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 If you turn on your TV today and get static where your favorite shows used to be don’t panic…right away.

On that day television stations will be turning off their analog signals as part of a nation-wide “soft test” of the upcoming transition to digital television. Signals will go down for anytime between two and five minutes in the morning, a few minutes after noon, and around 6:30pm.

Over-the-air viewers need to pay attention to this test.  If they loose their signal they will need to either buy a TV with a built-in digital tuner or purchase a converter box and attach it to their current set.
The long-awaited switch to digital, which was postponed in February is set to happen in about 3 weeks, on June 12th.

written by tom

If you’re willing to take a deep breath and drop your cable, you can survive without it and still keep up with chatter in the office.
For about a year now I have been without cable or satellite TV service.  Not until recently I have felt like I’m “back in the TV game”.  Why?  I’ll tell you:

I hooked my computer to my TV…that’s it.

The Hook-Up

A few months ago I stepped into the flat panel TV era.  My TV has 3 HDMI inputs on it.  This allows me to hook up digital inputs to the TV.

The first HDMI unit I bought was my DVD player.  If you have a service like Netflix you can use  my DVD player to catch up on all of the episodes, or whole series, of “Lost” or “Hereos” I want.  And I can also watch movies on it too, go figure.

PC on TV

Let’s get back to the purpose of this article.  For about $50 I bought a video card for my computer that had an HDMI output.  This allowed me, with one cable, to get video and sound to my TV.  While I was at it I hooked up a wireless keyboard and mouse.  That allowed me to sit on the couch and watch “TV”.  Once my hook up was complete I was ready to watch TV.

The Web: TVs New Friend

If you subscribe to cable and use TiVo, don’t fret.  There are many sites like hulu.com, ovguide.com, and  youtube.com that you can watch videos on.  Some streaming video sites now offer HD videos.  I’ll tell you write now that the quality of streaming video is not as great as HD cable, but for the price you pay it’s worth it.

Live TV is Still Free

If you feel like you’ll be pushed from the water cooler at work because everyone is talking about the latest episode of “American Idol” you can still watch it live on broadcast television. With a purchase of a digital converter box (if your TV doesn’t have a digital tuner) you can not only watch live TV but also get the side-channels most major broadcasters are offering.  There are kids channels, Spanish channels, news channels, and even local weather channels that go beyond what you can see on your analog TV line-up.  I use titantv.com to look at my growing line-up of channels.  Just plug in your zip code and select “over the air” to see what’s available.

The Price

This is the best part…it’s free,  you still need broadband cable though.  I have DSL and it has not effected my viewing.  Just think of saving $100 a month…attractive isn’t it?

I just read a terrible article from computerworld.com and have to write  something about the subject.

written by tom

written by tom

Think the iPhone is the king of the mobile market, think again.  In the first quarter of 2009 the Blackberry Curve outsold Apple’s smartphone, mostly due to aggressive “buy one get one” marketing by Verizon Wireless.
RIM’s BlackBerry Curve moved past Apple’s iPhone to become the best-selling consumer smartphone in the U.S. in the first quarter (Q1) of 2009.  RIM’s consumer smartphone market share increased 15 percent to nearly 50 percent of the smartphone market in Q1 2009 versus the prior quarter, as Apple’s and Palm’s share both declined 10 percent each.

Based on U.S. consumer sales of smartphone handsets in NPD’s “Smartphone Market Update” report, the first-quarter 2009 ranking of the top-five best-selling smartphones is as follows:

1. RIM BlackBerry Curve (all 83XX models)
2. Apple iPhone 3G (all models)
3. RIM BlackBerry Storm
4. RIM BlackBerry Pearl (all models, except flip)
5. T-Mobile G1

“Verizon Wireless’s aggressive marketing of the BlackBerry Storm and its buy-one-get-one BlackBerry promotion to its large customer base contributed to RIM capturing three of the top five positions,” said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at The NPD Group. “The more familiar, and less expensive, Curve benefited from these giveaways and was able to leapfrog the iPhone, due to its broader availability on the four major U.S. national carriers.”

Smartphones, which represented just 17 percent of handset sales volume in Q1 2008, now make up 23 percent of sales. “Even in this challenging economy, consumers are migrating toward Web-capable handsets and their supporting data plans to access more information and entertainment on the go.” Rubin said.

written by tom