AdesBlog.com

Connecting Hard Disk to TV

Posted in » Gadgets, Personal, Technology - by Ades

19 Comments 

CDs are great for writing digital media but they get scratched very easily, especially when you have kids that are 3.5 years old and 1 year old in one team ;)

So I said to myself I should get one of those “harddisk encapsulators” that can hook up your harddisk to a TV and make it a media player. After doing some research on hdd players on the net I decided to buy Popcorn Hour A-110. However when I went to local IT Mall “Low Yat” there was no “popcorn” brand whatsoever. When I asked the sales assistants whether they had this “popcorn hour” player, they simply smiled and didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. I am sure they thought I was kidding, asking for real popcorn…

After going from one shop to the other, it was clear that most of the shops had only two brands for 3.5″ harddisk encapsulators, they were GigaView by Noontec and WD TV by Western Digital.

GigaView 3.5” HDD Media Player

GigaView was priced at $70 and WD TV was $100. Also for GigaView you can put the harddisk inside the media player, as for WD TD you have to connect the harddisk via USB cable - that means your harddisk would be lying around the TV cabinet. So I said “I will buy GigaView, it’s cheaper and I can put the harddisk inside it”.

How was I wrong! It was a nightmare product! I came back and put up everything - connected to TV and played a sample movie file. At first it was taking too long to detect the harddisk (hdd was brand new btw), I said I am sure it will be faster next time, it’s just for the first time I said to myself. Then it finally detected the harddisk but now it would only play the files for 5 minutes and then get stuck. So I formatted the harddisk and changed it from NTFS to FAT32 file system, this solved the 5 minutes issue, but now it was flickering every 10-15 minutes and jumping the frames… After few hours, it wasn’t even recognizing the file names and was showing some scrambled characters instead. Now it wouldn’t play completely.

After that I didn’t bother to touch the player, I just put it back in the box and the next day took it to the shop back. I told them that I want my money back or to change it to different brand. They said they could only change it to same brand but different unit. I said I don’t want the same brand. Because after checking online it was clear that the problem was not with specific units but with the whole product of the company. So I got my way and got it changed to WD TV by Western Digital. I paid extra $30 bucks plus $4 for changing to different brand. The guy wanted the $4 to be paid in cash specifically so I asked him whether it was going to his pocket ;) he said “no” and gave me some unconvincing reasons. Anyway, I was happy that I could get it changed to WD TV now.

WD TV 3.5” HDD Media Player

WD TV was great, came back put it up everything and pressed ‘on’. It showed everything instantly, it could detect the harddisk and its different partitions, different folders.. etc. Compared to GigaView, the difference was like the earth and the sky.

This post is already long, so I won’t be talking about WD TV here. You can see a detailed review of this product at Geek.com here. But so far, I am very satisfied with WD TV, and the issue of harddisk being outside the media player became a “no issue” anymore ;)

Optimus Keyboard - IT Geek’s Dream Keyboard

Posted in » Gadgets, Usability - by Ades

8 Comments 

Long awaited Optimus keyboard by Russian designer - Artem Lebedev is taking pre-orders now. The thing that makes this keyboard totally different from others is that, every key has its own display (screen) on top, where you can practically display (assign) any image you want. You can put your own image if you want (try for delete button ;)

Some keys are too far for your fingers? No problem, you can re-assign any letter to any key on the keyboard, making it your special keyboard. Playing games and having hard time to remember shortcut keys? Placing images on the shortcut keys without the confusing letters (as seen on the screenshot) will help you play better HalfLife or your other favorite game.

It’s a great keyboard, but comes with a great price too. It costs approximately USD 1,564! This year about 200 keyboards will be sold, if you pre-order now you will get it at the end of the year (Dec, 2007).

Other Great Features

In Optimus, pressing CapsLock does capitalize all the letters on the keyboard. Isn’t that great? And pressing NumLock replaces the Arrows, Home, End buttons with Numbers (see screenshot below). If you want to see it in action, here is a demo that is done in flash, click here.

Conclusion
It’s great keyboard, but it’s expensive. Nevertheless it’s in my Wish List, I hope next year they can go mass production and achieve some economies of scale and then, it’s my hope that the price will come down.

If you want to know more about Optimus, check their FAQ here. You can pre-order it here.

P.S I have ordered his book on design, called Kodovstvo. It’s a very comprehensive book not only for web design, but for everything, it’s full of tips for designers. (Language: Russian only).

Cool LED Clock for Designers

Posted in » Gadgets - by Ades

3 Comments 

Actually it’s a cool LED clock for anybody that likes sleek design. It’s in my WishList already.

Features:

• Can be either desk or wall mounted.
• It is a programmable message clock.
• Comes complete with a remote control.
• Can store up to 16 messages. All the messages can be accessed from te remote control.
• Can store up to 470 characters at any one time.
• Shows the time, date and messages.

Costs: UK£ 179.00 (USD 358.23) http://www.prezzybox.com

via Gizmodo