Become More Efficient With USB 3.0
Today’s laptops and computers include at least one built-in USB 3.0 port. In comparison to its USB 2.0 predecessor, USB 3.0 offers some great advantages – particularly for photographers.
“What are some notable differences between USB 2.0 & 3.0?” Well, let’s look at some facts.
Workflow Speed:
USB 3.0 is capable of transferring data ten to twelve times faster at speeds up to 5 Gbit/s (625 MB/s), compared with USB 2.0 speeds of 0.48 Gbit/s (60MB/s).
Workflow Efficiency:
USB 3.0 can read and write data simultaneously, in comparison to 2.0 where data can only be directed one direction at a time.
Power Management:
USB 3.0 draws less power from your laptop or desktop computer, letting you work longer in the field without needing a recharge.
Equipment Sustainability:
USB 2.0 accessories are fully compatible and swappable with USB 3.0 ports, and vice versa.
Due to USB 3.0’s seamless backwards and forwards compatibility and ten time increase in speed capability, it has become the new standard for photographers who are in search of a smoother, faster workflow. Using a USB 3.0 memory card reader and computer, photographers are transferring two hours of HD 1080p video in 26 seconds, almost 10,000 images in less than a minute, and 2000 MP3 files in less than 13 seconds.
Bluetooth Speakers
I finally backed on something I liked on kickstarter last Christmas. Since I’m always in search of a good mini speaker(s) to lug around when I travel, I figured there’d be something in there that could improve the way we listen to audio coming from our smartphones apart from being attached to cords of headphones and such. Notice how I said audio and not just music? You see, music this days are primarily still mixed in stereo (and I say so coz music engineers rarely do Mono testing compatibility this days) and if your hardware only supports Mono, chances is that you’re only listening to the Left channel of the audio mix. I sure hope that’s not the case with the product we’re gonna be talking about here..
Hidden Radio & Bluetooth Speaker
I’ve been using Singapore-produced X-Mini Max II where ever I roam; to the beach, the park, in Bali, on the boat or just right in the living room with an iPad to listen to webcasts. But last Christmas, when I saw the design from John and Vitor… I thought it’s about time I try something untethered, and a pretty looking one to boot.
What John van Den Nieuwenhuizen said about their design made me want to try their speaker out.
“Radios and speakers are often large and obtrusive, we created the HiddenRadio + BT Speaker using simple, unassuming, intuitive design so it can be loved in any home.”
This is true.. The thing that never got emphasized though is that this radio is an FM based receiver. So I don’t know if it’d receive all stations when you bring it with you across different hemispheres. In Europe the stations are spaced at 9kHz intervals, and in the US they use 10kHz spacing. Most modern radios won’t let you tune between these spacings. Since there is no AM then no problem. Smartly enough, the unit uses simple 2-button Up/Down Scan function to lock on to any good FM transmission available. You’d have to guess what station you’re listening to as there’s no LCD indicator on the frequency you’re on.Thus the name is true, there is a ‘Hidden Radio’ built into the Bluetooth speaker. Something to add about the FM radio, you’d have to plug in an external FM antennae for better reception. Curious why they didn’t use the knob itself as a brushless antennae.
THE LOUDNESS WAR AND IT LOOKS METALLICA
The Bluetooth Speaker would crank audio up til just over 80dB . Pretty loud claim for something its size. There’s a video comparison on the audio quality compared against well known Jawbone speaker. But seeking deep into HRBS site, there’s no where in tech specs that they mention the speaker’s range for Frequency Response. Proprietary 360° sound diffuser.. that’s all that’s written under Audio Specs.
No buttons, just one giant knob to lift and turn. The higher you lift the cover, the louder it gets. That simple? Not so.. Two things..
ONE..
I’m curious how the mechanism is designed for this to work smoothly. They claim that it should be effortless to lift the lid without having to hold the base. There’s gotta be some sort of gummy rubber placed on the base to create friction from the base to spin as you turn the top cap. And if I’m right, then you’d need a little practise to actually do the twist-to-turn-on-and-raise-up-the-volume functionality. Eitherwise it’d be a grab and turn like what I saw on SlashGear’s video review. And notice how the lid is twitsted clockwise to lift? Its counter intuitive on how we always twist anti-clockwise to open a lid.
TWO..
Its a gimmick I think. If you don’t turn that knob all the way up, the sound is bound to be muffled. Looking at the picture again, you see that the speaker grills sit all around under the knob casing. You don’t adjust the volume of a speaker by blocking the face of the tweeter or cones do you? Even when you lower down the volume, that speaker cone needs to be free and unblocked to continue reproducing the full frequency range of audio that you’re listening to. So I’m curious how they’d overcome that issue based on their design. I believe you just have to keep it wide open to get the full range and adjust audio from the playback device. If this falls true, then there’s a huge design flaw against the aesthetic idea. Well even I fell for it!
With AirPlay enabled on the iOS device and paired via bluetooth, HiddenRadio will now appear as one of your external audio device. Switching speakers is effortless.
Built-in battery is claimed to give about 15hrs of play time. Which I hope is made easily replaceable when shelf-life is reached. I can’t even remember what their final decision was.. as to whether a wall plug would be delivered with the product or not.
Looking further into the design itself I think all is good except for two critical items..
ONE: They forgot to add in a microphone. Kinda defeat its purpose if you have to run back to the phone to speak and listen back via HRBS. It should work fine for Skype and FaceTime video chats fine as you’d have to be close to your phone for video framing anyhow, thus using the mic on mobile device is inevitable.
TWO. I wish they had a Call Answer or Call Reject button. Think about it. It’s almost a ‘speakerphone’ but you can’t talk into it or stop the phone from ringing when somebody dials in.
WHAT ABOUT QUALITY AUDIO
Alternatively, if you’re looking for quality speakers that offer wireless bluetooth functionality which focuses on sound quality as well as functionality apart from clean looks, checkout Soundmatters’ foxL v2.2 speakers. Claimed as worlds best bluetooth stereo speaker, which comes with a hands-free microphone that enables better speakerphone / conferencing. And with no surprise, foxL also comes with one-touch answer/reject/end-call button. Batteries lasts only about 8 hours it makes sense as you get full fidelity stereo sound. Shame I only learnt about Soundmatters’ foxL after pledging for HRBS! Aarrghh!!!
Shame that I cannot do any audio comparison of Foxl against the HRBS right now. But come the time, you bet that I will do back-to-back referencing on the audio spectrum from HRBS. I sure hope it stands to its competitors even if its not a stereo speaker.
We’re just days away before receiving our Hidden Radio and Bluetooth Speaker here in Holland.. and with the new announcement of iPhone5 yesterday, audio is triumphantly one of the most focussed enhancements in recent comm tech developments. High Fidelity audio is the way forward. Not just about being wireless. Not just about sitting pretty. For now, we wait, see and listen.
Clarke-Tech 5000HD-Combo + TechniSat Multytenne TWIN with 4 Satellites reception (Part 4 of 4)
After 2 months of using this setup, I have to say that I’m pretty content with it. But just like any other consumer we can never be content comparing to what’s available out there for best experience possible with a digital satellite setup. The quality out of the 2 units used side by side has been a great one.
There is nothing more to say about the Multytenne dish. Besides the easy assembly along with proper guidance as to which direction to point the dish to, its one of the best value-for-money dish today. Thus the weakest link (possible) in this setup is clearly the Satellite Box which is key for ultimate experience.
External Hard Drive recording:
I’ve attempted plugging in all kinds of external Hard Drive in the CT and as long as its formatted FAT16, it will be recognized and thus recordable via the available USB port. USB Sticks, Self-Powered USB 2 HS Hard Drive, Micro Drive all works with this. But the time it takes the hard drive to be recognize by the CT depends on the (initial buffer) size. Thus a 2GB stick will be more instantaneously recognizable instead of a 500GB Lacie HD like the one I use. But to overcome the delay, you simply need to initiate the drive earlier to prepare the drive for instantaneous recording. And then you’re sweet to go.
The inability to Record one channel and watch another simultaneously really is starting to bother me. How many times within the family has it happened that you want to watch football or Top Gear and the family comes around and asked for NCIS? OK I want to watch both if possible and here’s where the squeeze comes it. You can only watch one with the current CT.
There is however an option out there that enables the Recording of one program while watching the other. In fact you’d be able to watch both at once since today’s TV enables PIP viewing!! And I want this new box. How unsurprisingly, its made by TechniSat and was just released weeks after I bought my setup.
This will be the next acquisition I guess. While the CT can go up into the bedroom for a smaller HDTV that we plan to get to be mounted to the wall. It does all the CT does and even more with it’s built in 160-500GB option of internal HD along with an external USB connectivity. And of course the much yearned for Twin Tuner.
The only difference I see since its release is the placement of the USB slot. Some images has it placed in the back where as newer ones have it placed under the flip-open faceplate of the HD S2. I would highly recommend the one behind. Based on experience with the CT, its not a nice sight having cable sticking out from the front face plate. You want to possibly keep it well stream-lined and clean on your entertainment deck.
The only let down will be the asking price for this unit. At EU500 to EU600 depending on the internal storage size is quite another bullet to consider. Guess I will wait til there’s more of the same kind of box designed by other companies. But looking at the specs from the HD S2, I rally think there is nothing more to be improved unless if they start recording compressed video in H264 instead of the current ‘alien’ format in the storage. Imagine what you can do when its in a recognizable format. YOu can then transfer it to your iPod or burn it to CD or DVD in a format more transferable for other medium playback. Now THAT would be hot!
Clarke-Tech 5000HD-Combo + TechniSat Multytenne TWIN (Part 3 of 4)
The HDTV Satellite tuner
Face it. If you’re gonna place an HiDef SAT Receiver under your TV, it better look as good as your (probably) brand new HDTV. And I gotta say, right out of the box, I love the design of this Clarke-Tech. The buttons are well placed with no distracting dials. The CI Card slots are well covered behind a pull-down plate. The USB port is at the front for easy access. And heck, its slick shiny black!
If you’re a sci-fi fan you’d have known that Clarke Tech is the author of the 2001 Space Odissey.
A tribute to a great dreamer
It was during the late 40’s when writer C.Clarke (Author of 2001 Space Odissey) had imagined that, if a television transmitter could be placed at a certain distance from the earth, it was possible to cover with its signal an entire continent. To achieve this intent, those transmitter would have been placed on satellites orbiting at 36000Km from earth at equatorial line level. An ingenious system seen the fact that in this way the satellites would have followed exactly the earth rotation. The satellite, viewed from the earth would have appeared as a fixed point in the sky. With three of these satellites, Clarke thought it was possible to let the television signal cover the whole globe. The vast majority of the scientist back then was laughing at this proposal, defining it science fiction.
Many years needed to pass before the first radio/television comunication satellite was launched during the cold war at the end of the 50’s. The president of the United States of America Eisenhower was able to irradiate his Christmas whish speach to the whole world through the satellite Score.
The belt at 36000Km positioned right above the Equatorial line, where the satellites are orbiting has been nicknamed Clarke’s belt, in honor of the guy that first thought of making use of it.
It was the beginning of a new era….~ Quoted from ClarkeTech.com
Blue LED light indicating Standby Mod.
This option is can be turned off if you think its not your thing. But after a while using it, it served me as a quick indicator to let you know if the box is turned on or off.
Unlimited USB external Hard Drive recording enabled.
I tried this with my Lacie Porsche 500GB USB2.0 drive and it records without a problem. In fact if you’re format savvy, you could easily open the captured video and watch the recorded program in your laptop / computer. Sweet! By the way, the captured format is in MPEG4 which I will elaborate on.
Hi-Definition Multimedia Interface output.
Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) in MPEG-4 means you have Tomorrow’s Media Today.
MPEG-4 is designed to deliver DVD-quality video (MPEG-2) at lower data rates and smaller file sizes. And the same folks who created the popular .mp3 file format — a.k.a. MPEG-1 layer III — developed the new Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) codec, providing much more efficient compression than MP3 with a quality rivaling that of uncompressed CD audio. If you’re an Apple Quicktime fan, this is great news!
MPEG-4 is ready to stream incredible-quality audio and video today in QuickTime. With the free QuickTime Player or browser plug-in, you can play back any compliant MPEG-4 file.
STAB® Universal Satellite Automatic Location System
Digital Satellite Equipment Control 1 & 2 (DiSEqC1.2) for motorised enabled dish
I don’t use this option since I have TechniSat’s 4LNB auto align system on my dish. (See my previous input on TechniSat Multytenne.) But if you use a motor-controlled dish, you’re well prepared for an auto locating system.
Intergrated Card Reader and 2 additional Common Interface slots for various additional channels subscriptions. For the Dutch users, this box can be used to receive Digitenne TV channels if you slide in a KPN Digitenne card into the CI interface. This is possible since this system is DVB-S/S2 and DVB-T compliant. Yep you read that right. It has 2 tuners built in. The USB slot being behind the face plate do kinda bother me a little. If you plan to leave a USB Drive there permanently, there’s no other option but to leave the plate down thus ricking dust gathering on your CI module slots. Other than that, its good for easy access I guess.
CONTINUE TO PART 4 (FINAL VERDICT)
RASTASIA RENDERS 