Great tip! I've been working with libraries for our company that lets kids publish their own books (www.tikatok.com), and they have been so great. The librarians are enthusiastic, creative, and open to new ideas - far from the stereotype of the stodgy bookworm. And it's amazing the amount and quality of activities the libraries in my area (Boston) put on for kids each week. They are in a nice position, I think, because they have decent funding (although I'm sure they could use more), but don't have the same stifling restrictions that public schools do.

Do you have a reference for the claim that "the required hardware is expected in the second quarter of '08"? I've been waiting for a complete solution for HD audio+video (or at least audio) over HDMI. Most of the new HTPC video cards do DD/DTS over HDMI but none do the HD codecs. Furthermore, I have to have an HDMI solution because my receiver does not have analog inputs.

Not to get too deep into the lcd vs. plasma debate, but as someone who has yet to buy an HDTV (student loans + startup = poverty), I had a question and perhaps another way of looking at the value of contrast ratio vs. brightness. It seems unequivocally agreed by experts that plasmas offer better PQ. But to do this quasi-scientific, expert method of assessment, I suspect an attempt is made to remove any noise in the viewing environment. But real viewing environments are highly variable and not at all ideal.

For example, let's assume that you do a significant percentage of viewing in a fairly well lit room (watching live TV), a smaller percentage with the lights turned down low but not off (watching a movie), and a miniscule to nil percentage with the lights turned off completely (your favorite movie ever came out on DVD/BluRay and you must watch it with no distractions). This holds true for my house and I suspect also for many families. Given that most of your viewing occurs in a well lit to dimly lit room, is panel brightness more important than the expert analysis may suggest, and contrast less important (since your eyes never fully adjust to let in the full range of shadow detail)? How much higher does contrast really have to be for it to be noticeable in a bright room? It's an honest question, I'd really like to know.

This also gets us back to PQ being in the eyes of the beholder. But instead of it being an issue of the beholder having bad taste or poor perception, it could be that the beholder has made a tasteful decision given his viewing habits. And if you have a problem with his viewing habits, it no longer becomes a debate about technology. Is watching a movie with the lights on also "bad taste"?

Best explanation for the irrational teenage behavior we all know (and perpetrated ourselves as teens) is from signaling theory. The most reliable signals we can send are the ones with the highest cost. If you want to send the message that, say, you have the market cornered on youthfulness, and you want that message to be believed, then you do the things that will cost you that very resource, like listening to music too loud, laying out in the sun, generally being self-destructive.

Sounds great. Too bad Vista Media Center still doesn't support QAM tuners.