The TechStuff Christmas List

And this is just stuff that Chris and I would love to have as Christmas presents. If the sky was the limit, we could ask for anything we wanted. Um, and you know price was not an issue. So ho ho ho exactly do you want to get started? You want me to go? All right, I'm gonna do. This is what I may actually get. I'm gonna start off with one that I might actually get this Christmas, the HTC e G one phone running the Android platform. Because you know, I'm I am a devoted Google disciple. I've

noticed that. Yeah, well the hats a little much, but I you know, you know they're watching you, Chris, just like Santa clause, they're watching you. So yes, HTC G one phone. Uh, this phone's got an accelerometer, GPS three G and WiFi capability. It's got a touch screen, a full Corty keyboard, runs on T Mobile. I happen to be a T Mobile customer, so that that works out great for me. Um, I want the smartphone, all right,

that's my first one. All right. Shoot, So what I was thinking is when we went to c S last year, I found out that my camera is just very ill prepared to handle the rigors of life as a traveling journalist and really anything else. For that man, it's kind of old. So what I was thinking is it would be really cool if I could pick up a Nikon D three. Now I realized we're talking top of the line here, but it does have the advantage of being able to use every Nikon lens ever invented, or at

least pretty much all of them. I think, uh, you know, and it's only uh you know, so for just under and I mean just under five thousand dollars. I mean, how could you go wrong? Okay, well, if we're on cameras, I'd kind of like the Casio eat X Dash f H twenty digital camera. Would I'd like to know why. All Right, the Casio. It can take forty high res photographs in one second. It can also shoot video at one thousand frames per second, so you can get that

great slow motion video. And it has a twenty times maximum zoom, so you know, when I'm stalking Alison Hannigan, she doesn't have to know about it can be like three blocks away. Um, yeah, that that's a It retails for around six hundred bucks, so it's definitely a little on the prices side for my camera usage. I am not a shutter bug. I am not. I am definitely on the amateur side of photography. I'm the guy who always has the thumb somewhere in the photograph. Um, I

was wondering who that was. It's hard to tell. Usually my thumb, though occasionally it's some other guy's thumb that I just have to be carrying around. But anyway, yeah, I'm not a very good photographer, but this camera really does appeal to me. You know, the creepy stuff was the Halloween podcast. I just want to point that out. My bad Right, Um, while we're on the Santa dropping stuff off, I realized I just got a sixteen gigabyte

iPod Touch right that you can't stop talking about. Hey, but I would like it's beautiful by the way, I covet your iPod Touch, and that explains why it goes missing something, but that in the drool on it. But I would like to to get the the thirty two gigabyte iPod Touch, which wasn't the same as you know, the one that was out when I bought mine. I bought mine right as usual before the announcement for the new ones, and in addition to being larger, it also

has the hardware slider. Mine has the touchscreen slider for volume control. So if something else comes on and it's louder than I expected it to be, I have to unlock it, you know, slide to unlock and find the volume control and slide it back instead of using the little knob. Meanwhile, you're slowly going deaf. What yeah, nice um, You're a percussionist. You should be used to it. So

I'm gonna go switch over to TVs now. And I have a I have a kind of uh an advantage here because I recently wrote an article about the top ten televisions and it was really about TVs that I thought were top of the line. Not necessarily was that the average use or could could afford, but sort of the best of the best. It's out there. And uh, and one particularly caught my attention. And I could get bitten for this because it's sort of a new technology.

But it's the Mitsubishi Laser View sixty five inch television laser that's a big TV. Sixty five inch television. Really, you're not going to go for the hundred and five inch there's d and fifty inch mythic. Yes, well we saw it. I saw it. I don't think you got You didn't go to that press conference also at yes, yes, but you don't see them at your local electronics. Yeah, you don't fit through the door. So yeah, because that's eight ft by eleven feet, that's a little big. No,

the Mitsubishi sixty inches plenty large enough. That's much larger than my current TV. And uh, it's really nice to ten eight high deaf resolution, hundred twenty hurts refresh rate. I mean, it's optimized for three D viewing. It's got hd m I inputs component and then but you know the whole shebang um cost about seven grand. Yeah, yeah, there's gonna be a seventy three inch model out soon. Actually I should have checked. The seat may might even be out by now. Yeah. And and this one maybe,

uh it may have lowered the price. Oh sure, yeah, because because you know. Yeah, well actually I was just saying, if the new ones, I'll go for the sky's lemon. Right. Oh that's right, that's right, I dude, Okay, so yeah that's my that's the TV that I covet all right. Well, um, the article that that Jonathan is referring to is an article that we updated because it had uh t vs from a couple of years ago, so we wanted it

to refresh that and do some really cutting edge stuff. Well. Um, our other tech writer, who is not with us at the moment, John Fuller, updated the home theater systems article, and I'm gonna throw in for for a combo. Um. John wrote about the the six million dollar theater that music producer Jeremy Kickness created. Boy you aim, big Pete. Yeah, yeah, well it's uh, it's got an ultra high definition TV, the Sony s r x R one ten, which is

a digital cinema projector TV. Um. Well, and it also has eight point eight channels around sound, six eighteen in sub woffers, Uh, you know PS three Blu ray H D DVD would okay, I'll stamp on that. I was about to say, regular DVD, VHS and laser disc. Wow. So you know where this is. This is a custom built high end, ultra end theater and it has t high definition. You can't even find anything that plays that right now, can you? Well, apparently this can. But you know,

for six million dollars, it really ought to here. I mean, I just I can't think of any content you would find that actually is ultra high definition, is what I was saying the U. I guess if you were to get it straight from the movie studio, and if you're gonna spend six million on your home entertainment system, then you might as well go ahead, go all out, you know, Spielberg. But I would buy more chairs the one. There are

only three seats for this particular theater. That just means you have to battle it out to be one of the top two. Friends that that's kind of that's kind of cruel, that's true, but it appeals to me. Um all right, Well, but I didn't mention this, but I would have to add the large Logitech Harmony one remote. That's that was one of mine too. Oh, this is what I want, But that's okay, that's okay, we both want it. It's that tells her that it's definitely one

to look out for. You have the Logitech Harmony one Universal Remote has an LCD touch screen as well as button control. Um it's web programmable, so you can go online and program all the information of your home entertainment system onto this remote and give it special names. So that way it makes it very easy for you to switch between components. Uh, it's looks really really nice. Yeah, you just sort of. It's got a rechargeable lithium ion battery. So this is a serious remote. No double as for

this thing. Yeah, until the you know, thermal runaway, right until it explodes in your hand, but you know, actually watching like you know, I don't know, Armageddon, you won't care. It'll just seem like it just seemed like really immersive. Yeah, yeah, I should add to that the Kalid Escape, which is a box that I read about in PC World in their most Expensive Gadgets article, which is pretty pretty amusing, most of which really didn't apply to this particular podcast.

But this Kalid Escape is a peripheral that you can add to your home theater and it will store all of your your DVDs on it like you can. Basically, it's like a giant hard drive e thing. But of course it made the most expensive Gadgets article, so it's ten dollars you know for this thing. But it's pretty use that I have an enormous DVD election to the point now where I don't have shelf space for the DVDs. I have a bin of DVDs in my living room right now because I have nowhere else to put it.

My wife wanted us to buy a a filing system of drawer system from Ikea. They get a free plug Ikea, and it was so far. Yeah, it was a really neat, neat drawing that may be one of the things on my list. The only problems I don't really have any floor space for it. So yeah, I gotta figure out something um overhead compartments, right, yeah, something that you know, right up there with the oxygen masks just in case the living room loses pressure. Um, so another component of

my home theater system. Because I didn't look at the six million dollar one I didn't think about that is the yeah you beat me there, pullet is the s Sony s t R D A five three zero zero E s hike. Yeah. I love these names where it's all digits and letters. But it's a it's an a V receiver, okay. Um, it's got six h d M I inputs, three component video inputs, five S video. A v in puts three coaxial inputs, and it up converts

analog signals so that they are better. When you're you know, like you're listening to a Vinyl album, it suddenly sounds better than it would have normally because it's up converting that signal. Um. It's kind of interesting. And uh, it's also x M and serious ready, I know you're a big serious x M fan. Uh. It has automatic speaker calibration. You can have up to nine high definition video sources going into this thing. It's crazy. It's seventeen hundred dollars. Um.

It's actually sort of affordable for that precious. Then, you know, if you're gonna watch regular TV, I would recommend the tvo h d x L, which was is there extra large hard drive all of their HD DVR and you know, I just like the tvo interface. Yeah, I would recommend that, but that's that's one of those that consistently gets very good reviews, the TVO. I mean, out of all the DVRs,

TiVo's interface they really nailed that the user interface really well. Um, okay, so are you ready for It's probably not my biggest big ticket item, but it's it's it's the one that I'm I kind of built this whole list around. You ready, Well, you know I shot my yeah, the six million dollar so the Alien War a l x X Dash five eight gaming computer, and I'm talking about the fully tricked out one, which, by the way, I went ahead and went on Alien wear site. It's a it's a it's

a gaming pc. Um. They build really good PCs for playing computer games, you know, very high end graphics cards and processors, uh and cooling systems. I mean like they just trick it out so that you can play the most advanced games in the highest settings with no hiccups whatsoever. Right, So, fully tricked out this thing costs almost ten thousand dollars, it's ninety seven actually, um, and that was without any extras.

It was just like the top end stuff. But just to give you an idea of some of the specs. UH and Intel I seven Extreme CPU, which is a three point to giga hurts speed. It's got also three channels of d d R three memory. That's not Dance Dance Revolution, by the way, that would be double data rate three UM. It has a twelve gigabytes of RAM. Twelve gigs of RAM. Can you imagine? UH runs Windows Vistas,

so that's the downside it's got. Actually, at this point, Vista is not as bad as everyone made it out to be. UM, but it also has UH. You can get it with dual to gigabyte a t I radio on HD graphics cards, so you're running two major graphics cards in this thing, plus a physics processing card UH to one terabyte storage hard drive, so you have two terabytes of storage. It's insane. Four times speed, dual layer blue ray DVD B Chris Santa, if you're listening, I

will take one. I like it black with the red highlights. But you know, if you want to give me silver with you know, purple, I'll take it. Right. It's ah, this, it's it's drool worthy. Now this does not we should add come with the extra circuit you're going to need. Yeah, what power supply? Twelve hund what's of power? Yeah? Not the greenest machine. Now, my carbon footprint would get much larger just from owning this machine. Yeah, I would suggest

you switch to solar panels. Yeah, maybe an extra bank right, um? Yeah? Welly for my computer, I actually went to non surprisingly towards the Mac end um. I was thinking of the seventeen inch MacBook Pro, you know, which which I I've coveted for some time. But I would add to it the new one right that was just announced. Right, Yeah, they're pretty with a glass tracking pad, and those are

very pretty pretty machine. They're pretty machines. And I would also add to that, you know, for those sedentary moments, the thirty in Apple Cinema HD display nice, you know, and uh, I was shopping around on Apple's site and found uh a nice set of banging all of us and bail ab uh you know, four speakers set. It's only nine dollars for the speakers alone. Well, the monitors about seventeen and computer three dollars, so you're getting up there, not quite ten grand, but for the whole package. But

you know, I prefer the Mac. Yeah, of course. You know, I have that anti Mac bias that I'm working on, so you know, for the record, he uses a Mac at home, people, I do, so I do use a Mac at home. But okay, Amazon Kindle, that was on my list. Well, I just figured we can both talk about it. I mean, it's real, it's a it's an e book reader uses the inc you know, we talked about it in a a few times before, and highly convenient. Yeah. I mean, I don't know that I'm ready to buy

a three fifty dollar e book reader. It's a gift, but a gift, Yeah, totally. I'll totally take it as a gift. Yeah, absolutely, So that was on my list. Um, oh, I've got one other big one home automated living system or how because home automation, I mean, that's another thing that's been around for you know a while. It's been getting more and more advanced. While the HELL system, one of the things you can do is you can put in microphones and speakers throughout your house and make it

voice activated. Can it open the pod bay doors? Possibly, but I don't think it wants to do that day. Um, but you know it just plays also sproatstra forever on a loop. You know. Um, but you can say things like you can you could create uh, you have to create a code word that activates the system. Otherwise, if you were just in the middle of a conversation, you know, everything could be going bonkers, like your microwaves going off

and your refrigerators opening up or whatever. Um, but you've come up with a couple of a code word that activates the system, and then you tell what you wanted to do, Like, you know, you want to play music, and if you have an iPod hooked up to the automation system, it could totally pull music from your iPod, play it throughout your house, and you can adjust volume everything vocally if you wanted to. There are other interfaces besides voice commands. But it just made me think, I

don't know, have you ever seen the show Eureka? Yes? Do you remember Sarah as the self actuated residential automated habitat? You know what it stands for, you? You know how I know? I called my wife just before this podcast. She's she she got me hooked up over over the Thanksgiving break that we had not too long ago. She got me hooked on Eureka, and I called her up and like, what's the name of the house, And she said,

why do you need to know them? Like, that's not important, just tell me the name and so yeah, and she she, you know, pretty much popped right out with that answer. So but yeah, it turns your house into that. Man. How awesome is that? The password is octopus? Um? Yeah, I just I just have one more and uh, Sadly it is uh sort of a moot point. Um. And this is another that was written about by our other

tech writer, John Fuller. It's the Dash Express, something that I saw at CS and I thought was the coolest thing ever. It's a GPS that's Internet enabled, so it's able to not only tell you where you are and where you're going, but it also can find out where the traffic is and let you know and you know, if you're craving that that cup of coffee, you can find out where the coffee shop is. Unfortunately, it's a collector's odem. Now, well, it's sort of a collector's outem there.

I'm sure there probably aren't many of them left. Um. Sadly, just as John turned the article into me, Dash announced that it would no longer be making the hardware for this particular products in the software. But they're in the software is and they're going to be licensing the software to different GPS manufacturers. So I I just don't have the next product the so and so three x l M I right, that has the DASH software loaded on it.

But it's really cool. Keep an eye out. There will be something probably before terribly long maybe for next Christmas list that has the DASH soft. It really was a really really neat I remember Jason Calicanas was going with walkers. Well I've got I've got three stocking stuffers, so real quick toes um, Well that would be for normal stocking stuffer. This is Christmas stockings, all right, right? Right? So the personal Soundtrack shirt, Oh yes, it was an April Fool's

joke from Think Geek and now it really exists. It's a shirt that has a speaker in it and a little remote control. You can have up to twenty sounds programmed into this thing. It's got some pre programmed in it, but it also has an SD slot so that you can put in new sounds if you don't like the ones that it came with. And it also has a jack where you can jack plug it into your iPod and you can play music from your iPod through your shirt,

so you have a personal sound soundtrack wherever you go. Now, I don't know if you listeners are are like you know, my own humble self really excited. I've always wanted to be able to enter a room dramatically with the right you know music. You know, I'm a big I'm a big pro wrestling fan, and so you know, you gotta have like that song that really just it strikes up when you enter the room. I just haven't figured out what mine would be. Probably you know Imperial March from

The Empress Strikes Back. I mean that's the go to, that's everyone goes to. That one. That would be right there. So that's one of the stocking stuffers. The stocking stuffer. Oh wait, I was just gonna add that. They also have two other really cool shirts here. One is the WiFi Finder shirt, which actually has the lights and it lights up when you're around a WiFi hotspot. Then in me at drummer shirt and me being a percussionist, I love that, but it actually has a drum drum kit

into the shirt chest. Yeah, I was not going to use the word cool for that, but yeah, yeah, it's appropriate for your stuff. Okay, So the R two Fish training school kit. You can train a goldfish to do tricks like knock a soccer ball into a sucker net Um with this gift, I would need one additional gift, a goldfish because I don't have one, and a bolt. Well you know, yeah something plus kit, right, goldfish plus kit.

Uh and then the third This is not really a stocking stuffer because it wouldn't fit in one, but it would be completely appropriate like where we were, Like the goldfish bowls gonna fit in your stock. Okay, well, you know, be technical. The nerve Vulcan e b F heavy automatic blaster. It shoots three darts per second. It's belt fed, it takes six D batteries. This thing is a monster people. It's got it's got its own tripod and target site starts that stick to school is exactly you shouldn't have

shot me with the nerve Vulcan eb F, Johnny. My mother shot me with the nerve Vulcan EBF once once. So um, you know I do have one that could qualify as a stocking stuffer because I didn't check these off, and I do have a last one, um, and that was the Denon ah D five thousand reference headphones because my old headphones broke. Yeah, I remember, that was a sad day. It was a sad day for all of us. So we don't I gotta listen to my show the

day the private music died. And now that I have my you know x M blasting through my little speakers on my desk, and everybody has to deal with listening to the Zeppelin channel or the commercial jingles. That's right channel, that's your chance, exactly. It the problem. Anyway, I feel better now that we got all this out, especially since I'll probably only see one of these, if any, this year.

But uh I don't know. Actually, my parents might give me that soundtrack shirt because they are amused when I get geeky things and annoy all of my friends. They find it very entertaining. Uh So, But I guess that wraps up our discussion about our ultimate Christmas wish list. So before we go, I thought i'd give a little shout out to a new podcast that has recently started with Under the House Stuff Works Umbrella, and that is called High Speed Stuff, which has our wonderful hosts, Ben

Bolan and Scott Benjamin and they're uh, they're great. They have they cover all things automotive. So it's kind of a kind of a you know, a step sister podcast to our own, and you guys should definitely go check that out and subscribe to that on iTunes. And as for our wish list, lots of these things can be found on how stuff works right sure, well, digital photography of course, around sound, the iPod, the laser view, it's on that television. Yeah, we need to do an article

about that nerf gun. No, yeah, we definitely need that nerf gun. But most of these topics can be found in one form or another at how stuff works dot com right now, and we'll talk to you again really soon, Merry Christmas, guys for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com? Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you