The days of having to lug around a bunch of blank tapes with you when you wanted to use a camcorder are over. After all, this is the digital era, and that means physical media is no longer necessary. It’s great news for videographers who want to lighten their load and make recording video a much easier affair.

Just look at this Sony HDR-SR12 120GB Hard Drive HD Camcorder, for example. It’s got a huge 120GB hard drive on board that’ll let you record many tapes worth of video right to it with no swapping required. It also makes digitizing easier, allowing you to simply plug the camera into your computer and digitize as easily as dragging and dropping files. The video and still picture quality is excellent, and you’ll love how small and portable it is. Camcorders have just gotten a lot more usable.

Everyone knows that high definition content looks better than standard definition. We can all see the difference. With blu-ray looking to be the successor to DVD, many consumers have made the leap to purchasing standalone blu-ray players, or the ultimate Trojan horse for the blu-ray format, the Playstation 3. Combined with a quality display, the picture quality will no doubt be superb, but that is only half of what blu-ray has to offer. Many people don’t know the auditory benefits blu-ray has to offer. A dual layer blu-ray disc can store 50 GB of data; more than six times the storage capacity of a dual layer DVD. With the extra storage capacity, blu-ray discs are capable of playing back lossless audio effortlessly. DVD cannot. The standard Dolby Digital and DTS (Digital Theater Systems) soundtracks are compressed audio formats. The lossless audio formats on blu-ray discs are Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD MA (High Definition Master Audio) and PCM.

PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) is simply a digital representation of an analog signal. LPCM (Lossless PCM) is not compressed in any way. It’s a bit for bit representation of the studio master.

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Getting a movie from, say, a DVD on to your iPod is no small feat. Generally speaking, it involves finding a program to decode the DVD on your computer, another program to convert that file to a file the iPod understands, importing it to iTunes, and finally, transferring it to the device. Not really worth it, is it?

Well, the Pinnacle Systems Video Transfer makes that whole process a lot easier. How’s this? Plug your DVD player into one end of it and your iPod into the other. Hit the transfer button. That’s it. And it works with more than just iPods, allowing you to transfer video between any devices with a USB port or standard composite or S-video. There’s no simpler way to swap video files between devices without lengthy, annoying digitizing or formatting processes that don’t even work half the time.

You live and die by your DVR. Without it, you’d never watch your favorite shows. After all, in this day and age, who conforms to the schedules of when something airs rather than just sitting down and watching it when you want? That’s so last century. But when you go a while without catching up on your shows and clearing off your hard drive, trouble strikes. You’ve got to delete something you haven’t watched or skip recording something new, neither of which are great options.

The solution? Beef up that DVR hard drive! The
Iomega 500GB DVR Expander Drive eSATA is an external hard drive designed to plug into your DVR, giving it a whopping 500GB of extra space. In TV terms, that’s 300 hours of standard definition TV or 60 hours of high def TV, which should be plenty for even the stingiest of show hoarders out there. Never delete a show you haven’t watched again!

Look for it soon!

YouTube lends itself more to the quickly shot, casual video than to the overly-polished Hollywood type video, so why should you buy some fancy camera that’s designed to make your videos look like they belong in a movie theatre when they’re just going to show up on the computer screen? You need a video camera designed for what your video is going to be doing, and if you’re planning to shoot videos to put up on streaming sites such as YouTube, you need a camera like the Pure Digital Mino Pocket Digital Camcorder.

The Mino is tiny, easily small enough to slip in your pocket. That means you can carry it around with you wherever you go, always able to take video of interesting things you see going on. It has 2GB of on board storage built in, which is plenty of space for video. It has a screen on the back that allows you to see what you’re shooting, and the buttons are straightforward and simple. It’s an easy to use camera that you can bring anywhere designed for online video. What more are you looking for?

It’s summertime, which means lots of fun times spent outside, maybe by the pool, at a cookout, or at the beach. It’s a great time to start taking some home videos or just plain videos, so why not get on board with the digital video revolution?

If you grab yourself one of these hot Sanyo VPC-E1W Xacti E1 Waterproof Camcorder, you’ll do just that. It’s a tiny camcorder, fitting easily in the palm of your hand and even in your pocket when all folded up. It shoots great, high quality video and can take still pictures as well. It has a 2.5-inch flip-out screen so you can see what you’re doing, and as an added bonus it’s completely waterproof. You can bring this thing up to 5 feet below the surface and shoot video of your kid learning how to swim from down below. It’s an awesome, versatile camera, a perfect way to start shooting digital video to share with family and friends online. When’s a better time but now?

Forget Obama vs Clinton, the real hot debate topic is Plasma vs LCD displays. Which one is better? What are the differences? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each display type? What is contrast ratio and why should it matter? Do plasma displays burn in? Why are LCD displays susceptible to input lag? Questions like these are always asked, and many people don’t quite understand the differences between these two display technologies. Before we delve into the questions, we first must understand what Plasma and LCD are.

Plasma display panels (PDP) are flat panel displays that house a mixture of inert noble gases, neon and xenon between two panels of glass. They work by emitting light when phosphors are stimulated via electricity after the gases are turned into plasma or ionized gas. These are inert gases and contrary to urban legend, they don’t leak and are not dangerous.

Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD) are also flat panel displays. They work by backlighting monochromatic pixels positioned in front of a light source. Liquid crystals are just phases of matter. It does not necessarily mean that there are liquids swirling around your display. A perfect example to help further understand are the different states of water. Water does not have to be a liquid; it can have a solid state like ice, or a gas state like vapor.

PDP and LCD both deliver fantastic high definition images. Provided your source material is pristine, your image quality will also be pristine. However, there are certain differences between the display technologies and one might be superior in one area and inferior in another. I’ll list the advantages and disadvantages of both display types.

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If you got on board with the DVD format back when it first came out, the chances are good that you have a gigantic, mediocre DVD player that you paid a small fortune for. Hey, it’s the price of being an early adopter, right? But now that the format has had a decade or so to get its act together, maybe it’s time to upgrade to a nicer model.

Luckily for you, the nicest DVD players around are still really cheap due to the new kid in town, Blu-ray discs. Take this Philips DVP5982 Ultra Slim HDMI DVD Player with DiVx support. It’s slim, sleek and sexy, which is great, but it’s also an upscaling DVD player that can make your DVDs look nearly high def by sending them to your TV via a HDMI cable. It’s something that first generation DVD players certainly didn’t have, and if you’ve got an HDTV it’s a feature you’ll notice right out of the box. So go ahead, treat yourself. You’ve stuck by that old clunker long enough.

If you’ve got yourself an HD camcorder and are looking to save your video on discs, there’s no better option out there than Blu-ray. Blu-ray discs can hold a whopping four hours of HD content, which should be plenty for your masterpieces and your home videos. In addition, Blu-ray discs can be used to back up data, storing up to a whopping 50GB per disc. That’s a heck of a lot more than a blank CD or DVD, wouldn’t you say?

In order to burn to these lovely blank Blu-ray discs, you’ll need a Blu-ray drive with recording capabilities. One such drive is the LaCie 301828U d2 External Blu-ray Drive. It’s external, meaning you can easy hook it up to any number of computers rather than having it stuck inside just one for all of time, and it’s an attractive little number to boot. It can burn not only Blu-ray discs, but also blank DVDs and CDs as well, making it quite the versatile drive. It can also play Blu-ray discs, so if you want to watch HD movies on your computer, this is the way to go.

With the format war officially over, many consumers are feeling more confident and secure about delving into blu-ray. The only issue prohibiting many people from jumping in is the cost of the players. With units costing anywhere from $500 to $2,000, it’s safe to say that until prices come down, many people just can’t afford to go blu.

However, a cost effective way to get into blu-ray is via the Playstation 3. Don’t be fooled…a PS3 is not just for gaming, it is also a great blu-ray player! Games and movies look magnificent on the 1080p display. The picture quality is superb.

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