As our practice post indicated the other evening we got new phones this week. I choose the LG enV (left) and Leandra got the LG vx8300 (right). Both have better cameras and (a little) better reception.

I really like the keyboard on mine, and I’m hoping to use my new phone as a PDA replacement (i.e. calender and contacts). It should also make posting from the road a little easier. We’ll see how it goes when we travel to Virginia this weekend.

Side note: The current Verizon plans start at an $20 extra a month more than old plan, but fortunately we were able to just renew our old plan which has enough minutes and texts for us.

This post is to thank WRAL, the CBS affiliate in the RTP area, for our free antenna. I learned about their giveaway promotion in February, and after finding out that it was a legitamate offer, applied.

Why would we need an antenna when we already have a satellite system? For one, our Dish HD system only carries the local ABC and NBC stations in HD. We’ve been using an indoor antenna for CBS and FOX, and while it works most of the time, whenever it gets windy we have problems. And of course it always gets windy when you actually want to watch a certain show. An antenna also provides a backup for times when our satellite reception is interrupted by thunderstorms. Third, HD seems to look better over-the-air (probably due to lower compression) and we can pickup alternate digital channels that cable and satellite generally don’t transmit. For example, during March madness CBS transmits all the games on its over-the-air digital channels. All in all, with digital broadcasts there are a lot of good reasons to have an antenna.

So a few weeks later I came home to a large box on our porch- our new antenna (a Channel Master 4228)! Over Easter my dad helped me install it in our attic. We’re now receiving a near perfect signal for both CBS and FOX, and a more stable backup signal for NBC and ABC too.

Quite frankly, this warning is crap.

Leandra recently bought a refurbished iPod and the sticker to the left was attached. I find it mildly insulting. Stealing what music, and from whom? The biggest record companies would love for us to pay each time we hear a song - is anything less stealing?

And really, do I need a major company chiding us on behavior? Why not eat my peas (yuck) or wipe my nose? How about this apple—don’t steal from customers. Plenty of people have lost access to songs they’ve legally purchased and apple’s solution is to buy them again. Digital rights management (DRM) doesn’t stop dedicated pirates, but it does make things more complicated for everyone else. I’d also like to see apple put their money where their mouth is and release DRM-free songs from companies that allow it, but they don’t seem to have much interest in it. Or how about designing iPods that not only look good but have batteries that last or are replaceable (gasp!)? So apple, get off the soapbox, you don’t have the moral high ground here.

I received my new Dell XPS 410 today, and I’ve been busy uninstalling unwanted software and updating Windows. The photo to the left shows why that takes a while… and there were an additional 16 updates after those were complete.

Really, it’s a bit silly that a brand new computer isn’t more up-to-date from the factory.

On the bright side, it looks like I may have received some hardware upgrades for free. More to follow later.

Background: Prior to our recent S.Africa / London trip we decided to get some sort of mp3/video player as a way to pass the long flight times. I looked at three main options, all with 30 Gb of space: the video iPod, the Archos 504, and the Creative Zen Vision W. The iPod is very nice, small and light, but I felt the screen was too small for movie viewing. There was also no easy way to charge the non-removable battery in-flight. Both the Archos and the Zen had a large screen and the option for a secondary battery. However, the Archos is a modular unit, which meant it didn’t come standard with a compact flash reader, while the Zen had the reader already built-in. Plus the Archos was more expensive… so we purchased the Zen.

Impressions
The good: The screen is quite enjoyable for watching movies, much better than the screens built into airline seats and comparable in quality to a laptop screen. However, by turning the brightness down we got nearly 5 hours of video use out of each battery, much better than my laptop. Organization of music, movies, pictures, etc, on the unit is relatively straightforward. The compact flash reader worked as advertised, allowing the transfer of files from our camera chip to the Zen for storage and viewing. Output to a TV screen is quite good - we were able to watch “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” in South Africa without problem.

The bad: Podcasts are a little difficult to find at times; for example, some are sent to the “Video” section. However, the worst feature is the clunky software used to transfer and transcode material. Slow, mysterious, and far too many individual applications is the best description. It is possible to use explorer, windows media, etc. for transfer, but none of them are great either. Certainly not as simplified as iTunes. And finding the correct video codec specs in other transcoding programs is a nightmare. Slysoft’s CloneDVDMobile was by far the best at transcoding movies.

Overall
You certainly wouldn’t want to jog with the Vision W, but it is quite handy as a portable video player, and a good size for plane travel. We are definitely glad we bought one.

I actually put the lights up just before Thanksgiving this year, so this photo is a little late.

You can click on the photo for a large version. Note that 1) our hanging ferns are still alive and 2) the shadows on the house are from the moon.

This one image is actually a composite image of three photos brought together with the HDR function in Photoshop CS2. HDR is a digital processing step that allows me to get a much greater tonal range than a “normal” photo would allow. See our Flickr:HDR set for the other pic I’ve processed with HDR.

About a month and a half ago we had DishTV installed, and so far, we’re quite happy with the results. The receiver only supports output to two TVs, but since we really only use two TVs it’s been an acceptable limitation for us.

I’d estimate that 75% of our viewing is now on HD channels (with the Daily Show and Nip/Tuck being notable exceptions). ESPNHD has been a favorite for college football this Fall, and we already knew that DiscoverHD was good. We’ve actually been a bit disappointed in National Geographic HD, as the array of shows found on the non-HD channels are not yet mirrored on the HD service. One channel that has pleasantly surprised us is Equator HD, which features a lot of travel-style and nature shows.

We get the digital network channels (FOX, CBS, ABC, NBC) over-the-air through an indoor antenna, which has worked out reasonably well. Only really windy days have caused problems for these channels, and I’m hoping that moving the antenna to the attic will fix this problem.

Two more nice attributes- recording and pausing HD TV (as Leandra alluded to earlier), and Sirius satellite radio. Leandra has been listening to the 80’s/90’s and BBC Radio1 channels while peeling wallpaper. Overall, the move to Dish has been great, and we’re glad we made the switch.

Today was the second Saturday that I spent waiting for the our new Dish receiver to be installed, and this one was successful. Proof below:

25 HD channels, including ESPN 1 & 2, Discover, Food, and National Geographic! More to come…

I would give some serious consideration to this 103″ plasma TV: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13798647/

that is some serious tech cool.