Panasonic is unleashing a Monster! I heard someone talking about this on the radio last night that was at the CES 2008 show. The picture is spectacular from what he said.
This is not listed yet on Pasasonic store site and no price is available yet...but if you have to ask you cant afford it!
http://www.panasonic.com/cesshow/
It's been raining like heck today. Working in it has been a pain. When I showed up at FedX yesterday they had metal roof panels strewed all over. the field from last Fridays havoc. The gals told me it was a mess and the roofers were still working on it. I got over to DHL and the parking lot was covered in broken limbs. Bearly had a place to park.
Last evening I was at a clients house about 20 miles east from the house and they had an awning that had tore off and the post went through the window.
Chains are required north, east, and west of the house. The nearest being about 5 miles from here. Since we are at the edge of the foothills we really just get to look at the snow most of the time which is ok with me. BRRRRR.
We actually have been lucky. So far, a fence panel that I haven't installed yet fell over but looks intact. The roof is holdin...knock on wood. But it's colder than the dickens out. My hands turned red today within several minutes of being outside.
Guess I'll Live.
I feel lucky having a newer fence. I did see many older fences blown over and a couple of really expensive solar panels the city had put up over by the airport had broke off at the base. Power outages have been spotty. We seldom see no more than a flicker since we are 10 minutes from the largest hydroelectric units in the state.
Everywhere you go, you see great new HD TV and players for sale. Prices are coming down. Eventually, but not tomorrow, every old TV and DVD player, cable box and satellite box will likely be replaced with HD rated equipment. As of yet, it is uncertain where the industry will go as far as to who will win the format wars between HDDVD and Blue-Ray. So we will likely see an assortment of players that either play one or the other or both. Possibly there will be a continuation of combo units that play VCR tapes also.
You probably cringe when you look behind your entertainment center with all the wires and stuff if you have all the traditional equipment like I do. Eventually that will be a thing of the past also.
HD content can be seen by connecting your device to your HDTV via 2 popular interfaces...DVI (Digital Video Interface) or HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface).
DVI can display all popular HD resolutions up to 1080i as can the HDMI interface. The difference is that HDMI combines both video and audio into one wire. DVI requires separate audio cables just like S-Video and all other analog type connections. Most likely you would use component or optical audio which delivers a higher quality.
An Intel spinoff group has developed a copy protection scheme called HDCP (High Definition Copy Protocol). Basically how this works is that via the DVI or HDMI cable, your HDTV and the component communicate back and forth exchanging encryption keys. Each frame is either turned on or off depending on whether the correct key or cookie is recieved. Keep in mind that not all HD content will be encrypted and unless it is encrypted may not be an issue.
What this is designed to prevent is the audio/video signal from being intercepted between the component and the video display and then recorded. Most likely where you would most encounter this I assume would be with HDDVD and Blue-Ray discs I assume. I'm going to also assume that the satellite and cable companies will continue to control content via subscription. However, they could just as easily deploy HDCP in thier HD DVR (Digital Video Recorder) offerings as well as any one of thier HD packages.
For people like me who refuse to pay extra for HD programming, likely will never get my satellite box replaced unless it literally dies. So even if I go out and purchace an HDTV...doesn't mean I have to watch HD content. HDCP only works over DVI and HDMI.
Certification of the HDMI 1.3 standard released last year requires the devices to be HDCP compliant also. This standard opens up a whole new level of HD possibilities. HDMI.org has some pretty good video presentations that explain the new standard.
Most everyone that has owned a VCR recorded a TV show or two right? I'm not going to discuss the legality or morality of doing this. It is possible, that at some point in time, this practice could be stopped. It would require both audio and video display options to use HDMI and have that be the only option. Today we have several options and should remain that way for sometime to come.
According to what I have read though, It is mathmatically possible to crack the HDCP code. This means that some ingenious fellow could design a breakout box of sorts that sits between a component and a display and emulates a HDTV on one side and emulates a component device on the otherside and could care less if the audio/video gets tapped off of it and recorded.
Even without that, how hard would it be to take apart the display and tap into the A/V stream on the back side of the security chip? Probably would take a decent Electrical Engineer about a day to to that. I suspect it also wouldn't be that hard to make a telecine device that captures and records the display output either.
While this may slow piracy down for a fashion, the fact that the code can be cracked, chips can be purchaced, and they already have plenty of practice already...it isn't going to be a permanent situation.
The storm let up a bit and the birds decided it was safe to come out of hiding. For all practical purposes the airport was closed yesterday because it was so bad out. So while 2LiveCrew was circling the airport...we held our own concert complete with the cleanup crew.
After a recent installation of Adobe Reader 8, I discovered I didn't like it when I actually started to use it. So I said. "Self. just uninstall it in Add/Remove Programs and install an earlier version and get back to work".
This all sounds good except it refused to uninstall. So since sometimes you have to re-install an application to uninstall it I also tried that. It refused to uninstall and re-install! Even the earlier version refused to install .By this time I was rather ticked off.
Being the techie that I am, I set out to manually remove the program. This includes often several layers of things to do like deleting files, editing the registry etc. Basically making the computer forget the application had been installed. Since this was basically a new build of XP on my system, System Restore was not an option and of course I didn't feel like spending all the time it would take to completely rip the program out of the registry.
My next step led me to searching for an Adobe Uninstaller similar to the Flash Uninstaller they have when flash gets messed up. What I came up with is the Microsoft Installer Cleanup Utility which I had forgotten about.
It is available here http://tinyurl.com/45x45
Sure enough after Installing and running the utility, Adobe Reader 8 was listed as being installed. This was also after manually removing the most obvious registry keys. Removing the reader was as simlpe as putting in a checkmark and clicking finish.
Within minutes of this, I installed an earlier version I was used to and was back working without an issue.
1. A day without sunshine is like night. 2. On the other hand, you have different fingers. 3. 42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot. 4. 99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name. 5. Remember, half the people you know are below average. 6. He who laughs last thinks slowest. 7. Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm. 8. The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese in the trap.
9. Support bacteria. They're the only culture some people have. 10. A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory. 11. Change is inevitable, except from vending machines. 12. If you think nobody cares, try missing a couple of payments. 13. How many of you believe in psycho-kinesis? Raise my hand. 14. OK, so what's the speed of dark? 15. When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane. 16. Hard work pays off in the futur e. Laz iness pays off now. 17. How much deeper would the ocean be without sponges? 18. Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines. 19. What happens if you get scared half to death, twice? 20. Why do psychics have to ask you for your name? 21. Inside every older person is a younger person wondering, "What the heck happened?" 22. Just remember -- if the world didn't suck, we would all fall off. 23. Light travels faster than sound. That's why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.24. Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapeno's . What you do today, might burn your butt tomorrow.
I'm not exactly sure what type of bird this is...small wren variety I believe. This peticular one has over the last few weeks developed a taste for hummingbird food and the hummingbirds gladly share. Since the windows have screens over them, clarity is not present, but I think you will concur this is not a hummingbird.
This little guy lands on the roof and checks things out. Then flys under the eave to the hummingbird feeder and chows down.
The finches really are going to town. Since they are really skidish, they are hard to catch admist thier feeding frenzy.Here's a picture of the front feeder with 4 finches.
It's kind of hard to see but the volume of seed in the sock is about 1/4 of what was in the other sock in the backyard. The front is a really quiet spot for them. Most of our in-and-out traffic is through the back door. I tried photographing the humming birds yesterday through the window but since it was so dark in the room the flash ruined the pictures. I might try learning how to turn the autoflash off and try again.
Yesterday we had no less than 30 humming birds at the feeders. And at the same time probably 10 or 12+ finches at the back feeder. Man talk about noisy. The little guys in the front though were being awfully quiet.
Went to Petco yesterday on the way to get pellets. Actually it is farther than my pellet stop. Anyway, I picked up a huge bag of thistle seed and 2 "supersocks" which hold about twice as much feed as the socks in the pictures. Hopefully we are set for the winter.
I just checked and they are back at it again this morning. Not as many yet but you can hear them buzzin and singin already at daybreak.