Geeks.com, home to 10 MP digital cameras and other cheap digital cameras, sent over the consumer Kodak M420 digicam for a quick look.
This is a 10 megapixels camera, shooting at a 3648×2736 resolution. It features a sensor of 1/2.3-inch CCD, a 3.0-inch wide angle color LCD display, a 4x optical zoom, digital image stabilization, 64 MB internal memory, SDHC slot, face detection, high ISO support up to 6400, text and sound tags, records continuous VGA video (640×480) at 30 fps and QVGA video (320 x 240) at 30 fps (MJPEG), and it comes with many scene modes.
According to the specifications it has a Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon lens, 28 – 112 mm (35 mm equiv.), f/2.6 – 5.8, shutter speed of 8-1/1000 sec., auto focus modes at normal, macro, infinity selectable, white balance with auto, daylight, tungsten, fluorescent, open shade options, a flash range of 0.2 – 4.0m at wide, ISO 400; 0.5 – 1.8 m at tele, ISO 400. Flash modes: auto, fill, red eye reduction, off, burst modes: self-timer (2 sec/10sec, 2 shots), burst 3 shots, scene modes: portrait, sport, landscape, close-up, night portrait, night landscape, snow, beach, text/document, fireworks, flower, museum/manner, self-portrait, high-ISO, children, backlight, panning, candlelight, sunset, panorama (right-left), panorama (left-right), blur reduction, program. There’s also AV output with NTSC/PAL selectable support.
The package came with a wall charger, which is pretty rare for Kodak cameras. Charging the battery for the first time took a whopping 7 hours. Battery life was so-so with this camera, mostly because of the large screen it had to power up.
On paper this camera’s abilities look good, but the quality we got out of it was sub-par. As you can see from the sample pictures, there’s fringing, and a very grainy look — reminiscent of interpolated cams. We also found it impossible to focus close enough in our macro shooting experiments. More over, the camera over-exposes like crazy in auto mode. The only good thing about its actual shooting abilities is the wide-angle aspect of the lens.
The ergonomics for the camera are not good either. I usually don’t complain about ergonomics on digicams, but this one is worse than usual. The flash/on-off/shutter buttons are glued next to each other, and more often than not I kept clicking the wrong button. The trash/menu/info buttons are very small and round, and so I needed to use my fingernail to press them — using just the thumb would press the wrong button. The D-pad’s round and stiff nature is as problematic too. Only good thing about the ergonomics was the zoom rocker buttom, which in fact I found it better than in most other digicams.
On the plus side the flash was pretty powerful and had an effect even from pretty far as you can see below in the without and with flash example:
The video mode is very basic (30 fps VGA MJPEG .mov) and there are no manual controls for it. In fact, the only manual control that the camera has is in its “P” mode, where there’s exposure compensation. When manually reducing exposure we were able to shoot a few acceptable pictures that weren’t hopelessly over-exposed.
Overall, I don’t think most people would be happy with this cam. Even every day people who just snap random pictures and don’t care about controls won’t be very happy with it. The pictures produced are too grainy, and the cam over-exposes way too much. If you need a cheap digicam I would suggest the Kodak Z1285 instead, which shoots better pics, has good manual controls when needed, has 720p HD video recording support, and it’s much cheaper too!
Rating: 5/10
This is my editing desk: a 2.4 Ghz Core2Duo DELL PC, 6 GB of RAM, an nVidia card, Vista 64 bit, with Sony Vegas Pro 9 32bit (for plugin/codec compatibility reasons), and two monitors. The 28″ one runs the main Vegas interface at 1920×1200, and the secondary 22″ one previews the actual video in 1:1 ratio size at 1920×1080 (so I can see all pixels as they truly are and edit/color-grade accordingly).
Click for a larger view
The video project loaded is a music video that I am working on for a Bay Area singer/songwriter. I used 18 tracks there. The look I chose for this video is a green-ish low-contrast look. I am hoping to have the video released by Sunday, after we re-shoot a few scenes on Saturday.
On the left side you can see my Canon HV20, 120 GB iPod, and my new smartphone, the HTC Hero. I still need to use better speakers with that PC system though. We have some very good high-quality Logitech speakers in storage, we just haven’t taken them out to connect them. So I am still editing with these $10 speakers (although most of the time I am using some very good headphones, so it doesn’t really matter much).
Litl’s super-secret product, the Webbook, that the company was working for 2 years now, was announced yesterday. It’s a netbook-style laptop, with a TV-like presentation mode when in “easel mode”, HDMI TV-out, and custom user interface — where the web browser is the interface. A lot of the information is stored in the cloud, and the laptop auto-maintains itself at night when not in use. It’s using Linux underneath, with some highly-modified Gnome technologies on top. More info and videos from here.
The reason I originally got interested about it last night was because it kind of reminded me Be’s “internet appliance” touch tablets back in 2001 which were running the BeIA operating system (based on the BeOS). Kind of reminded me that romantic era in terms of operating systems and new emerging technologies and whatnot.
Then, after the 2 minutes of day dreaming, I flash-forwarded myself back to 2009. And I realized what a stupid idea this is.
From the get go, the Webbook is simply over-priced at $699. It has no additional hardware that a $300 netbook doesn’t already have, and I am willing to pay an extra $100 for the special software that did cost money to develop. But 700 bucks? No freaking way. Especially for a non-touchscreen device like this (touchscreen that you would expect in this day and age), this is an overpriced item. Given the kind of homes shown in the marketing pictures on their web site, this feels like it’s geared towards the kids and grandmas of filthy rich people who try novelties like this for the fun of it (”oh honey, daddy can’t be in your birthday party tomorrow, he’s got work to do [see: whoring in Vegas]. But I bought for you a lovely present, your friends will be so jealous of your new toy computer!“).
Then, you will have to think about how *useful* this computer is. Interestingly, not much. It does WAY LESS than what an iPhone can do for once (both in terms of third party apps and basic functionality). And at least in the Bay Area (which is where most of the potential rich suckers for the Webbook live), everyone and their dog has a freaking iPhone (in fact, yesterday at Google’s headquarters I saw a lot of people using an iPhone, even if Google gave a free Android phone to all of its employees last year). And then there’s the AppleTV for the HD TV-out abilities, and even the PS3 and XBoX360 can show movies and pictures. Not good enough? Think that a REGULAR netbook, one that costs $300, can do everything that the Webbook can, and then some! In other words, the functionality offered by the Webbook is commoditized today, and easy to come by with cheap — or better understood — alternatives.
The only thing that the Webbook has for it, is its “easy to use” custom interface, but I think that custom interfaces that don’t offer a real (non-HTML) platform underneath for developers to really tap in, can simply not sustain themselves in the big picture. And heck, what is wrong with LiTL not offering a 3G connection? I mean, these devices are home-bound without a 3G connection, and given that they use the cloud so much (much more so than normal computers), it makes them utterly useless when wanting to take them with you. Or are we to believe that this webbook is supposed to be home-bound, and act as a middle ground between your stationary normal PC and your mobile cellphone? Because honestly, I don’t think there’s a market for that since a regular laptop can do most of that. And if not, Apple’s upcoming tablet will, in 3 months time.
So basically, my opinion is that LiTL has spent money on a product that simply can’t sustain itself. It couldn’t in 2001, and it can’t in 2009. Maybe if the netbook explosion hadn’t had happen 1.5 years ago, maybe — just maybe — there was some glimpse of hope for the Webbook. But the way things are now, it’s a lost endeavor. And it’s sad really. Especially for the engineers who worked on the software of this device.
And don’t get me started about that remote control (optional addon). Instead of really breaking new technological ground and creating a system like Natal (or at least a Bluetooth-based battery-powered touchpad device), users have to use that butt-ugly right-out-of-the-’60s remote control with its cumbersome “I am feeling blue” wheel-button. I honestly don’t know what the hell these people were thinking.
Geeks.com, sent over one of their popular computer parts products, video cards, the nVidia GeForce 8800GT (512 MB DDR3, PCIe, PureVideo2 HD support, GL 2.0, DirectX10, HDCP). This is a test on video playback performance with Vista-default drivers (Vista 64bit, SP2), and nVidia accelerated drivers (latest stable, v190).
I tested a Canon 5D Mark-II file, since it’s a heavy format: MOV h.264 High Profile, 40 mbps, no audio. File was loaded full screen in a 1:1 screen (1920×1080) at 32bit color, using various decoders and media players. Then, the frame rate and CPU usage was measured. I used a video file with a lot of movement to visually figure out if VLC was playing the file in real time or not (from the players I tried, it was the only one that didn’t have a way to show fps performance). The rest of the players had a way to get actual concrete numbers. Results below:
The CoreAVC Pro CUDA-accelerated version had of course the best result with just 3% CPU utilization (the Vista default drivers had no CUDA support). When CUDA was turned off, there was still a small speed up with the newer, non-Vista, drivers. The rest of the decoders also had it easier either with better frame rate, or with less CPU utilization. If they didn’t do better in terms of frame rate was mostly because of multi-threaded issues, as these decoders are written in legacy styled code (JBQ and I still joke sometimes how even today’s programmers can’t get multi-threading). The only decoder from the ones I tested that was actually multi-threaded was CoreAVC’s. These guys rock.
Please note that I used a speed up option for VLC to get real time decoding with it. By default, VLC doesn’t do real time on the 5D files, not even in this Quad Core 2.4 Ghz DELL PC I used for the test.
The moral of the story is:
- Use graphics cards that have a fast memory bus. Since 2D acceleration tapped by generic non-Purevideo decoders is mostly bandwidth-bounded, get cards that don’t cut costs by using slow memory or buses.
- Don’t leave your PC with the default XP/Vista/Win7 drivers. Upgrade to the latest stable version from your manufacturer’s web site.
- When possible, use CoreAVC Pro as your default decoder on media players/editors (Vegas won’t support it unfortunately, since it doesn’t support DirectShow decoders — but Premiere might).
- Prefer nVidia over ATi. nVidia’s PureVideo architecture is better supported by decoders, be it CoreAVC or Adobe’s CS4.
- Don’t ever opt for an Intel integrated card, unless you are really short on money.
I was somehow invited into the Google Voice beta, and I am loving it. It works, it’s cheap, and under some circumstances it can make telephony cheaper for some people, e.g. college kids.
Having a single number to be called in and never miss a call since it rings on all of your available phone numbers, having spam detection, free SMS, free Voicemail (accessible via the web, either with speech-to-text or via direct audio), and even free call-in on VoIP, well, all these features are really cool. Especially since a few years ago I left VoIP behind. I have now paired my Gizmo5 SIP number to Google Voice, and it works wonderfully well. I have a free call-in from around the world, without paying a dime. And if I want to call out, I pay nothing for calls in the continental US, and only $0.02 per minute for France/Greece. This is dirt cheap, cheaper than any VoIP operator, let alone actual carriers!
In the past, one had to use IPKall if he/she wanted to use a free call-in number with VoIP SIP, but this didn’t always work well, as they delete your account if you don’t use it after a few weeks. With Google Voice, there’s no such fear.
I believe the following plan could work for many poor people or college kids. Here’s how:
1. Get an unlocked cheap Nokia S60 smartphone with VoIP SIP WiFi support. You can get one for $200.
2. Get a free Gizmo5 VoIP SIP account/number.
3. When you eventually get your Google Voice invite, “pair” it with your VoIP SIP number (follow the instructions on Google’s page, you must not include the +1 prefix in order for this to work).
4. [Optional] Get a $25-per-3-months “pay-as-you-go” SIM card from either T-Mobile or AT&T, so you can call out too if you need to. Alternatively, you can buy call-out credit from Gizmo5, which is much cheaper ($0.04 per min), but that would mean that you can only call-out when connected to WiFi.
4. Give everyone your Google Voice number. Your VoIP # will now start ringing (and your cell # too, if it’s also paired).
5. When you are visiting others who have a landline, e.g. your old folks who might not have WiFi in their home, you can temporarily pair their phone number with your Google Voice too, so you won’t have to use your cellphone at all (Google can also ring your incoming calls on both phones).
The only thing I would like to see from Google Voice is an actual VoIP SIP protocol that they host themselves. This way, I would be able to call-out with their dirt cheap rates without having to go through Gizmo5’s (somewhat crazy sometimes) servers and higher rates. If this ever happens, I would like Google to make absolutely sure their SIP servers work with the Nokia VoIP phones. And why not, write a good Android SIP client too (not third party, but part of Android, so it’s well integrated).
Another feature I would like to see is the ability to say to the system “if I receive a call between 11 PM to 11 AM, put it straight on voicemail” (update: the option exists in the advanced menu of each paired phone). I might then put up my Google Voice number on my blog, and ask people call me directly with their video editing questions. I get about 10 emails daily about video tech support, and honestly, I rather talk than write… 
Geeks.com, the place for cheap mp3 players, sent over the SanDisk Sansa View 16 GB for a review, along an 8 GB microSDHC card for it. In the box, we also received its USB cable (proprietary connector is used) and some standard earphones.
It took about 2 hours to fully charge the player the first time. The UI loads within 10 seconds and greets you with a scrolling interface. The icons are: Music, Photos, Videos, and More (Radio, voice recording, device settings). When a song is playing, a new icon appears called “Now Playing” (it doesn’t show up otherwise). The UI is controlled by an iPod-like wheel that is actually rotatable rather than touch-sensitive. There’s also a “Home” button, a power on/off/HOLD slider on the side of the device, next to the microphone. The 3.5mm headphone jack is placed on the bottom of the player, next to the proprietary USB connector. The 2.4″ LCD screen is very readable and supports many colors, however the font used in it is pretty ugly.
The device sports 16 GB of internal flash, but it also has a microSD card slot. We tested the slot with an 8 GB card that Geeks supplied for the test.
The music menu has all the normal options one would expect, e.g. playlists, artists, songs, podcasts, audiobooks, genres, and a few more, like “recently added”, “my top rated”, and [voice/FM] “recordings”. When you click on a song, it will start playing, with the band name, album title, song title on the top, followed by the album art, and the progress bar. Clicking the bottom part of the wheel, it will bring a new menu up, that includes options like “Add to Library”, Rate music, repeat, shuffle, EQ, Go List and even “Delete song”. The device supports MP3 and WMA, but the latest firmware adds AAC support too (.m4a). Audio quality was very good.
The Photo menu has some nice slideshow options, while the video menu allows you to resume a video you had started watching earlier. It supports WMV and h.264 videos up to the QVGA resolution. The FM radio option allows you to set presets and even record radio stations, while the voice recording is also pretty straight forward too.
It all sounds good in first glance, and someone could go as far as to say that this might be the next best mp3 player after the iPod, if it wasn’t for the inconsistent UI. There are multiple ways to go “back” to a previous menu, that make the whole usability pretty confusing. On that, we should add that the device failed to read all of our AAC’s album art, and about 40% of our mp3 album art (all jpeg files embedded in the tags, ID3Tag v2.3). The Nokia cellphones also only read about 50% of my mp3’s album art, but if at least there was consistency in the failing of the two devices, I would have talked about a bug on my tagging, but both devices fail on different songs, so it seems that they are just buggy (iTunes and Mp3Tag can read all of them for example).
Also, the player is advertised as having gapless playback, but while the feature seems to have been worked on, it was certainly not as gapless as the iPod is. There was still a small sound heard when hoping between tracks.
The biggest problem however was the database corruption that I experienced twice within the last 3 weeks. The device would fail to recognize that it had GBs of songs in it, even when the “system info” utility correctly reported how much of the flash space was used. In order to fix the problem, you need to either delete or add a song via a PC, so you can force a re-generation of the DB (that takes up a few minutes when the device is full). Problem is, if you are high up in the mountains camping, and you don’t have a laptop with you, here goes your music for the time being.
The USB usability is a bit weird too (the UI for it doesn’t make it clear which mode is set on). More over, when I try to “eject” the device from Explorer, the device reproducibly crashes my Explorer (other devices don’t do that).
On the up side, the player can deliver over 25 hours of continuous playback, which is a feat. Overall, this is a good player if you just want to listen to some music and radio without having high expectations of a consistent interface and usability. It’s definitely better than most cheap mp3 players out there, but nowhere near the mighty iPod (or even the Zune).
It was WWDC day today, and new products were announced. Here’s my take:
Mac OS X: Indifferent. This was like, the 100th rewrite of Finder. It remains to be seen if Quicktime will be any faster with the new hardware acceleration. The $29 upgrade price was good though.
iPhone: I wanted a true 16:9 OLED screen at 4″ and 640×360 resolution. That would fit almost on the same size iPhone as the current ones (because of the 16:9 instead of 16:10). I also wanted a VGA video-call camera. Maybe next year.
Macbook Pros: I might opt for the new 13″. It was very interesting seeing Apple bringing back Firewire, as there was a huge bitching about the lack of Firewire by HDV prosumer and fw audio users for the last year’s model. The backlit keyboard is a very good addition too. However, compared to the other candidate for my next laptop, the MSI U200, it’s heavier, has a lower res, and it costs double the money. I haven’t decided yet for which of the two laptops I will be going for. I prefer a Macbook, but does it worth the extra $800? I am not so sure.
I wanted a new AppleTV too, one that can decode 1080p and allows for third party codec plugins.
Some people are whining online that their smartphone doesn’t last for more than 1-2 days without recharging, while their 5 year old phone could last over 5-6 days before need any recharging. This is a fallacy. The new phones have better battery life than the older ones.
Consider this: Phones like a Blackberry, iPhone, Android, Symbian, etc. come with many media and internet-heavy applications. It’s now customary to check for email, to check Twitter, to check the internet-updated Weather app, to check stocks, sync between the phone and various online accounts many times a day, to check some RSS or web pages, to use Y! or Google maps. And on the side, play some music, quickly visit youtube, and maybe even watch a small TV episode while waiting on the bus.
All these things are features that you couldn’t do 5 years ago. At least not in a way that would be pleasurable. 5 years ago, you would check your voicemail, your SMS messages, and just do voice. And that was about it. No wonder you could do over 5 days in battery life.
What changed is HOW we use these phones. We now use these phones as mini-laptops. And yet, we expect them to have the same battery life as they had when they were dumb bricks. I am sorry to say that battery technology doesn’t move as fast as software tech does!
And then there’s the other thing. On platforms that allow background apps, the third party application designers only care about their little app and not the whole device. As long as they can invoke a network ping or connection when you are not looking to sync something, they are happy. Very seldom these app developers think what would happen if there are 5 (or 10) background apps installed and doing their own thing whenever they damn want. The user will see a big drop in battery life, and will place the fault at the phone manufacturer instead.
In conclusion, be objective when you are damning a manufacturer of bad battery life. Maybe there’s something you can do to better the experience (short of inventing a new kind of battery altogether).
We are flying to Europe soon, and I was keep trying to convince JBQ to get a protective case for his 4th Gen iPod Nano. There’s no time now to go to Frys to get one, so I thought he will fly without a case.
I went to Longs pharmacy today to buy some masks (we will be changing 3 planes, so better safe than sorry), but they were out of them. In one of their baskets full of random items sold at 1/3 of their price there were some iPod cases (yes, sold at the Longs pharmacy). Anyways, they didn’t have any for the 4th Gen Nano, so I thought that this is it, JBQ won’t have a case for his player.
Fast forward 15 minutes. I was walking back home, when I literally stumbled into this, red color, perfect condition. In the middle of the street. I took it home, sanitized it, and it looks like JBQ will have a Nano case after all. It’s all kind of funny, really.
What a freaking let down. RED, JVC and Sony revealed no new products or updates whatsoever, while Canon rehashed their older ones. Unless Canon announces new prosumer products tomorrow, I will completely lose my faith on that company. They make no sense anymore.
Panasonic on the other hand already announced a bunch of stuff, including a very impressive 3D camera that uses AVC-Ultra (200 mbps bitrate!), and the HMC-40 (press release, news report, big picture). The important thing here is that Panasonic realized that there’s a hybrid consumer-prosumer market (and they even called the HMC-40 a “hybrid”). They are the firsts to do so, as far as I am concerned. I have been burbling about that hybrid need for 1.5 years now!
The camera uses three 1/4.1″ sensors, 12x zoom, 21 to 24 mbps VBR AVCHD recording (unfortunately, no constant recording at 24 mbps), 24p/30/60i at 1080p, up to 60p at 720p, cine-gamma presets, manual controls, enough buttons and focus ring, 2.7″ touchscreen, XLR/handle-bar add-on (sold separately), and Panasonic’s dynamic range stretching algorithm. Price is a bit steep at $3200 though for these specs.
The real let down on this camera is the sensor size though. Even if it has 3 sensors, each is still of minuscule size, and the lens seems to be consumer grade too. Which means that background blur will probably be worse than the $500 HV20’s. This is a deal breaker for me. I would have preferred a single 1/2.0″ sensor rather than three at 1/4.1″.
So, even after the much awaited NAB show, there’s still no camera that does what I need. This HMC-40 came SO CLOSE. So close. But still no cigar. However, there are rumors that Canon will update the Canon’s 5D Mark-II firmware with more video abilities, so if that happens and they add 24p frame rate, zebra support, and shutter speed support, that’s the camera I will be getting — even if it doesn’t have other features that camcorders do. We have about 15 lenses that go on the 5D anyway.
Enough with this shit though. This was a letdown.
Our 300 CD changer holder is out of space with our 400 CDs, and there’s no way to playback our digitally-bought 3.5 GBs of mp3/aac files that we have around. We need either something like the AppleTV where we can move all our 35 GB of ripped music in there, or a new 400 CD changer system like this one but with the ability to also play mp3/AAC and have a UI viewable via composite-out.
As it stands right now the AppleTV doesn’t do what we need because it doesn’t have composite-out, as I would like to use a small portable DVD player as external monitor for it. I simply don’t want to hook it on our 50″ TV and have our TV “on” all the time just so we can listen to music. If that was the case, we already have a PS3 that can do that (I currently use it for video playback only). It’s such a shame that the AppleTV doesn’t do RCA because it would have been perfect for music. 
As for the linked Sony CD changer above, it doesn’t do AAC, it doesn’t have a hard drive (and I am not sure it reads mp3 files from DVD-R disks and not just from CD-Rs), while its UI simply sucks from what I read online.
The funny thing is that the device we need actually existed once as a prototype product. Back in 2000. And it was created by my husband’s then-company, Be Inc. The Be Aura was a beautiful device (unfortunately I couldn’t find any picture of it online to link, there used to be one), with a specialized UI, a remote control, and had a nice monitor too. Surely you could put together a small PC today with Windows Media or Linux on it, but it will still look like an ugly ass PC in our living room. That was a targeted device like the AppleTV, not a quickly-put-together PC job. Update: The device I was thinking was called “HARP”, btw. “Aura” was the software platform for it.
So, we basically need a device that can accept a SATA drive with mp3/aac and preferably FLAC music, has composite-out with a usable UI, and good digital-out for audio. The CD changer feature is optional as long as there’s a hard drive in there and there’s lossless FLAC support. So, do you know anything that would work for us?
Update: We might just be going for the Sony 400 CD changer it seems. We feel that the home entertainment systems today are in a state that resembles mobile phones before the iPhone arrived. The Sonos system is close to what we need, but no cigar.
Camcorderinfo.com finally posted their review of the Canon HF-S10/S100 camera, which is supposed to take over HV20/30’s reigns. The camera has been in the market for a month now, so we already knew most of what was noted in the actual review. After 30+ pages of discussion over at HV20.com, we now know this camera pretty well.
Here are the good points:
1. Sharpest camera in the consumer market today, when light is adequate.
2. More manual controls than other consumer cameras.
3. Other stuff, as I have mentioned here before.
Here are the negative points:
1. High levels of noise when light is inadequate, and terrible low light support in general.
2. Terrible image stabilization (especially compared to the Sony HDR-XR520V).
3. Other stuff, as I have mentioned here before.
I think that Canon will have no choice but to use larger sensors in the future to make up for the bad low light support and noise. One thing is for sure: I won’t be buying that camera. Neeeext…
This is a good buy if you already don’t have a Canon HD camcorder. But if you do, wait for the next generation, next year.
Canon’s photography department just doesn’t have a freaking clue about video. Their latest 500D shoots in… 1080/20p. Yup, 20 fps. They could offer us instead 720/24p, 720/25p and shutter speed control in addition to their 720/30p mode, and completely laying off that 1080/20p madness, and that would have made the camera much more useful and without cannibalizing their camcorder line (because there would be no 1080p mode). Prolost blogged about this twice, and there’s a long thread on HV20.com too.
Geeks.com, known for their cheap electronics store, sent over two interesting gadgets for a review, one that geeks will find interesting, and one that videographers will.
* 9″ Axion AXN-6090A Widescreen Portable DVD Player
This portable DVD player comes at the very affordable price of $70. It has a 9″ widescreen but low resolution LCD, and it can play NTSC DVDs. It has AV in/out support and cables, a battery, and a remote control. The device is amazingly cheaply made, the case is probably one of the few gadgets I’ve ever reviewed that feels so cheap and fake. However, so far, the device has hold together and its software hasn’t outright crashed.
There are some buttons on the device itself to control DVD playback, brightness and volume, but you will find more setup and menu options by using the remote control. This means that if you ever lose the remote control, you will lose a large part of options. Regarding compatibility, I found that the DVD player was unable to playback the double-sided DVD “Drowning Mona”. It did play single-sided DVDs though. I wouldn’t be surprised if the player had trouble reading home-made dual layer DVDs, but I had none to try out.
Visual quality is pretty bad when playing back the DVD, as the LCD is low-res. While the video picture itself is manageable (your eyes will probably get used to it after a few minutes), the subtitles are almost unreadable because of the low-res — and that’s a real problem.
However, this DVD player can have another, more useful usage: as external monitor on camcorders with 35mm adapters. The player has A/V-in support, so you just connect your camcorder’s female AV cable to this player’s male AV cable and you are good to go. Many in the videography scene use the Sony DVP-FX820 model that can rotate its screen, and has a high res LCD. However, I found that the difference in visual quality between the two monitors, when using the AV cable, is minimal! Sure, Sony’s LCD is still a bit better, but not by much.
A small problem is the large battery that extend on the back of the device quite a bit. The battery can playback a two-hour movie fine, and can serve up to 3+ hours as an external monitor. A car adapter is included. As for the weight, it’s almost the same between the two monitors. Regarding the overscan that screens usually do to the incoming video feed, the Axion monitor “sees” a tiny bit more horizontally than the HV20 LCD does, and about the same vertically. The Sony monitor can “see” much more of the area that’s been recorded recorded, both horizontally and vertically.
Overall, this device is pretty bad as a portable DVD player, but if you are a budget-conscious videographer who is handy with tools and can create a custom tripod stand for this device, and doesn’t need screen rotation (or you can use rails that mount the camera rotated instead), then this is not a bad deal at all. For $70, the Axion is $100 less than the Sony monitor, so you got to ask yourself if screen rotation, and marginally better battery life and RCA quality is worth the extra cash for you. Geeks also sells some other DVD players that can act as external monitors (with some googling you can easily find which ones have AV-in).
* Bluetooth v2.0 Class 2 Mini USB Dongle
This is my favorite Bluetooth dongle of all times. It’s so incredibly small that never looks ugly by sticking out as most dongles do. This small dongle is ideal for those who have netbooks that come without Bluetooth, like the Acer Aspire One and most of the Eee PC models. It’s a class 2 dongle, so up to 6 meters reception was good with my Ubuntu netbook. If you own a netbook, or a laptop without Bluetooth, this is a must have!
Geeks.com sent over three nice gadgets for a review, two of which will be reviewed here. The third item’s review, the Kodak Z1012 IS, will be published in a few days at FreshDV.com.
* Micro Innovations PD5230LSR 3-Button USB Laser Travel Mouse w/Retractable Cord
A travel mouse is an ideal companion to use with the Acer Aspire One netbook, and at first glance this Micro Innovations mouse sounds like a good deal. It is a high DPI laser-based mouse, has 3 buttons & a wheel, and a retractable cable. It feels pretty good in the palm, and after using it for hours didn’t made my wrist hurt. Unfortunately, I can’t qualify it exactly as a travel mouse. This mouse is not very long, but it’s very tall! It is taller than my regular mice in my office! And when you pack gadgets in your laptop bag, you mostly care about their thickness, not so much about their length. Given these realities, this mouse is just too thick to fit nicely in a laptop bag and this takes away a lot of its value.
This is a great little cheap addition for yourself and for sharing with your family. The package includes three cases for digital cameras. The more serious-looking black and blue, and a pink one that feels softer to the touch than the rest two. These cases feature a thin metal bracelet at the bottom that has a tripod head-sized screw on it. You screw this on your digital camera’s tripod hole to hold it steady, and then you wrap the case around the camera to secure it via the provided Velcro. What I like about this case is the fact that you never have to fully remove the case from the camera, you just unwrap it, shoot your picture, wrap it back. This is much more convenient than having a traditional case where you remove the camera from within, place the case in your bag, shoot, take the case back from your bag, put the camera back. Now, you are probably thinking that not having the tripod hole available is not a good idea when using a tripod. That’s true, but these cases only fit the “thin” consumer cameras (e.g. Kodak’s V- and M-series), the kind of cameras usually people just point and shoot. The Canon A-series, Kodak’s Z-series don’t fit, for example. So this product is useful and well-thought, for its intended audience.
