The FlatHDTV Blog

Tired of the measly amount of high definition content from your cable TV company? Do you not see the point of watching American Idol in 1080p? Well, if you have a broadband internet connection and a fairly recent-model computer, there’s a huge amount of content available to you, and it covers every conceivable subject.

If you’ve heard of torrents already, it was probably in the context of internet piracy. A torrent is simply a method of transferring a very large digital file (like, the size of a full-length DVD movie) in a short time. This makes it easy for anyone who can copy some digital media (copyrighted, or not) to upload it to the world wide web, where anyone in the world is then free to download it. The good news is, there is an ever-growing number of legal torrents on the web, and many of them are HD.

The two things you need to make this work are the web address of the torrent itself, and a media player that can handle torrents. The best tool going right now is a program called the Miro Player, which combines an index of popular torrent “channels” with a very user-friendly player. Most of these channels are made up of podcasts, which are videos ranging from a few minutes to a few hours in length. With an average broadband connection, a podcast generally takes about half as long to download as it does to watch. A good plan is to download while you are doing work on the computer, or while you’re out doing something else. You can download the player here for free in about five minutes: Miro Player

Miro’s website and the player itself will walk you through the installation process. Once it’s installed on your computer, if you haven’t already done so, you’ll need to connect the computer to your HDTV. You can find some tips on doing this here: connecting your computer to your HDTV

The content on Miro’s guide ranges from professional broadcasts like NBC News and National Geographic to low-budget, homemade shows covering niches with a very limited audience, and everything in between. Most is standard-def, but a steadily growing amount is in a 720p format. If you are interested in going beyond this content, however, and into the high seas of the internet where exotic digital booty and pirates abound, you’ll have to learn a little about the way torrents work.

Basically, a torrent exists when there is someone, somewhere in the world, who has a file on their computer that you want, and they make it available to the world. These people are called seeders, because they are “seeding” the internet with bits of these files. People who download files from seeders are called “leechers” because, well, they are getting something for free from the seeders. Leechers are also seeders while they are downloading, because the torrent player can use a partially downloaded file to seed for other leechers. That’s part of the magic of torrents.

So, if you’re ready to try it, go to a torrent tracker site like Mininova, and search for something you are interested in. There will probably be several versions of it, all with different numbers of seeders and leechers. The trick is to find the torrent with the best ratio of seeders to leechers, since that one will probably download the fastest. But take note: since some of the torrents on Mininova are copyrighted material (OK, most of them), you might be breaking the law by doing this. Keep that in mind.

Once you are on the page for the torrent you want, the simple way to get it into the Miro player is to right-click where it says “download this torrent”, and choose “Copy link location”. Then open up the Miro player, select “download video” from the file folder, and click OK to start downloading. The torrent world is a tricky place, though, so it might not work- try another one. Sometimes you just get what you get. And sometimes the torrent is more like a trickle.
If you are using a Mac, there’s probably a simpler way to do it, but this method works: on the page where it says “download this torrent”, copy the web address in your browser, go to Miro and select “download video”, and you should see the address in the dialog box that pops up. Change the letters “tor” in the address to “get”, hit OK, and you should be in business.

So again, be careful out there on the wild world web and be aware that just because a torrent tracker site is popular and professional looking, doesn’t mean that everything on it is kosher. The decision to use it is up to you. To be safe, stick to the Miro Guide and other legitimate torrent sources.

Whenever new, amazing, and mysterious technology appears in the world, a new group of “experts” on this technology often appears out of nowhere. These people are full of good information and have the best intentions, but sometimes they get a little careless with their explanations and promote an idea that seems logical and makes sense, but is actually wrong.

The conventional wisdom behind HDTV tech, magic as it is, includes several of these logical but misguided tips. One goes like this: Plasma TVs contain a weird substance inside the screen, called “plasma”, which is so slippery and sneaky that it could leak out of the set if you lay it flat on the floor or in the back of your car. This reasoning supposedly explains why many retailers have a strict policy against shipping a Plasma TV any way except vertically. Some customers have even been obligated to choose an LCD over a Plasma because the back of their car wasn’t tall enough to take it away from the shop in a vertical position.

The real reason behind that policy is that a Plasma TV has a relatively fragile construction, with two panes of glass mounted very close to each other. If one was resting horizontally in the back of a truck, and that truck bounced over a speed bump a little too fast, the panes could bounce a little themselves and squeeze what’s in between.

What’s in between is not a pool of mysterious liquid, but an array of tiny cells that contain a special kind of gas. When the computer inside the TV tells them to, these cells light up like tiny neon lights, because the gas inside them is excited into what’s called a “plasma state”. If some of these cells get damaged by transport, there’s really no way to fix them. Laying a Plasma TV carefully down on your living room floor, however, won’t do any harm at all. Just don’t step on it.

Here are some references, in case you need a little more convincing:

http://www.dtvcity.com/plasmatv/plasmatv-leak.html

http://www.hometheaterblog.com/hometheater/2006/06/plasma_tv_sales.html

http://www.answers.com/plasma+display?cat=technology

The high-definition DVD format wars have finally come to an end, with the Blu-Ray format edging out HD-DVD. With striking similarity to a U.S. political party nomination race, Blu-Ray won because the big industry players decided it would do a better job supporting their content. All parties are now relieved that the race is over, since the movie studios don’t have to decide which format to burn their movies onto, and consumers don’t have to decide which type of player to buy.

Predictably, though, the end of this competition has brought an end to the dropping prices. Most dedicated Blu-Ray players have spiked in price at least 20%, some much more. It may be some time before the competition between different brands of Blu-Ray player forces the price back down again.

For now, it seems that one of the factors in HD-DVD’s demise is still relevant, but in a different way: Sony’s popular game console, the Playstation 3, doubles as a high quality Blu-Ray disc player, and it isn’t participating in the price spike. It’s not much more expensive than the cheapest dedicated player, and it plays games, too.

Check here for more details, and check out FlatHDTV.net for more information on the world of HDTV.