Digital TV cards
Friday, July 28, 2006
I bought a new computer last year, a Shuttle SN25P with an AMD dual-core CPU (4200+), a couple of WD Raptor 10,000rpm SATA drives and a Dell 24" LCD monitor - geek heaven! Runs Windows and Gentoo Linux real quick.
It has one spare PCI-e slot, and I've long thought that I'd put a digital HDTV card in it. The monitor has enough resolution to display 1080i in all its glory.
I finally got around to looking into it this past week and started researching what is available. The first thing I found was that there are not many PCI-e DTV cards around yet. After lots of googling and reading forums, I decided on the Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT. There is no Australian distributor, so I've just ordered it directly from Terratec in Germany.
Despite the lack of information on the Terratec web-site, I gather that it does work in Australia and it does do HD (the Germans seem to take this as a given). My only concern is that it fits. I've read some suggestions that it might be a bit tight in the SN25P as it sits up against the graphics card. I have only a modest graphics card (Nvidia 6200TC) which doesn't even have a fan, so hopefully should be OK.
Stay tuned... (pun intended).
posted by bj @ 5:04 pm,
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Google, Google, Google
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Google are taking over my life. Well, on-line at least.
While they seem benevolent enough compared to that big monopoly that everyone loves to hate (me included), I'm not sure I am entirely comfortable with that. I've always blocked their cookies on the search engine - maybe I'm paranoid, but I always think the less info out there about you the better, and I don't like the idea of anybody owning my search history.
Of course I have had to allow cookies to use some of the other services now on offer, but one of the (many) advantages of living in Australia is that I can block cookies to google.com.au (which is where searches go) , while allowing them from google.com (where everything else is - for now).
Still, I now find myself using:-
Blogger - erm... you're standing in it.
Calendar - for the social diary. Sharing calendars with T (my partner in life) works well. I have also found useful public calendars that others have made available (e.g. ASNSW calendar)
Notebook. Excellent for capturing bookmarks, text snippets and images while researching something.
Browser Sync. Finally! - a way to synchronise the work and home browser. Its a shame though that the favicons aren't copied along with the bookmarks. I very quickly stopped it syncing bookmarks and went back to another Firefox extension Bookmark Synchroniser SE for that.
Maps/Earth. I was a subscriber to Keyhole before Google bought it. Its great that Australia is better covered now, but when will we be able to find addresses and get directions?
Picassa. A pretty good organiser/viewer for your digital photos. I haven't tried the Web Albums yet, and probably won't. I already have a hosting package with plenty of space, and I run Dalbum for photos. Its not that sophisticated, but its clean and uncluttered.
Desktop. The jury is still out on this one. I don't like the sidebar taking up screen real estate and earlier versions slowed down the computer too much. The recently out of beta version 4 seems better, but its too early to tell. It does however seem to slow down opening files on network drives a lot! It might not last on my work computer because of this. Sadly, that's where I would find it most useful.
Gmail. Got an account, but don't really use it. I prefer a mail client rather than web mail. They way they have implemented POP is weird. It won't download onto more than one computer. If they allowed IMAP, I'd be there!
Spreadsheets. Can't say I use this much (I don't use any spreadsheet much). It may not be that sophisticated, but - Wow! This is the future, right now. This is the browser as the universal application platform. We won't be buying software and installing it in the not too distant future, but subscribing to it and using it anywhere.
Other Google products I've tried, but didn't take to:-
Reader - I prefer Firefox's live bookmarks for RSS.
Pages. Could be useful though for less technical people.
Bookmarks - although T finds this useful.
What is Google's plan? I can see how Gmail can make money by placing ads, but what's in it for them with the rest of the things. They are providing storage and services for nothing - except perhaps more information about me.
As
posted by bj @ 11:13 am,
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