Big Year for Starwars Fans

Just recently the new trailer for Episode III: Return of the Sith was released. I must say the new trailer is pretty impressive. I haven't been terribly impressed by Episode I & II, but by the looks of the trailer it may be finishing off in style! I could tell you all the cool stuff about it (and trust me there is plenty of cool stuff) but that would just spoil it so check it out! Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith Trailer

The other big thing to come out this year for Starwar's fans is a film by fans ( I do have to thank Valavien for this link). Star Wars: Revelations is film by Panic Struck Productions due to premier on 16th April.

This is the blurb on the plot.

Seers once shaped the path of the Jedi Order. But their visions grew unreliable and the Jedi came to distrus those with the ability. Seers hid their visions or left the Order forever.

In the wake of the Temple's destruction a power struggle has emerged between Darth Vader, the Dark Lord of the Sith, and Zhanna, the Emperor's Hand. Each seeks to eliminate the last of the Jedi and gain the Emperor's favor.

Caught between them is one women who cannot deny the truth of her visions as all race to posses an ancient Jedi secret.

The acting is not the best (about the same as the first episodes of Star Trek or The Bold and The Beautiful), also not helped by the home video quality of the real life sequences (which were filmed on miniDV cameras). However, the CGI sequences are amazing and would be at home on any theatrical release.

There are no details on releases or whether the film will ever make it out other than at the preview. Even so it is definately worth checking out trailer. Star Wars: Revelations Trailer

Get your Nintendo DS Cranking

No I'm not talking about hooking your DS into some awesome portible sound system to pump out Project Rub tunes.

There is nothing worse than getting to the train/bus turn on your console to find the battery light glaring at you. Now you no longer have to wait to find a power point to get your DS ready for action.

Japanese GameTech offers a manual charger for the Nintendo DS. A hand cranking charger to get some juice back into your gaming. Just 3 short minutes of cranking will keep you up and going for another 20minutes!

Endless gaming is just a short crank away!

Is it time to throw out my DVD Collection?

There was a article published this week The chronicles of a futile battle: Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD outlining the war of the new Digital Video Format.

They discuss the limitations of the current dvd format with its resolution limitation of 720x480. This in now easiy outstriped by current 1080i HD formats with resolutions of 1920x1080. The fight to an extent comes down to size.

Blu-Ray promises 25 GB for single-layer and 50 GB for dual-layer, compared to HD-DVD's 15 GB for single-layer and 30 GB for dual-layer.

This would tend to indicate that there is no real race at all with HD-DVD supporting almost double the amount of data than its Blu-Ray compeditor. However Blu- Ray is currently offered support by its inventor, Sony, and Dell, Hitachi, Hewlett-Packard, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung and other IT equipment producers. HD-DVD (High-Density Digital Versatile Disc) doesn't have support from nearly as may IT Companies: only Toshiba, the inventor of the format, and NEC. It does have in its favour the backing of more movie studios: Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros and New Line Cinema while Blu-Ray has only received backing from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Walt Disney.

What does it all mean for the movies? Well a single layer HD-DVD disc (which can store about 25GB) will be able to hold about 2 hours of HDTV using current MPEG2 encoding while using MPEG4 would deliver about 4 hours.

So it looks like the humple DVD format which changed the way we watch movies at home and turned many people into movie collectors may not be long for this world. But don't throw out your DVD player and collection just yet, it probably won't be until 2006 before the format is widely available.

How to upgrade your Wharfedale Diamonds....

The new Diamond 9 range from Wharfedale has been out for a little while now. I've had an audition of the Diamond 9.5 (which are the replacement for the previous Diamond 8.4) which sound just as good as you'd expect just that bit better than the last model (which in itself was a 5 star award winner)

The disappointment I've found so far is the lack of ability to test the flagship offering of the new range. A few stores have the Diamond 9.6 in stock but almost no where has the new Diamond 9.CM with duel 6.5" drives along side the separate soft dome midrange and tweeter drivers. The 2" tex midrange driver is that shared with the 9.6 floor stander and should provide seemless integration across the front stage. However, at this point it's only speculation as the speaker isn't available for audition.

The completion of this package would definately Diamond 9.3 to drive the rear offering a great multi-channel music setup with 8" driver have enough gusto to produce ample bass. There is also a diapole offering in the Diamond 9.DFS for more movie focused applications.

New Music (at last!)

It's been quite a while since I've bought any new music. Probably for a few reasons, there hasn't been a lot of new stuff around that has inspired me of late and probably because (since the arrival of Jay & the Doctor on triple J anyway) I've been listening to the radio a lot less. I did have a pleasant surprise when I wondered into a music store yesterday though. Sitting proudly on the New Music stand was a copy of Human After All. After 4 (long) years daft punk have release another album, as Discovery (their last album) is one of my all time favorite albums I was understandably excited about finding the new disc since I had no idea it was on its way.

The press release had this to say about the new album

Daft Punk release their first new studio album in four years. Thomas Bangalter and Guy Manuel de Homem Christo recorded the ten tracks of the new album 'Human After All' in just six weeks between September and November 2004, in their homestudio in Paris. The French electronic music duo came to worldwide attention in 1997, with the release of their debut album 'Homework', both a critical and commercial worldwide hit and whose impact at the time on the dance music industry was revolutionary. In 2001, they released their second album, 'Discovery', which also became a global hit and broke ground again musically and visually, through the use of Japanese anime imagery and the portraying of the band as robots.

As ever, the music is diverse and fresh whilst retaining their trademark Daft Punk sound, this time with a more spontaneous and direct quality to the recording. A mix of guitars and machines, 'Human After All' takes us from the hardcore 'Brainwasher' to the pumping 'Technologic', with the addition of rockier tracks such as 'Robot Rock' and emotional moments such as 'Make Love'.

I must admit the album is much harder than their last release but no less enjoyable. I've listened to it end to end about 4 times now and it still has the same daft punk feel as their previous albums. My favourite track however is one of the track more reminiscent of Discovery 'THE PRIME TIME OF YOUR LIFE'

Flat Panels for the Bedroom

This was a bit of an unusual find. We have recently renovated the bedroom and were looking for a bit of a stereo setup to finish it off. I stumbled across the speakers from this TDK NX03CD on 'quit' (ie they need to get rid of it) at Myer. The main unit had been stolen (not that it's much use for anyone because the main unit is powered by the subwoofer) and left all the cables and speakers behind. The setup is basically a 6.5" woofer teamed with 2 NXT panels and for $29 I thought it was well worth entertaining as a set of speakers.

All in all I was fairly impressed with the sound. They not exactly anything to replace the Wharfedales in the main setup but they produce a fairly clear (although a little bass heavy... and no the subwoofer doesn't have an adjustment) presentation. They don't have the best separation but overall the vocals are strong and clear.

Now I'm just in search of the best way to drive the units (which is currently hooked to a PC)

Foxtel iQ quick review

Tonight I went to the Brisbane launch of the new Foxtel iQ PDR (Personal Digital Recorder). I must admit I was pretty surprised at the turnout the Myer store was packed out. From what I saw it's a pretty impressive little unit although not unlike most other PVRs or HDD recorders on the market.

Overall these were the things that were impressive :

• There looks as though there has been a lot of thought into the interface to make it easy to use for those people that have trouble programming their VCRs (not that I'm saying that they'll be able to program it but it does look easy to use)
• The system has dual tuners allowing you :
  watch one channel and record another or
  record two channels and watch something that's already been recorded.
• Seamless integration with the Electronic Program Guide allowing for simple recording
• Integration allowing for series linking which will automatically record ever occurance of that series.
• 160Gb HDD which will delete the oldest recorded program when then HDD fills up.

However it's not that different to the features of my Topfield, so it's not as amazing and as innovative as the presentation would have you believe. That said many of the people attending the preview were concerned about where the tape went and how they changed it so it was probably fair to say they weren't up to speed on the latest HDD recorders.

All in all it's a pretty good unit and for the price ($395 + $100 installation), even with the on going fee, it has all the features of a $1000 PVR plus a few extras, not least of all the ability to convienently record your Foxtel Digital.

Beogram 4002 Stylus Time

My B&O Beogram 4002 is in a sorry state. I bought it a while ago for a pretty good price knowing full well that the stylus was in pretty bad shape. I'd done my research and spoken to B&O who had informed me that I could get a new stylus for a pretty reasonable price. Unfortunately about a day after I'd picked up the turntable I received an email from B&O informing that they'd made a mistake and they no longer produced the MMC 20EN stylus.

Not disuaded I browsed the internet to try and find a replacement. As I've now discovered there are very few places that actually make the part (actually that would be one place). At the time I found Sound Smith had bought the rights to reproduce new styli to B&O specification.
The exact replacement sells for $279.95US plus shipping which at the time was about 3 times the price I'd payed for the turntable. With the current exchange rate it's not so bad and I've decided it's time to bite the bullet.

Especially when it received reviews like this :-

Bang & Olufsen BEOGRAM 4002 with a tangantial tone arm and an elliptical
stylus cartridge. One of the best for a quality 33's and 45's LP reproduction.

ADSL speeds on the increase

Following on from my Confusion on Connection Speeds I've been looking around at other broadband choices to see if I can get better value from my hard earned dollars. As it turns out there has been a bit of news on the ADSL front.

First of all TELSTRA has begun upgrading its ADSL equipment to deliver internet services at speeds up to 16 times faster than are currently available.

The article from The Australia goes on to say...

Telstra spokesperson Patrick O'Beirne said the carrier expected to install DSL
equipment capable of up to 24Mbps in all exchanges by mid-2006.
The new equipment would support the next-generation ADSL2+ standard, expected to be ratified by the Australian Communication Industry Forum later this year, Mr
O'Beirne said.

Unfortunately they haven't set a date when plans on the new equipment would be available to the public.

Also iiNet annouced their acquisition of Ozemail. Currently I get my net through Ozemail and was looking around for a more economical option for the speeds that were provided. The advantage with iiNet is their iibroadband2. iibroadband2 plans on the iinet broadband network (DSLAMs) can reach speeds of up to 8000k! All this for less than I pay on Ozemail.

So here's hoping there is an easy transfer process :)

More Details on Foxtel iQ

There have been some more details (since I first posted Foxtel gets some iQ and PDR for Foxtel to be released about the PDR) starting to come out about the features and functions that will be available to the Foxtel subscribers that take up the PDR option.

One thing the iQ will not do is allow viewers to skip commercials, probably one of the biggest advantages of most PVRs, instead it will only allow ads to be fast forwarded. This is going to be a pretty big piece of functionality that the Foxtel set will have to miss out on. The decision not to have an ad skipper is purely a financial one.

Steve Allen, managing director of advertising strategy group Fusion Strategy, said clients buying ad time on TV and pay TV had asked about any impact of PDRs on advertising effectiveness. However, with relatively low levels of recording actually happening, PDRs were expected to have "a very minor effect on the market".

The big plus for the unit is the integration with its Electronic Program Guide, which allows the device to record a show when it actually starts (something that is nearly impossible with a regular PVR even with electronic program integration, see TV Time). The system will also allow for automatic recording of each new episode in a series whenever it is shown, regardless of any changes to the programming schedule.

The unit is basically Pace's TDS460NF and TDC460NF and will use a 160 gbyte hard drive to record digital quality television programming. Integrated twin tuners allow one programme to be recorded while watching another, or two programmes to be recorded at the same time while watching a previously recorded program.

But I will leave you with a bad note. It is rumoured that the Box Office channel will not be on the list of channels that you can record. Also for the $395 cost and the $100 installation fee you don't get to keep the box.