Trump obviously wants Putin to claim all of Ukraine for Russia. To that end, he refuses to give Zelensky any assistance. But now Trump is harming his own war effort in Iran by refusing assistance from Zelensky.
Category: Tech
From Denmark With Sound
https://hifihalloffame.com/equipment/dynaco-a25-loudspeaker/
The A-25 was just the right size — smaller than the Large Advent speaker, and larger than the Small Advent. It was a rarity for its time in being praised by both Consumer Reports and Stereophile.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/dynaco-25-loudspeaker
For anyone who thinks $1600 would be a lot of money to spend on a pair of speakers today, adjusted for inflation that’s what a pair of Dynaco A-25’s cost when they were introduced in 1969.
Dear Verizon
Verizon Fios has been my ISP for exactly twenty years. I dropped Fios TV a year ago, after the forced switch from QAM to IP. The soft picture quality, that compared unfavorably to even DVD, was unacceptable to me.
Verizon is now about to disable Bismo’s DVR. He has a 4K TV, and perhaps Fios IP TV will look better on that than it did on my 2K setup.
Regarding my Internet service, I am once again trying to get the attention of an actual person to address this serious security issue within the Verizon Fios router.
At home, when I disable Wi-Fi on my Pixel 8a phone, leaving 5G/LTE network access, I am able to use Verizon Home remote administration. This is with Normal Security set on the G3100 router and without Remote Administration enabled. Which means that I, or potentially anyone else, can access my Fios home network from anywhere on the Internet. Clearly, the Verizon Home utility has backdoor access into the G3100 router. This is a serious security hole.
A Year With Lyrion
A bit over a year ago, I reconfigured my music network over from the last vestiges of Logitech Media Server and onto Lyrion. It’s been great, and their adding support for SiriusXM has been wicked good. Will channel 20 finally turn me into a Springsteen fan?
For all of my experimentation with various headphones and in-ear monitors, if I were forced to limit myself to one pair of each type, for laptop and phone use, these would be them.
They are both from Sony and they happen to be the least expensive products they have. The headphones are the MDR-ZX110, the earbuds are the MDR-EX15LP. They sound nothing at all alike, but they’re equally excellent. Being hairless, I stuck some foam on the headphone band for cushioning.
Easy Listening
The next time I travel, I’ll be carrying this ridiculously inexpensive, excellent sounding, audio kit.
Nit-Picking Video
[Note: A “nit” is a measurement of the amount of light coming off of a surface, like a TV or video projector screen.]
tastewar sent me a YouTube link. I replied, and realized I’d just written a blog post. Here’s the video with my reply.
I’m always amazed at how many people are making money, even earning a living, by being on YouTube. This guy has done a lot of research, and he does a good job of explaining everything. But he picks up the story after the actual start of the analog-to-digital history.
Speeding up the laborious film editing process was indeed the original goal, which has expanded out from there. But it began with the Lucasfilm Edit Droid. Avid bought Edit Droid from Lucas. When I lived in Tewksbury, where Avid was based, there was a satellite link connecting Avid with Skywalker Ranch. There’s a video about the Edit Droid that I used in a 2022 post.
The springboard for Slidebean’s video is his annoyance at what, to me, appears to be more mosquito noise than color banding. Either way, it’s a lossy compression artifact.
Movie theater digital projectors are 4K 3-chip DLP systems. That gigantic image has no more resolution than the 65-inch (?) set the Slidebean guy watches.
I agree with his emphasis on color depth. Blu-ray follows Rec 709. What a movie theater’s projector has over 2K Blu-Ray’s 8-bits per channel (RGB) color depth, is 10- or 12-bits of color per channel.
Something I’ve been trying to figure out when I play a 4K movie on my projector is, does the deep color find its way to the screen? The projector is “full HD” 2K, not 4K, but it supports 12-bit color. I assume it’s an HDMI handshaking thing.
I like his comment about no longer using HDR in his videos. A true “WOW” movie experience, in my opinion, requires a video projector. Giant TVs are still TVs. Watching a projector that’s intended for home theater use (rather than business presentation, or gaming, or whatever) requires a completely dark room.
The lamp that’s presently in my JVC projector is nearing its end-of-life, which means it’s much dimmer than when the bulb was new, 1800 use-hours ago. Yet, when a movie abruptly cuts from a very dark, extended scene to a bright scene, it will cause most anyone to feel their pupils straining to close.
With so many movies being dark, with few nits of light coming off the screen, I fail to see the need for brighter images at home, except when watching a TV that is competing with another light source. Which isn’t the same as watching a movie and hoping for a “WOW” moment.