Sony Handycam DCR-DVD508

Although there's no denying that the consumer electronics market is shifting toward high-definition products, there's still room for standard-definition gear in the camcorder space. In fact, the standard-definition miniDVD is still the most popular format with most consumers. As I found with last year's top Sony DVD camcorder, the DCR-DVD508 easily rises to the top of the miniDVD camcorder market by offering excellent quality, performance, and ease of use, clearly earning itself an Editors' Choice.

This camcorder's price is $200 less than last year's comparable model, the DVD505. That's an obvious indication that more of the high-end marketplace is embracing HD cameras and Sony is trying to keep its standard-def products competitive. Many of the same features that the DVD505 possessed are back in the DVD508, though not all of them. For example, although both have touch-screen LCDs, the DVD508's display is just 2.7 inches, whereas the DVD505 used a 3.5-inch display.

The new camcorder does boast a few improvements. The 6.1-megapixel sensor captures very sharp stills. Most of all, I liked the overhauled menu system and structure. It has tabbed sections for changing many features, including the macro settings, exposure, meters, and various effects. I think having a tabbed interface is essential in a touch-screen device. The menu also provides the ability to switch on special functions such as the smooth slow-record mode, which lets you capture about three seconds of fast action in slow motion.

Like the DVD505, the DVD508 comes equipped with the "Easy" mode, for those who prefer to keep things super-simple. It also includes a night-shot mode that outperforms most non-Sony camcorders. Although there's not a lot of color when using this night mode, streaking and smearing effects are eliminated. What you're left with is relatively clear footage.

As with all DVD camcorders, you'll need to finalize your miniDVD in order to watch it in a DVD recorder or on your computer. In my tests, this took just 4 minutes 51 seconds. You can record up to about 20 minutes of video in the device's highest-quality movie mode. You can also use double-sided discs as well, which would give you just about double this time (the manual claims 38 minutes, but you will need to flip the disc over yourself). As I've found in the past, however, I had problems playing the finalized disc on some very new computers and on older DVD players.

On my head-shot tests, the dynamic range, resolution, and clarity were all quite good. Skin tones looked dynamite. The color was very accurate, too, with very little color shifting.

I watched recorded video from this camcorder on both an HDTV and a standard-definition TV. Even on the HD set, my footage looked pretty good (although as with video from any SD camcorder, you'll notice some artifacts, since it has a higher-res screen.) On a standard-definition TV, my test footage was absolutely stunning. And during my action-clip test, the autofocus function adjusted very well. It also kept up with a variety of details in moving objects without any noticeable streaking.

Measured against my EIA Resolution Chart, the DVD508 scored 475 lines, which is very good for a DVD-format camcorder.

As with other miniDVD camcorders I've tested, recorded files on my DVD discs seemed to pick and choose which third-party software they would work with. For example, I was able to import video into Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 but not into Vegas 7, which gave me a coding error.

The DVD508 handled itself well with still images. My still-life test shots had decent color and sharpness, especially the images where I used the flash. My only complaint with the flash was that the illumination could be more even. In my lines of resolution test, the camcorder scored 1,450 average lines, which is right in the middle for a 6.1MP camera. Still, this result sits on the higher end for camcorders, given that most do a lousy job of handling still shots.

Speed at shooting still images is the one area where the Sony Handycam DCR-DVD508 disappoints. With a 10-second boot-up time, a 5.2-second shot-to-shot recycle rate, and lots of shutter lag, it falls far short of where a hybrid camera/camcorder should be. Still, as a standard camcorder, it's excellent. But if you're looking to go entirely HD, this obviously is not the camcorder for you.

by: Terry Sullivan

Ending Red-Eye at the Source

Is there a way to get rid of red-eye in my photos without having to go into Photoshop or another image-manipulation suite? The red-eye reducer on my camera doesn't always work.

Few picture problems irk people more than red-eye, which is caused by having the camera's flash positioned too close to the lens. Some camera makers now include a feature that removes red-eye from images right after you snap them, so you never see it in the image file. Higher-end cameras include a hot shoe for an external flash, which often has a movable head that can bounce the light to avoid a red-eye effect.

by Terry Sullivan

Government vs. the Free Internet

by Michael J. Miller

If the problem of keeping the Internet free, available, and anonymous is difficult in open and democratic societies, it's even harder in more closed societies such as China.

All the major search engines now filter their results at the behest of the Chinese government. They do so because that's "the price of doing business in China," and they typically say that in the long run having the Internet and all that information out there will facilitate a more open exchange of ideas. And China is a big market: The U.S., with 203 million users, is now the biggest market, but it's pretty much saturated. China is second, with 103 million users—less than 8 percent of its population.

Google is the latest to give in. Until recently, it didn't have a Chinese site. The Chinese government blocks a number of political sites, but users could at least find out they existed using Google and then try to circumvent the restrictions. But now Google has a Chinese site that eliminates the sites the government doesn't want its citizens to see.

There are no great answers here. A Chinese journalist was jailed after Yahoo! turned over his e-mails. Microsoft has blocked antigovernment blogs all over the world, and it's still doing so in China.

It's not just search engines that are a concern. All sorts of tech companies make products that can be used for repression: databases that can keep track of what people are doing, firewalls that can block certain sites, and routers that can monitor what people are doing online. It's fruitless to say that U.S. tech companies shouldn't participate in the Chinese market, but what they could do is at least fight for more transparency there—and it would be good to see them come together to suggest proper rules.

China isn't the only country restricting the Internet. The U.S. has rules aimed at protecting minors. A number of European countries have restrictions against Nazi or racist content. But these are nothing compared with closed societies. One of the first things the new hard-line Iranian government did was crack down on the Web.

Even the U.S. government's asking Yahoo! and Google for large amounts of data makes people more careful with their searches. I worry that even well--intentioned actions to place minor constraints on the Internet are sending a message that restricting information is acceptable. In one sense, the countries that make finding dissident sites close to impossible are pushing that message to an extreme. And that's a bad sign for all of us.

5 Tech Myths

Five Tech Myths
ExtremeTech, August, 2007 by Loyd Case

Sometimes it's just like playing an endless game of whack-a-mole. You may remember the old arcade game, where you pound on plastic moles with a rubber mallet as they pop up out of little holes.

Sometimes myths propagate mysteriously, just like the old "telephone" game, where you'd sit in a big circle with your classmates and whisper some phrase in the next person's ear. By the time the phrase makes its way around the circle, it's something completely different.

Other times, companies may change their plans, but old information dies hard, so keeps reverberating through the system like some standing wave that never quite goes away.

Let's take a look at a few we've tackled in the past year or so.

Games for Windows Live: Must Pay Micro$oft $$$ It is true that Games for Windows Live is a premium service, and has an annual fee associated with it. The confusion revolves around what exactly you get with the free (Silver) version, and what you get for extra cost (the Gold version.) As GfW Live evolved, Microsoft kept updating us on the features, and some of the stuff that Redmond initially suggested would cost money got moved into the "free" column.

I still see people post that they'd never pay money just to get voice chat. Please, let's just stop. Voice chat is something built into the free GfW Live Silver account. What you get with the premium $50 per year version is matchmaking services and game achievements.

I also need to note that if you already have a Xbox Live Gold account, then GfW Live Gold is folded into that at no extra cost.

Now, if Microsoft would stick with this and not change their story again, maybe this meme will die out.

DirectX 10 on Windows XP ( This meme courtesy of Jason Cross. ) This one pops up occasionally still, usually offered by people who really don't understand what DirectX 10 entails.

One of the key features of DirectX 10 is that it's built on the Windows Vista graphics driver model (sometimes called LDDM.) It's a radically different driver model that lives in user space, as opposed to the kernel mode driver used in Windows XP. That's one reason why a graphics card driver failure can occur in Vista and Vista restarts the driver and keeps going.

It's not so much that Microsoft couldn't back-port DX10 to Windows XP, but that would require extensive rewriting, and even to the point of rewriting the kernel of Windows XP to support a user space driver like LDDM.

But Microsoft has already done that. It's called Windows Vista.

By the way, you may have seen reports of people who have cleverly enabled gamers to run Shadowrun or the PC version of Halo 2 —both Windows Vista only games—on Windows XP. Those hacks work, after a fashion. You don't get multiplayer, which kind of defeats the purpose of Shadowrun . And neither use DirectX 10, so these hacks don't mean someone's figured out a way to run DX10 titles on XP.

That could theoretically occur: Clever programmers could create a translation layer allowing DX10 titles to run on Windows XP in DX10 mode. Performance, however, would most assuredly suck.

My DirectX 9 Games Won't Work on Vista It's certainly possible that games originally written for Windows XP might not run on Windows Vista. But that's not because of DirectX 9. Windows Vista, in fact, incorporates both DirectX 9 and DirectX 10. In fact, newer games will even update the version of DX9 on Vista to later versions, to take advantages of bug fixes and enhancements the boys in Redmond continue to make in DirectX 9. But the majority of DX9 titles work under Vista.

By the way, one reason some Windows XP games don't run under Vista is because of driver-level content-protection schemes, such as Starforce. We're certainly not fans of Starforce, but we need to note that drivers for it are now available for Vista, so if there's a Starforce-protected game you're burning to play, you can find those available at the Starforce web site.

My TV has a Resolution of 1080i Robert Heron of DL.TV and who reviews HDTVs for PC Magazine gets this one fairly frequently from readers.

Except for a few old CRT projectors and CRT direct view HDTVs, no HDTV supports native interlaced resolution. They're all progressive scan TVs. Now, a number of high-definition sources will output 1080i signals, but every single flat panel and digital rear projector will process that signal and display it in some progressive format.

DTS Sounds Better than Dolby Digital DTS is the second most popular encoding scheme for multichannel DVD audio, behind Dolby Digital. Both DTS and Dolby Digital are lossy encoding schemes, which discard actual data in order to improve compression. The DTS encoding scheme is different, and is typically stored at a higher bit-rate (up to 1.5Mbps for DVD) than Dolby Digital, which is typically below 500Kbps for a 5.1 channel stream.

Early on, people glommed onto that higher bit rate number, listened to some DVDs that had both DTS and Dolby Digital encoding, and pronounced DTS better.

In fact, what they were really hearing was level differences. According to the folks at THX, which is vendor-neutral about audio encoding schemes, quite a few DTS-encoded DVDs were mastered so that the overall audio would play at a higher level than the typical Dolby Digital stream. So when people heard a DTS movie, it sounded better to their ears only because it was louder.

When listening tests were conducted using level-matched signals, no audible differences were readily discernable by most listeners.

Top Tip: IP address for switch?

"How can I find out what the IP address is for the switch on our network. I am trying to use web-based management on it but I need it's IP address. The folks who installed and supported our equipment went out of business, so they can't help me. " Answer from dwilkinson "There should be a serial port on the switch. Connect a computer to the serial port and use a terminal program, like HyperTerminal. Once you are connected, you should be able to find the ip address. You should also find the manuals for the switch."

Answer from natehoy "How big is your network? You could sweep through all of the IP addresses in your network and find it that way. Sort of a nasty brute-force approach, but it might work.

You can also try entering x.x.x.1, where the first three x's are the octets of your current IP address.

If your switch acts as a router (I know they are different beasts and this is a bit of an outside chance) you can try TRACERT to some other IP address within your network and see if your switch shows on the list."

Top 10 Outrageous Laptop Bags

What is a well-designed laptop bag? For starters, it can't weigh more than the laptop itself. Next, the shoulder strap should be comfortable, especially if you're lugging it to and from work. And with all the gadgets we all own these days, there should be plenty of zippered compartments for storage and safekeeping. Style can be a deciding factor, and color and material are definitely a personal choice. With all of these decisions to make and options to deal with, it's no wonder most people just go with the traditional black nylon bag (you know, the one that came with the laptop in the first place).

That said, there's no doubt that your laptop deserves the extra effort. It is what you use to send e-mail and read PCMag.com, after all. OK, perhaps you do a few more things with it—even more reason to spend the time finding it the best laptop bag. So, steer clear of those ordinary laptop bags and opt for one that really shows your personality. Among the outrageous bags in today's top 10, you'll find one for those of you that live on the edge, another that will appeal to sushi lovers, a laptop bag that will warm your hands, and much more.

Here are a couple of the products you'll find in today's top 10 slideshow:

A Sushi-Friendly Laptop Bag Can you imagine traveling on your next business trip with this laptop bag made of bamboo chopsticks? Yeah, we didn't think so. The Koo measures 12-by-8-inches wide and is lined with a removable hemp bag that has several pockets. The liner comes in tan or dark green and sells for $54. And if you order sushi for lunch but they forget to pack the chopsticks, just use some from this bag!

A Laptop Bag for Daredevils Skydivers, climbers, and others who live life on the edge will most likely appreciate the International Space Station Parachute Laptop Bag . It features the "original landing parachute used to bring back U.S. astronaut Michael Foale, his Russian colleague Alexander Kalery, and Andre Kuipers from the Netherlands to earth." In addition, it contains a dual quick-release buckled strap, a Velcro-secured back pocket, a nylon-cotton black lining, laptop compartment, cell phone and PDA pockets, and a 2-inch nylon shoulder strap. Waterproof and measuring 12-by-15-by-5 inches (HWD), buy one for $224.95 from SpaceToys.com.

PC Magazine, March, 2007 by Jennifer L. DeLeo

Latest Gadgets

Just because you are getting older does not mean that the fun has to stop. It only means that you have to change your mindset, and start to shop for items that are geared towards people of your age. With that being said, there are hundreds of gadgets on the market today that can help you have fun, or just make your everyday life a little bit easier.

Listed below are just a few of the gadgets that are taking the world by storm available at www.shushhh.co.uk

1. If you are tired of missing the big game because your life partner is dragging you shopping or on other errands, you will want to consider buying a television wristwatch. This gadget is exactly what it sounds like. It is a miniature television that you can strap to your arm and watch no matter where you are at or where you are going. In addition, it comes with earphones and batteries that will give you up to four hours of life.

2. Some people are simply forgetful and always seem to lose what is most important to them. If this sounds like you, chances are that you have misplaced your cell phone at some point in time. And to take this a step further you may have even lost it for good. When this happens you will lose all of your contacts and information that you were storing, or will you? With a sim card backup device you can backup 250 contacts and numbers in a matter of seconds. So if you lose your phone, all you have to do is rely on your backup and input the information into your new unit. It is that simple!

3. The shocking liar is a gadget that a lot of people wish they had. For a low price you can tell when somebody is lying without a shadow of a doubt. All you have to do is strap them into the compact design and ask them any question that you want. From there, when a lie is told the victim gets a minor shock. Sounds like a great device for parents that are constantly chasing their kids around!

4. If you are always running out of battery life on your I-pod or other handheld device you may want to look into buying the Solio. This product is a compact solar charger that can recharge a number of different units via solar power. Along with the Solio itself you get a cable that allows you to connect your two devices. From there, solar power takes over and your I-pod or other unit is charged.

Gadgets are great fun, and can also bring an added level of ease to anybody’s daily life. Listed above are just four of the hundreds of gadgets that are for sale on the market today. Start your search and you will be sure to find a couple that you would love to have!

Article Source: TechnoArti