Posted by ZeeMart | Making your life cheaper
in Monday, November 2, 2009
Product Description
Wired or Wireless, The Choice is Yours
You can connect the Roku player to the Internet using most broadband providers (such as a cable modem or DSL connection.) You need at least 1.2 Mbps to watch movies instantly on the Roku digital video player with decent quality. The faster your connection, the better the quality (although this rule-of-thumb peaks out at about 5mbps). Use the built-in Wi-Fi capabilities to connect to your wireless network, or use the Ethernet port for a wired connection. It's easy either way.
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Connect to Virtually Any TV, New or Old
The player comes complete with everything you need to get connected right away. It even includes the standard yellow, white and red cables. Or use the HDMI or component connections with your new HDTV.
remote
Control is at your Fingertips and Easy to Understand
The Roku player is easily controlled using the handy included remote. Choose the item you want to watch, play, fast-forward, rewind, pause and resume play later, just like watching a DVD.
Includes AC adapter, car adapter, AV cable, and mounting straps
Headphone jack for personal listening
Plays most formats of DVD, CD, and picture discs
Product Description
Play your music and movies in the car! The PET7402 features two 7" TFT LCD display screens that let you indulge in enjoying your DVD movies, music, and photos on the road, with everything you need to easily install and mount to the headrests in your car. Includes AC/DC adapter, AV cable, car charger and headrest mounting straps.
Posted by ZeeMart | Making your life cheaper
in Thursday, October 29, 2009
Technical Details
5.8-inch motorized touchscreen LCD monitor
Double DIN Head Unit
Plays DVD-R/RW, CD-R/RW, DivX, MP3, WMA and AAC
Features touchscreen control for iPod/iPhone with album art, touch slide, ASR and USB control
4V pre-outs
Product Description
The Pioneer AVH-P3100DVD is a touch-screen Double DIN aftermarket car stereo. It has a 5.8? full color widescreen face, front auxiliary port for connecting an Ipod or other device, a front USB port for connecting a USB flash drive, and it can play DVD-R/RW, CD-R/RW, DivX, MP3, WMA and AAC files. The Pioneer AVH-P4100DVD 7-Inch In-Dash Double-DIN DVD Multimedia AV Receiver with Widescreen Display is the same exact radio, except it adds a bigger screen (7?) by removing the physical buttons to the side, and it adds a subwoofer preamp output.
INSTALLATION AND DVD BYPASS:
Double DIN means that it is roughly twice the size of a conventional car stereo, so before ordering, you need to make sure it will fit in your car. The best way to do this is to go to Crutchfield’s web site and determine if it will work on your vehicle. The unit itself comes with the receiver, mounting screws, manual, a stylus pen, front mounting cover, and a power cable. I found it fairly easy to install. The power cable it comes with just has bare wires coming out of it. In addition to the radio, you will want to buy a mounting harness and mounting bracket for your vehicle. The harness looks just like the one that comes with the stereo, but it is designed to clip into the factory harness that’s in your vehicle, to make it easy to remove the stereo. If you don’t have one, you’ll have to connect all of the wires by hand, and disconnect each one to remove. The mounting bracket is designed to make sure you radio fits correctly in your specific vehicle. I purchased both the harness and bracket from Crutchfield. My only problem with installation, is that it comes with a long green wire that is supposed to be connected to your emergency brake wire. This is necessary, because the unit has a safety feature that requires the emergency brake to be applied in order to play DVDs. My emergency brake wire was extremely hard to get to, and once I was able to finally remove the center console and find it, it was buried and almost impossible to access. I don’t suggest doing this, but if you have the same problem and want to get around this issue, or if you want to be able to watch DVDs without having to engage the brake, then you need to connect this wire to an auto relay switch. Go to Radio Shack and buy a momentary push button switch, part number 275-1548. Cut the green wire coming out of the radio harness from the receiver, close to the end of it, maybe 5 inches away from that red clip. Strip the wire, and run it through one of the holes on the relay switch. You can solder it or just wrap it with electrical tape. Buy a standard 16 gauge wire from Radio Shack and connect it to the other hole on the switch, then connect the other end of it to a grounded connection on your vehicle. I just wrapped mine around one of the mounting screws for the radio. I stuffed this wire out of site under the dash and pull it out when I need it. Alternatively, you can just cut the green wire directly in half, and use the half you cut instead of having to buy more wire at Radio Shack, but I wanted an extra long wire in case I ever want to move it. Now, when you play a DVD, the warning screen will come on. Just press the button on the switch and it will go away, since it tricks the receiver into thinking you have engaged the parking brake. Be sure to check with your local laws, as having the DVD player on while driving or bypassing this may be illegal in your area. It may also void insurance claims. I definitely do not recommend ever watching a DVD while driving.
FORM FACTOR:
The radio itself is beautiful. It fit flush with my dash and looks gorgeous. There are only a few buttons on the left hand side, and I didn’t even realize they were buttons until I looked at them closely. They control volume, forward/backward, source, mute, and power. I like having these physical buttons, especially for volume and mute. If I get a phone call or need to hear something, I want to be able to instantly mute the radio without having to fool around with a touchscreen. It’s very nice to have a radio that doesn’t have 15 buttons all over it and looks cluttered. Customization is easy with the radio. You can select from several different colors, which will change the LED colors on these physical buttons and on the touchscreen menu buttons, so that it matches your car’s LED colors. You can also choose from seven factory background screens, three of which are animated videos. The animation on the videos is very subtle and doesn’t distract you. Plus, when you change the LED color, it actually changes the color of the background videos to match it, which is really cool. If you don’t like these, you can use your own image from a CDR or USB drive. The screen contains a dimmer option, so when you turn on your lights, it automatically dims. This is pretty nice, but can also be annoying. I like to use my lights during the day, and while the screen is still readable, it can be hard to see. Fortunately, you can completely adjust the dimmer options through the settings.
TOUCHSCREEN:
The touchscreen is very easy to navigate and done very well. The menu system is very intuitive and set up a lot like a computer. There is a back button and an escape button to get you through the menus. Seeking through a song can be done in three ways. You can hold down the physical forward/backward buttons on the unit, you can do the same with the touchscreen forward/backward buttons, or you can use your finger to slide a progress bar back and forth, the same as you would do with a video file on your computer or with an Ipod. This is great because a 30 minute song can start, and I can just press the end of the progress bar with my finger and it will immediately skip to the end of the song (or whatever position I press on the bar). From what I can tell, it will scroll exactly like a computer and stop at the exact position you touch. A lot of touchscreens would have “segments” or 5-10 seconds, and stop on whichever segment you came close to. But with the AVH-P3100, it is segmented into 2 second increments, so you can have much more accurate scrolling. This is the only instance where I can see the stylus being of any use, but I have fairly large fingers and don’t have any problem with the scroll bar. My main gripe with the touchscreen navigation, is with the up/down scrolling. This is used when navigating radio/satellite stations, song racks on a CD, or file folders on a USB/Ipod. There is no page up/down feature, so if five folders are displayed and you press the down arrow on the scroll bar, or if you press anywhere below the current position on the scroll bar, it will move the list down by one, instead of down by five. This is a major oversight in my opinion, and will affect the way you setup your folders. I have one folder on my USB with 80 subfolders. That means if I want to scroll through every folder in the list, I have to press the down button 75 times. Now you can put your finger on it and simply drag the arrow down to move quickly, but it goes kind of fast, and paging through the list would be so much more convenient. Also, since it only displays five lines at a time, it means you have to scroll one time to view all six of your radio presets.
USB/Ipod:
Ipod menus look the same as the front of your regular Ipod and navigation is easy. It will also display a picture of the album. USB is the main reason I purchased this radio, and works well, with a few faults. First, it takes about 10 seconds when I start the car or select the USB source, for it to “read format.” This is possibly because I am using a 8Gb drive with over 1000 songs on it, so it’s acceptable to me. My main problem with the USB feature, is the way it organizes the folders. They do not appear alphabetically. I am not sure what method it uses, but like a lot of MP3 audio devices, it just seems to throw them up in the folder list in whatever order it wants. It will use the same order every time, but you can’t trick it by copying a folder you want to appear at the top first, or adding “01, 02, 03, etc” in front of your folders/file names.” There is probably a workaround for this, but I have no idea what it is. I think it would make more sense if it just listed the folders alphabetically. It does read ID3 information very well, however it cuts off anything after a certain character limit. It would be nice if it scrolled sideways through long song titles/artists to show you the full ID3 information, but for about 95% of people’s music, this won’t be a problem, and for the other 5% you should have enough of the title to figure out what it is. However if you don’t have ID3 tags on your music, it can be a problem. For example, if you have a folder with 10 songs in it labeled “DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince – Greatest Hits – Girls Ain’t Nothing But Trouble,” and there are no ID3 tags, it is only going to display the first part of the filename until it reaches the character limit. So your list on the screen will have 10 songs on it that all say something like “DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fr.” Additionally, the USB drive is going to stick out 3? or so from the unit, so unless you remove it every time, you have to be aware of it and careful not to break it off. It doesn’t bother me at all though. The only other problem I’ve noticed with the USB playback, is that the progress bar is off. The bar shows time elapsed and time remaining at the same time. Time remaining is incorrect about 80% of the time. A song will start up and it will show that it has 6:22 remaining, when it is only a 4:00 song. Some songs are accurate, but the majority is off anywhere from :30 to 3:00.
DVD PLAYBACK:
DVD playback is superb. The video quality is on par with any portable DVD player you would buy. You cannot tilt the screen, so application is limited, but if you’re parked somewhere you can easily enjoy a movie from any seat in the car. If it’s daylight and sunny, you won’t be able to see much however. The DVD onscreen menus are nice, and the scroll bar works well for skipping quickly through a movie, even better than a traditional DVD player. There’s a HIDE button for quickly removing all onscreen displays, so you don’t have to wait several seconds for the menus to time out.
SOUND:
Sound quality is excellent. DVDs sound great. It has three loudness modes which really bring out the sound. I am using factory speakers with no amplifier, and the built-in Pioneer amplifier makes a huge difference. It has several pre-set equalizer settings for different types of music.
Overall, even if you don’t get it at Amazon’s current price (40% off SRP), I think this receiver is worth the money. It really is a beautiful and functional unit, and I always like showing it off to my passengers. It is too bad there doesn’t seem to be a way to update the firmware, because it would be a perfect unit if Pioneer just made a few small changes to the menus. The unit also does not come with built in Bluetooth, HD Radio, Satellite, or steering wheel controls, but you can add all of these from the products below. I realize Pioneer makes more money by adding these separately.
The Panasonic DMP-BD60 Blu-ray Disc Playercombines high quality images with enhanced networking functions. Continuing its commitment to producing products that stress ease of use, the 2009 line of Blu-ray Disc players continue to incorporate VIERA Link, allowing the consumer to operate their audio/video components, via HDMI, with one remote. And, in keeping with Panasonic’s pledge to reduce the planet’s carbon footprint, the new Blu-ray players have been designed to reduce power consumption.
Posted by ZeeMart | Making your life cheaper
in Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Product Features
Full HD 1080p Output (Learn more)
DVD Upscaling via HDMI technology: DVD Upscaling via HDMI makes your existing standard DVDs look better on your HDTV by upscaling them to near HD quality.
Dolby TrueHD and dts HD- 7.1 Analog: In the past, most audio codecs used compression that actually removes some sound data to transmit audio from the disc to the audio circuitry. This means that what you hear is a subset of the original audio. However, newer formats allow the audio to be compressed but not discarded, allowing the original audio to come through once it’s been decoded. This player allows you to stream the audio out via HDMI to a capable receiver or through analog 7.1 outputs for maximum compatibility with high end receivers. (Learn more)
BD-Live Technology allows you to download and stream bonus content such as additional scenes, shorts, trailers, movie-based games, and more. And with Bonus View, you can enjoy “picture-in-picture” capability with select Blu-ray titles. External memory (sold separately) is required.
Quick Start Mode: Quick Start Mode lets you begin operating your Sony Blu-ray Disc player approximately six seconds from the time it’s powered on.
Ethernet port lets you connect the BDP-S360 to your home’s existing broadband network to access bonus features on BD-Live enabled Blu-ray Disc movies.
Bonus View feature provides “picture-in-picture” capability with select Blu-ray Disc titles — useful for viewing director or actor commentary while the movie plays.
BRAVIA Sync technology lets you enjoy the convenience of one remote control to operate and control all your compatible home entertainment devices. It utilizes the HDMI CEC function to easily turn on and control your compatible HDMI-connected components without having to use multiple remote controls.
24p True Cinema technology lets you watch films at their intended 24 fps (frames per second) — the way movies are shot and mastered — so you can enjoy cinematic picture quality.
Precision Cinema HD Upscale circuitry delivers accurate and vivid images with clarity and detail that are faithful to the source — whether film or video (upscaled image quality will vary). This circuitry uses advanced conversion and processing to detect image changes at the pixel level, rather than at the level of whole scan lines. Additionally, separate algorithms are used to process the moving and still parts of an image, resulting in sharp backgrounds with moving objects that are free from motion artifacts.
Emmy-Award Winning Xross Media Bar Interface: Sony’s exclusive xross media bar user interface makes it simple and intuitive to navigate television menus, controls, and user settings.
x.v.Color output plays AVCHD-format discs with support for the international xvYCC color standard, producing images with nearly twice as many viewable colors as the existing RGB color standard. (Learn more)
dts Output: Yes, & /DTS-HD bitstream out over HDMI (V1.3)
Sony BDP-S360 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player + Accessory Kit Overview
The Sony BDP-S360 Blu-ray Disc player provides a movie experience worthy of your HDTV. Plays Blu-ray Disc movies in Full HD 1080p quality and upscales the quality of your DVDs. Supports BD-Live technology to download bonus interactive entertainment on select movies. Supports Dolby TrueHD and dts-HD audio codecs for up to 7.1 channels of high-definition sound. With QuickStart Mode your movies will start approximately six seconds from the moment you turn on the player.
