Today’s Show:

Google Play

We promised more Android coverage, so here you go, our take on Google Play.  If you’re familiar with iTunes and iCloud from Apple, you’re probably pretty familiar with the concept behind Google Play.  Of course, Google would like to think it’s a new idea, according to the official site…“Now your favorite music, books, movies, apps, and games are all in one place that’s accessible from the Web and any Android device. Discover, buy and share like never before.”

We all know that, like it or not, our lives are moving to the cloud. It seems like an inevitable evolution of technology and data. We want to be able to access our content from any device we own, at any time. The simplest way to do that, for the non-technophile, is to simply move everything to the cloud.  Amazon has pretty much always been there, Walmart is moving there with Vudu, Apple moved there with iCloud, and Google is moving there with Google Play.

About Google Play, some snippets from the Google Play website:

All your entertainment in one place
Google Play is your one-stop shop for all your favorite entertainment. With over 450,000 apps, millions of songs and books, and thousands of movies, Google Play has something for everyone. Before you decide what you want, sample a song or book for free, view app ratings, reviews, and screenshots, or watch a movie trailer. Google Play is a more connected, powerful experience.

The power of the cloud
How cool would it be if your entertainment was just available anywhere? Now it is. Buy a book on your Android phone and read it on the web at play.google.com. Buy a new album on your Android tablet and listen to it on your desktop at work. Rent a movie online and watch it anywhere on your phone. That’s the beauty of the cloud. You can read, listen and watch all your favorite content anywhere you want. No software required and no wires or syncing needed, and the best part – Google Play cloud is free to use.

Share what you love
Discover, shop, enjoy, and share music, movies, books, and apps anytime, anywhere. When you discover an amazing song, a nail-biting thriller or memorable movie, the first thing you want to do is share it with your friends. On Google Play sharing your favorite entertainment just got easier. You can easily share posts about your favorite books, music, movies, games or apps to your circles on Google+, email, or text message in a single click.

Buy now, listen now, sync never
There are hundreds of free songs and millions more to buy on Google Play. The music you choose is automatically stored in your Google Play music library and instantly ready to play on your computer, Android phone or tablet.

Watch it now or later
Rent movies and watch them instantly. Alternatively, download your movie for offline viewing and view it later using the Google Play Movies app or watch it directly on the Web.

Watch it anywhere
Watch Google Play movies anywhere — your couch, your friends’ house or in-flight. When you rent a movie with Google Play you can watch it on your phone, tablet or any Web connected PC.

Bottom Line

Essentially Google has merged all of their markets and media services into one service and rebranded it Google Play. They’re hoping that a combined service, integrated with Android and your other Google services like Google+ and potentially Gmail and others, will entice you to make Google Play your one stop shop for media, books and apps.

Google has probably been struggling to convince their users to buy their books, music, movies and TV shows directly from Google.  Most of us are already entrenched somewhere else, be it iTunes, Amazon, or a host of other options.  But if you can get anything you want from one shop, integrated into all your devices, that could change. And if Google can successfully get Google TV bundled into all major manufacturers sets in the next year or so, it could

We tried it online and on a few Android devices and it worked as advertised.  Even tried it on Google TV (Google Play Music, Movies isn’t available yet on the Logitech Revue) and it performed fine there as well. We weren’t blown away by any aspects of the service; none of it was really new or earth shattering.  But it could be a huge win for Google if they are successful with Android, Google TV and Chrome Books, and can make Google Play the de facto store for those platforms. It’s a bit like being the only McDonalds at the airport.  Sure there are better options, but for some reason, we all end up at McDonalds.

Download Episode #523

Today’s Show:

Crystal LED HDTV Technology

It was pretty clear that the OLED TVs demonstrated by LG and Samsung stole the show at the last Consumer Electronics Show we went to. We were really impressed by the color, contrast and sharpness of the picture. Check out this video we shot in the Samsung booth (Samsung Super OLED HDTV). However, there are some issues that need to be resolved before we see mainstream OLED HDTVs in sizes that we would want in our living rooms.

Rather than go with an OLED TV, Sony displayed a technology called Crystal LED. Crystal LED takes six million tiny LEDs to create a picture that they hope will rival OLED technology. A 1080P TV has nearly 2 million pixels on screen. Crystal LEDs TVs take three LEDs, one for red, green, and blue, and combine them for each pixel. Each pixel is mounted directly in front of the display. This is not an LED based LCD but an actual LED TV.

On paper this technology has a ton of potential. For instance, like plasma, each individual pixel can be controlled. This should provided blacks that can rival plasma and OLED. Another benefit for the technology is that a Crystal LED will use far less energy, 70 watts for a 55 inch screen. Crystal LED TVs produces a picture with viewing angles of 180 degrees, high contrast ratios, and better color than current plasma and LCD HDTVs.

The version that we saw in Las Vegas looked quite impressive. One of the things that stuck us was that there was minimal reflection. That is another drawback of plasmas. We left the Sony booth thinking we could have our cake and eat it too!.

The concept isn’t new. Those really large screens that you see at stadiums use this type of technology to do the same thing. Its much easier to do this on a large screen when you are sitting tens or hundreds of meters away. The key for Sony is that they are shrinking the size of the LEDs down dramatically so that they can fit six million of them into a screen that would fit in your family room. That process is complex and costly. Sony wants to get this right. With six million LEDs there will be a higher chance of having a dead pixel.

Cost and Availability

So when can I have one and how much will it cost? Sony isn’t answering any of these questions. Our hunch is that it will cost about what an OLED TV will cost. And if Sony wants this technology to have a chance it needs to come out at about the same time as OLED. We know that Samsung will be releasing their OLEDs in the second half of the year. Our prediction is that you will be able to by a Crystal LED TV from Sony by the summer of 2013 and it will run about $6,000.

Download Episode #522

Today’s Show:

Simple.TV: A DVR for a Connected World

We were recently asked what DVR we would recommend for someone who wanted to cut the cord or simply connect a standalone DVR without paying additional fees to their cable or satellite company. We struggled to find anything we could enthusiastically recommend. But we had overlooked this year’s Best of CES Home Theater Winner: Simple.TV. At $149 it seems to fit the bill exactly.

About Simple.TV

The Simple.TV set top box is a single-tuner DVR that plays back recorded content via 1080p HD video streaming throughout your home.  The single tuner supports ATSC digital broadcasts or Clear QAM basic cable. It doesn’t have any built-in storage, so you have to add your own USB hard drive to hold recorded content.  That’s both a good thing a a bad thing; you can’t record out of the box, but you can expand storage at will.

The device is a fairly small white box that appears to be slightly larger than an Apple TV but not quite as big as a Logitech Revue. It doesn’t support WiFi, but we assume the potential is there in the future via the USB port.  For some reason it has two Ethernet jacks, perhaps functioning as a local hub so you still have an Ethernet connection available for another device if you need it, but we aren’t sure.  As an added bonus, it actually includes a mini digital antenna that works within 10 miles of most broadcast towers.

Playback for Simple.TV recorded content is done using your favorite video streaming box. There’s a native app for the Roku and iPad and they’re working on the HTML5 front end that will allow you to access your shows using Boxee, Google TV or pretty much and device with an HTML5 compliant browser. It supports adaptive streaming to ensure best quality on any connection in the home.

Our Take

At $149 the Simple.TV is a very cost effective way to add live video playback to an otherwise Internet only player like a Roku or Google TV. Live TV is the one huge feature we constantly come back to as the missing piece we need before we can truly cut the cord. The one gotcha is that to get the features you really want, like electronic program guide and the ability to record shows automatically, you have to pay a $4.99 month fee to upgrade to Premier service. Certainly less expensive than cable service, though.

We’d like to see Simple.TV add a few features, or maybe introduce a slightly more advanced, higher priced unit to address what we see as some shortcomings in the first release.  First of all, it only has one tuner. Ideally you’d want to have at least two so you can record multiple shows at once. Simple.TV offers the solution of putting multiple units on your network to add more tuners.  But that is a somewhat expensive and heavy handed solution, plus you’ll need more hard drives for each unit.

Another great add would be a CableCARD version that allows you to record even the encrypted content from your Cable subscription. This would provide a nice compromise for many cable subscribers.  You could eliminate all the DVR and set top box fees but still have access to the live, cable-only content like ESPN and CNN. Hopefully soon channels like ESPN, and Fox Sports will allow you to get access to their content via the Internet for a small monthly fee, allowing all of us to build our own a la carte systems.

The Simple.TV website claims support for 1080p streaming, but there’s a serious lack of technical details along with that. According to an article at GigaOM.com, they’re testing 5 Mbps for their highest quality 1080p stream. That’s good, but not great. If it has to go over Ethernet, and not over the Internet (at least not yet), we’d like to see a bit more bandwidth used for the stream. There’s also no mention of audio support. Hopefully it’ll have support for 5.1 surround.

Along the lines of “nice to have,” access to your content via the Internet, and built in support for Internet video apps like Hulu and Netflix would both be big pluses. Since all of the boxes you can play Simple.TV recordings back on already support the Internet apps, that probably isn’t that big of a deal, but the ability to access your recorded content from anywhere would be nice.

Conclusion

There isn’t much you can do with the Simple.TV that you can’t already do with a plethora of other devices, but Simple.TV really appears to live up to its name. It doesn’t require a Mac or PC, so there’s less IT required to set it up. That also makes it a less expensive solution. It also has a lower monthly fees than other options, but it doesn’t quite stack up, feature-wise, with many of those more expensive units like TiVo. But if you want to cut the cord and are looking for a good, low cost DVR solution to get your broadcast TV fix, Simple.TV will be worth a look when it ships this Spring.

In our example of cord cutting from Episode 518, we could save a bit of money per room by using a Roku instead of an AppleTV. But we’d actually need to spend a bit more money upfront to get enough Simple.TV boxes to provide the equivalent number of tuners and the hard drives to store recordings. All in all, the Simple.TV solution would probably be slightly more expensive upfront. But monthly the Simple.TV would be much less expensive, dropping the fees from $50 for TiVO to $5 (or maybe $15 or $20 if you can’t share one Simple.TV premier subscription with multiple tuner boxes, we couldn’t find an answer to that question on the website).

Download Episode #521

Today’s Show:

Wireless Surround Speakers

We receive emails from time to time asking us for advice on wireless surround speakers. When we first started the podcast there weren’t too many options available and today we have plenty. The early wireless solutions had noise issues and today the noise has been dramatically reduced. On today’s show we will talk about some of the options out there to help you bring surround sound to areas where running cables may not be possible.

Audioengine W1 Wireless Audio Adapter (Buy Now $149)
Think of AW1 as a simple replacement for any RCA or 3.5″ mini-jack cable to or from your powered speakers and surround-sound receiver.

The AW1 consists of 2 parts, the “Sender” and “Receiver”. The Sender transmits audio from your AV Receiver with RCA audio outputs. The other side of AW1, the Receiver, connects audio to any powered speakers with a RCA or 3.5” mini jack.

Power for the Sender and Receiver is provided from  from the included USB AC power adapter, or from any other USB AC charger (such as an iPod charger, for example). If you use the Audioengine A5 powered speakers, they include a ComboPort USB charger on top of the left speaker which will power the AW1.

This system is a bit clunky but it does not require much space on both the transmitter and receiver side. If you use the excellent sounding A5s for your surround speakers it is extremely easy and convenient. We have used this device and found it to transmit the audio flawlessly in our home. In all cases with wireless speakers your mileage will vary depending on the interference in your home.

Polk audio F/X Wireless Surround Sound (Buy Now $290)
The F/X is a unique product. Think of it like a soundbar for your surrounds. The entire unit is contained in one cabinet. The 2.4 GHz transmitter is connected to your home theater receiver and communicates with the F/X loudspeaker which can be placed on the floor, a table or a shelf. The whole thing sets up in a snap. Out of all the solutions this is the easiest to setup. Plug in the transmitter, place the speaker behind the couch and provide power. That’s it! We have no experience as to how good it works. We’ll try to get one for demo.

Panasonic SH-FX71 Wireless Rear Speaker System (Buy Now $100)
The Panasonic SH-FX71 is a classic wireless transmitter, it has a transmitter and receiver. The receiver base is a box measuring 9.00″ h x 6.00″ w x 10.00″ so you need to find a place for it behind the couch. Connect your speaker wires and power and you are good to go. The system works on the 2.4Gz frequency.

JBL WEM-1 50-Watt Wireless Amplifier and Expansion Module (Buy Now $329)
The JBL WEM-1 kit contains a transmitter that wirelessly transmits a signal up to 70 feet. The receiver includes a 50W amplifier that receives the wireless signal and can drive any pair of loudspeakers with plenty of power. The transmitter connects to the source using either line or speaker level inputs. The receiver/amplfiier also offers equalization settings for several speakers. A local input allows the user to hook up a portable device as well. At $329 this is one of the more expensive solutions on the market.

KEF Universal Wireless System (Buy Now $499)
(Full Disclosure Kef is a sponsor of the Blu-ray Review Podcast of the HT Guys)
Kef uses some cool technology to make sure your audio does not have any interference. Its called High Fidelity Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation. What that means is that they constantly monitor several channels at a time and continually switch to the strongest available. They also employ an advanced error correction technology to ensure a robust delivery of CD-quality audio between the transmitter and receivers. Its the most expensive but its also the most sophisticated approach.

Conclusion

There are plenty of approaches available today to connect your surround speakers without cutting into walls. The products we highlighted in this article range in price and quality so depending on your wants and needs you should be able to find a solution. If you live in an area that has a lot of interference you may have to spend more money for a more sophisticated solution. But if you have a relatively interference free environment you can get buy for less than $150!

Download Episode #520

Netgear NeoTV Streaming Player (NTV200) $49.99

 

Today’s Show:

Skifta – May your stuff be with you.

The concept of ‘cutting the cord’ is more than just dropping cable or satellite to get rid of a monthly bill. It’s also about the freedom and convenience of being able to access whatever content you want, whenever you want it, and on whatever device you’d like to play it back on. As smartphones and tablets continue to proliferate, we can only assume they’ll play a big role in that new world. Qualcomm hopes Skifta can help get you there.

What is it?

From the Skifta.com website:
Skifta is an easy way to control, play and enjoy your music, videos and photos at home and on the move. There’s no uploading to the web or syncing to your phone. In fact, you don’t copy or move your stuff at all. You just leave it where it is. Then, whether it’s somewhere on the Internet or on your computer at home you can access your stuff remotely using your smartphone or tablet.

And here’s the magic bit.
Not only can you access your digital media from anywhere, with your smartphone or tablet you can also stream it to DLNA-Certified™ and UPnP-compatible TVs, IP-connected stereos, PlayStation 3 game consoles, Windows 7 PCs thousands of other connected consumer electronics devices anywhere.

So, you can take your digital media with you, without actually taking it with you.

How it works

At its heart, Skifta is an Android app (Android 2.2 and above) for playing back and sharing media. Sorry Apple fans, no iPhone or iPad support yet. To be honest, Skifta probably butts heads with AirPlay, so there may never be support for it on Apple devices. The biggest difference is that Skifta is built on the DLNA and UPnP specifications, which should make it a bit more generally available outside the Apple ecosystem. The app can be a player, a server, or what you might call a “bridge” between a server and a player.

As a player the Skifta app can connect to DLNA servers and play the content directly on your phone or tablet. The server can be local using a wifi connection, or can be accessed remotely using a 3g or 4g connection if you install the Skifta desktop application and register for an account. The player itself relies on the codecs and playback functionality of your Android device, so not all file types will play on all phones.

As a server, you can use any DLNA player, like a PC or a PS3 or Xbox360, to view, watch or listen to the content from your phone or tablet. Did you take some great pictures you’d like to show your friends or family? If they have an Internet connected TV with a DLNA app, you can throw your photos up on their big screen in no time. Or you can share music at a party or movies for movie night. It’s very simple. Skifta is able to find some DLNA players on the network and push content directly to them. For others, like the PS3, you have to use the player itself to connect to Skifta on the phone to view or listen to the media.

But the real magic comes in what we call, for lack of a better term, “bridge” mode. This allows you to use your phone to connect a DLNA server, either local or remote, to a DLNA player. If you’ve installed the Skifta DLNA desktop app on your movie server, you can play your movie collection on any DLNA player, anywhere in the world where you can get 3g or 4g data. The folks at Skifta are also madly at work adding “channels” you can add to play back Internet content using the Skifta app. The selection is limited right now, but should grow over time.

Up next

As you can imagine, using your phone or tablet as the middle man between the server and the player is less than optimal. Ideally Skifta would simply connect the player to the server and remove itself from the equation altogether. Although we couldn’t find any definitive statements about this at the website, we did read some hints to this effect at some other sites. So if we’re thinking about it, and others are as well, you can imagine Qualcomm is too.

So that would leave us with a platform that allows you to connect any media server, be it your own collection of photos, movies or music, or an online content source, with any network connected player. Forget cable and satellite, guides and DVRs, movie and music servers. All you need is a tablet. Browse around on your tablet, find something you want to watch, and send it to your TV. Or if you want to watch it in multiple rooms or on multiple screens, send it to all of them. No more remote controls either, just a tablet and a screen. That’s it.

 

Download Episode #519

Today’s Show:

Cord Cutting – A Financial Analysis

Cord cutting has been in the news quite a bit lately.  A week doesn’t go by when we don’t receive an email from a listener telling us about how they have cut the cord and couldn’t be happier. Every email prompts us to consider a life without cable bills but inevitably there is something that keeps us from taking the plunge. A recent email from Van in Odenton Maryland got us thinking. Could we combine OTA with a Tivo Box and iTunes and a AppleTV and essentially eliminate our Pay TV bill altogether? For this paper study we will use Ara’s TV usage as the base.

The bulk of what is watched in the Derderian household are the broadcast networks which can be made up via OTA with no issues at all. Its the cable shows and Sunday Ticket that pose the real problem.  Pay movie channels are nice but with Netflix and a deep video server library, there is seldom a lack of things available to watch moviewise. We’ll begin the study with outlining the current cost and capability followed by the replacement solution and finally what if anything has to be given up.

Current Cost for Programming

Ara subscribes to DirecTV Premier Package including locals. The Premier package includes just about every channel including pay channel that DirecTV has to offer. The total cost is $114, but its the fees and add ons that kill you! Check out the itemized list:

• Monthly Fee for the Premier Package $114
• Protection Plan $6.00
• HD Extra Pack $5.00
• HD Access $10.00
• DVR Service $7.00
• Whole Home DVR $3.00
• Additional Receiver $6.00
• Leased Receiver $6.00

Total cost $157 a month plus Taxes. Ara also subscribes to Sunday Ticket which adds an additional $300 a year or $25 more per month. So the base we have to work with is roughly $185 a month. An advantage that using DirecTV or other provider is that you don’t have to buy your equipment and if something goes wrong the provider will fix it for you

Tivo

Part of the solution is a Tivo box that can act as a DVR. Tivo comes with a monthly fee but its a far cry from what you pay at DirecTV. Our solution will use the Tivo Premier which goes for $99 and we’ll connect it to the antenna on the roof. We will have to buy three of them so our cost start up cost will be just about $300 plus tax. In addition to the purchase price Tivo will require $20 a month service fee and since we have three boxes it will cost us $60 a month.

The reason we are choosing Tivo over a basic DVR is that the recording features of the Tivo are quite nice and we have become accustomed to setting season passes and all the other cool features of a modern DVR. Tivo also offers connections to Netflix, Hulu+, Amazon, and Blockbuster so for most people you can stop right there and be quite happy!

AppleTV

AppleTV will be our means of getting cable content that we lose by cutting the cord. Many shows are available in iTunes the day after they air on cable. These shows are in HD and 5.1 audio. The quality is quite good. If you can wait a season, many, but not all, shows end up on Netflix or Amazon so you may not need this option. The AppleTV will run you $99 a piece and we’ll need three of these as well. Like the Tivo we are up to $300 plus tax. For the Derderian’s the season passes that we’ll have to buy are the following:

• Covert Affairs – $40
• Burn Notice – $38
• Sons of Guns – $25
• American Guns – $24
• various shows on ABC Family for the kids – $200
• Budget of another $200 for single episodes or new series not yet discovered.

Total cost for non OTA programming $527.

Now let’s add a budget for movies. We’ll allow 2 HD rentals at $5 and one purchases at $20.

Cost

Let’s add it up and see what it will cost us!

• Hardware (One time Cost)  - Let’s say $650 after you consider tax and incidentals
• Content
  • Season Passes and individual shows on iTunes $527
  • Movie rentals/Purchase $30 ($360 for the year)
  • Tivo Service $60 ($720 for the year)

Total content cost for the year – $1607
Total cost for DirecTV without Sunday Ticket – $1884
Savings $277 ($577 without Sunday Ticket)

In actuality your savings may be more. If you don’t rent or buy movies from iTunes and if you buy a generic OTA DVR without the niceties of the Tivo you can save over a Thousand dollars. In the Derderian scenario we have three DVRs but if you only have one or two you can save quite a bit of money. Finally, this plan requires you to pay upfront for the equipment. In the Derderian’s situation, breakeven would be in just over one year.

What do you give up?

In the Derderian case you give up Sunday ticket. That means about seven or eight less Chicago Bears football games a year. They also give up Food Network and the joy of discovering a program simply by flipping through channels. While this isn’t a big deal for us there have been some Saturdays where this was the only option. Maybe it will free me up to do other things like create more content for the show!

Conclusion

Cutting the cord is probably a great thing for most people out there. Whatever is being missed on the cable channels can be found through Amazon, Netflix, or iTunes so you really don’t have to do without. Live content like news and sports can be found via the old fashion airwaves in better quality than what you would get on cable so there is no loss there at all. The only drawback is that there is an initial outlay of cash that may take a year or two to payback. With all that said, Ara is not ready to cut the cord. He is ready to talk to DirecTV about his bill however! We’ll revisit the analysis in a year or so.

Download Episode #518

Today’s Show:

What is OLED and why do we care?

One of the big hits at CES this year were the Samsung and LG OLED displays. Sure we’ve seen OLED TVs in the past, but they were 55” screens this year, and they looked great. But why all the hype? Why do we even see references to AMOLED in cell phone commercials? Is OLED really that big of a deal?

What is it?

We’ve talked about this before, but a quick refresher might be in order. OLED stands for Organic Light-Emitting Diode. It is an emissive display technology meaning that, like plasma and CRT, it doesn’t require a light source. Instead the organic compound itself is actually a semiconductor that will emit light in response to an electric current.

We talk about OLED so much that we tend to forget that it is a variety of LED, the same acronym/technology used to light the latest and greatest generation of LCD displays. So what makes the organic variety so much better than the ones used in LCD TVs? It’s the fact that the OLED combines the functions of the LED and the LCD into one. It is both the light source and the pixel itself (color, intensity, etc.).

Each OLED is actually a sandwich of several different layers of materials. The color of light produced by an OLED depends on the material used in the emissive layer. By arranging the organic films when the screen is being produced, manufacturers can create OLED groupings to form pixels for color displays. The intensity of each pixel is determined by the amount of electrical current passed into it.

Advantages and Disadvantages over LCD

The main advantage of OLED over LCD it that in an OLED display, each pixel produces its own light. If a pixel should go completely dark, or totally black, the display can achieve that by not applying any electrical current to it. With LCD the best you can do is dim a portion of the screen to make some areas darker (local dimming), but you can’t turn off the light source for an individual pixel. As far as contrast goes, OLED is much better.

One often quoted advantage that OLED has over LCD is thickness, or perhaps thinness in this case. Because the OLED combines the function of the LCD and the light source, it can be much thinner. Until the TV can be rolled up, it’s going to be mounted on a wall somewhere. Whether it comes off the wall one inch or one centimeter probably won’t make too much difference in your overall home theater viewing experience. This “advantage” probably won’t change your life too much.

The biggest debate about OLED and its viability in the market is cost. Right now OLED TVs cost much more to manufacture that LCD for two reasons. First, the fabrication of the substrate itself is costlier right now. And secondly, LCD has a tremendous head start in economies of scale. There are many LCD plants around the world cranking out thousands of LCD screens. It will take quite an investment to match that capacity for OLED displays. On the other hand, in theory OLED TVs will be able to be manufactured with a technology as simple as an inkjet printer. If that can scale, the TVs could be quite cheap.

Advantages and Disadvantages over Plasma

If the biggest advantage OLED has over LCD is the fact that it is emissive and can produce dramatically better contrast ratios, what advantage does OLED have over plasma, which is also an emissive technology? Theoretically, OLED will offer advantages in color reproduction and contrast and brightness because the organic (carbon based) materials are easier to manipulate that the noble gasses used in plasmas. Both technologies will be somewhat matched in terms of refresh rates and viewing angles.

The real killer for plasma will be energy efficiency. Although plasma manufacturers have been hard at work to optimize their screens and make them much more energy conscious, it is believed OLED displays might be the most energy efficient of all display technologies when they finally make it to store shelves. They’ll need to be much more efficient, we’re talking thousands of dollars a year, to justify the early price premium, though.

Other Considerations

There main factor really hindering the mass release of OLED TVs into the market is the color blue. You could say that the continued success of LCD and Plasma has been brought to you by the color blue and the number 14,000. That’s the number of hours a blue OLED has before it drops to half brightness. That is well below the 25,000-40,000 hours you expect to get from and LCD or Plasma. The blue material also degrades more rapidly, impacting color balance as much as brightness.

Conclusion

From what we’ve seen, OLED looks amazing. From what we can gather, it could be the best looking display technology, slightly edging out plasma in color and contrast, and also the most energy efficient, slightly edging out LED LCD. If the theory that they can be made by inkjet printers becomes reality, they could be the cheapest display as well. Who knows, in the future you might be able to go to your local printer and have them crank out a new screen for you that’s just the exact right size to fit in that niche or cabinet you’ve got.

 

Download Episode #517

Today’s Show:

Listeners Respond

There are many times when we ask our listeners for their opinions on topics we discus on the show. On last week’s show we asked you what you thoughts were on two subjects, How you would improve the Harmony Remote and would you pay $25 for day and date VOD titles. Since we received so many responses we thought we’d take a bit more time to share and discuss your emails as our main feature for today’s show.

Day and Date VOD for $25

Overwhelmingly the HT Guys listeners were for this idea. Contrary to what Phil Swann wrote in his article Wacky Wall Street Analyst Proposes $25 Movies all of our responses thought it was a great idea. Here is a sample of the email we received:

Twenty-five USD is a bargain. Last year, I went to two theater movies, Harry Potter Deathly Hallows Part II & Hugo. On each, I paid the extra for 3D. The ticket price alone was $13.00 each for my wife and me. Add to that the obligatory large ($5.00) diet coke, and we’re over $30.00.

If same day release were to happen, it would likely accelerate the upgrading of home theater systems. I’m planning on eventually buying a passive 3D. I’d like one that’s bigger than 60″. I’d prefer it to be plasma but local dimming LED would probably work. If same day download release at $25 per movie were to happen, I might pull the trigger sooner and settle for the 55″  $1200 3D LG + BluRay that was in this weekend’s Sunday paper adds.
- JL
$25 would be a steal to watch movies. Because of the cost (usually $30+) my wife and I don’t see as many movies as we’d like. We pretty much limit ourselves to blockbusters that need a giant screen or 3d (hugo, tin tin, and mission impossible were the last we saw).
The problem will be that theater owners will revolt. I guarantee that the first studio to try it will get boycotted by the large chains.
- Andrew
I would definitely go for a first run movie day and date in my home for $25.   HUGE savings and convenience for those of us who have families.   I rarely go to the movies as the value proposition isn’t good considering the whole family plus add-ons.
- Ralph

We did not receive one email saying that $25 was out of line. To be honest, the reason movie theaters are having so much trouble is two fold. First is price. Ten dollars a ticket is about half the cost of a Blu-ray disc. If a family of four can wait a few months they can own the movie for less than it would cost to go and see it in the theater. Throw in popcorn and drinks they can own two other movies that they didn’t even want to see. The second issue is quality of the movies. We post the upcoming Blu-ray discs every Wednesday, and every Wednesday we marvel at the lack of good content being released. There are better TV shows on than some of the movies out there. We hold off on some shows and watch two or three episodes back to back on a Friday and Saturday night. We prefer this to going to any movie theater!

Harmony Remote Improvements

We received a ton of email on this one. We hope the Harmony Engineers are listening because you guys had some great ideas! Here is a sample:

Just thought I’d let you know what I would like to change on the Harmony One.  I’ve had mine now for a couple of months now and I agree with you, it is perfect, but there are a few things I would like changed.

1.  Swap the Info and Guide buttons around.  I use the Info button quite a lot since when you are watching something on satellite, you hit the Info button to bring up the title bar at the bottom of the screen.  My finger always hits the Guide button by mistake – and I hardly go into the program guide.

2.  Introduce hard buttons for the red, green, blue and yellow buttons.  I use the red button quite a lot, but would rather prefer to have them as hard buttons instead since it reminds me so often how much full scale touch-screen remotes suck.  I think the Harmony 700 and 900 have them.

3.  The “click” the buttons make when you press them is too “loud”.
- Glen
I can think of at least one improvement I’d like to see in a new Harmony One… the blu-ray red, blue, green and yellow buttons.  That and real support for macros in at least the upper models.
- Zach in FL

Here’s what I would improve:

Longer battery life,
Shorter case,
Imdb type app via web wifi,
Support of two way feed for apple tv like iPhone which shows what’s playing and status (timings)
- Ed
The three improvements I would like to see in Logitech Remote Controls are:

1.  Allow multiple remotes on one account.  Let the account name (email address) be changed.  Due to an unfortunate error when setting up a Logitech remote control for a neighbor, I can not use my own email for setup of my remote which I got later.  If I switch the email then all the settings on that account go away.  If I would have known, I would have used a made-up email address.  This seems like a ridiculous restriction.

2.  In the power macros for the different activities I would like to see the web software allow for easy programming of delays.  It is a big hassle when certain devices like the TV turn on and the macro goes on too quickly so the TV does not set the correct input.

3.  Compared to other universal remotes or those supplied with most devices, the Logitech seems to send its commands slower.  For example if you are quickly surfing using the channel up, the TV responds slower with the Logitech than the original remote.
- Jeff in Chicago
I say give me a remote with a mini keyboard/keypad. Would be great for use with my HTPC and probably many of the other newer network-connected devices out there.
- Ed in SF
Around Xmas time we cant configure because there’s too much traffic to their servers. For two days i couldn’t configure it.
Maybe using the software on the PC to save and configure the remote and just upload the settings to their server on a time schedule would be better.
- Fernando Rato, from Portugal
We would also like to be able to have the remote issue a sequence of commands at predetermined time. Setting up a sleep function to shut down your system at 10:00PM would be great. Or program the TV to turn on a specific time and channel would add a nice touch to an already great remote!

 

Download Episode #515

Today’s Show:

Pioneer Elite N-30 Networked Audio Player

The HT Guys love music and when a product comes along that lets us enjoy it, we want to take a look. The Pioneer N-30 is just such a device. It’s a networked device that lets you listen to your favorite music whether it’s on a computer, iPad, or on one of over a thousand Internet radio stations from around the world. The N-30 will have a MSRP of $499 when it becomes available. At the time of this writing we could not find available from the usual outlets.

Setup

Setup is super simple but you do need network access. In our case we have a physical Ethernet port but don’t worry if you don’t. Pioneer has a wireless adapter (AS-WL300) that plugs into the back of the unit. We found setting up the wifi kind of convoluted. You have to connect the wifi adapter to a PC and connect it to the wireless network then connect it to the N-30. The setup screens on the N-30 are very basic. Our testing was done with a hard wired Ethernet connection.

The unit has Optical and Coaxial outputs for digital audio as well as left and right RCA connections. You can connect the N-30 to an amplifier/receiver or a set of powered speakers.

Performance

Since the N-30 supports a digital output we wanted to listen to the highest quality music we had. In our case that was 256Kbps AAC, which to most is indistinguishable to the original CD. There are a couple of ways to stream the music over to the N-30. First the N-30 is DLNA 1.5 certified so if you have a computer that supports DLNA you are good to go. Second the unit supports Apple’s Airplay so you can send your music over from your iPad, iPhone, or iTunes. The front of the unit has a 2.5 inch color display that shows album art and other information about what’s playing. Its a nice touch, but in reality, unless you are close to the screen you really can’t see what’s on it.

The listening results were pretty amazing. But to be fair, we were listening to the music on some pretty nice KEF Speakers. Regardless, the music sounded fantastic! The N-30 recreated every nuance of the classical music we listened to as well hard pounding sound of Van Halen. We even listened to some techno music with a heavy bass track that allowed us to FEEL the music. In all we were quite pleased with the sound.

The N30 also allows you to listen to Internet radio stations. Here the quality of the music is dependent on how much data is in the stream. A station that sends out its stream at 64Kbps is never going to sound as good as even 128Kbps mp3s. There are literaly thousands of stations out from all over the world. If you can’t find something you like, its because you stopped looking.

Odds and Ends

Pioneer has an iOS and Android app for control of the player. You can use the app to see what’s on your server and make your music selections. If you are using Airplay, there is no real reason for the App. There is also a Bluetooth adapter that allows you to send music to the device from your smartphone.

Conclusion

The N-30 is a nice device that bridges your digital library and online radio stations with your home theater. But with many companies, Pioneer included, making much of this functionality available on mid-range receivers, one wonders if people would rather spend the $500 on upgrading their receiver instead of buying this device.

Download Episode #515

Today’s Show:

CES 2012: Part II

It’s never enough to just talk about CES, we have to put eyes on all the goodies for ourselves. This year we did a whirlwind, one day, Vegas and back, Consumer Electronics Show supertrip. We hit the show on the final day and it was awesome. All the technology was the same, the TVs didn’t look any different than they did on Monday, but all the crowds had left and there were almost no lines for any of the demos.

Mitsubishi

Our first stop was Mitsubishi where we saw the LaserVue. There was a ton of hype about this TV when it first came out but we didn’t see what all the fuss was about. Good enough picture though. It just didn’t blow us away.

JVC

We also stopped at JVC and where was sat through a JVC 4K projector Demo. The DLA-X90RBU (MSRP $12,000) really impressed us. It has a ton of features but what blew us away was how good 1080p Blu-ray discs looked when upconverted to 4K!  Although most of the 3D demo on the projector was pretty rough, there was one part that was simply amazing. We’ll tell you about it on the show.

LG

Then it was on to LG where we saw really good passive 3D, the only example we saw at CES of really good passive 3D. The best thing about passive 3D technology is the prices of the glasses are dirt cheap! All active glasses demonstrations at other vendors were pretty much locked down. We also saw the LG OLED TV. Very nice but we felt the Samsung produced a better picture.

Dish Network

At the Dish Network booth we saw this cool Gizmo called the Tailgater. It has been out for a while but when you see it in person you really see how cool of a device it is. It goes for about $350 and only weighs 10 pounds.  The big message at Dish, however, was their new whole-house DVR system called the Hopper and the Joey.  They’re a bit late to the game, but add some cool features to the offering. We’re hoping to get a demo setup to review.

Panasonic

You can’t really call the Panasonic booth just a booth, it’s more on par with a small shopping mall.  They were showing a bunch of stuff but we zeroed in on the VT50. The VT50 finally has blacks on par with the Kuro demo we saw three years ago. No pricing yet.

Toshiba

At Toshiba we checked out some glasses free 3D. There were spots marked on the carpet where you were supposed to stand to optimize the effect. We have seen this technology for the last five years now with little improvement. We are still a few years away.  The “face tracking” technology isn’t exactly what you’d expect.

Sharp

Onwards to Sharp where we saw an 8K LCD. It was quite impressive. Kind of like looking through a window on the world. The scaled down picture does not do it justice, but imagine that the scene is just on the other side of a pane of glass!  Watching 3D gets old pretty fast, your eyes get tired and you just want to be done, but we could stare at this 8K screen for days.

But what really caught our eye at Sharp was their line of Elite LED LCDs. In the order of quality we would probably say it was Samsung and LG OLEDs then the Sharp Elite and Panasonic Plasma were nearly identical. Of course the plasma is something mere mortals can own. The Elites come with an Elite price tag. A 60 inch Elite goes for about $5K. We are estimating the 65 inch Plasma to come in at about half the cost.

Samsung

There’s a great HD video of the Samsung OLED display at HTGuys.com

In our mind the Samsung OLED stole the show as far as picture went.  Surprisingly, the video we shot shows off the TV quite nicely.  The pictures don’t do it justice but the TV is incredibly thin.  This was one area of the show that always drew a big crowd.  The displays certainly lived up to the hype.  Samsung also showed some other interesting ideas, like vaccuum tube amps in their Blu-ray home theater systems for the audiophile and the “dual” HD experience for those with attention span issues.

Sony

And no trip to CES would be complete without a stop by the Sony superbooth. We were mostly there for the Crystal LED display. And while the TV looked very good, it didn’t have the wow factor of OLED. For our eyes, we’d put it on par with the Panasonic Plasmas and Sharp Elite LCDs. Sony also had glasses-free 3D that was pretty rough. We really enjoyed the Personal 3D Viewer, though.  while there aren’t a million applications for it, when you put it on, you really feel like you’re in a private movie theater. It’s pretty fun.

Other stuff

Of course we walked through a bunch of other booths while we were at the show, including Intel, Microsoft, Dolby, DTS, and many more. All of them were great, but not earth shattering. We also took a stroll through the North hall where all the automotive technology is. There were some cars in there you could easily drool over.

There are a lot more pics of the adventure, including the parking lot at CES, at HTGuys.com

Download Episode #514