I decided it was time to upgrade my older television set and get a brand new one. I was looking around for a 32” Inch HDTV at Best Buy, but to my surprise I seen a 40” inch HDTV. It was by no means a brand name TV. Having already owned a Norcent 2200 I was no stranger to owning no name brand electronics. I read all the reviews and it has an amazing positive rating. Tons of good feedback. But one thing stood out to me from the few negative. People were complaining about some sort of annoying humming sound that emanates from the TV even when it was off. This sounded a little scary to me and probably would make others not want to buy it. But for $499.99 you cant go wrong (or can you?). I decided to take a chance. I went to actually see the Proscan TV at my nearest Best buy location, but Best buy for some reason does not display it. Maybe because they don’t wish to take sales away from their big ticket items such as Sony and Panasonic. Especially when people see that there isn’t very much in difference between this TV and more expensive ones. I instead pulled the trigger and bought it with in store pick up because shipping would have killed the deal. My brother and I went to go pick it up. When we got it home we immediately set it up. The first thing I did was hooked it up to my Xbox 360 and was blown away. For this price who could turn down this deal. If you have the money I say go for it if you dont mind having a Non name brand TV in your house. I for one have yet to experience any humming or buzzing sounds coming from the TV.
Cons.
1. No Swivel or Pivoting stand.
2. Red power light might be distracting if you have this as a bedroom TV.
3. Sound seems lower when using HDMI most likely because HDMI should be used in a surround sound setting and not with the small built in speakers.
Pros.
1. Inexpensive
2. 40” HDTV with 1080p output
3. Comes prepared out of the box (Even for wall mounting)
Built in digital tuner.
Overall this is a great tv for the buck. It’s price is perfect and does everything the more expensive brands do.
Update:
The 499.99 price is no longer. But 579.99 is still not a bad deal for those looking for a cheap HDTV that can do what the big boys can. But if your smart you will book mark this page because when the holidays come around you know this will be significantly cheaper.
1. The ability to hear messages from the phone and not speaker phone or headphones. Just for privacy concerns.
2. The ability to record greetings directly from the phone. If you don’t have access to a computer and you want to change or add a greeting, it would be a nice feature to have.
3. Pictures of your contacts. Either from your phone or if you could upload them to the site.
4. Ditch-Mail access (Toggle on or off). If you do not want to talk to someone you can send them directly to “ditchmail” from the phone. This would be awesome.
5. Push Notification (To let you know when you got a new message). You could easily enable sms notifications. However if you don’t wish to use your own text message account limit, push would be the ideal method.
The Youmail service Youmail link for those who do not know what it is, is a voicemail alternative for your cell phone or possibly your home phone. They provide rich features like customizable voice greetings for each of your contacts. It is a really cool service. They recently added an app to the iPhone app store. Soon as I received their email announcing it’s release I jumped on and downloaded it. Well…….. It works. But it’s lackluster on purpose. This is because its features and services are too similar to AT&T visual voicemail. Therefore when you get a voicemail no photo of the person will show. In addition to this when you play a voicemail it’s forced to play in speaker phone. What developer would do such a thing, haven’t they heard of privacy before. You can solve this by grabing some headphones but if you don’t have a pair with you expect your messages to be played aloud.
This is a major concern, if Youmail is to be taken seriously they need to address these matters soon. Also Apple needs to release the stranglehold on developers to create rich content for everyone to enjoy.
Parsing through the app store recently I went looking for good reliable VOIP/SIP applications. I have found my fair share of applications which allow you to use voip for making phone calls over wifi. But whether or not these applications were any good was questionable. Fring and icall to name a few are sort of good. But I had to turn outside of the app store to find something that truly satisfied me. Cydia has an application (not approved by apple) called siphon, probably a play on the words SIP and Phone. This app does everything you would want it to do with a few minor bugs.
Did you know that you can use your computer monitor as an HDTV saving you some money on getting a brand new HDTV. If you purchased a monitor which has DVI or HDMI inputs it is possible that you can use this as an HDTV because it is capable of receiving HD input signals. If your monitor was like my monitor it will require a little more muscle to get you up and running. Because my monitor used DVI I needed to get a DVI to HDMI converter cable which converts the connectors. I am pretty sure most TV cable companies do not have boxes which have DVI connectors on them so there was no avoiding this step. I checked staples first and could not find the cable I needed. I then checked best buy and found it but it was waaaaay too much money. They ranged anywhere from $60.00 to $99.99 dollars. So I ended up having to look for it online. I checked a few places. A friend referred me to a site called www.monoprice.com. They had what I wanted but still a little bit more than I was willing to pay. So finally I checked eBay and there it was for $9.01 with free shipping so I ordered one. Once I got the item in the mail It was as simple as plug and play. The only adjustment you would have to make is where your sound is going to come from since most monitor do not come with speakers you will need to get external speakers. If you have some cheap satellite speakers laying around you will need yet another converter cable. This time you will need to find a 1/8th” Stereo to RCA cable, radio shack RadioShack Linky has plenty of these. (more…)
As you have may have undoubtedly noticed there are tons of unboxing videos on the net. let me add to the list. Here is a video which i haven’t had much time to upload this is actually quite old. I was suppose talk about how great it is and describe all the specs on it. But I will make another video at a later time showing cooler stuff then just talking about a laptop. The good thing about these videos is that with a laptop like this which you cannot see in a regular store you can kinda get the feel of what it would be like to hold it in your hands. I virtual tour if you will, or maybe it just someone showing off how they got one before you could. This isn’t a full review its more like a mini one. This is just in case you might have been in the market for one and wanted to see how it looks before you pulled the trigger and purchased it.
My friend and I decided to meet up on the day after he purchased his iphone 3g. We thought it would be a nice idea to make a little comparison video, showing the new iphone 3g compared to the old one. What you cant tell in the video is the yellowish hue that everyone noticed in the 3G model. He actually purchased his phone on launch day but Ive been a little busy to upload the videos. Still good to see if you are looking to get your self the new one if your shopping around.
What you will notice off the bat is that the new iphone is significantly lighter in weight. Its suppose to be bigger but you really wont notice that there is any difference unless you pull out a ruler and begin to measure. The screen definitely is yellower then the cooler blue first generation phone. That isn’t a problem at all, besides they say they will correct the color balance in a future update.
Well here I am on my iPhone writing my first post using the wordpress application. I must say this application rocks for the blogger on the go. If you have something you need to blog about and it just can’t wait, now you have a useful tool to get your post out the door faster. Often times I have forgotten to write a post because I might be too busy or a good idea just slipped my mind. Now I can just make a quick post with no hesitation at all. Plus I get to practice my iPhone typing speed, which isn’t that bad by the way. It’s available on the app store right now as a free download you should to get it now if you have an iPhone and a wordpress blog.
If you have been looking for a new instant messenger for the iphone then look no further then Agile Messenger. It is a new native chat program for the iphone. From looking at it you would think it was from the app store. But it is actually from and for the homebrew community. You can use this application if you have a jailbroken iphone. This thing is feature rich compared to some of the other crap we have been given. If you tried other web apps or the dreaded Apollo for the iphone this would be a refreshing change. Actually anything would be better then Apollo but im digressing from the point here. What I am saying is for you to give it a shot install it and i promise you this, you will not uninstall this. Unless something better comes around. But for free I honestly don’t think anything will.
When you launch the messenger you will be asked to enter your log on information for your various chat protocols. Once you set up you can change preferences like auto log on and your messenger status. If you have a stalker change your status to invisible and no one can see if your online until you message them. You can make a custom away message also if you would like to say something more personal. It also has a history logging function for when you like to bring up what people say back in their faces (not that i do that). How to access the entire chat I’m sure you would need to ftp into your iphone to actually grab the whole conversation. I’ll test that and report back on how to do that if you don’t already know how. But you can see from within the program some of the more recent chats you have had. Another feature that totally took me by surprise was that you can utilize the iphones camera to send pictures to the person your talking to. How cool is that. When you minimize the program to the iphone home screen you can see how many unread messages you have like how SMS app does. But stop delaying and go download it now from their home page here, or if you have installer.app already on your iphone do it that way and check the repositories.
Some details from their page. Agile Messenger is the worlds most feature rich and user friendly all-in-one MSN®, AIM®, Yahoo!®, ICQ® & GoogleTalk® instant messaging client for your iPhone!
Send instant text and picture messages to anyone on your MSN®, AIM®, Yahoo!®, ICQ® & GoogleTalk® contact list directly from your iPhone!
Save money on SMS: Agile Messenger sends all messages through your data-plan, there is no per message charge!
UPDATE
This application is actually official and can be downloaded from the app store for 9.99. I was wondering why I couldnt find it anymore in cydia thats because they moved on from the homebrew realm.
Its back again and better then ever if you loved shooting these strange looking aliens then you will still love shooting them now. Back in the day all the aliens would do was stay in a line and when you were about to shoot the last few they would get very quick. Well now they do not stay in a straight line waiting to be shot at they move around. They have become smarter and harder to kill. Some of them make kamikaze moves to take you out faster. I know it sounds like they made them too smart and in tern made a fun game frustrating. Well its the opposite, its difficultly is what makes this game fun. Don’t worry now you get all sorts of new moves and power ups to combat the aliens such as bombs, lasers, spreadgun, and shields. Not like how the shields used to be a barrier to hide behind the shields now forms over you not slowing down the action. Now I am going to have to eat my words I stated that the DS version would not be as good as the PSP. Well it just might be better it all depends on what type of gamer you are. If you would rather have a prettier looking more polished version get the psp one. If you don’t mind it not looking as good and would rather have more gameplay modes and multiplayer modes then get the ds version. There is also a bit of strategy involved you can hold on to a power up by holding the right trigger giving you more time to use it on the next swarm. So what is my final verdict you should pick this up with no questions asked its fun and tell a friend to pick one up also. But the DS has game sharing so they can play you with out it, but they will want their own. (more…)
