Technorati Tags: Reviews of the Day

DV Hardware is out with a review of the Spire Edge Laptop Sleeve here on their website. Here’s what they had to say about the sleeve:

“If you have a MacBook and are looking for some extra protection you should consider the Spire Edge. It’s a pretty simple but professional looking bag. It’s made from good materials, it should last for years and at $20 it won’t break the bank. “

Looking for a new keyboard? How about the Hiper Superslim Alloy Series keyboard as reviewed by the folks at Bit-Tech. Here’s a snippet:

“it wasn’t the size of the Superslim Alloy that first grabbed us, but the frankly gorgeous 2mm thick aluminium alloy plating used to cover the front side of the keyboard. It’s the same high grade alloy Hiper uses in its Osiris case and is not only perfectly moulded and cut, but also feels fantastic and is machined to a wonderfully smooth, finger friendly finish.”

Super Talent’s known for manufacturing a ton of flash drives. The folks at Bjorn3D.com have reviewed one 8GB model here on their website (and man it’s suppppperrrr small). Here’s what they had to say:

“The Super Talent Pcio 8 GB flash drive is small enough for us to hide anywhere on our persons, in our purses and wallets, or even put it on our key chains. The overall looks and design to it is very appealing.“

Hardware Secrets has a new review up of the Lian-Li PC-7F case here on their website. A snippet for your viewing pleasure:

“we think this is a terrific product for the average user. It is a high-quality all-aluminum mid-tower case quoted on the same price range of good steel cases. “

Thinking about a new solid state drive? Check out the G.Skill MLC Solid State Drive as reviewed y the folks at BenchmarkReviews.com:

“the G.Skill FM-25S2S-64GB SATA-II SSD has really impressed me with a rare combination of phenomenal performance and incredibly affordable pricing”

FutureLooks takes a look at the Future Sonics Atrio Series Professional Earphones here on their site. Their conclusion?

“If you’re looking for some very portable monitoring headphones, then the Future Sonics Atrios are hard to beat”

Finally, ThinkComputers puts the Lenovo ThinkPad X200 12.1 inch Tablet PC through its paces here on their website. A snippet follows:

“If I had to get a tablet notebook this is for sure the one I would I would choose, with all the features you really cannot go wrong.”

Technorati Tags: Review Roundup,

Icrontic.com has a review up of the Chill Pill speakers – come on.. you gotta love these speakers. With a name like that – how could you possibly go wrong right? In all seriousness – you have to love these speakers simply because of the size!! Here’s what they thought of the Chill Pill speakers:

“In sum, Small Dog’s Chill Pill speakers fit the bill: they’re small, self-powered, self-contained, portable speakers with surprisingly good sound. These perfect stocking stuffers for the traveling techie run about $40 and arrive with a one-year warranty.”

Looking for a solid state drive for your desktop PC? How about one that connects via a PCIe slot? That’s right TweakTown takes a look at the Fusion-io ioDrive – a PCIe expansion card that offers 80GB of solid state storage space. Here’s what they think of it.

“The Fusion-io ioDrive is the fastest storage solution available on the market today. When compared to other types of enterprise storage, the price becomes invisible. “

LegitReviews has a review of the MSI Radeon HD4830 Video Card here on their website. Here’s their verdict:

“MSI comes through again with a well designed graphics card to fill a hard fought spot in the battle for your gaming dollars. With an excellent showing in Call of Duty 4 and Crysis Warhead, the Radeon HD4830 from MSI is definitely worth taking a look at.”

I didn’t realize NZXT entered the mice market but apparently they did. Two sites are out with reviews of their first mouse – the NZXT Avatar Gaming Mouse. First up is Big Bruin’s review of the Gaming Mouse.Here’s their verdict:

“This may be NZXT’s first foray into gaming mice, but they have produced a solid initial offering. The Avatar seems to mix elements from other popular gaming mice with a bit of NZXT’s own innovation to create a recommendable product.”

The second review comes from ThinkComputers.org. Here’s what they think of the mouse:

“Overall the NZXT Avatar mouse is a pretty good mouse for NZXT’s first attempt at one. “

TweakNews has a review out for the Thermaltake Soprano Aluminum Keyboard. Here’s a snippet from their review:

“The Soprano is a great keyboard for general internet surfing, email and occasional document preparation. If a larger, classier version of a laptop keyboard sounds appealing to you, then it will be a welcome addition to your home office setup for years to come”

Hard drives running too hot? Check out Overclockers Online review of the Vizo Orbiter Hard Drive Cooler here on their website.  This funky looking cooler screws to the bottom of your internal hard drive and attempts to lower temps by improving the airflow around the drive. But does it work?

“All things considered, the Vizo Orbiter is a well-designed, useful, and effective hard drive cooler. It is quiet and works well but there are a couple of things that could be improved.”

Technorati Tags: Review Roundup

Hardware Secrets reviews the Logitech ClearChat PC Wireless Headset here on their website. Here’s a snippet from the article:

“The Logitech Clear Chat PC Wireless is a headset (microphone + headphone) that not only is cordless but also truly plug-and-play, being very easy to install and promptly use. It’s better for VoIP applications than gaming and listening to music..”

TechwareLabs has published a review of the Mio DigiWalker C520 Portable GPS device. (Just got a TomTom $99 GPS device myself – love it!). Here’s what they thought of the Mio C520:

“The Mio C520 is a very nice product that comes with an amazing amount of built in functionality and even more added functionality if you start thinking outside the cube.”

Thinking about getting a new heatsink for that LGA775 based Intel processor? Make sure to check out Frosytech’s billboard sized chart comparing 141 LGA775 heatsinks here. Crazy.

PCSTATS.com has a review of the Foxconn A7DA-S AMD 790GZ Motherboard here on their website. Here’s the conclusion of the review:

“Ultimately the Foxconn A7DA-S motherboard is designed well, but priced a little higher than we’d like to see it. “

ThinkComputers has a new case review up – this time of the NZXT Khaos Classic Series Full Tower Welded Aluminum case. Here’s an excerpt from the review:

“Overall Think Computers would like to award the NZXT Khaos Classic Series Full Tower Case a 9 out of 10 score and our Editors Choice Award.”

Looking to get into Wireless USB? Check out Everything USB’s review of the Cables Unlimited Wireless USB Adapter Kit. Here’s what they think of the kit:

“Teething pains, device incompatibilities, and slow performance with mass storage devices mar an otherwise significant new Certified Wireless USB product. We don’t doubt that in time, many operational glitches will be solved with a driver update or firmware patches. For now, we are left with a well-priced, underperforming product that may suit your needs – if your requirements are not that heavy and you don’t require isochronous or Mac support.”

TweakNews reviews the Icy Dock MB664UEA-1S USB/Firewire HDD Enclosure here on their website. Here’s a snippet:

“I have to say this is one of the best enclosures I’ve had the opportunity to review and what won me over is Icy Dock’s simple yet effective design. It actually took me longer to un-box everything than it did to install the hard drive, power it up, and begin copying files.””

Lost Circuits has published an extensive article about the Intel Core i7’s supply power here on their website.

Technorati Tags: Review Roundup, December 9th, 2008

BTW – if you have a new review that you’d like us to post up here at Krunker.com, please send it to news at krunker.com.

So without further ado, here goes nothing!

Hardware Secrets reviews the BFG MX-550 Power Supply Unit(above) and has this to say:

“The new MX series of power supplies from BFG features a modular cabling system, one 120-mm fan and one 80-mm fan that only kicks in when the temperature on the secondary heatsink is above 50º C. Let’s see if the 550 W model (MX-550 or BFGI550WMXPSU) is a good product.”

TechwareLabs reviews the NZXT TEMPEST Enthusiast Steel Mid-Tower case (right). Here’s their snippet:

“With a professional look that can fit anywhere, you’re sure to intimidate others with the very presence of this case”

TechwareLabs also has a review of the Altec Lansing SoundBar (above). Been looking for a soundbar myself for the bedroom. I wonder how these will do. Here’s a snippet:

“Looking for a set of computer speakers that are compact, but still loud enough to blow you away? Are you a audiophile that really wants to hear your music while at the office? Look no further. Today JasonD takes a look at the Altec Lansing SoundBar. Featuring XdB bass technology, the SoundBar is definitely something to check out”

ThinkComputers has a review of Xilence RAM Cooler HP Duo memory cooler. Here’s a snippet:

“The RAM Cooler HP Duo has a pair of copper heatpipes with lots of pretty copper fins, so besides providing extra cooling for those hot memory chips, you also get an excuse to add more shiny copper to the inside of your rig.”

OverclockersOnline has a review posted of the E-Power Thunder 650W 3 in 1 power supply. Here’s what they say:

“Topower manages to do an excellent job balancing price and performance. While there are cheaper power supplies available, and at the same time better performing power supplies available, Topower has managed to reach an equilibrium”

TrustedReviews has a review of the ASUS Maximus Extreme Mobo here on their website. Here’s their summary:

“You pay plenty for the Maximus Extreme, but that’s true of any X38 motherboard. We’re not convinced about the merits of three graphics slots but neither can we see any harm in the set-up that Asus has chosen and the cooling system and Fusion block are simply superb.”

The freaks at Test Freaks has a review of the HTC AT&T Fuze handset. Here’s what they think of it:

“The HTC Fuze is not a bad phone overall, it will take most users quite a bit to get accustomed to the new interface and the lack of buttons, the Fuze is meant to be navigated with the fingers primarily, and for those of us that like buttons and navigation pads, we’re out of luck”

Need a new pair of headphones for the holidays? Check out TechLounge’s review of the Sennheiser HD 595 headphones on their website.

“… the Sennheiser HD 595s are a great choice if you like listening to music alone at home. They won’t fly on a commute or in any public situation due to invading outside noise, and you might get in trouble for inadvertently broadcasting your music selections to those around you.”

Is your notebook running a tad bit hot? Check out TechPowerUp’s review of the Vizo mini Ninja II Notebook Cooler.. (I couldn’t help but laugh when I read the Ninja naming…). Here’s what they had to say:

“The mini Ninja II does the job quite well, just like the other versions from Vizo”

Digital Trends reviews the HTC Touch Diamond on their website here. Like many other earlier reviews, Digital Trends didn’t have high regards for the software. Here’s a snippet:

“..we have very few complaints about the outside of the Diamond Touch, and wish the software inside could live up to its promise.”

And finally, TweakNews has a review of a new HTPC case – the Antec Veris Fusion Remote Max Premium HTPC case that is (that’s a long name!). Here’s what they thought of the case:

“If you’re in the market for an HTPC chassis, and don’t want to spend a small fortune for it, I can easily recommend the Antec Fusion Remote Max. The combination of quality, functionality, quiet cooling performance and value is going to be difficult to beat. I like the Max a lot, and I think you will too.”

Technorati Tags: Review roundup, HTC Touch Diamond, HTC Fuze, Antec HTPC case, Sennheiser headphones, ASUS motherboard, power supply, altec lansing soundbar

From afar, it’s easy to mistake the Sony VAIO VGN-NR385E/W as a possible Apple MacBook. After all, this system shares many of the same qualities as a MacBook – smooth white color, rounded corners, and a solid construction. Of course, once you get closer (and you see the VAIO logo emblazoned across the top), you’ll quickly realize that this is indeed a Sony VAIO system. The Sony NR series is Sony’s value oriented notebook series which aims to deliver a balance between performance, style, and value.

On the performance front, this notebook delivers an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a bright 15.4 inch widescreen display, and a large capacity 200GB internal hard drive. For style.. well the mere fact that it looks somewhat like a MacBook says it all right? And for value, the VGN-NR385E/W is fairly inexpensive – with many places selling this system for as low as $600 dollars after rebates or instant savings. Join me as I take a look at the Sony VAIO VGN-NR385E/W.

Specifications

The system being reviewed today comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo T5550 processor clocked in at 1.83GHz, 2GB of RAM, a 15.4 inch XBRITE-ECO LCD, a 200GB SATA Hard Drive, and a built-in DVD/CD burner with dual layer support. For network connectivity, the system has 802.11 a/b/g support, and 10/100 Ethernet. Powering the 1280 x 800 display is a feeble Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 which utilizes shared memory. Other niceties include 4 USB 2.0 ports, 1 FireWire port, 1 ExpressCard/34 slot, and a Memory Stick and SD card slot. For input, there’s a full sized 86 key keyboard with a 2.5 mm stroke and 19.05 putch, and a two button touchpad.

Finally, the system measures 14.2 x 10.6 x 1.5 inches and weighs 6.2 lbs – not exactly an ultra-portable notebook system. There’s a rechargeable Lithium Ion battery and the system comes with Windows Vista Home Premium installed.

Packaging

Here are shots of the VAIO VGN-NR385E/W packaging:

Opening up the box..

Let’s open up the box shall we?

Here are the items inside the box:

On the outside..

The following are pictures of the outside of the notebook – starting with the top of the VGN-NR385E. Note – though the chassis surface looks smooth, it really isn’t. The surface has a grid-like finish to it which adds a certain texture and grip to the entire notebook

The bottom of the notebook:

The left side of the notebook provides access to the built-in DVD burner and two USB 2.0 ports.

The right side has an ExpressCard/34 slot, two more USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire port, a headphone and microphone jack, and a VGA port.

The back of the notebook has an AC port, an Ethernet jack, and a Modem jack.

The front of the notebook has two media card slots – one for SD cards and one for Memory Stick PRO cards. There are indicator light for battery power, battery power, and hard drive activity. Finally, there’s a Wi-Fi switch.

Here’s what the notebook looks like once opened:

A closeup shot of the keyboard:

Above the keyboard are two shortcut keys – a programmable S1 shortcut key and an AV mode key which brings up a multimedia toolbar with shortcuts to Media Player, Photo Gallery, and the web.

As mentioned in the specifications, the ]VGN-NR385E/W weighs in at 6.2 lbs which isn’t exactly light – especially if you’re constantly carrying this on your shoulder.

Build quality

The unit is well constructed and should handle the rigors of everyday mobile usage. The display is held in place thanks to two hinges on either side of the notebook. The hinges are a little tighter than I would like since it requires two hands to lift up the display – but it’s probably better tight than not.

Display

The VAIO VGN-NR385E/W comes with a 15.4 inch XBRITE-ECO widescreen LCD display and yes.. the display is indeed bright. Characters are sharp, colors are vibrant, pictures are clear, and movies are a joy to view on this display – at least when you’re viewing it head on. Unfortunately, both the vertical and horizontal viewing angles are limited at best with the horizontal angles better than the vertical. Colors and brightness fall off when you move off-center from the display.

Keyboard and Trackpad

The VAIO VGN-NR385E/W comes with a full-sized 86 key keyboard and two special function keys on the upper right hand corner. I must admit that it took me some time to get used to the keyboard on this notebook. It’s certainly not a ThinkPad keyboard – but then again, few system keyboards can actually compare to a ThinkPad keyboard. If you’re not a fan of somewhat mushy keyboards with short key travel depths, then you might not be a fan of this keyboard.

The built-in track-pad has a large surface area which is always a plus in my book. The mouse buttons are well positioned below the track-pad and the buttons themselves offer responsive tactile feedback.

Interfaces and Connectivity

The system comes with a good array of interfaces – ranging from four USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, a microphone and headphone jack, and a VGA port. The built-in ExpressCard/34 slot gives you the ability to expand system capabilities.

Networking wise, there’s a built-in 10/100 Ethernet jack, as well as 802.11 a/b/g wireless connectivity. I had little trouble connecting to my Linksys Wi-Fi 802.11g router. If there’s one glaring omission, it would be the lack of a Bluetooth stack.

Storage

The VGN-NR385E/W boasts a capacious 200GB Serial ATA Hard Drive which should be ample storage for most users out there. If you feel the need to burn, you’ll love the built-in dual layer DVD/CD burner with support for a variety of DVD/CD formats including DVD+/-R DL, DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW, DVD-RAM, CD-R/RW, DVD-ROM, and CD-ROM.

Software

Sony typically pre-installs a large number of applications on VAIO systems, and unfortunately the VGN-NR385E/W is no different. There are at least eight different VAIO applications installed on the notebook – most of which quite honestly, I’ll never use but who knows – maybe you will. Sony also bundles a ton of other third party applications with the notebook.. or as I like to call it – crap-ware. I’m sorry but I just can’t stand all the crap-ware that gets installed on notebook/desktop systems these days. Here’s a list of the applications that I removed from the notebook:

• InstallAware Assistant for Office 2007
• Adobe Acrobat
• AOL Toolbar 4.0
• Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo
• Crackle ScreenSaver
• Norton 360 trial
• Office 2007 Home/Student Trial
• QuickBooks Simple Start
• Microsoft Works
• Sony LocationFree Player
• Napster
• Roxio Easy Media Center
• Spy Sweeper
• VAIO Survey
• VAIO MusicBox

Heck.. here’s a snapshot of my uninstall window under Vista:

Just give me a notebook with an OS and necessary drivers and I’ll be perfectly happy.

Performance

Let’s be real here – the Sony VAIO VGN-NR385E/W won’t blow anyone out of the water when it comes to speed. After all, it only has a 1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo.. which is plenty powerful enough for most everyday application. The goal of the Sony VAIO NR series is to try and strike a balance between features, style, and value – which classifies this system as a budget oriented notebook.

With that said, this sub $1000 (really sub $800) notebook is still a very decent performing system. Now for those of you who really must have benchmarking numbers, I quickly ran PC Mark 2005 and 3D Mark 2006. On PC Marks 2005, the VGN-NR385E/W scores a 3677 while on 3D Marks 2006, the system scored a measly 547 (yikes!).  The 3677 PC Marks score is comparable to other systems with comparable processing capabilities. The 547 3D Mark is certainly nothing to write home about so don’t expect to be gaming with this system – at least not high end 3D gaming that is.

One thing I do want to stress is – benchmarks only tell a part of the overall story. Ultimately, the true value of a computer system is in how useful the system is to you and how productive you are with the system. If it meets your intended needs and helps you be more productive, then it’s a good system for you. Faster systems doesn’t necessarily translate to better productivity – unless your productivity is gated by the system performance.

With that said, the VGN-NR385E/W meets my needs perfectly. This system is a great notebook – offering just enough performance for everyday needs such as reading/writing email, working with Office documents, surfing the web, listening to music, watching a DVD or HD video, writing blog postings, or performing straightforward multimedia operations. If you’re looking for a gaming platform, then look elsewhere (might we interest you in say an Alienware system or a VoodooPC box?). However, if you’re on a tight budget, then definitely give this system a look over.

Finally, on the battery front, the VGN-NR385E/W was an OK performer. I was able to get around 2.5 to 3 hours of usage off of the battery when I was strictly surfing the web and blogging on the notebook – not great but not bad.

Summary

The Sony VAIO VGN-NR385E/W successfully strikes a delicate balance between style, performance, and value. The system comes with a wealth of performance minded features such as an Intel Core 2 duo processor, 2GB of RAM, a bright 15.4 inch display, and 200GB of storage space. It also has a sexy white chassis design which will certainly draw some looks in the crowd.  Of course, there are some things we’d love to see Sony fix – such as the keyboard, weight, and discrete graphics – but these are minor issues when you look at the overall package. With average selling prices for the VGN-NR285E/W ranging from $650 dollars to $800 dollars, you’ll quickly realize how tremendous a value the system really is.

Pros:

• 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• Lots of storage space
• Large bright display
• Sexy design
• Inexpensive

Cons:

• Somewhat mushy keyboard
• Integrated graphics

Technorati Tags: Sony VGN-NR385E/W, Review

It’s actually funny that I even considered this route. I felt like I was tracing back to my earlier roots with this project. When I first got into constructing Home Theater PC (HTPC) systems years ago, I toyed with several Shuttle XPC based small form factor systems. In the end, I opted for a larger box since it looked so darn sexy in my home theater rack and had plenty of room for expansion. After a few years with a large box, I was finally ready to go small again. The question was – how small did I want to get?

Now, I could have gone the Shuttle route again (and I still might – more on that later) or I could have purchased something like the HP Pavilion Slimline PC. Ultimately, I chose the Apple Mac mini primarily because I had one handy and I wanted to see what it was like transforming it into a Vista based Media Center HTPC. Would it work well under Vista? Would I be able to do all the things I envisioned?  Hopefully I’ll be able to answer these questions and then some in this writeup. The purpose of this writeup is to cover all the steps that I took to build my Apple Mac mini home theater system utilizing Windows Vista and the Windows Media Center application. Is it my final setup? Probably not but it proves it indeed is a viable, solid, and reliable solution.

Finally, I apologize ahead of time if some of you think I might have “bastardized” the Mac mini by installing Vista. I also want to give credit where credit is due – primarily to two blog postings I read before starting this prokect – one over at markwilson.it and one over at Mauricio Freitas’s website here. Let’s get started shall we?

A look at the Mac mini

Before getting started, I figured I’d show the Mac mini that I was going to modify (just in case some of you may have NEVER seen a Mac mini before.. My goodness where have you been? I kid..)

I purchased the low end Mac mini ($599 model) back when Leopard first came out and the specs included:

• Intel 1.83 GHz Core 2 Duo processor
• 1GB of RAM
• 80GB RAM
• Intel Graphics
• Slot-drive DVD-ROM
• Ethernet
• Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth
• Analog and digital audio

Here’s a look at the front of the Mac mini

Here’s the back of the Mac mini:

One nice thing about the Mac mini is the inclusion of a DVI port. This means you can use a DVI to HDMI cable to connect the box directly to an HDTV (or A/V receiver with HDMI inputs).

The Mac mini also comes with a remote control designed to control Apple’s Front Row application (exactly the same as the one for Apple TV). Since I would be using Media Center, I really could care less about the remote.. but it’s worth noting there is one handy.

So what was next?

Upgrade the memory!

1GB might be fine for OS X (and for the most part it is) but it’s certainly not enough for Windows Vista unfortunately. Yes, I could have gone with Windows XP but in my opinion, Media Center under Vista is a far more appealing experience than XP (though not by much!).

Taking apart the Mac mini chassis is a bit of a challenge since there are no screws to remove. There are at least two ways to remove the top of the case – I opted to use a thin ruler to help pry the case off (though this method could have damaged my case also – luckily I suffered no damage at all). Unfortunately, removing the case is only a part of the procedure. You need to unscrew several screws on the inside and then carefully remove the drive mount. (Beware of some wires too!) You can read more about the procedure I followed here at AppleFritter.com.

For the 1GB Mac mini, Apple installs two 512MB SO-DIMMs – a real pain because this means I need to purchase two 1GB SO-DIMMs to reach 2GB of system memory. (Anyone want to buy my two 512MB SO-DIMMs ?)

While I had the chassis open, I could have upgraded the hard drive also but since I was planning to record all television content on an external hard drive, the internal 80GB drive would suffice (in reality it was going to be way less than that – but more on that shortly).

So with the memory upgraded, I put everything back together except for the case and booted up OS X. This allows me to perform a sanity check on the system and make sure I didn’t screw up anything during the installation of the memory (also to verify that the system registers 2GB of memory).

Time to enroll Boot Camp

If you’re familiar with OS X, there’s no need to read this section. This is for all you Windows users out there who have no inkling how to get around OS X.

In order to dual boot OS X and Windows Vista, you need to use Apple’s Boot Camp software application. Boot Camp is found within the Utilities folder in the Applications folder.

Click the Utilities folder and here’s the Boot Camp executable:

Boot Camp utilizes an easy wizard driven interface. Once the application starts up, you’ll see the following:

You have the option of printing the installation and setup guide at this point. If you have important data on your drive, you might want to perform a backup at this point.

Next, Boot Camp asks how you want to partition the internal hard drive. The application is capable of dynamically resizing the existing OS X partition (here we resized the OS X partition from the original full partition down to 37GB).

The application initially provided 5GB of space for Windows – I opted for the “Divide Equally” option since I wanted Windows to have more breathing room.

Once I was happy with the sizes, I clicked on the “Partition” button and watched Boot Camp go about its business.

When the re-partitioning finished, I inserted the Windows Vista installation DVD and began the OS installation.

At this point, Windows Vista’s installation program takes over and took approximately 25 to 30 minutes to install on the Mac mini.

I have to admit that Boot Camp was extremely easy to use. If only every Windows software application was this easy!! (yes.. then why am I moving to Vista and Media Center right? Media Center is an anomaly if you ask me)

Vista installed but we need more drivers…

With Windows Vista successfully installed, I moved onto the next step which was to complete device driver installation. The default Vista install doesn’t have all the drivers necessary to cover all of the Apple Mac mini hardware thus you’ll need to insert the original OS X disc into the slot drive and install the bundled Vista drivers from Apple. After a quick reboot, I applied all of the latest Vista updates – some of which are driver updates.

Once Vista was fully updated, everything worked like a charm. Thanks to Boot Camp, I was able to install Vista and by default boot into Vista all the time. If you want to boot back into OS X, you have two ways of doing so. One way is through the Boot Camp Control Panel application which resides in the Vista system tray.

The other way to boot into OS X to hold down the “Alt” button during the system. You’ll be shown two hard drive icons – one for OS X and one for Windows Vista – just select the drive partition you want to boot.

Additional hardware..

Now that the Mac mini itself was all set, I needed some additional hardware to really make the system truly useful. There were two key areas that I needed to address – storage space and TV tuners.

For additional storage space, I added several different external hard drives. I had two spare USB based external hard drives – a 500 GB MyBook hard drive and a 320 GB FreeAgent hard drive. Here’s a shot of the two USB drives next to the Mac mini.

The primary purpose for these two USB external hard drives was to store multimedia content ranging from digital music to digital images to movies.

I also added a third external hard drive for the sole purpose of storing recorded television content. For the third drive, I opted to get the NewerTech miniStack V2 external enclosure which utilizes the older PATA interfaces (the V3 supports SATA). I had a spare 500GB IDE drive lying around which made the miniStack V2 the perfect fit for the drive. I’ll perform a full writeup later on. Here are pictures of the drive enclosure and setting up the drive.

The drive is also designed to match the Mac mini – allowing you to stack the Mac mini on top of the hard drive as pictured here. The V2 has a couple of ways of interfacing with the Mac mini. I opted to connect the miniStack V2 to the Mac mini via a Firewire connection.

With storage taken care of, I needed to install some sort of TV tuner to the Mac mini. I was particularly interested in recording HDTV content but due to the limited expandability of the Mac mini, I could only opt for external tuners. At first, I thought I would have to use an external USB HDTV tuner but then I discovered the Silicon Dust HDHomeRun.

The HDHomeRun is best described as a networked digital tuner box (actually it has dual digital tuners). What’s great about the HDHomeRun is the flexibility it brings to my setup. I can place the HDHomeRun anywhere near a video source and a network connection and then stream the captured video over the network to my Mac mini. This allows me to separate the tuners from the PC – great if I want to place the Mac mini somewhere far from a good HD source. My plan was to use the HDHomeRun’s Clear QAM decoding support to get HD content to the Mac mini. Thus, I placed the HDHomeRun near my cable box which luckily was near one of my network switches. The HDHomeRun also supports Over-The-Air (OTA) signals but I stuck with unencrypted QAM since I had several channels available from this method.

The next step was to install the necessary software drivers and the HDHomeRun application. Getting QAM decoded channels to work within Media Center is a bit of a chore but if you follow these Silicon Dust instructions, you’ll be just fine. I had some trouble with the current drivers from Silicon Dust but once I switched to the older December drivers, everything was fine. Although the HDHomeRun lacks analog tuners, I didn’t particularly care since all I wanted was high def content. Stay tuned for a more thorough review of the unit at a later date here on Krunker.

Setting up Media Center

Now that all of my hardware was setup, it was time to set up Windows Media Center. I won’t go into the full details of Media Center setup since it’s pretty much self explanatory and I’ve talked about in the past here and here. I do want to mention a couple of tidbits.

1. Since I had a dedicated hard drive for TV recordings (the NewerTech miniStack V2), I needed to tell Media Center to record all television shows to that drive. This is done within the Tasks section.

2. If you’re using Clear QAM support within the HDHomeRun, make sure to follow these directions on the Silicon Dust website. Media Center does not support QAM so you’ll need to “fool” Media Center into thinking that you’re tuned into a regular cable channel lineup. This is perhaps the most cumbersome part of the Media Center setup. Luckily this is the only hard part of the entire setup.

On a different note, I decided to try out a Media Center application/plug-in called “My Movies” and folks – it’s a really cool product. “My Movies” provides a way to catalog your movies and show your entire collection along with meta information within the Media Center interface.

As a result of this application, I decided to back up my DVDs onto one of the external USB hard drives. I backed up only the main movie and storedit in MPEG2 format. The basic strategy was as follows:

1. Rip the main movie into a single VOB file

2. Turn the VOB file into MPEG2 or DVR-MS file format. DVR-MS is advantageous since it allows you to fast forward and rewind within the Media Center UI.

To make this possible, I used AnyDVD in conjunction with Clone DVD to back up DVDs, and then used VideoReDo to convert the VOB files into MPEG2 or DVR-MS files.

If you don’t need the My Movies capabilities but like the ability to show movie posters, you can enable the DVD library feature within Vista’s Media Center application (which is disabled by default for some reason). Follow these instructions from Microsoft to enable DVD library. You’ll then need to add the movie poster images (which you can usually find on Amazon.com) as JPEG files within each movie folder (call the JPEG file – “folder.jpg”).

Now onto other thoughts. All of my digital media content is stored on those external USB drives. In case you didn’t already know this, Media Center relies on and works in conjunction with Windows Media Player – which means settings and libraries within Media Player are inherited by Media Center (since Media Center leverages Media Player technology).

Thus, I set up my music and picture libraries within Media Player which automatically meant Media Center had access to all of my content. You could do all of this within Media Center also – I was just used to working with Media Player configuration.

I also set up Media Player/Media to “watch” my media folders in case I added additional content later on (such as new music or photos). Watching these folders meant the libraries would automatically get updated whenever I added new content.

The HTPC’s all setup.. so now what?

Getting everything to this point took the better part of half a day since it takes a while for Media Player/Media Center to build its libraries – especially if you have a large collection of digital content (let’s just say I have thousands and thousands of files to peruse through).

The original purpose of having a Media Center based HTPC was to be able to access all of my digital content from my home theater system. This meant having a PC directly connected to either my A/V receiver or via the HDTV. However, I developed a steady pattern over the last few years of using my HTPC which made me rethink my deployment strategy. I really only do the following with my system:

1. Watch recorded television shows or live TV

2. Listen to music

3. Watch an occasional movie

Since I didn’t have a large collection of MPEG4, DivX, or XviD movies, I really didn’t need an HTPC in my living room. All I really needed was a Media Center Extender device and luckily I had one in the form of the Xbox 360.

The beauty of using the Xbox 360 as the Media Center Extender was as follows:

1. There’s no need to worry about how to connect the HTPC to my home theater system. No worries about using DVI or HDMI cables or dealing with audio connections.

2. There’s no worry about how to deal with properly setting the overscan settings of the graphics adapter

3. I could hide the HTPC in a different part of the house thereby keeping my home theater setup simple.

Of course this negated one of my original reasons for using the Mac mini as a Vista based MCE box which was to show off the small form factor of the system in the living room.

Using a Media Center Extender does have it’s tradeoffs of course. First, you can’t stream DVD disks from the Media Center system to the Extender device. Second, you have limited codec support. The Xbox 360 supports WMV, MPEG1 and MPEG2 which is why I opted to backup all of my DVD movies into MPEG2/DVR-MS files. Again – DVR-MS allows me to fast forward and rewind through a video.

If you have an extensive XviD collection, then you might be better off checking out the Linksys Media Center Extender device which supposedly supports XviD decoding.

Now back to the Xbox 360 Media Center Extender

If you’re not familiar with the Xbox 360 Media Center Extender, never fear – it’s extremely easy to use. Turn on your Xbox 360 and then go to the “Media” blade within the 360 Dashboard. There’s an option for Media Center.

Once you select Media Center, the 360 will provide a setup key that you’ll need to enter in your Media Center application.

At this point, I went to my Mac mini MCE box and noticed that the system detected an Xbox 360 Media Center Extender.

I plugged in the key information and watched Media Center do it’s thing.

After a few minutes of setting things up, Media Center and Media Center Extender was ready to go.

Now every time I fire up the Xbox 360’s Media Center option, the console automatically connects to my Mac mini and presents the familiar Windows Media Center UI. I have access to nearly all of my content (music, photos, recorded TV, and WMV/MPEG2 movies/videos) – as long as it’s in a format compatible with the 360’s Media Center Extender.

Is this the ideal scenario? of course not but it suffices for my everyday needs. The truly ideal scenario would be a system which could handle whatever audio/video codec I threw at it. However, since I really didn’t have a wide variety of file formats, I was perfectly happy with support for MPEG2, WMV, and MP3.

Thoughts and impressions

I’ll keep my thoughts and impressions focused on what it was like to use the Mac mini as a Media Center box. I’ve written enough about Media Center in other postings here (just search for that if you want to read my prior postings).

Right off the bat, let me just say that Apple makes it so incredibly easy to install Windows on a Mac system via Boot Camp. Seriously folks.. it’s super easy and on top of that, they provide all the necessary software to get your hardware working under Windows. Well done Apple.

Having said that, is the Mac mini powerful enough to run Vista and Media Center? Definitely. The 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo is certainly beefy enough to handle a Media Center Extender connection, recording two HDTV streams from the HDHomeRun as well as streaming a recorded HD stream back to the Media Center Extender. If you’re familiar with the Mac mini, then you’ll also realize how incredibly silent this system is. Seriously people – you hardly hear the system when it’s on. In fact, I often I hear the whir of the external hard drives more than I notice anything from the Mac mini. The keys to the silent operation of the Mac mini lie in the cool running Core 2 Duo processor and the external power supply. This translates to a quiet and cool running system. Very nice!

Other pros about the Mac mini – it’s just a beautiful system to behold folks. If you did want to have a small form factor box in the living room, there’s nothing like placing the Mac mini next to your receiver or HDTV. If you like Apple TV, then think of the Mac mini is a larger brother. Simple as that. Other notable features – it’s great to have the slot drive but be warned – there’s no external eject button. You can eject DVDs via Windows Explorer or via the Media Center user interface. Of course since I’m using the Xbox 360’s Media Center Extender to connect to the Mac mini, there’s no point in worrying about the eject button since I can’t stream DVDs anyhow.

Now of course there are some cons to using the Mac mini – notably the limited expansion capabilities of the mini. If you want to add storage space to the mini, you’ll need to connect hard drives either via USB or Firewire. You could also pry open the case and swap out the drive but man.. what a pain in the rear end that is! Oh yes.. speaking of prying open the case – you’ll need to do this if you want to upgrade the memory unless of course you opted to get 2GB of memory from the get go (you just might want to do so). TV tuners? You can either go the USB TV tuner route or install the HDHomeRun.

If you’re planning to directly connect the Mac mini to your HDTV set or A/V receiver, then be aware that the Mac mini will struggle at times to play back HD video while performing other tasks simultaneously.

Now looking past the pros and cons, how does the Mac mini hold up as a Media Center box? Very nicely indeed! I’ve been running the Mac mini as a MCE box for the last three plus weeks and it’s performed flawlessly. The system is more than powerful enough to handle Windows Vista and Windows Media Center. It easily handles Media Center Extender connections from the Xbox 360. It also served double duty as a file server for my home network. All in all, I was very impressed with using the Mac mini as a Windows Vista MCE box.

Now before I head into the summary, I must say that I’m thinking about reclaiming my Mac mini as a Mac system. Why you might ask? It’s simple – I want to work with OS X for some software development projects. Now since I still need Media Center running most of the time, I will most likely end up creating a new Media Center system – probably out of a Shuttle small form factor system. This takes nothing away from the fact that the Mac mini is more than capable in becoming an HTPC system utilizing Windows Vista.

Update – April 24th, 10:48 AM:

I thought I’d add a couple of other tidbits this morning (realizing that I missed a couple of points).

If you’re not using the Apple remote – what remote are you using?

Easy one there – I’m using the Media Center remote that you can purchase separately (which again I had a spare lying about). It’s a wonderful remote in my opinion. In the living room, I actually navigate the Media Center Extender using a Logitech Harmony 890 remote programmed with all the Media Center buttons.

One thought which I never did try out – I’m not sure if the built-in IR receiver on the Mac mini will work with the Media Center remote. I’ll have to check that out later.

Yes.. three external drives is a bit much..

Ideally, I’d like to have everything on a single NAS on the network but I’ve yet to build that out. One such NAS I’ve been contemplating is the HP MediaSmart EX470 Windows Home Server. It’s received very nice reviews and I’m definitely a fan of Windows Home Server (even with the small corruption bug) having used it during the beta cycle. If the ideal world, I would have all of my static digital content stored on the Home Server and then have a single external hard drive for recording television shows.

It’s all nice and dandy but what about the cost?

Yeah.. it’s not a cheap solution by any means. Luckily I had some spare USB external hard drives lying about (don’t ask why I did.. I just did) but if it wasn’t for that, then costs would start soaring to the point where it might make more sense to get a pre-made system from say HP. In any event, let’s quickly run down component costs:

• Apple Mac mini – $599.00
• Apple wireless keyboard – $79.00
• Apple wireless mighty mouse – $69.00
• Newertech miniStack V2 – $79.99 (for the kit)
• Silicon Dust HDHomeRun (newegg.com) – $179.99
• 2GB of RAM – $40 dollars

Total: $1046.98

Now keep in mind, I made no mention of the cost of the three hard drives which I had lying around. However, two 500GB drives and one 320GB drive will add on about 400+ dollars to that bill. Finally, there’s also the cost of Windows Vista. Luckily I have an MSDN account but otherwise you’d need to tack on the cost of Vista also. There is one thought though. All of the add-on I’ve made here have nothing to do with Windows Vista or Media Center itself (except for the cost of the OS). If I were to run a home theater system on OS X, I’d probably end up getting similar parts (or one super large hard drive) which would still drive the system costs up. You’re paying for the fact that the Mac mini is ultimately a very compact system and limited in what it can provide internally.

Where do I go from here?

As I mentioned earlier, I’m probably going to reclaim the Mac mini as a standalone OS X box. I’d like to do some iPhone development AND I’d like to use some of the awesome built-in apps on OSX for some movie/DVD work.

This means that I’m actually in the process of putting together my final Windows Media Center box shortly. This one is centered around the Shuttle KPC system and a new Intel Core 2 3.0GHz processor – DEFINITELY enough horsepower for my needs! Stay tuned for that writeup in several weeks time.

Finally, I’ll probably eventually get the EX470 and set up all of my content on that box. Again – once I have that up and running, expect a full review on it too.

Summary

In this article, I’ve gone over the high level elements that I’ve undertaken to transform a Apple Mac mini into a Windows Vista Media Center system. At the end of the day, the Mac mini makes a solid and capable Media Center box. It’s even better when you use the system in conjunction with Media Center Extender systems since the Extenders can deal with the actual video processing and rendering. There are of course some limitations with the Mac mini – mostly in the areas of storage and expandability. Storage expansion can be solved via external hard drives or via a network attached storage device such as Windows Home Server (and I’ll delve into that in the near future). Additional capabilities can be added to the Mac mini via USB connections although it does destroy the simplistic look of the overall system a bit.

Overall, you can’t go wrong with using the Mac mini as a base system for a Windows Vista Media Center system. There are of course other HTPC interfaces out there – all of which would work just fine on the Mac mini also. At $599, the base Mac mini is not just a compelling Mac OS X box, it’s also a compelling Windows box.

Sorry for such a long article!!

Technorati Tags: Apple Mac mini, Windows Vista, Windows Media Center, Xbox 360 Media Center Extender, Converting Apple Mac mini to Windows Media Center

Do you find yourself running out of HDMI inputs on your receiver or HDTV? If you’re like me, then the answer to that question is probably a resounding yes. The coming of HDMI greatly simplified home theater systems by combining the video and audio (and control) signals into a single cable. However, this simplicity also brings a problem to consumers. As more and more devices embrace HDMI, we’re running into a problem of a limited number of HDMI inputs on receivers and HDTV sets. You could get around this by buying a high end A/V receiver with four HDMI inputs but these receivers are typically rather expensive. Could we solve this by connecting to an HDTV? Problematic there also as many HDTV’s only have one or two or at most three inputs. What do you do then when you have an HDMI enabled cable box, PS3, and Xbox 360 and you only have two HDMI inputs to work with? You add an HDMI switch into the picture of course. That’s pretty much the problem I faced earlier this year when I finally caved and purchased a Sony PlayStation 3. I desperately needed more HDMI switches. Thus, today I’ll be looking at one such switch commonly found at local Best Buy stores. It’s called the Psyclone PSC47 and it’s one of the more expensive switches out on the market (at $199.99). Let’s see if the PSC47 is worth the money!

Features and Specs..

Features of the Psyclone PSC47 include the following:

• Four 1.3 HDMI inputs and one output
• Four digital optical audio inputs and one digital optical audio output
• Customizable LCD display for individualized input titles
• Standard component sized steel chassis with brushed aluminum front panel
• Gold plated HDMI connections
• Measures 411 mm x 242 mm x 50 mm
• Small remote control

The PSC47 is a unique HDMI switch in that it comes with four optical audio inputs (TOSlink). This is especially useful if you have an older receiver that doesn’t have any HDMI inputs but does have optical audio inputs. If your HDMI enabled device has an optical audio output, you can possibly connect both connectors (HDMI and optical audio out) to the PSC47 and then route the HDMI signal from the PSC47 to your HDTV while routing the optical audio output to your receiver. NOTE – The PSC47 will not separate the audio from the HDMI signal to the optical output. This means you do need to connect an optical audio connection from your original device to the PSC47 and then connect the optical audio out to your receiver. It’s also important to note that some devices will not deliver signals on both HDMI and optical audio simultaneously. Please check your device manuals for additional information.

For this review, I didn’t get a chance to test the optical audio switch portion of the PSC47 since I strictly used HDMI for routing audio and video in my home theater setup.

Physical Overview

First, let’s take a look at the packaging of the Psyclone HDMI Selector. Here’s the front of the box:

Here’s the back of the box:

Taking a peek inside.. nice nice..

Here’s a look at the packaging on the inside.

I wasn’t initially sure if the PSC47 came with an HDMI cable or not since the outside packaging didn’t indicate anything one way or another. However, once I pulled the switch out of the box, it was nice to see that Psyclone did indeed package a single HDMI cable (though a few more would have been nice too!).

Other included accessories include the power cord, remote control, and small instruction booklet.

Here’s a look at the front of the PSC47:

From left to right, you have:

• On/Off button
• IR Remote Sensor
• LCD display
• Joystick which allows you to edit the display names for the input channels
• Source Button/Gain Adjustment

Here’s a look at the back of the PSC47 (Don’t you just love the simplicity of HDMI cables?):

From left to right, you have:

• HDMI jacks (4 input followed by 1 output)
• Optical audio jacks (4 input followed by 1 output)
• Power jack

Setup

Setting up the PSC47 was pretty straight forward (getting everything to work correctly was a different story but more on that later). Simply gather all the relevant HDMI cables together, connect them to the relevant inputs on the switch and then connect the HDMI output from the switch to either the receiver or to the HDTV set.

I originally purchased the Psyclone PSC47 to add more HDMI inputs to my home theater setup. The main centerpiece to my home theater system is the Onkyo TX-SR804 receiver which only has two HDMI inputs. These two inputs were good enough originally but over the last year, I added on the Apple TV device and a Sony PlayStation 3 (and let’s not forget that I’ll eventually move to an HDMI enabled Xbox 360 too!). To get all of these devices routed through my receiver, I needed more HDMI inputs and that’s where the PSC47 came into play. My final setup had my Motorola cable box and Sony PS3 connected to the PSC47 which was then connected to the Onkyo reciever.  Note, many of you I’m sure will opt to use the PSC47 simply as a switch to your HDTV set. That’s perfectly fine too. Just take the scenario I have and remove the receiver from the picture.

Now note that I did say “final setup.” My original setup was slightly different. I originally planned to have my cable box, Apple TV, and PS3 connected to the PSC47 and then route the HDMI out to the receiver. Basically I wanted to use the PSC47 as the primary HDMI switch connected to a single HDMI input on the Onkyo receiver – leaving the second HDMI input on the receiver dedicated to my HTPC.

Here’s what the original setup was supposed to look like:

Everything worked initially. However after testing the various inputs and switching back and forth between devices and other inputs on my receiver, I started running into a consistent problem with the Apple TV. After much debugging and poking around online I discovered that Apple TV didn’t like being connected to either the PSC47 or the Onkyo receiver (and many other receivers out there). Apple TV would occasionally hang and need to be rebooted whenever I switched away from it and then back to it later on. After much testing, I decided to just directly connect the Apple TV to my Samsung HDTV and then route optical audio out to my receiver. This fixed the problem but it also meant that I was no longer using the PSC47 as a way to route the Apple TV device. Bummer.

Thus in the end, I had two devices connected to my PSC47 which was then connected to the Onkyo receiver. Thus, my final setup with the Psyclone PSC47 was as follows:

Was this the only problem I ran into with the PSC47? No.. but I’ll save that for the next section.

Usage

Let’s quickly go over the basic operations and functions on the PSC47. When the switch is turned off, the front left and right LED’s are red. When the switch is turned on, these indicators turn blue.

The Psyclone PSC47 has a customizable LCD display. Each of the HDMI inputs can be customized with its own label. You use a joystick located on the front of the HDMI Selector to navigate through the LCD menus and to customize the input labels. The joystick is a bit painful to use since you have to scroll through all of the characters to get the one you want (and the scrolling isn’t all that fast). Oh yes.. lowercase characters come after the uppercase ones which means you have to scroll through all of the uppercase to get to the lowercase. A royal pain in the !#@#@!.

The LCD display has a back-light which comes on for a few seconds when the device first turns on and when you’re switching between different inputs.

The PSC47 comes with a small remote control which is fine for people who don’t have a lot of remotes to deal with. However, if you’re like me, then you probably already have 4-5 remote controls, in which case having another remote can be a pain. Luckily, Logitech Harmony remote controls support the PSC47 switch so I had no problems integrating the switch into my activity driven Logitech Harmony 890 remote.

Here are additional pictures of the switch within my A/V rack. (It’s residing above my cable box)

Here’s a full height shot of my A/V rack:

Testing

With everything connected, it was time for some thorough testing. At first, all of the HDMI connected devices were showing up just fine on my television set (with sound coming out from speakers powered by the Onkyo receiver). I was easily switching between the cable box input and the PS3 input on the PSC47.

I then started testing some of my other A/V devices – notably the Apple TV which was connected to my TV set’s second HDMI input and my Xbox 360 which was connected to the HDTV set’s PC (VGA) input. The first HDMI input was connected to my Onkyo receiver.

Once I began switching between various inputs on my TV set, things began to get interesting (or rather, annoying). The problem was ultimately had to do with HDMI handshaking issues and HDCP authentication issues (did I mention that I hate HDMI?). Symptoms included no video signals on my TV set and HDCP authentication failure messages when I tried to watch the cable box.

After several days of testing and changing settings on my remote control, I realized the real culprit was the fact that my Harmony remote was programmed to turn the PSC47 switch off when it was not needed for a particular activity. For example: when I’m playing with the Xbox 360, I really don’t need the Psyclone PSC47 on because the Xbox 360 is directly connected to the TV set and to the A/V receiver. However if I wanted to watch cable TV, the Harmony remote would turn on the PSC47, and then switch the input to the cable box. Now, in theory, this SHOULD work without a problem but I ALWAYS got HDCP authentication problems going this route. The Samsung HDTV would display my HD video at lower resolutions – instead of 1080i, I was getting 480p.

The solution? Keep the switch on all the time. I programmed the Harmony 890 to never turn off the HDMI switch. Once the switch was left on all the time, all the handshaking and HDCP authentication issues disappeared.  Now granted, It’s a little annoying having a device left on the entire time but I can’t imagine the PSC47 consuming a great deal of power.

I’ve been testing the PSC47 for over two months now and I haven’t had a problem with it at all ever since I decided to leave the switch on all the time. Switching speeds are no slower than having just the receiver box in place. In fact, the Samsung HDTV set actually detects the HDMI video input from the cable box just a tad bit faster. My only beef still is with the Apple TV device which is directly connected to the HDTV set. Yet – I can’t necessarily blame Psyclone for this because the Apple TV device failed to work properly when connected to my Onkyo receiver also.

At the end of the day, the Psyclone PSC47 HDMI Selector works as advertised. It was easy to setup and integrated well into my home theater setup. I probably made things more complicated by having it connect to my A/V receiver but hey – these things should work right? Well sometimes. I’m fairly positive that the PSC47 would be just fine if it was the only switch between your television set and your video equipment.

The real question is – was it worth the $199.99. I honestly can’t say that it is. There are many other HDMI switches out there that offer the same number of ports for much less. There are two features that set the PSC47 apart from other switches though (which may or may not be important to you). Feature one is the optical audio inputs. Very useful again if you have a need to separately feed your optical audio to another device. The second feature is the overall look and feel of the PSC47. It’s well made and looks great within an A/V rack or cabinet. Many of the inexpensive switches that you see out in the market are usually small rectangular boxes that look somewhat awkward in a home theater setup. Of course, if you don’t care about that, then I would recommend you try the cheaper ones first.

Summary

This was certainly an interesting product review. I originally purchased the Psyclone PSC47 HDMI Selector because I had purchased a Sony PlayStation 3 after New Years and I ran out of HDMI inputs. I was either going to get a separate HDMI switch with many inputs OR get a new A/V receiver with tons of HDMI inputs and quite frankly, A/V receivers with 4 HDMI inputs are just way too expensive right now.

Along the way, I discovered some interesting things about my A/V devices and their relationships with HDMI. I discovered that the Apple TV doesn’t play very nicely with HDMI switches – at least not the PSC47 nor the Onkyo receiver.

I also discovered the complicated world of HDMI handshaking. Put one switch in the form of a receiver into the mix, and things are fine. Put a second HDMI switch into the mix and daisy chain them together and things get more interesting. My ultimate solution of course was to leave the PSC47 on all the time – not exactly a power saver’s dream.

Overall, the Psyclone PSC47 HDMI Selector is a well built switch – and honestly, it better be for $199.99. The PSC47 includes features such as the brushed aluminum front panel, customizable LCD display, classy component design, and optical audio switching.  However, you do end up paying a premium for the PSC47 and for many of you out there, these added features may not justify the $199 retail price.

So the question still remains – is the Psyclone PSC47 HDMI Selector the right HDMI switch for you? It ultimately depends on a number of factors.

• If you don’t care about having a rack sized chassis nor do you care about having an LCD display then get a small HDMI switch from vendors such as Monoprice, DVDO, XtremeMac (and many others). These switches tend to be 1/4 to 1/2 the price of the Psyclone device and should deliver similar performances.
• If you don’t care about TOSlink switching (optical audio), then look at cheaper HDMI switches
• If Apple TV has to be one of your HDMI inputs to the switch, then definitely look at other solutions. Some users have successfully used the Apple TV with other HDMI switches.
• If you do care about TOSlink switching along with HDMI switching, then the PSC47 should be a consideration
• If you do care about a customizable display, and a beautiful rack-sized chassis, then the PSC47 should be your consideration
• And finally, If money is no object at all, then do yourself a favor and just get a high end receiver with lots of HDMI inputs.

I’m sure over time we’ll see inexpensive receivers with many more HDMI inputs. Even now, there are several vendors with mid-range receivers in the $500-800 dollar range that feature three HDMI inputs. Not bad though it could be better. Perhaps I’m just a rarity in the consumer world but I do think it’s feasible to consume at least three HDMI inputs these days. It’s not unheard of for a family to have a cable box, a PS3 and an Xbox 360. Add in maybe an Apple TV, or an HTPC or even a standalone DVD/Blu-ray player, and things quickly get messy.

The Psyclone PSC47 works well with some caveats. It has features that will certainly attract some consumers out there. However, if you’re price conscious, I would seriously consider other brands. Even if you’re not price conscious, make sure that you really are ok with spending roughly 200 dollars for a switch (which is basically 1/2 to 1/3 of your way to a decent A/V receiver).

Pros:

• Solid construction
• Component design – matches well with other A/V components
• Optical audio inputs
• Remote control
• Customizable display

Cons:

• Expensive
• Apple TV doesn’t like it (but to be fair, it didn’t like the Onkyo receiver either)

Technorati Tags: Psyclone, HDMI Selector, Model PSC47, Review, HDMI Switch

• Supports movie rentals direct from Apple TV
• Built-in music store (via iTunes)
• Access to Flickr photostreams and .Mac web galleries – all from Apple TV
• Automatically checks for new software every week
• Rent and download HD movies
• New user interface design

I checked out the update tonight and decided to take some snapshots of the overall update process as well as some of the new user interface elements and features of Apple TV. This is NOT a comprehensive overview of the new version – just a quick early primer.

Here’s a a snapshot of the Apple TV User Interface BEFORE the upgrade:

To get the update, go to Settings and then click on “Update Software”:

Apple TV will check for new software and yes.. it found something:

Click on “Download Now” and let the waiting game begin. The download process itself was estimated by Apple TV to be around 5 minutes. It actually took approximately four minutes on my cable connection.

Once the download is complete, Apple TV will display the following:

I selected “Update Now” and then waited approximately 5-6 minutes while the installation of the update took place. The device restarted several times during the entire process (I totally lost track of the number of times but it was definitely more than 3 times). During the process, you’ll see something similar to these screens:

After minutes of installing, a new splash screen appeared. Here are some stills of the splash screen:

You’re then presented with the new Apple TV user interface. The first thought that came to mind when I saw the new user interface was “sparse”. First off, the background has images of various movies available for rent via iTunes. In the foreground is the new arrangement of menu selections. The original Apple TV user interface had a single column of menu items. The new version is split into two columns. You make a general selection on the left hand side which updates the right hand column with more specific menu items.

Here’s a quick look at the various “Movies” related screen shots:

“Top Movies”

When you select “Top Movies”, you get presented a thumbnail view of various movies available for rent via iTunes.

“Genres”

“All HD”

Here are all the HD titles available for rent via iTunes. Not a lot right now.

“Search”

“Trailers”

One nice update – you can view high definition trailers!

“My Movies”

This section lists the movies that are currently on your Apple TV.

Here’s the “TV Shows” menu:

And various snapshots for TV Shows:

“Favorites”

“Top TV Shows”

“Genres”

“TV Networks”

“Search”

“My TV Shows”

Now let’s say I’m interested in a TV Show on iTunes. Here’s the first episode of Family Guy from Season One. When I select the episode, I can view a preview of the episode or directly purchase the show for $1.99.

Here’s a snapshot of a preview:

Preview quality is OK though still not quite at SD quality.

OK.. I’ll go ahead and buy this episode. Since this is the first time I’m purchasing anything via iTunes on Apple TV, I need to inform the device of my user ID and password.

Then I need to agree to the terms of service…

And that’s it! The show is purchased and since my Internet connection is fairly quick, I can pretty much begin viewing the episode as it downloads:

Here’s a snapshot of the “Music” menu but note – I didn’t drill down into the lower sub menus here.

Here’s the “Podcasts” menu:

Here’s the “Photos” menu:

Here’s the “YouTube” menu:

And finally, here’s the “Settings” menu:

One thing I did discover while perusing through the “Settings” section. I can now set 1080p as an output setting via HDMI.

I showed you snapshots of what it was like buying a TV show. What would buying a movie be like? It’s pretty much the same thing.

Here’s a picture of me looking at Star Trek II : The Wrath of Khan. I have the option to preview the movie, rent it in regular format or rent it in HD format.

I opted to rent 300 in HD since it was newer and probably better looking in HD than Star Trek II.

Here’s a preview snapshot:

Let’s go ahead and rent the movie:

Within a minute or so, I was presented with this screen informing me that 300 was ready to watch.

I decided to NOT watch the movie yet – instead waiting till later on when I’m ready to do a more comprehensive look at Apple TV.

An interesting thing happened along the way. I ran out of disk space on my Apple TV and both of my downloads paused (Family Guy and 300).

There’s a “Downloads” section where you can view your current downloads.

To alleviate this problem, I went to my PC and told iTunes to remove some content from my Apple TV. Apple TV itself will not remove any content to make room for downloaded materials so you’ll need to remove content yourself. I removed about 3.3 GB of space and then went back to Apple TV to resume the downloads:

That’s it for now! I obviously have not played with the update enough as of yet but I do have a couple of early observations:

• I like the new user interface. Yes it’s text heavy but it’s also fairly easy to understand
• The thumbnail views of the Top Movies and Top TV Shows is pretty neat but I’m very glad that there is a way to search for content and of course a way to view content by genres and TV networks
• The user interface continues to be responsive
• 1080p output. Very nice.

Stay tuned for a more comprehensive review in the days to come.

Technorati Tags: Apple TV, Take 2, Update, Preview

If there’s anything anyone can agree about the Apple iPhone, it’s this – it’s absolutely beautiful. You spend an obscene amount of money for a smartphone which arguably can be considered a work of art, thus wouldn’t you want to protect it? While it might be a bit late to protect my iPhone from scratches (which I’ve had since the first day the phone was made available in late June), I thought it would be good to take a look at a couple of iPhone cases made by the folks at Incase. Today, we’ll take a quick look at the Incase Molded Rubber Protective Case for the Apple iPhone which retails for $29.95.

Features:

The Incase Protective Cover/Molded Rubber Case for the iPhone features the following:

• Access to all controls and dock connector
• Allows charging while in case
• Custom topographic pattern exterior
• Speakerphone and microphone openings
• Form-fitting construction
• Camera lens cutout
• Provides a good grip on the iPhone
• Flexible for a secure fit on the phone
• Durable construction

Packaging and Overview:

Because we all love pictures… here are snapshots of the packaging:

Here’s the front of the case:

Here’s the back of the case (note the textured pattern):

Here’s the top of the case:

And finally, the bottom of the case:

Usage:

The Incase Protective Cover is extremely easy to install over the Apple iPhone. Since the case is flexible, all you need to do is slide the iPhone into the front of the case and then stretch the cover around the other corners of the phone (think of what it’s like to put bed sheets on your mattress. You are the one to put bed sheets on your mattress right?!?!).

Once installed, the only openings will be the major ports, and the front of the screen. The hardened glass screen is the one part of the iPhone most resistant to scratches.

Here’s what  the front looks like with the Incase cover in place:

Here’s the top:

Here’s the bottom:

As you can tell, the cover provides access to all the ports on the iPhone. The cutaways are exacting so you won’t have any problem connecting the headphones or docking cable to the iPhone. My only complaint is access to the ringer on/off switch on the left side. It’s a bit of a pain to flick the switch with the cover on – especially if you have thick fingers.

The top power button and the left-side volume button are entirely covered by the rubber case but the raised relief patterns make it easy for you to find and press these buttons nevertheless.

Keep in mind that with the covering in place, you will not be able to dock the iPhone into the docking cradle. If you don’t want to keep removing the Incase Protective Cover, you’ll need to directly connect the USB cable to the iPhone and forgo the dock cradle.

If you’ve always felt the iPhone was a bit slippery in your hands, then you’ll love the fact that the Incase Protective Cover provides ample grip to the sides and back of the iPhone. With this cover in place, it’s less likely that my iPhone will be accidentally falling out of my hand anytime soon. However, should it fall, the cover will provide a decent amount of protection to the sides and back of the device. Of course the iPhone screen is a totally different matter, but again, that’s the hardest part of the entire phone. The case is designed to prevent small dings and scratches from appearing on the rest of the iPhone (or in my case, to keep the number of scratches constant from here on out!). Drop the phone from a high enough location onto a hard enough ground and I’m sure the iPhone will still be damaged (if the screen doesn’t crack first!). Keep in mind that it’s not designed to protect the glass touchscreen of the iPhone. There’s no protective film in place at all so if you’re looking for all inclusive case, you’ll need to look elsewhere. The Incase Protective Cover is designed to provide just enough protection for the vulnerable parts of the iPhone.

Using the iPhone with the protective cover in place was a breeze. All the covered buttons were completely workable. I was able to talk to my friends without a problem and the overall physical size of the phone is only increased by a small amount.

On the downside, this Incase Protective Cover certainly won’t win any beauty or design contests. You can choose from a variety of colors (I just happened to like red) but it won’t make your iPhone anymore “beautiful” than it already is – but that’s not really the point is it? Remember, we’re trying to protect this work of art!

Summary:

While the iPhone’s screen is tough to scratch and mar, the same can’t be said about the rest of the smartphone. I must have scratched the sides of the iPhone within a few hours of owning the device (sigh.. the same sad story since my very first iPod too). Thus if you want to try and preserve your iPhone, it only makes sense that you pick up some sort of case for the device. The Incase Protective Cover is an inexpensive solution – providing enough protection where needed, access to all the ports, good grip to the device, and a durable rubber finish. It’s not the most glamorous case out there nor does it protect the hardened glass screen but it’s a good moderate approach to protecting the iPhone.

Pros:

• Inexpensive
• Easy to use
• Provides enough protection to the scratch-able areas of the iPhone
• Access to all controls and ports

Cons:

• Can’t use iPhone dock with cover on
• Does not protect glass screen

Technorati Tags: Incase, Protective Cover, Apple iPhone, Review, Krunker

Up until fairly recently, I had a multi-monitor setup here in my home office. Two standard 19 inch LCD monitors comprised my dual display desktop and as a result, I was quite happy and content with things – that was until my 8 year old 19 inch NEC monitor decided to die on me. All of a sudden, gone was the real estate afforded to me by two 1280 x 1024 displays and suddenly a single 19 inch display felt utterly handicapping – especially when you’re writing a lot of articles for a blog site like Krunker (or if you’re writing code etc). So.. what to do? I decided to go out on the market for a nice 20 to 22 inch widescreen LCD monitor. After searching around, I was pleasantly surprised to see these widescreen LCD monitors in the range of $200 to $300 dollars. But what exactly was the difference between a budget $200 dollar monitor vs. a higher end $300+ monitor? I decided to experiment and find out by getting the LG L222WT-BF 21.6 inch widescreen LCD monitor which was on sale this week (Week starting 11/18/2007) at Best Buy for $219.99 before taxes. Join me as I quickly go over this monitor and see if it’s worth the asking price or whether it’s better to drop a bit more cash for something a tad bit better.

Specifications

First off, let’s go over the specifications for the LG L222WT-BF:

• Viewable Screen Size: 21.6 inches (what the heck.. they couldn’t just use a 22 inch panel??)
• Maximum Resolution: 1680 x 1050
• Aspect Ratio: 16:10
• Response Time: 5 ms
• Brightness: 300 cd/m²
• Contrast Ratio: 3000:1
• Inputs: 1 DVI-D, 1 D-sub
• Compatible with PC and Mac
• Height: 16.8 inches with stand (13.3 inches without stand)
• Width: 19.8 inches
• Weight: 12.1 lbs with stand
• Depth: 9.2 inches with stand (2.3 inches without stand)
• Viewing angles: 160 degree horizontal and vertical viewing angles
• Wall mountable with optional mounting kit

Packaging and Contents

Because we all love pictures, here is a shot of the outside packaging.

Let’s open up the box and take a look inside:

Content wise, you get the following:

• LCD Panel
• Stand neck
• Stand base
• CD software
• VGA cable
• Power cable
• Instructions

Unfortunately you don’t get a DVI cable even though the monitor supports a DVI-D connection but then again.. this is an inexpensive monitor right? Good thing DVI cables are also fairly inexpensive!

Here’s a look at all the things inside:

Setup

Yes.. there’s some assembly required folks! If you plan on using the LG L222WT-BF on your desktop, then you’ll need to spend a few moments putting things together. Luckily, it’s literally a snap to do this (and I do mean a snap!). If you plan on mounting the display, then you won’t have to worry about assembling the stand.

The first step is to lay the screen down on something soft.

Now insert the neck into the bottom of the screen until you hear a snap.

Once the neck is in, simply slide the stand portion right into the bottom of the neck and you’re all set!

A look over..

Going with the theme that a picture is worth a thousand words, let’s take a look at the LG L222WT-BF from all sorts of different angles. Here’s a shot of the monitor after being completely assembled:

Just got kicks..let’s put this 22 inch widescreen up next to my 46 inch Samsung 1080p LCD bad boy.

It’s a humbling experience for the 22 incher isn’t it? Not so big afterall? Ok.. enough of that. The truth is – the 22 inch display is plenty large enough for computing purposes – maybe just not for the living room.

Let’s go to office space and put this monitor next to my Dell 19 inch LCD monitor (a standard display – hard to imagine eh?). Truth is – that Dell 19 inch monitor is a beautiful display – I just wish it was larger and had a higher resolution.. oh and I wish it was widescreen too.

Now that’s a noticeable size difference if you ask me (not to mention that 1680 x 1050 is far better than 1280 x 1024!).

Here’s a close up shot of the front of the display (after everything’s been connected):

Here’s the back side of the display.

The power cable connects to the left side of the monitor while the monitor cables attach to the right side. As mentioned above, LG packages one set of VGA cables but fails to package a DVI-D cable in case you have a computer with DVI output.

Here’s a shot of the rear left side:

Here’s a shot of the rear right side:

There is one nice small feature on the backside of the monitor – you’ll find a handy cable management piece attached to the back of the neck. You can route your cables through this piece to add some order to your cable mess.

Thoughts and Impressions

Now that everything was assembled and connected to my PC, it was time to fire up the monitor and see what the overall picture quality and user experience was going to be like. Since the previous monitor in place was a Dell 19 inch LCD monitor, I had to inform Windows Vista that I needed to go to a completely new display resolution. Vista took a few moments to figure out that I had a new monitor installed and then enabled the 1680 x 1050 resolution option within Display Settings.

LG includes a device driver for the monitor on the packaged CD. You can install this driver for Windows Vista or you can alternatively use the generic profile that Vista always seems to default to.

Once the correct resolution was established, I sat down and took a good look at my new display and much to my dismay.. I was immediately disappointed. Right off the bat, I noticed the display was way too bright, the colors too washed out, and the backlighting uneven going across the screen. The backlighting dims fairly significantly as you get to the edges of the display.

Alright.. no problem – this is probably just the default settings for the monitor. Every display needs a bit of tweaking right?  To adjust settings, there are several buttons located on the lower right hand corner of the front of the display. From left to right, there’s a Zooming button, a Menu button, a “Down/Engine” button, an “Up/Source” button, an AutoSet button, and a power button.

Using a combination of the menu button and the up/down/autoset buttons, you can modify the brightness, contrast, color temperatures etc for the display – everything that you would typically find on an LCD monitor. If that doesn’t work, you can even try the four “engines” found on the LCD display which includes “Movie”, “Text”, “User”, and “Normal”.

After fiddling with the settings for over 30 minutes, I never found settings that I was completely satisfied with. The problems I first noticed just would not completely go away. If there was a single problem I would cite with this display, it would have to be the uneven backlighting (followed closely by the washed out colors). It’s one of those things where.. once you notice it – you simply can not shake it. (Those of you who notice dead pixels will know what I’m talking about here).  Even if the brightness was uniform across the display, the rendered colors were just a bit too washed out for my own tastes. Finally, the other major problem with the L222WT-BF was how much the brightness and color changed when viewing the monitor off center.

Now, if it wasn’t for the overall picture quality, I would be completely jazzed up about this monitor. Who wouldn’t want a nearly 22 inch widescreen display for a cool $220 dollars or so? (Speaking of which – LG just couldn’t make use of a 22 inch panel instead of a 21.6 inch panel eh?). There are some positive aspects to the display. It has a fairly high response rate at 5ms. Video playback was certainly pleasant.. as long as you can overlook the brightness uniformity issues mentioned above. In all honesty – for a little over $200 dollars – this is a decent monitor to have as a secondary monitor in a multi-monitor setup, or as an upgrade to a small 15 or 17 inch monitor. However, if you have or are used to a high quality monitor, then you might want to look elsewhere.

Finally – one more con to this display. For a 22 inch monitor, you get a limited set of input connections. The display only accepts DVI or VGA connections. No HDMI, composite, or component inputs whatsoever.

Summary

Ah.. a $220 dollar 21.6 inch widescreen LCD display – a bargain for the size of the display right? Well in the case of the LG L222WT-BF, you certainly get what you pay for. While the monitor is easy to set up and install, the overall display quality is unfortunately less than satisfactory. The display suffers from uneven backlighting, washed out colors, and poor viewing angles. But then again – it’s about expectations. If you have low expectations coming in, then perhaps the L222WTF-BF will be a pleasant surprise to you. After all, it does offer a 5 ms response time and a contrast ratio of 3000:1 so on paper, it’s a good monitor for watching movies and playing most video games. However, if you’re picky about picture quality and you’re used to more polished displays, you might want to save a few more bucks and purchase a higher end display. That’s ultimately the path I chose and hence this particular monitor went back to Best Buy.

It should be noted that this monitor received fairly high review marks on the Best Buy website. Clearly there are a number of people who have enjoyed this monitor so make sure to read their takes before deciding one way or another. Perhaps I was just being a bit too picky. If you’re budget is confined to the $200+ range, then the LG L222WT-BF isn’t a bad choice at all. Just level out those expectations please.

Pros:

• Inexpensive
• Easy setup
• Decent OSD controls

Cons:

• Uneven backlighting
• Washed out colors
• Limited input jacks

Technorati Tags: LG, L222WT-BF, 21.6 widescreen LCD monitor, Review, Krunker

1. Palm would not disclose the nitty gritty specs of the device (sorry – no word on the amount of memory or the processor type/speed)
2. The Foleo is ALL about email.

Ah yes, Palm also served some free (and pretty good) food as well free drinks at the sneak peek event. Yes.. I do enjoy free things from time to time. Palm handed out goodie bags for folks who finished up and were ready to leave the event. Inside the goodie bags were a travel mug, an SD card with music loaded on it, some Foleo marketing materials, mints and a Starbucks gift certificate.

Yes that’s nice and all – but we’re here to talk about the Foleo right? So let’s get down to it shall we?

The Foleo - what exactly is it?

Palm bills the Foleo as a “Mobile Companion” – a device that’s designed to work side by side with a Smartphone – say a Palm Treo device. (It doesn’t have to be a Treo of course but the demonstrations at the event were of course related to the Treo). You can find a list of compatible smartphones here. Think of the Foleo as an extension of your smartphone. Palm’s argument centers on the following – who wants to write and read email on a tiny mobile phone display? Why not have a secondary device deliver a better viewing, composing, and editing experience? To accomplish this, the Foleo wirelessly connects with a smartphone (say a Treo) and synchronizes the inbox between the Foleo and the Smartphone.

It’s certainly an interesting concept. As proven over and over, nearly everyone will carry at least one mobile phone – no matter how crappy or functional the phone may be. Many others will also carry a notebook computer – simply because they need email or Microsoft Word or a web  browser. Why not make things simpler but simplifying the notebook down to the bare essentials? That’s what the Foleo is essentially all about.

Here are the main features of the Palm Foleo:

• 10.2 inch widescreen LCD display
• Full-size QWERTY keyboard
• Weight of 2.5 lbs
• Up to 5 hours of battery life
• DataViz Documents To Go for Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files
• PDF viewer
• Photo viewer
• Web browser
• Bluetooth 1.2 wireless technology
• Wi-Fi 802.11b
• SD/MultiMediaCard expansion slot
• CompactFlash slot
• Scroll wheel
• Previous and Next buttons
• One touch email sync button
• Linux OS (kernel 2.4)
• VGA output (with an included adapter)

Here’s what the Foleo is designed to perform:

• Wirelessly connect to your smartphone to read and write emails and view attachments
• Deliver a better viewing experience than your smartphone thanks to the 10.2 inch display
• Provide a small lightweight portable platform
• Provide an instant-on experience
• Provide a larger web experience than your smartphone
• Provide up to 5 hours of battery life – more than enough for a cross country flight

Physical overview

Here are various pictures of the Foleo that I snapped up tonight.

Initial impressions

The display is definitely nice at 10.2 inches. I wasn’t told what the display resolution was but emails and web browsing was certainly enjoyable on the Foleo. The top of the Foleo’s cover has a nice rubbery feel to it making it easy to hold and grip the device. The Foleo’s weight of 2.5 lbs is sheer joy for anyone used to carrying 6+ lbs for a notebook.

Here’s a shot of the right side of the Foleo where all of the ports are located.

You’ve got yourself a headphone jack, the SD card slot, the VGA out (using an adapter, the USB port, and I believe the power connector? (I could be wrong there)

Oh yes – the battery compartment is accessible too.

There are no ports on the left hand side.

Application performance appeared relatively robust and snappy. It was simple to start up applications through what appeared to be something akin to the Windows Start menu. For power users, Foleo provides a terminal (shell) as seen here (though they really didn’t want us playing with it at the event):

Synchronization

The Palm Foleo utilizes Bluetooth networking to synchronize content to and from the smartphone. Now if your smartphone supports dial-up modem access, then you can use the smartphone as a way for the Foleo to get onto the Internet - particularly great if you have Sprint or Verizon data plans since their data networks are rather speedy. (Keep in mind of course you will probably need to pay additional fees for this through your mobile phone carrier. This is definitely the case for both Sprint and Verizon Wireless). The Foleo is also able to connect to Wi-Fi networks so you can easily surf the web, read and write email from any freely accessible hotspot.

It’s all about e-mail

As the Palm reps repeated to me over and over tonight, the Foleo is all about e-mail. The main purpose of the device is to provide a better experience than a smartphone when it comes to reading and writing e-mail. The Foleo is able to connect and sychronize email from the smartphone to the Foleo and back. The full sized QWERTY keyboard makes it easy for a user to compose email messages. Who wants to write long email messages on a small smartphone? Heck I don’t want to write long messages on an iPhone either!

Here’s a picture of the keyboard.

For anyone curious – the keyboard had a pretty good feel to it. Of course anything will be better than typing on a thumb-board.

Here’s a picture of the e-mail application under the Foleo.

As you can see, it has a fairly standard email look and feel to it. To synchronize your email between the smartphone and the Foleo, you simply press the email button on the upper left hand corner and watch it go. Attachments can be downloaded and opened right on your Foleo. The device comes with Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and PDF viewers – which should cover most attachment file formats out there. You can even edit documents and place them on an SD card for transfer to a PC later on.

I was curious to see how far the Foleo takes e-mail synchronization so I asked the Palm rep whether the Foleo supports synchronization of draft messages. Here’s the scenario. What if you start an e-mail message on the Foleo but don’t get a chance to finish it? As it turns out, the Foleo synchronizes the draft message to your smartphone allowing you to later send the message from your smartphone (or of course via the Foleo later on if you wish). Now that’s pretty cool.

Aside from email functionality, the Foleo includes a web browser (which a Palm rep said was Opera), document viewers for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and of course PDF, a picture viewer, a terminal application as we’ve mentioned before, and a file browser.

Palm was also showing off a remote desktop application provided by a third party vendor which allowed the Foleo to connect to another PC. That’s a nice tool to have IF your PC is accessible on the network you’re connected to of course. I can appreciate remote desktop functionality but I don’t think  it’s that big of a deal. Folks in IT may think otherwise though.

Let’s start with the positives

The Palm Foleo has a great form factor. It’s small and lightweight which no $599 notebook could ever match. It has instant on capabilities, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, and an open source OS in the form of Linux. That also means the Foleo has an opportunity to tap into a vast open source community of developers – the key will be whether Palm can provide all the tools and support necessary to make it easy to get third party developers to develop applications for the Foleo.

And some negatives..

For a mobile companion device, the Foleo is all business all the time – at least in its bare form. There’s no media player application installed on the Foleo. You’ll need to pick one up yourself from a third party vendor (apparently PocketTunes is coming to the platform). There’s no instant messaging application which seems slightly odd considering the emphasis on e-mail. IM is only the next largest form of communications on the Internet. Finally, there’s the price. At $599, the Foleo is a bit expensive for the  general public – especially when you consider you need a smartphone to really make it shine. However, is the general public the true audience for the Foleo?

The real audience..

After spending some time with the Foleo tonight, it’s clear to that the device is ideally suited for the mobile professional; to the person who needs to be connected to his or her email; to the person who can’t wait for his notebook to start up.. and to the person who needs something better than his smartphone’s dinky display. As Palm reps reminded me tonight, the Foleo is all about instant-on access to e-mail above all else. Similar to how Apple claims the iPhone delivers the ”full Internet”, the Foleo delivers the “full email” with it’s wireless connectivity, 10.2 inch widescreen display, and available document viewers.

At $599, consumers might be put off by the Foleo. However, businesses and mobile professionals might just drop the dough for the device – especially if it means it will help them be more productive in their daily life.

Final thoughts…

The question I find myself asking is the following:

Would I be willing to buy the Foleo when it comes out?

As a consumer - no. As a regular consumer, I want a fully functional, fully featured device which means more than email, and more than web browsing. Instant on is nice but I can certainly wait the minute it takes for Windows to boot. Now if the device was $200 dollars cheaper, then maybe I’d consider it.

As a business user – maybe. There have been plenty of times where I wished I had a larger display on my smartphone. Even the iPhone’s display pales in size when compared to the Foleo. I can certainly read emails on my iPhone but I want a full QWERTY keyboard which the iPhone does not supply (but the Foleo does). The Foleo provides all the basic functionality that a business mobile user or mobile professional would want – minus perhaps the IM functionality. This leads me to my point that third party app developers will be central to the success of the Foleo. However, the point is this – the Foleo aims to deliver enough of what you need and nothing else. Most mobile professionals simply need email and the web and that’s what the Foleo delivers.

If the business pays for it? YES. If you’ve ever lugged around a 7 lb notebook on your back all day long, you’ll come to appreciate light devices. At 2.5 lbs, the Foleo is light.. so light you might forget it’s a computer. Now consider.. if your company is willing to foot the bill for the device – would you use it? I think most of you would say yes. Granted, this means you’ll need to carry the Foleo AND a mobile phone.. but is that so different from carrying a notebook and a mobile phone?

The real threat to the Foleo will be hardware vendors that manufacture super cheap notebooks with instant on capabilities. If you can get a small notebook in the sub $500 dollar range that starts up immediately, then the Foleo could be in for some trouble. This is where VIA’s plans for small nanobook systems is pretty interesting and perhaps troublesome for Palm.

I’ll reserve my final judgement on the Foleo when it comes out at the end of the summer. Until then, I think there is a market for the Foleo – I just don’t think it’s as large as Palm hopes it would be. If Palm would provide more functionality than just email and web browsing to the Foleo, then I would be far more positive (and hopeful) of the device. One thing I can say - the Foleo is not revolutionary by any means. It’s just a device that straddles the line between notebooks and mobile phones (yet not nearly as featured or an expensive as a UMPC).

Again, the Foleo is due out at the end of the summer. According to reps at the store, the Foleo will sell for $599. There will be a $100 mail-in rebate initially which will bring the price down to $499.

Here’s a short video clip of the marketing material being shown.

Thanks to Kontrib.com, you can see this article machine translated into:

• Arabic

• Chinese

• French

• Romanian

• Spanish

Technorati Tags: Palm Foleo, Sneak Peek, The Grove, Los Angeles, Palm,

Well folks – after updating Apple TV tonight and playing with some of the YouTube functionality and of course watching some YouTube videos, I am here to say that I was wrong with my early judgments and I am now a believer of the concept. OMG.. did a PC fan boy just say that? Yup.. he did. So let’s go over the latest Apple update to Apple TV and in particular, let’s look at what YouTube and Apple TV has to offer.

Update Process

Let’s get the version details out of the way first. This update brings the software version running on Apple TV to version 1.1.  I’ll quickly go over the Apple Update procedure.

To update the Apple TV, go to the top level menu and select “Settings”:

Once you’re in “Settings’, scroll down until you see “Update Software”.

Select “Update Software” and you’ll see the following screen.

You can decide not to “Update Now” but we didn’t. Once you select “Download Now”, you’ll be sent back to the “Settings” menu where you’ll notice the previously selected menu item has turned from “Update Software” to “Downloading Update…” Be warned folks – the download will take several minutes to finish.

Once the download is finished, you’ll see the following screen:

You can “Update Now” or “Update Later”. You might as well update now. Once I selected that option, I saw a single lone silver Apple.

In fact the silver Apple stayed on the display for quite some time.. then everything went black.

After a moment, the silver Apple came back..

Only to go away again..and then back. Later a larger silver Apple came up on the display (though I suspect the video resolution was changed temporarily).

After some time, the silver Apple finally was accompanied by an installation progress bar beneath it.

After a few minutes of updating, the opening Apple TV splash came up and everything was up and running again.

Here’s a picture of the top level menu. Notice the new addition?

Here’s the menu before the update. As you can see, YouTube is now a menu item right along with Movies, Music, Podcasts, and Photos.

YouTube Integration

Click into the YouTube menu and you’ll see the following menu structure.

The list consists of:

• Featured – Featured video clips from YouTube’s library
• Most Viewed – The most viewed video clips sorted by time
• Most Recent – The latest video clips added to YouTube
• Top Rated – The highest rated YouTube video clips sorted by time
• History – Look at the past video clips you viewed on YouTube
• Search – Search for specific video clips based using keywords
• Log In – Log into your YouTube account

If you log into your YouTube account, the menu structure will change slightly. An extra menu item is added to the list (”Favorites”).

Logging in requires you to use an on screen keyboard that looks as follows.

You’ll be asked for your YouTube account name and your password.

“Featured” Videos

Featured videos are selected video clips from YouTube’s vast array of user uploaded content. These aren’t necessarily the highest viewed or highest rated clips so bear that in mind. Here’s the snapshot of the feature.

This user interface is common throughout the YouTube related menus. Individual videos are along the right hand side complete with their title, submitter, length of time, number of views, and current rating. The left hand pane shows a snapshot of the video clip along with a description of the video provided by the submitter. You’ll also find information about when the video was uploaded, what category it’s uploaded to, and what keywords the submitter associated the video with.

To play back a YouTube video, you simply highlight the video you want to view on the right hand side and press play on the remote. The video begins to stream to your device and playback begins within a matter of seconds. I’ll get into playback quality shortly.

If you press the menu button during playback you’ll see a menu list as follows:

You can resume the video playback, go back to the YouTube menu, or perform additional options. The additional options are interesting because it’s here where you can rate the video, save it to favorites or flag the video as inappropriate. In order for you to rate the video clip or save it to favorites, you need to be logged into YouTube from Apple TV so make sure you have a YouTube account.

“Most Viewed” Videos

Most viewed provides you a list of the most viewed videos sorted by time (”Today”, “This Week”, and “All Time”). This gives you a quick glimpse into what is popular right now (or in the past) on YouTube and it’s arguably my favorite feature of Apple TV. Don’t get me wrong – the “Features” section is nice but what I really want to know is what everyone else is interested in right now. This menu really gives you that sort of instant gratification.

Here I selected the top video on the list which was the entitled “BGT FINAL”. Here’s the opening shots of the video playback:

Note – pressing the menu button here will give you the same options as before – “Resume”, “Return to YouTube Menu”, and “Options”. Now if the video clips’ submitter had other videos, you’d see his list of related videos here as well.

The right hand list shows 20 videos at a time. When you get to the bottom of the list, you can ask Apple TV to load the information for the next 20 videos.

“Most Recent” Videos

Videos are constantly being added to YouTube all around the clock and this where you’ll find them on Apple TV.. well sort of. Keep in mind that YouTube is still converting their entire video collection to H.264 right now. This will undoubtedly take some time given how many millions of videos they must have. YouTube will eventually catch up and offer all of the videos in H.264.

“Top Rated” Videos

This section gives you the top rated videos on YouTube sorted by “Today”, “This Week”, and “All Time”. The current top rated video today is the “Microsoft Surface Parody” (which I saw and I must say is pretty funny).

“History”

The History section provides a list of the videos that you’ve watched on YouTube via Apple TV. This gives you a quick way to go back to a video you saw some time ago just in case you find it difficult to find that video again. You can also clear the history simply by selecting “Clear History”.

“Search”

Search is exactly that – search for videos by typing out keywords or strings. Hopefully the matching video or videos will come up. The matching videos come up on the right hand side as you type the search terms on the left.

Playback quality

If there was one concern that I had with YouTube on Apple TV, it was going to be the video playback quality. It’s one thing to view YouTube videos within a browser window on your computer desktop. The darn thing is tiny so you’re not going to notice the blocky-ness of the video clip. It’s an entirely different thing when it comes to viewing YouTube videos on a 46 inch LCD HDTV display such as mine.

So how did it fare?

Let’s get right to the point - video playback wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Now granted, my expectations were next to zero at this point so perhaps anything would have made me happy. However, I was pleasantly surprised with some of the streamed video content coming from YouTube and I believe a lot of this has to do with the H.264 encoding of YouTube content. I would assume that YouTube went back to the original user submitted videos to convert from. If that is the case, then it would explain why some of the video content is better than what is available via the web browser. However, keep in mind that you’ll get a wide range of video qualities depending on the video capture device and the original resolution of the capture. People who capture videos on their mobile phones will certainly get different playback qualities than say someone who used a digital camcorder or an HD camcorder.

Of course when the video playback quality is bad.. it’s bad. However, I did find myself rather forgiving in those instances – simply because I was enjoying the YouTube experience. Don’t get me wrong -  you’re going to get a mixed bag of video content via this service integration.. but you know what? It’s fun!

If you’re using a widescreen display you’ll be happy to hear that widescreen video clips will automatically fill the screen. That’s a nice feature because you really do get a feeling that your entire screen real estate space is being utilized – even if the video playback is crappy at times.

Is it just me or is…

I was curious to see what video quality was going to be like across the board on Apple TV – not just in the YouTube section – so I went ahead and viewed some trailers, TV clips, and even content that I had previously purchased via iTunes.

Now is it me.. or is video playback quality on the device better in this software update? It’s still not on par with high definition quality by any means but the videos seem better somehow. (yes. I know – better is so subjective)

Seriously – to the people that own Apple TVs - look at the online trailers.. or the TV episode clips available through the iTunes lists. The videos just seem a bit more crisp than before and the colors appear to be a bit more accurate (or life like?). It’s almost as if the video decoding was smoothing out the blocky-ness that I had witnessed earlier actually.

I honestly can’t verify this since I don’t have the previous version available to compare against. Everything is relative to what’s stuck in my mind. Was it my imagination? What do you folks think? Did video decoding get improved?

Back to YouTube and Apple TV

Anyhow, let’s get back to YouTube and Apple TV. As I stated in the opening paragraph, I’ve become a believer in the YouTube integration efforts. Originally I thought that I would never be interested in viewing YouTube clips from the living room couch. They’re fun to watch on your PC at work or in your off hours.. but on your TV screen? Hmm no way.

However after twenty minutes of looking through the content, I found myself absolutely absorbed by the videos available to me now.

Consider this. You select a video to watch.. you watch it.. and then when you’re done. What happens next? You’re presented with a whole new list of videos to watch from the same user.. and if not, you can always back out and view content from hundreds of thousands of other YouTube users. Next thing you know, you’ll have watched 30 to 60 minutes of video and you’ll want more. It’s deceptively addicting on the big screen. Yes the video quality could be improved but YouTube on a big screen is something to behold.

Where I see this being incredibly successful is in the party scene – whether it’s at home or in a business. Imagine gathering a bunch of people together to watch some stupid online parody or video clip of lonelygirl15 (or whatever her nick is). Suddenly you’re not alone anymore – you have your friends there with you enjoying the same content that you’re enjoying - sharing the same laughs and smiles as a result (or cries?).

Yes, the online world meets the offline world in the living room! (Hey .. did I just make that up?)

As YouTube catches up with their entire video library, I can totally see the following happening. Say you want to share a video clip with family members across the country. You can already do this by uploading your video to YouTube and having your relatives watch the clip within their browser. However, now folks with Apple TV devices can suddenly access the same video clip right from the comfort of their living room. Suddenly the concept of sharing a video clip online with your mom or brother or sister because even more of a reality. The same could be said of YouTube content on the iPhone.. but I think the real joy is being able to relax on your couch and viewing all this great (and many more not so great) content at home.

Final thoughts on the experience. About the only feature I wish Apple included with the YouTube integration was a “Random” or “Shuffle” menu item. It would be so cool to simply click Random within the “Top Rated” video clips and let Apple TV cycle through various videos to play back. This would be ideal for a social gathering. Also – a “Play All” feature would be welcomed too – although the “Play All” would need to have some limitations of course

Summary

I really had mixed feelings about Apple TV when it first came out. Honestly it felt like a glorified networked iPod that was connected to your television screen. In many ways that hasn’t quite changed yet. However the inclusion of YouTube content makes Apple TV even more compelling simply because so much content is now freely available to you from the Internet. Sure video quality could be better but it’s the addictive nature of watching YouTube that sucks you in. Up until now, I was strictly using Apple TV as a way to play back music from my home theater system (although I also use Windows Media Center for that very same purpose). Now I think I’ll be drawn into the YouTube world a bit more.

I’ll end this by saying that phrase again.

Apple TV + YouTube = Where the Online World meets the Offline World in your Living Room.

yeah.. I like that phrase

What do you folks think?

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Specifications

Let’s quickly go over the specifications of the LN-S4695D. Here’s the rundown:

• 46 inch 16:9 widescreen display
• 1920 x 1080 resolution
• 6000:1 contrast ratio
• S-PVA panel
• 10 bit processor with 12.8 billion colors
• SRS TruSurround XT sound
• 178 degree horizontal and vertical viewing angle
• Samsung Digital Natural Image engine
• CCFL Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp (92% NTSC color gamut)
• Game mode enhances dark areas, sharpens picture, speeds up image processing response and enhances sounds for games
• Integrated ATSC digital tuner for over-the-air (OTA) HD signals
• 8 ms response time
• Swivel stand
• Picture in Picture support
• On/off clock timer
• V-Chip system for parental control of television content
• Speaker system on the bottom
• 10W x 2 watts per channel

Here are the measurements of the LN-S4695D display:

• 44.5 x 31 x 12.8 inches with the stand in place
• 44.4 x 28.8 x 4.2 inches without the stand

The LN-S4695D weighs 77.2 lbs with the stand in place. When moving this display – make sure you have at least two people carrying the display. While 75+ lbs doesn’t seem much, the size of the display makes it a bit overwhelming to handle for a single person.

Packaging pictures

The LN-S4695D comes with the following in the packaging:

• Remote control and 2 AAA batteries
• Power cord
• Cleaning cloth
• Cover for the bottom
• Instruction manual
• Warranty card

Input/Output ports

Here is a summary of ports on the back of the display

• 2 – Component video/audio inputs
• 2 – HDMI ports
• 1 – S-Video/Composite video/audio input
• 1 – VGA input for PC
• 1 – Composite video/audio output
• Two antenna connections – one for over the air and one for cable

The LN-S4695D also has a set of side panel jacks which includes the following:

• S-Video/Composite video/audio input
• Headphone jack for private listening

Here’s a picture of the side panel jacks which are located on the left hand side of the display.

Quick Physical Overview

Let’s do a quick run around the television set. Here’s the front of the set:

The surrounding chassis utilizes a smooth gloss finish which I honestly wasn’t sure about initially. I was worried about the possibility of having too much glare from external light sources such as sunlight coming through the window or light sources in front of the display. However, strangely enough, I wasn’t at all distracted by any glare that might occur. If I look hard enough, I might still get annoyed by some glare that occurs here and there but overall, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I thought it would be. What can be annoying with the gloss finish is the ease in which fingerprints and minor scuffs can get onto the chassis. Make sure to use the included cloth to wipe down the display – you don’t want to scratch this beautiful chassis!

Below the screen is the Samsung logo and the power button. When the display is off, the power button shines a cool blue LED light. When you turn on the display, the blue LED light turns off.

Note – OK.. maybe I’m a bit of an old schooler or what not but I’m not a fan of the LED light coming on when the device is supposed to be off. Granted this might indicate the display is in a sleep mode but still.. turn it off! Ok. that’s a pet peeve.

The speaker system is hidden below the front gloss finish. Nice touch designed for those who don’t like television sets that show an unsightly speaker system.

The left side of the display has the side panel jacks – useful for external devices like camcorders and digital cameras.

The right side has controls for basic television settings. Here are the buttons top down.

• Input source selector – toggle between the different video sources
• Menu button to bring up the on screen display
• Volume control
• Channel control

The Samsung LN-S4695D comes with a adequate remote control which is also capable of controlling other devices. If you have a simple home theater system, the included remote might be good enough for your needs (I chose to work with the Logitech 890 instead).

Setting Up

The one thing I wasn’t looking forward to with an LCD display was the notion of having to set up the picture correctly. Luckily the Samsung LN-S4695D was extremely easy to set up. In fact the default picture and color settings on the display were pretty much on target straight out of the box. I did spend a few minutes tuning some settings but not anywhere near as long as I would have feared.

When you first turn on the LN-S4695D, you’ll go through what Samsung calls a “Plug & Play” setup. The P&P setup allows you to setup the menu language, channel settings, and the display time.

I set up the LN-S4695D in two different scenarios. The first set up occurred before we moved to our new home so I briefly hooked it up directly to my Xbox 360 and used the built in speakers. The second set up occurred after we moved so the display was connected to our new Onkyo HDMI switching receiver (which I will try and review later on).

Setup 1:

This was the most straight forward setup. The components to this setup included the Samsung LN-S4695D and an Xbox 360 console. I connected the console to the display using a VGA cable (which I had to purchase separately since it doesn’t come with the Xbox 360). Why use a VGA cable? Well before the Xbox 360 Elite came out, the only way you could get 1080p output from the 360 was via a VGA cable. The VGA cable also comes with left/right audio stereo connectors which I simply plugged into the rear of the display.

Once connected, I fired up both the display and the console and then tried out the Xbox 360 HD DVD player. Wow.. the picture quality was amazing!! The sound output from the LN-S4695D wasn’t too shabby either!

Setup 2:

Setup two is the setup I use today. Most of my video sources are connected to my new Onkyo HDMI switching receiver (model TX-SR804B) which then feeds video the LN-S4695D via a single HDMI connection to the display. The Xbox 360 is also connected directly to the display via the VGA cable (as I mentioned in setup 1). In this setup, I have one spare HDMI input connector on the LN-S4695D which I will eventually use for either the new Xbox 360 Elite (if I get one) or a standalone Blu-ray or HD DVD player. Here’s a breakdown of the components connected to my Samsung LN-S4695D.

Components connected to my Onkyo TX-SR804B

• Motorola DVR cable box (via HDMI)
• Self built Windows Media Center (via DVI->HDMI connector for video and coaxial for audio)
• Nintendo Wii (via Component for video and stereo for audio)
• Apple TV (only optical audio)
• Xbox 360 (only optical audio)

Components connected to LN-S4695D

• Onkyo TX-SR804B (via HDMI)
• Xbox 360 Console (via VGA)
• Apple TV (via Component only)

This setup ONLY works because I have the Logitech Harmony 890 remote control which allows me to control all of the devices using macro driven activities. The 890 turns on all of the relevant components and switches to the proper inputs depending upon the task at hand – but more on this in a later review.

Menus

Once the LN-S4695D is up and running, you can modify settings by pressing the “Menu” button on the display. I have to admit, I’m fairly impressed with the menu display on the LN-S4695D. You get colorful icons and a logically laid out infrastructure which is overlaid on top of the current picture. Here are the following options available when Menu is pressed:

Input

The input menu will display what the current input source is. You can also edit the different input source names if you’re not happy with the default names.

Picture

If you want to modify picture settings, this is the place you’ll be heading off to. From here you can select different modes (including Dynamic Standard, Movie, and Custom). Within each mode, you can go ahead and modify settings such as Contrast, Brightness, Sharpness, Color, Tint, and Color Tone. I’m currently running the display in Movie mode with some minor modifications.

Sound

The sound menu as you would imagine allows you to modify the sound settings for the LN-S4695D. I currently have the sound output disabled on the LN-S4695D since I use a 5.1 speaker system from Axiom Audio. However when the built in sound is enabled, you can control the integrated SRS TruSurround XT technology (which simulates surround sound using the integrated speakers). All told, the sound output isn’t too bad from the LN-S4695D but you won’t get the “oooohs” and “ahhhs” that you’d normally get from a full fledged 5.1/6.1/7.1 surround sound system.

Channel

The Channel menu item allows you to program the channel lineup on the LN-S4695D. Here you can utilize the integrated tuners found on the LN-S4695D by connecting an OTA HDTV antenna or connecting your cable line to the display directly. I’m not utilizing this feature currently.

Setup

The Setup menu controls various display settings such as the display language, clock, timer, game mode (for those times you’re playing on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3), V-Chip, Caption, Menu Transparency, Blue Screen, Color Weakness, PC, Blue Eye, Energy Saving, Function Help

PIP

The Picture in Picture menu option allows you to view a secondary video source on the display. This menu allows you to specify the size and position of the secondary video. The secondary video can come from either the antenna connection or a cable connection. You then select the channel that you’ll want displayed.

Menu Map

The final menu option allows you to find your menu options faster by display a text only view of the entire menu infrastructure.

Usage

As I mentioned in the beginning, I’m not exactly a pro at reviewing television sets but I’ll do my best here! I’ll break things down into the pros and cons of the display.

Pros:

I still remember my first experience in using the LN-S4695D. I turned on the Xbox 360 and saw the 360 opening splash screen and let me just tell you – I was WOW’d by the immense picture. Now you have to understand something – I’m coming from a 34 inch display and moving up to a 46 inch display so the transition was pretty large for me. Not only was I wow’d by the picture size but richness in color and detail was immediately apparent when navigating through the menus.

Once all of my components were connected, I had an immediate appreciation for the overall quality of the Samsung LN-S4695D. First off – HD video signals look wonderful on the display. Whether they’re 720p/1080i signals or pure 1080p signals from my HD DVD player, the quality and resolution was top notch. Colors were accurate reproduced on the LN-S4695D. Heck even the dark colors were surprisingly good. What really surprised me was how good the display looked in all sorts of lighting conditions – from brightly sunlit rooms to dark environments, the display was easy on the eyes. If you turn on energy savings, you can allow the display to lower the overall brightness to conserve power.

Here are some snapshots of Batman Begins on HD DVD:

But let’s go back to the colors for a second. I’ve had a Sony Direct View Tube TV for several years now and I’ve always been impressed with it’s ability to reproduce colors on HD signals. However, the LN-S4695D REALLY impressed me with it’s color reproduction. I was reminded of this recently when I was watching the Discovery Channel’s Planet Earth series. If you haven’t seen the series, you HAVE to watch it on HD – watch it in HD DVD too – don’t bother with DVD if you have an HD DVD player.

But what about standard definition signals you ask? Let me tell ya – you won’t be disappointed with the way the LN-S4695D handles SD video input. If you’re sitting up close, you might notice pixelation from the lower resolution of the signal but if you’re sitting at a normal distance back from the display, then the picture quality is more than acceptable. Of course HD video sources are the way to good but it’s good to know that the Samsung LN-S4695D can handle SD signals well too.

Cons:

I’ll be honest – I had a hard time coming up with a list of cons for the LN-S4695D. The most obvious con would be the limited number of HDMI inputs on the LN-S4695D. There are only two HDMI inputs on this display which is a bit limited with many more devices supporting HDMI output. (note though – the latest generation of 1080p LCD displays from Samsung include three connectors).

As I mentioned earlier, the chassis utilizes a high gloss finish which does seem to scratch or blemish fairly easily. Keep that in mind when you’re moving the display around or if you’re wiping the chassis with a cloth (it’s best to use the included cloth).

While I didn’t really have a problem with black color levels on the LN-S4695D, it’s not necessarily perfect as I’ve seen slightly better black reproduction on higher end plasma displays. Keep in mind though – it’s only slightly better!

Finally, keep in mind that the display includes integrated sound below the display. Sound output is OK but you’ll quickly find yourself wanting a real surround sound system with a display like this.

Summary

I love this display. I absolutely love this display. My wife could tell you how glued I was to the television set after the system was all setup. Connect an HD source to the display,sit back, and watch.. and prepare to be amazed. It’s hard to really knock this display folks. It has 1080p resolutions, supports a wide variety of connectors, accurately reproduces colors, and even makes standard definition video signals look good.

There is one thing to keep in mind – this isn’t the top of the line display from Samsung anymore. They recently refreshed their LCD and plasma lineup which also means the LN-S4695D can be found for quite a good deal. You can easily get the LN-S4695D for around $2200 or less now. That’s a great deal for a 46 inch 1080p display if you ask me.

Let’s summarize the pros and cons here:

Pros:

• Beautiful design
• Integrated ATSC tuner
• Beautiful colors, brightness, and picture quality
• Easy to setup
• Solid menu design

Cons:

• Black color reproduction could be a tad bit better but this is a common problem on LCDs
• Only 2 HDMI ports

Finally, I thought I’d throw in a little note about where I got the TV from. After careful research, I purchased the Samsung LN-S4695D from OneCall.com. Why?

• Great competitive price
• Great shipping
• Great customer service

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Of course by now, I’m sure you’ve read many number of reviews regarding Apple TV so let’s get the obvious out of the way – Apple TV is best summarized as a glorified, networked Apple iPod for the home. That’s not a bad thing of course given the immense success that the iPod has has over the first five years of it’s existence. The challenge is – can Apple TV do to the home living room market what the Apple iPod did to the digital audio player market? Can it redefine what it means to be a networked media player? Let’s find out!

One more thing before we jump into the review. This is mainly a look at the Apple TV device – from features to the user interface to what it’s capable of doing. I’ve stayed away from mentioning the many hacks and mods that have appeared in the last few weeks. However, if you are interested in those hacks and mods, do a simple “Google” search for them and I’m sure you’ll find hundreds if not thousands of links available.

System Requirements:

Here are the system requirements according to Apple.

Macintosh computer:

• Mac OS X system software version 10.3.9 or 10.4.8 or later
• 1GHz Power PC G4 or G5, or an Intel processor
• QuickTime 7.1.5 or later
• 256MB of RAM
• 16 MB video RAM

Windows based computer:

• Windows XP (Home or Professional with SP2)
• 2 GHz Pentium processor or better
• QuickTime 7.1.5 or later (included with iTunes 7.1)
• 512MB of RAM
• 32 MB video RAM

Other requirements:

• iTunes 7.1 or later
• Widescreen ED or HDTV with HDMI, DVI, or component video port and analog audio or optical digital audio ports
• HDMI, HDMI to DVI, or component video cable and analog or optical digital audio cables
• Ethernet or wireless network and a broadband Internet connection
• iTunes account and iTunes content

Packaging:

One look at the Apple TV packaging and you’re reminded of the Apple iPod packaging. It’s basically an elongated iPod box if you ask me!

Here is the front of the packaging.

Here’s the back of the packaging.

Pull out the inner box, and you’ll see the familiar motto – “Designed by Apple in California.” Ahh.. but I wonder who actually manufactures these devices?

Here’s a shot of the inner box opened up. The left side is the Apple TV device while the right side holds the small Apple remote.

The power cable and documentation is found below the Apple TV box. One interesting note – there’s no CD included with the box which means you’ll need to download iTunes yourself from the Apple website.

Here’s a look at everything out of the box:

The front of the Apple TV looks as follows.

Yes that’s it. There’s not much to it, is there? The front right section has two circles. The smaller circle is the status light while the larger circle is the IR receiver for the Apple remote.

Here’s a shot of the back:

From right to left you get:

• Power cable port
• USB port
• Ethernet port
• HDMI port
• Component Video ports
• Analog audio ports
• Optical digital audio port

Everything makes sense except for the USB port. In the Apple TV documentation, the USB port is listed for service and diagnostics. There’s additional information on various other websites about USB possibilities with Apple TV.

Finally, here’s the bottom of Apple TV:

Hooking everything up:

Yes – the Apple TV is a bit of a snob isn’t it? The device requires you to have at least a component video connection or better. Sorry – composite and s-video connections need not apply here. This isn’t to say that you have to have an HDTV. Standard definition television sets with component inputs will work just fine with Apple TV – as long as you can deal with the widescreen output format. Truth is – Apple TV really doesn’t fully utilize HD displays at this time anyhow (but who knows when that will change for the better) so there’s no real rush to get an HDTV because of this device.

Time for a minor gripe. Apple chose not to bundle any sort of cables whatsoever with Apple TV. This means you’ll need to obtain your own set of component cables or HDMI cables depending on your needs. Now granted, these cables can be expensive and Apple doesn’t know what you’ll ultimately need. However, Apple could have at least bundled component cables since most modern television sets come with at least component inputs.

As I listed above, Apple TV supports component video output or HDMI output. For my setup here at home, I chose to use component mostly because I was all out of HDMI inputs. (Companies really have to make an affordable HDMI switching receiver with more than 2 HDMI inputs!).

My setup process was as follows:

1. Connect the component cables and optical cable to the back of the Apple TV device.

2. Connect the Ethernet cable.

3. Connect the power cable.

4. Connect the optical cable to my receiver. (Sorry no pictures here – forgot to take one)

5. Normally, I’d connect my component cables to my receiver but again – I’m out of video inputs on my Onkyo receiver so I’ll be connecting the component cables to my Samsung LCD television set instead.

For my home AV system, I have the Apple TV device connecting to the CD input of my receiver. The Onkyo receiver allows me to rename input channels so the receiver displays “Apple TV” instead.

As you can probably tell, the way I have the device set up isn’t exactly the ideal scenario. I would prefer to hook things up via a single HDMI cable. Instead, I have to make sure my TV is on the right input video source and then I have to make sure my receiver is also set to the proper input source for audio. However, thanks to my Logitech Harmony 890 remote control – everything works seamlessly with a push of a single activity button. Alas – a review of this remote will come later on in the month! (And yes, I did get my 890 remote to work with the Apple TV device).

Starting things up:

This is the first screen you’ll see from Apple TV when everything is connected – the language selection menu. We’ll use English here.

The next screen sets up the display resolution. I have a 46 inch Samsung 1080p LCD display but since Apple TV supports at most 720p/1080i, I’ll stick to 720p for now.

Apple TV will set the output to 720p and then test the display. You need to confirm or cancel the setting. We’ll go ahead and confirm.

After the display setting is checked, Apple TV performs a network connectivity check. This network check also includes a check for Internet access as Apple TV uses your Internet connection to obtain information about the top iTunes movies, music videos, music, and TV shows.

Earlier, you might have noticed that I never mentioned anything about a power button. That’s because the Apple TV doesn’t have one at all. Once you plug the power supply into the device, Apple TV is designed to stay on for good (or at least until a reset). Speaking of resets, you could reset the unit via the remote control if need be. What about power consumption? It’s doubtful the box consumes much power especially since we’re dealing with a mobile processor in the form of the Intel Pentium M and a notebook oriented hard drive.

iTunes, Syncing, and the Apple TV

There are two ways you can get content onto the Apple TV. You can upload/synchronize content onto the box much like an Apple iPod. To accomplish this, you need to have Apple iTunes running on a computer on the same network as the Apple TV device. Alternatively, you can stream content from any system running iTunes on the same local area network. Apple TV is able to connect to at most five different computers via streaming (although you can only interact with a single system at a time of course).

Make sure first of all that you have the latest version of Apple iTunes. Apple TV requires iTunes version 7.1 or greater.

Whether you’re syncing or streaming to an Apple TV device from iTunes, the initial setup is the same. Once you start up iTunes, you will see the Apple TV icon on the left hand side. Click on “Click to set up” and you’ll be asked for the 5 digit passcode from Apple TV.

Apple TV will provide that passcode for you when you want to connect to a new computer system or during the very initial setup of the device. Note – a new unique passcode is generated everytime you want to connect to a new system.

The very first time you are setting up the Apple TV device via iTunes, you can define a new name for the box.

Syncing content to Apple TV

Once Apple TV is authorized for your iTunes, you can begin syncing content to the device from your PC or Mac. iTune’s default action is to automatically sync all of your iTunes content onto the Apple TV device. This might be ok if your library is less than 40 GB in size(actually much less than that – more like 32 GB after all the system software etc) but if you have a larger sized library, then you’ll want to pick and choose what files you want to sync.

Apple TV syncs content according to a priority list. Priority is given in the following order:

• Movies
• TV Shows
• Music
• Podcasts
• Photos

This priority is reversed when it comes time to remove content from the device in order to make room for other content.

Every major multimedia category has it’s own tab within iTunes. Depending on the multimedia format, you can either choose to sync playlists or specific movie files or television shows etc. Yes.. it’s a bit inconsistent if you ask me.

Here’s the tab for movies.

Here’s the tab for TV Shows:

For music, I created a playlist which I called “Apple TV”. I then dragged all the albums that I wanted to sync to the device and then sync’d this playlist to Apple TV. This was far easier than trying to sync my entire music library.

Here’s my unused Podcast tab (yes.. I don’t listen to podcasts… oh well)

For photos, you can sync folders within the “My Pictures” folder or “Pictures” folder under Windows/Windows Vista or you can sync albums from Photoshop Album/Elements.

Content – iTunes to your home media collections

If you think of the Apple TV device as a networked Apple iPod for the television set, then you can expect the device to play the same music file formats as the iPod. This includes MP3, AAC, protected AAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV file formats.

For video, you get support similar to the iPod video device. Apple TV supports H.264 video files (protected and unprotected), iTunes Store purchased content, and MPEG-4 video files.

For pictures, Apple TV supports JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, and PNG file formats.

As you can see, there’s no support for third party formats like DivX, OGG etc. Thus if you have a large collection of DivX video files, then you’ll need to convert them into either MP4 or H.264 formats. According to Apple’s technical specifications, the video files have to fall into the following specifications.

For H.264, the files can have a maximum bitrate of up to 5 Mbps, and utilize the Progressive Main Profile (CAVLC) with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps. The maximum resolution is 1280 x 720 at 24 fps or 960 x 540 at 30 fps.

For MPEG-4, the files can have a maximum bitrate of up to 3 Mbps, and utilize the Simpe Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps. The maximum resolution is 720 x 432 at 30 fps.

There are a number of third party applications which can help you convert content from one video format into one that is compatible with Apple TV. Keep in mind that video conversion is something that is typically very CPU intensive. I’m currently working with Ahead’s Nero 7 software to re-encode video into something compatible with Apple TV.

Another possibility for getting television shows onto the Apple TV box is to utilize BroadClip’s MediaCatcher software which was originally designed for the iPod but should work equally well for Apple TV.

The Apple TV User Interface

Apple TV’s user interface is truly one of simplicity. If you’re used to an Apple iPod (and really.. most of you reading are), then this will feel right at home. Everything about the Apple TV device is controlled via the small Apple remote. Here’s a snapshot of the top level screen for Apple TV.

From top to bottom, you get:

• Movies
• TV Shows
• Music
• Podcasts
• Photos
• Settings
• Sources

To scroll down the menu, you simply press the +/- buttons on your Apple TV remote. To select a menu item, you press the play/pause button. To go back up a menu, you press the “menu” button. There are good and bad things to like about the Apple remote. First the good things. It’s easy to use and if you’re familiar with the iPod, then you’ll feel right at home here. Unfortunately there’s no scroll wheel which means navigating through long lists of files means holding down a + or – button. Similar to how the Microsoft Zune works, the menu items will scroll by faster the longer you press and hold a button.

Now the bad – the remote is a bit too simplistic. Since Apple TV does not support a search/query interface you can’t type out the name of a movie or artist that you’re looking for. But even if it did have such an interface, you’d have a problem entering letters using the included remote. Additionally, Apple could have updated the remote for the Apple TV device. The +/- buttons make you think you can control the volume level when in fact you can’t. What’s up with that? Of course you wouldn’t be controlling the volume anyhow since the device is designed to work with an external amplifier.

Movies

Click into the “Movies” section and you’ll get something that looks as follows:

The right hand side will list the top movies in iTunes, the latest trailers available online and the movies stored on your Apple TV device. These could be movies purchased via iTunes (which is what Apple will want you to do of course) or they could be movies you ripped/encoded yourself. The snapshot here shows two movies purchased via iTunes – The Danish Poet and Star Trek VIII:First Contact. The left hand side is reserved for either a snapshot of the currently selected movie or a picture of the movie poster if downloaded via iTunes. You’ll also find additional content about the movie (such as movie rating, description, cast, length etc) if it was purchased via iTunes.

If we click over to the “iTunes Top Movies” menu item, you’ll get all the top movie poster pictures scrolling by along the left hand side. Clicking into the iTunes Top Movies will show you something like this:

Again, movie information (including the poster art) is displayed on the left hand side. If you select one of these iTunes Top Movies, you’ll see a quick trailer preview for the movie. Unfortunately you can not purchase movies directly via Apple TV. This list of Top Movies is strictly for previewing purposes only. If you wish to then purchase the movie, you need to go to your PC or Mac and buy it via iTunes.

Clicking into the “Theatrical Trailers” section also reveals a similar display of movies and information. Think of this as basically a new way of displaying the movie trailers section on Apple’s website. When you select a trailer, Apple TV will download the trailer directly from the net and display it onto your screen. Apple TV will not download the HD versions of the trailer which is a shame should you have an HDTV display. We suppose this is to ensure videos are downloaded and streamed to your display in a timely manner but I wouldn’t mind waiting a bit if it meant that I could see a higher quality trailer.

So what about movie playback? As most of you already know by now, Apple iTunes does not currently sell HD quality videos which means the content being purchased on iTunes really is not a good fit for those of you with HDTV displays. We’re sure that Apple will eventually sell HD quality videos via iTunes but for now, don’t expect much from iTunes.

On a side note – One wonders what will happen when Apple does launch HD video downloads. What about all the movies that have already been purchased in lower resolutions? Will these users have to pay a full price again to get HD quality or will there be a discounted price for HD movies if you’ve already purchased the movies before. The Xbox 360 pricing model actually works well in this case. If you purchase an HD movie, you are also eligible to download the standard definition quality version. Here’s hoping Apple will do the same too.

Here’s a snapshot of the movie playback quality.

On a 46 inch 1080p display, it’s clear that the video quality really isn’t up to snuff. In fact, large high resolution displays will emphasize the poor quality of the movie downloads. If you’re watching on a smaller display or a standard definition display, you probably won’t mind the quality of the iTunes movie downloads. Unfortunately, I’ve been somewhat spoiled by the Xbox Video Marketplace so this just doesn’t cut it for me.

To play back movies, simply select the movie with your remote control and press play on your remote control. If you ever stop movie playback and come back to the movie, you’ll be prompted with two choices – either resume from where you were or start over:

Movies purchased via iTunes comes with chapter support which means you can skip through the movie to defined chapter points. As you skip through the chapters, Apple TV will display the chapter title as you skip through the movie (these titles should match the titles in the DVD version of the movie).

TV Shows

When you click into “TV Shows”. you get basically two types of menu items – one is the “iTunes Top TV Episodes” and the other is a list of all the television shows you have in the library. You can sort the television shows by date or by show name:

Here’s what the “iTunes Top TV Episodes” looks like when you click into it. It’s equivalent to the other iTunes Top lists. You can view a preview of the television show but that’s about it.

Interested in watching your purchased television shows? Here’s what it looks like when you click into a television show series such as Battlestar Galactica. Here I purchased a good portion of season three:

The right hand side lists all the episodes for a particular television show series. The left hand side shows poster art and information about the currently selected episde.

Here’s a snapshot of an episode being played back:

Music

When you click into the “Music” section of Apple TV, you’re presented with the following menu items on the right hand side:

• iTunes Top Songs
• iTunes Top Music Videos
• Shuffle Songs
• Music Videos
• Playlists
• Artists
• Albums
• Songs
• Genres
• Composers
• Audiobooks

The left hand side displays random album covers which are constantly being shuffled. The album cover art is dependent on the menu selection you’re currently at. I’ll spend a little bit of time on each of the menu categories.

The “iTunes Top Songs” is equivalent to the iTunes Top Movies menu selection.

Click into the menu selection and you’ll get a list of the top 10 songs on iTunes right now. You’ll also see the appropriate album cover art and information on the left hand side. Again – Apple only provides a snippet of the song here. You have no option to purchase music via the Apple TV device. You’ll need to go to your Mac or PC and purchase it through iTunes there.

The “iTunes Top Music Videos” displays the current top selling music videos on iTunes.

Again – same concepts as before. You get a snapshot of the video and if you select a song, you’ll get a snippet of the music video. No purchase option of course.

“Shuffle Songs” is exactly that – you’re telling Apple TV to shuffle through all the songs loaded onto your device.

Click into “Music Videos” and you’ll see a list of the music videos that you’ve purchased through iTunes sorted by artist.

Here, I’ve purchased a single music video from Justin Timberlake via iTunes and synced it to the device. Again- don’t expect high definition video quality.

The other menu items under “Music” are pretty much the same thing. Click into playlists, artists, albums, songs, genres, composers, and audiobooks, and you’ll get a complete listing of content organized by that genre. The album cover art changes accordingly as a result.

Music playback quality is quite good via the Apple TV device but that is of course relative to the bitrate you encoded your music in.

Playing back a song… a wee bit boring

I’ve dedicated a separate section just for the act of playing back music. Why you might ask? I find it pretty boring on Apple TV and I’m somewhat disappointed here. Consider – most of us are used to simple visualizations on our computers when we play back music. Heck WinAmp users have been using visualizations since forever now. Why do we use them? Because they’re appealing and well.. funky to look at. It’s something for the brain to wander off to.

At first glance, things look promising. You get the album cover art on the left hand side of the screen with a scroll bar on the bottom. After a few seconds, the album cover art will flip to the right.. and then back to the left. *yawn*.

Most of the screen real estate space is actually wasted with nothing but a black background. If you have a screen saver enabled, it will kick in after a few moments depending on your configurations. The screen saver itself is pretty cool because you get a nice flow of images going up the screen – flipping around every once in a while. Unfortunately even the screen saver gets a bit boring after some time. Unless you’ve loaded the device with a ton of pictures, you’ll quickly be bored with the screen saver too.

Playback visualizations is something that I feel Microsoft has actually done a great job with under Windows Media Center – espcially on Windows Vista. I hate to say it but Apple could learn a thing or two here from Microsoft!!!

Podcasts

The podcasts section will show you all the podcasts that have been sync’d to the Apple TV device via iTunes. Sorry.. I don’t use podcasts so I didn’t try this out. Yes.. I must be one of the few people out there not into podcasts. Go figure.

Photos

The “Photos” section lists the following menu items:

• Slideshow Settings
• Sync’d Albums

Under “Slideshow Settings” you can customize the following settings:

• Time Per Slide (select from 2, 3, 5, 10, 20 seconds)
• Music – (select from the library, or playlists)
• Repeat setting (on or off)
• Shuffle Photos (on or off)
• Shuffle Music (on or off)
• Ken Burns Effect (on or off.. but really.. who wants this off?)
• Transitions (select from Random, cube, dissolve, droplet, fade through black, flip, mosaic flip large, mosaic flip small, page flip, push, reveal, twirl, and wipe)

The slideshow playback feature is a pretty nifty feature although certainly not unique to this device. You simply select a sync’d photo album and Apple TV will begin playback of the pictures based on the settings you’ve selected. Apple TV will also play random music from the playlist you’ve selected to accompany your slideshow.

Photo playback is the one area where Apple TV really excels in utilizing high resolution displays. Pictures are sharp and colors are vibrant on an HD display. If there’s one complaint I have with the Photo section is the inability for me to skip through the music as the slideshow progresses through the music playlist. You’re pretty much stuck to the music playing at that moment.

Settings

The “Settings” section lists the following menu items:

• About
• TV resolution
• Network
• Screen Saver
• Repeat Music
• Sound Check
• Sound Effects
• HDMI Brightness
• Pair Remote
• Update Software
• Language
• Legal
• Reset Settings

Some highlights from these menu items:

The “About” menu item gives you a brief informational overview of your system. You’ll see how much disk space is available, what your TV resolution setting is, and network information. Here’s a snapshot of it here.

The “TV resolution” menu item is where you can change your output video resolution.

I have it set for 720p on my display. If you happen to select a display resolution/frequency which isn’t supported on your display, don’t worry – Apple TV will revert back if you can’t seem to see the output.

The “Network” menu item allows you to configure your network settings and also shows you your current IP and MAC address.

The “Screen Saver” menu item is where you can program the various screen saver related settings.

You can choose when the screen saver can kick in, when to use it, and what content should be used by your screen saver. You can choose Logos, Albums, or Photos. I currently have it set for Photos which is displaying all of my wedding pictures.

“Update Software” allows Apple TV to check online for any new software updates. This is certainly a nice must have feature of Apple TV – especially in light of the fact that there is no media slot or disk drive on the unit.

Sources

The “Sources” menu item shows you the various media sources available to Apple TV.

You can of course listen and watch content stored on your Apple TV library (which is synced from a computer on your network). You can also connect and stream content from up to five other iTunes enabled PCs or Macs. Everytime you want to add a new iTunes enabled system to your Apple TV device, you’ll need to give it a unique passcode.

Remember – you can also stream content from the same computer you sync’d from.

The Pros and Cons

Let me preface this section and remind all of you where I’m coming from. First off, I’m a Windows user so there’s probably some bias in my writing here. I’ve always respected Apple hardware and software products and there have been many instances where I wished I had an Apple system instead of a Windows based PC. At the end of the day, I’m still a Windows user (and a Windows Vista user too!)

Ok.. with that said, let’s jump into the pros and cons of the Apple TV device.

Pros:

Apple TV is all about KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Hardware setup is dead simple. Apple TV is incredibly easy to set up which goes a long way towards making sure it’s accepted by the general public and not just by the technical elite. If you know how to hook up a DVD player to your TV and/or AV system, then you already know how to connect the Apple TV device. The only difference is connecting the Ethernet cable or connecting the device to your wireless network.

Software setup is also dead simpel. Setting up the hardware is easy but setting up the software is even easier in our opinion. If you know how to sync an iPod, then syncing to an Apple TV is just as easy. The only complication comes if your iTunes library is larger than the Apple TV hard drive (which isn’t hard to accomplish). You’ll then need to pick and choose the content to sync to your Apple TV a bit more carefully. Apple chose to emphasize video content over music content with Apple TV (which is evident in how it decides to copy/remove data from Apple TV) which makes sense given the name of the product. If you wanted to just listen to music, then purchasing an Apple iPod makes much more sense than an Apple TV device.

Downloadable content to the masses? Apple TV further opens the doors to downlodable content – albeit the doors to the Apple iTunes storefront. What does this mean for you and I? More content will be available online which translates to faster access to content. Sure the Xbox 360 has that today, and in many ways offers high quality video content. However, nothing currently beats the size and popularity of Apple iTunes – whether it’s movies, music videos, or music.

Imagine a day when you say to yourself – Gee.. I want to watch this movie like.. NOW. OK. Just go on iTunes, purchase the movie, download it, and watch it right on your Apple TV device. Simple enough!

Ease of use. Keeping with the KISS tradition, Apple TV is a cinch to use. The menu system makes a great deal of sense and navigating through all the selections is simple with the included remote control. Again – if you know how to use an iPod, then Apple TV will feel right at home in your living room. As many other reviewers have mentioned before, the Apple TV is basically a networked video supporting iPod.

Portable multimedia storage. Apple TV makes portable multimedia content even more of a reality. Think of it. Just sync all of your favorite music, movies, TV shows, and photos onto your Apple TV. Disconnect it from your A/V system and bring it with you wherever you want (as long as they have a component or HDMI connector). Multimedia portability made simple if you ask us! Once you have the content on your Apple TV, you can simply take it anywhere without the explicit need for a network connection. Yes, it’s not a portable media player but that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about taking your content to someone else’s home and easily connecting it to their display with the best possible video connections like component or HDMI. Once HD content is more readily available on iTunes, Apple TV’s world will change for the better.

Cons:

40 GB Hard Drive – what gives? Hard drives are dirt cheap these days Apple. Couldn’t you have plopped in at least an 80GB hard disk drive into the device? What are we going to do with 40GB of hard drive space? I suppose we’ll end up streaming everything from iTunes then over time. Yes there are mods out there that let you upgrade the hard drive to something larger but come on.. give us more space. Didn’t you learn anything from Microsoft’s inclusion of a paltry 20 GB HDD in the Xbox 360? Load your favorite music, photos, and movies and you’ll see that 40 GB of space just doesn’t cut it.

Limited format support. Yes, this isn’t surprising. In fact, one should expect this from Apple especially when you consider they want to sell more content from iTunes as a result of Apple TV. However, it would have been nice for Apple to support other video formats such as the popular DivX format. It’s not hard for the device to support a new format and one could easily keep it updated via the Update Software setting. However, it comes down to dollars and cents in our opinion. Apple wants you to purchase legal content from their website. With that said, it’s not impossible to get content into the proper Apple TV formats. We just wish you wouldn’t have to.

ITunes video quality stinks. That might be a bit rough but it’s true. It’s an interesting situation of course. Apple first enforces the fact that the device needs at least a component video connector. But once you make sure you have all the proper equipment on hand, they disappoint you with the quality of the downloadable content. We’re sure this will change over time but who knows when Apple will introduce HD quality content. Of course the problem might be how to deliver large files over iTunes in a timely manner but come on.. the Xbox 360 allows for this! Yes you wait some time for HD content to get downloaded but the image quality is worth it! In any event, what you currently have with iTunes is content which is ultimately blurry and washed out at best. It certainly makes me wish I viewed Apple TV on my small computer monitor rather than on a 46 inch LCD display. Thus – don’t buy the Apple TV device expecting to have access to a wide array of HD or even DVD quality downloadable videos at this time.

Movie audio quality could be better. OK. You might have been wondering about audio support – especially in light of the fact that Quicktime supports 5.1 audio playback. Unfortunately, Apple TV downmixes everything to two channel stereo sound. Great. I’ve got an optical connection to my receiver and I’m sending it two channel digital sound. Sounds lovely right? Yeah.. but five discrete channels would have been better! Again, this will probably change over time but for the here and now, this is rather lacking.

Remote control – small, cute but otherwise useless. Yes it’s easy to use and yes it reminds you of iPod controls. But let’s think about it. This is a home oriented device which means you really should provide additional controls to your remote. There are times where keeping it simple just doesn’t cut it anymore. Even a simple numeric keypad would have been appreciated. A numeric keypad in conjunction with a search interface would allow users a quicker way to find their content on the device. If you’ve got yourself a large list of artists stored on the Apple TV device, then using the remote can be a pain sometimes.

Why can’t I buy directly on Apple TV? This is perhaps my biggest complaint with Apple TV. We’re teased with Apple TV’s ability to show us what is currently popular on iTunes yet we can not purchase any of that content. Of course adding support for this would probably complicate the user interface somewhat but come on – we’re all lazy right? I know I am. I don’t want to have to get up from my couch, walk over to my computer, and purchase the movie, music video, or TV show. I want to be able to do all of that right there on my Apple TV and then also have the ability to download the same content onto my computer later on. Is it so much to ask? I think not. Perhaps Apple will add this feature later on too. Anything is possible right?

Other minor complaints

Media playback stops when you go to the top level menu screen. Why? I’m playing back an album and I go to the top menu to see what else is available on the Apple TV device. Once I hit the top menu, music playback stops. Why? It’d be nice if Apple took a cue from Windows Media Center and allow music playback to continue until the user either stops playback or selects something else to play.

I mentioned this one earlier – When you’re playing a slideshow, you can’t skip through the songs being played back. This isn’t a problem if you set up a specific playlist for your slideshow but if you’re listening to your entire music collection, I’m sure there are some songs you don’t want to hear. Let us skip through it!

Oh yes – one more gripe which I mentioned earlier – what about bundled component or HDMI cables? Come on Apple – don’t be so cheap please!

Finally this isn’t really a complaint of Apple TV itself but rather the iTunes software application. Apple – please make the server component of iTunes into a background process, Windows service or daemon. It’s a bit annoying that iTunes always has to run on the desktop in order for Apple TV to stream or sync content. This isn’t a problem if all of your content is being played directly from Apple TV’s integrated hard drive of course.

Comparisons

I thought it would nice to compare the Apple TV device against two other products that I use regularly in my home – an Xbox 360 console and a Microsoft Windows Media Center PC.

Cost comparison

From a pure cost perspective, Apple TV is cheap at $299 while an Xbox 360 with a 20 GB HDD checks in at $499. However, the Xbox 360 is useful by itself – you don’t need a PC to connect to in order for the system to download content or play music, games etc. Another thing to keep in mind – you can really do far more with an Xbox 360 than a comparable Apple TV device. An Apple TV requires an external computer system to get content from which is an important consideration when you factor in costs. Of course, if you’re purchasing an Apple TV, there’s a good chance you already have a computer. Finally, a Windows Media Center PC costs the most but it’s also is an entirely self contained device. Prices will range from cheap systems in the 500 dollar range to over $3K for super high end systems.

Setup comparisons

Both the Apple TV and the Microsoft Xbox 360 are extremely easy to setup. You simply connect the cables and power up the devices and you’re up and running. Both devices require a network connection to get things rolling with the Xbox 360 requiring an Internet connection in order for you to purchase digital content. Apple TV requires a computer to sync with which MIGHT need an Internet connection should you want to purchase online content.

As for home theater PCs such as a Windows Media Center system, setting things up is far, far more complicated. You have to worry about how to connect the video output from your PC to the television set (unless you happen to have a rare HDMI output connector on your PC). You’ll probably have to deal with the underlying OS’s user interface to perform tasks such as updating the system. Let’s not forget boot times mind you. PC’s are not exactly quick starters. While booting, there’s also a chance you’ll see ugly POST screens – especially in the Windows world. Yes.. HTPC’s are far from simple to set up.

Video support comparison

Both Apple and Microsoft support their respective video file format standards. Apple TV supports H.264 and MPEG-4 video file formats. The Xbox 360 supports Microsoft’s proprietary WMV file format (but will add H.264 and MPEG-4 shortly) but is also capable of playing back DVDs thanks to it’s built in DVD player. If you feel like spending a bit more cash, you can also purchase an HD DVD player for the Xbox 360. There are additional ways for getting non-WMV content onto the Xbox 360 but we won’t get into that here. Clearly both platforms stress the importance of staying with their respective proprietary file formats. Both platforms stress the importance of staying with their respective platforms primarily due to proprietary DRM standards. You could argue FairPlay and PlaysForSure are open.. but how many devices out there support both platforms? Both platforms lack support for third party formats like DivX. The Xbox 360 presents a more complete home theater package when you consider the bundled DVD player and the ability to connect to Windows Media Center PCs as well as Windows systems on the network.

The most flexible platform would be a Windows Media Center based PC (or any HTPC platform really – it could be a BeyondTV setup, a MythTV setup, a Mac mini etc). The point is – a computer gives you the most flexibility because it allows you to install as many video codecs as possible. Unfortunately setting up a computer to work with a television set is a bit more difficult as a result.

Audio support comparison

The audio side of things is somewhat reminiscent of the video side. Both Apple TV and the Xbox 360 support MP3 file formats and they both support their own proprietary file formats as well. Of course a computer such as a Windows Media Center based PC would again provide you the most flexibility. Why? If you don’t have the proper codec, just download and install the codec yourself. Easy!

Online content comparison

For Apple, it’s all about iTunes. You can purchase all of your music, music videos, movies, and TV shows via iTunes. The only catch? You need to purchase the content from a PC or a Mac and then sync it to the Apple TV.

For Microsoft, everything is about the Xbox Live network and the various marketplaces that are available as a result. Right now, the Xbox 360 has the Video marketplace feature in place which allows console owners the ability to purchase and download TV shows, and movies. The really great thing? You can purchase the content directly from the Xbox 360 console. There’s no need to go to a PC to do any of this. You can not purchase music at this time via the Xbox Live network although you could purchase music from say the Zune marketplace and then stream such content to the Xbox 360. Otherwise, you can connect digital audio players (even the iPod) to the 360, connect external hard drives, or stream content directly from a PC.

As for home theater PCs like Windows Media Center – downloadable content is typically relegated to third party applications such as Amazon Unbox. There are several vendors which provide MCE applets which you can then purchase and download content directly from the MCE interface. Of course Media Center systems also come with applets for MTV, VH1 and other vendors as well.

User interface comparison

OK.. I’m a bit biased here. To me – Windows Media Center’s user interface rocks. Microsoft’s been working on it for many many years now and it’s a thing of beauty. This is not to say that Apple TV’s user interface is bad. On the contrary, it’s quite good although somewhat simplistic. Ironically, the Xbox 360’s Dashboard UI is a bit clunky in comparison to both Apple TV and Windows Media Center. The Xbox 360 Dashboard works well for gaming but could use a little more improvement when it comes to the Xbox Live Video Marketplace.

So what does this all mean?

Why present all this information? Because I believe in providing a clear balanced look at the Apple TV device in relation to other established competitors out there. Keep in mind that I haven’t even discussed the many other third party media center like devices out there too! The truth is – there are only a couple of devices that would be considered similar in scope to the Apple TV device. This includes the Xbox 360, the Sony Playstation 3, and even the likes of TiVo. I’ve stuck with the Xbox 360 and the Windows Media Center platform mostly because I have the most experience with these devices but don’t for a second forget about other possibilities.

Here’s what we do know from all this information thus far. Apple TV is a simple easy to use device that works in conjunction with a computer running iTunes on a local area network. Does it need a computer to be on in order for it to run? Not after the initial synchronization. Once content is delivered to the device, Apple TV simply works. Watch your movies, television shows, music videos, or listen to your music all from the comfort of your living room (or whatever room it’s hooked up to).

Everything about Apple TV is designed around ease of use. From the ease of setup, to the software synchronization, to the user interface. It’s a simple device period.

However, simplicity does come at a price. Apple TV is not the be all, end all of the digital living room and it’s not quite the revolutionary device that some of us were hoping it to be. If anything, Apple TV represents a new step in Apple’s evolutionary development. It doesn’t really propel the current state of affairs in the digital television world either except in the areas of setup and ease of use. Power users will find it lacking in capabilities and will yearn for hacks and modifications to make the device more powerful. The device lacks several key components such as true HD offerings/downloads and an integrated store front. In fact, the Microsoft Xbox 360 is in some ways more advanced in it’s video offerings than what you find with Apple TV. It has an integrated store front in the form of the Xbox Video Marketplace and it plays games to boot! Yes it costs more but it’s also more capable in many ways.

So where does this leave Apple TV? In all honestly, I thought about it for some time and I realized that the Apple TV is the platform for the rest of us! Whether we like it or not, iTunes is one of the most popular online media store fronts on the Internet and Apple TV can easily tap into all of this content. With so much content from iTunes available on so many computers out there, it’s easy to see how Apple TV could actually succeed. Users can now watch the very same television shows that they were previously viewing on their iPods on their television sets. People can listen to their music fromt he comfort of their couch. Now that’s easy living! The Xbox 360 has a ton of potential of course. Microsoft already offers downloadable HD content but their online music subscription service for the 360 is non-existent. You’ll need to go through the Zune marketplace and that represents fragmentation which simply doesn’t exist in the iTunes world. Finally, people think of the Xbox 360 as a gaming console first – not a multimedia entertainment system (even if it really is these days). Apple TV? It’s clearly a digital media box.

To summarize, I’ll repeat what I said in the beginning. Apple TV is a glorified networked Apple iPod. It’s easy to use and it just works. It’s not necessarily better than other products out there and it’s certainly not perfect but in many ways, it’s more than enough for most of us.

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A look around..

The first thing that struck me when I picked up the packaging was how heavy the product was in my hands. I just wasn’t expecting the product to weigh as much as it did (Sorry – I don’t have the actual weight with me but I’ll try and get that info for you later on).

Here are pictures of the outside of the box:

Let’s open up the box shall we?

Here’s everything laid out in front of the camera.

The Xbox 360 HD DVD player comes with the following:

• Xbox 360 HD DVD Player
• Universal Remote Control
• Two AA batteries
• Hi-Speed USB 2.0 cable
• Power Supply
• AC Power Cord

Here are pictures of the HD DVD player itself. Doesn’t it look like a mini Xbox 360 console? I thought so.

One thing to note about the back – the Xbox 360 HD DVD player has a built in USB hub which is great for those who have several 360 accessories using the current USB ports.

Microsoft also packaged the Xbox 360 Universal Remote Control which is different from the remote control that came with my original premium system. Here is a close up snapshot of the two remotes.

I have no real use for this universal remote since I have the Logitech Universal remote but if you don’t have a universal remote, then you should enjoy the one bundled with the Xbox 360 HD DVD player.

One final thing – the player comes with a copy of King Kong on HD DVD for a limited time.

Setting things up

Setting up the new Xbox 360 HD DVD player is extremely easy. It boils down to the following steps:

1. Make sure your Xbox 360 is updated with the HD DVD player software installed (The package comes with a disc you put into the Xbox 360 drive)
2. Find a place to put the HD DVD player
3. Connect the player to the power supply
4. Connect the player to your Xbox 360 via the USB cable
5. (optional) Connect any devices to the HD DVD player’s USB ports
6. Configure your console display settings if need be for HD viewing

Let’s spend a bit more time on the setup portion.

First up – there’s the software installation. The HD DVD player comes with a disc which you place right into the Xbox 360 DVD drive. Once you pop it in, the 360 console will also inform you that there’s an update available. The whole software setup process took less than 30 seconds to perform on my console.

Now came the hardest part – finding a place for the player and hooking up the cables.  I have the Xbox 360 lying on its side beneath my Sony HDTV (which is a Direct View/Tube HDTV – one heavy motha..) so there really wasn’t a whole lot of room for another device. I finally decided to simply stack the HD DVD player on top of the Xbox 360 console as pictured here.

There are usually two downsides to external devices. One – you have yet another device to connect and two – you have yet another power brick to deal with. The Xbox 360 HD DVD player’s brick is definitely smaller than the Xbox 360 power brick.. but it’s still another brick to contend with.

All you have left to do is to connect the USB cable between the Xbox 360 and the Xbox 360 HD DVD player. If you already have something connected to the back of the 360 – no worries here. The HD DVD player comes with a built in USB hub offering two additional USB ports. I have an Xbox Live Vision camera which was originally connected to the back of the Xbox 360. It’s now connected to the HD DVD player instead.

Once everything was connected, the system was ready to rock and roll! Here’s a video that I took of the Xbox 360 and the HD DVD player connected:

Start up the 360 and you’ll notice practically nothing different. The only real indication that something is different is with the lower portion of the Dashboard where you now have an option of either opening the integrated DVD drive or the external HD DVD drive. You select which drive to open by selecting the upper or lower half of the circle on the lower left. You’ll know you’re dealing with the HD DVD drive because it’ll say so and you’ll see the HD DVD logo.

So what’s the point for all of this?

Ah yes – so why did we buy an HD DVD player again?

Well it’s all about the content of course! With the HD DVD player connected, you’;; be able to instantly enjoy the growing collection of HD DVD discs out there. Of course there’s a format war brewing between HD DVD and Blu-ray but we won’t really discuss that here.  The point is – if you own an Xbox 360, you now have the option of upgrading to HD DVD playback from the standard DVD playback that the Xbox 360 initially supported. Of course all of this really only matters to people who own HDTV sets with their Xbox 360.

You might be wondering – I own a 720p/1080i HDTV – will I be able to enjoy this? You betcha! HD DVD titles were clearly sharper on my 720p/1080i display vs the corresponding DVD version of the same title. For those of you curious - my Xbox 360 is connected to my home theater system via component cables.

I had a few movie titles on hand where I had both the HD DVD version and the DVD version. The titles were King Kong, Apollo 13 and Batman Begins. I played back both the DVD versions and the HD DVD versions and it was just so obvious that the HD DVD versions were WAY better. The HD DVD versions of the titles were sharper, brighter, and more vibrant at times than the DVD counterparts. I wish I had snapshots of the pictures but you’ll just have to believe me when I tell you that the video output from the Xbox 360 HD DVD player was worth it for the price. Your mileage may vary depending on the title of course. Certain older movies won’t show as much or any gain but newer movie titles should look better on HD DVD.

The good stuff…

Let’s briefly sum up some of the positive aspects about the Xbox 360 HD DVD player.

• It’s inexpensive. At $199, you get the player, the cables, a King Kong HD DVD disc, and a universal remote control. Let’s also not forget that an Xbox 360 + HD DVD player is a far better value than a standalone HD DVD player right now.
• It’s EASY to set up
• You’ll instantly see the beauty of HD DVD as long as you have a 720p/1080i or better HDTV
• The drive is quiet and easy to use

On final note – if you want 1080p resolutions, you’ll need to connect the Xbox 360 to your television set via the VGA output (and of course assuming your televion set supports 1080p resolutions).

UPDATE: Nov.25th, 2006

Some people have noted that they are getting 1080p to work over component. If you have an HDTV that can actually handle 1080p over component, then you can probably do 1080p out from your HD DVD. However, this does not mean you can upscale your DVD content to 1080p over the component lines.

and some of the bad stuff..

The answer to that is simply – YES. The Xbox 360 HD DVD player is an external option which means more wires and another power supply to deal with.

I felt it was necessary to mention this – I did run into two instances where the HD DVD player seemed to crap out on me. The first time was in playing the included King Kong HD DVD where the video would stutter every so often. A simple reset fixed that. The second time something happened was when I was playing back Batman Begins. Right in the 2nd chapter, the video completely freezes resulting in a reset. I haven’t had a problem since but I thought it was important to mention this. Of course, given the complexity of the software decoder used for the HD DVD player, I’m sure we’ll see some glitches here and there. The nice thing? It’s easily patchable by Microsoft via Xbox Live.

The other problem is more of a problem with the Xbox 360 itself. The console currently does not offer HDMI output which could lead to a problem. Movie studios COULD program HD DVD discs to display at a lower resolution when outputting via component video cables. Why? When video is sent over the component cables, it’s unencrypted which means you’ll potentially have the ability to record it. With HDMI in place, HDCP couild be used to protect the content. The titles that I’ve played with thus far are all far better on HD DVD than in DVD formats but who knows if that will continue.

Finally, the biggest problem is the format war of course. No one knows who will win but if Blu-ray does win, then you’ll probably find less and less HD DVD content available for sale (if any at all over time). If you enjoy your HD DVD titles, then it’s important to spread the word! Make sure movie studios realize HD DVD is a viable path for movies.

A little Q&A:

Here are some questions (and answers) about the Xbox 360 HD DVD player that people have asked on the Xbox.com forums.

Q: Will the HD DVD player upconvert current DVD titles

A: If you use component cables, the player will not upconvert DVD titles. If you connect a VGA cable between the 360 and the TV set, you can upconvert your DVD titles to 720p, 1080i, or 1080p – depending on what your TV supports

Q: What resolutions can the HD DVD player play back HD DVD titles at?

A: If your 360 player is connected via component cables, then you can play back at 720p or at 1080i. Update (11/25/2006) – If you have an HDTV which supports 1080p over component, then you can view 1080p from your 360 via the HD DVD player (but no upscaling of other content mind you). If you are connected via the VGA cable, then you have the option of displaying HD DVD titles at 1080p. AGAIN – this is assuming your television set supports the resolutions in question.

Q: Will the HD DVD player play back regular DVD titles?

A: Yes!

Q: Is the HD DVD player noisy?

A: Not at all. I don’t even think I can hear it when it’s on. Once the movie is going, I definitely don’t hear a thing!

Summary

HD DVD finally comes to the Xbox 360 via the Xbox 360 HD DVD Player. With the player in hand, you can easily start enjoying the HD DVD revolution now – assuming of course you have an HDTV on hand. Yes – there are some open issues that are not yet resolved. What will movie companies do with component video output playback? Will Microsoft ever release HDMI connectors for the 360? Will HD DVD prevail or will Blu-ray kick it’s butt?? All important questions that just can’t be answered right now. However, if you want an inexpensive way to get into the HD DVD revolution, then the Xbox 360 HD DVD player is the way to go – assuming of course you already own an Xbox 360. If you don’t have the game console and you don’t want the game console, you’ll probably be better served with a standalone HD DVD player. For the gamers out there – this a great easy solution for the here and now.

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