Matthew Botos

After watching the HDTV market for years and blogging a good bit about prices, I finally decided they were at a point where I was willing to take the plunge. Shopping and consulting with Brian and Merle led me to the Samsung HP-S4253. This 42″ flat-panel plasma does 720p (720 horizontal lines drawn progressively, or all at once) and has more input options than you can shake a stick at.

The EGL freight service used by Amazon got it to me in a week, but overshot their 5-hour window by a good 2 hours. Jerry was kind enough to spend his Friday evening helping me set it up and enjoying the huge picture. The unboxing wasn’t as intricate as other products, but did feature a nice tray for the TV with two plugs that allowed the rest of the box to be lifted off. Samsung also had the good sense to provide two bona fide handles to help move the 90-lb monitor.

Plugging it in was easy with digital cables; HDMI into the monitor and a single optical audio out to the receiver. Stripping out all the old analog cables made quite an impressive pile. Not to blow my own horn, but I was also impressed with the size of my center channel when compared to my main speakers. I forget how huge the thing perched on top of the TV has been, but it makes sense with upwards of 50% of front audio coming through it. After finding it wouldn’t fit on the top shelf in front of the TV, I rearranged things to fit it below.

The final product, as Jerry noted, really completes the look of my bachelor pad. It’s a vision that I’ve had for at least six years, and there is a certain materialistic and technophile satisfaction in seeing it realized. Plus, “it really ties the room together”.

View the HDTV photos

After setting up the Tivo Series 3, a few recordings were missing from my Series 2 Tivo. It took me half a day to realize it, but clicking through the setup on the new box had managed to work through the menu to delete recordings on the old one! Tivo boxes and remotes are all interchangeable by default, hence the crosstalk.

There is a procedure to uniquely pair the remote to the Tivo which you could do on the older Tivo before setting up the new one. Alternately, you can cover the sensor in the middle of the old unit until the remote is paired.

My Christmas cactus started to bloom this week, so I snapped a few quick photos.

View the Christmas Cactus photos

I wasn’t going to take unboxing pictures of my new Tivo Series 3, but the packaging was too cool not to. Tivo went for a classier black box this time, with the color not popping out until you open it up. Like their on-screen interface, they put ease of use first in the packaging, with a quick-start poster and instructions for your cable guy.

What really impressed me is all the cables they include, especially in an HD world, where everyone wants to sell you overpriced HDMI cables. The only thing they left out was an optical audio cable, but otherwise it’s a pretty complete set for your money. The box itself is wider than the Series 2, and has a glossy black finish, silver faceplate and Cylon display slot.

In the back is a rich selection of ports for all those cables; one particularly neat detail is the built-in dust cover for the optical audio out. I had to clear some room in by equipment rack for the new addition, so it got to sit up on a pedestal for a few days. During the power-up and setup, the fancy new display gets put to good use.

View the Tivo Series 3 Unboxing photos

When I bought my MacBook, Bluetooth was a feature I thought I could’ve left behind, not having a slick enough phone or PDA that could wirelessly talk to the computer. Over the last few months, though, I’ve found that it definitely has its uses.

The first was for hooking up a mouse to the laptop; wireless mice are all the rage, but I couldn’t see marring the MacBook’s clean lines with a dongle for a wireless mouse. A Bluetooth mouse easily solved the problem, though it does occasionally lose sync with the computer.

More impressive was how well it worked with my new Motorola RAZR phone. After I set it up as a new device, the Mac popped up iSync to send over contacts and calendar items. I setup a “Cell” group in Address Book to transfer and that was it; no cables, no lame vendor software, no cajoling Verizon to load them from an old phone. The only slightly goofy part was it assigned speed dials in alphabetical order, which took a little effort to sort out. Also, while Verizon didn’t totally neuter the phone, they do seem to have turned off the ability to transfer for files (photos, ringtones, etc.).

I’ve been checking out HDTVs a bit more seriously and finally went to look at some in person last night. While all the HD sets look good, the ones that really popped with detail were the 1080p ones playing high definition DVDs. To translate from geek-speak, that’s 1080 horizontal lines being drawn at once versus the 480i drawn in alternating passes on a standard TV. Most HDTVs on the market do 720p.

As impressive as full 1080p HDTV is, it doesn’t seem worth it at the moment. The selection of sets is still limited, and there are no broadcasts in that high a resolution. Even of the two competing HD DVD formats only one currently offers it, and that’s still a $1000 BetaMax gamble. You get a lot more options and better deals in the meat of the market where there’s plenty of 720p competition.

One of the great things about iTunes is the ability to buy the single odd track from an album that really catches you. Except when they make it only available as part of a complete album.

I gave up gaming long before video cards and gaming systems hit stratospheric prices, but the recent ad for Gears of War really grabbed me. It’s the music; a sparse rendition of “Mad World” from Donnie Darko (per ars technica). Available on iTunes, but only as part of the complete soundtrack. I passed, but many others didn’t- it was the #7 album on iTunes this week!

Sometimes, the full albums are worth it, though; I did buy Foo Fighter’s Skin and Bones. It’s all acoustic renderings of their songs, and perhaps a sign of maturing musical taste that this sort of thing is more appealing to me. The album also includes a “digital booklet”, aka liner notes. In an age of downloaded music, it is nice to flip through artwork and candid photos from recording sessions.

I was a good citizen and exercised my right to vote today, though I can’t say it was terribly inspiring. Voting has always seemed to be a choice between the lesser of two evils; this year the evils made themselves quite while known and I showed up more to vote against them than for their opponents. I’ve spent past elections poring over platforms and candidate’s positions on the the issue; this year was more of a gut feeling on who wasn’t a complete jerk.

This year’s campaigns has been fairly obnoxious, and more intrusive than in the past. My mailbox has been stuffed full of flyers, and my voicemail always has “important policital messages” sent by automated lobbying groups. The latter should be illegal; perhaps I could let my congresspeople know with an automated system of my own…

Despite past miscounts and questions about closed, proprietary voting machines, the physical polling place was pretty relaxed, once you ran the gauntlet of last minute lobbyists up to the front door. It wasn’t as bad as Robert Stack’s scene in Airplane, but there still needs to be a greater standoff distance. Inside, there was no ID check, just a signature next to your name in the book.

It’s a striking contrast to any election photos you see in developing nations getting their first taste of democracy, where seriously determinted pollsters shuffle locked ballot boxes under the watchful eye of armed guards. A bit dramatic, but it leaves no doubt as to the gravity and passion of the event.

My own experiences seem to be mirroring those of Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Fry in terms of upgrading cell phones. Though “it’s just a phone”, the cell phone has become more of a fashion statement and status symbol than one’s car.

Though I’m a technical person with the usual slew of electronic toys, I held off getting a cell phone for five years after college. Even then, I grudgingly got a pay-as-you-go plan with a suprisingly good color flip phone. It was fine for 18 months until I found myself surrounded by coworkers with slick Motorola RAZRs.

One the somewhat practical side, a wider, thinner phone is easier for my hands, and I have been looking to consolidate my VOIP and cell lines. But lusting for a slick new phone definitely pushed me over the edge.

I just ordered naked Verizon DSL (DSL without a voice dial tone). It’s not an option on their website, so you do have to call and pay a $5 premium, bringing it to $35 a month with a year commitment. Comcast is $43 if you also have cable TV, so Verizon is still a better deal. (You can get $30 DSL with a “$12″ basic line, but my last land line was at least $20 with various fees that funded the Spanish-American War until a few months ago.)

You also can’t dodge the setup/equipment fee if you’ve had DSL before; you’re still going to pay $30, so you might as well take the equipment. Though it is an integrated modem and wireless gateway, and having a spare is better than paying $2.50 a month in “insurance”.

Finally, the woman who took my order was the first in a long time to recognize that my email was my last name. I didn’t have the heart to tell her part of the reason was so I could jump to the cheapest Internet provider as the winds shift