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Sony's Playstation3 Unveiled

Sony unveiled the Playstation3 at a launch event at E3 last night.

Quick facts:

US Launch: Nov 17th

2 Versions (Comparison Chart Here):

$599: 60GB Hard Drive, HDMI, Wireless, Memory Card Reader

$499: 20GB HD, none of the above

2 million to ship at launch, 2 million more by end of the year, worldwide.

The combination of Blu-Ray built in, as well as the previously announced Linux operating system make this the console player for me. But only the $599 one – HDMI is a must-have!

Toshiba's HD-DVD player: Just a HTPC?

Could Toshiba’s just released HD-DVD player, the HD-A1, really just be a home theater PC disguised as a normal DVD player?

Sure enough, as seen on this blog and in the video, Toshiba’s HD-DVD player contains an IDE HD-DVD drive, P4 2.5 ghz, 1 gig of RAM, and a flash disk running Red Hat’s linux operating system.

As The Digital Bits noted, no wonder it takes the thing a minute to boot up.

Like the blog author above, I’m waiting for Blu-Ray – sure, it’s Sony’s technology, and their track record isn’t the best, but the compression and size opportunities (for the discs) are better with Blu-Ray than HD-DVD.

Stop the RIAA – Join the Petition

The EFF has started a petition to send to Congress regarding the RIAA’s tactics in stopping music piracy.

From the petition:

We respect reasonable copyright law, but we strongly oppose copyright enforcement that comes at the expense of privacy, due process and fair application of the law.

We urge you, as our representatives in Congress, to stop this madness.

As of this morning, the petition is at 80,758 signatures – with 100,000 signatures the EFF can send this to the Senate and House Commerce and Judiciary Commitees.

I purchased 3 CD’s last night – I’m all for supporting the artists, but the music industry’s governing body is out of control when they’re blackmailing 12 year old girls and suing families who don’t even own a computer.

Sign the petition today, the RIAA’s madness has to be stopped.

Ubuntu Dapper+1: The Edgy Eft

Ubuntu’s sabdfl, Mark Shuttleworth, has announced the next Ubuntu release after 6.06 Dapper Drake will be the “Edgy Eft”.

What is an eft?

An Eft is a youthful newt, going through its first exploration of the

rocky territory just outside the stream. And that’s exactly what we hope

the development team will do with Ubuntu during the Edgy cycle – explore

slightly unfamiliar and uncharted territory that is perhaps a little out

of the mainstream.

The exciting news in Edgy Eft, as posted in the announcement:

And here’s why. Edgy is all about cutting edge, perhaps bleeding edge,

brand new code and infrastructure. It will be the right time to bring in

some seriously interesting but definitely edgy new technologies which

lay the groundwork for the next wave of Ubuntu development.

…

So dream a little about Xen for virtualisation, Xgl/AIGLX and other

wonderful wobbly window bits, the goodness of Network Manager, a first

flirt with multiarch support for true mixed 32-bit and 64-bit computing

on AMD64, the interesting possibilities of the SMART package manager…

and other pieces of infrastructure which have appeared tantalisingly

on the horizon.

We can afford to take some risks with Dapper+1, because Dapper has turned

out so well. We have a great answer for people who need super-solid

and super-predictable results: Dapper is still fresh, will continue to work

on modern hardware for some time, and has plenty of legs in its support

cycle left to run.

One of the reasons that led to my break from my blogging habit over the last month or two was playing with Dapper Drake from Flight 2 on. I’ll post later on my thoughts on Dapper, but even the cutting edge stuff I was playing with, in what will be a Long Term Support release from Ubuntu was amazing – I could play with XGL/Compiz for hours.

I hope to see things like Leaftag, Gimmie, and many other goodies in Edgy Eft.

In's & Out's of 1080p HDTV

Team Xbox has an excellent story going through the details of 1080p HDTV vs. 720p and 1080i. Easy to read, it goes through all the technical information you need to know about the next generation HDTVs coming to market, and how Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will play with them.

The last two pages go through TV recommendations, and while I disagree with the writer that DLP is the best way to go, it’s an informative read on the best DLP TVs on the market. Like the writer, I’ve heard excellent things about the DLPs from Hewlett-Packard – who would have thought a PC maker could make an excellent HDTV?

The writer takes a shot at Sony’s SXRD towards the end, and seems unaware of Sony’s public announcement that their 2nd generation SXRD coming this fall will be 1080p compatible. The fall timeline gives me heartburn – even with the basement flooding putting my basement behind schedule, the SXRD is what I want, and I’ll be ready in June. Sony’s SXRD is a LCoS technology, which is a step ahead of DLP, with better blacks and a better picture.

I Steal Television Because I Have To

I came across this blog post about stealing TV a few days ago: I Steal Television Because I Have To.

The author is spot on – it’s not about theft, it’s about control. And sometimes recording TV something happens you couldn’t control, and you have no way to get the show you wanted to watch. A week ago Tuesday, my Season Pass on my TiVo for The Unit didn’t work. No idea why – no idea what channel it was trying to record, but it recorded a blank screen for an hour.

So I went and got the torrent.

The TV industry needs to wake up – and some are. ABC’s announcment this week that they’ll be releasing TV shows the day after – with non-skippable commercials – is a step. It will be interesting to see what the future holds, especially with TV-like content developed and delivered over the internet and not over the air.

Hold the government accountable

Wired has an article up discussing AT&T’s attempts to get back 140 pages of documents given to the EFF by a whistleblower.

The EFF is suing AT&T based on AT&T’s efforts to assist the NSA in tapping phone calls.

If half what the whistleblower says is true, the government needs to be held accountable for this gross breach of civil liberties. Wiretapping and providing information to the government for U.S. citizens is expressly forbidden by law – but that doesn’t seem to stop the NSA or the current administration.

HTPC Components Ordered

I ordered all of the parts for my home theater PC over the weekend, as a few things were on sale. Of course, my basement needs to cooperate and stop flooding. I have to get the carpet / pad replaced now. But this gives me two months to get the system built, Ubuntu installed, and MythTV configured.

  • 1 pcHDTV HD3000 PCI card for watching / recording HDTV with.
  • Abit 939 Motherboard (KN8), to go with the x2 4800+ I’ve had for a while.
  • 2 GB of Corsair RAM
  • 1 Silverstone LC16 home theater PC case, with 500w silent power supply, and 2 extra 80mm fans
  • 1 Pioneer DVD-RW drive (black)
  • 3 Seagate 300GB SATAII hard drives (call it 100 hours of HDTV recording)
  • And a Hauppauge PVR-250 for recording standard def TV that I’ve been hanging on to for a while
  • 1 BFG 6600GT PCIe video card – needed a GT to fit in the HTPC case

Almost everything was ordered from Newegg and PC Alchemy.

I need to do some more research if I should be using Ubuntu’s 64 bit version with MythTV, I’ve read mixed things. But the AMD x2 should perform extremely well for a HTPC. It won’t be easy getting everything configured, but god knows I’ve been researching it long enough, and now it’s go time.