TechLore - Lurker at the Threshold

Product Review: LG DP889 Portable DVD Player

Yog-Sothoth — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 23:03:17 GMT

While on a family vacation to Disney World recently, I realized how bad the battery in my laptop had gotten—it would only work for about an hour of DVD watching, so I explored some portable power options. I found a few, but none that added more than a half hour to a laptop's battery time. Discouraged, I said "WTH" and looked at portable DVD players. I found a unique one listed on Circuit City's web site, so I had to get it - the LG DP889 "Portable DVD Player & Digital Photo Frame" (8" widescreen; $229, but I saved some with a 10% coupon). Instead of a lengthy discussion, a list of positives and negatives would be better: POSITIVES Can view photos. Has a USB port; you can connect flash drives to view photos and listen to music. The manual is not accurate, as it states that a direct camera connection is not supported—it worked well with the two digital cameras I tried. Has a media card slot. Plays MP3s. I copied a bunch to an SD card for my future trips. 256MB onboard memory (used to copy music and pictures from USB or media card). A/V inputs—yes, that's right—...

HD Format War Over: Blu-ray Wins

Yog-Sothoth — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:10:37 GMT

It's done. For those of you who have been hesitant in buying one format or the other, now you don't have to decide. From High Def Digest: Following several days of rumors, Toshiba has confirmed that it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders, effectively ending the high-def format war. In a just-issued press release , the company said that it reached the decision following "recent major changes in the market." Toshiba emphasized that it will continue to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products. var federated_media_section = ''; “We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop,” said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation. "While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality.” Toshiba said it will begin reducing shipments of HD DVD players and recorders immediately, with the aim of pulling...

Playstation 3: The Only Future-Proof Blu-ray Player

Yog-Sothoth — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 03:05:02 GMT

If you've been following my high-def disc news ( here , here , and here ), you'll notice that I've been busy. After more research, I found out that there are now three "profiles" for BD players; more info here . Since the standalone player I had was a 1.0 unit and had no way to update to the new profile, I returned the Sony BD player and got the safest one—the PS3. Of course, not only is it a great BD player, it is also a good media center and can be loaded with Linux and used as a computer. Software updates for the PS3 are a click away. Oh, and it plays games, of course.

An E-mail from Toshiba

Yog-Sothoth — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:58:54 GMT

If you read two of my previous entries concerning HD DVD and Blu-ray, you'll note that—due to Warner Brothers dropping support for HD DVD—I returned a Toshiba HD DVD player and got a Sony Blu-ray one. My inital e-mail to Toshiba was for my HDMI–DVI issue (didn't work). Toshiba added my TV model to the list of ones where this didn't work, but had no further advice at the time. My second e-mail to them was for them to close my case; I told them that I returned the unit due to Warner's recent announcement. Here is their response to that e-mail: Thanks for writing! I am sorry to hear that Sir. I will note that while Warner's announcement was somewhat of a surprise, it does not change Toshiba’s commitment to support our consumers and HD DVD. The HD DVD format still enjoys the support of major and independent film studios in addition to Microsoft. Toshiba intends to continue to market HD DVD players for the US market at prices reasonable to consumers. HD DVD continues to be the only next generation format that has delivered superior video performance, audio performance combined with unrivaled interactive features at a reasonable cost....

Before You Go Buy An HD DVD Player

Yog-Sothoth — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:07:39 GMT

You may want to read this . With Warner dumping HD-DVD in favor of Blu-ray, that will leave HD-DVD with only about 25% of the market. I'm pretty sure the remaining studios will follow suit. Immediately after reading the article, I went searching Circuit City's web site for a Blu-ray player; I found a Sony BDP-S300 on sale for $299.99. I unhooked my Toshiba HD-A3 , boxed it up, and headed to the store. They returned the HD-DVD player no problem (with an additional $100 for the price difference). As as a matter of fact, they even exchanged the HD-DVD version of Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix I had for the Blu-ray version free of charge. I won't be able to return The Bourne Ultimatum , but at least it has the regular DVD version on the other side of the disc. The Blu-ray took a while to first start up, as was indicated in the manual. Lo and behold, I got a picture using the HDMI–DVI connection, something I never got with the Toshiba (mentioned in the blog entry noted above). I quickly set it to 1080i, and all is well. Too bad I hadn't seen that artilce...

PIXMA MP830 & Canon Customer Support

Yog-Sothoth — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 22:06:47 GMT

A little over a year ago, I decided that it was time to get a multifinction printer—printer, copier, scanner, FAX. After reading a number of reviews, I decided on the Canon PIXMA MP830. Prints were nice, and the scanner worked well. The only problem I had with it was that it drank ink like beer at a frat party. A few days ago, it "ate" a sheet of paper and gave me a "6A00" error message on the display. After a bit of research, I moved the print head, and sure enough, there was a tiny piece of paper still in the unit. After that, it worked again for about one sheet. I called the local Canon repair center, and the tech said that even though it is out of warranty, Canon would still probably pay for the repairs. Today, the tech called me and confirmed that Canon was in fact covering the repairs. Not only was the feed unit on the printer bad, so was the logic board, so I guess it just "took a dump" all at once. The tech also confirmed that even though I set the printer to grayscale, it still used a combination of inks...