Hold on to your Pentium M notebook
Bob Kiger on assignment at CES Las Vegas 2007
If there is one thing that this years Consumer Electronics Show presented it is that "smaller is better in just about every category except monitors . . . which occupy more vertical and horizontal real estate as time goes on". Some may want their entire digital affair to be conducted under a touch screen unit only slightly larger than a credit card. Hold the iPhone! We want to see our videography big time!
But is smaller or bigger better in a time of such flux? Today we are witnessing competition for our "earballs" at a faster rate than ever before in history. Vidiots will recognize this time as a Techno-Plateau that sucks money out of our accounts before we know what's going to standardize.
So slow down and use your old Pentium M notebook as a breadboard platform to create the recipe for the configuration that suits your needs. Why a Pentium M notebook? Because they are ubiquitous and cheap. The Pentium M chip is energy efficient and notebooks have a big enough display to evaluate all the new contenders in both software and hardware.
EDITORS UPDATE: Vidiots are usually ahead of their time so on August 31, 2007 we update to include future predictions on Notebooks 2008 from TechWeb.
Most Pentium M notebooks have all the gozintos and gazoutas that are needed to interconnect to other digital peripherals from printers to game boxes, to TV tuners and the cornucopia of software including VoiP like www.skype.com and webcams.
So what's are "gozintos & gazoutas". This is old engineering tech speak for inputs and outputs that allow the computer to become your personal experimental lab. Just this week we added three new videography systems to our trusty Gateway notebooks, which are described below.
These systems are:
Microsoft's new MediaPro cataloger & Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick - which led to THETUBE . . . a great over the air music video channel. Here we will only give a short reviews:
The Microsoft MediaPro catalog is a simple yet powerful and fast way to access and assert control over all your video assets (still & live action). The software was developed by iView and acquired by Microsoft. At this time, you can simply right click any asset > Open with whatever editor you choose. We hope that Microsoft will retain this classic approach and not bind the MediaPro to some proprietary Vista software.
We chose Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick off the shelf from an enormous selection of TV tuners at Fry's electronics. Even got a $30 mail in rebate which will bring the unit price to under $100!!! There were several other reasons for our choice. The letters HD in the name piqued our interest. True to it's name the PCTV HD tuner scanned digital, analog and internet radio channels off both our external antenna and it's own antenna, which is included. Cool! Pinnacle is a division of Avid, a long time professional editing name that we trust. The sound and picture quality of the new HD transmissions were very good, even though our old Pentium could not bring in the full HD resolution. The digital transmission from antenna is far superior to the same channels analog reception, so the HD feature is importants. It becomes even more so this spring when all stations are supposed to have their HD transmissions up and running. Over the air HD is free and easy to access with this little USB 2.0 device.
Perhaps our biggest thrill came when we started channel surfing HD channels and found THETUBE. Real old fashioned rock & roll music videos with high quality stereo sound 24/7. It's like MTV and VH1 used to be in the early 80s B4 "The Real World" took over. BTW: Vidaddy aka "Cruiser Bob" starred in the Maui episode of the "Real World" back in 1993 with the SF group. We had no idea then, that the show and it's clones would transplant music videos as the programming fodder of choice for the next generation.
A while back, Vidaddy chose two identical Gateway 450 ROGs to work through this years tech claims. Sound like dinosaurs? . . . well think again! These notebooks have edited feature length video for DVD and have handled every videographic assignment that we vidiots could imagine.
They have all the usual ports, like 2-USB 2.0 + firewire and a couple of PC Card slots and more. But the best feature. The real enabling detail is the Universal Drive Bay . . . the ability to hot swap DVD burners, large high speed notebook drives, floppy disks, CDs, extra batteries and many more peripherals into direct connection with the mother board. Check out the heap of accessories to the right of the notebook in the photo below.
If your Pentium M notebook has a Universal Drive Bay it can help you explore the vast majority of technologies while they price down and shake out in the year ahead. If you don't have one of these sweet old notebooks, don't hesitate to grab one. We anticipate 128GB NAND hard drives for HD capture this year. Best of all, most peripherals will immediately connect to your next generation notebook and so your investment maintains its value.
BTW our second Gateway 450 ROG is travels in a vintage 73 Ford CamperVan and is constantly on line via Cingular (AT&T:) with a Sierra Wireless Aircard and EDGE technology. If you want more now than go for a dual core processor. This review of ultra-compact PC platforms my provide a hand carry solution for travelers.
We vidiots will wait a little while for the dual-core generation notebooks to plateau. For now our plain old Pentium M will gets us where we want to go.
Update: August 28, 2007
See Videography Workflow 2007
If there is one thing that this years Consumer Electronics Show presented it is that "smaller is better in just about every category except monitors . . . which occupy more vertical and horizontal real estate as time goes on". Some may want their entire digital affair to be conducted under a touch screen unit only slightly larger than a credit card. Hold the iPhone! We want to see our videography big time!
But is smaller or bigger better in a time of such flux? Today we are witnessing competition for our "earballs" at a faster rate than ever before in history. Vidiots will recognize this time as a Techno-Plateau that sucks money out of our accounts before we know what's going to standardize.
So slow down and use your old Pentium M notebook as a breadboard platform to create the recipe for the configuration that suits your needs. Why a Pentium M notebook? Because they are ubiquitous and cheap. The Pentium M chip is energy efficient and notebooks have a big enough display to evaluate all the new contenders in both software and hardware.
EDITORS UPDATE: Vidiots are usually ahead of their time so on August 31, 2007 we update to include future predictions on Notebooks 2008 from TechWeb.
Most Pentium M notebooks have all the gozintos and gazoutas that are needed to interconnect to other digital peripherals from printers to game boxes, to TV tuners and the cornucopia of software including VoiP like www.skype.com and webcams.
So what's are "gozintos & gazoutas". This is old engineering tech speak for inputs and outputs that allow the computer to become your personal experimental lab. Just this week we added three new videography systems to our trusty Gateway notebooks, which are described below.
These systems are:
Microsoft's new MediaPro cataloger & Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick - which led to THETUBE . . . a great over the air music video channel. Here we will only give a short reviews:
The Microsoft MediaPro catalog is a simple yet powerful and fast way to access and assert control over all your video assets (still & live action). The software was developed by iView and acquired by Microsoft. At this time, you can simply right click any asset > Open with whatever editor you choose. We hope that Microsoft will retain this classic approach and not bind the MediaPro to some proprietary Vista software.
We chose Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick off the shelf from an enormous selection of TV tuners at Fry's electronics. Even got a $30 mail in rebate which will bring the unit price to under $100!!! There were several other reasons for our choice. The letters HD in the name piqued our interest. True to it's name the PCTV HD tuner scanned digital, analog and internet radio channels off both our external antenna and it's own antenna, which is included. Cool! Pinnacle is a division of Avid, a long time professional editing name that we trust. The sound and picture quality of the new HD transmissions were very good, even though our old Pentium could not bring in the full HD resolution. The digital transmission from antenna is far superior to the same channels analog reception, so the HD feature is importants. It becomes even more so this spring when all stations are supposed to have their HD transmissions up and running. Over the air HD is free and easy to access with this little USB 2.0 device.
Perhaps our biggest thrill came when we started channel surfing HD channels and found THETUBE. Real old fashioned rock & roll music videos with high quality stereo sound 24/7. It's like MTV and VH1 used to be in the early 80s B4 "The Real World" took over. BTW: Vidaddy aka "Cruiser Bob" starred in the Maui episode of the "Real World" back in 1993 with the SF group. We had no idea then, that the show and it's clones would transplant music videos as the programming fodder of choice for the next generation.
A while back, Vidaddy chose two identical Gateway 450 ROGs to work through this years tech claims. Sound like dinosaurs? . . . well think again! These notebooks have edited feature length video for DVD and have handled every videographic assignment that we vidiots could imagine.
They have all the usual ports, like 2-USB 2.0 + firewire and a couple of PC Card slots and more. But the best feature. The real enabling detail is the Universal Drive Bay . . . the ability to hot swap DVD burners, large high speed notebook drives, floppy disks, CDs, extra batteries and many more peripherals into direct connection with the mother board. Check out the heap of accessories to the right of the notebook in the photo below.
If your Pentium M notebook has a Universal Drive Bay it can help you explore the vast majority of technologies while they price down and shake out in the year ahead. If you don't have one of these sweet old notebooks, don't hesitate to grab one. We anticipate 128GB NAND hard drives for HD capture this year. Best of all, most peripherals will immediately connect to your next generation notebook and so your investment maintains its value.BTW our second Gateway 450 ROG is travels in a vintage 73 Ford CamperVan and is constantly on line via Cingular (AT&T:) with a Sierra Wireless Aircard and EDGE technology. If you want more now than go for a dual core processor. This review of ultra-compact PC platforms my provide a hand carry solution for travelers.
We vidiots will wait a little while for the dual-core generation notebooks to plateau. For now our plain old Pentium M will gets us where we want to go.
Update: August 28, 2007
See Videography Workflow 2007
Labels: workstation breadboard for future platform exploration HDTV tuner Microsoft iView catalog THETUBE
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