I started writing for MakeUseOf, which is a blog for web application and other free, useful programs! I just posted an article on Ditching your cable company with free, legal alternatives.

Summary:

Ditching your cable company has never been more viable than it is today. The rise of online, streaming TV shows allows you to save on one of the most expensive household bills if you are willing to sacrifice a bit of the convenience of having either a cable box or DVR. The main question you will need to ask yourself is what shows you actually enjoy watching. Several name brand shows are now available online in free, ad supported formats; if your particular shows are not available then you may be stuck with your cable company, at least for now. More and more shows are always coming online, so keep checking back to see if your favorite show is available.

Click here to see full post!

For Christmas my wife and I decided to replace our aging circa 1998 19″ CRT with a new LCD Monitor. After searching the web and reading numerous reviews, I decided to purchase the Dell SP2008WFP LCD Monitor. Some of the major features of this monitor are:

• 20″ Widescreen HD LCD Monitor
• 2000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio
• 1680 x 1050 native resolution
• 2ms Response time
• Built in 2MP webcam
• 2 side facing USB ports and 2 bottom facing rear ports

For full specs please see the Full Product Page.

For the first time ever I’ve compiled a quick video review of the Dell SP2008WFP - press play to watch the review. Look below for more in depth analysis.

Dell’s monitors come with a 3-yr advance shipment replacement policy, which means that if your monitor goes bad, they will ship you a replacement after you send your defective one back. This is one of the main reasons I ordered directly from dell rather than one of my other favorite places for PC Hardware - Newegg.

First Impressions

Upon first unboxing and turning on this monitor - my first thought was “WOW”! It looks so much sharper and brighter than my old CRT monitor, and even compared to my other Dell LCD monitors at work it looks very sharp. I even had to turn the brightness levels down a bit.

I put on a movie to test it out - when - CRAP! A stuck pixel! There was a stuck blue pixel right in the middle of the screen. Since this was my first experience with a stuck pixel, I was a bit discouraged. Furthermore, I read on Dell’s site that they will only replace a monitor if there are 6 or more dead/stuck pixels. Note that a ‘dead’ pixel is one that is black, and a ’stuck’ pixel is one that is red, blue or green. Upon doing some research - I found out that a ’stuck’ pixel is normally fixable and isn’t as bad as having a dead pixel. After using some methods that I had discovered, it did end up fixing itself after a day or 2, and hasn’t returned since.

Daily use

For daily use the SP2008WFP really excels. The brightness really makes your screen ‘pop’ and everything is extremely sharp. It is best to run at the screen’s native resolution - 1680 x 1050. Depending on your eyesight and how far the monitor is from your seat - you may find fonts to be a bit too small. This can be fixed by modifying the window’s default font size to ‘large’ and setting the default Firefox or IE font size. Personally I had no problems reading the font at this resolution but my wife said it made her eyes twitchy after a while.

The two side USB ports really come in handy for those who use USB Keychains (that includes me!). The bottom ones can be used for a wireless keyboard/mouse dongle or for other USB peripherals.

I added the optional speaker for this monitor. I realize that the audio coming out of it is not spectacular, but since we have a child I wanted to do away with my BASS BOOSTER powered system and this does nicely. The speaker is powered, and has a blue light to let you know it is on. The right side includes a volume control and the left side has inputs for headphones and a microphone. Another nice feature is that the volume control works for the headphone volume, thus eliminating the need to change the volume on the system. My one ‘gripe’ on the speaker is the the volume control does not let you mute the volume without turning it off completely. That meaning that it gets down low and then click off. I wish it would go all the way down to mute and then turn off.

Video

Video looks great on this monitor, even in a bright room. In a darkened room, I did notice some LCD backlight leaking through on the edges on dark scenes in movies. This effect wasn’t overwhelming and I only noticed it when I was looking for it. In a bright room, the blacks look very black and the colors still very crisp.

Webcam

The 2 Megapixel webcam is pretty decent. The drivers indicate that it is actually a Creative webcam built in. The quality is really pretty good, and worked right out of the box for me in programs such as Skype. The built in software allows you to record video, capture images, run motion detection (security) capture, remote monitoring, and ‘time lapse’ video. These functions are neat but not usable for me, so I disable this software to prevent it from adding unneeded system programs. Also, if this software is actually running, it will interfere with other capture programs such as Skype. If you need to run more than one program with your webcam, use Splitcam.

Conclusion

This monitor is a great upgrade from someone moving from a CRT and even from a smaller LCD. The price you can find on Dell’s website is not the cheapest 20″ Widescreen LCD, however it is one of the only non-iMac monitors you can find which includes this webcam ability - which other monitor manufacturers will surely follow. For my own personal uses, it seemed like I could get a 22″ plain LCD or a 20″ with webcam. Time will tell if this was a good purchase, but I think my desk really thanks me in that I have consolidated almost every item on my desk into this one item (excluding my scanner - I don’t think they will be merging monitors and flatbed scanners anytime soon).

At $289 this monitor seems like a good deal and I would recommend the purchase to anyone looking for a new monitor! I figure if I want more desk space in the future, I will move to a dual monitor setup and get a cheap 22″.

Adobe take note - you need to add 3D acceleration to your software. I’ve just checked out Pictomio and it really has a kick-ass GUI which utilizes your 3D accelerating video card to view and zoom photos. This provides a much better viewing experience than my current image library software, Adobe Photoshop Elements. Photoshop elements uses what I assume is a 2D rendering of photos - both zooming and scrolling through your photos is slugging even on my fairly new PC. Take a look at Pictomio:

It is a pretty screenshot but you need to actually use the software to appreciate how smooth the GUI functions. This reminds of me of Coverflow and Apple - purchase this technology and incorporate it into your product Adobe - or your image library software will be out of date in no time.

Photoshop Elements releases about 1 version per year, and I do not see any reason to upgrade every year. First of all, it is expensive compared to other image cataloging software; secondly the number of features that are added just don’t justify the expense every year. Usually the updates are small little features that I do not use.

On another note; I also came across PicaJet which is another image catalog and management system and it also uses 3D acceleration in it’s interface. If Adobe doesn’t come around soon I may switch my 30,000+ photo catalog over!

Download Pictomio!

The Opera team has announced that Opera 9.5 Alpha is now available.

I haven’t been an Opera user in the past. However, I’ve used their Mobile (Opera Mobile and Opera Mini) and their Wii browser and have been impressed. I’ve been missing out!

Opera 9.5 is nice - if you haven’t tried Opera lately I would give it a shot. I’ve heard other users rave about previous versions, but I always thought to myself: “It’s just another browser”.

9.5 has a ton of features but here are the highlights in my opinion:

• Fast Page Rendering Engine
• History Search
• Bittorrent Client Integrated
• Synchronize With My Opera
  - Synchronize Bookmarks, Speed Dial, and other Preferences
• Improved Skin - Apple Human Interface Guideline support
• Mail Client Built In

There is a slew of other changes in this release. I’ve found several pages which did not render properly or at all in this version - I know they are working on such things and there is a “report this page” button within the menu which helps you test their alpha stage release.

This Opera Browser definately gives me a “next gen” feeling and anyone who considers themselves an early adopter should give it a try!

Here is the problem: you have a DVR/HTPC hooked up to your TV downstairs, but you have other televisions in your house you wish to use to access the HTPC. How do you distribute the Audio/Video signal to these other television sets?

One solution to this problem is Crossbar MediaCaster, which was kindly provided to me for review by SnapStream Media.

The basic idea of this hardware is that you are creating a “private access channel” AKA Avcast® entertainment network, which is then provided content from any device which outputs an RCA signal.

 

 

In the box:

• 1 x CableCaster - Establishes the Avcast entertainment network
• 1 x MediaCaster - Provides the content for the Avcast network
• 1 x IRcaster - sends IR signal over the Avcast network
• 1 x IRdetector - receives IR signal
• 1 x Notch filter - filters a channel range to allow Avcast network to utilize a channel
• 2 x Coax Cable - to connect MediaCaster/CableCaster to coax network
• 1 x RCA Cable set - to connect HTPC to MediaCaster

The setup of the system is rather complicated and requires that you both have access to, and know the setup of your home coax system which is already built into the majority of homes built in the past 30 years. If you have cable television, then you most likely have this internal network already set up.

Step 1:

Locate where the cable comes into your house. You need to intercept it where it splits off to go into separate ends of the house.

 

 

The CableCaster unit plugs in here. Also you will need A/C power. There is a plug for input - the input cable from your cable provider. Also in between the cable provider and the CableCaster goes the Notch Filter. This device blocks a channel range, so that the CableCaster can broadcast on this channel.

Step 2:

The MediaCaster is then plugged into cable network near or at your HTPC. You will need to have access to the coax network in your home if you don’t already have this near to your HTPC. This part will also need A/C power.

Step 3:

 

 

Plug your Audio/Video device (in this case, a DVR running SnapStream BeyondTV). This means you will need to output the video and audio in RCA format - so make sure you have the necessary cables/converters to do this.

Step 4 (optional):

At the remote end, connect the IR Caster and IR Receiver to the coax network. This will allow you to use the IR remote at a remote location to the intended receiver, the signal will be broadcast over the Avcast network to the MediaCaster unit.

In my case, I used the BTC Wireless Remote and Firefly remote, which were both able to reach to my upstairs room and control my PC.

Now that everything is set up, you can see my remote TV with my HTPC desktop running!

 

 

I must admit, it was very cool to be operating my HTPC from another room while seeing the content broadcast over a CATV channel. This signal is now available from anywhere in my house - allowing me to enjoy my recorded content over any cable-equipped television set.

There are several large drawbacks or flaws to using this system.

- First, the HTPC must output in 1.33:1 ratio format, meaning if you have your HTPC set up to output to an HDTV in widescreen format (16:9). I could only get my setup to output one or the other, meaning I had to make sure my aspect ration stayed in Standard format.
- Secondly, the notch filter also seemed to filter out content which it should not be filtering. Specifically, my Motorola set top box became useless. On Demand stopped working, as well as HDTV signal quality dropped dramatically - causes dropouts in signal.

These drawbacks really limit how you are able to use this system. In my case my wife really relys on the OnDemand service from Comcast - so this is a deal breaker for me. If your cable TV provider is not comcast, then you might not have this same problem. Also the system is fairly complicated to set up, so it is for advanced users only.

Final verdict:

 

Recommended
Recommended to those with advanced knowledge of cable/HTPC workings and specific requirements

 

Product provided by: SnapStream Media
Review date: 5/1/2007

If you have an HTPC which uses software such as BeyondTV you can use a remote for the majority of the time but there are times where you will want a good old fashioned keyboard, for surfing the web or other PC maintenance tasks. Sure you could use a wired keyboard or mouse, but who really wants to be tied to your Television which might be across the room. Typical wireless keyboards may only work several feet away from your PC. The 9019URF works at least 3.5 meters (10.5 feet) away from your PC, and in my experience it worked in another room on a different level, through the walls. It uses Radio Frequencies (RF) which can go through walls and does not require line of sight.

The box contains everything you need to use the keyboard:

• Wireless RF Keyboard
• USB PC Interface
• CD with optional drivers and manual
• 2 x AA batteries for the keyboard

Installing the keyboard is as simple as installing the batteries, and plugging the USB PC connector. The keyboard works out of the box in this setup. However, if you want to use the special “media” keys to launch your internet browser or e-mail, you will need to install the software which came on the CD, or download them from BTC’s website.

As I have hinted above, the BTC 9019 includes a pointing device right on the keyboard.

This pointer works fairly well while using your keyboard. It also has left click built in - if you wish to use right click, you will need to use the button to the immediate right of the pointer. Also to the immediate left, a scroll up and scroll down button have been placed. This is very handy while you are viewing any web pages.

Integration with any HTPC or DVR software, such as BeyondTV, works just as well as with any other keyboard. It is nice to be able to use the finess of keyboard/mouse combo when controlling BTV, or your system in general.

I had a small issue with the receiver where it seemed to lose its connection when I held the keyboard at a certain angle. This only seemed to be at a certain range, and moving the angle of the keyboard always fixed the issue. After moving the receiver on top of my entertainment system, rather than behind, the issue seemed to go away. This indicates to me that this keyboard might be susceptible to RF interference from components. When placing the receiver, make sure it is as far away from components as possible.

Overall the keyboard feels solid and not as cheap as I expected considering it’s bargain pricetag. At $35 as of 5/2007 from the SnapStream Store, it is a great deal.

I give this keyboard a:

Highly Recommended

Would Recommend to Family and Friends

Provided by: SnapStream
Review Date: 5/1/2007