shop@Panasonic

For my birthday, last Wednesday, I received a Panasonic DMR-EZ47:

*2-in1 DVD & VHS Combi
*Full HD 1080p Up-Conversion
*DVB-T Tuner and 7 Day EPG
*HDMI with VIERA Link
*Super Multi Format - Record and Play ALL DVD Formats
*Super Easy GUI
*Dual Layer Compatible
*16X - R Compatible
*DV-in
*MP3, JPEG from -R
*500 Line LP Mode
*1 Sec Quick Start and Record
*VHS to DVD Refresh Dubbing

Ultimately, I decided that a built-in HDD was overkill! As it was my birthday, the sales person made the recorder multi-region and included a HDMI cable/DVD-R pack gratis! That puts shop@Panasonic on a par with the Sony Centre for customer service.

My various College and University video productions will be transfered from VHS to iTunes via this paradigm:

VHS > DVD > HandBrake > iMovie > iTunes!

Next month Apple will start shipping Time Capsule 1TB and my pre-order is in! Review to follow.

Have a great weekend... I'll be clearing out clutter from the garage! It's surprising how much junk gets accumulated!

Time Capsule Craft

Of all the announcements during Steve Jobs' Macworld Keynote, the all-new Time Capsule is, for me, the most enticing!

MacBook Air looks, at face value, to be style over substance and I can't justify £1200 (or more) for an expensive paper weight! In a couple of years I'll be eating my words! After all Steve Jobs foresaw, and accelerated, the demise of the 3½-inch floppy disc with the advent of the original iMac! However, £199 for a 500GB wireless hard drive/Wi-Fi base station, that works seamlessly with Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, is a worthwhile investment!

With the introduction of iTunes HD movie rentals, has Apple put the final nail in the coffin of the optical format wars? Steve Jobs has been quoted as saying "Clearly, Blu-ray won, but in the new world order of instant online movie rentals, in HD, no one will care about what format is where."

iTunes HD movies are only encoded in 720p and do not contain a PCM, Dolby TrueHD, or DTS-HD Master Audio track at this time. For now Blu-ray remains my preferred HD medium!