, also what are they doing about frame rates, most PCs are going to want to put out 60hz progressive, the signal going down the wire will most likely not be 60p.
All in all though, this could be really exciting for a lot of people.
In case any of the zeevee folks are monitoring this thread..
MPEG 2 Quality: Are their settings for adjusting this? What is the bitrate, what GOP structure?
More than one: Can we modulate onto multiple QAM channels?
Sounds great, I would order one today if I can get some feel for the quality of encoding that it is doing.
MIT solar dish holds promise for low-cost energy production {Engadget}
Jun 20th 2008 9:36AM They are called Thermal Energy Storage solutions or TES. They are used primarily for cooling but conceptually it is similar. You use the off peak power (or free power such as solar) to create energy which is then stored in some container. In cooling systems you literally freeze a large block of typically water and some chemical and then use that block of ice during the day during peak hours to provide cooling. Work is just starting in heating systems but there are examples of this in commercial production as well. BMW had an option in its cars that stored the heat created from the engine in a container filled with I think a brine solution (called a heat battery or heat reservoir) so when you start the car the next day it can warm the interior instantly (or so the plan went)
