The FlatHDTV Blog

NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, of the US government) has recently restored hundreds of hours of space footage from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions in the 60s and 70s. Much of this footage had only existed on film, and has been converted to digital files with HDTV resolution.

The main archive for NASA’s HD video is here: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/hd/HDGalleryCollection_archive_1.html

The restored footage might not be on the site quite yet, but that’s where it will be available soon. And for a little more information, check this news item or NASA’s Home Page.

To see this footage in its full glory, you’ll have to connect your HDTV to your computer. For some tips, check here: Connecting your HDTV to your PC 

Buying a big-ticket item like an HDTV through the internet is a pretty scary prospect for most people. There are several anxiety issues: Will my stuff get damaged in shipping? What if I have to return it? Will I waste the better part of a day (or two) waiting for the delivery truck? And isn’t it crazy to send several thousand dollars into cyberspace, to someone who may or may not even be a real person?

Those are all reasonable fears. But, the last one is not as reasonable as it was back in the 90s. The rise of major online retailers like Amazon.com has raised online customer service standards to a level where the overall experience, though different, is in many ways better than the experience at your neighborhood electronics store. Let’s look at some of the concerns behind buying online:

• My HDTV may be damaged in shipping. It’s certainly possible. But the policy of Amazon and most other online retailers takes this into account, and gives you several ways to deal with it. With their standard shipping, the delivery person will typically help you take the set out of the box, wait for you to plug it in and see if there is any shipping damage. If there is, it’s a no-brainer- the set goes back and you get a replacement immediately.
• The set may be damaged in a way that is not immediately obvious. Even if you don’t notice anything wrong with the set right away, you can still send it back for a replacement within 30 days, and Amazon will pay for the shipping. And when you think about it, this problem is equally likely when buying from a physical store: the set had to be shipped to the store in the first place, and the store is certainly not going to test every unit for every kind of defect. That means you’re the “test pilot” whether you buy from Circuit City or Amazon.
• I will have to wait all day for the delivery truck. Yeah, this one’s annoying. But fighting traffic and hanging around in a big-box electronics store for several hours can be infinitely frustrating as well.
• It’s easier to talk a salesperson into a lower price. If you’re a genius at haggling low prices out of retail sales managers, you might enjoy the buying process more at a physical store. Unfortunately, while most salespeople can be talked into matching the price you found down the street, they will rarely match the best price you can find online. Beating the other neighborhood stores is one thing, but beating every store on the internet is quite another. And to top it off, Amazon will actually give you a rebate on your purchase if the price of your HDTV goes down within 30 days after your purchase.
• It’s hard to trust a faceless online merchant. Given the speed with which the world is changing, that’s understandable. The best way to get around this one is to start spending more time online, do your research, interact with real people in chat rooms, read industry newsletters, and so on. Once you become aware of the potential pitfalls and the ways to safeguard against them, buying online will feel as natural as putting money in the bank.

For more information on buying HDTV sets online, please visit FlatHDTV.net, a website dedicated to helping you make a wise and informed purchase.

Learning the ropes in the brave new world of HDTV can be overwhelming at times, especially if reading acronym after acronym makes your head spin. Get a new HD-DVR for your LCD DTV, turn your HP into an HTPC, and then once you’ve learned to download WVGA from your ISP you’ll wonder why you ever watched MTV on your RCA.

One of the most important new terms, though, is HDMI. It refers to a new type of cable and stands for High Definition Multimedia Interface. The concept behind HDMI is really simple: instead of having different kinds of cables to connect between your TV, computer, DVD player and what have you, just use one type of cable that’s capable of doing it all. It comes down to the bigger-fire-hose theory: with ever increasing TV screen resolutions, high definition movie players, and growing popularity of downloading huge files over the internet, demand has increased for high capacity cables, and so the cost has come down low enough that it makes little sense to buy anything smaller.

HDMI cables replace the following: coaxial cable (the stiff, round wire with one pin coming out of the end connector), DVI cables (the ones with a trapezoidal end jack, with about 15 pins, that is often used for a computer monitor), composite and component cables (the familiar old red and green, or white and yellow cable pairs that TVs have used for decades), and many many more. They are not part of every device yet, though, so adapters will still have to be used for several years to come when connecting an HDMI port to a non-HDMI port. To see pictures of these connectors check this article: connecting your computer to your HDTV.

And even though HDMI is the most powerful cable in consumer electronics, there is still something better- future versions of HDMI. The standard right now is called HDMI 1.0, and it is capable of handling the most advanced HDTV technology (1080p, 120Hz, Blu-Ray) that you can buy right now. Just around the corner is a new standard called HDMI 1.3 that should handle the next generation of HDTVs, whether they can play 2560×1600 resolution, super enhanced audio, 3-D movies, or even smell-o-vision. Getting a 1.0 cable is fine for now, though, because they are cheap and can handle just about anything.

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.

Just this week, Toshiba has announced that it will no longer support the HD-DVD format of high definition DVD technology, which it had been developing. This means that the only option for high definition DVD watching is the Blu-Ray format, and consumers will no longer have to choose between two very similar but incompatible formats. It’s good news for the movie industry, too, since they can now focus on only one format to produce their high definition movies in, and will not have to risk choosing an unpopular format.

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray were equally matched at first, so there was no clearly better technology. Consumers had a hard time choosing which format to invest in, and so did the studios. Each format depended almost completely of the support of the major studios, so when big ones like Warner Brothers chose to support Blu-Ray exclusively, it was only a matter of time before HD-DVD went down. Another big factor was the popularity of the Sony Playstation, which doubles as a Blu-Ray player.

(source)