Wireless all- In-One for Dummies- P15 pot

Understanding Content Sources Assuming you actually want to use your HDTV to view shows, you need a content source.. Book VII Chapter 5Premium services: Satellite and cable Satellite and

Book VII Chapter 5

Wide-screen movies will show letterboxing at the top and bottom, rather

than the left and right sides Just briefly, this is what you’d see with the two

most common wide-screen movie aspect ratios, 1.85: 1 and 2.35:1, shown in

Figures 5-3 and 5-4

Again, most current HDTVs try to scale the image to use the entire screen,

with some distortion Again, whether you do that or not entirely depends on

how you value image quality

That’s resolution, interlacing, and aspect ratios in a nutshell There are many more considerations when buying an HDTV Mostly, though, take along some content (DVDs or Blu-ray movies) with you when buying an HDTV or at least insist on watching some content that you tend to view often Then choose

the TV based on what you see on the screen.

Shopping for an HDTV

Now that you have an understanding of several key technical terms, let’s go shopping!

Consider the following items when shopping for an HDTV:

✦ Budget: How much money are you willing to spend? Your budget

deter-mines what feature set you can afford and also affects the ultimate screen size of the HDTV you purchase

✦ Physical size: Have a huge living room and a small budget? Maybe a

large format, DLP rear projection TV would work On the other hand, if you have tight space constraints, perhaps because you have a particular piece of furniture that will house the HDTV, then that will dictate the maximum size of the unit

✦ Content Source: What’s the source of the HD content? If you want to use

an over-the-air antenna exclusively, you’ll need an HDTV with a built-in tuner or you’ll have to make sure that an external tuner is part of the package If you plan on watching exclusively through cable, then you may not need a built-in tuner

✦ Connections: Finally, if all you want to connect is a cable or satellite

box, you may not need many inputs Similarly, if you’re connecting multiple devices through an A/V receiver, one input on the HDTV will suffice But if you want to have many devices connected directly to the HDTV, then you want to have multiple inputs — as many as you have devices to connect

Prices of HDTVs have dropped considerably in the past several years, and it’s not uncommon to find a 50-inch LCD for around $1,000 and a 50-inch plasma at nearly the same price — and those are the prices for 1080p Above about 55 inches, prices increase much more rapidly, due to manufacturing constraints Again, determine your budget and space constraints before going shopping

Shopping for an HDTV

Book VII Chapter 5

As I noted earlier, make sure to watch some content on the HDTVs you’re

seriously considering buying Even good quality HDTVs may handle color,

brightness, and contrast a little differently, so personal preference often

has a strong impact on what you buy Note also that most HDTVs in

show-rooms typically have their controls set to be very bright, with very saturated

colors, so that the images “pop” on the showroom floor

One final word about buying: you should also make sure to buy your HDTV

from a store with a solid return and exchange policy, in case the unit you

buy simply won’t work in your viewing environment

Understanding Content Sources

Assuming you actually want to use your HDTV to view shows, you need a

content source The three primary sources of HDTV programming are

over-the-air (OTA), cable TV, and satellite TV A fourth source, streaming video

from the Internet, is in its infancy but is rapidly becoming a popular

alterna-tive Take a look at the options in the following sections

Receiving TV over the air

Getting your programming over the air, using an antenna, has one key

ben-efit: it’s free Depending on your location, you may have access to few or

many channels of digital programming Large urban areas can have access to

30 or more digital TV channels

I’m assuming your entire setup is fairly current

Whether your cable company is supplying you

with a cable box or you’re using a home theater

A/V receiver, the best way to connect your HDTV

today is HDMI (high-definition multimedia

inter-face) HDMI carries both audio and video signals,

so you only need one cable connecting a single

source to the HDTV It’s far more convenient than component video cables with separate digital audio cables, for example Plus, HDMI can carry all the newer high-definition audio standards, such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio

A word about HDMI

Understanding Content Sources

All you need for OTA reception is a tuner and an antenna Typically, you can buy a good antenna from the same source where you bought your HDTV Note that some antennas are directional, while others can gather signals in all directions (omnidirectional.) Make sure to consult your dealer for the type of antenna best for your local area

A good source of information on antennas and ways to help maximize your HDTV over the air reception is antennaweb.org, a Web site cosponsored by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB)

If you’re lucky, you may only need an indoor antenna Could the days of the rabbit ears be returning?

Even if you have cable or satellite TV, you may still want to have OTA tion The reason is that over-the-air broadcasts actually offer better image quality, since satellite and cable providers often use heavy compression on their HD signals, reducing image quality So if you have a choice of receiving

recep-a precep-articulrecep-ar show through recep-an OTA source, for from crecep-able/srecep-atellite, get it from the local broadcast

You also need an over-the-air tuner OTA tuners are built into most modern HDTVs, but they’re also often included in satellite or cable TV set-top boxes.There is one difference between getting digital TV over the air and the old analog broadcasts With DTV, you either get a picture or you don’t There’s

no fuzzy image because of poor reception Poor reception means no picture

at all, with DTV

Until recently, you could buy an HDTV without

a built-in, over-the-air tuner These were really

just large monitors, not true TVs, and were

often labeled “HDTV ready.” You had to add

your own content source Most HDTVs today

ship with an included OTA tuner, but you may

still stumble across the occasional model that lacks a tuner Be aware of what you’re buying, since you need some source of HDTV content

if you want to actually watch anything on your shiny new display

HDTV versus HDTV ready

Understanding Content Sources

Book VII Chapter 5

Premium services: Satellite and cable

Satellite and cable TV providers are pay services, usually requiring a

monthly subscription fee If you want to add HDTV and premium channels

(such as HBO or Showtime), you may need to pay additional monthly fees

The advantage of premium services is the lack of commercial interruption

Note that cable and satellite often offer similar mixes of HDTV programming,

though there is some exclusive content on the different providers

Receiving HDTV via satellite TV

Both local and cable channels broadcasting in HDTV are available from

two satellite TV service providers, DirectTV and Dish Network For an

addi-tional fee, you subscribe to local stations, receiving them via your satellite

provider rather than over the air However, the satellite set-top boxes also

include OTA tuners, so you can hook up an antenna to them to get OTA

HDTV from a single source

Along with cable TV providers, satellite TV services are offering a package

of HDTV content that goes beyond these local stations They include new

channels, such as ESPN HD, Discovery HD, HDnet (movies), HBO HD, and

Showtime HD

You usually need to purchase or rent a new set-top box that receives HDTV

con-tent This investment is on top of the one you make for the high-definition TV

One popular option is the DVR (digital video recorder), which enables you to

time-shift your viewing A DVR contains a large capacity hard drive that stores

shows for later viewing, much like people did in the analog era with VCRs

Receiving HDTV over cable TV

Receiving HDTV programming over cable TV is similar to getting it from a

satellite TV provider In some cases, you could have trouble receiving all of

the local HDTV channels directly on cable, if the local cable provider hasn’t

signed contracts with local TV stations to offer local content However, you

can still get those local channels through an OTA tuner

As with satellite TV, local cable providers often offer DVR capability if you want

to record shows for later viewing A few cable companies are experimenting

with virtual DVRs A virtual DVR doesn’t actually store the show in a local set-to

box, but flags it back at the cable provider’s server farm for later viewing

Understanding Content Sources

404 Understanding Content Sources

Some HDTV TV sets offer CableCard slots With one of these cards, you can bypass the set-top box and plug the coaxial cable into your TV You insert a card into a CableCard slot, which carries information about the services you are allowed to view, as well as any limitations on the programming you can record

TV over the Internet

A generation of new streaming video services, some free, some fee based, is emerging Free services like Hulu (www.hulu.com) are gaining in popular-ity Like broadcast television, the Hulu service uses commercials to pay for the programming, though the commercial interruptions are typically briefer than broadcast television

Companies such as Amazon and Netflix also offer streaming services Amazon’s streaming service is pay-per-view Netflix, on the other hand, offers their Netflix Watch Instantly service free to any current Netflix sub-scriber who has more than the most basic subscription

Image quality ranges from poor, if you have a slow, unreliable Internet nection, to high definition, if you have a high-speed broadband connection However, not all shows or movies are available from any single service.Getting streaming Internet services to your TV is something of a challenge You can use your Wi-Fi network to deliver content streamed to your PC to the TV Some services, like Netflix’s Watch Instantly service, are available in

con-a stcon-andcon-alone set-top box which connects directly to your TV, or on the Xbox

360 game console

A new standard for connecting HDTVs to

cable TV, known as CableCard, emerged

sev-eral years back, but it wasn’t widely adopted

CableCard theoretically allowed TV producers

to embed a digital cable tuner in the HDTV itself

that was independent of the cable provider

Once the TV was installed, you would call your

local cable provider who would supply you

with the proper CableCard for your area The

problem was that the first CableCard standard

was one way, which meant that interactive

services like video on demand still required a telephone connection CableCard 2.0 attempts

to address this key issue, but future adoption remains in doubt For the moment, the better option is to buy an HDTV without a built-in digi-tal cable tuner and go with the set-top box sup-plied by the local cable provider If you want

to use TiVO HD, though, you’ll need to get two CableCards from your local provider, one for each of the cable tuners built into a TiVO high-definition DVR

To CableCard or not?

Book VII Chapter 5

The Xbox 360 itself offers downloadable TV shows and movies for a fee

Similarly, Apple TV uses Apple’s own iTunes service to deliver video and

music to your HDTV from the Apple TV box itself

Emerging classes of HDTV and accessory products now have some of these

services built into the unit itself For example, some HDTV and Blu-ray

play-ers have Ethernet connections and can connect directly to the Internet,

offering services like Watch Instantly directly on your TV — no PC needed

Heavenly Radio

The era of driving in your car and listening to crackling and hissing radio

sta-tions interfering with each other is almost gone The new era of digital radio,

whether from satellite services like Sirius XM or the emerging generation of

HD radio stations, will forever change the way we listen to radio

Satellite radio

If you’re looking for all the possible radio programming you could ever want,

you need look no farther than Sirius XM, which provides satellite radio

ser-vice nationwide Most newer cars and many aftermarket automobile radio

receivers offer Sirius XM Of course, you do have to pay a monthly

subscrip-tion fee of $12.95 per month The service does offer a lifetime membership

for around $500, but you can only switch receivers three times during that

“lifetime.”

HD radio

Digital radio is quietly, but rapidly, supplanting traditional AM/FM radio It’s

quiet, because digital radio coexists alongside AM/FM, but you do need new

hardware to receive the HD radio signals Many newer cars and home audio

receivers now have HD radio tuners built in The audio quality of HD radio is

substantially better than typical AM/FM radio and nearly as good as satellite

radio

406 Book VII: Wireless Home Technology

Chapter 6: Exploring the Kindle

In This Chapter

✓ Understanding eBooks

✓ Reading on the Kindle 2

✓ Reading blogs, newspapers, and more

✓ Reading eBooks for free

Imagine being able to carry dozens of books around with you, without the

weight and bulk of actual books Now imagine you can buy those books anywhere, anytime, and have them delivered nearly instantaneously, what-ever your location

That’s the promise of Amazon’s Kindle I get into more detail about what an eBook is, but for the moment, think of it as a thin, portable device for stor-ing and reading anything that can be converted into electronic text The Kindle revolutionized eBooks by adding the capability to buy books and have them automatically transferred wirelessly to the Kindle

I explain how eBooks work in this chapter

Understanding eBooks

When people first look at eBook readers and compare their prices to other devices, like Netbooks (small, Internet-connected laptops), the initial reac-tion is negative After all, the second-generation Kindle 2 costs $299, the same price as many Netbooks If you want the larger-screen Kindle DX, that costs a hefty $489

Electronic book readers are built around a technology known as e-paper, or electronic ink These are unlike the LCD displays in laptops in several ways:

✦ The image requires no refresh, which means the text or image is stant (no flickering) That makes it easier on the eyes and uses much less power than LCD displays

con-✦ The surface of e-paper is reflective, rather than requiring a backlight (as a standard LCD) or emitting its own light (as with OLEDs)

✦ Current e-paper implementations are monochrome or shades of gray only, though color versions are working in research laboratories

The extraordinarily low power draw, coupled with the reduced eyestrain relative to LCD displays, makes eBook readers compelling for actually read-ing I’ve read very long books on the Kindle for hours at a time, with almost none of the eye fatigue associated with extended computer use

A variety of eBook readers exist, from companies like Sony, iRex, Samsung, and others Amazon launched the original Kindle in 2007 The Kindle offered

a 6-inch screen and four shades of gray The Kindle’s key innovation was its built-in Whispernet capability, which uses Verizon’s CDMA cell network to wirelessly transmit books bought on the Amazon.com store to the Kindle.The Kindle was followed up with the notably thinner and slightly lighter Kindle 2 The Kindle 2 offers longer battery life, 16 shades of gray, and faster page turning Like the original Kindle, it has a small keyboard and a 6-inch screen The Kindle 2 also has built-in text-to-speech capability and an audio output jack, which can be used for headphones or speakers So you can enjoy having books read to you, even if you’re in the dark, or want to listen while driving

Amazon also offers the Kindle DX, a larger, heavier version with a 9.4-inch display Almost twice as heavy, at 18.9 ounces, and more expensive than the Kindle 2, the DX is targeted at students and others requiring more robust graphics support and native support for PDF files (the Kindle and Kindle 2

do not natively support PDF)

The Kindles uses a proprietary file format which includes DRM (digital rights management) capability to protect authors from having their works illegally distributed The format is actually based on the open Mobipocket standard The Kindle readers can also natively read Mobipocket formatted files Many free eBooks are available as Mobipocket files

Now that we understand a bit more about the various Kindles, keep reading

to find out how to use them

Reading on the Kindle 2

The Kindle 2 (Figure 6-1) is a compact device weighing just a shade over

10 ounces The 6-inch screen seems small at first, but it’s easy to read, and page turning is fairly quick

Reading on the Kindle 2

Book VII Chapter 6

The power switch on the Kindle 2 has two purposes If you quickly flick it,

the Kindle 2 is put into a very low power sleep mode The sleep mode still

uses a little power, but the Kindle 2 can still remain in suspended animation

for weeks without a recharge — provided you’ve also disabled Whispernet

If you leave Whispernet on while the Kindle 2 is in sleep mode, Kindle books

you buy from www.Amazon.com will still download automatically, but

bat-tery life will be reduced

If you move the power switch, but hold it for several seconds, the device

completely powers down If you do this while the system is powered off, it

powers up

You buy Kindle books from Amazon’s Web site That’s the only place to buy

currently published work in Kindle format However, other sources of free —

as in zero cost — books are available in Kindle or other recognized formats

See “Reading free eBooks” later in the chapter

Reading on the Kindle 2

The Kindle home page simply consists of a list of books, with the most recently read books at the top, as in Figure 6-2 One of the best features of a Kindle book is the automatic bookmarking Whenever you exit a book, the reader will remember the last page read When you return to that book, you can take up reading where you left off

Navigating the book list is simple A little nub in the lower right, between the MENU and BACK buttons, behaves like a tiny four-way joystick You can navi-gate down the book list by moving the nub toward the bottom of the Kindle Moving it right opens a book; moving it left asks you if you want to delete a book You can also open the book by pressing the nub into the Kindle, like you would a mouse button If you do delete a book, you can always re-download eBooks you own from Amazon at no charge

If you have multiple pages of listings — something that’s easy to do if you buy more than a few books — the Next Page button will take you to the next part of the book list The Prev Page button takes you back

Book VII Chapter 6

The Menu button has two functions When you’re in the book list, you can

search the Kindle, shop for books (shown in Figure 6-3), change settings, and

peruse the Experimental section, which includes a crude Web browser, an

MP3 player, and the text-to-speech function

When you’re reading a book, the menu shows alternative navigation

possibil-ities, including creating custom bookmarks, looking at the table of contents,

or even adding annotations to what you’re reading Each note is marked in

the book with a footnote-like number One very useful feature in the in-book

menu is the ability to change the text size, making it easier to read in dimmer

light or if your eyesight isn’t as good as it used to be See Figure 6-4

You can also use the joystick nub to move a cursor through the text Pausing

over a word causes a brief definition of the nearest word at the bottom of

the Kindle page Pressing the return key takes you to the Kindle’s built-in

dictionary, if you want a more detailed definition

Figure 6-4:

The Kindle menu when reading a book

Every time you read a book, that book’s title pops up to the top of the book list

That’s pretty much it The Kindle 2 is an extremely simple device to use — another advantage of using a dedicated eBook reader rather than a small laptop

Reading Blogs, Newspapers, and Magazines

In addition to books, other content is available for the Kindle 2, as shown in

Figure 6-5 These include popular newspapers such as The New York Times,

Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Le Monde (if you can read French), and

Reading Blogs, Newspapers, and Magazines

Contents

Chapter 6: Exploring the Kindle

407

Understanding eBooks 407

Reading on the Kindle 2 408

Reading Blogs, Newspapers, and Magazines 412

Converting PDF Files for the Kindle 414

Book VII Chapter 6

many more You pay a monthly subscription fee, which varies, depending on

the publication Color pictures are rendered in 16 shades of gray, so those

don’t look as good But a newspaper supports most of the book-reading

fea-tures, making reading easy and convenient

Subscriptions to popular blogs, like boingboing.net, Slashdot, Gizmodo, and

tons of other blogs, are also available Unlike reading them for free on the

Internet, you do pay a subscription fee, but it’s typically only $1.99 for the

more popular blogs and less for others

If blogs and newspapers are available, what about magazines? In fact, a wide

array of magazines are available Text-heavy magazines, like those

special-izing in fiction, work best, while art heavy magazines are probably best

avoided unless you have a Kindle DX