Tech Guy Open 431: The Death of HD-DVD

I'm playing with recording video of my opening sermonettes on the radio show. Unfortunately, Viddler is limited to 10 minutes and I talk for 12 so this ends abruptly. I'll look for a way to record the full segment before the next show.

Big Screen in the Big Apple

I'm back East in New Haven spending the Thanksgiving weekend with my wife's sister and her family. We had a lovely snowfall on Wednesday and the kids have been having a blast with their cousins. Tomorrow we'll take the train to New York City so that I can tape my World News Now segments on Sunday night and do Live! with Regis and Kelly on Wednesday. We're going to see The Lion King and we'll go ice skating at Rockefeller Center and do all the usual touristy Christmas in New York things. I'll try to do some video blogging while we're there. I've brought the Piano Avanti DLP projection TV with me. It's a dictionary sized projector that can handle DVI, RGB, HDTV, S-Video, and Component signals in native 780p. It's not the brightest projector in the world at 400 lumens, but with a 700:1 contrast ratio it looks darn good in a relatively dark room. I was able to get a good looking movie screen sized picture projected on white walls and sheets. We've screened Lord of the Rings, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Zoolander, and had a great time. I'll be showing it on WNN and Regis, but I wish I could keep it. At $3200 it's pricey, but I prefer it to a similarly expensive big screen TV, especially since you can pop it in a drawer when you're through. Wouldn't be very good for daytime TV viewing, though. Last week's pilot went very well. Thanks to those of you who called, emailed, and faxed. It was great to have all that material for the show. Morgan and Kevin were stars, and Steve Gibson was his usual fun and informative self. We put about 90 minutes on tape which Ken Marquis is now editing into a 12 minute highlight reel. I think everyone involved felt pretty good about what we got - even Paul Block liked it. It's a good representation of what I'd like to do, anyway. I forwarded a number of messages of support from you all to our new VP Programming. That should help. Now we'll just have to wait and see. I'd love to get started in early January. The Screen Savers officially goes back to an hour December 30, so that would be a good time to put another show into production, at least for me. We fly home Thursday and I'll be back on The Screen Savers Thursday evening. I'll be taking more time off for Christmas, December 16 through January 1. Maybe when I come back I'll have two shows to do. Wouldn't that be nice?