Last year, the folks at Pure Digital Technologies burst onto the camcorder scene with an affordable flash based compact video recording device, the Flip Video. It got tons of attention, and within a few months, they released an upgraded model, the Flip Video Ultra. Both video cameras made it real simple to grab some video, do some basic editing, and share it with friends, or post it to video sharing sites such as YouTube. Now finally it was really simple to capture and share video. Heck, I even made my first video with this hardware.
Well, a year has passed, and now the latest video camera in their stable is the Flip Video Mino. Let’s see what a year and further development have reaped from the Flip’s sophomore effort.
The package arrived at our Lab. The out of the box experience was excellent, with a box that could impress even an Apple aficionado. Inside I found the Flip Video Mino, a pouch, a wrist strap, a video cable, and a user manual. For starters, I noticed it was black (it is also available in white, and for some reason at Amazon it’s over $20 less expensive as I write this). The Mino is also considerably thinner than last year’s lineup of Flip Videos. This diet in size was made possible by changing from a pair of AA’s as a power source, and going lithium. While I generally like a more replaceable battery, I must admit that the new thinness does make the Flip Video Mino rather compact, and even easier to tote along. The other advantage of a lithium power source is that the shooting time doubles to a claimed four hours from last year’s models. It is rechargeable via any USB port in three hours.
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Digital photography is just about the de facto standard in digital image capture these days. It’s simply better from the capture process, to the lack of developing costs. The downside of using a digital camera is that I take many more photos than I should because I’m not paying for developing, and I rarely print these photos. This means that too often nice images end up on a hard drive for storage and are not enjoyed and shared.
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Continuing along with our saga of the triple play saga, this time out it’s the television service. I’ve had a protracted journey as I worked on getting a hi def signal to my HDTV over the last year. While the internet breaking was the primary need for switching to cable, the HD was a secondary selling feature.
As part of the triple play package, Optimum includes their family package, and their iO upgrade. To view the iO channels, that’s where the set top boxes come in (more on this later). For my Samsung LCD I got a Scientific Atlanta 8300 HD DVR, and for my Hitachi 20″ CRT, a Scientific Atlanta 4200 would get the job done. I passed on the upgrades to the iO Silver or Gold that would include the premium channels (HBO, Cinemax, Starz, TMC etc.), and went for the more “affordable” package. I still admit that paying for TV is a little bit of a new concept to me. BTW, each box with a remote costs $6.28, and the DVR is $9.95 additional. Once the box is hooked up, just put the TV to input source, and then the STB controls the content via the iO Remote. Thankfully the remote double as a universal remote so it can control the basic features of the TV as well like power and volume.
I’ve already covered the install ad nauseum, so I won’t repeat that here, and skip to the other aspects. With so many different aspects to Optimum iO TV, this is the most complicated of the segments to write compared to the phone and internet, so we’ll break it down and deal with it bit by bit.
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In this part of the triple play saga, I’ll be focusing on the internet service included, better known as Optimum Online. I’ve previously discussed both the install of the triple play package, and the phone service.
The TechNudge diehards are already aware that I previously had Verizon DSL as my ISP. The primary motivating factor behind changing from Verizon to Optimum was to get my internet access working again, and faster was a bonus.
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In this part of the triple play story, I’ll focus on the “internet phone” that works via VoIP, better known as Optimum Voice. This is a continuation of Part One: The Install.
I’ve been a lifelong customer of Verizon copper phone service. I had experienced some down time in the recent past due to aging copper infrastructure that Verizon didn’t quite maintain all that well. The audio quality was good, although not excellent, and I probably would have stayed forever, except when my DSL modem bit the dust, and Verizon thought they had me over a barrel, I decided to jump ship.
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I have lots to say about the Optimum triple play service, so this article will be written in various parts which I’ll eventually link together and keep updated as issues arise. You may recall that after being a Verizon copper phone and DSL customer for quite some time, I exited stage left when the DSL modem died, their customer service folks annoyed me, and tried to overcharge me for a modem. On top of that, in preparation for the digital television transition, I was going to have to subscribe to some service anyway.
Therefore, I had signed up for Optimum’s triple play deal which includes the three services over one wire: television, telephone and internet. I was given an install date in around 10 days from when I ordered it. This was partially accounted for because I had wait for some days for my number to be ported from Verizon to Optimum. In terms of upfront costs, there is a $14.95 “install fee” which I got them to waive, but they wouldn’t budge on the $40 “number port fee” which I’ll be paying when the first bill arrives.
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I jumped at the chance of getting my hands on one of Antec’s Three Hundred Cases because the Nine Hundred series was a bit much –not in a bad way, but it was really meant to house something a little more feature packed than I was building. I wanted a media PC in a non-HTPC case.
More
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
I’ve kept a running commentary of my experience with DSL on TNL, but I wanted to collect my experience with Verizon in a more formal review. By way of introduction, I’ve had Verizon DSL for a few months shy of three years.
The initial sign up for Verizon DSL was anything but easy. I had an existing Verizon copper phone line. After receiving an invite in the mail for their 768/128 offering at the price of $14.99 monthly, I called to sign up. After a lengthy discussion, I figured out that they didn’t want to sell it to me. As I was in a Fios area, they only wanted to sell me Fios for $40 monthly. While I agreed with them it was better, I also told them that it would be better to keep me as a customer and sell me DSL, than to lose me for everything. They finally acquiesced, and they gave me a start up date when my DSL would go live in a week.
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I’ve been chronicling my upgrade to digital television. All I can say that if the rest of the nation shares my experience, this will be anything but smooth.
By way of background, I am just around 25 miles from the TV transmitters in the NY metro area. My current antenna is a roof top VHF only model. With less than a year to go for the digital TV transition, it was time to upgrade. My TV is a Samsung 26″ LCD with NTSC and ATSC tuners.
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Thursday, February 28, 2008
I spend plenty of time creating online content using three different interfaces: Blogger, WordPress and Typepad. When I heard about w.bloggar I figured this could simplify my life.
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Monday, February 11, 2008
I spotted the UberNote Online Web Notes, and decided to take a look. It has the requisite cap in the middle of the word, so it must be current and cool. The claim is that after opening an online account, which is free, I can save text and links for later viewing. They also take this to the next level by offering tagging features that make for easy organization. As I’ve been a big fan of tags on Blogger and WordPress (there’s that cap in the middle of the word again), it seemed like this would make for a great combo.
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Thursday, January 24, 2008
The Sansa TakeTV is a novel approach to bridging the gap between online video, typically viewed on a computer, and getting it onto the television set which is where most people want to view it. They’re taking the sneakernet approach to shifting the content from the desktop to the internet by having it travel “the last ten feet” via an included flash drive. While the USB flash drive approach works quite well with shuttling files between computers, video has its own challenges, so let’s see how well this approach works here. After all, most folks have a DVD player, and maybe a cable box and a game system hooked up to their TV, so let’s see if there’s room for one more device.
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We’ve looked at several sources for music on the internet. Sites like Pandora or Last.FM are useful when you want someone else to pick the music for you. There’s certainly a role for this, but there are times when you just want to hear one specific song, and then these types of user directed internet radio fall apart big time. Here’s where Songza comes in.
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Monday, December 31, 2007
It’s quite common for a category of software to get dominated by a particular program. For example, for word processing it’s Word, and for image manipulation it’s Photoshop. Heck, even our operating system is dominated by Windows. It should come as no surprise that optical disc burning is dominated by one program, Nero. However, I was less than satisfied with the latest version of Nero Burning ROM. You see, it was simply too powerful, and while it had plenty of power, the routine tasks were frustrating as there were too many choices, and too much navigation through screens to make one disc.
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Thursday, December 27, 2007
With my LCD monitor off in RMA land, I’m finding myself relying on my notebook in the interim. Since my last OS reload, I’ve left it pretty empty, and I’m just reloading all of the needed programs. I always consider this an opportunity to reconsider my software choices as I repopulate it.
I’ve had an ongoing interest in alternative browsers, so I randomly picked one called Crazy Browser. Kind of a catchy name, huh? After a little while, I was heading back to FireFox.
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Friday, December 21, 2007
Sometimes simpler is better…
There are plenty of ways to store images online. Some popular services include Flickr and Photobucket, and they certainly have their uses- and limitations. Flicker limits the number of images that can be uploaded for free, and Photobucket limits the bandwidth. Sometimes I just want to host a file for a website, or message board. For that I need a simple site, without all the bells and whistles.
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Thursday, December 20, 2007
One of our recurring themes here on TechNudge is the shift from video from the television set to online offerings. While some of that is from the major TV networks, this has opened the door to other sources. I’ve tried Joost, a popular name in this arena, and found it rather useless. After I wrote a post about a service named Miro, it turns out that Oldster has been using it all along.
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Thursday, December 20, 2007
I’ve always hated the dashboard warning lights, better known as “idiot lights.” On my last car, I had one go on at thirty thousand miles, and for the next fifty thousand miles kept staying on. The funny thing is that the engine always started, ran quite fine, and always passed emission inspection by a healthy margin. I always thought it was a ploy to get me to go back to the dealership.
For no apparent reason, the maintenance light went on on my Toyota. Clearly I was going to have it staring me down for the next 50k, right? I looked into it, and discovered that while the “wait for the light to burn out” was certainly one alternative, perhaps there was a better way. Any car made after 1996 has an interface for OBD II, which stands for On Board Diagnostics. This is a way to have a computer talk to your car, and thankfully it’s a “standard” as all the car makers conform to the same port.
Did I really have one of these ports? Where was this darn thing hidden for so long? I picked up my hood, grabbed my trusty flashlight, and looked for the car equivalent of a USB port without success. I even looked into my fuse boxes, and still came up empty handed. Then, all the way under the dash, I found my OBD II port!
Unfortunately, you can’t just plug your notebook in, and a dedicated code reader is the way to go. I ordered the Actron CP 9125 on Amazon (link below). It’s an inexpensive code reader that is designed to do two things. The first is to be able to read the error codes which are a series of numbers. These then get converted into the actual problem via an included manual. The second is to be able to erase the codes and reset things, getting that darn light out.
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Sunday, December 16, 2007
I’ve always been fascinated by photomosaics. You know, those images that get composed by thousands of smaller images to fit together just right to become a larger image. I never really thought about making one myself, but when I heard about a new site that claimed to do that, I decided to check it out. With holiday gifts coming up, this could make some really interesting custom wrapping paper!
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Friday, December 14, 2007
I’ll say it again: “You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too many USB ports.” While the first two parts of the statement require some serious New Year’s resolutions, thankfully, for the USB part you won’t even have to break a sweat.
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