Even though the economy may be struggling not to grind to a halt, the standards organization bodies that create those geeky acronyms that go over your head when shopping for a DVD player are at it again.  Up on the block today are two upgrades to loves of long past: HDMI and SATA.

HDMI, short for High-Definition Multimedia Interface, is the cable primarily used to connect to TVs these days.  Unlike TV cables of yore, the HDMI cable is digital instead of analog.  And not only is it for your high-def TV picture at 1080p ( 1920 × 1080) and surround-sound (up to 8 channels), but with the new reversion 1.4 just announced, it’ll do even more.

With HDMI 1.4 you get resolutions well past 1080p.  It will support up to 3840 x 2160 at 30Hz, and even 4096 x 2160 at 24Hz.  In that TVs do not offer past 1080p it is believed that this increase in resolution is not specifically for larger pictures, but for pictures in stereoscopic 3D.  Oooh.  Aaaah.

On top of this support for 3D TV HDMI 1.4 also comes with support for your network connection straight through the HDMI cable for all of those internet-enabled devices so that now you only need to use the one cable.  And added on to that is also support for bi-directional audio, presumably for supporting devices with built-in microphones.  And HDMI 1.4 also comes with support for sYCC601, AdobeYCC601, and Adobe RGB color spaces typically used by digital cameras.  Sounds an awful lot like people are expecting TVs to come with built-in webcams soon, eh?  Maybe when combined with VoIP your TV will become your video-phone in the blink of an eye.  Or is this to sneak into the in-car electronics systems market?  Only time will tell.

Also new to HDMI 1.4 is a change in the cable itself.  There’s a new Micro HDMI Connector that’s even smaller than the already small HDMI Mini Connector, because nothing is more entertaining than trying to juggle teeny little connectors on your digital cameras, cell phones, PDAs, Game Boys and the like.

Yay for HDMI 1.4.

Next up on the block is that beloved replacement for IDE/PATA: SATA.  Serial ATA, ATA itself short for Advanced Technology Attachment, making the whole long-hand name actually Serial Advanced Technology Attachment, if anyone cares, is basically what connects your hard drives to your computer with nice neat efficient little cables.  The older IDE interface, retroactively named PATA or Parallel ATA after the release of SATA, used all of those really wide ribbon cables, because each wire was a communication path that served a purpose and there were a lot of paths.  It worked great … for moving data.  It however didn’t work so well for moving air throughout your computer to keep it cool as those cables were quite wide.  In came SATA to save the day, with tiny cables that moved data at faster rates over far fewer lines, making for much thinner cables.

SATA started out simply just as a replacement for those clunky old PATA hard drive cables.  Then it began to support CD and DVD drives.  (Thank goodness, as those used the same clunky PATA cables that hard drives did.)  And then SATA started to really get fun with revision 2 including some Native Command Queuing (a feature similar to that in server-class SCSI hard drives that re-orders read and write requests to optimize their performance) and some improved power managemen to save electricity, not to mention the usual bandwidth increase.

Now SATA is announcing Revision 3.0.  Once again it comes with even more bandwidth, now 6 Gb/s.  Yay.  It also has some NCQ upgrades, including a new command that trips an isochronous mode, which basically means a forced data rate, typically used in video capture or streaming to ensure that no matter what, no data gets left behind.  And, of course, SATA Revision 3 also comes with, you guessed it, even better power management.

Also new to SATA Rev 3 are new cables that are even smaller, no doubt for the netbook and such devices that are considerably smaller and tighter spaces to work in than normal laptops.

It’s all not exactly stunning news or all that impressive, but it’s the kind of thing that is always needed as the world keeps moving forward.

So there you have it.  HDMI and SATA both get upgrades, adding the features and changing the connectors as needed to keep up in the modern world.  Enjoy.

So I finally bit on the lure and tried out that new streaming video TV/movie service, Hulu. The basics?  You can watch lots of TV and movies, for free, from your computer.

The concept isn’t exactly new.  However, Hulu does have a decent selection of random stuff.  If for some reason TV just isn’t doing it for you, maybe you can find something on Hulu.  Or if, like in my case, Comcast’s OnDemand for some strange reason doesn’t carry some pretty common channels that you’d think they would (like in my area, CW, Fox, ABC, etc.) and you missed a show (because networks compete just a little too much) then you possibly can catch up.

Hulu is free*, as in no fees, but forced commercial breaks.  I can live with that.

As quality goes, it’s not so good.  The default quality setting is, of course, crap.  Let’s face it.  You’re using a computer to access Hulu.  You’re going to see every pixel in horrible detail as your monitor’s resolution is a lot higher.  Hulu’s “Std-Res” is basically worse than watching standard definition TV on your computer.  It’s only 360p, which is just 360 vertical pixels.  (The NTSC standard used by analog televisions in North America has 525 vertical pixels.)  Worse than that however is the usual bad streaming that you get where movement is jerky at best.  The framerate that you’re getting is not equal to TV.

You can however change the setting to “Hi-Res”, which is actually a pretty big fib.  It’s not anything near TV’s HD, which is 720 or 1080 vertical pixels.  Hulu’s “Hi-Res” is only 480p, a mere 480 vertical pixels.  So Hulu’s “Hi-Res” is not high resolution at all.  It doesn’t even reach the quality level of digital TV’s standard-definition.  But it’s at least slightly better than their “standard” resolution of 360p.  In theory.  In practice however, Hulu’s other problem comes into play heavily: bad buffering.

Yeah, Hulu had enough trouble keeping your buffer filled on their low quality setting.  On occasion you get pauses or jerky play.  Kick it up to their higher quality setting and you’re just begging for trouble.  The servers aren’t serving fast enough and the software isn’t buffering enough when it has the chance to in order to fix the server lags.  It gets really nasty when you kick it up to “Hi-Res”*.  (Keeping in mind that it really isn’t a high resolution by anyone’s standards except Hulu’s.)

Still, it’s free.  What do you expect for free?

(And before anyone goes trying to say I just have a crappy internet connection, I’m on Comcast’s high speed cable internet.  I have all of the bandwidth in the world for this.  It’s not my end that’s being sluggish.  It’s most definitely Hulu’s servers.)

So on your computer, it’s an effort some times, but Hulu can be swallowed … if for some reason you really need to watch a missed show or something.

So the next obvious thing to try, of course, was get Hulu out of my computer room and into my living room where I have a large widescreen TV to watch shows on and a comfy couch to sit on.  I know that in theory the Playstation 3 has an internet browser.  And I’ve got to say, unless you’re a gluton for punishment, don’t even try it!  Really.  The PS3 and Hulu just do not mix.

So it goes like this:  You struggle to input the URL into the PS3’s address bar, fighting that stupid fake keyboard with your controller.  You get to Hulu.  And wait.  And wait.  And wait.  Apparently the PS3’s web browser basically won’t do anything at all while any little bit of a page is loading.  And Hulu loads a lot.

Worse, you’re trying to type in a search query, again fighting the stupid fake keyboard with your controller.  During your fight, Hulu switches their advertisement to something else.  The PS3’s browser actually clears what you’ve managed to type so far, forcing you to try all over again.  And so it becomes a game.  Can you type your search keywords in faster than Hulu changes something on the page?  It’s not easy with a controller running a fake keyboard.

But okay, so say you try to outsmart the bad design by browsing manually through channels and genres and such.  So sorry, but didn’t I already mention that the PS3’s web browser freezes up whenever there’s the slightest change in the web page?  Scrolling, apparently, makes new items visible, which requires more loading.  Somehow.  Which means just trying to see everything in the list brings everything to a lock-up for freaking ever while the PS3 jerks itself.  During that time, nothing works.  You can move the pointer around, but clicking doesn’t work, scrolling doesn’t work, etc.  You get the idea.

So after fighting this all for twenty minutes, you finally find something to watch.  The browser, by the way, has been stuck on the “Standard size” setting which is basically only using a standard definition TV’s amount of space.  Why?  I don’t know.  Apparently Sony couldn’t be bothered to determine which type of TV output you have and use space accordingly.  You know, like any other computer in the world would do, just use maximum use of the resolution it’s set to.  So you do this manually by switching the web browser’s mode to “Maximum size” by hitting the triangle button to bring up the settings, then go to View -> Maximum size so that you can take advantage of the fact that you have a widescreen TV.  You start your show.  You set Hulu to display the show “full screen” which should make the video take up the entire screen.  And I’ll be damned if the PS3 doesn’t take that “full screen” request as an opportunity to revert the browser back to a space-wasting TV’s fullscreen resolution size with black bars encapsulating your video.  Nerf!  And sure enough, once the “full screen” video is over and the web browser goes back to normal mode, it’s reverted right back to the “Standard size” view setting, making it quite clear that it didn’t stay on the “Maximum size” setting that you specifically set it to.

Basically there’s just no getting around it.  The Sony Playstation 3 has a crap-awful web browser.  It’s bad.  Really really bad.  And what’s worse, a lot of it’s badness is really brought out by trying to innocently use Hulu on your PS3.

Sony, you have a lot of work to do…

(And before you mention that it’s a problem that has been fixed, I just updated the PS3’s firmware this morning to the latest.  And I double-checked that I still have over 50GB of free space and have a good solid signal to my wireless router.)

But still, by themselves, Hulu isn’t all that bad.  It just needs higher resolutions and either better servers or better buffering.  And the PS3 is great for playing games, watching Blu-Ray and DVD movies, playing CDs, and such.

Just don’t try mixing them together.  Not until Sony works out a lot of kinks in the Playstation 3’s incredibly bad internet browser.  Just use Hulu on your computer.  It’s not ideal, but it’s better than the alternative.

Hopefully by now you’ve heard it and know all about it: the switch from analog television signals to digital signals.  February 17th was to be the day that the analog signal stands still.  But maybe it won’t be.

Because, as was obvious would happen, things aren’t going smoothly.

There’s talk of a new bill that would extend the date of the required switch over all the way out to June 12th.  And according to Nielsen, there are still in excess of 6.5 million American households not yet ready to go digital.

The real question is, why digital?  “Experts” will tell you that it’s because digital signals come in clearer and have better sound.  Which, theoretically, is at best only a half-lie.  The truth is that technically speaking, you get slightly more visual information in the analog signal as you do the lowest quality of digital, which is the only quality required to be broadcast.  Only when talking about the audio signal is the digital broadcast actually better.  In theory.

In practice however, this is really only true of the ideal cases, where the signal strength is strong and there are no interfering signals.  We all know that there are plenty of places in the world where this isn’t true.  In the “boon docks” signals get weak.  And in areas of heavy population, interfering signals occur all the time.  With an analog signal, when there are problems, you get “snow”.  The signal may not be perfect, but often it still manages to deliver quite a lot of information.  Where as, when a digital signal has problems, you get failures.  The screen may freeze.  The screen may go black.  The screen may just get a lot of bad transmission artifacts that make it all gobledy-gook.  The sound may just stop.  Or may have “pops” or “gaps”.  When things are less than ideal, analog is a lot more ideal than digital is.

So if the quality isn’t better, and things are much worse when Bad Things Happen, then why is the country being forced to broadcast in digital?

Money.

It’s really that simple.  Though no one will tell you that simple honest truth.

You see, an analog signal takes an awful lot of the radio spectrum to broadcast.  Where as a digital signal takes just a tiny blip of the spectrum by comparison.  So if you force a switch, all of the digital broadcasts can be made in a fraction of the radio wave spectrum reserved for TV.  What will happen to all of that unused spectrum?  Why, it’ll be sold of course.  Maybe it’ll be the next range for cell phones.  Maybe it’ll be used for satellite communication.  Maybe it’ll be a new wireless network standard.  Or most likely, it’ll be split up and sold for all sorts of things, each piece of it going to the highest bidder.

Now, is this necessarily bad?  Not really.  By now a lot of people really are using cable, sattelite, or some other digital means of getting their television already.  And as has been sold from on high since the first announcement of the switchover, if your TV doesn’t already have a digital tuner, a simple box will do the work for you.  (Though you’ll probably want a new antenna too while you’re at it.)  It’s only a one-time cost for a household to switch, and the government does offer coupons to reduce the cost.

But it’d be awfully nice if the government just told the truth.  The digital switch may bring you worse TV than better TV.  It’s not being done for the sake of quality.  It’s being done for money.  And they’re making both you the end consumer and the TV broadcast stations both pay so that they can sell off the unused airways.  If the government really wanted it to be about better TV then it wouldn’t be just a digital switchover, it would be a high definition switchover.  It isn’t.

The Tesla Roadster

Tesla Motors, makers of the fully electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster, may have had a cheer, a chuckle, and a groan when BBC’s Top Gear took a Tesla Roadster out for a spin.

It starts out quite well.  After a quick jibe at the Toyota Prius, Jeremy Clarkson moves on to the stunning all-electric car of wet dreams: the Tesla Roadster.  And it’s a mighty impressive bit of production editing with electrifying special effects.

The high point is when they go head-to-head between a Tesla Roadster and a Lotus Elise in a drag race.  The Tesla wins, no hands down.  It’s not even a competition.

The Tesla Roadster beats a Lotus Elise off the line.

This is exactly why electric motors make perfect sense in a sports or race car.  Their torque is unbeatable.

The Tesla Roadster's motor cranks up to over twelve thousand RPMs!

The rapid surge to over twelve and a half thousand RPMs makes Jeremy sing, “That’s Biblically quick! This car is electric! Literally.“  Which he later follows with a proclamation, “Not bad for a motor that’s the size of a watermelon, and only has one moving part.”

Unfortunately, that’s the upside of Top Gear’s review of the Tesla Roadster.  It’s not long before the downside begins.

The first complaint is that the batteries add so much weight to the otherwise ultra lightweight car that it affects the handling.  As Jeremy puts it, the Tesla Roadster is kind of like him, “Thin at one end, thinning at the other, and ends with a big fat bit in the middle.”

Unfortunately, the Tesla Roadster has a few handling problems.

This, however, begins to be mitigated by the tires, which Jeremy says are low rolling resistance (which at InsanIT.net means low traction) wheels.  And because of the combination of tires and batteries, on their test track the Lotus Elise is able to easily squeeze by the Tesla Roadster on the corners.  “However, come the next straight … Yes!  Come on!  Come on!  Go!  Bye!“  Jeremy, in the Roadster, slingshots right by the Elise with ease once again as he hits a good straight.

Jeremy in the Tesla Roadster waves goodbye to the Lotus Elise once he gets back onto a straight part of Top Gear's testing track.

But then, on a high note again, the next disappointment falls.  The claim of Tesla that the Roadster will go 200 miles between charges is quickly dashed as the Top Gear team only gets 55 miles out of theirs.  The Roadster comes to a stop and has to be pushed into the garage for a recharge.

The Top Gear team has to push their Tesla Roadster back in for a recharge after only 55 miles of driving.

The disappointment is further explained by Jeremy.  “Ok, to fill the tank on a normal car takes, what, a couple of minutes?  To fully recharge the batteries in this, from a normal thirteen amp socket like that, takes sixteen hours.”

Things only get worse from there as the Roadster proved to be more prototype than production quality.  Taking a second Tesla Roadster around the track some more quickly comes to a halt as the motor overheats, putting the car into a reduced power mode.  And while it cooled down Top Gear tried to go back to using their first Tesla Roadster … “Only to find that while it was being charged its brakes had broken.“  Oops.  Not so good for Tesla.  “So then, with the light fading, we had no cars at all.“  It was a dismal end to the Top Gear’s first day of Tesla Roadster testing.  Jeremy ends the day walking down an empty track, musing, “I did think that the Teslas would bring a bit of peace and quiet to our track with their electric motors.  I didn’t think it would be this much peace and quiet though.”

Jeremy is sad as Top Gear's TWO Tesla Roadsters both fail on testing day, leaving the track eerily silent at the end of the day.

“What we have here then is an astonishing technical achievement:  The first electric car that you might actually want to buy.  It’s just a shame that in the real world it doesn’t seem to work.”

Of course, being Top Gear, that’s not quite the end.  They still had to hand the car over to The Stig for a track time run.

Even The Stig slides a bit off the track because of Tesla's choice to use low rolling resistance tires.

The Stig finds out all too quicky just how bad the traction of low energy ties are as he bites into the grass through the first turn.  But being the professional that he is, once gauged, he pushes the Roadster quite well.  The Stig manages to get a track time of 1:27.2 in the Tesla Roadster, exactly the same time as a Porsche 911 GT3, and strangely enough, exactly on the same mildly moist track conditions.

And there it is, the Tesla Roadster completes Top Gear's test track in the exact same time (and conditions) of a Porsche 911 GT3 at a mere 1:27.2 seconds.

So there it is.  We knew that the Tesla Roadster was fast.  We knew that an electric motor could really tear up a track.  And Top Gear proved it.  But we also knew, all too well, just how expensive it was.  And, unfortunately, Tesla Motors still seems to have a few quality control issues to work out, at least if you’re going to push your Tesla Roadster in track conditions, as Top Gear found out in the worst of ways.

Some say that the all-electric car is dead.  That sentiment even gets thrown around at Top Gear.  But here, honestly, I think that’s just a load of back-minded hogwash.  With better battery technologies like NanoSafe, and better (higher amperage) recharging stations put into place (If hydrogen “gas stations” can get an infastructure built up from nothing, then why not high amp “recharging stations” from our already solid electrical infrastructure?) then there’s really no reason for the electric car to be dead.  At all.  In fact, frankly, across most of the world it makes more sense to use electricity than it does to use hydrogen, at least until we have a good means of producing hydrogen for every region.  The electric car only gets its bad name from the early attempts to push it before the technology was ready.  Where as the hydrogen car has no bad name yet simply because it practically doesn’t exist.

And still, the only difference between a hydrogen fuel cell car and a battery car is … the battery.  You either charge a battery by electricity, or you charge the battery by filling a fuel cell back up with hydrogen.  The motor is the same.  The transmission is the same.  Everything is the same, except which battery provides the electricity to power the car.  So most of the advances in one technology are likewise advances in the other.  They don’t have to compete.  Their technologies are almost completely shared.

Wow!  Yesterday’s PETA turkey massacre reminded me of an old episode of WKRP in Cincinnati.  To my amazement, I found a video clip from it uploaded onto Yahoo Video!  Isn’t technology great?  I just had to share this holiday classic!