Remember when a decade ago when Plasma technology was first introduced to the public? People living in the then CRT dominated time period were amazed at just how thin this technology allowed televisions to become. At that point in time I recall my father saying something along the lines of, “There is simply no way televisions could have a slimmer profile.” Fast forward 10 or so years later and it’s absolutely amazing how wrong he was with that statement. Simply take a look at the video attached above to appreciate just how thin the next generation OLED based Television Panels can become! We can only wish that the strong presence of OLED technology in this years Consumers Electronics Show translates into faster adoption of the technology for devices aimed at the general public (i.e. people who do not own yachts). Anyhow, if you haven’t already done so, I urge you to look at the video above showing the latest 55″ OLED offering from LG electronics!
When the house I currently live in was under construction, my family decided that they wanted our living room area to have a very clean appearance. In our previous house, the entertainment area was a complete mess due to a combination of poor cable management as well as clutter created by equipment such as the home theater receiver, HTPC, smart tv box as well as the Blue-ray player. To eliminate the presence of such devices from the living room, HDMI, USB, ethernet as well as coaxial cables were installed behind the TV mount during the framing stages of the house. These in-wall rated cables ran to the basement where a specific area was allocated for all the Audio/Video equipment in the house. Unfortunately, fixing the “clutter” gave rise to another problem; how would we control the equipment in the basement without physically going to the basement each time we wanted to alter a setting? For devices such as the Blue-ray player which featured an Infrared input (IR) the solution was to purchase and setup an Infrared blaster (or RF universal remote). However, this was not possible for the HTPC which featured no IR ports. In turn, Wake on LAN as well as a 2.4Ghz Keyboard/Mice was used.
It’s that time of the year again. The time of the year when all the holiday shopping has completed, only to be followed by endless credit card statements from the christmas/boxing day shopping spree you partook in this holiday season. Lucky for you, there are several strategies you can implement in your lifestyle to quickly reduce your liability (and perhaps start saving for the next holiday season?). In the past, Lifehacker has already produced several guides relating to the subject of interest like: Eliminating your Cable Television bill (1, 2) and consolidating your credit cards. However, now Canadians have a third option when it comes to reducing monthly liability thanks to a company known as Fibernetics. In this article, I discuss my experience using Freephoneline as my primary home phone provider as well as some advantages and disadvantages (honestly, brainstorming was required to come up with any disadvantages discussed in this article).
