I took delivery of a Samsung LN40D630, a model that’s liked by both LCDTVBuyinguide.com and Consumer Reports. When I powered it up there was a bright, solid, vertical red line on the left side of the screen, as simulated on the picture. So back it went to Best Buy. *Sigh* I’ll wait for the credit card activity to clear before deciding what to do next.
Engadget says the end may be near for quirky little Chumby. We have a Chumby in the kitchen, and wouldn’t it be nice if the service is maintained somewhere, so all those little Web radio alarm clocks keep working for a year or two more?
Update: From Venture Beat – “CEO Derrick Oien told The Verge that Chumby’s assets, which include widget technology, patents, and the platform, are being shopped around by a corporate trustee. The content and apps platform, however, will stay operational for the immediate future.”
Last week, while thinking about my nice federal tax refund, a buddy was rushed off to the hospital with heart trouble and I had a “life’s too short” moment of weakness. I bought a flat panel TV for the sun room (calling it that sounds fancier than saying “porch”). Amazon sent me a notice that Panasonic had a deal on a 42-inch plasma HDTV with a free Blu-ray player, and thanks to some Amex reward points it cost me only $470 out of pocket.
The TV arrived, I set it up, made some adjustments, and my initial reaction was quite enthusiastic and positive, but after a while I noticed something odd. Strange yellow-green streaks. Then TCM showed Casablanca and the streaks were everywhere!
On the Roku player I looked at portions of more black-and-white movies, and every one of them had raging yellow-green trails to the left of objects and there were blue trails on the right. Even with stationary scenes, all I had to do was move my eyes and I’d see flashing colors. They reminded me of the notorious rainbow effect in single-chip DLP projectors.
I did a Google search and learned that the problem is called phosphor lag, and it’s built into every plasma display, as explained at this link.
How could I not have known about this?? I keep up with most of the tech sites and blogs, I watch Tekzilla and its HD Nation segments, etc., and I thought I knew all of the advantages and disadvantages of plasma vs. lcd/ccfl vs. lcd/led, but obviously I didn’t.
Consumer Reports warns about DLP rainbows, but says nothing about plasma lag, so I added a comment about it on their Web site. Maybe it’s true that the effect is seen by only 1% of people, but to me it’s so relentlessly bothersome that black-and-white material simply isn’t watchable, and I watch a lot of stuff in black-and-white.
I’ve never returned anything to Amazon before, and when I called them I was pleased they immediately agreed to take the set back and pay for shipping. I’m waiting for the freight company that dropped it off to call and arrange a pickup. Once it’s been returned to the warehouse and my money has been refunded, I’ll look into getting a 40-inch LCD HDTV.
There are four computers in the house with Windows XP SP3. Updates for them will stop on April 8, 2014, when Microsoft ends life support for XP. By that time Windows 8 should be out. I have a system at work running Windows Server 8 Beta, and it took a while for me to warm up to the new Metro user interface. Fortunately, Microsoft included a trick, where if you place the cursor in the lower left corner of the screen, there’s an option to launch a more familiar Desktop-style interface.
With Apple’s phenomenal success in touch screen products, the introduction of a new version of Windows for consumers seems as irrelevant as it is inevitable. One area where Microsoft is enjoying success is with the Kinect and its gesture interface. The Kinect’s lead developer was Johnny Chung Lee, who I featured four years ago, when he was at Carnegie Mellon University. Microsoft has released a software development kit for the Kinect, with hospital operating rooms being one of the best possible uses for touch-free display control.
http://youtu.be/vXVXEgpTY1A
tastewar has a couple of offerings to help nudge me out of idleness. First, there’s the news that Englishman Jim Marshall, inventor of Marshall amplified guitar speakers, the industry-standard for loudness, has died. Note: The Beatles used guitar amps from another British company, Vox.
And there’s this bit of fun, with the Hubos robots as the Robotles.
Whah hah! Leave It To Beaver is back on Netflix Watch Instantly! But it’s in high definition, despite the lack of the HD symbol. Why is this not good? Because on my Sony 32XBR100 TV it puts a small 24-inch image on the big 32-inch screen. Why, Roku, don’t you provide a feature to disable HD on SD outputs?
(By the way, the title of this post is a reference to a character in the Red Ryder comic strip.)
Follow-up: 42-inch Panasonic 1080p plasma, with a free Blu-ray player deal, is on the way from Amazon, with free shipping. Total cost is $470, thanks to Amex points.
