@Guy_Incognito

I happened to have my Kill-A-Watt nearby and this is what I found:

With the HD spinning: 180mA / 12Watts

With the HD idle and the PH in standby: 100mA / 6Watts

Add 1 watt to both those numbers above when active and streaming video through it. So, it only uses 7 watts to stream video if the HD stays off or is not installed.

Not bad, although I think that most of the additional 6 watts for the HD is turned into heat since this little thing gets HOT!

A power switch would also be handy for when it crashes like a speeding garbage truck.

:-P

The FIRST thing that they should improve should be their quality control before shipping new firmware. The latest update breaks many features.

For those that haven't bought one yet, you might want to read my mini-review. Overall I'm not very happy with it.

http://www.seantorbett.com/2008/07/13/will-the-popcorn-hour-nmt-replace-my-xbmc/

For my $200 I was expecting something better than what I wound up with.

Yes, but I didn't buy an expensive monstrosity that claims to do it all. Like many of us I built mine which is essentially a PC in a quiet case with a good HD tuner card (MDP-130), a fat hard drive and an Internet connection for all that online goodness.

Although, after seeing a recent video of the latest LinuxMCE build in action, that is a project that has jumped up high on my list of things to do.

I realize Engadget may not be set up for this request, but since you guys come into contact with a lot of nice consumer/pro-sumer HD gear, I was hoping the crew could put together a comparison grid "roundup" every couple months or so with a summary of features and usability comments for the units you've gotten in recently.

Maybe not at the level of Tom's Hardware, but something of a buying guide for those of us in the market for that particular item.

Other sites, like CNET, tend to have some stale ratings and reviews for products and a fresh perspective would be good to read.

Just a suggestion....

As far as network affiliate broadcasters go, I have yet to work for, build or visit a studio that doesn't have a compressor/limiter (either Dolby, Orban, CRS or FMSystems) on the last output stage before heading out to the transmitter. Every broadcaster has been fed up long ago getting phone calls from the public about it - but, in reality people still call in because they "perceive" them as being louder.

Unfortunately, as the article says, programs have low audio levels (especially for dialogue) compared to action scenes or when the commercial comes on and runs full tilt with music and narration to grab everyone's attention.

One place where limiters are not in widespread use is at many cable company headends. The cable companies can insert, on non-local network channels (e.g. HGTV, Sci-Fi, TNT, etc.), a couple or more spots in a given hour on most of their channels once they receive a "cue" tone from the network provider. Their inserted commercial audio can be all over the map even between the spots they insert and it will vary from market-to-market depending on their level of quality control.

It's good to see a pretty well written article on the topic.

NHK had a prototype camera set up at NAB in Vegas this past April, however they didn't have any native 8K displays and had to scale it down to 4K displays they did have.

I have a couple pictures of the camera they used in my NAB review (scroll down to the end of my post) if you're curious:

http://www.seantorbett.com/2008/05/04/nab-2008-in-review/

It wasn't nearly as impressive as the Red One theater, but maybe next year...

Holy shit.... I don't think I could sit through another 10-hours of watching Sam and Frodo walk around Middle Earth, even *if* it were in HD.

Panic doesn't 'sink' in the micro-gravity environment of the orbiting space station.

It just floats around with the turds....

OTA Since around 2000. I also receive HD for free via cable since I only pay for the basic cable service (for my cable modem) and use a tuner card (the MDP-130) in my HTPC to decode the QAM HD streams that are "in the clear".

No way am I paying for HD if I can help it.

There are some HD channels I wouldn't mind getting (like Universal HD), but I'm not addicted to TV enough to spend more money on it.