Comments on: 20 fun little gadgets....

20 fun little gadgets....

Ufez Jones — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 17:34:08 -0800

TechTV's Top 20 Gifts for this Christmas. (via sdw)

By: yerfatma

yerfatma — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 18:06:02 -0800

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.

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 18:13:23 -0800

I only want this.

By: tdstone

tdstone — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 18:24:18 -0800

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

By: Keyser Soze

Keyser Soze — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 18:26:56 -0800

someone buy me this. Please. I promise I will use it for good.

By: Zonker

Zonker — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 18:33:35 -0800

I want one of these. Not quite as illegal as a machinegun (depending on how you measure things), but much more practical.

By: fenriq

fenriq — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 19:41:40 -0800

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.

By: josh

josh — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 19:48:39 -0800

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?

By: The God Complex

The God Complex — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 19:51:24 -0800

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).

By: The God Complex

The God Complex — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 19:53:59 -0800

Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2 are supposed to be fantastic turn-based strategy, too, but I haven't checked them out yet.

By: Hildago

Hildago — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 22:47:39 -0800

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.

By: skallas

skallas — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 00:53:00 -0800

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.

By: Blue Stone

Blue Stone — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 04:05:32 -0800

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.

By: yerfatma

yerfatma — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 04:21:31 -0800

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.

By: skallas

skallas — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 04:58:04 -0800

Whoops, that should be "can't just download" not "can just download"

By: lotsofno

lotsofno — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 05:56:01 -0800

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.

By: mcguirk

mcguirk — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 08:02:19 -0800

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.

By: niteHawk

niteHawk — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 13:16:13 -0800

mcguirk... tystudio, and the other progies out there ONLY work for the version 1 tivos.. not the newer version2 boxes (the Pioneer included)

By: niteHawk

niteHawk — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 13:17:04 -0800

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.

By: mcguirk

mcguirk — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 13:31:24 -0800

Ah, I see.

By: mcguirk

mcguirk — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 13:34:37 -0800

However, browsing around I see that there do seem to be ways to disable the scrambling even on a Series 2 unit.

By: inpHilltr8r

inpHilltr8r — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 15:36:00 -0800

I will never fly again without my GBA-SP, or my inflatable neck pillow.