20 fun little gadgets....

December 8, 2003 5:34 PM

TechTV's Top 20 Gifts for this Christmas.(via sdw)
posted by Ufez Jones (21 comments total)

Oh great. Not bad enough I caught this show this weekend too. I'm just bitter 'cause someone at our office xmas party won #1 in the raffle.
posted by yerfatma at 6:06 PM on December 8, 2003

I only want this.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:13 PM on December 8, 2003

The Pioneer DVD/TIVO unit at #1 sounds cool....but it also made Wired's "Most Overated" list in their Consumer Product reviews in the Oct. issue
posted by tdstone at 6:24 PM on December 8, 2003

someone buy me this. Please. I promise I will use it for good.
posted by Keyser Soze at 6:26 PM on December 8, 2003

I want one of these. Not quite as illegal as a machinegun (depending on how you measure things), but much more practical.
posted by Zonker at 6:33 PM on December 8, 2003

Zonker, we all need one of those, heck, I think I need two or three. I want one that I can use like a gun to selectively shut down phones.

All I want for Christmas is a shiny new 40 gig iPod.
posted by fenriq at 7:41 PM on December 8, 2003

Since starting graduate school I've begun to miss video games. I was thinking of getting a GameBoy Advance SP, since I don't think I'll have time for console video games, but wouldn't mind some Game Boy every once in a while.

Anybody have one? Is it cool?
posted by josh at 7:48 PM on December 8, 2003

Anybody have one? Is it cool?

I have one. The graphics are the equivalent of about Super Nintendo and it has some cool RPGs on it (which is why I bought it, for the most part).
posted by The God Complex at 7:51 PM on December 8, 2003

Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2 are supposed to be fantastic turn-based strategy, too, but I haven't checked them out yet.
posted by The God Complex at 7:53 PM on December 8, 2003

Somebody here on the old metafilter should make an FPP about cool things to buy for cheap. I for one need to buy gifts for a lot of geeks and have quite run dry.
posted by Hildago at 10:47 PM on December 8, 2003

Holy crap, tivo is allowing digital to digital recordings? Well, at $899 retail its a bit much.

Currently all Tivos encrypt the crap out of everyting on their hard drives. So even if you put an ethernet connection in there you can just download a favorite show and burn it to a VCD or DVD. Instead you have to go through the pain of video capture which means a loss of quality and high barrier to entry. Of course there's videotape, but who wants to use clunky tapes that look like crap?

What I would pay for is a firmware upgrade that would shut off tivo's encryption so I can just copy the stuff I like onto my PC and vice versa.
posted by skallas at 12:53 AM on December 9, 2003

I played Advance Wars one on a GB simulator, and got pretty hooked. I was seriously thinking about getting a GB Advance SP to play Advance Wars 2.
posted by Blue Stone at 4:05 AM on December 9, 2003

skallas, ReplayTV allows for direct extraction. Then again, it's in a proprietary format (some spin on MPEG-2) that's such a pain in the ass to find something that will open it, it's barely worth it either. And then it's hours to convert and burn.
posted by yerfatma at 4:21 AM on December 9, 2003

Whoops, that should be "can't just download" not "can just download"
posted by skallas at 4:58 AM on December 9, 2003

final fantasy tactics advance, and advance wars make getting the gameboy SP well worth it.

sure, you can get the roms and emulators, as i have, but they just don't beat the portability and convenience of taking one of these dudes out when you're bored in a waiting room somewhere.

the gameboy sp and ipod are great, and not to mention pretty gifts for any techy.
posted by lotsofno at 5:56 AM on December 9, 2003

Instead you have to go through the pain of video capture which means a loss of quality and high barrier to entry.

That's not true. There are tools available to convert the video to standard MPEG-2 files (it's already MPEG-2, but in a proprietary format) with no reencoding and no loss of quality. See TyStudio. It sounds like the files aren't encrypted at all, just in a proprietary format. If they are encrypted, whatever encryption they use has been broken.
posted by mcguirk at 8:02 AM on December 9, 2003

mcguirk... tystudio, and the other progies out there ONLY work for the version 1 tivos.. not the newer version2 boxes (the Pioneer included)
posted by niteHawk at 1:16 PM on December 9, 2003

Currently there is no series 2 tivo support. Although it's a high priority, we do not have any developers who own these units to do the porting.
posted by niteHawk at 1:17 PM on December 9, 2003

Ah, I see.
posted by mcguirk at 1:31 PM on December 9, 2003

However, browsing around I see that there do seem to be ways to disable the scrambling even on a Series 2 unit.
posted by mcguirk at 1:34 PM on December 9, 2003

I will never fly again without my GBA-SP, or my inflatable neck pillow.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 3:36 PM on December 9, 2003