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Welcome to the Best Picture Showcase, a miniseries on THE MOVIES where I review each nominee for this year's Academy Award for Best Picture. With each installment, I hope to answer the following: 1) What's the movie about? 2) What's it feel like to sit through the movie? 3) Did I like it? 4) Should it and will it win Best Picture? What's my current ranking of the nominees? 5) How can you catch this movie? I hope to make this list feel more accessible for folx intimidated or turned off by what they might derisively consider "Oscar Bait." So a 3.5 hour drama about a Hungarian refugee escaping the Holocaust to 1950s Pennsylvania is a great place to start, right? Brady Corbet's THE BRUTALIST works that artist's magic of making hyper-specific circumstances feel universal. This is a movie about a man who feels his life is robbed from him. In many ways, it was, and yet, that struggle between accepting his difficult realities of working back up from the bottom rung of the ladder & confidently striding with the experience and value earned over years of work designing buildings that stand the test of fascist regimes and war feels almost insurmountable. This is a story peeling back the layers of the American Dream, the reality behind the promise; it's hard not to feel, sometimes, as though we live in hopeful delusion regarding that journey to make our dreams into truth. It's a movie about the person made into the other, never acceptable to the dominant class outside of the immediate value they can provide. And it's all shot in breathtaking Vistavision film, capturing these grand moments in ways both timeless and timely. This is the kind of story we go to the theaters to experience: an epic that our HDTVs will, simply, never do justice. Closing Song: "Library" - Daniel Blumberg, THE BRUTALIST (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) --- Follow The Movies on social media: linktr.ee/themovies_pod

Shawn Cox, PGA Director of Golf at Sharon Heights Golf & Country Club joined Rob Thomas on the Club + Resort Talks podcast to discuss the recent golf course renovation, as well as an upcoming addition to the club. The club reopened with a refreshed and enhanced golf experience after a $23 million renovation by Todd Eckenrode and Origins Golf Design. Approved by the club in 2019, this comprehensive redesign spanned all 18 holes and was crafted to create a more engaging layout, elevate aesthetics, and support the club's sustainability goals. The club also secured the green light for a 15,000-sq.-ft., state-of-the-art facility which will serve as a maintenance and operations center. It is seen as a landmark in sustainable renovation and environmental stewardship. Also in the news … After more than a century of serving its members and the Wheeling, W.Va., community, the Wheeling Country Club has announced plans to close on Dec. 31. The decision comes after years of significant challenges, as shared in a letter sent to members. The club has pledged to continue providing exceptional service and experiences for all guests and events until its final day of operation. Meanwhile, discussions are underway to explore future uses for the property. Collaborations with Oglebay and other local stakeholders are being considered as part of this process. Heritage Golf Group, an owner and operator of private country clubs and high-end daily-fee courses across the U.S., acquired its 39th club, Ptarmigan Country Club in Fort Collins, Colo. The Flack family, who owned the club for more than 20 years, selected Heritage as the purchaser. This acquisition marks Heritage's fourth property in the Greater Denver area, further strengthening its presence in Colorado. The other three properties in the area are award-winning daily fee courses: The Golf Club at Bear Dance, Plum Creek Golf Club, and Colorado National Golf Club. Coeur d'Alene Casino Resort Hotel has unveiled a state-of-the-art indoor golf and entertainment venue, Circling Raven Golf Suites, where golfers and non-golfers can immerse themselves in interactive fun, choosing from a variety of games. With access to more than 80 iconic courses like The Old Course at St. Andrews and Pebble Beach, the simulators bring every slope, tree, and green to life with breathtaking detail. Between games, guests can relax in style with plush lounge seating, HDTVs, and music, while savoring food and drinks delivered from select casino eateries.

Some signs of tech progress are obvious: the moon landing, the internet, the smartphone, and now generative AI. For most of us who live in rich countries, improvements to our day-to-day lives seem to come gradually. We might (might), then, forgive some of those who claim that our society has not progressed, that our lives have not improved, and that a tech-optimist outlook is even naïve.Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I talk with economist Noah Smith about pushing the limits in areas like energy technology, how geopolitical threats spur innovation, and why a more fragmented industrial policy might actually be an advantage.Smith is the author of the popular Noahpinion Substack. He was previously an assistant finance professor at Stony Brook University and an economics columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.In This Episode* Recognizing progress (1:43)* Redrawing the boundaries of energy tech (12:39)* Racing China in research (15:59)* Recalling Japanese economic history (20:32)* Regulating AI well (23:49)* Rethinking growth strategy in the EU (26:46)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversationRecognizing progress (1:43)Pethokoukis: Noah, welcome to the podcast.Smith: Great to be here!Not to talk about other podcast guests, but I will very briefly — Last year I did one with Marc Andreessen and I asked him just how tech optimistic he was, and he said, “I'm not sure I'm an optimist at all,” that the most reasonable expectation is to expect the future to be like the past, where we have a problem building things in the real world, that some of our best ideas don't necessarily become everything they could be, and I think a perfectly reasonable baseline forecast is that, for all our talk about optimism, and “let's go,” and “let's accelerate,” that none of that happens. Does that sound reasonable to you or are you more optimistic?I'm optimistic. You know, a few years ago we didn't have mRNA vaccines. Now we do. And now we have a magical weight loss drug that will not only make you lose weight, but will solve half your other health problems for reasons we don't even understand yet.So much inflammation.Right. We didn't even have that a few years ago. That did not exist. If you told someone that would exist, they would laugh at you. A magic pill that not only makes you thin, but also just solves all these other health issues: They would laugh at you, Scott Alexander would laugh at you, everyone would laugh at you. Now it's real. That's cool.If you had told someone a few years ago that batteries would be as insanely cheap as they are, they would've been like, “What? No. There's all these reasons why they can't be,” but none of those reasons were true. I remember because they did actually say that, and then batteries got insanely cheap, to the point where now Texas is adding ridiculous amounts of batteries for grid storage. Did I predict that was going to happen? No, that surprised me on the upside. The forecasters keep forecasting sort of a leveling off for things like solar and battery, and they keep being wrong.There's a lot of other things like reusable rockets. Did you think they'd get this good? Did you think we'd have this many satellites in the low-earth orbit?AI just came out of nowhere. Now everyone has this little personal assistant that's intelligent and can tell them stuff. That didn't exist three years ago.So is that, perhaps, growing cluster of technologies, that's not just a short-term thing. Do you think all these technologies — and let's say particularly AI, but the healthcare-related stuff as well — that these taken together are a game-changer? Because people always say, “Boy, our lives 30 years ago didn't look much different than our lives today,” and some people say 40 years ago.But that's wrong!Yes, I do think that is wrong, but that people's perception.When I was a kid, people didn't spend all day looking at a little screen and talking to people around the world through a little screen. Now they do. That's like all they do all day.But they say that those aren't significant, for some reason, they treat that as a kind of a triviality.Like me, you're old enough to remember a thing called “getting bored.” Do you remember that? You'd just sit around and you're like, “Man, I've got nothing to do. I'm bored.” That emotion just doesn't exist anymore — I mean, very fleetingly for some people, but we've banished boredom from the world.Remember “getting lost?” If you walk into that forest, you might get lost? That doesn't happen unless you want to get lost, unless you don't take your phone. But the idea that, “Oh my God, I'm lost! I'm lost!” No, just look at Google Maps and navigate your way back.Being lost and being bored are fundamental human experiences that have been with us for literally millions of years, and now they're just gone in a few years, just gone!Remember when you didn't know what other places looked like? You would think, “Oh, the Matterhorn, that's some mountain in Switzerland, I can only imagine what that looks like.” And then maybe you'd look it up in an encyclopedia and see a picture of it or something. Now you just type it into Google Images, or Street View, or look at YouTube, look at a walking tour or something.Remember not knowing how to fix things? You just had no idea how to fix it. You could try to make it up, but really what you'd do is you'd call someone who was handy with stuff who had this arcane knowledge, and this wizard would fix your cabinet, or your dresser, or whatever, your stereo.Being lost and being bored are fundamental human experiences that have been with us for literally millions of years, and now they're just gone in a few years, just gone!So why does that perception persist? I mean, it's not hard to find people — both of us are probably online too much — who just will say that we've had complete and utter stagnation. I don't believe that, yet that still seems to be the perception, and I don't know if things haven't moved fast enough, if there are particular visions of what today should look like that haven't happened, and people got hung up on the flying-car, space-colony vision, so compared to that, GPS isn't significant, but I think what you have just described, not everybody gets that.Because I think they don't often stop to think about it. People don't often stop to think about how much the world has changed since they were young. It's like a gradual change that you don't notice day-to-day, but that adds up over years. It's like boiling the frog: You don't notice things getting better, just like the frog doesn't notice the water getting hotter.Do you think it's going to get hotter going forward, though? Do you think it's going to boil faster? Do you think that AI is such a powerful technology that it'll be indisputable to everybody that something is happening in the economy, in their everyday lives, and they look a lot different now than they did 10 years ago, and they're going to look a whole lot different 10 years from now?Utility, remember — back to econ class — utility is concave. A utility of wealth, utility of consumption, is concave, which means that if you get 10,000 more dollars of annual income and you're poor, that makes a hell of a lot of difference. That makes a world of difference to you. But if you're rich, it makes no difference to you. And I think that Americans are getting rich to the point where the new things that happen don't necessarily increase our utility as much, simply because utility is concave. That's how things work.In the 20th century, people escaped material poverty. They started out the century with horses and buggies, and wood-burning stoves, and freezing in the winter, and having to repair their own clothes, and having food be super expensive, and having to work 60-hour weeks, 80-hour weeks at some sweatshop, or just some horrible thing, and horrible conditions with coal smoke blackening the skies; and then they ended in nice, clean suburbia with computers and HDTVs —I guess maybe we didn't get those till the 2000s — but anyway, we ended the 20th century so much richer.Basically, material poverty in rich countries was banished except for a very few people with extreme mental health or drug problems. But then for regular people, material want was just banished. That was a huge increment. But if you took the same increment of wealth and did that again in the next century, people wouldn't notice as much. They'd notice a little bit, but they wouldn't notice as much, and I think that it's the concavity of utility that we're really working against here.In the 20th century, people escaped material poverty. They started out the century. . . having to work 60-hour weeks, 80-hour weeks at some sweatshop. . . and then they ended in nice, clean suburbia with computers and HDTVs . . .So is economic growth overrated then? That kind of sounds like economic growth is overrated.Well, no. I don't know that it's overrated. It's good, but I don't know who overrates it. Obviously it's more important for poor countries to grow than for rich countries to grow. Growth is going to make a huge difference to the people of Bangladesh. It's going to be life-changing, just as it was life-changing for us in the 20th century. They're going to have their 20th century now, and that's amazing.And, to some extent, our growth sustains their growth by buying their products; so that helps, and contributing to innovations that help them, those countries will be able to get energy more easily than we were because they're going to have this super-cheap solar power, and batteries, and all this stuff that we didn't have back in the day. They're going to have protections against diseases, against malaria, and dengue fever, and everything. We didn't have those when we were developing, we had to hack our way through the jungle.So growth is great. Growth is great, and it's better for the people in the poor countries than for us because of concavity of utility, but it's still good for us. It's better to be advancing incrementally. It's better to be feeling like things are getting better slowly than to be feeling like things aren't getting better at all.So many things have gotten better, like food. Food has gotten immeasurably better in our society than it was in the '90s. The food you can eat at a regular restaurant is just so much tastier. I don't know if it's more nutritious, but it's so much tastier, and so much more interesting and varied than it was in the '90s, and people who are in their 40s or 50s remember that. And if they stop to think about it, they'll be like, “You know what? That is better.” We don't always stop to remember what the past was. We don't remember what food was like in the '90s — I don't. When I'm going out to a restaurant to eat, I don't think about what a restaurant was like in 1994, when I was a kid. I don't think about that. It just doesn't come to mind. It's been a long time.In Japan I noticed it a lot, because Japan had, honestly, fairly bland and boring food up until about 2010 or so. And then there was just this revolution where they just got the most amazing food. Now Japan is the most amazing place to go eat in the world. Every restaurant's amazing and people don't understand how recent that is. People don't understand how 20 years ago, 25 years ago, it was like an egg in a bowl of rice and sort of bland little fried things. People don't remember how mediocre it was, because how often did they go to Japan back in 2005?It's better to be feeling like things are getting better slowly than to be feeling like things aren't getting better at all.Redrawing the boundaries of energy tech (12:39)Your answer raised several questions: One, you were talking about solar energy and batteries. Is that enough? Is solar and batteries enough? Obviously I read about nuclear power maybe too much, and you see a lot of countries trying to build new reactors, or restart old reactors, or keep old nuclear reactors, but over the long run, do we need any of that other stuff or can it really just be solar and batteries almost entirely?Jesse Jenkins has done a lot of modeling of this and what would be the best solutions. And of course those models change as costs change. As battery costs go down and battery capabilities improve, those models change, and we can do more with solar and batteries without having to get these other things. But the current models that the best modelers are making right now of energy systems, it says that we're probably looking at over half solar and batteries, maybe two thirds, or something like that. And then we'll have a bunch of other solutions: nuclear, wind, geothermal, and then a little bit of gas, we'll probably never completely get rid of it.But then those things will all be kind of marginal solutions because they all have a lot of downsides. Nuclear is very expensive to build and there's not much of a learning curve because it gets built in-place instead of in a factory (unless it's on a submarine nuclear plant, but that's a different thing). And then wind takes too much land, really, and also the learning curve is slower. Geothermal is only certain areas. It's great, but it's only certain areas. And then gas, fossil fuel, whatever.But the point is that those will all be probably part of our mix unless batteries continue to get better past where we even have expected them to. But it's possible they will, because new battery chemistries are always being experimented with, and the question is just: Can we get the production cost cheap enough? We have sodium ion batteries, iron flow batteries, all these other things, and the question is, can we get the cost cheap enough?Fortunately, China has decided that it is going to pour untold amounts of capital and resources and whatever into being the Saudi Arabia of batteries, and they're doing a lot of our work for us on this. They're really pushing forward the envelope. They're trying to scale every single one of these battery chemistries up, and whether or not they succeed, I don't know. They might be wasting capital on a lot of these, or maybe not, but they're trying to do it at a very large scale, and so we could get batteries that are even better than we expect. And in that case, I would say the share of solar and batteries would be even higher than Jesse Jenkins and the other best modelers now predict.But you don't know the future of technology. You don't know whether Moore's Law will stop tomorrow. You don't know these things. You can trace historical curves and forecast them out, and maybe come up with some hand-wavy principles about why this would continue, but ultimately, you don't really know. There's no laws of the universe for technological progress. I wish there were, that'd be cool. But think solar and batteries are on their way to being a majority of our total energy, not just electricity, but total energy.Racing China in research (15:59)Does it concern you, in that scenario, that it's China doing that research? I understand the point about, “Hey, if they want to plow lots of money and lose lots of money,” but, given geopolitical relations, and perhaps more tariffs, or war in the South China Sea, does that concern you that that innovation is happening there?It absolutely does concern me. We don't want to get cut off from our main sources of energy supply. That's why I favor policies like the Inflation Reduction Act. Basically, industrial policy is to say, “Okay, we need some battery manufacturing here, we need some solar panel manufacturing here in the country as a security measure.” Politicians always sell it in terms of, “We created this many jobs.” I don't care. We can create jobs anyway. Anything we do will create jobs. I don't care about creating specific kinds of jobs. It is just a political marketing tactic: “Green jobs, yes!” Okay, cool, cool. Maybe you can market it that way, good for you.But what I do care about is what you talked about, which is the strategic aspect of it. I want to have some of that manufacturing in the country, even if it's a little inefficient. I don't want to sacrifice everything at the altar of a few points of GDP, or a few tenths of a percent of points of GDP at most, honestly. Or sacrifice everything in the altar of perfect efficiency. Obviously the strategic considerations are important, but, that said, what China's doing with all this investment is it's improving the state of technology, and then we can just copy that. That's what they did to us for decades and decades. We invented the stuff, and then they would just copy it. We can do that on batteries: They invent the stuff, we will copy it, and that's cool. It means they're doing some of our work, just the way we did a lot of their work to develop all this technology that they somehow begged, borrowed, or stole.. . . what China's doing with all this investment is it's improving the state of technology, and then we can just copy that. That's what they did to us for decades and decades. We invented the stuff, and then they would just copy it. We can do that on batteries. . .The original question I asked about: Why should we think the future will be different than the recent past? Why should we think that, in the future, America will spend more on research? Why do we think that perhaps we'll look at some of the regulations that make it hard to do things? Why would any of that change?And to me, the most compelling reason is, it's quite simple just to say, “Well, what about China? Do you want to lose this race to China? Do you want China to have this technology? Do you want them to be the leaders in AI?” And that sort of geopolitical consideration, to me, ends up being a simple but yet very persuasive argument if you're trying to argue for things which very loosely might be called “pro-progress” or “pro-abundance” or what have you.I don't want to whip up any international conflict in order to stimulate people to embrace progress for national security concerns. That wouldn't be worth it, that's like wagging the dog. But, given that international conflict has found us — we didn't want it, but given the fact that it found us — we should do what we did during the Cold War, during World War II, even during the Civil War, and use that problem to push progress forward.If you look at when the United States has really spent a lot of money on research, has built a lot of infrastructure, has done all the things we now retrospectively associate with progress, it was for international competition. We built the interstates as part of the Cold War. We funded the modern university system as part of the Cold War. And a lot of these things, the NIH [National Institutes of Health], and the NSF [National Science Foundation], and all these things, of course those came from World War II programs, sort of crash-research programs during and just before World War II. And then, in the Civil War, of course, we built the railroads.So, like it or not, that's how these things have gotten done. So now that we see that China and Russia have just decided, “Okay, we don't like American power, we want to diminish these guys in whatever way we can,” that's a threat to us, and we have to respond to that threat, or else just exceed to the loss of wealth and freedom that would come with China getting to do what it wants to us. I don't think we should exceed to that.I don't want to whip up any international conflict in order to stimulate people to embrace progress. . . But, given that international conflict has found us. . . we should do what we did during the Cold War, during World War II, even during the Civil War, and use that problem to push progress forward.Recalling Japanese economic history (20:32)You write a lot about Japan. What is the thing you find that most people misunderstand about the last 30 years of Japanese economic history? I think the popular version is: Boom, in the '80s, they looked like they were ahead in all these technologies, they had this huge property bubble, the economy slowed down, and they've been in a funk ever since — the lost decades. I think that might be the popular economic history. How accurate is that?I would say that there was one lost decade, the '90s, during which they had a very protracted slowdown, they ameliorated many of the effects of it, but they were very slow to get rid of the root cause of it, which was bad bank debts and a broken banking system. Eventually, they mostly cleaned it up in the 2000s, and then growth resumed. By the time per capita growth resumed, by the time productivity growth and all that resumed, Japan was aging very, very rapidly, more rapidly than any country has ever aged in the world, and that masked much of the increase in GDP per worker. So Japan was increasing its GDP per worker in the 2000s, but it was aging so fast that you couldn't really see it. It looked like another lost decade, but what was really happening is aging.And now, with fertility falling all around the world right now in the wake of the pandemic, probably from some sort of effect of social media, smartphones, new technology, whatever, I don't know why, but fertility's falling everywhere — again, it looked like it had bottomed out, and then now it's falling again. We're all headed for what happened to Japan, and I think what people need to understand is that that's our future. What happened to Japan in the 2000s where they were able to increase productivity, but living standards stagnated because there were more and more old people to take care of. That is something that we need to expect to happen to us, because it is. And, of course, immigration can allay that somewhat, and it will, and it should. And so we're not because of immigrationWill it in this country? In this country, the United States, it seems like that should be something, a major advantage going forward, but it seems like it's an advantage we seem eager to throw away.Well, I don't know about eager to throw away, but I think it is in danger. Obviously, dumb policies can wreck a country at any time. There's no country whose economy and whose progress cannot be wrecked by dumb policies. There's no country that's dumb-proof, it doesn't exist, and it can't exist. And so if we turn off immigration, we're in trouble. Maybe that's trouble that people are willing to accept if people buy the Trumpist idea that immigrants are polluting our culture, and bringing all kinds of social ills, and eating the pets, and whatever the hell, if people buy that and they elect Trump and Trump cracks down hard on immigration, it will be a massive own-goal from America. It will be a self-inflicted wound, and I really hope that doesn't happen, but it could happen. It could happen to the best of us.There's no country whose economy and whose progress cannot be wrecked by dumb policies. There's no country that's dumb-proof, it doesn't exist, and it can't exist.Regulating AI well (23:49)Do you think what we're seeing now with AI, do you think it is an important enough technology that it is almost impossible, realistically, to screw it up through a bad regulation, through a regulatory bill in California, or something on the national level? When you look at what's going on, that if it's really as important as what perhaps the most bullish technologists think it is, it's going to happen, it's going to change businesses, it's going to change our lives, and unless you somehow try to prohibit the entire use of the technology, there's going to be an Age of AI?Do people like me worry too much about regulation?I can't say, actually. This is not something I'm really an expert on, the potential impact of regulation on AI. I would never underestimate the Europeans' ability to block new technologies from being used, they seem to be very, very good at it, but I don't think we'll completely block it, it could hamper it. I would say that this is just one that I don't know.But I will say, I do think what's going to happen is that AI capabilities will outrun use cases for AI, and there will be a bust relatively soon, where people find out that they built so many data centers that, temporarily, no one needs them because people haven't figured out what to do with AI that's worth paying a lot of money for. And I have thoughts on why people haven't thought of those things yet, but I'll get to that in a second. But I think that eventually you'll have one of those Gartner Hype Cycles where eventually we figure out what to do with it, and then those data centers that we built at that time become useful. Like, “Oh, we have all these GPUs [graphics processing units] sitting around from that big bust a few years ago,” and then it starts accelerating again.So I predict that that will happen, and I think that during the bust, people will say, just like they did after the Dot-com bust, people will say, “Oh, AI was a fake. It was all a mirage. It was all useless. Look at this wasted investment. The tech bros have lied to us. Where's your future now?” And it's just because excitement about capabilities outruns end-use cases, not all the time, obviously not every technology obeys this cycle, for sure . . . but then many do, you can see this happen a lot. You can see this happen with the internet. You can see this happen with railroads, and electricity. A lot of these things, you've seen this pattern. I think this will happen with AI. I think that there's going to be a bust and everyone's going to say, “AI sucks!” and then five, six years later, they'll say, “Oh, actually AI is pretty good,” when someone builds the Google of AI.Rethinking growth strategy in the EU (26:46)To me, this always gets a lot of good attention on social media, if you compare the US and Europe and you say, the US, it's richer, or we have all the technology companies, or we're leading in all the technology areas, and we can kind of gloat over Europe. But then I think, well, that's kind of bad. We should want Europe to be better, especially if you think we are engaged in this geopolitical competition with these authoritarian countries. We should want another big region of liberal democracy and market capitalism to be successful.Can Europe turn it around? Mario Draghi just put out this big competitiveness report, things Europe can do, they need to be more like America in this way or that way. Can Europe become like a high-productivity region?In general, European elites' answer to all their problems is “more Europe,” more centralization, make Europe more like a country. . . But I think that Europe's strength is really in fragmentation . . .I think it can. I wrote a post about this today, actually, about Mario Draghi's report. My bet for what Europe would have to do is actually very different than what the European elites think they have to do. In general, European elites' answer to all their problems is “more Europe,” more centralization, make Europe more like a country. You know, Europe has a history of international competition. France, and Germany, and the UK, and all these powers would fight each other. That's their history. And for hundreds of years, it's very difficult to change that mindset, and Mario Draghi's report is written entirely in terms of competitiveness. And so I think the mindset now is “Okay, now there's these really big countries that we're competing with: America, China, whatever. We need to get bigger so we're a big country too.” And so the idea is to centralize so that Europe can be one big country competing with the other big countries.But I think that Europe's strength is really in fragmentation, the way that some European countries experiment with different institutions, different policies. You've seen, for example, the Scandinavian countries, by and large, have very pro-business policies combined with very strong welfare states. That's a combination you don't see that in Italy, France, and Germany. In Italy, France, and Germany, you see policies that specifically restrict a lot of what business can do, who you can hire and fire, blah, blah, blah. Sweden, and Denmark, and Finland, and Norway make it very easy for businesses to do anything they want to do, and then they just redistribute. It's what we in America might even call “neoliberalism.”Then they have very high taxes and they provide healthcare and blah, blah, and then they basically encourage businesses to do business-y things. And Sweden is more entrepreneurial than America. Sweden has more billionaires per capita, more unicorns per capita, more high-growth startups per capita than America does. And so many people fall into the lazy trap of thinking of this in terms of cultural essentialism: “The Swedes, they're just an entrepreneurial bunch of Vikings,” or something. But then I think you should look at those pro-business policies.Europeans should use Sweden as a laboratory, use Denmark, use Norway. Look at these countries that are about as rich as the United States and have higher quality of life by some metrics. Look at these places and don't just assume that the Swedes have some magic sauce that nobody else has, that Italy and Greece and Spain have nothing to learn from Sweden and from Denmark. So I think Europe should use its fragmentation.Also, individual countries in Europe can compete with their own local industrial policies. Draghi talks about the need to have a Europe-wide industrial policy to combat the industrial policies of China and America, but, often, when you see the most effective industrial policy regimes, they're often fragmented.So for example, China until around 2006, didn't really have a national industrial policy at all. At the national level, all they did was basically Milton Friedman stuff, they just privatized and deregulated. That's what they did. And then all the industrial policy was at the provincial and city levels. They went all out to build infrastructure, to attract FDI [foreign direct investment], to train workers, all the kinds of things like that. They did all these industrial policies at the local level that were very effective, and they all competed with each other, because whichever provincial officials got the highest growth rate, you'd get promoted, and so they were competing with each other.Now, obviously, you don't want to go for growth at the expense of anything else. Obviously you'd want to have things like the environment, and equality, and all those things, especially in Europe, it's a rich country, they don't just want to go for growth, growth, growth only. But if you did something like that where you gave the member states of the EU more latitude to do their local policies and to set their local regulations of things like the internet and AI, and then you use them as laboratories and copy and try to disseminate best practice, so that if Sweden figures something out, Greece can do it too, I think that would play to Europe's strength, because Draghi can write a million reports, but Europe is never going to become the “United States of Europe.” Its history and ethno-nationalism is too fragmented. You'll just break it apart if you try.The European elites will just keep grousing, “We need more Europe! More Europe!” but they won't get it. They'll get marginally more, a little bit more. Instead, they should consider playing to Europe's natural strengths and using the interstate competitive effects, and also laboratory effects like policy experimentation, to create a new development strategy, something a little bit different than what they're thinking now. So that's my instinct of what they should do.Faster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Micro Reads▶ Business/ Economics* Behind OpenAI's Audacious Plan to Make A.I. Flow Like Electricity - NYT* OpenAI Pitched White House on Unprecedented Data Center Buildout - Bberg* OpenAI Executives Exit as C.E.O. Works to Make the Company For-Profit - NYT* OpenAI to Become For-Profit Company - WSJ* Mark Zuckerberg's AI Vision Makes Metaverse a Slightly Easier Sell - WSJ* Intel's Foundry Shake-Up Doesn't Go Far Enough - WSJ* OpenAI CTO Mira Murati Is Leaving the Company - Wired* Meta unveils augmented reality glasses prototype ‘Orion' - FT▶ Policy/Politics* The Schumer Permitting Exception for Semiconductors - WSJ Opinion* Biden breaks with environmentalists, House Dems on chip bill - Politico* Mark Zuckerberg Is Done With Politics - NYT▶ AI/Digital* I Built a Chatbot to Replace Me. It Went a Little Wild. - WSJ* Meta's answer to ChatGPT is AI that sounds like John Cena or Judi Dench - Wapo* Want AI that flags hateful content? Build it. - MIT* The Celebrities Lending Their Voices to Meta's New AI - WSJ▶ Biotech/Health* Why do obesity drugs seem to treat so many other ailments? - Nature* Antimicrobial resistance is dangerous in more ways than one - FT Opinion* Who's Really Keeping Ozempic and Wegovy Prices So High? - Bberg Opinion▶ Clean Energy/Climate* Microsoft's Three Mile Island Deal Is Great News - Bberg Opinion* China's accelerating green transition - FT* Microsoft's Three Mile Island Deal Isn't a Nuclear Revival — Yet - Bberg Opinion* A Faster, Cheaper Way to Double Power Line Capacity - Spectrum* A Public Path to Building a Star on Earth - Issues▶ Space/Transportation* Hypersonic Weapons — Who Has Them and Why It Matters - Bberg▶ Up Wing/Down Wing* Trump Offers Scare Tactics on Housing. Harris Has a Plan. - Bberg Opinion* The Sun Will Destroy the Earth One Day, Right? Maybe Not. - NYT* How supply chain superheroes have kept world trade flowing - FT Opinion* Can machines be more ‘truthful' than humans? - FT Opinion▶ Substacks/Newsletters* America's supply chains are a disaster waiting to happen - Noahpinion* The OpenAI Pastiche Edition - Hyperdimensional* The Ideas Anticommons - Risk & Progress* Sam Altman Pitches Utopian impact of AI while Accepting UAE Oil Money Funding - AI Supremacy* The Government's War on Starter Homes - The Dispatch* NEPA Nightmares III: The Surry-Skiffes Creek-Whealton Transmission Line - Breakthrough Journal* Dean Ball on AI regulation, "hard tech," and the philosophy of Michael Oakeshott - Virginia's NewsletterFaster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe

On this week's show we look at using a two channel powered speaker with ARC as a soundbar alternative and we look at the best 85” HDTVs you can purchase today. We also read your email and take a look at the week's news. News: Dish Network Loses 314,000 Pay TV Subs Fubo Adds 173,000 Subs and Cuts Loss in Q4 Warner to Crack Down on Max Password Sharing Later This Year Fox predicts sports venture will reach 5M in 5 years Other: Best Smart Home Gadgets To Avoid The Cloud Kanto's new active speakers - with HDMI ARC - could be a nifty soundbar alternative The new Kanto Ren are well-connected, featuring an HDMI input for hooking up to a TV as well as a USB-C input for playing files up to 24-bit/96kHz from a source player. An optical Toslink supports up to 24-bit/96kHz transmission, and there's a single RCA input alongside a 3.5mm jack. If you don't want to plug in directly, they're also kitted out with Bluetooth 5.3. Outputs, meanwhile, come courtesy of a single sub-out line and a single USB Charge. The new units are supplied with a remote control and feature a choice of two extra sound modes – vocal boost and night mode. The latter does one of two things. if a subwoofer is connected, the sub-out signal will be switched off and the low-frequencies will only be emitted from the speaker itself. If no subwoofer is connected, the Ren's bass will be reduced, presumably so as not to disturb your lower-floor neighbors when they're trying to get some kip. There's also a quarter-inch hole at the base of the units for mounting. The new units will be on sale from July, priced at $599 per pair, and are available in a choice of six colors: black, cream, white, green, brown and orange. Potential system to rival the Kento Ren for $250 less: Arylic Bluetooth aptX HD Stereo Amplifier $140 paired with RSL CG3M BOOKSHELF SPEAKER $210 for the pair total cost $350 The 5 Best 80-83-85 Inch TVs - Winter 2024 RTINGS.com We talk about large format HDTVs all the time and they range in super expensive to pretty darn cheap. But what are you getting for your money. RTINGS.com has posted their list of the 5 Best 80 - 85 inch TVs. We run them down for you on today's show.  Best 80-85 Inch TV The best TV you can buy that's available in 80+ inches is the LG OLED83C3PUA ($3596). It's an excellent TV with stunning picture quality, especially in a dark room. It looks amazing in the dark thanks to its near-infinite contrast ratio that results in perfect inky blacks, with no distracting blooming or halos around bright highlights or subtitles. Combined with its high peak brightness and wide color gamut, the latest movies and shows in HDR look amazing. It's no slouch in a bright room either, as it's bright enough to fight glare, and its reflection handling is fantastic.  Mixed Usage 9.0, TV Shows 8.6, Sports 8.8, Video Games 9.4, HDR Movies 9.0, HDR Gaming 9.1, PC Monitor 9.4 See full test results. Best Bright Room 80-85 Inch TV If you're rarely in a completely dark room, check out the Sony XR-85X95L ($4498) instead. It's a slightly larger TV than the LG C3 OLED, making it the best 85-inch TV you can get if you want something slightly bigger. It doesn't have the same perfect black levels as the OLED, but it has a truly incredible contrast ratio and black uniformity, leading to extremely deep blacks. Plus, it gets much brighter than the LG, so it's a better choice if you're in a very bright room, as it can overcome more glare. It also delivers brighter highlights in HDR. This, combined with its excellent color gamut, makes it an impressive choice for watching content in HDR10 or Dolby Vision HDR. Mixed Usage  8.6; TV Shows  8.3, Sports 8.4, Video Games  8.9, HDR Movies  8.8, HDR Gaming 8.9, PC Monitor  8.7 See full test results. Best Mid-Range 80-85 Inch TV If you don't want to spend an arm and a leg but still want good picture quality, then a mid-range TV like the Hisense 85U8K ($2198) is a good alternative. It's significantly cheaper than the Sony X95L or LG C3 OLED but still delivers amazing picture quality. It's just as bright as the Sony, and its contrast is almost as good due to a better overall local dimming solution. The Hisense displays a wide color gamut, has surprisingly good image processing, and supports advanced audio and video formats like our top two picks, so it's an amazing home theater TV for a lower price than the Sony or the LG. Mixed Usage 8.5; TV Shows 8.0, Sports  7.9, Video Games  8.8, HDR Movies  8.8, HDR Gaming  8.9, PC Monitor  8.5 See full test results. Best Lower Mid-Range 80-85 Inch TV If you're on a budget but want better picture quality than the budget option below, the Hisense 85U7K ($1798) is the best lower mid-range TV we've tested available in an 80 to 85-inch size. It's a great TV, with very good picture quality and a wide selection of additional features. It's basically a dimmer Hisense U8/U8K with a nearly identical feature set. It's still bright enough for a pleasant viewing experience in bright rooms. Its contrast, while worse than the picks above, is excellent overall, leading to deep blacks in dark rooms. Like its more expensive sibling, it's a stellar home theater TV with very good image processing and support for HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and advanced DTS audio formats. Mixed Usage  8.2, TV Shows  7.8, Sports  7.8, Video Games  8.7, HDR Movies  8.3, HDR Gaming 8.7, PC Monitor  8.5 See full test results. Best Budget 80-85 Inch TV If you're on a budget and want a large TV, you'll have to spend more than if you were getting a smaller size. However, a few budget-friendly models are available in larger sizes, like the TCL 85Q650G ($998). It's a decent overall TV that doesn't cost nearly as much and still has much to offer. Unlike the models above, this TV doesn't have local dimming to improve its contrast, so it doesn't look as good in a dark room. It also doesn't get as bright or emphasize highlights like the Hisense U7K/U75K does, but it's still good enough to overcome glare in a bright room. Like the Hisense TVs, the TCL supports both HDR10+ and Dolby Vision, but it doesn't have good image processing, so it's not a great choice for a home theater setup. Mixed Usage 7.3; TV Shows 6.9, Sports  6.9, Video Games  7.9, HDR Movies  7.2, HDR Gaming  8.0, PC Monitor  7.7 See full test results.

Michael Zink is president of the UHD Alliance, an industry group founded in 2015. He is also the Vice President of Emerging and Creative Technologies at WarnerMedia. The Alliance was founded to bring together consumer electronics manufacturers, film and television studios, content distributors and technology companies to have unified technical specifications for what Ultra High Definition should be. Michael has been instrumental in helping set the standards for Filmmaker Mode, an option now available on most new TVs. Most electronics manufacturers have automatic factory pre-sets on their HDTVs that include post-processing of the image, known as “motion smoothing” or “smooth motion” which makes every image onscreen look like the evening news or a videogame. It can be very difficult to figure out how to disable it or turn it off. Starting around 2014, actors, directors and cinematographers like Tom Cruise, Rian Johnson, Christopher Nolan and Reed Morano loudly decried the smooth motion default settings and were very upset that their films were not being seen at home as they had intended. Tom Cruise even went so far as to make a PSA he posted to Twitter in 2018, asking viewers to turn off motion smoothing. UHD Alliance met with industry groups such as the ASC and the DGA, and determined that preserving filmmakers' creative intent on home televisions was very important. UHD Alliance then came up with the specifications for Filmmaker Mode, which most manufacturers have adopted. Filmmaker Mode is designed to help you watch movies and TV shows at home the way that filmmakers intended AND make it very easy for consumers to use. Most people just use their electronics directly out of the box, without any special calibrations. By disabling all post-processing such as motion smoothing, and preserving the correct aspect ratios, colors and frame rates, Filmmaker Mode enables your TV to display the movie or television show's content precisely as it was intended by the filmmaker. Today, even streaming services such as Amazon Prime Video have automatic switching in the data stream that will communicate with certain brands of televisions to switch it to Filmmaker Mode. Find Michael Zink: Twitter @_MichaelZink UHD Alliance: https://www.experienceuhd.com @experienceUHD Filmmaker Mode: https://filmmakermode.com Sponsored by Hot Rod Cameras: www.hotrodcameras.com Sponsored by Greentree Creative: www.growwithgreentree.com The Cinematography Podcast website: www.camnoir.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheCinematographyPodcast Facebook: @cinepod Instagram: @thecinepod Twitter: @ShortEndz

The World Cup is getting underway in Qatar. The Cup's official ball has a colorful and busy design, perfect for HDTVs. Here's the story of how the classic black and white ball got its design. Plus: this time in 1938, some TV viewers in New York were watching... the BBC? The Footballs during the FIFA World Cup™ (FIFA) BBC Television received in New York - November 1938 (Archive.org) Our Patreon backers score a goal with every episode of this show --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/support

This week we further discuss the beginning of the “Fuzz Tone” in music, give you some fun facts of the Compact Disc and rundown the availability and pricing of the 2022 LG line of HDTVs. Plus we read your emails and go over the week's news.  Ara's Latest Speaker Build  News: ESPN's iOS app adds SharePlay to help you watch sports with friends Apple TV 4K gets seriously useful upgrade — it's now a travel essential Epson unveils 4K 120Hz laser projector Xiaomi launches a huge 100-inch 4K TV in China for $3,150 Other: Lutron Caseta Wireless - Smart Lighting Control System Ready Wholesale Electric Supply Matter home automation full release delayed until Fall 2022 | AppleInsider Join the Neat Exchange - Social Media for Whiskey Drinkers Ara's Woodworking Join the Flaviar Whisky Club and get a free bottle How Sam Phillips Invented the Sound of Rock and Roll Here is some more information about the story Ara told last week about the broken amp that created a new sound. Full article here… From the article: It was around this time that a baby-faced Beale Street regular came into the studio. His name was Riley King, but everyone called him the "Beale Street Blues Boy," a name that later boiled down to simply "B.B. King." With singles like "Mistreated Woman" and "She's Dynamite," King became one of Phillips' first successful artists, and far from the last. In early 1951, King recommended Phillips' services to the Mississippi-based band "Kings of Rhythm," led by teenager Ike Turner. In their haste to fix an unlucky flat tire on a road trip to Memphis, one of their amps fell out of the trunk and onto the pavement. Upon arriving at Phillips' studio, guitarist Willie Kizart plugged in the amp and got a horrible, fuzzy, distorted noise. The speaker cone of the vacuum tube amp seemed to have broken in the fall, or maybe was damaged during a rainstorm that befell the band on their way to the studio. Whatever the case, the amp was shot and the group, crestfallen, feared their shot at recording a song was over before it had even started. Phillips, however, had a different idea. Running to the diner next door, he grabbed some paper—the legend differs on whether it was brown paper or day-old newspaper—and stuffed it into the amp, giving it a new, unique sound, a muffled saxophone-like bass. For Phillips, this wasn't just a quick fix, but in fact something better: something different. When you listen to the the song widely hailed as rock and roll's first, "Rocket 88," you'll hear exactly what he created. A sound that helped launch a genre. "Instead of trying to hide that sound," says Jerry Phillips, "he brought it to the forefront." While this may not have been the first instance of fuzz tone or distortion in a song, it was the first commercially successful song with this soon-to-be-iconic manipulation of sound that would go on to define songs from The Kinks' "You Really Got Me Going" to The Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" to The Beastie Boys' "Sabotage." Rocket 88 (Original Version) - Ike Turner/Jackie Brenston Fun facts about the CD Sony worked with Philips to develop the first CD. The Sony CDP-101 was the first CD player and it cost around $900 in 1982. Compact discs themselves were at first extremely expensive at $30 each. CDs were manufactured at only two facilities in the entire world, each owned by Philips and Sony. The manufacturing process was tedious and required masked technicians in labs. There were soon six factories, and the price per disc dropped to $25, and then to $20. As venture capital poured in, there were soon 40 factories manufacturing discs. The first portable CD player was released in 1982, but it was not possible to skip songs you didn't like.That technology came out in the mid 1990's. Sony's first portable CD player, the Discman D-50, was introduced in November 1984. At first, the D-50 was not profitable but as the product gained popularity, it soon became profitable, and Sony began to create a portable CD market. The Discman range was later re-named to CD Walkman. The first ever CD was a 1982 album by Swedish pop group Abba called The Visitors The biggest selling CD of all time is the Eagles 1976 Their Greatest Hits album, which sold over 38 million copies If all the CDs in the world were piled up, they'd circle the Earth six times Vinyl sales in 2021 topped CDs in the United States for the first time in 30 years. According to data from Billboard, 38% of all album sales in the country last year were in vinyl format, accounting for over 50% of all physical album sales. This marked the first time more vinyls were sold than CDs in the US since 1991. LG's 2022 OLED televisions start shipping this spring LG today announced pricing and availability for its 2022 line of OLED televisions. That includes four series of 4K sets (we've got info for three of them, anyway), as well two 8K models. Full article here…

This week we further discuss the beginning of the “Fuzz Tone” in music, give you some fun facts of the Compact Disc and rundown the availability and pricing of the 2022 LG line of HDTVs. Plus we read your emails and go over the week's news.

Episode OverviewIn episode 76, Chris and Baz answer listener questions around Aviation and Cruise Dining, followed by another bumper week of cruise news from around the world. This weeks “Itinerary of the Weel” is Cunard's Queen Elizabeth, Barcelona to Fremantle, check it out towards the end of the show.Support the show - Buy Me A CoffeeThis podcast is only possible thanks to our supporters, simply buying a coffee keeps us on air. It is just like shouting your mate a coffee, and we consider our listeners close mates.  https://bit.ly/2T2FYGXListener QuestionsHi Baz, I know Chris also has a passion for aviation, can you ask does he have a favourite aircraft and any preference over Boing or Airbus? Love the show, sorry its not a cruise question. Joe from Victoria.Sam from WA asks, First time cruisier and not sure what to do about dining, early, late or flexible? We are a family of 4 (inc 2 kids) plus the grandparents may also book. Thinking of a South Pacific Cruise for late 2022. Any tips around dining?Cruise NewsHolland America Line Names Her Royal Highness Princess Margriet of the Netherlands Godmother of RotterdamHolland America Line has announced that when Rotterdam is named next spring, Her Royal Highness Princess Margriet of the Netherlands will be the ship's godmother, carrying on a tradition that began in the 1920s.Holland America Line's connection to The House of Orange goes back nearly a century to Prince Hendrik launching Statendam III in 1929. Since then, members of the Dutch Royal Family have launched 11 more Holland America Line vessels throughout the years, including Her Royal Highness Princess Margriet who named Prinsendam (1972), Nieuw Amsterdam II (1983), Rotterdam VI (1997) and Oosterdam (2003).Additional members of the Dutch Royal Family who are godmothers include Queen Máxima, who named Koningsdam in 2016 and Nieuw Amsterdam in 2010. Then-Queen Beatrix served as Eurodam's godmother in 2008. Rotterdam V was launched in 1958 by Queen Juliana. Then-Princess Beatrix named Statendam IV in 1957 and Prinses Margriet in 1960. Nieuw Amsterdam II was launched by Queen Wilhelmina in 1937Rotterdam marks the 13th ship for the cruise line to be named by a Dutch RoyalHolland America Line's Rotterdam Departs on Maiden Voyage from Amsterdam to Florida for Inaugural Caribbean SeasonHolland America Line's Rotterdam departed today on its highly anticipated 14-day maiden voyage from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The cruise line celebrated the occasion with fanfare, cheering crew and a ribbon cutting to welcome guests on board the transatlantic cruise.The 2,668-guest Rotterdam was delivered in July 2021 and is the third in the Pinnacle Class series for Holland America Line. Last week the ship arrived at its namesake city of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where it was announced that Her Royal Highness Princess Margriet of the Netherlands will be the ships godmother when it is officially named in the spring (Northern)Following the transatlantic crossing, Rotterdam will spend from November through April on its inaugural Caribbean Season, with all sailings roundtrip from Fort Lauderdale. The cruises range from six to 11 days and span the entire region on southern, eastern, western and tropical itineraries. Guests looking for a longer getaway can embark on a Collectors' Voyage — combined back-to-back itineraries that offer an in-depth exploration covering more than one area.Every Caribbean cruise includes a call at Half Moon Cay, Holland America Line's award-winning private Bahamian island. This quaint sanctuary has evolved into a playground for cruise guests and features the finest beaches; two-story villas and private cabanas; delicious dining venues like Lobster Shack; and a variety of fun-filled tours for nature lovers, adventurous travellers and explorers.About RotterdamRotterdam has the highly successful amenities and innovations introduced with her sister ships, including the 270-degree surround screen World Stage, Rudi's Sel de Mer restaurant and Grand Dutch Café. The ship introduces the Half Moon Bar, an immersive experience looking at the history of Holland America Line and cruising through the lens of a cocktail.Delivering the best of everything, Rotterdam celebrates live music with a collection of world-class performances each night — from Lincoln Center Stage and B.B. King's Blues Club to Rolling Stone Rock Room and Billboard Onboard.Throughout the ship, Rotterdam showcases Holland America Line hallmarks that drive one of the highest repeat rates in the industry: exquisite cuisine guided by eight of the world's leading chefs; gracious, award-winning service; a museum-quality art collection valued at more than $4 million; and superbly appointed staterooms and suites, including family and single accommodations.Rotterdam is the seventh ship to bear the name for Holland America Line.Captain Cook Cruises Fiji delivers Aid to struggling Mamanuca & Yasawa familiesCaptain Cook Cruise's sailing catamaran “Fiji One” sailed to the Mamanuca & Yasawa islands on Wednesday 13th and 14th of October and Reef Endeavour to the Northern Yasawa on 15th October. Both ships were laden with essential supplies to assist multiple villages who have suffered with lack of visits from cruise passengers and unemployment during COVID.  Essential supplies were provided such as groceries, medical supplies, reusable personal hygiene packs, baby packs and seeds for edible plants.The fundraiser was initiated by Captain Cook Cruises who worked in conjunction with the Rotary Clubs of Sydney Cove and Nadi on the project.  Captain Cook Cruises were very grateful for the generous contributions from their past passenger network, social media followers, a Tourism Fiji Australia travel industry fundraiser and general public as well as the significant contribution made by The Rotary Club of Sydney Cove.Captain Cook Cruises helped to ensure the villages receiving the aid were those who had been most affected by unemployment of hospitality workers as well as the absence of visits from passengers on Reef Endeavour which had ceased her itineraries to the region during this time.  Reef Endeavour dropped the supplies at Sawailau and Yanuya during her first itinerary to the islands departing with some “happy to be out of lockdown”, Fiji locals!Princess Cruises Offers Half Price Cruise Vacations to First Responders and Medical Professionals (North America Only) Princess Cruises is launching a special 50 percent off promotion, valid on select cruises sailing from North America through February 2022 for all active first responders and medical professionals in gratitude for their service.Select cruises departing from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Mexico and the California Coast, plus Caribbean cruises sailing from Ft. Lauderdale, can be redeemed at 50 percent off, subject to terms and conditions.For those taking advantage of this special discounted offer, verification of current professional status through Sheer ID, a digital verification form, is accessible at https://www.princess.com/cruise-deals-promotions/first-responder-medical-offer. First responder and medical professional information will be collected from 10/18 -10/31 and then validated with offers emailed on 11/3. The discount offer booking deadline is December 31, 2021In addition, active first responders and medical professionals can enter a sweepstakes between October 18-31, 2021, for a chance-to-win a cruise for two people. The entry link can be found https://www.princess.com/cruise-deals-promotions/first-responder-medical-offer/. One grand-prize winner will be randomly drawn and notified on Nov. 1, 2021. The grand prize value of the sweepstakes is $2,500.00, based on a 7-day Eastern Caribbean cruise, balcony stateroom for two with drinks, wifi and crew incentive included with Princess Plus. The discount and sweepstakes is only available to U.S.-based first responders and medical professionals.Royal Caribbean Introduces Ultimate World Cruise in 2023Serenade of the Seas to Make Cruising's First-of-its-kind, 274-Night Adventure in 2023Royal Caribbean International is raising the bar for world cruises with the debut of the inaugural Ultimate World Cruise, an epic 274-night adventure that visits all seven continents, more than 150 destinations in 65 countries and 11 great wonders of the world. This rich, immersive experience on Serenade of the Seas is the longest and most comprehensive world cruise out there, sailing roundtrip from Miami on Dec. 10, 2023 and through Sept. 10, 2024. Bookings for the full Ultimate World Cruise can be made by phone starting today, with an exclusive one-week window through Oct. 26 for Royal Caribbean's Crown & Anchor Society Diamond status members and above.Travelers will sail to 57 destinations new to the cruise line and exclusive to the cruise itself. Highlights include Casablanca, Morocco; Qaqortoq, Greenland; and Shimizu, Japan – the gateway to Mount Fuji. Guests can delve deep into many of the world's breathtaking wonders, from Peru's Machu Picchu to the Taj Mahal in India, and experience distinct cultures and picturesque shores at every corner of the world all in one spectacular adventure – only on Royal Caribbean.Guests ready to traverse the world can book the full Ultimate World Cruise today or choose from any of the four expeditions that will offer a wide range of destinations as soon as December 2021 – the Americas, Asia-Pacific, the Mediterranean and Northern Europe:Round the Horn: Americas and Antarctica Expedition Dec. 10, 2023 – Feb. 11, 2024 – Three continents, 36 destinations, four wondersThe once-in-a-lifetime journey begins in Miami, the cruise capital of the world, and sets course for postcard- perfect Caribbean destinations – like the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao) – before heading to glacier- studded Antarctica and around Cape Horn. Travelers can take in four of the world's stunning wonders along the way in Central and South America, including Chichen Itza in Cozumel, Mexico; the largest art deco sculpture in the world, Christ the Redeemer, in Rio de Janeiro – where they'll celebrate New Year's Eve – and the largest waterfall system on the planet, Iguazu Falls near Buenos Aires, Argentina. One of the most iconic symbols of ancient Inca civilization and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Machu Picchu, awaits in Peru, while sunshine and glamour will welcome guests in Los Angeles. Wonders of Asia and the Pacific Expedition Feb. 11 – May 9, 2024 – Three continents, 40 destinations, three wondersGuests will venture miles from the ordinary in Oceania, Asia and beyond on the cruise's next showstopping leg. They can discover the beauty and adventure throughout the Hawaiian Islands' world-renowned mountainous landscapes and black sand beaches before sailing south to Moorea and Tahiti, French Polynesia, for sapphire blue skies and crystal-clear waters. The thrills continue with an exploration of New Zealand, before a deep-dive into Australia's Great Barrier Reef – the only living thing on the planet that's visible from space. Pristine natural beauty in Bali, Indonesia, is soon followed by two of the most iconic manmade world wonders, the Great Wall of China and India's Taj Mahal, and gems of the South Pacific – from Vietnam to Malaysia. Rounding out the expedition are endless possibilities in Japan, with unparalleled culture in Tokyo, street food in Osaka and the tropical beaches of Okinawa. Middle East Treasures and Marvels of the Med Expedition May 9 – July 10, 2024 – Three continents, 44 destinations, four wondersThis expedition begins in glamorous Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and brings many of history's greatest mysteries, myths and legends to life. Adventurers can uncover ancient sites and more world wonders from the times of emperors and pharaohs, like Jordan's lost city of Petra, the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, Turkey, and the Colosseum in Rome. There are also less-traveled places to explore, such as Greece's Olympia, once a sanctuary site to honor Zeus and the location of the first Olympic games. The journey only continues to even more destinations known for their storied history — like Split, Croatia, and  annes and Provence in France. Capitals of Culture July 10 – Sept. 10, 2024 – Three continents, 40 destinationsThe final leg of the Ultimate World Cruise is an immersive, cultural experience that begins in the Mediterranean and heads north. At travelers' fingertips is the opportunity to discover Barcelona's brilliant architecture, including Antoni Gaudi's famed Sagrada Familia and whimsical Park Guell, and savor new flavors across continents — such as an indulgent lunch in a Parisian bistro and a dinner of tagine and mint tea in Morocco. Museums, theaters and galleries line the streets of St. Petersburg, Russia, while larger-than-life fjords await in Norway. Guests can reflect on their epic voyage in the geothermal waters of the Blue Lagoon in Iceland before visiting New York on their way back to Miami. Globetrotters will explore the world in style on board Serenade,Seven Seas Explorer® Commences Inaugural Season from Trieste, ItalySeven Seas Explorer® has welcomed luxury travellers back on board for the first time since the voluntary industry-wide pause in operations. Excited guests embarked the ship known as the most luxurious ever built on 15 October 2021, in Trieste, Italy, for an unforgettable journey through Italy, Croatia and Greece, whilst experiencing the highest benchmarks of service in lavishly designed suites, restaurants, bars and lounges.Sailing with the cruise line's enhanced SailSAFE™ Health and Safety Program – which includes 100% vaccination of both guests and crew – Seven Seas Explorer is the second of the Regent Seven Seas Cruises® fleet to return, joining their newest ship Seven Seas Splendor® which has been enjoying a hugely successful inaugural season since 11 September 2021.Helmed by Captain Rosario Vasta, Seven Seas Explorer is cruising the Adriatic and Mediterranean Sea on an eight-night itinerary, visiting Ravenna, Italy; Zadar, Croatia; Dubrovnik, Croatia; Bari, Italy; Corfu, Greece; Taormina, Italy; and Sorrento/Capri, Italy. The ship arrives in Rome, Italy on 23 October, after which she will continue to cruise Southern Europe before crossing the Atlantic to Miami, Florida for a season in the Caribbean from mid-November until March 2022. The next ships in The World's Most Luxurious Fleet™ to resume sailing will be Seven Seas Mariner® on 18 December 2021, and Seven Seas Navigator® on 6 January 2022, both from Miami, Florida. Seven Seas Voyager®, Regent's final ship to return will sail on 15 February 2022 from Barcelona, Spain.Crystal River Cruises Named Best Luxury River Cruise Line in 2021 Wave AwardsCrystal River Cruises, the World's Most Luxurious River Cruise Line™, has earned top recognition as Best Luxury River Cruise Line in the 2021 Wave Awards held earlier this week in the UK. Presented by World of Cruising Magazine and Cruise Trade News, the Wave awards recognize excellence across wide variety of product- and service-related categories. Celebrating the very best of the travel industry, the awards are presented based on a panel of esteemed judges comprised of industry leaders, travel experts and members of the press.Crystal River Cruises fleet comprises the most spacious and luxurious ships sailing Europe's rivers with 2 attentive crew for every 3 guests, the highest crew to guest ratio in the industry; Crystal's acclaimed Michelin-inspired cuisine served in multiple open-seating restaurants; and the largest guest accommodations, all of which are suites featuring butler service and king-size beds. Crystal Mozart sets the standard for space and features suites for solo travelers with no supplement on all sailings, a wrap-around Promenade Deck, the largest onboard spa, two onboard fitness centers, four restaurants and four lounges. Crystal's four Rhine Class ships – Crystal Bach, Crystal Debussy, Crystal Mahler and Crystal Ravel  – accommodate just 106 guests with an intentional focus on maximizing personal and public spaces throughout their 135-meter hulls (a size typically designed to accommodate twice the number of guests). The ships are the industry's first and only all-balcony, all-suite, butler-serviced vessels in Europe, with every category of guest accommodation positioned above the waterline. All suites feature Panoramic Balcony-Windows™ and walk-in closets and dual vanity bathrooms are featured in most categories.All Crystal's River ships feature private butler service in every room category, king-sized beds, Caudalie amenities, robes and slippers, and wall-mounted flat-screen HD TVs. Additional enticing features include Michelin-inspired cuisine in multiple, open-seating eateries: the elegant Waterside Restaurant, namesake Bistro cafés, Blue (on Crystal Mozart) and the exclusive Vintage Room; and the Palm Court for entertainment, enrichment presentations and sweeping views of the riverside scenery. Crystal's attention to detail reaches ashore, as guests are transported on the days' adventures in luxury motor coaches equipped with complimentary water and Wi-Fi for added convenience and comfort.Storylines private residence ship increases communal spaces and adds a whole new deckStorylines residential ship announces a redesign of deck plans including new homes available for purchase and many new amenities. The updates include additional crew space and a reconfiguration of the marina deck to accommodate tendering for shore landings. The plans also include more outdoor spaces for dining and socializing, a coveted commodity in recent times as evidenced by recent surveys to the resident community.The number of decks changed from 17 to 18 and the number of residences available for purchase changed from 627 to 547, thereby increasing the amount of space for the owners of the private homes at sea and decreasing the number of people on board.New amenities include:Compounding PharmacyMeeting Spaces including Board RoomsBowling AlleyShared & Private Work SpacesSports Bar with Pool TablesOutdoor Cinema2-Level Cinema & Performance TheaterPickleball CourtMusic & Video Recording StudioBali BedsKid & Teen Recreation and EducationPet Walking Promenade & Day CareInfinity Edge JacuzziKennel, Vet & Grooming FacilitiesMaker Space & LabLarger Golf Simulator & Pro ShopAbout Storylines: Storylines is creating an environmentally sustainable ocean residence and a way of life that is attracting adventure seekers looking for immersive cultural experiences on a global scale. A conscientious community with an enthusiastic approach to living, residents will travel to more than 100 countries. With an average of three to five days in each port, experiential learning is integrated into curated itineraries and immersive shore excursions. Additionally, Storylines brings each destination to life onboard with enrichment programs, spa services that feature local elements, and a culinary street with regional dishes inspired by each port of call.Itinerary of the WeekCunard – Queen Elizabeth – 10 Oct 2022 – 28nts Barcelona to FremantleQueen Elizabeth: https://www.cunard.com/en-au/cruise-ships/queen-elizabeth/728nt – 10 Oct 2022 – Barcelona to Fremantle: https://www.cunard.com/en-au/find-a-cruise/Q230A/Q230A35nt – 3 Oct 2022 – Med & Barcelona to Fremantle: https://www.cunard.com/en-au/find-a-cruise/Q229B/Q229B36nt – 10 Oct 2022 – Barcelona to Sydney: https://www.cunard.com/en-au/find-a-cruise/Q230B/Q230B  And MoreEthical Cruise T-Shirts Now available branded podcast t-shirts, cruise-tees and Christmas gifts or design your own in the studio. All using organic cotton, printed using green energy and plastic-free packaging! https://bit.ly/32G7RdhJoin the show:If you have a cruise tip, burning question or want to record a cruise review get in touch with us via the website https://thebigcruisepodcast.com/join-the-show/  Guests: Chris Frame: https://bit.ly/3a4aBCg    Chris's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ChrisFrameOfficialPeter Kollar: https://www.cruising.org.au/Home  Listen & Subscribe: Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2XvD7tF  Castbox: https://bit.ly/2xkGBEI  Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/2RuY04u  I heart Radio:  https://ihr.fm/3mVIEUASpotify: https://spoti.fi/3caCwl8  Stitcher: https://bit.ly/2JWE8Tz  Pocket casts: https://bit.ly/2JY4J2M  Tune in: https://bit.ly/2V0Jrrs  Podcast Addict: https://bit.ly/2BF6LnE  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hungry Goriya dropped in on the GVG crew to talk today's news, including the surprise announcement of a new Ninja Turtles game! We also dove into what makes a retro game retro and CRTs vs HD TVs in our latest episode! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gvg/support

This week we sip on some Laurent-Perrier Cuvee Rosé and chat it up Mikayla, a marvelous lifestyle blogger and Renée, owner of the award winning business, Cork and Keg Tours. About Mikayla Mikayla is helping you discover & learn more about wine and chic & affordable style to share. Feel free to follow and check her blog out! About Cork and Keg Tours Renée and her husband are the proud owners of Cork and Keg Tours in Virginia. Cork & Keg Tours offers pre-curated “cluster” tours of area wineries or breweries in the Potomac, Mosby, Snickers Gap, Loudoun Heights, Harmony or Waterford regions, or allows customers to create individual itineraries. Tour in a Mercedes Sprinter outfitted with two HD TVs and a sparkling wine bar. Tours include a sparkling wine toast, pickup and drop-off and visits to two or three wineries. Vote Daily For Cork & KEG TOURS for Best Wine Tour Company! Laurent-Perrier Cuvee Rosé The Cuvée Rosé from Laurent-Perrier is the most recognized rosé champagne in the world.The house uses its proprietary maceration technique and the wine is crafted for a fragrance and not mixed for a color. Held in an elegant bottle inspired by King Henri IV, it has been widely acknowledged for its consistent high quality for more than 40 years, and it is the benchmark for rosé champagne around the world. Laurent-Perrier Cuvée Rosé is truly remarkable for its highly expressive bouquet, stemming from very careful preservation of fresh fruit aromas during the wine making. Made with 100% Pinot Noir from 10 different "crus " (or villages), from the North and South areas of the Montagne de Reims, as well as the famous village of Bouzy. Grapes from carefully selected plots are meticulously sorted and de-stemmed before going into the vats, and the controlled maceration helps with the color extraction and the development of the full aromatic richness of the Pinot Noir. Intensely fruity flavors, clean and slightly sharp, the wine opens to the sensation of freshly picked red berries: strawberries, Morello cherries, black currants and raspberries. The finish is supple and rounded. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/therosehourpodcast/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/therosehourpodcast/support

     Technology has greatly advanced since the introduction of RPGs in the mid 1970s.  Saul and Jolene discuss the pros and cons of having today's tech at the gaming table.  For the most part the discussion is positive about technology at the table.   From laptops, cell phones, tablets and HD TVs technology at the game table can really help in running an RPG.  Things such as PDFs of the rules, music and sound effects, pictures and movie clips can really spice up your experience at the RPG table.       But of course technology can also be a problem.      As always thank you all for listening and all we ask is that you share our podcast on your favorite social media.   Music by Stock XL,   song Technology Background    Available at Tribeofnoise.com

On today's show we take a look back at the year 2012, discuss how to make your HDMI connected devices work with Hotel HDTVs, take a poll on home much our dedicated home theaters cost, and finally give you the top ten HDTVs at Amazon based on sales. Top Ten TVs at Amazon Based on Sales   Toshiba 32LF221U19 32-inch 720p HD Smart LED TV - Fire TV Edition 4.4 stars (16584 ratings) $129.99  TCL 32S327 32-Inch 1080p Roku Smart LED TV (2018 Model) 4.5 out of 5 stars (8,253 ratings) $149.99  Insignia NS-50DF710NA19 50-inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV HDR - Fire TV Edition 4.5 (8,849 ratings) $249.99 TCL 32S325 32 Inch 720p Roku Smart LED TV (2019) 4.5 stars (8,253 ratings) $127.88 TCL 55S425 55 inch 4K Smart LED Roku TV (2019) 4.5 stars (6,196 ratings) $299.50 TCL 43S425 43 Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart Roku LED TV (2018) 4.5 stars (6,196 ratings) $229.99 Samsung UN65RU7100FXZA Flat 65-Inch 4K UHD 7 Series Ultra HD Smart TV with HDR and Alexa… 4.6 stars (5,974 Ratings) $597.99  TOSHIBA 50LF711U20 50-inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV HDR - Fire TV Edition 4.4 stars (16,584 ratings) $299.99 Samsung UN55RU7100FXZA Flat 55-Inch 4K UHD 7 Series Ultra HD Smart TV with HDR and Alexa… 4.6 stars (5,974 ratings) $399.99 Samsung UN43RU7100FXZA Flat 43-Inch 4K UHD 7 Series Ultra HD Smart TV with HDR and Alexa… 4.6 stars (5,974 ratings) $299.98  

On today's show we take a look back at the year 2012, discuss how to make your HDMI connected devices work with Hotel HDTVs, take a poll on home much our dedicated home theaters cost, and finally give you the top ten HDTVs at Amazon based on sales.

In today's podcast Andy is joined by good friend and fellow podcaster Dean Swain from Retro Asylum. The lads talk about what they have been up to, Crts vs HDTVs when retro gaming. Transformers the animated movie the terrible Live action Bay movies and loads more geeky stuff. Don't forget to check out Retro Asylum if you love retro gaming

https://www.chicagowinefest.com/   Review of my experience at Chicago Wine Fest 2019   Chicago Wine Fest, an elevated wine tasting experience that aims to stimulate all of your senses. Come throw back some great food and enjoy live musical performances, all while sampling some of the best varietals from around the world. VIP admission means you’ll gain early access before the crowd, so you’ll have more time to sample amazing wines and meet representatives who can answer questions and help you choose which wines to enjoy at home!   Located in Chicago’s beautiful River North, Moe’s Cantina is the only authentic Northern Mexican Restaurant in the heart of the city. It’s exposed bricks walls, custom-made wrought iron chandeliers, and open kitchens with wood-burning grills make for a warm, inviting atmosphere that is perfect for a meal with family, or a night out with friends! Equipped with state of the art sound systems and countless HDTVs, it is also the ideal spot to catch any of today’s top sporting events!   Founded in 2013 in Chicago’s Wrigleyville neighborhood, Old Crow Smokehouse has since expanded to another one of Chicago’s hottest neighborhoods, River North. The country venue can be described as the ultimate blend of home cookin and a lively saloon. Master Chef season 2 finalist, Tony Scruggs, combines his smoked meats with his homemade BBQ sauce to give you an irresistible flavor that is simply mouthwatering. Old Crow Smokehouse pays homage to the diverse BBQ styles served across the US.

On today's podcast I dive into some of the lingo of HDTVs, what it means, why it matters, and what should you be looking for when getting that new TV. Want to know more? Listen to find out!

Press START to hear all about the history of video game controllers! We have a special guest Kevin Harbin on the show talking about his new book "The Evolution of Gamepads"    We also discuss some new technology by Hyperkin allowing the use of a new NES Zapper-like controller, the Hyper Blaster HD, to be used on HDTVs, and other companies making new controllers for retro systems.   We finish off by reading your tweets discussing the best, worst, and weirdest controllers. See what's voted as the worst of all time!

In dieser Folge des Podcast sprechen wir über unsere Nominierung für den Podcastpreis 2019 in der Kategorie Technik, unseren neuen Discord Channel, wie sich Nintendo die Zukunft vorstellt, Charles Martinet und seinen Rekord, den SimCity Prototype für das NES, Hyperkin und ihre NES Light Gun für HDTVs, wer die besseren PS Plus bzw. Xbox One Spiele im Jahr 2018 hatte, die aktuellen Xbox Live Games with Gold im Januar 2019, die PSPlus Games im Januar 2019, die neuen Spiele im Nintendo Switch Online Service im Januar 2019, über EA's neue Strategie für FIFA 19, über Hannover 96 und ihr FIFA Team, darüber dass Epic Games ärger wegen des Carlton Dance in Fortnite hat, über die Beteiligung von ProSieben an eSport.com, den Star Wars Fan Film "Vader Episode 1: Shards of the Past", eine Anleitung wie ihr uns schnell und einfach bei iTunes bewerten könnt, über den Kinofilm Aquaman, den C64 Mini, Sam's Journey auf dem C64 Mini, das Mobile Game Brawl Stars, Twinkle Star Sprites für die Switch und einiges mehr. Wir genießen Lemonaid Maracuja und Limette. Viel Spaß beim Anhören! Die kompletten Show notes mit allen Links zur Sendung findest Du auf unserer Webseite: www.maennerquatsch.de/podcast/2018/folge-41/ Übersicht: Männerquatsch#41 Genussmittel: (09:09) Björn: Lemonaid Maracuja Maik: Lemonaid Limette News: (03:29) Wir sind für den Podcastpreis 2019 in der Kategorie Technik nominiert - Stimmt für uns ab (Webseite) (04:20) Willkommen in unserem Discord Channel (Webseite) (12:55) Nintendo kann sich vorstellen in Zukunft auf eine eigene Konsole zu verzichten (18:15) Charles Martinet kommt im Guinness Buch der Rekorde (21:03) SimCity Prototype für das NES aufgetaucht (26:41) Hyperkin bringt eine NES Light Gun für HDTVs (34:57) Rückblick: PS Plus vs. Xbox One Spiele im Jahr 2018 (45:00) Xbox Live Games with Gold im Januar 2019 (48:08) PS Plus Spiele im Januar 2019 (50:27) Nintendo Switch Online Service Spiele im Januar 2019 (52:18) FIFA 19 mit neuer eSport Strategie und Hannover 96 mit eigenem FIFA Team (59:40) Epic Games wird wegen verschiedener Tänze aus Fortnite verklagt (01:03:12) ProSieben beteiligt sich an eSport.com (01:05:23) Vader Episode 1: Shards of the Past (Star Wars Fan-Film) (01:17:55) Helft uns in den iTunes Charts zu bleiben und bewertet uns Was geht ab: (01:07:05) Ausprobiert: The C64 Mini (01:11:05) Angespielt: Sam's Journey auf dem C64 Mini Picks: (01:13:49) Maik: Brawl Stars (Mobile) (01:15:16) Björn: Twinkle Star Sprites (Switch) Pre-/Postshow: - Für Unterstützer gibt es in jeder Folge zusätzliche Inhalte in Form der Pre- und Postshow. - Warm-up - Was haben wir in der Pause so getrieben? - Neuer Mikrofonarm (Rode PSA-1) - O2 Rückgewinnungsquatsch - Angespielt: Puzzle Bobble (Switch) - Geschaut: Predator Upgrade - Geschaut: Aquaman (Kino) - Jack Black mit eigenem YouTube Gaming Channel - Macaulay Culkin beim Angry Video Game Nerd - ICQ schirmt sich ab und Erinnerungen an die gute alte Zeit Im Männerquatsch Podcast sprechen wir über Retrospiele, aktuelle Videospiele, Filme, Serien, Apps, Events, Genussmittel und Gadgets. Wir versorgen Dich mit einer handverlesenen Auswahl an News und Themen, damit Du gut informiert bist ohne selber zu viel Zeit zu investieren. Neue Folgen erscheinen jeden 1. und 3. Montag im Monat. Für Feedback und Kommentare nutze gerne unsere Facebook-Gruppe, die Männerquatsch Society. Oder unseren Discord Channel: https://discord.gg/4n35eHU Wenn Du uns unterstützen willst, dann schau doch mal auf unserer Unterstützerseite vorbei: www.patreon.com/maennerquatsch Oder nutze für Deine Einkäufe bei Amazon unseren affiliate-link: amzn.to/2uVop1y

Pictured: Joe Casely-Hayford Matthew Bannister on Joe Casely-Hayford, the fashion designer whose creations ranged from punk to Savile Row tailoring. His children, who followed him into fashion, pay tribute. Nicholas Crichton, the judge who pioneered specialist family drug and alcohol courts in the UK. Professor Sophie Oluwole, who was a powerful advocate for African philosophy. Professor Paul O'Brien, the pioneer of nanotechnology who developed new ways of producing the quantum dots which lie behind our HDTVs and barcode scanners. And Carol Channing, the colourful Broadway star of 'Hello Dolly' and 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes'. Interviewed guest: Charlie Casely-Hayford Interviewed guest: Alice Casely-Hayford Interviewed guest: Claire Wilcox Interviewed guest: Sophie Miller Interviewed guest: Professor Muyiwa Falaiye Interviewed guest: Professor Richard Winpenny Producer: Neil George Archive clips from: Ebony People, BBC Two 09/06/1989; Inside the Family Court episode 1, Radio 4 08/06/2006; Importance of the Mother Tongue, Tunde Kelani TV 13/01/2016; Oro Isiti with Professor Sophie Oluwole, Tunde Kelani TV 17/02/2016; North West Tonight, BBC One 30/10/2008; What is Professor Paul O'Brien Researching?, School of Materials, University of Manchester 14/07/2015; Broadway Babes: Carol Channing, Radio 2 14/09/1984; Star Sound, Radio 2 24/09/1979.

This week on Analog OutPat, Bowman, Cody, and new guest Mike talk about the newly announced Mad Box game console. Nintendo announces Bowsette is not canon. The boys discuss the news that the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC characters may have been revealed through data mining. Sim City for the NES is finally released in full. A new zapper has been developed allowing light gun games to be played on HDTVs.Analog Out is Pat Dovale and Chris Bowman. We are Orlando, FL based game collectors, anime fans, theme park nuts, youTubers, exercise buds, sushi bois and all around guys who talk about stuff at a table with microphones. Subscribe to us on Google Podcasts, iTunes, Podbean, and anywhere podcasts are available. Follow us on Twitter @ProjektPat88 and @Bowmansays . We Love You.Intro and Outro song produced and created by Mike Wingate.Support Analog Out by donating to their Tip Jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/analog-outFind out more at https://analog-out.pinecast.co

TWICE has announced the winners of their annual Best of Show awards at CEDIA Expo. The products were nominated by the manufacturers and a team of judges was employed to walk the floor and rate the products on a number of criteria, including its value, impact, and how unique it was to the market. #10)  URC MRX-30 - This controller is the powerful, flagship processor for the Total Control system. It delivers rock-solid control and automation for your residential and commercial installations. The powerful MRX-30 provides instant two-way communication with the family of Total Control user interfaces – tabletop touchscreen controllers, in-wall touch screens, handheld remotes and keypads. #9) Sony VPL-VW295ES 4K HDR Home Cinema Projector $5000 #8) Sony Master Series 4K A9F OLED TV $4,500 65” $3,500 55”- Powered by the Picture Processor X1™ Ultimate, this best picture quality TV pairs the deep black and natural color of OLED with Pixel Contrast Booster™ for enhanced color contrast in high luminance. Everything you watch comes to life with fine detail and vivid color. With Acoustic Surface Audio+™. Three actuators and two powerful subwoofers deliver multi-dimensional sound that immerses you in a whole new entertainment experience. #7) Samsung The Wall - A 146-inch modular TV featuring self-emitting MicroLED technology.  “As the world's first consumer modular MicroLED television, ‘The Wall' represents another breakthrough. It can transform into any size, and delivers incredible brightness, color gamut, color volume and black levels. We're excited about this next step along our roadmap to the future of screen technology, and the remarkable viewing experience it offers to consumers.” #6) Samsung Q900 8K TV - Available in four ultra-large screen sizes (65”, 75”, 82” and 85”), Samsung QLED 8K TV will feature several 8K-ready enhancements, including Real 8K Resolution, Q HDR 8K and Quantum Processor 8K, all created to bring 8K-quality images to life. The new Samsung QLED 8K will be available in stores from end of September*. Samsung's QLED 8K with 8K AI Upscaling is a part of the company's long-term vision of leading 8K to the forefront as the most accurate and life-like screen resolution on the market. #5) ProVideoInstruments MiniMod-2 $495 - The VeCOAX MINIMOD-2 Distributes any of your HDMI Video Sources to an unlimited number of televisions over the existing TV Coax Cables, with professional perfect FULL HD 1080P & Dolby digital quality. There is no need for any new cables nor accessory behind each tv, so the installation is very simple, immediate, plug 'n play anywhere, perfect for any application. Set the wanted channel names & position numbers, then rescan all TVs to find the VeCOAX MINIMOD-2 Channels as new available HDTV TV Channels. Expand the number of channels at any time by simply adding more VeCOAX modulators on the same coax. #4) Polk Audio Command Bar  $300 - The Home Theater Sound Bar System with Amazon Alexa Built-in. Tuned driver array, wireless subwoofer and Dolby/DTS surround sound decoding. Works with 4K and HD TVs — built-in dual HDMI 2.0b inputs #3) LG 77 Inch OLED C8 4K HDR Smart TV with AI ThinQ  $8,000 - LG ThinQ® AI | Google Assistant, LG α9 Intelligent Processor, LG OLED Display, 4K Cinema HDR, Dolby Atmos® #2) Klipsch Heritage Theater Bar $2,200 - The Klipsch Heritage Theater Bar was engineered to provide a low-profile design that can deliver a true high-fidelity listening experience in a premium, easily installed, handcrafted package. Leveraging the latest advancements in Klipsch proprietary acoustic technology, the Heritage Theater Bar is able to emit the sonic performance of a three-speaker system, but within a single housing. Finished with real-wood veneer and a beautiful grille cloth, the Klipsch Heritage Theater Bar far exceeds any other sound bar – both aesthetically and acoustically. #1) Hisense 4K Ultra HD Smart Laser TV $10,000 - The 100" Hisense Laser TV explodes with color and gorgeous 4K resolution. Where giant LED screens have ugly, intrusive installation, the Hisense Laser TV's thin, lightweight, 100" screen hangs wirelessly, inconspicuously—elegantly. It doesn't require a specially darkened environment or messy equipment. The Hisense Laser TV will make you see your walls in a whole new light. With incredible laser technology, 4K Ultra HD resolution and 4K upscaling, the Hisense Laser TV is the TV you've been waiting for. Add harman/kardon® sound, a TV tuner, WIFI and tons of built-in apps, and the Hisense Laser TV is unapologetically amazing at an unbeatable value. In short, it makes all other TVs look like prima donnas.

In this episode, BGB talks about the season finale of Claws, Zlata & Ruval, Sheryl Lee Ralph, classy cleavage, wedding colors & dresses, "thirst of all," Jen & Bryce, Polly Paul, Virginia & Dean, bossing up, Niecy Nash stays snatched, Fee B ruining movies and shows consider yourselves warned because we weren't, HD TVs, wearing a wire and wire code, how we can't wait for the return in 2019 and so much more

The newest and most innovative hotel in the Santa Ynez Valley. This stunning 50-room boutique hotel offers warm hospitality and refined, stylish accommodations. The Landsby features a clean contemporary design, with a hint of traditional Scandinavian aesthetic. The completely remodeled, bright and open guestrooms are finished with blonde woods, brushed brass accents, and elegant but comfortable hand-crafted furnishings complete with updated bathrooms, 47-inch flat-screen HDTVs, minibars, and stunning artwork commissioned from regional artists. http://www.thelandsby.com/en-us

Zwei Schüler treten in den Schweige-Streik, weil ihnen ein Fernseher im Haushalt verwehrt wird, die Vorsitzende des Hausfrauen-Clubs befürchtet, dass eine Nachbarin die Mitgliedsbeiträge zwecks Kaufs einer Waschmaschine unterschlagen hat - auf den ersten Blick scheint es in GUTEN MORGEN von Yasujiro Ozu um Banalitäten zu gehen. Doch auf dem zweiten Blick werden hier, im Kleinen der Vorstadt und bei jungen Familien, die großen Konfliktlinien des Nachkriegsjapan verhandelt: Moderne versus Tradition, demokratisches Familienverständnis versus Patriarchat, alte Rollenverständnisse versus wirtschaftliche Neuordnung. Wir reden darüber, wie Ozus in seinen Melodramen entwickelter, strenger Stil einen freien Blick auf eine Welt erlaubt, in der selbst die Akteure sich dessen nicht bewusst sind, dass sie gerade ihre Welt verändern, aber merken auch an, warum diese Filme im Zeitalter von großen HD-TVs erst wieder funktionieren können. Es bleibt am Ende ein leichter, fast verschmitzter Film der trotz des Regisseurs-Alters von damals 55 Jahren als alterweise und milde gesehen werden kann.

More than just recapping and analyzing the big tech stories of the week, we here on the good ship Space Javelin strive to bring you 60 minutes worth of depth, background, caveats, and color. We offer heads-up on good deals, warnings on bad headlines, and what we hope is genuinely useful information. This week alone, we debunk two alarmist stories about iPhone security, speculate on Android "O", follow-up on the growing Microsoft-Consumer Reports argument on reliability, and explore the value of Comcast's Xfinity Mobile and AT&T "free" Apple TV offer. Also in this episode: Ireland vs the EU vs Apple; Nonsense and half-truths about the next Apple Watch, expected this fall; the details on Thunderbolt cables and USB-C 3.1 compatibility; and finally, Mike and Charles go all Mythbusters on claims of a 60-inch Apple HDTV. All this and more, cadets, so strap in and get ready to spend 60 minutes on a mission to the best of technology news!

Jam has officially returned and this week he and Fred are getting into the basics of retro gaming.  It all starts with the best televisions, cables, and ways to hook up your retro consoles along with a good explanation as to why old systems look rough on HDTVs.  Then the discussion moves on to hunting down games before concluding with questions from the community.

Ultimate Home Theater in a Box for 2016 Each year we design a Home Theater setup that is considerably better than a typical home theater in a box. We have seen complete setups for less than $500 from manufacturers like Sony and Panasonic that quite frankly do not sound good. While our system costs more than a name brand HTIB your satisfaction will be dramatically more. Plus we include EVERYTHING you need to actually setup a home theater.  Minimum components for our system are a HDTV, Blu-ray Player, Receiver, and 7.1 speakers. For this feature we choose components that we either have direct experience with or have experience with a similar model made by the same manufacturer. This year we have set a maximum price of $5,000. The amount we paid for our first HDTVs.  We are defining a system that can had by anyone who is serious about home theater. These systems will look and sound great by anyone's definition! Rodney: Sony XBR65X850D 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart TV (2016 model) $1,498.00 You'll be hard pressed to find a more capable 4K TV at this size and price.  It uses Sony's X1 processor which provides some of the best color, contrast, and clarity. It's also equipped with Android TV with Voice Search and Google Cast. Yamaha RX-A760BL 7.2 Channel Network AV Receiver $649.95 This receiver has everything you need to support 4K content and to listen to music streamed from your phone or off the internet. It supports 4K Ultra HD video upscaling with HDCP 2.2, HDR and BT.2020 support. Its features Dolby Atmos and DTS:X surround sound processing. It also has built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, AirPlay, Spotify Connect, Pandora, Rhapsody, SiriusXM, vTuner, NAS support. BIC Acoustech PL-980 7.1 Home Theater System-NEW!! PL-200II Sub  $1,699.00 BIC America isn't as well known as Klipsch, but they've been in the speaker business for over 20 years and have a fan following. This 7.1 set comes with floor standing speakers that incorporate a 3-way multi-driver design rather than the standard 2-way design. The 4 surround speakers also have three way design and are angled so they can add more depth of sound. This set also includes a front-firing 12 inch long-throw subwoofer with BASH amplifier.  Xbox One S 500GB Console - Battlefield 1 Bundle $249.00 Instead of throwing in a standard Blu-ray player or a set top box, getting a 4K gaming system that supports HDR is way more versatile. You can watch UHD Blu-ray movies and stream 4K content on Netflix and Amazon Video. You can also play games that will utilize the home theater and put you right in the middle of the action. Logitech Harmony Companion All in One Remote Control for Smart Home and Entertainment Devices, works with Alexa $129.99 Of course a remote is needed to control all the awesomeness. So why not get a remote that can work with home automation and smartphones? You can use your Smartphone or Harmony Remote for one-touch control of your entertainment system and home automation devices. Plus it also works with Alexa. Summary With a grand total of $4,225.94 you will be the envy every man, woman, and child on your block. For that price you've got a complete 4K HDR system, with bombastic audio, gaming entertainment, and a remote that supports home automation. All that and you'll still have money leftover to buy a lots Blu-ray movies and video games.  Ara: My theme this year has been 4K HDR and Wide Color Gamut so there is no reason to move away from that now. My Ultimate Home Theater in a Box will serve you well for years to come! LG Electronics 65UH8500 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV $1697 My first HDTV was a 50 inch DLP capable of 720p. This LG gives you 15 more inches and more than 4 times the resolution for less than than half the cost. Not only that, you get better color and contrast! It's a smart TV featuring WebOS 3.0 so you'll be able to stream your 4K content from Amazon and Netflix. We have come so far since 2002.  UDP-203 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc Player $549 This year I have gone back to Oppo for my Blu-ray player. We have increased our budget this year and since Oppo just released this product we felt why not include it in an ultimate HTiB setup. Since most of your library probably Blu-ray at this time you need a player that can upconvert well. The UDP-203 does just that with a custom developed quad-core processor. On the audio side the player features a 8 channel 32-bit DAC from AKM that will easily handle any hi-resolution format you throw at it. All the latest sound formats are supported. Suffice it to say this is the ultimate UHD Player on the market today! Yamaha RX-A1050 7.2-Channel MusicCast AV Receiver with Built-In Wi-Fi and Bluetooth $898 I went with a receiver from this years receiver buying guide. I kind of cut costs on the receiver this year because I felt it necessary to not skimp on the speakers.  From the buying guide: Plenty of power (110W), Auto Calibration, Multidimensional sound, and wireless connectivity. I went with this model over the A850 because in addition to Dolby Atmos you also get  DTS:X and and Advanced HDMI switching! You can watch different sources in different zones. Yamaha says that this receiver employs “audiophile grade design that incorporates a rigid chassis and symmetrical amp layout with the latest ESS SABRE DACs”. RSL CG3 5.1 Home Theater Speaker System - Special Edition $1270 There are so many choices when it comes to speakers. This year I decided to go with RSL CG3s. We had Howard and Joe Rogers from RSL speakers on our show a few years ago and have since been really impressed with the company's speakers. They are some of the best speakers you will listen to, and at $1270 for a complete 7.1 system, and incredible value! What struck me was how much effort the guys put into making their speakers accurately reproduce the sound of live music. No need to upgrade these in the future. This set will pretty much last you forever! Miscellaneous You will need a remote control to tie everything together. There are many options out there and rather than specify one, I'll just allocate $250 and let you choose between Harmony, Simple Control, or iRule. The last thing to consider are cables, power strips, and connectors. We will allocate an additional $200 for these items as well. Summary There you have it! An ultimate home theater in the box for less than I spent on my first HDTV. Last year my system came in at $2,995 plus tax, this year the grand total is $4,864 plus tax. Last year's system was not future proof. This system is! Well for the next few years anyway.  

Patrick and Robert help find the best shopping deals, pick out great HDTVs, position speakers for optimal audio, and gaze longingly at laser projectors.

Value Electronics HDTV Shootout 2016 Each year Value Electronics, a Scarsdale NY Electronics Retailer, gathers HDTV experts from across the nation and pits some of the best HDTVs against each other in order to determine which TV is the “King of TV”. This was the thirteenth year the competition took place. Five Mini Overview TV Shootout sessions and Two full voting TV Shootout evaluations were held over two days on Wednesday, June 22 and Thursday, June 23, 2016. All TVs were set-up on an equal playing field, positioned next to each other in alphabetical order, and professionally calibrated in Day and Night modes. The TVs were judged on nine criteria: Black Quality Perceived Contrast Color Accuracy Sharpness Off-Axis Performance Screen Uniformity HDR/WCG Performance Overall Day Performance Overall Night Performance The Contestants Sony XBR75X940D 75-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart TV $5998 The Sony comes with full-array local dimming technology for better contrast, HDR, and wider color gamut. The TV is only 2 inches (5cm) thick which should make mounting a snap. It's rated 4 ½ stars at Amazon Samsung UN78KS9800 Curved 78-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV $9998 The Samsung KS9800 is a Curved 4K SUHD TV that uses Quantum Dot color technology and supports a High Dynamic Range (HDR) picture. One person bought this from Amazon and rated it 5 stars LG Electronics OLED65G6P Flat 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart OLED TV $7997 The OLED 4K 65G6 features a flat 65-inch screen with HDR and LG's webOS 3.0 Smart TV Platform in a thin (2.6 inches) design. It has a 5 star user rating based on 6 reviews. VIZIO Reference Series 65” Class Ultra HD Full‑Array LED Smart TV $6000 The Vizio is one of the lower cost TVs on the list but 10 inches smaller than the similarly priced Sony. Not available at Amazon so there is no star rating on this TV. The Results http://www.htguys.com/storage/content-images/HDTVShootout.png

Samsung HW-K450 Soundbar Review Braden recently upgraded some of the gear in his loft because his boys were demanding a 4k television. There's something to be said about raising a new generation of home theater enthusiasts, especially when they can help you gang up on the finance committee. They were approved for the purchase of a Vizio E70u-d3, but since we've already reviewed the Vizio P702ui-B3, we'll skip the TV review and talk about what the boys decided to buy to upgrade sound in their loft, the Samsung HW-K450 Soundbar. About the Soundbar Despite the higher quoted MSRP, you can pick up the Samsung HW-K450 for just under $200 pretty much anywhere it is sold, including Amazon or even direct from Samsung. Prime shipping will save you some money and get it to you faster, unless you head out and pick it up (for the same price coincidently) from Best Buy or another brick and mortar retailer. At $200, we knew it wasn't going to blow us away, but when you're already $1600 in on the TV, you don't want to push your luck. And the Samsung does have a few features that made it a better choice than similar priced models from other models from other manufacturers.  The spec sheets lists the features as: 300W nominal output power for dynamic sound. Wireless subwoofer for powerful bass. Dolby Digital decoder reproduces multichannel audio to deliver a cinematic audio experience. Sleek appearance fits seamlessly along most HDTVs for a streamlined look. Includes HDMI input and output Built-in Bluetooth makes it easy to enjoy tracks from on a compatible Bluetooth-enabled device. Supports a variety of file formats including WAV, WMA, AAC, MP3, FLAC and OGG, so you can enjoy your favorite media. Wall-mountable with the included bracket. Setup If you aren't wall mounting the HW-K450, setup is a breeze.  The soundbar is small enough to sit below many TVs; we have it sitting on the table below the Vizio and it doesn't interfere with the picture at all. You plug it into power, add the cables you need for sound from your various devices, and that's it. Then you plug the wireless subwoofer into the wall somewhere and when they start up, they locate each other and pair automatically. This all happened for us without issue and we had the soundbar in service in about 5 minutes. If you want to mount the Soudbar to the wall, you can using the included wall mount brackets.  However, the soundbar doesn't include the screws or drywall anchors needed to secure the brackets to your wall, so you'll need to make a quick run to your local home improvement or hardware store for those. We didn't wall mount ours, but it is pretty small and light, so we wouldn't anticipate any issues hanging it above or below your wall mounted TV. Just a couple screws and you're set. Performance and Use We know what you're thinking: you bought a Samsung for audio? What were you thinking? Samsung isn't exactly world renowned for audio gear and sound quality. While that is true, we were pleasantly surprised by how much better it sounded than just using the TV. Audio had much more punch and we could get much higher volumes without the audio distorting or everything blending together into one big mush of sound. For music, it probably wouldn't delight your ears, but for television and movies it does a really solid job. Without the included subwoofer, it would have been pretty lackluster. The sub certainly adds the boom you need to feel the experience of an action movie. There were times when watching high action movies that the dialog could get lost in the rest of the action. This happens with a lot of lower end audio gear, not just soundbars.  Delivering crisp dialog even among a mess of other noise and sound effects isn't easy to do. And as most have probably experienced, simply increasing the volume doesn't solve the problem. While we don't think the Samsung HW-K450 is the best audio solution out there, or even the best soundbar out there, it actually does sound really good and makes movie watching better for sure. While Samsung talks about a feature called Surround Sound Expansion, saying it “delivers more realistic and immersive audio experience that feels like it's coming right out of your TV”. We didn't get any sort of surround sound at all.  The sound coming from the front of the room was great. To say we heard anything to the side or behind us would be a stretch. To solve that, Samsung offers the optional SWA-8000S Wireless Surround Kit for $130. It includes a little wireless surround sound amp and two speakers so you can truly have sound all around you. The unit includes Bluetooth so you can stream audio to it from your smartphone or tablet. Like we already said, it isn't a super impressive device for music, but if you're starting with compressed audio and running it over bluetooth, you don't really need much.  When we tested it out, we'd get the occasional hiccup in the music, most likely due to interference from the Bluetooth subwoofer, but perhaps from other interference in the house. It didn't bother us too much, but if you plan to use your soundbar for a lot of bluetooth audio, it could be a deal breaker. The one feature that pushed the HW-K450 over the top for us was the presence of HDMI, more specifically HDMI output and passthru. It's odd that many soundbars on the market today don't include an HDMI input, but that is slowly changing. However, HDMI output and passthru, especially in the $200 price range is pretty rare. The HW-K450 will pass 3D and 1080p thru to your TV, but not 4K. So we admit it isn't a perfect match for a 4K television, but the HDMI passthru makes setup and installation much simpler.  Simpler, in fact, than we were even expecting due to the support for ARC (Audio Return Channel). In our setup we connected the Cable Box to the Soundbar with HDMI, then ran the HDMI output from the Soundbar to the TV.  We also connected an Amazon Fire TV box to the Soundbar with an optical audio cable and ran another HDMI directly to the TV.  It turns out the optical audio cable was unnecessary. The TV discovered that the soundbar supported ARC and used the established HDMI connection instead. We could potentially remove the HDMI cable from the Soundbar input and run it straight to the TV, using ARC from the TV for all inputs to the soundbar. This would mean we'd never have to change inputs on the Soundbar, just on the TV, making setup and use super easy. In addition to ARC, the soundbar supports HDMI-CEC, so it will turn on when you turn on your TV and turn off when you turn off the TV.  It also allows you to control volume with your TV remote. So if you don't have a universal remote, the TV remote essentially becomes one.  That was a pretty cool surprise (we should have known had we thought about it). Conclusion At $200 you don't expect the Samsung HK-450 to blow you away, but for us, we really enjoyed the audio experience, especially for TV and movies. The included subwoofer is a great touch and the inclusion of HDMI is stellar. If you have more money, there are better options out there. If you're on a budget, the Samsung is great. And if you're scared about what the finance committee is going to do to you when they find out how much you spent, the HK-450 is perfect.

Highlights from NAB 2016 Faithful listener and long time contributor to the show Ed Stouffer graciously agreed to be our “man on the street” - or “man on the convention show floor” if you prefer, at this year's NAB Show in Las Vegas. The show just wrapped up, running from April 16-21. For those who aren't familiar, NAB is the National Association of Broadcasters and the NAB Show is their annual gathering to see, learn about and talk about all the latest innovations in audio and video production, broadcasting and distribution. TV Trends – some of my views from NAB 2016 show Edward Stouffer 4K going wide and deep in the broadcast market with a big push to consumers building. This has several components, so I will try to describe them, and what they mean. Original Content. Several presentations talked about 35mm motion picture film stock having a native resolution right about 4K. Decent prints can be scanned with minimal cleanup. Older prints will take some work, just like what happened when HD versions of older material were released. As for new material, there was a general consensus that most mainstream content is moving to 4K capture or is already there. In many cases, the editing is either downconverted to HD or that is the export In the Canon “mega-booth” – which spanned 2 levels and had amateur, pro-am and professional cameras on display - they showed excerpts from several 4K movies shot partially or entirely in 4K, along with some TV episodes, such as “Homeland.” Distribution. The net is that while broadcasts are not 4K today, 4K streaming via Amazon and Netflix will have more options as less work in the future is required when the original material is in better shape. As for fixed media, the UltraHD BluRay players have cracked the $500 price point, with the Samsung generating a lot of interest at $399. Christmas 2015, they were $5,000, so the start toward commodity is rapidly coming. Manufacturers I talked with showing the under-$500 players said they generally expect a $250 UHD BluRay player for Christmas 2016. Also, the manufacturers expected that most of the UHD BluRay players will support 4K clients for Netflix & other services, so consumers will also use them as streaming devices for 4K. Broadcast. The chicken's egg has hatched! ATSC 3.0 is the new specification and it includes support for 4K broadcasts, including HDR, 24-channel audio, etc. I talked briefly with a technical director for a major US network and they are actively looking for a pilot at one affiliate this year. As I understand the spec – not close to being a SME by any measure – it takes the equivalent of 2 HD digital channels for one broadcast, depending upon compression used. (The folks in the ATSC booth said twice that it only needed a single digital channel…using the prototype CODECs and laboratory environments.) The network I was talking with said their pilot will likely be an affiliate who has unused spectrum or who multicasts some additional channels who would be willing to interrupt that for the test period. To that end, I saw an LG TV set at the show with the first ATSC 3.0 chipset included. I read through the press briefings a bit and it looks like all major manufacturers announced either future models or lines with ATSC 3.0 shipping by Christmas. Versions of 4K. HDR displays were everywhere. “Ultra HD Premium” was being promoted - as well as HDR branding - which includes HDR, WCG and other requirements for improved black levels and luminance. I asked Sony, Samsung and others about when we could see HDR for HD TVs, and as I expected, they seemed reluctant to talk about it, with one telling me it might hurt 4K sales. One manufacturer said it could cost between 25%-50% for “true HDR” on an UltraHD set. I asked what that meant, and he said that it really required the correct display, software and enough on-board CPU. To that end, he said some “lower tier” brands would say they offer HDR, but to look at their displays beside a top-tier manufacturer and there would be a big difference. I guess one test is to look at the new Vizio 50” 4K TV with HDR and see how that stacks up.  As much will be lost as made There are a lot of big – and costly – bets being made on the future path and as some are against one another, they cannot possibly all succeed. I saw multiple DRM systems being advertised. While some use the same encryption standard, they are incompatible with each other, as things like key distribution infrastructures are sold as a whole system. One prediction I heard from an architect at a major encoding vendor was that “Netflix was the next MySpace.” Think about that for a moment: when is the last time you used MySpace? I asked for more and he said to compare what happened to HD-DVD. He said it was the better format, was cheaper to produce media, but when Sony flexed its muscle on content, it lost. So, he said, if one or more studios either raise prices on content to Netflix or deny it altogether in favor of any company, Netflix can get starved out. Private Copy cDVR cannot stand Private copy – having your own copy of a recorded show stored in the cloud - gets very expensive very fast. In Europe, shared copy is widely used. It allows a single copy to be recorded, with pointers to each customer who indicated the desire to “record” that content. You can cache shared copy. The technology to splice ads into playback of a DVR recording is already here, so a provider could either restore the original ads, insert new ones or do a hybrid per market, per customer. Now it's a matter of the carriers/MSOs to stand up as a group and say they cannot afford to install exabytes of storage in support of private copy, as the US content owners are against shared copy generally. Ericsson estimates that each 100,000 customers using Cloud DVR require about 33 Petabytes of storage. Line between TVs and Projectors continues to blue I watched Leyard's 31' wide 8K TV and wanted to take it home. It was made of 64 panels, meticulously assembled. Not to be outdone, a new generation of short throw projectors is out, which allows them to be 2' from the front of the screen and still do a 100” image. Also rear-projection versions of them exist. Epson has said they hope to get this down to 1', which is getting close to putting a projector inside a closet or small recess behind the screen, rather than 5-8' today.   3D still a novelty, sort of One manufacturer was showing a 50” 3D no glasses TV. If you sat just right, 2 rows of 3 folks in the demo, it did look pretty good. If you did not, it looked distorted and made me dizzy. There has been at least one of these at every CES for the last few years, and while there's a lot of consumer interest, going beyond the prototype has been the challenge. Sharp also showed a model, but didn't give many details on price or availability. Since their business has essentially been sold, it's unclear what the future of R&D is on items like this. I also looked at the Nokia Ozo demo, which is a 360 degree camera (16 cameras on a sphere) designed to pair with VR goggles. I looked through a pair of Oculus Rift and was able to watch the live concert being held outside and noticed the soundstage moved around as I turned my head. The camera has a pretty high bitrate, so likely a high bandwidth satellite application, or it will light up the fiber to your home. I also watched a higher-resolution movie where I went 40km up in a weather balloon with full 360 degree view and it was outstanding. For gaming and special events I could see wearing the goggles is compelling. For continual TV viewing, I think the “no glasses” TV is the only option, but they have to fix the viewing angle and price point.   Bit Rates Seesaw When you try to take into account where bitrates are going, it is very much like a seesaw. Sony had this gorgeous display of compressed 4K sources being played. They said this was 4K with HDR at under 10 Mb/s using HEVC encoding. When I asked, they admitted this was multi-pass processed, and yes, this was not suitable for live TV. I further asked about what HDR was doing, and their answer was “well, if the source material gets bigger, then the output will too.”  To which I asked if the improvements in HEVC were offset by the HDR movement and they simply smiled at me. If 4K VOD goes there, it would be a big improvement for that, at least.   So what of 8K? Commercial tests start in Japan on August 1 with the Olympics, with NHK expecting full deployment by 2018. NHK was showing a prototype camera, TV and projector. Besides the Leyard uber-tron, I spent some time looking at the 85” NHK OLED protype with a live feed and it looked pretty darn good. I pressed for a price target, but got nothing in return, except that it could be “millions of yen.” If it follows some of the early OLED and 4K, I predict a $100K entry price. I also sat through an 8K recording of a symphony with the NHK 8K projector, using 22.2 channel sound. While it was not the most dynamic content, the audio was good and 15' from the screen, we could see the conductor's individual hair and scratches in the wood stands. Ikegami, not to be outdone, was showing both an 8K handheld and an 8K studio camera they said was in production. Canon showed 2 8K prototype studio cameras. This was my one disappointment with Canon: their 8K demo content was disappointing, not looking much better than 4K demos they showed. For the US market, it looks like 8K will appear in large venues and in digital theaters. Sony said they were working on 8K cinema systems with theaters now, and they believed this would become the new standard within 18 months for new installs and upgrades. With commercial large-venue 4K projectors starting around $125K today, this will not come cheap. NHK also had a demo 8K streaming and believes they can get it down to 33 Mb/s by commercial launch.  Drones Drones were also in the house. In fact, they were a good part of an entire pavilion. Also, there were some spread throughout the main venues. These went from the smaller, entry-level products to big ones that looked like they belonged to SkyNet. I asked about the price on one of the bigger ones – 6' across, 8 rotors and a full-on commercial 4K camera cradled by it. The response I got was that it was “price upon request.” I said, “OK, I'm requesting the price.” The guy rolled his eyes at me and said $26,000 plus shipping. I asked further why 26K, and he pointed and said, “See that camera and lens? That's $150K and 11 pounds sitting there, and we don't want our drone to drop it or crash. We hand assemble and test each component, including making sure that this will autobalance if one of the rotors fails.” OK, a $26,000 for a $150,000 camera – I guess I get it. There was also this crazy off-road vehicle with caterpillar treads and a 360 degree arm with a camera mount. I asked what this beast cost, and the answer was, “up to $325,000, if you want the armored version.” OK, an armored version. I had to ask. He said, “If you're out in a place such as Afghanistan and are filming and this thing comes over the ridge, it can look like an assault vehicle to the locals. They often shoot first and ask questions later. We can only protect the camera so much since it needs a lens opening, but if you lose the vehicle, you certainly lose the camera.” A few more manufacturer notes Black Magic couldn't be missed, even if you wanted to. They had large display ads and a good-sized booth by the doors. Much closer to what I could afford, their 4K cameras started at $1,300 and they had a number of companion products, including an SD card replicator they said would “change 4K distribution.” I had to ask: how, exactly. They said this 1RU unit would create 24 duplicates for 4K, so if you shot a wedding at 4K, you could give the guests an SD card when they left. …Now I'm not sure about the listeners, but most of my video needs editing, so I don't think I'd shoot video and pass it out right away…. I admired one of their displays of their slightly more expensive camera as it looked fabulous – but then the guy next to me, who was professional cinematographer, said, “Look closer at the display – that's the Dolby at $40K each. My bad takes look pretty good on that…!” Epilogue I ended up going last-minute, and I do wish I had more than 48 hours to prepare. But after sore feet from walking the massive displays, I also wish I had a bunch of discretionary money to buy some of the items on display. CES may be more appropriate for the average end-customer, but the NAB show sures gives some insight into what is coming and exposes the production side of film and video. I did get to meet and listen to some directors, editors and broadcast engineers talk about their side of the business. 21 years ago, I attended the Western Cable Show and remember going to the launch party for The History Channel. The show was all about coax versus satellite, large systems versus small systems, and who owned which sports content. Last week, looked very different: it was all about new advances in digital TV, mobile video, the continued decline of filmed productions…. I don't think it will take anything close to 21 more years to see dramatic changes, and a redefinition of what a “broadcaster” is.  

What is HDR? For more than a year now we have been talking about 4K TVs and how they are supposed to be the next big thing. But in actuality the increased resolution is only mildly better than equally spec'd 1080p HDTVs. We have pointed to case study after case study that says you need very large (100” or more) screen to see a difference between 1080p and 4K when sitting at normal viewing distances. This alone is not a good reason to upgrade. What has us really excited is what is coming along with these new UHDTVs, HDR (High Dynamic Range) and that IS a good reason to go out and buy a new UHDTV. We have mentioned HDR on previous shows but we we never really talked about what HDR entails in any detail. We thought it would be a good idea to explain what HDR is and why you will want this on your next TV. First we need to differentiate between HDR in photos and HDR in TVs. Photo HDR combines multiple images with different exposures to create a single image that mimics a greater dynamic range. TV HDR expands the TV's contrast ratio and color palette to offer a more realistic, natural image than what's possible with today's HDTVs. Photo HDR can make a picture look unrealistic whereas TV HDR actually makes the picture look more realistic. HDR capable TVs coupled with HDR content will display a more realistic color range, higher contrast ratio which in turn yields deeper blacks and brighter more vivid colors. HDR is far more important to your next TV purchase than 4K but at this point in time it is unlikely that there will be a 1080p HDTV that supports HDR so you will end up with a 4K TV regardless. A TV's ability to display a wider and richer range of colors, brighter whites, and deeper, darker blacks gives the TV picture a more ‘dynamic' look, which is where the name comes from. Format War There are two HDR formats vying for your dollars, one from Dolby and one from Technicolor. However this format war is not like Blu-ray vs HDDVD. You will unlikely be stuck with an orphaned UHDTV. Both of these formats support the HDR-10 specification which is supported by UHD players. Streaming services will more than likely support the HDR-10 format although Netflix has some support for Dolby Vision on some of their original content.   Some TVs manufacturers are supporting both so it's unlikely that you will be stuck with a TV that won't support HDR content. If we had to choose between a TV that supported only one format we would pick the one that supports Dolby Vision. Dolby has always been out front with it's support at the point of content creation. They are at the studios working with sound mixers and video professionals to make sure their format looks and sounds best. We heard this with Dolby TrueHD and we expect the same with Dolby Vision. How Do I Know Which TV to Buy? At CES, the UHD Alliance, a 35-member consortium released a standard called “Ultra HD Premium” which is supposed to make it easy for consumers to identify UHDTVs that meet their specification. To be certified Ultra HD Premium a UHDTV must achieve a brightness of at least 1000 nits. There is no specific HDR specification but there are for black levels and color gamut which will guarantee a minimum level if HDR quality. What about cables? You won't need new cables for HDR. Current High-Speed HDMI cables can carry HDR content. The source device (a 4K Blu-Ray player, say) and TV must be HDMI 2.0a to transmit the metadata, however. If you have a receiver and want to use it for switching, it will need to be HDMI 2.0a as well. HDR content (the key) All these new features won't really do anything to enhance your experience unless you have content that takes advantage of it. HDR content is starting to trickle out now and more is on the way. Amazon has a few titles in HDR (Mozart in the Jungle, Red Oaks, and a few others) and Vudu is offering HDR content in Dolby Vision. Netflix streams Marco Polo and Daredevil in HDR. There are also UHD discs that support HDR so if you have a UHD TV that supports HDR you should be able to find something to watch and show it off! To Sum it Up Getting the best picture from an HDR TV will require HDR content. To guarantee your TV will support HDR look for the “Ultra HD Premium” label. If you really want a UHD TV that does not have the “Ultra HD Premium” label buy a TV that has or comes close to 1000 nits brightness. HDR from cable, satellite, and OTA are still a bit off.  

Cinematographer Reed Morano is the Director of Photography for HBO’s hit new show Vinyl, executive produced by Martin Scorcese and Mick Jagger. In early 2013, Reed was invited to become the youngest member of the American Society of Cinematographers; she is one of very few women out of approximately 340 active members in the organization. She has been named one of variety's"10 Cinematographers to Watch", one of ioncinema.com's "American New Wave 25", and one of five innovative cinematographers in icg magazine's "generation next" spotlight. In 2012, reed's work was featured in Indiewire's "On the Rise '12: 5 Cinematographers Lighting Up Screens in Recent Years" and "Heroines of Cinema: An A-Z of Women in Film in 2012." Some of Reed's thoughts on the digital revolution and how it has affected filmmaking are featured in Keanu Reeves' acclaimed documentary Side by Side. She was honored to be featured in Kodak's long-running OnFilm series. Reed's work appears regularly at the Sundance Film Festival including the premieres of Little Birds, Shut Up and Play the Hits, and For Ellen. Frozen River won the Grand Jury prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and went on to be nominated for two Academy Awards (Best Actress for Melissa Leo and Best Screenplay) and seven Independent Spirit Awards, including Best Picture; Reed's work on the film was the subject of an article in American Cinematographer. In 2013, Kill Your Darlings, a 35mm period piece about the beat poets set in 1943, starring Daniel Radcliffe, Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Jason Leigh was released theatrically and premiered at Sundance, as well as the Toronto and Venice film festivals. Also in 2013, The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete, premiered at Sundance and was released theatrically that fall; the drama was directed by George Tillman Jr. and stars Jennifer Hudson, Anthony Mackie, and Jeffrey Wright. In January of 2014, HBO premiered the first season of its new original series, Looking, shot by Reed. Reed's other theatrical premieres of 2014 include The Skeleton Twins, War Story, Autumn Blood, and Rob Reiner's latest feature, And So It Goes, starring Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton, written by Mark Andrus of As Good As It Gets. In the summer of 2014, Reed began production on her first feature as both the director and DP; Cinedigm's dark drama "Meadowland" stars Olivia Wilde, Luke Wilson, Giovanni Ribisi, Elisabeth Moss, Juno Temple and John Leguizamo. Reed is currently leading the charge on a movement to control motion interpolation a.k.a. "the soap opera effect" on our HDTVs; Reed's change.org petition is supported by nearly 10,000 signatures and has gained momentum, attracting the attention of both the film and technology communities. Reed currently lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two children. Notes from the show: Her dad suggested NYU film school to her because of her love of photography. All DPs develop an intuition so they can tell from a script how it wants to be shot. No one teaches you in film school what the etiquette is for a cinematographer. It takes years and years to find the right combination of your style, the director's ideas, and what's right for the story. Vinyl's pilot had already been shot before Reed's interview for the HBO series. Reed likes to light a whole space and yield to amazing spontaneous moments more than planning every shot. There's a fear of not having enough light. Reed left film school in no rush to direct. Reed started working in the grip and electric departments on local shoots. Her first "big" film was Returning Mickey Stern, shot on Fire Island, NY. Fellow filmmaker and college buddy Toshiro Yamaguchi invited Reed to join the crew of Mickey Stern. Gripping gave Reed a real understanding of the set. It also provided a paycheck while she shot films on the side. You build up stamina and muscle memory over time. She feels like "just one of the guys"- you have to "have a trucker's mentality... you have to be chill." That time she saw Conrad Hall, ASC speak. The moment she found out she had been invited into the ASC. How she got into the ASC. Her partnership with Olivia Wilde. The American Cinematographer Manual The photography of Philip-Lorca diCorcia Find Reed on Instagram at ReedMorano This podcast hosted by New York attorney Michael Prywes was sponsored by Prywes Schwartz, PLLC, a law firm devoted to artists and entrepreneurs. This podcast may contain attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee future outcomes.

TCL Roku LED TV Review Smart TVs are all the rage these days. It seems like everyone has their own Smart TV platform that is supposed to be better, faster, cooler, more awe inspiring than the other guys'. But what is an upstart TV manufacturer like TCL, without the resources to go off and build it's own smart TV platform supposed to do? Partner of course. They chose to partner with Roku to give you a jaw-dropping Smart TV out of the box without having to invest in building or maintaining their own. Sort of brilliant if you ask us. Roku is a great Smart TV platform, whether standalone or embedded. We grabbed the 48” model that was selling at Costco for $349 to test it out, At that price it was considerably less expensive than the other more well-established brands, and it came with Roku built in. Not something we could easily pass up. The specific model we tested was the TCL 48" Class (47.5" Diag.) 1080p Roku LED LCD TV 48FS3750. You can pick one up for yourself from Costco for $349.99 or from Amazon for $349.99. Features Make it yours- Personalize your Home screen, put your favorite cable/satellite TV, streaming channels, gaming console, and other devices front-and-center. No more flipping through inputs or wading through complicated menus. Find what you want- Search through the widest selection of channels – by keyword, actor, or title. Follow your favorite entertainment and always know when it is ready to stream—on what channel and at what price. Control with a smartphone or tablet- With the free mobile app, transform your smartphone or tablet into a Roku remote and even browse and add new channels. Plus, find what you want fast with voice search - a fun way to find what you're looking for. Little screen, meet big screen- Send photos, videos, and music from your smartphone or tablet to the TV. Plus, cast movies, web videos, and more to your TV with with Netflix and YouTube mobile apps. 1080p Full HD Resolution Clear Motion Index 120 Refresh Rate 3 HDMI, 1 USB, Built-in Wi-Fi, & Roku Streaming Software Setup Setting up the TV is simple, but it is a little different than you would expect. First steps are easy: setup your inputs and connect to WiFi. Setting up the inputs is pretty cool. You tell it what you have plugged into each of the inputs in the back of the TV, such as a Cable Box, Satellite Box, Blu-ray player, Gaming system, etc, and it adds an icon to the home screen for that device. No more scrolling through inputs, you just select the device icon like you would any other app and away you go. Connecting to WiFi is the same as any other network TV or set top box. Once you get on the network, you're given a code to register the device to your Roku account using anything with a web browser, could be a desktop, laptop, tablet or smart phone. If you don't have an account, you create one. If you have any other Roku devices, you just add the TCL TV with the registration code and away you go. You use the online account to select what apps (Roku calls them channels) you want on the TV. We thought this was going to be awesome. At first the idea of creating a Roku account just to use the TV seemed cumbersome. But if we were able to select the apps we wanted, then sign into each of those apps on the web, using the full keyboard we had available on the laptop, it would save a ton of time. Subscription info would be pushed down to the TV, and there you go, instant Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, Pandora, you name it. Unfortunately this wasn't the case. You select the apps online, but you still have to sign into them from the TV using the tiny remote. Wasted opportunity if you ask us. Performance Once you have everything setup and the Apps are registered and authenticated, you're good to go. You can use the TV as a standard television, or select from any of your configured apps. The Roku platform has by far more available app choices than any other Smart TV we've used. Because it is a neutral platform, you can get things like Netflix, Amazon, Google Play and Vudu all on the same box. Of course, no Apple. They're still learning how to place nice with others. From the Smart TV and apps point of view, it worked great. Beyond your standard streaming audio and video apps, Roku has other apps like Plex and its own Roku Media Player to get access to your own content from USB or the network. The TV can operate as an Video server playback device without the need for any external boxes. It even supports SlingTV so you can watch live television without having to pay a Cable or Satellite subscription. The TV is very versatile and we found all the apps to be snappy and they performed quite well. As a television, the TCL is fine. It's really what you would expect from a $350 almost 50 inch HDTV. The picture quality isn't stellar. There are occasional artifacts on the screen, but it isn't terrible. It is still quite a bit better than even the HDTVs from 5 or 6 years ago. The sound is pretty bad, but if you're looking for good sound from a TV speaker, you're probably not doing it right. All in all, average audio and video performance. Not a set you'd want to put at the center of your home theater, but not too bad for a bedroom, bonus room or garage. Conclusion Roku is a pretty killer platform. Having it built into the TV makes the set itself very versatile. With just WiFi and power you have access to a plethora of content options, including videos from your home network and live television using Sling TV.  For $350 you can add a video server viewing zone to just about any room without breaking the bank. We wouldn't suggest it for the home theater or family room, but if you get one of these in the garage, somehow we think you might find yourself out there more often.  

This week A.J. and Mikah wave goodbye to ride-hailing service Sidecar, they dream of a future where all smart home products are psychically linked, and wag their finger at Valve for giving away credit card information on Steam. Integrate Topics A.J.: Squarespace Metrics Mikah: Adobe Post Produced by Katie Hiler This episode of Integrate is not sponsored by ūnHub. Music provided by Eino Toivanen, kongano.com. Follow Integrate on Twitter, and subscribe/rate/review the show on iTunes. Links and Show Notes Pre-show: The Cartoon Cast episode where we give our definitive anime judgement Waving Goodbye to Sidecar: Sidecar, once an Uber and Lyft competitor, is shutting down on December 31, via VentureBeat Samsung's New TVs Can Control Your Smart Home: Samsung is adding SmartThing hubs to its 2016 HD TVs to control connected devices, via VentureBeat Wagging Our Fingers at Valve: Valve briefly suspends Steam service after security error exposes user information, via Polygon

Instant Home Theater in Two Hours or Less Amazon Prime changed the game. You can have pretty much anything you need, including an entire home theater, delivered to your home in two days or less. And you never have to get off the couch. A recent conversation with a friend who needed a TV and an HDMI cable and had them delivered in an hour using the new Prime Now app got us thinking. What if you wanted an entire home theater delivered to your home within an hour or two? Is that even possible?   The scenarios are endless. You have company over and everyone decides to watch a movie, but they brought kids and the kids need something to watch too. Or you and your family, friends, guests, whatever can't decide if you want to watch a live sports event or that night's episode of Dancing with the Stars, so, in the spirit of ‘why not both?' you need to add a second home theater to keep everyone happy. Or, simply, just cuz.   Prime Now is a new service from Amazon, available to Prime members in select markets at no additional charge, that allows you to order products for delivery in two hours, sometimes less, depending on your proximity to the distribution center. We assume the products available may vary by market, since not all distribution centers would have the exact same inventory, so this adventure is what the HT Guys would be able to put together from their local distribution center in Orange County, California.   Prime Now is currently only available as an app for your smartphone. You cannot tap into it from your computer, not yet at least. For our discussion we'll provide links to the products at the main Amazon website, but if you want to get them delivered in an hour, you'll need to download the app and find them there.   Televisions Every home theater needs an HDTV. What options are available from Prime Now? We assumed they would be small TVs, easy to store and easy to deliver. What we found surprised us. There were a bunch of options for HDTVs from Prime Now. Small TVs, like you would imagine, a 32” model from LG or Sharp, 43” options from Vizio and Sharp, etc. But they also had some bigger sets available. There's a 50” Vizio, a 55” Vizio, and a 55” LG. Sure 55” isn't huge, but it isn't tiny either. A 55” TV would make a pretty good cornerstone in a 2 hour or less home theater.   LG Electronics 55LF6000 55-Inch 1080p 120Hz LED TV. If you buy it from the Amazon website, you'll pay $647.99 and the strange thing is, it isn't available for Prime shipping - you actually pay an extra $36.36 for shipping. If you buy if from the Prime Now app you pay more than $100 less, $538, and you get same day shipping. That's a great deal.   VIZIO E50-C1 50-Inch 1080p Smart LED HDTV. Probably not the way to go unless you're a huge Vizio fanboy, the TV is 50 inches compared with the 55 inches of the LG, but you only save $10. It costs $528 from both the Amazon website, where it is available for Prime shipping, and from the Prime Now app. The consistence makes sense, but the price for the screen size doesn't.   VIZIO M55-C2 55-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED HDTV. If you want to go super impressive in a couple hours or less, there is one 4K TV available from Prime Now. For some reason this one is also more expensive from the website than from the app, and isn't available for Prime shipping from the site either. At Amazon.com you pay $921.99. Although the shipping isn't Prime, it is free. From Prime Now you only pay $849.99.   Projectors But what if your emergency home theater needs to go really big? You want to watch in the backyard by the pool or set the kids up in the front yard so they can share with the whole neighborhood. Prime Now has you covered there as well. These should be much easier to stock and ship, making it that much easier to be an instant hero.   Optoma HD141X 1080p 3D DLP Home Theater Projector, $574 from Prime Now, 3000 Lumen Optoma HD26 1080p 3D DLP Home Theater Projector, $649 from Prime Now, 3200 Lumen BenQ W1070 1080P 3D DLP Home Theater Projector, $696 from Prime Now, 2000 Lumen   And of course you'll need a screen. The Epson Duet 80-Inch Dual Aspect Ratio Projection Screen is $105.78 from Prime Now, includes a floor stand and can be expanded to the size that best meets your needs - old school 4:3 or widescreen 16:9.   Surround Sound This is where it gets tricky and you have to be a bit creative. We didn't find any AV Receivers through the app, and the speakers we could get were all more computer speakers than home theater speakers. That said, the Logitech Surround Sound Speakers Z506 would probably do a decent job for you, and at $57.99 they aren't going to break the bank. You get a center speaker, four satellites and a subwoofer for that price. Certainly better than the built-in TV speaker.   There are a couple of sound bar options, like the VIZIO SB2920-C6 29-Inch 2.0 Channel Sound Bar for $78 or the VIZIO SB4051-C0 40-Inch 5.1 Channel Sound Bar with Wireless Subwoofer and Satellite Speakers for $348. With the inclusion of the wireless subwoofer and satellites (which are not wireless), the SB4051-C0 is probably the best option available to us in the Orange County area. And it has built-in Bluetooth if you want to stream music to it from your smartphone or tablet.   But if you want to be creative, you can get a Sonos Playbar TV Sound Bar for $699, add a couple Sonos Play:1 speakers at $199 each for surround sound and cap it off with a Sonos Sub Wireless Subwoofer to make it go boom for another $699. At a total cost of $1796 it isn't cheap, but at least you won't have to buy speaker wire (yes, that is available on Prime Now) and they can be used to stream music as part of a whole house audio system if you need them to as well.   Odds and Ends Pretty much any cable or wire you'll need to connect a home theater is available from Prime Now. They have a plethora of choices for OTA antennas and a couple set top bot OTA tuners if that's how you choose to get content onto your instant home theater. There are a few Blu-ray players, like the Samsung BD-J5100 for $57.99 or the Sony BDPS6500 that has built-in WiFi, does 3D and has 4K upscaling for $128. And, of course, a wide variety of Blu-ray movies if you need something to watch. Or, you could certainly pick up a Fire TV Stick for $39.99 if you want to stream all the content you already get for free as part of your Prime membership (the standard $99 Fire TV wasn't available to us as an option through Prime Now. Seems like they're out of stock everywhere until early November).   Conclusion All in all, you can build a pretty killer home theater setup and have it delivered to your door in under 2 hours, should you need it in a pinch. A 3200 lumen 1080p projector, an 80” screen, a sound bar with wireless sub and satellites, and maybe a fire TV stick to round out the package would be about $1145.   And one really interesting tidbit we found in our research is that pricing on Prime Now can sometimes be better than the Amazon website. Talk about win-win. Get the product in an hour or two and pay less for it.

What the H? In the transition from High Definition Television to Ultra High Definition TV, we've seen the acronym dictionary go from bad to worse. On the good side, HDTV was multiple video resolutions and display formats, like 480p, 720p, 1080i and 1080p, while UHD is essentially just one. Some call it 4K, some call it UHD, some call it 2160p, but it all really boils down to the same thing for the TVs we'll buy as consumers - 4 times the resolution of 1080p.   HDTV to UHD There are differences between what the professional video industry considers 4K, which is a resolution of 4,096 by 2,160, and what the rest of of get when we buy a 4K TV, or an Ultra High Definition television set, which is typically 3,840 by 2,160 resolution, but the two are quite close. Some TVs support the slightly higher resolution, but for the most part we're dealing with the one, quad-HD format, that defines UHD.   In some ways, this makes the transition from HDTV to UHD very simple. In early HDTV days, there were the EDTVs: plasma TV sets that could display HDTV content but scaled it down to a native resolution of 480p. Then there were two dominant resolution formats, 720p and 1080i. 720p was better for fast moving action while 1080i had better resolution and produced sharper images. Eventually we got 1080p sets, the best of both worlds, and the debate was solved. With UHD, we don't have to worry about it,. We get 2160p televisions. That's it. Nice and simple.   But that's not the whole story. It isn't just a resolution change in the migration from HDTV to UHD. There are so many more changes under the covers, so many more changes built into the transition that are intended to improve our lives and make the entire viewing experience better and more advanced. We've talked about many of them before, but sometimes it's easy to get them confused or to gloss over the relationships between all of them. They build a somewhat twisted web of interconnected relationships it's easy to get turned around. It happens to us all the time.   HDMI 2.0 The High-Definition Multimedia Interface 2.0 specification is typically considered part of the UHD or 4K transition. HDMI cables have been heaven-sent. One cable that carries high definition audio and video in the same connection makes wiring up your home theater soe much easier - so much simpler than the days of old with a coax or SPDIF audio cable and three component video cables, or one DVI cable if you were so lucky to have digital video support on both ends.   As the demands for what you can watch on your HDTVs evolves, the HDMI spec has had to evolve as well to support the better video. HDMI 1.4 actually supports 4k resolution, but only at 24 or 30 frames per second. If you want full 4k resolution at 60 fps, you have to get a system that supports HDMI 2.0. In addition to the higher frame rates, the higher bandwidth supported by HDMI 2.0 also allows more audio and video information to travel across the cable. For example, HDMI 1.4 is limited to 8-bit color, HDMI 2.0 can go to 12-bit. That higher bandwidth paves the way for something called HDR or High Dynamic Range.   HDCP 2.2 But before we get to HDR, let's take a brief detour to discuss HDCP 2.2, the next rev of the High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection spec also commonly associated with Ultra High Def TV. HDCP has been around since the beginning of HDMI. It is the copy protection part of the spec aimed to keep pirates from getting their hands on pristine, high quality digital formats that they could turn right around and post on the Internet for anyone to download. It is designed to protect the content owners from the evil pirates who want to post movies and TV shows on bit torrent and other file sharing sites.   However, what it typically does is just make all of our lives harder. Many of the HDMI communication issues we've all experienced between set top boxes, receivers, and other home theater devices are due to the copy protection part of the spec. A part of the spec that probably, in most cases, isn't even enabled for the content we're viewing. But HDCP 2.2 is the next evolution, so if you want to make sure you'll be able to watch copy protected 4K content, you'll need gear that supports HDCP 2.2.   Odds are they'll never turn on the content protection for most of what we watch, because it would create so many issues with people trying to view it that it wouldn't be worth it, but if they do decide to enable it, all the devices in the chain: set top box, blu-ray player, receiver, television, etc. will all need to support it for you to see the content. The biggest bummer is that we'll probably have a whole new batch for HDMI incompatibility issues as some devices begin to roll out with HDCP 2.2 and try to talk with legacy devices that don't support it. HDMI, for all its benefits, hasn't been without its issues, and HDCP will most likely compound them, not make them any better.   HDR If you can get past the copy protection, and get your devices all talking with HDMI 2.0, you might very well be able to enjoy HDR content, or High Dynamic Range video. High dynamic range video is, in a nutshell, a better luminance range than typical video, providing whiter whites and blacker blacks, this gives you better contrast, better color response and better shadow detail in the videos you watch on TV. You don't get better resolution, but you get more realistic, more lifelike images because the contrast more closely resembles what we see in the world around us.   HDR isn't an essential part of UHD or 4K TV. You don't even need 4K resolution to enjoy the better color and contrast you can get from HDR video, but in most cases you'll need to upgrade to a 4K set if you want a TV that will display the High Dynamic Range content - not because the two are required or connected, but just because the latest and greatest TVs, the ones that support HDR, just so happen to be 4K sets. There may be 1080p OLED TVs in the future that have support for HDR, but why would you upgrade to that?   HEVC The last piece in the puzzle is our last ‘H' acronym: HEVC or High Efficiency Video Coding. It is the successor to the standard H.264/MPEG4 AVC codec used predominantly for our current HDTV content and is the codec used most often to encode or transmit UHD content. It has twice the compression capabilities without sacrificing video quality, or it can be used to transmit much higher quality video, up to 8K resolution, in the same bandwidth currently used for 1080p HDTV content.   One important note about HEVC is that it is currently the only mainstream codec that supports HDR content. so while it is possible to get HDR in your 1080p HDTV movies, you'd need those movies to be encoded with HEVC, not the old-school H.264 codec you have now. So you'd need a TV and a player that both support HDR and HEVC to get the benefit of higher dynamic range. Since HEVC is typically associated with UHD, it isn't likely that many manufacturers will introduce support for it in non-UHD devices. so while it might be possible to watch 1080p content with HDR, you'd probably need to do that on a 4k set anyways.   Conclusion The move from tons of resolution options in the HDTV spec to essentially one in the UHD world should have made our lives easier, but content providers and manufacturers wouldn't stand for it, so they gave us a bunch of new ‘H' acronyms we'd have to worry about to keep us on our toes. The good news is that in a couple years, when UHD is commonplace and reaches mass adoption, everything will support all the new acronyms and it won't really matter anymore. But for those of us on the early adopter curve, it can be tricky. For now, make sure you read the specs on everything you buy to make sure it'll support what you want now and in the near future. And if you have any questions, give us a shout.

Jack's back! Also, the Chaplain Quibbles over the studio equipment The Chaplain's creepy mic-breathing Droning (AKA Jack and The Chaplain are nerds) After Lodge dues talk spills over onto /r/freemasonry /u/ThePastMaster and his lodge care a little too much about Jason's regularity The big hub-bub meeting and After Lodge gaffes Topics this week from The 'Templar's Treasure' Whiteboard [chaplain approved!!] Product placement The After Lodge crew has played too many videogames What's the problem with candles? The crew as Simpson characters When is a brother not a brother Felonious freemasons? The Chaplain speaks too quickly too often Drone v2.0 makes an appearance HDTVs/internet and your lodge Email us at afterlodge@gmail.com Hang out with us on Reddit Find us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter @AfterLodge Leave us a voicemail at 215-792-3538 Join us on IRC: irc.snoonet.org #freemasonry Special Guest: Jack.

What we're thankful for '14 Each year at this time of year we do a show where we discuss what we are thankful for. There are the obvious things to be thankful for like our families, especially our wives who put up with our home theater obsessions. And of course we are thankful for you, the listener/reader of our show. So as is tradition over the last six Thanksgivings, on today's show we give you our list of consumer electronics things we are thankful for. But first, a very quick rundown of last year's list:   Aereo   Netflix Insteon The DVR High Speed Internet 4K TV   For 2014 Roomie Remote - I (Ara) drank the Roomie Remote Kool-Aid last year but this was the year that the application really went to another level. With the release of version 3 users now have powerful home controller that would cost $10K just a few years ago. If you are a DIY kind of person you may want to check out the Roomie Remote Control (www.roomieremote.com)   The Hopper - The single worst part of watching any television program in glorious high definition is the dreaded commercial break. The DVR has made our Thanksgiving list consistently, but the Hopper and the Auto-Hop feature take the DVR to the next level. Once you've tried it, it really is hard to go back. You almost find yourself avoiding shows that aren't on the Prime networks because you have to manually skip commercials.   4K TV - This made the list last year but this year we actually own one. While there isn't much 4K content out there yet we are thankful for early adopters who will push producers to release more content in glorious 4K.   Home Automation - This has become a bigger area for the show this year. Many don't understand what our infatuation with the subject is until they automate something. It may be a light, a door lock or a garage door opener. But once they get the bug they are done. This year we saw numerous companies releasing hubs that talk to a disparate group of devices. Its never been easier to automate your home!   Amazon Prime - While we love Netflix, its great to see competition. And with the recent announcement that 4K content will be included with the Amazon Prime subscription what's not to be thankful for? When Amazon first launched this service they barely had more than 10,000 movies and TV shows. Today they have more than 40,000. Throw in free two day shipping on many items sold through Amazon and you have a no brainer!   Amazon Fire TV - And what if there was a tiny set top player that could connect directly to your Amazon Prime library and stream it all seamlessly? There is. And what if that box could also play games? Games that cost a dollar or two, not fifty or sixty dollars. If you happen to have five boys, you may want to put one in every room of the house. We're thankful for peace and quiet.   802.11 ac - Wifi makes all of our lives easier whether its for home theater or just web surfing. The issue is that everyone uses it and if you live in a high density environment it becomes unusable for home theater related uses. The ac update makes wireless and viable alternative to stringing wire all over your house. We still claim NOTHING beats wired but with ac its a tradeoff that doesn't cost you too much.   NuForce / Emotiva - This is really less about NuForce, which Braden uses, or Emotiva, which Ara uses, and really more about our awakening to the idea of separates for home audio. Just like our original HDTVs, or the first time we ran front projection setups, or our first taste of home automation, separates are a whole new world of sound. And we love it. Yes, we're thankful for surround sound and Dolby and DTS, but we're also thankful for separates that sound amazing that we can actually afford.   Sonos - This year Sonos made it possible to have a multi room audio system that competes with systems costing thousands of dollars more. And those systems don't even include speakers! Sonos has created speakers that look and sound great. No need to hide your speakers. Just put them out for everyone to see. Whether its music residing on a computer on your network, in the cloud or from a number of music services. Sonos gives you control! You can do it for less but not nearly as elegant. You can do it for more but why waste your money!

Movie Theaters Enter the Fourth Dimension It will come as no surprise that the HT Guys will opt to wait for the Blu-ray version of popular movies so that we can enjoy them in the comfort of our own homes. We know that we are not alone, many of our listeners are doing the same. As our hobby grows, people are setting up relatively inexpensive home theaters that provide a quite enjoyable experience. Others will spend a little more money and create an experience that rivals what you get in the cinema.   Some History Back in the day the only way to see a blockbuster the way it was intended was in a movie theater.  At some point the movie would find its way onto network television but imagine watching “The Sound of Music” on a 25 inch 4:3 SD television with a small 3.5 inch speaker. Not quite what Director Robert Wise had in mind. No, the only way to really watch a movie was in theaters.   Another argument for watching in theaters was that TV dramas were quite frankly amateurish in comparison to the cinema. The movies had bigger budgets, better actors, and higher production values. This resulted in Hollywood producing a better product for cinemas vs television. Quality Gap Narrows Today many of the differences between the home and cinema have been eliminated. Television and movies have similar aspect ratios, HDTVs provide better picture quality, low cost 7.1 receivers provide similar audio experiences, and Hollywood is producing cinema quality television. In some cases television has better content than all the remakes and sequels Hollywood wants to charge you $11 a ticket for. Its no wonder people are staying home and saving their money.   Ara put his theater together for about $15,000, Braden spent less than $10,000. Perhaps a bit pricy but everyone who watches a movie in our rooms comes away wanting to do the same in their houses. You don't have to spend that much either. Each year we put together our Ultimate Home Theater in a Box systems which are not entry level systems but they go for about half the cost of our projector setups. These systems will provide an experience that is superior to that of the cinema. This year Braden spec'd out a 80 inch, 7.2 system with a Blu-ray player for less than $6200!! Ara's was a bit smaller, 65 inch, 9.2 audio, with Blu-ray for $7,800. When you consider that you can enjoy your home system every day! That makes the upfront cost a little easier to justify. Especially if you love watching sports!   With a home setup that provides a technical experience that is equal or nearly equal to that of the cinema what does going to the movie theater offer that you can't get at home?  Well how about high price ticket and concession prices, noisy inconsiderate people texting and posting selfies to facebook, and twenty minutes of commercials and trailers. Yeah… we can't wait to go to a movie theater. Its no wonder people are staying away in droves. The three to six month wait for a movie to hit the home market is goes by very fast. How many times have you said, “That's already out??” If release windows for home distribution keeps getting smaller the multiplex may be a thing of the past.   What can be done? Its clear that the cinemas need to do something to draw people back. We say cinema because filmmakers can choose to ride the wave and go straight to home. Whether it be physical media or streaming, Hollywood can deliver their content to the people who want it. This problem is really a cinema operator problem. Well, good scripts may draw a few more people to the cinema but not enough to stem the tide in our opinion.   Theaters need new tech that is not available in the home. They need a way to differentiate themselves from our living rooms. And it has to be tech that improves the experience. We don't think 3D was that tech. Plus it was available in the home at the same time.  Some theaters are experimenting with a 4D experience. Think sensurround from the 70's. In this case theaters are looking for ways to further immerse the viewer into the story.   One way is bigger screens that wrap around you. Yes some Imax theaters have this and if you lived in southern California in the 60s and 70s you could have gone to Disneyland and watched Wonders of China on Circle Vision. Circle Vision would be a bit too gimmicky but adding screens to the front sides for 50 or so feet would open up the picture and provide a more immersive experience. One that would be more difficult to create at home.   Better seats with motion actuators could provide a feeling of motion and deeper bass. It would be nice if there was an override switch for those who get motion sickness so they can turn off or dial back the effect. They could also provide speakers in the seats that would provide a more intimate experience than surround speakers way at the end of the auditorium.   For the full effect theater rooms can be built with misting systems that can provide a rain effect and fans that can provide wind. While we are at it why not add scents to heighten the experience.  These features would need to be used judiciously so as not to burn the viewer out. But if used correctly it could really help with the experience. The best example of “Smellovision” in use today is on the simulator ride called “Soaring over California” at California Adventure in Anaheim.  When you fly over the orange groves you can smell oranges or pines as you fly through Yosemite. The effect is subtle and it does enhance the experience.   Some theaters offer higher quality food and alcohol with ninja like wait staff to bring it to you. But can you really enjoy a good steak while watching a movie? Drinks sure! This type of arrangement appeals to a minority. The one thing that can really help the experience is to have a zero tolerance for chatty patrons and those that text. Maybe offer a texting and non-texting viewing. If you text in a non-text room you will be asked to go to the screening room where texts are allowed.   While filmmakers can help get people in the seats by creating better movies, we still think its the movie theater experience that needs to be fixed. Let us know what it would take to get you to go spend $50 to watch Hollywood's latest blockbuster?    

Tim Robertson and Owen Rubin discuss Sony, BetaMax vs VHS, older HDTVs, early cable boxes, video games, Window’s iTunes problems, and much more!

Alex Moore is CEO of Baydin, the creators of email sanity saving Boomerang and The Email Game. Talking about email management, networking in a new town, and following up. NBN29 Show Notes Join the NBN Club today, price increases on October 1. Listen to episode 29 in iTunes or Stitcher. Launch your WordPress blog with my quick tutorial. Sign up for Bluehost and support the show. Thanks. Record your audio comment or networking tip here. Please pick up a copy of my book, New Business Networking: How to Effectively Grow Your Business Network Using Online and Offline Methods. We began by talking about Boomerang (now four years old). You can use it to send emails later, mark emails to reappear in your inbox later, and remind you to follow up if you don't hear back from the recipient. Boomerang came from personal pain. Alex was working at Analog Devices. He was responsible for making the Input Select button ten cents cheaper on HD TVs. He created Boomerang, because he had a hard time keeping up with emails from his team members. He began working on an automatic semantic search engine, but it was too geeky to work. Tim Ferris swears by the Email Game. Alex explains what it is and why you should try it. I love it too. Email is the only thing that's compatible with everybody's system. Make email good at what people use it for. How to follow up with everyone you met at a conference from The NextWeb. CardMunch and Evernote. CardShark business card scanning app by FullContact. Brad McCartey first wrote about Boomerang on the NextWeb. Why following up is crucial in networking. Baydin blog post about how they launched. How to identify journalists via social media. How Alex would start his career again. Alex grew up in Alabama, where networking occurred at the Wal-Mart checkout line. He moved to Boston for school, and then moved to Silicon Valley when they needed funding for Baydin. He attended a different tech networking event every night for two weeks while visiting Silicon Valley. You can do a lot in two weeks, if you focus on it. He created a list of people he wanted to meet. He used LinkedIn as the main tool for this. He also used StartUp Digest, a weekly email with local tech events. In Boston, tryGreenhorn Connect. App Recommendation: Fitbit Flex Wireless Activity + Sleep Wristband, BlackBook Recommendation: The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Book 1) by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.Contact Alex: @awmoore or at baydin.com. Join me at LinkedIn Live in Nashville on October 2. Tickets from the Nashville Technology Council. Book me to speak at your conference or to provide your staff with the best networking training  

Panasonic launch their new UK spec HDTVs and 4K TVs, VR headset from Sony official, AV Snack recipe and more...

We discuss the high-stakes game of summer movie marketing. We’ll tell you what blockbuster marketing drove our butts to cinema seats and what films flopped at inspiring us to leave our air-conditioning and HDTVs.

HT Guys Top 5 HDTVs for less than $1,000 A week doesn't go by without the HT Guys receiving an email asking us for our opinion on which TV to buy. When we answer those emails it usually requires a little back and forth to understand the use case for each TV. There are many factors but the biggest two are the size of the screen and the cost of the TV. For this week we thought we would pick five HDTVs that you would be proud to showcase in your home. The two hard requirements for the list were size, each TV had to be 50 inches or greater, and cost, each TV could not cost more than $1,000. The TVs can be found almost everywhere but some models may only be available online.   Allaire™ ARIS® Wireless Speaker System If you wanted to setup a home with multiple zones in the fastest way possible its pretty clear there is only one way to go, wireless. There are plenty of solutions for Apple's Airplay technology built in but what about if you use Windows Media Player? What would you say if we found a system that works with just about any protocol out there and sounds great too? That's where the Allaire ARIS Wireless Speaker System ($297) by Aperion Audio comes in.

We like to occasionally take a look at the top selling products at Amazon as a barometer of what is occurring in the larger Consumer Electronics market. Sometimes what we find shocks us, other times is confirms our suspicions, and sometimes it just flat out doesn't make any sense at all. Yesterday we took a look at the top 10 selling HDTVs. What we found was in some ways surprising, but it certainly wasn't shocking.

Stuart Jaffe (author and co-host of The Eclectic Review) is today's featured guest. Topics: Google putting together a convention this month for app developers to come and write apps for Google's new eyeglass computer; Google calling for the end of passwords and pushing for some method which might be more secure than passwords; Casual terrorists verses Dedicated terrorists; the new 4K and 8K TVs (which have four times and 16 times the resolution of HD TVs); David Brin's prediction of a future without privacy (in his novel Earth) and the curious effects in Nancy Kress's novel A Beggar in Spain; the life-changing convenience of streaming TV shows and movies; ways Japanese and Korean movies are different from America movies; as well as Life extension and what Stuart might do differently if he knew he would probably live to be 300 years old. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 6, 2013 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 37 minutes] Stuart Jaffe is the author of The Max Porter Paranormal-Mysteries, The Malja Chronicles, a post-apocalyptic fantasy series, and After The Crash as well as the short story collection, 10 Bits of My Brain, and many other short stories which have appeared in magazines and anthologies. He is the co-host of The Eclectic Review -- a podcast about science, art, and well, everything. He also plays guitar, is active in the theater, and holds a 2nd degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

What was the best technology on show at CES 2013? We cast our eye over offerings from Samsung, LG, Sony, Huawei and many more in our whistle-stop tour

What was the best technology on show at CES 2013? We cast our eye over offerings from Samsung, LG, Sony, Huawei and many more in our whistle-stop tour

There was a disturbance in the HT Guys force after our initial revue of the DTV Green Dish, a.k.a Dishtenna so we decided to post a little bit of an update to the original review.  We also discuss four very highly rated HDTVs you should consider if you're looking to buy a new one and ten technology trends that may change the way you live.

Rod and Karen are joined by Will and Justin to discuss crapping in public, advertising on Rush, seat belt laws, audio books, cell phone charges, leaked nudes, HD TVs, Peyton Manning, prison showers, the Saints, drive-thru drunk, criminal job application, Facebooking while driving, old man strength, Super head, selling 6 year old for crack, Willie Singletary, Lotto welfare receiver, homeless voyeurs, hot for teacher, a child left behind and sword stories. Intro: Tron Cat - Tyler The Creator Outro: You Got Me - The Roots Twitter: @rodimusprime @SayDatAgain @RhymeOverReason @Mr_Montgomery Email: theblackguywhotips@gmail.com Blog: www.theblackguywhotips.com Voice Mail: 704-557-0186 Sponsors: www.shadowdogproductions.com And they're on Twitter: @ShadowDogProd www.adamandeve.com And they're on Twitter: @adamandeve Code: TBGWT

Go to TheStarCast.com for everything StarCast.Call us at 941-882-0281 StarCast is proudly sponsored by Doghouse Systems at DoghouseSystems.com. Use the code StarCast or Biscuit to get a $25 J!nx gift card and support StarCast in the process. And by Allcastmedia and Best Buy.  Support StarCast and go to Tiny.cc/moregg for free shipping on 90% of their inventory, 10%-30% off select HDTVs, $20 off 12 months of Xbox Live Gold, specials on Gaming Consoles and LITERALLY hundreds of other deals. Additional support comes from StarCast.Icora.uk. Visit starcast.icora.uk for StarCraft themed T-shirts and iPhone cases.

Go to TheStarCast.com for everything StarCast.Call us at 941-882-0281 StarCast is proudly sponsored by Doghouse Systems at DoghouseSystems.com. Use the code StarCast or Biscuit to get a $25 J!nx gift card and support StarCast in the process. and by Allcastmedia and Best Buy.  Support StarCast and go to Tiny.cc/moregg for free shipping on 90% of their inventory, 10%-30% off select HDTVs, $20 off 12 months of Xbox Live Gold, specials on Gaming Consoles and LITERALLY hundreds of other deals.

This week we were joined by Matt "LookNoHands" Fink.  Get comfortable because this was a long one!Go to TheStarCast.com for everything StarCast.Call us at 941-882-0281StarCast is proudly sponsored by Doghouse Systems at DoghouseSystems.com. Use the code StarCast or Biscuit to get a $25 J!nx gift card and support StarCast in the process. and by Allcastmedia and Best Buy.  Support StarCast and go to Tiny.cc/moregg for free shipping on 90% of their inventory, 10%-30% off select HDTVs, $20 off 12 months of Xbox Live Gold, specials on Gaming Consoles and LITERALLY hundreds of other deals. Want to support the show and look awesome while doing it? Get a StarCast shirt designed by Garrett at starcast.spreadshirt.com/

Highlights include NZ Mobile Termination rates with Paul Brislen, Microsoft's Skype acquisition, Bluetooth car solutions, home cinema and hot prices on big screen HD TVs. Running time : 1:03:24

We discuss the best HDTVs and projectors of 2010.

The Third: "Sugarolly".This time around it's all about the street games in old Glesca. We hear all about the wee toerags wreaking havoc with the tenement folk tying their doors together with rope, catching hudgies at the BRS depot in Lister Street, being chased by Limpy Dan from the Kennedy Street playground, making what sounds to have been a very early poor man's version of soda stream drinks except with a particularly dodgy ingredient, and playing endless football through dinner which consisted of jeely pieces thrown down by the parents from the windows above.Ah yes, you might get your PS3s and your HD TVs nowadays, but if the kids of today were to listen to this episode, without a shadow of doubt they'd choose "kick the can" or "dreep the dyke" over all your fancy technology any day. Ahem...

Eddie Inzauto hosts the biggest VS Node to date, with newcomers Tyler Cameron of GN, Joe DeLia of Big Red Potion, and Creighton DeSimone of Bleep Bloop. The quartet discuss the PS3 Slim, old and new software, competitive gaming, videogame controllers, realism, art direction, console lifespans, and more as they weave in and out of a lengthy discussion about HD gaming. 00:00 - Welcome! Introductions. 01:11 - Games we've been playing. Layton, Metroid, inFAMOUS, Shadow Complex. 05:05 - Beating Shadow Complex in under 20 minutes, 13 percent of items. 06:25 - Unattainable achievements. 07:49 - News: PS3 Slim. 07:59 - "Slim" name? 08:58 - Console size comparison. 09:41 - Backwards compatibility vs. re-buying old software. 12:00 - Eddie's new HDTV and HD gaming. 12:31 - First HD moments, remembered. 13:00 - Creighton and Call of Duty 2 looking "AWFUL" 14:34 - Dead Rising in standard definition. 15:31 - Tyler's almost-HD TV, and "a beam of golden light" 17:29 - Joe's HDTV "magic aim." The HDTV assassin. Bleeding eyes. 18:48 - The Wii on HDTV vs. SDTV. Better on SD? 20:53 - SD-only gamers missing something massive? HD-only players? 22:09 - Eddie's early HDTV woes. Playing on the PC monitor. Newfound beauty in HD. 23:19 - Classic console games on HDTVs. What are the options? 24:55 - Controller options for games on PC. Controller wars. 28:23 - Do developers try to provide the best experience for both SD and HD? 29:59 - Voluntary sacrifices vs. developing two games in one. 31:20 - Finding an SDTV at retail. 32:35 - NES Zapper and light guns no-go on HDTV. 33:07 - Joe and all his gaming systems. Tales of the Virtual Boy. 36:43 - Do HD standouts get more praise for graphics than SD standouts? 42:16 - Getting away from realism 44:45 - Broad range of styles on XBLA and PSN. 47:24 - PixelJunk Shooter. It's like a Zack and Wiki puzzle. 48:44 - Visual technology moving too fast for artistic exploration? 52:21 - Hardware longevity. 55:23 - Is the industry too focused on visuals? 56:35 - The never-ending Braid joke. 57:24 - The end! Just kidding. 57:35 - Gaming at 120Hz. 58:45 - The prerequisites for modern gaming. 60:01 - Sound matching visuals. 64:34 - Supersonic hearing in multiplayer. Joe has NEVER lost a deathmatch. 65:05 - Creighton and virtual surround sound on HDTVs. 67:02 - Joe's 4-dimensional gaming setup. 67:40 - Thanks and outro. Intro music, Main Theme from Level 5's Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, 2009. "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles, 1979, performed by Erasure, 2003. Guest Links: Joe DeLia: Big Red Potion - www.bigredpotion.com Creighton DeSimone: Bleep Bloop - www.collegehumor.com/bleepbloop Tyler Cameron: Detroit Gaming Lifestyle Examiner - www.examiner.com/x-3809-Detroit-Gaming-Lifestyle-Examiner --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamernode/message

Here are the shownotes for episode #34 for the Global Geek News Podcast. * HDTVs are now in more than half of US homes * Modder arrest reminds that most console hacks are illegal * The Pirate Bay Dutch retrial * 14-24 year olds pirate over 8,000 songs each * People increasingly waking up to the internet * US Marine Corps bans social networking sites * Study: Facebook can threaten relationships * Twitter not so popular with young people * AT&T changes contracts to prevent class action lawsuits * You can now text message 911...in parts of Iowa Host: Jeremy Bray & Wesley Faulkner

Here are the shownotes for episode #34 for the Global Geek News Podcast. * HDTVs are now in more than half of US homes * Modder arrest reminds that most console hacks are illegal * The Pirate Bay Dutch retrial * 14-24 year olds pirate over 8,000 songs each * People increasingly waking up to the internet * US Marine Corps bans social networking sites * Study: Facebook can threaten relationships * Twitter not so popular with young people * AT&T changes contracts to prevent class action lawsuits * You can now text message 911...in parts of Iowa Host: Jeremy Bray & Wesley Faulkner

This episode we discuss the crack down on free subbers, we talk about the pros and cons of the 4 different types of HDTVs, we discuss the lack of local multiplayer available in current video games, and finally we review the most recent Futurama DVD – Into the Wild Green Yonder. So give it a [...]

We discuss ways you can use entertainment technology to help save money in these uncertain times.The DiscussionIt's about more than saving gasHDTVsSports PackagesMovie PackagesDVRsAppleTVVuduNetFlixXbox360PlayStation 3GameFlyShow LinksThe Blog: True Tech LifeRSS Feed: HereiTunes Link: HereShow TwitterMike's TwitterNancy's TwitterMike's PlurkNancy's PlurkE-mail: truetechlife "at" gmail "dot" comThanks for listening!

Reed's eating habits, the dumbing down of culture, HDTVs, and fist fights.

Reed's eating habits, the dumbing down of culture, HDTVs, and fist fights.

Dancing With Elephants Listener Feedbag Show for Episode 068. Thanks to everyone offering to lend us their Harry Potter 'Books on Tape'. We'll have to take some of you up on your offer. Feedbag Roll Call: Amy called with a suggestion for traveling with small children and called to tell us about 3 websites where you can get drive-in information: Drive-ins.com, Drive-in Theater.com, and List of active drive-in theaters. Check out The Car. Jim of Iowa wrote to tell us that del.icio.us allows for notes. Papabear called with some suggestions for finding audiobooks (Talking Book World has been forced to discontinue its business in the US) and wrote to tell us about the iPhone Clone. Check out Henson.com for a great behind the scenes podcast produced by Grant Baciocco of The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd. Tina of tinatheartist.com wrote with her recipes for the sensory table: PLAY DOUGH 1 cup flour 1/2 cup salt 1 cup water 1 Tbsp vegetable oil 1 Tbsp cream of tartar (optional) Heat in heavy saucepan. Cook stirring constantly until forms a ball. Turn out onto floured surface and knead until desired consistency. Store in plastic bags or airtight container in refrigerator. CORNSTARCH PLAYDOUGH 2 lbs baking soda 1 lb cornstarch 1 1/4 cups water Cook until consistency of mashed potatoes. Can add more water if needed later. SILLY PUTTY 2 parts white glue 1 part liquid starch food coloring Mix until it achieves the 'right' texture. If the silly putty is too sticky then it's too gluey, add more starch. If the silly putty won't stick to itself then it needs more glue. Store in airtight container in fridge. OOBLIK Water and cornstarch Can't remember the proportions, play around with it. It should flow like a liquid but when you press it feel like a solid, you can roll a ball in your palms for example. Dale of Tech Talk For Families called with a bone to pick about Dungeons & Dragons, The Dungeons & Dragons Cartoon, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends Cartoon, The Muppet Show, Battle of the Planets, and HDTVs. He also sent a link for making a ring out of a silver half dollar. Check out the TTFF Episode 11 interview with Jason Snell. Also check out Omni-Directional Treadmill. Did we mention Henson.com for a great behind the scenes podcast produced by Grant Baciocco of The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd? Paul wrote Tonya with another Amazing Spider Catcher. Finally, Mike of KidsWifeWorkLife called to suggest Heelys to make Caleb tall enough to ride the rides at Walt Disney World. Announcements: Keep an eye out for The Daddy Panel Episode 15 with your host Dennis Gray of 101 Uses For Baby Wipes and featuring Mike of KidsWifeWorkLife, Chuck Tomasi of chuckchat.com, and Kevin Cummings of Short Cummings Audio. Podcast Pickle Contest. We'll be joining Chuck Tomasi of chuckchat.com for his 2007 Karate America Kick-a-thon. And finally we'll be attending the Chicago Air & Water Show on Aug 18. If you'd like to join us, drop us a line. New Email Addresses for the DWithE Gang: greg@dwithe.com tonya@dwithe.com nikolai@dwithe.com caleb@dwithe.com

May 5th, 2007 - We discuss technical news topics, and take listener's questions. The main topic of this show was HDTV and focused on what makes a show High Definition and explains the terms you may come across when buying an HDTV. We also discussed the differences between HDTV and Digital Broadcasting. Pete stands up for Windows. - Show Notes - Main Topic: High Definition Television – At the end of 2006 a little over a quarter of US households own HDTVs. It is predicted that by 2011 this percentage will increase to 70%. With everyone adopting this new technology, we wanted to clear up some of the terminology surrounding HDTV. DTV Vs HDTV – Digitial television is a method of broadcasting a television signal. In the past, all TV broadcasts have been analog. The FCC has mandated that by February 17, 2009 all TV broadcasts must be digital. They are doing this to free up bandwidth for other uses. An added benefit is that by changing over to digital broadcasting the broadcasters have come up with a new standard called ATSC (the analog standard is referred to as NTSC) that allows for the support of widescreen and HDTV shows. Resolution – High Definition Television is a higher resolution image. Resolution in television is normally referred to as the number of vertical lines that can be displayed. You may have heard the terms 720p, 480p, and 1080i before. These are all standard TV resolutions. The “p” and “i" are abbreviations for progressive and interlaced respectively. Interlaced means that for each frame displayed on the television only half of the lines are drawn. First the even lines are drawn and then the odd ones. Progressive means that all lines are presented at the same time. The minimum resolution of High Definition TV is 720p. Support Calls: Benny in Phoenix Arizona called looking for advice on buying his first home computer. Pete advised that he use free time on his work computer to read reviews online. Kevin chimed in to offer 5 to 9’s services to build a computer for him to save the time of research, and to end up with a higher quality computer than anything he could buy online. Benny also had questions about the differences between Macs and PCs concerning ease of use. Ivy from Phoenix called about a slow computer. He tried a registry cleaner (we don’t recommend them…) and that didn’t help. Most likely he either has too many programs running in the background, or he may have a rootkit. The easiest and surest way to solve both problems is to backup and re-install Windows. We advised that he could try and uninstall programs to speed up the system, and run RootkitRevealer to see if he has a rootkit. If that doesn’t solve the problem, re-installing Windows is really the only course of action. News Stories: New spyware legislation a mixed bag Crackdown on HD DVD Key Sparks Widespread Web Revolt Dell to choose Ubuntu Apple makes money on iTunes '$100 Laptop' to Cost $175 Internet Radio Equality Act would overturn decision on webcasting fees Pete’s Rant: Pete defends Windows. He points out that Microsoft is the “big guy” and as a result everyone picks on them. Because they are big they get targeted by viruses and security exploits. He also reminds us that every time a new version of software is released there are going to be bugs, and Vista is no different. Weekly Website: Del.icio.us Software Spotlight: Inline Search for Internet Explorer 7 Hardware Highlight: Linksys WRT54GL Music: Optimus Rhyme Direct MP3 Download iTunes Subscription RSS Feed

CJ's away in San Francisco, which means Phil and Greg are taking over this week and spending way too much time talking about one of their favorite systems--the Sega CD. Thrill to stories of the Sega CD launch; the greatest pack-in software bundle of all time; the synergy of Hollywood and Silicon Valley; and an in-depth review of the greatest Sega CD game you've never played. Dan even says two or three words during the segment!Of course, we begin things this week with Whatcha-been playin'? Here we talk about everything from God of War II and sucking less than CJ to Tetris Evolution on 360 and everything in between. Oh, there's some Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Earth Defense Force 2017 in there as well. And in the following segment we tackle Jack Thompson's latest frivolous lawsuit, 2K Games' tendency to stick their heads in the sand, and Dan gets really angry about the European PS3 launch. Plus, is the third-party exclusive dead? You'll have to listen to find out.Leave us a voicemail comment by calling 713-893-8069. Or you can e-mail us, vote for us on Digg, leave a comment on the iTunes Music Store, leave a comment on the blog page or join our forums! Thanks for listening, and we'll be back next week.Tetris Evolution 360God of War 2 PS2Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 360Castlevania Symphony of the Night 360Earth Defense Force 2017 360World of WarcraftCall of Duty PSP1UP.com: Devil May Cry 4 heads to 360, PCGamespot: Thompson countersues Take-TwoJeremy Parish 1UP blog: Why there won't be a System Shock RetronautsEngadgetHD: London's crime-free PS3 launch results in free HDTVs / cab ridesWikipedia: Sega CDLunarNET (Lunar series fansite)YouTube: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Sega CDSnatcherGood Deal Games (new or recovered Sega CD games)YouTube: Penn & Teller: Smoke & Mirrors digg_url = 'http://www.digg.com/podcasts/Player_One_Podcast'; digg_bgcolor = '#FFCC99'; digg_skin = 'compact';

Episode 10 is up, and we discuss "Ghost Machine," the latest episode of Torchwood, which features not only a star of the old series masterpiece "The Caves of Androzani," but also a nearly unrecognizable Gareth Thomas from Blake's 7. We also veer wildly off-topic and discuss the CBC, Zed, and the questionable usefulness of HDTVs.