Stuff You Can Hook Up to Your TV

talk about something really vague. Stuff you can hook up to your TV, right, go, okay, so cam qorders, uh, very small rocks, cherries, cherries. We wanted to talk about really sort of pretty much everything home theater related that you you hook up to your television. Actually I didn't go into a V receivers, but I thought we'd do another episode later on about home theater components specifically, But we kind of wanted to talk about different stuff that you can hook up to your TV to get content.

Really that was That's the way I looked at it, anyway, I'm not sure about you. Yeah, okay, So we're not talking about antenna's or cable boxes or satellite boxes for that matter, because that's really or at least I wasn't, at least not by themselves. No, no, no, that's their only application. We're talking about stuff that enhances what you you know, the basics. Yes, if it's a pair of rabbit ears that you can bake a potato on, I think that qualifies because it can do more than one thing.

That's true. That's true. And if you have one of those. UM sent it to Chris. He's apparently very interested. Um so the first thing I was going to talk about. But well, what was the first thing you were going to talk about before I jump in? No, No, I'm I'm interested to hear where you're going. I was gonna start off by talking about the Great Wars, the Great Wars between Beta Max and VHS. Okay, I thought we were going to have to get into that whole Austro

Hungarian thing. And no, I wasn't prepared to talk about wars. No, well this I hope you're prepared to talk about this one. Okay, So with Beta Max and VHS UM. For our younger listeners out there, you may wonder what the heck these things are. This is what we old folks used to watch movie pictures on UM back shortly after we you know, hooked up the view master to the ends fire then Beta Max. So Beta max was it was a Sony project, right, And so you had Sony on one side JVC with

the VHS technology on the other side. And these were both technologies that would allow home theater enthusiasts to watch programming on their television, prerecorded programming anytime they liked, which was a revolutionary thing at that point. And um, so it was two different technologies that were kind of similar. Beta Max a slightly better picture, um, but VHS could pack a lot more programming onto one tape than Beta Max could. And so you had this this battle early

on between the two formats. Is it gonna be Beta Max or is it gonna be VHS? Yep. And honestly, the from what I understand, the two formats are not all that different in quality. I mean VHS. Uh. If you read stuff about the The Great Wars um a lot of times you'll hear that Beta Max was the superior format and it just you know, completely created the VHS. But from what I've you know, and digging in a little bit more from what I've read, they really weren't

all that different as far as quality. I mean not that most people worry about it. I mean even you know, when people were using VCRs more than they do now. Uh, a lot of times people would put record when they were record stuff that that record things for themselves, they would use a uh slower recording time, and and that decreased the quality of the playback considerably. So, um, you know it's it. It actually became more of an issue of convenience and the length of the tape more than

it was video quality. Right in the original Beta Max, I think you could only record up to an hour's worth of programming, and the VHS to let you have to right, or up to four if you change the speed. The original Beta max is you couldn't even change the speed. So when you think about that, you're thinking, well, how how many programs on television would you want to record that are over an hour long? Yeah? There are plenty. Sports events would be over an hour long if you

wanted to. If you want to record an evening's worth of shows like you wanted to, you know, get the prime time programming from your favorite station, that would be up more than an hour. It's probably two hours right there. Or if it's a movie that's going to be longer, so VHS was more convenient, and it got the leg up and eventually ended up beating out Beta max. Um. Have you ever taken a look at a super VHS um, Not that I remember. I have a friend who owns

a super VHS machine and actually has super VHS. Uh. It does not. Um. It does wear glasses on occasion, and I've never seen it next to the VHS machine. UM. So super VHS was really it's the same sort of thing, the same sort of technology is VHS, but it was able to pack more lines of resolution into a recording than VHS, so your quality was better. It was it was more luminescent um colors sometimes suffered, but it was

it was in general of a sharper picture. Well, both technologies got better as the years went on, right, but by the point that that happened, that BETA had already lost out socially, except for you know, like TV production exactly. Yes, for home theater, Beta's pretty much it become a nonentity. Well. The interesting thing, the reason why I bring up super VHS is because it never really caught on. You know, even though it was better quality than VHS, it never

really took off in the home market. So you're talking about a technology that's similar to an existing technology, but it doesn't go anywhere because consumers are happy with the technology they have being good enough. That's going to come into play later, is it really? Yeah? I can think of another. I can think of a parallel to that, a current one. But before we get to that, I was going to talk about a couple of other sort

of legacy home theater devices. For for a moment, I thought you were talking about XP but then I realized we weren't talking to computers. No, No, I'm switched the theater. So we also have the laser disc. Yes, I was going to make sure that you mentioned this because I know this is one of your pet technologies, well, laser disc,

laser discause I never owned a laser disc. Again, I have a I have several friends who did own laser disc systems, and uh I remember as a kid going over to friends houses where they had laser disc systems and just being totally blown away because the picture was so much better than VHS, remarkably better. Uh I got a little annoying if you had to flip the disc halfway through, but other than that, it was really an amazing picture. Again, another one of those kind of a

niche market. I mean you had early adopters grab onto them, and then you had, you know, a small market in the US. It never really took off outside of the United States. And uh, CD technology is actually based off of laser disc technology. Yep, and and so is another one that you're going to talk about in a minute, but I'm not there yet. Yeah. Yeah, the laser disc

apparently had four five lines of resolution. And one of the things that I found out in doing research, even though I sort of looked at laser discs before, I didn't realize that the video format was analog. It was not digital, which is kind of funny compared to that other technology that everybody knows what we're going to talk about,

but we're not yet, yes, exactly, all right. So I was also going to go ahead and mention I've mentioned this in other podcasts, but the capacitance electronic disc that was the one that we owned. We didn't have the laser disc. Oh no, no, we had the capacity its electronic disc. And uh I've talked about it before, but I'm gonna go ahead and give the spiel again. So what you had was a disk inside a plastic sheath.

The plastic sheath was about the same size as This is also a dated reference for you folks out there, a vinyl record album cover. What, Yeah, exactly, So you kids who don't know what we're talking about. Um, something that you've never heard of is about the same size as something else that you've never heard of, and I'm yeah,

I just wanted to clear that up. So the discs actually had little grooves in them, and you know, a laser disc obviously the method that with the device would read the the information off the disc, they used a laser. Thus the laser disc um capacits electronic disk, did not

use a laser. He used a needle. So there was a very very fine needle and it would create an electronic connection between the needle and the disc itself and make a circuit as the disc turned, and that's how it would read information off the disk and display it on your television. So it was more like a vinyl record than a laser disc. And uh, you couldn't write to them, you could only read from them, so you

would buy movies or whatever. And again, after about I think it was around forty minutes or so, maybe thirty I can't remember quite right now. But you didn't have to flip it over. It would it would run out of space. And we had several movies. Um. I remember Rais Last arc always ended with they're digging in the wrong place flip. So that was my experience in home theater as a kid growing up. Um, and then there's

a pretty big gap. I mean, VHS kind of reigned supreme for several years and as just now really truly going extinct, and none of the other the videotape formats really have managed to displace it at all. I mean not the you know, the digital eight You don't see digital eight players. You know camcorders, yes, as you mentioned before, I mean, and you can for most of them anyway, plug them right into your TV and watch the movies you record. But you didn't buy movies on those formats.

So as far as as uh magnetic tape goes, that's pretty much the end of the line as far as watching movies. And I meant to mention this before just because I thought it was funny. Do you know what the original marketing term for a laser disc was, um beulah No, Okay, disco Vision, you're kidding. No. If I were kidding, i'd say a priest, a rabbi, and a horse walk into a bar. But I'm not kid crispy. This is being serious here, Disco vision. I don't know

why they changed it. Um so, probably because they were trying to keep it past going past the seventies. Yes, exactly so. Yeah, the VHS, the Beta Max, the Capassitan's electronic disk, that laser view. Those are laser disc round, not laser view. All of those have their origins back in the mid to late seventies and then throughout the eighties. Uh, laser just like we said, never really got much of

a foothold. Um. It had a larger market in the US than anywhere else, and then VHS was reigning supreme for a while until the DVD came along. Can we talk about it now? Sure, let's go, okay, go for it. Um. Well, these are these are much smaller than the laser disc. You may be familiar with the DVD format, dominant media format in every culture today. Yes, yes, um, you know. DVDs caught on for a couple of big reasons, um, One of which is that, um, you know, it's smaller

and more convenient. The other is price, and the price of the DVD players, which is now what like forty five cents or something like that. Yeah, but when they first came out, they were I remember, the big incredibly expensive. Actually, I think um, to some degree, DVDs have benefited from the success of vhs because when um, again, this is one of the things that that some of the younger listeners may not remember because it may really technically be

before your time. But when used to buy vhs, I remember when we've got our first VHS player, movies were like ninety dollars. They were really expensive. Ye. A lot of that was because you had these these rental agencies like Blockbuster cut popping up, and what they would do is they would purchase the movies that would hit the market. Were really meant more for these these you know, aftermarket

kind of places. UM. So what would happen is a rental agency would purchase however many copies of you know, uh, Empire Strikes Back or whatever, and then you would be you would rent it and they would make their money back through the rentals. Um. And and it wasn't until the market had really established itself before he started seeing some you know, the more popular movies start falling into home market you know, price ranges, and then it started

to uh, to affect the whole the whole system. But I mean, I own a movie that up until the point where I went out of print, the only way you could buy it officially was if you dished out a hundred bucks. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm sorry, but Blood Salvage is not worth a hundred dollars. But if Jake can't fix it, it's been dead too long. I was in that movie. Yeah, that's kind of why I wanted it.

I bought it on eBay, alright, moving gone. Yeah. But the I think that helped the DVD because by the time the DVDs became the primary format for videos, it was a player that was expensive and the videos were considerably cheaper. Now, I mean they were more expensive, sort of like another format that we're going to talk about in a moment um, you know, more expensive than VHS tapes. But um, I think that that was sort of part

of the transition. And another interesting point about this is that as people began to adopt DVD players, then you started seeing U stores cut back on on the VHS inventory both Reynold places and you know, big box stores or whatever. So it began to force consumers to switch over, even the ones who weren't interested in necessarily upgrading their experience. Because the jump between VHS and super VHS wasn't huge, I mean, you could notice it, it wasn't unnoticeable, but

it wasn't enough to motivate people to switch. The jump between VHS and DVD was significant, and that was enough to get enough people to jump over and adopt it to force the market to follow. And uh, Also, DVDs had other great benefits as well, like you could include all these extras on DVDs and extra layers on DVDs so that you could watch the movie again with commentary things like that that weren't possible with VHS unless you just had some talkative people in the room with you

when you're trying to watch your damn movie. Right, Well, I mean it was possible to uh to do some of that in laser disc to right, These are some of those features were introduced around that time, but um, you know, people hadn't really seen that because they were

kind of ignoring the laser disc. Right, Yeah, only the laser disc enthusiasts knew about that, and they thought it was great, and everyone else just looked at them funny whenever they would bring it up right right, But um, yeah, Actually, I think the DVD also affected the TV itself because you know, talking about stuff you hook up to your TV.

I've got an older TV, got got it in the early nineties and if you look on the back of it, it's got a coax connector on it and no composit, no s video, no HD m I, none of that stuff. So if I wanted to look up a DVD player, you know, there's no progressive scan, no cup or anything

like that. So, you know, I think it's one of those things where people said, m if they really want this kind of quality, if they really want DVD, we're gonna have to, you know, provide some kind of hook up in order to make the TV worthwhile, and maybe they'll upgrade their TV too. It also ties into the history of h D t V, which is a little

more complex. I don't think we'll go into that because it's maybe we'll do another podcast about that at some point, because I kind of went nuts on that on a recent article which was only tangentially involved with the history of HDTV, and I said, no, this is more interesting. I'm gonna write about this. Don't let everyone know that, I said that, don't don't let my bosses here this. Um. But all right, so we've got the DVDs, that's the

dominant form on the market. Now, then of course you have the other format war that popped up, the HD DVD versus Blu Ray format for high definition video. And what's really funny or interesting to me is that even the winner of that format war isn't really doing that well. So HD DVD was that was Toshiba's baby, and then you had Blue Ray Sony's baby. So Sony's back in the game. They're sticking from Beta max, but now they're back and ready to fight, and so they've got their

back in Blu Ray. Uh. The battle between these two is actually really interesting to watch, at least from my perspective, because you could see different Hollywood studios getting behind, you know, one format versus another, and then you had a few that were producing product for both. So you know, the the interesting thing about these two high definition video formats is that they were again pretty close to one another. I mean, you had people arguing the superiority of one

versus the other. And I think most people would say, if you really looked at the specifications, that Blu Ray did have the superior format. But it was interesting for a while there, I thought I thought HD DVD was gonna win because it looked like it had more public support.

You know, it's funny because we've talked about this. It's been a long time since we brought up that format war um on the podcast, but uh, you know, you and I had talked about the reasons why we hadn't gotten involved with that one, and that was simply cost um and that I think was probably the biggest factor in all of it was people weren't adopting either one of them, so it kind of eroded any early support

that HD DVD got. And yeah, that's kind of crazy because HD DVD was in general cheaper than Blu ray. The movies were about the same price, but the cheap being a relative thing. Yeah, less expensive, I guess I should say, rather than cheaper, because yes, it was still several hundred dollars for a player. A Blu Ray was almost a thousand dollars for a player. For a long time there. In fact, for a while, the Sony PS three was the cheapest Blu Ray player you could get,

and that was like six hundred bucks. So um. But eventually an Off Studios backed Blu Ray, where Toshiba was you know, said all right, no moss. They threw in the towel and Blu Ray one that format warp. But Blue Ray still hasn't really taken off. I mean, the numbers are up compared to where they were, but when you're going from you know, ten people owning one too, I mean that there's nowhere else to go. But so DVD sales in general are down. Blu Ray sales are

not taking off the way that people want. And I think part of it is the old s VHS argument. The improvement of Blu Ray over regular DVDs well noticeable, isn't enough for people to be willing to switch to a new format potentially go back and purchase old titles that they already own on the new format. Um, They're just not It's just not enough of a of a you know, motivator. So I think that's why we still

haven't seen Blu Ray really take off. Yeah, I mean the other thing that it keeps me from buying a Blu ray player other than price, is that I don't have an h d t V. You know, and you know, watching a regular DVD, it's it's seven ADP. Yeah that's I can't even see that probably on my standard definition television. Um technically, so you know the point of buying a Blu ray player for me is is moot, right, I have an hd TV, But I also have a wife. Yeah, and that would be why I don't have a Blu

ray player. Yeah, I love you, honey. Um oh no, no, I can't put the blame on her, I honestly, I I have also looked at the difference in quality, and while I can recognize it, I can't justify the expense. It's and and they are cheaper now there are cheaper Blu ray players out there in the market. The movies are still more expensive than regular DVDs. Yeah, yeah, but the difference is different about the difference is different, that's wise.

The difference is slighter than it used to be. Yes, and we can also I mean there's also the up converting DVD players where they add in information from the disks and then give you a slightly better experience. It's still not the same as Blu Ray, but it's better than a normal DVD and therefore, you know, it's an incremental uh improvement. It's not as expensive and you don't have to go back and replace your library. Yeah, and and they may be and maybe that the whole physical

media thing is a moot point in in the first place. Yeah, I was actually getting ready to go there. Okay, let's move on. You know, the digital download thing, especially with um companies like Netflix, you know already that that's a very that's going to be a very easy transition because people who are already using Netflix to rent DVDs may just go ahead and go, you know what, they offer a download service and it's already integrated, so I can

just switch over. And I think it's just gonna be one of those things that it's gonna be a transition to digital download that is much smoother than a lot of the other technology. You cool transitions have been simply because people already have you know, people are using computers already to access Netflix, so they're gonna start going, you

know what, I can do this. This is not hard and even if you don't want to use a computer, if for some reason you find the idea of of hooking a computer up to a television is UH is intimidating in some way. Netflix is partnering with other UH set top box manufacturers too, to create a way for you to access Netflix entertainment through a box like Roku. Now, granted, I've never used a Roku, and I've heard some conflicting things about its interface and how easy or not easy

it is to use. But that might be an in road for some people who you know, they just they can't get past that that weird mental block about hooking up your computer to your television. And but a box that makes sense because of VCRs A box at cable boxes a box, DVD players a box. So this is just yet another box you hook up to your TV. Or you might not need an extra box. It depends on what you have see if you have a DVR UH.

Certain brands are already partnering with services to provide digital downloads, like Netflix or Amazon yep YEP. TiVo has partnership deals in place, and UM basically you can if if you have a broadband connection in the right kind of TiVo, you can go ahead and download movies right then and there. Um, and you know, you can use the box for other things. You can use it for its regular DVR capabilities, which is um which a lot of people already are. Of course,

you know, TiVo is not the only one. There are dozens of others. Now. Um. You know, ADDIH Network has their own proprietary box. Scientific Atlanta, now part of Cisco, you know, makes a lot of boxes for different cable manufacturers. Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, um, you can you can always build your own too. We've had a podcast on that terribly long. Using a computer as a media center. Yeah, so I mean these kinds of things. Uh, you know that would

be your favorite word, convergence, convergence. Um, so you wouldn't necessarily pie. You knew it had to be one of the two. Convergence or pie. Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't but a few weeks ago that I discovered Jonathan's findness for pie. So every once in a while, I'm I'm you know, I may need to uh throw that in there just to watch his eyes glazing over. It's kind of fun if I get into a rant, all you

have to do is say the word pie. Pie. But um, yeah, convergence may you know, be the the end of the the argument for a lot of people because you know other technologies like the sling player. You know that's that's being built in addition network receivers too, So I mean you can you can get I'm sure there will be competing technologies for that too in the in the future. So sling players another good example of stuff you can help. YEP,

that's a place shifter. If you don't know what sling player is, UM, and it will let you say you're on a business trip, you have your sling player hooked

up and configured correctly. UM, you can you know, tune into your network at home, UH, use it to control your DVR and watch your recorded TV shows, or you can watch live TV on a on a you know, on some event especially that you may not be able to get in your local area, like say, uh sporting event, which has actually caused a lot of sporting leagues to be very upset with Sling and I assume Dish too

now that they were acquired. I would just like, you're out of the area, you're in a blackout zone, you're not supposed to be able to see this. I just take like to take a moment to say, what the hell I mean, they wouldn't be able to watch it anyway? What's the problem with watching it? I don't. I don't under this no sense to Baseball Graves. What what makes no sense to me is if you are allowed to watch it because you live in the zone and you are across the country on a business trip watching it

on your your place shifting device. I don't see why if you are legally allowed to watch it, you just don't happen to be at that place at that time. Why you wouldn't be allowed to write? Geography means less and less in the digital age, right indeed? I oh, it ever takes me so much? Um, I feel I feel. I feel the same way about this as uh as I'm sure a lot of our foreign listeners feel about being able to not being able to access things like Hulu.

Because really, in the SABC w BBC programming, which is why whenever you Brits talked to us about Doctor Who, We're like, wait, what happened? Because we're a year behind? Yes, um, no spoilers, no spoilers, so uh we Also, I was going to mention Apple TV, oh yeah, because that's another

digital media kind of downloading device. Yeah, that's sort of in a gray area too, because it's not a it's not a it's a it's uh it's Apple TV, right, Yeah, you can use Apple TV to essentially kind of it's it's kind of like hooking up your television to iTunes, really is what it boils. Yeah, that's pretty much. And you can use it to rent HD movies or purchase movies or television off of iTunes and watch it on

your television. And uh so it's again, it's one of those things where for people who who are unsure about hooking up a computer to the other television or maybe if maybe you're one of those households where everyone has a laptop, you don't have a machine that you can dedicate to that, then this makes sense. So yeah, actually it's a It's received quite a lot of praise, but um, I don't you know, it's not one of their perennial

top sellers. I've heard people, you know, I've heard rumors in the past that they were going to kill it, and they haven't, so they must sell some. Um. But it's a pretty neat little device. But it's it's very specialized in what it can do. And uh, you know a lot of people say, well I could, I could get a computer and actually convert it to a media center and have it do this and other stuff, you know,

with something like boxy. Well that's the thing though, I think, I think a lot of these items are really marketed for that group of consumers where they're not technologically savvy enough to take the steps that are required to hook up a computer to your television or home entertainment system, because in some cases it takes more than just you know,

putting the right cable between the two devices. There there are other steps that are involved, and um, if you don't have the recorrect software, for example, you'll be thinking, why the heck isn't this working and you get really frustrated. Whereas a box, of course, it's all supposed to work right on the box if it's designed correctly. Yes, okay, Well, uh, what other devices do you have if any? Um? Well, I wrote down some things about gaming systems, but that's

kind of a separate category. That's true. Yeah, there are tons of gaming systems. Um. I was going to talk about the online video game console because we mentioned that in a podcast previously. The online video game console was supposed to be this device that allows you to download UH or or actually to play game is over the cloud, you know, and you're not even downloading, but you're able

to play you a little bit. Yeah, there's some stuff on the device itself, but the there's there's a there's supposed to be a version version for the PC, for the Mac, and then there's a standalone little concel that who come to the TV and ideally you would be able to play these really normally resource intensive games, but the cloud would take care of all the processing for you, so you would just be able to play it rail the box. You wouldn't have to have the latest and

grace machine to play it. The reason why I wanted to bring it up is because I noticed going to their website that I haven't seen any updates since June one, So UH and E three came and went, and I didn't see anything about it at E three when I was there. Yeah, that makes me a little nervous. I'm starting I'm starting to get shades of the phantom. UM.

I'm hoping that's not the case. So they are supposed to continue in open beta and UH not that I've been contacted I did express interest, but I haven't heard back, and it's supposedly going to be available um this coming winter, so we'll keep our eyes open see if that actually comes to fruition or if maybe this is another one of those things that just fizzles out before it ever goes to market. All right, then, so I guess that just leaves us to our favorite segment, which is a

listener mail. Okay, man, So this listener mail comes from James, and he has a nice long email, so I'm just gonna again cut this a little short. Hey guys, I must say I've always been quite the techie since I was a kid. I've always tried to stay on top of the latest and grace things in the tech world. I work now as a computer programmer, but I'm also a professional musician at night with my band Shipyard wreck Plug.

So my world's collide quite often between music or art and computers, which to me is an art as well. I was wondering what you guys might think about computers and technology and their effects on art in the studio. I love using all the digital tools and whatnot, but this same time, I think people sometimes use it too much, mostly because they don't have the talent to back it up. Do you think we will ever get back to a world of music where samples, auto tune and other digital

schools rule the world in markets? I think that means when they don't. UM. I somewhat fear that Sunday technology will push aside art because true artists will no longer be respected due to the fact that any Joe Schmo would be able to produce music at the touch of a button. And he goes on. But that's enough for us to talk about this briefly. What's your take on technology and art? Well, UM, you know, as a an

artist of sorts, not a visual artist, but a musician. UM, I gotta say that a lot of times we the stuff that I do with the people I record with UM is really a collaboration of technologies, between analog and digital. UM. I don't think you can. I mean, digital technology makes art of all kinds a lot easier in a lot of respects, but it kind of depends on what you do with it. And it's sort of like my my feelings on e books. You know, I like the idea of having a digital device where you can read UM.

You know, thousands of books on the train or where you know, take it with you and not have to carry a whole bunch of textbooks. There's something about the

physical medium. Um. There's something about playing an instrument, or going to a museum and actually see, you know, seeing the texture of the paint on the canvas, or you know, a sculpture that you can actually look at or in some cases touch, um And and you know, the kind of thing where you you actually have in your hands a book in your hands, where you flip the page. There's that that sort of visceral reaction that I don't

think you can get through pure digital media. Plus there's that whole preservation question, right and you know, whether it's going to be available to the next generation of people, whether it's going to fall apart, or whether people will even be able to read it if it's in some format or used on some computer. I mean, will people

be able to read DVDs in sixty year? So, I mean, you know, there there are a lot of questions regarding that, and I think, uh, computers are great for helping us, you know, create some of these things, but you know, I don't think I don't think analog are forms are going to ever completely go away. I agree. I think technology does help people realize their artistic visions um in ways that they otherwise may not be able to do. But I don't think it will ever completely replace it.

I mean a lot of the stuff I've listened to, UM, you can tell quality. That's that's really what it boils down to. I mean, you can you might enjoy like a weird song that was produced by putting a whole bunch of samples together, but that that's sort of a novelty I think. Um. I think genuine artistic expression does come through, whether you're using technology to achieve it or not. And if you don't have that, then it just won't you know, it just doesn't have any real lasting power.

So I agree. I don't think technology is ever going to push the artistic expression out. Um. I think it's going to continue helping people express themselves artistically, and uh, I see it as a great thing. In fact, there were some musicians I never would have heard of without technology, So that's true. That was a great question, James. Um, that would probably deserve its full podcasts all on its own. But maybe I'll just switch that over to stuff from the b sides and see what they want to do

with it. Thanks, and if any of you have any suggestions or questions, you can write us. Our email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com and you can learn all about various home theater uh boxes and sets and do hickies that's a technical term at how stuff works dot com. Crispy and I will taught you again, probably about pie really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff

works dot com. And be sure to check out the new tech stuff blog down on the house stuff Works homepage, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you