Firefoxx

I'd guess that blu-ray discs would outsell hd-dvd discs here, mainly because it's so hard to find a reasonably priced HD-dvd player, and the PS3 does fairly well. I was at that shop (BTS DVD shop) just yesterday... didn't have time to actually peruse anything.

On a related note, 24" computer LCD screens with 1920x1200 resolution (great for HighDef viewing) have *finally* arrived in bulk. I saw some HP 24" monitors with HDMI ports (along with VGA and a USB hub) selling for around 16-17k at Fortune IT Mall. So far no other brand has imported monitors in this price range, even though Samsung has them selling in other countries for the same price (but not here). Same thing goes for Benq and Acer. They're all going to lose serious market share here if they don't get their acts together.

You forget to mention that it's proprietary, has no real developer support (yet), has no memory expansion, has very little memory, is slightly on the expensive side, yadda yadda yadda.

But it sells very well, like a lot of Apple products, since people like the style. It's *cool*. What Apple gets right is design, even though it doesn't use cutting edge tech.

Sorry, I don't have any suggestions right now, since there's nothing really on the market that catches my eye. Anything that's small and light tends to be stupidly expensive (UMPCs) or crippled (EEEPc).

They are available, but not easy to find. I've seen many sold in Chinatown, right across the street from the Klong Tohm Plaza. I've also seen Boomerang at the local mall have some, but I'm not sure whether it was blu-ray or HD-DVD.

2007 wasn't the year for HD-DVD or blu-ray. However, 2008 should see some proliferation of both movies and players, since they've come down to the $200 level. DVD also took a couple of years to become popular, same as CDs.

My friend actually got three (yes three) iPhones, but not from here, from the US, and they were much cheaper than what's selling at MBK right now ($399 vs 20k+). His first two were pre-1.1.2, so were pretty easy to unlock, and he's using them with Thai sims. The last one was a 1.1.2 firmware, so he's having problems cracking it. He might just order a ultra-sim (or whatever) to get it to work for $90. Would still be cheaper than MBK.

Although I do advocate shooting in RAW if you wan the most of your picture, I'd have to say that it's not the only reason to buy a dSLR. There are PLENTY of reasons to get a dSLR without having to care a bit about RAW. DSLRs are just superior in so many ways to other cameras, with the only drawbacks being bulk, weight and movie mode. Even price is not much of a consideration any more since they're selling in point and shoot pricing right now.

Most UMPCs are very expensive. They have a lot of the bells and whistles of a full laptop in a very small form factor. The EEEPC, while cool, lacks a lot of things, but because of that it's cheap.

Although Samsung sells a ton of electronics in Thailand, it's computer presence is nearly nil. You'll be hard pressed to find even Samsung laptops being sold here (although you *can* find them). Good luck finding the Q1U.

Bugs in a driver, I can live with, as they're common to every driver out there. What I don't like is them promising to deliver a feature that's extremely important (one that prompted many people to buy the 8500/8600 series) half a year ago and not deliver. Not only that, they're not giving any deadline for it, either. I'm thinking that it will probably just be put on hold until XP is killed sometime in the next few years.

I've read that most pros agree that for 35mm, digital is indeed higher resolution than film (and don't forget you'll need an EXPENSIVE scanner or service to get the most out of film). However, for medium format, it's another story, but medium format has *always* been another story. It's the realm of really rich amateurs or pros, since the equipment costs so much in retail (I'm not talking about the occasional ebay bargain) and isn't what you'd call user friendly. The market has never been that big, and so development has never been as rapid as 35mm. Prices and quality of the digital options are therefore not yet fully mature.

So, yes, use film for medium format. It's far from dead in that realm. To tell you the truth, I've yet to personally witness a person taking a picture in medium format. But DSLRs? Tons. P&S's? Too many to count.

Lightscribe is really pointless. You're paying a huge premium for discs which you can print only in shades of "I can't see it", and you need your burner to do the "printing".

Why not just buy printable discs (CD or DVD) and then use a compatible inkjet (most consumer inkjets will do this) to print near photo-quality labels? Only if you can't afford a real cheap inkjet. Printable discs cost nearly the same as normal discs.

I don't recommend using the stickers. They're hard to get on correctly, they increase the thickness of the disc, they can upset the balance, and they add an extra step to the process.

One thing: When buying printable discs, DON'T BUY PRINCO. The ink will run only a few days after printing.

Turok, I said this before and I'm saying it again: I'm against the *principle* of paying twice as much for a console when it's not worth that much, and I know I'm being hugely overcharged (and no, it's not for expenses, it's just because it's supply and demand). I'm not saying that others shouldn't, it's your decision to make, but I'm telling people how much it's actually *worth*. Look at the Xbox. You pay, what, a 20% premium for it over the US cost. Same goes for the PS3. Neither are officially retailed here, either, so why aren't they also twice as much? Because the shops know that they can't get away with it, and so they charge only what they can, and milk a huge profit from Wiis. Yes, they can be more easily found on shelves in the US, but if you know where to look, you can also find the Wii in the US for $250 (really).

Hey, you *don't* get it. Didn't I say in my reply that I'm waiting for my friend to buy it for me? What, no ticket? Of course not! And for the dozens of electronics stuff that I got from the US, not for ONE SINGLE TIME did I ever have to pay the air ticket just to buy the product. It's all been through friends or business trips. Tomorrow I'm picking up some camera equipment my friend bought for me... hmm, no ticket? If you actually read my threads, you'd know that I *don't* advocate getting products from the US unless they're MUCH cheaper than in Thailand, and that's the case for the Wii.

I'll willing to wait, since I'm not, and have NEVER EVER BEEN a console gamer (well, yeah, I owned a PS1 for 2 whole months). I'm a PC guy, through and through. The one and only reason I'm going to buy it is so that my friend's kids can play it (and they can wait, they're spoiled silly). I have a DS, but that's only because I travel a LOT and get bored during trips.

Look, Turok, just get off my case. Leave me be. I'm not trying to pick an argument with you, OK? Enjoy your Wii. You made the right decision for yourself, but others have a right to their own decision making process. Let's not drop down to the level of flinging inane insults at each other just to protect some shops.

Actually, what LCD TV you buy does affect the quality of what you see. Each is made differently and most importantly has different internal processing. One may have superior component input, another may have superior TV input. I can say that the quality of my UBC signal is way better on my Benq LCD TV than on my friend's Sony Bravia LCD TV, even though they're very close in size. The high end Philips TVs (the one with the fancy processing) are the best suited for many types of signals (unless you don't like the "look"), but they're also the most expensive.

If buying one LCD TV gives the same results as buying another, then we wouldn't really have any competition, and no reason for the more expensive models.

I don't really know if you should really put 1080i/p as insignificant. The content is not yet widely available in Thailand except for consoles and computers, but next year it certainly will be. UBC is supposedly planning it, and the availability of HD-DVD/blu-ray discs has increased significantly. Next year players should come down in price to a manageable level, too. Buying a TV without 1080i/p capability right now is being a bit shortsighted, and you will probably regret it.

Some more information:

The original DV format was not very compressed. The bitrate for DV is around 25mbits, at a resolution of 720x576 for PAL and 720x480 for NTSC.

The harddisk/DVD standard definition camcorders used a different codec, and halved the bitrate (at highest quality) to 12mbits for the same resolution.

*Some* of these camcorders have come a long way (years) and worked out a lot of the quality problems inherent to the format, and are almost comparable to DV.

HDV uses a codec similar to mpeg2 (and thus not fancy) and has the same bitrate as DV (25mbits), but at a higher resolution of 1440x1080 (not 1920x1080, it's stretched horizontally while viewing).

The harddisk/DVD/blu-ray high definition camcorders use a derivative of the blu-ray standard (AVCHD), but at a bitrate of 12mbits (at highest quality, 1920x1080). It has not come a long way, and the biggest problem is motion artifacts. The standard supports up to 24mbits, but that would really defeat the purpose of using it in the first place. The support in NLE video editing programs is also not good.

Blu-ray, which is 1920x1080, has a bitrate of 28mbits to 40mbits (it's variable, according to the complexity of the scene).

Consider that when you get a harddisk/dvd based camcorder, you're paying around 30-50% more than the tape cousins, yet getting less picture quality, in return for some convenience, and some restrictions (20 minutes recording time for DVD, non-removable storage for harddisk).

The Wiis go out of stock depending on availability. Usually it's just either the US or Japan Wii out of stock. However, it's not that often, since they're sold for twice the price they're really worth. If you go to MBK or Chinatown, you should find at least a few shops that still stock them. US modded Wiis cost around 16k baht (actual cost around 8.5k in the US).

Me, I'll wait until my friend can find one in the US for the actual retail price and get it modded. I don't like overpaying this much simply because of supply and demand.

For DV, you can re-use the tapes, but for HDV, it's not recommended. The reason is because HDV has a higher compression than DV (it's similar to Mpeg2 compression). For DV, when you have a dropout from a tape glitch, the corruption to what you see on the screen is only for a fraction of a second. For HDV, because of the use of higher compression (with i-frames and b-frames), the corruption lasts quite a bit longer and is quite noticeable. So far, I've gotten glitches, but it's been very, very rare. Tapes are cheap anyways (less than 100 baht) so I'm not caring much.

There are other tips for less chances of tape glitching, such as not using the first few minutes of a tape (record nothing). Also, you're supposed to stick with a single type/brand of tape, since there have been reports that using different brands can lead to more glitching.

Why don't harddisk camcorders do HDV? Probably because of the same reason that they don't do DV. I'm guessing that it's mostly marketing, but also because HDV/DV aren't suited for random-access media (they can't be edited/spliced on demand).

There are several shops on the 2nd or 3rd floor of Fortune (towards the hotel side, not Lotus side) which sell LPs and related equipment. You can probably find a turntable there.

You can get it at many of the bigger hardware shops, like PC Outlet or Hardware House. Price is usually the same from shop to shop, but I haven't checked how much it is right now.

Again folks: If they were blocking websites, you would see the usual statement of "this web is inappropriate yadda yadda yadda". If you're not seeing that, then it's just a bad configuration problem on either your side (unlikely) or their side (normal), which may or may not be fixed, since their engineers are incompetent. In other words, it's not censorship, just stupidity.

OlRedEyes: The standard for transferring from tape to PC is firewire (IEEE1394). Practically all video editing software supports this, including the movie maker included with windows.

nikster: High def hard disk/DVD camcorders use a *derivative* of blu-ray, AVCHD. It's not the same thing, as it uses much higher compression and much lower bitrates, leading to very noticeable motion artifacts. Hitachi has released the first mini-bluray disc camcorder, but all reports say it's a dud (very, very bad quality, worse than even the DVD-based ones).

The high-def camcorder that's considered the best is the tape-based Canon HV20. It has a progressive mode which is supposed to be superb. The format used is "HDV", which is a standard supported by most popular NLE software, and it can use normal DV tape (you don't need HDV tape, really, I use DV tape all the time... but you *shouldn't* re-use a tape). Only problem is I've yet to see one being sold in Thailand, even though Canon Thailand's website says that it's "new" (and thus they've started importing it... nearly a year after it's introduction).

Yes, you have to delete the footage. You can delete without dumping, or with dumping. Either way, you have to delete it to make room. With tape (or DVD) you just change the tape/disc (which you then store for future use). With a digital camera, at least you can swap out the SD when you're on a trip and far away from your computer (or shop). You don't have that luxury with hard disk camcorders. My point is that it's a permanent fixture.

I think that most people just aren't making the right distinction. Film is pretty much nearly dead... to the average consumer. Your average vacation photographer would have difficulty justifying buying a film camera vs a digicam these days. However, to a pro who knows how to use cameras and can appreciate the distinction, film still has a lot of life left.

To me, when I was beginning, I would have never appreciated several aspects of photography without a DSLR. With digital, I could have instant feedback on what settings produced what kind of picture, how I overexposed/underexposed, the depth of field possible, motion blur, perspective, etc. etc. etc, without having to wait to get to a lab and have prints (by then I would have forgotten what I did to get the picture), not to mention the fact that I didn't need to care about taking too many bad pics. It helped immensely in my learning experience. Of course, to a pro who already knows these things and has the years of experience to know how his photos will come out, it's not that important.

There are 13" ~1.8kg notebooks by Acer and HP that are around 23-25k. They use celerons, of course, but otherwise are full-fledged notebooks.

I think I'll wait for the next iteration of this. The screen is too small (the black bars to the sides are irritating) and the capacity could be better. For now, I'm going to get one of the aforementioned Acer/HP notebooks.

VLC player, like media player classic and zoom player, are *just* players. They will not play a format if the correct codec isn't installed. If it *is* installed (and configured properly), then these players will play the file. The normal media player (not classic) included with windows will also do this, but with a few caveats. If you want codecs, get one of the many codec packs (like K-lite).

First, be aware about the limitations of the various formats. The hard disk and DVD camcorders use higher compression and lower bitrates than the tape formats, and thus will always have lower quality. For the hard disk camcorder, you're limited to what comes with the camcorder, and have to delete footage to record more. If the drive fails, you lose all. For the DVD format, at best quality (which is worse than tape), you can only record 20 minutes per disc. I'm telling you these things because the sales people will only extol the many benefits of these formats, not their downfalls. Tape camcorders, although not as "convenient", are the cheapest of the lot, and use cheap media (less than 100 baht per tape), and have the best quality. The "instant play" ability of DVD camcorders to play the disc on DVD players is only good if you don't care about the short recording time and will never edit the footage.

That being said, if you're willing to pay for these formats, you might as well consider the HD (high def) camcorders. They have much higher resolution (they can record in the older standard resolution too), and the difference is very apparent. Of course they cost more, but really, it's worth it. However, the same limitations apply... tape is still best for high definition camcorders. Much more so in that the high def standard for hard drive and DVD camcorders is still not very widely supported in editing programs, and the kinks in video quality are still much more apparent (unlike standard def, which had time to mature a bit).

There is a simple plugin for Firefox called Fast Video Download which allows you to download videos from the popular places pretty easily. It's very simple to use.

Basically worthless. They're several generations old, and there probably isn't anyone still using or wanting them. The minimum size of a harddisk these days is around 80-120GB, so a 20GB harddisk is not going to get you much, if anything.

Troubleshoot? I don't really know if it's worth the hassle. You can get a much better system for very cheap.