TV reviews and DVD player reviews

:: TV/Video Help & How-To

Choosing a Digital Camcorder
When you go shopping for a new digital camcorder, you'll be presented with myriad specifications and features. Your challenge is to sort through all the hoopla and figure out whether the camera will meet your specific needs. When reviewing the spec sheet for any new camcorder, pay special attention to these items:
Getting to Know Digital Video
Human beings experience the world as an analog environment. When we take in the serene beauty of a rose garden, the mournful song of a cello, or the graceful motion of an eagle in flight, we are receiving a steady stream of infinitely variable data through our various senses. Of course, we don't think of all these things as "data" but rather as light, sound, smell, and touch.
Analog to Digital: Exploring External Video Converters
You have a computer with a FireWire port, and you want to capture some analog video. What are you going to do? You have many solutions, of course. You can install a video-capture card, but a good one costs a pretty penny and you have to tear apart your computer to install it. If you're lucky, you may be able to connect an analog video source to the analog inputs on your digital camcorder and then connect the camcorder to the FireWire port. This method is clumsy, however, and it simply doesn't work with some camcorders.
Getting to Know Aspect Ratios in Digital Video
Different moving picture displays have different shapes. The screens in movie theaters, for example, look like long rectangles; most TV screens and computer monitors are almost square. The shape of a video display is called the aspect ratio. The following two sections look at how aspect ratios affect your video work.
Exploring HDMI Digital Video Connections for Your Home Theater
The latest and greatest in digital-video and -audio connections is the HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) cable. HDMI is being included in a variety of devices these days, including HDTVs, DVD players — both the current generation of DVD players and the forthcoming high-definition Blu-ray and HD-DVD players; cable and satellite set-top boxes; Media Center Edition PCs; and the Sony PlayStation 3 gaming console.
Configuring Your Media Center Edition PC to Play DVDs Your Way
Before you get started with DVDs on your MCE PC, it's worth spending a few minutes setting your preferences for DVD playback. Just follow these steps:
Choosing a Digital Video Format
Many different video formats are available for the movies that you edit on your computer. Each format uses a different codec. (A codec, short for compressor/decompressor, is a software tool that is used to make multimedia files smaller.) Common video file formats include MPEG and AVI, but these two formats are usually not suitable for movies that you plan to share online because they have big file sizes. Three other popular formats, however, are perfectly suited to the online world. These formats are as follows:
Camcorder Techniques: Framing a Shot
Framing the shot is simply a matter of placing the subject properly in the picture. You don't have much to remember to frame a shot correctly. Keep these three things in mind when framing: safety margins, offset versus symmetrical, and proper headroom.
Camcorder Techniques: Effective Zooming
Zooming is the process of changing the focal length of a lens. If you've ever had a fixed-length camera lens (one that didn't zoom), you know that to change the perceived distance to a particular object, you have to move the camera. With a zoom lens, you can change the focal length without changing the location of the camera.
Importing MP3 Audio to Your Digital Video
MP3 is one of the most common formats for sharing audio recordings today. MP3 is short for MPEG Layer 3, and MPEG is short for Motion Picture Experts Group, so really you can think of MP3 as an abbreviation of an abbreviation. The MP3 file format makes for very small files — you can easily store a lot of music on a hard drive or CD — and you can easily transfer those files over the Internet. What could be better for your video's soundtrack than a crisp, clear music file that you can easily put on your computer?
Home Theater Basics: What's "Electronic Content?"
Grabbing music and video off the Internet probably isn't a new topic for you. But when you get right down to it, knowing a few high-level concepts about "electronic content" helps you understand what all the fuss is about.
Playing DVDs in Windows XP

Microsoft raves about how Media Player plays DVDs. But that's a lie. Windows XP can't play DVDs right out of the box. See, even though you've bought a Windows XP computer, a DVD drive, and a DVD, you need something else: special software called a decoder. This bit of software, called a codec because itconverts one format to another, enables your computer to translate numbers on a disc into videos of galloping horses on the screen.
Using Windows Movie Maker

You can use the Windows Movie Maker program to capture video and audio clips, which you can then edit and arrange into your very own movies. You can play these movie files on your computer or distribute them to family, friends, and colleagues by e-mail so that they can play them on their computers.
Working with Digitally Captured Images
In the early days of digital cameras, downloading images was a complex process that involved connecting your camera to your computer with a special cable and then using a software program to download the images to your hard drive. You can still use that option with most digital cameras, but today there are simpler ways to get your images on your computer. The following options can be used with most digital cameras (consult the manual that came with your digital camera for details about your system).
Viewing Digital Video: Monitor versus TV
Almost everyone you know owns a TV and a VCR. These ubiquitous bits of home entertainment gear are all that you need to view your latest movie production — because exporting your movie to videotape is pretty simple. Well, it's usually simple, especially if you have the right hardware. But even if all you have is a digital camcorder, sending your movie to videotape isn't very difficult.
A Battle in the Home Theater: High Definition DVD Formats
What's really exciting in the DVD world is the development of a couple of new DVD formats that will allow true high-definition (HD) programming to be available on optical discs. A number of companies have banded together into two groups with competing standards for these next-generation, high-definition disc formats:

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