Review – Sony Dream Machine ICF-CL75IP iPhone alarm clock radio with 7 inch display

This Christmas I asked Santa for a new clock radio with an iPhone dock built in. My old one was perfectly alright but since it was built for the iPod it no longer charged my phone which had become quite annoying. My eldest sister rose to the challenge and being partial to my gadgets, I think had a little bit of fear of getting it wrong! But she got it so right!!

The new Sony Dream Machine and it is a DREAM MACHINE does everything I wanted a clock radio to do and a whole lot more, with a few nice touches thrown in there to polish it off.

Where to begin? Let’s start with the obvious! It’s got a 7 inch screen! As you know 7 inches is quite enough! And like you are wondering now and I was wondering as I took it out the box, is that merely a digital picture frame or can I watch movies through it? And yes, yes you can. The 7 inch display (800×480) allows you to watch your iTunes movies, video on YouTube, and even things like the iPlayer! Genius! and supports Mp4, M-Jpeg and Avi file formats. It also is a digital picture frame for when the machine is idle and this can easily be switched to sleep mode when you hit the hay with 3 taps of the snooze button.

The dock foe the iPhone pops out, spring loaded from the right hand side, you can control your music or video from the iPhone or from the dream machine. The sound is good and I’d so far to say more than you’d expect from a clock radio. Oh! Clock radio! The main function, it’s got a sweet clock radio that allows you to be woken up by radio, iPhone or sound of nature and matching image. One of the nice little extras is that you can set more than one alarm and adjust them from one button on either side of the display the alarms can also be programed to just go off over weekdays or just at weekends which if like me you are away most weekends saves having to remember to manually switch it.

The entire menu screen is based on the playsation 3 theme and is just as intuitive, you’ll get to grips with it with limited consultation of the instruction book.

The dream machine has 1 gig internal memory so that you can import photos, music and video. It has a USB slot SD slot and obviously the iPod dock.

The radio is pretty sweet an gets a better signal than the old clock radio I had in exactly the same position.

OK now for some negatives
The first USB stick I plugged into it could not be read, second one fine.
I cannot for the life of me figure out how to delete the sample pictures which is really frustrating having them on my little slide show.
Also, if the clock radio is on sleep mode and you drop the iPhone in you will get the this device is not supported error and it keeps flashing up but this is no biggy! Just tap snooze and drop the iPhone in again.

Nicks option

  • Share/Bookmark
January 30, 2010 | glennmward | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

Movies on the move – Convert your DVD’s for viewing on your iPhone, iPod or Mobile Device

I often want to take a few of my favourite movies away with me when I go away. It is possible to convert your DVD’s into a format that will play on your iPod, iPhone or any portable device to save you physically carrying the discs around with you. I am going to talk about a software I use on a Mac but you can download similar software for windows, just look on download.com or softpedia.com.

I use Handbrake to convert my DVD’s it’s really easy to use and now comes with present for most popular portable devices. Open up handbrake and insert you DVD, if you DVD Player software loads up just quit out of this as you don’t want the computer doing two things at once. Choose Source in the top left hand corner and locate your disc, you don’t have to go deep into folder structure, top level is enough for handbrake to assess the disc. Once selected Handbrake will review all the chapter on the disc. Make sure you have selected the first chapter right through to the last chapter to ensure you convert the entire DVD.

Select the preset for the output video using the drawer on the right handside of the interface. Handbrake now has presets for iPhone, iPod and iPod Touch to make things nice and simple but if you are worried about file size then you can fine tune the settings yourself.

Once you are happy and have selected where you would like your file to be saved hit the Start button next to the Source button at the top of the interface.

Open the file in iTunes and it will be copied into your iTunes Media Folder, next time you sync you device the file will be uploaded.

Also see Duplicating DVD’s and CD’s using Mac OSX’s Disk Utility

  • Share/Bookmark
January 7, 2010 | glennmward | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

XBox 360 – Playing Video Files from an Extenal Device

Xbox_360_Video_LibrarySimilarly to the Playstation 3 you can play regular video files on your XBox 360, here’s how.

Plug in you Hard Drive to a USB port,

Go to My Xbox and scroll right to your Video Library square / button/ tab what ever you call it,

Choose Portable Device with the USB symbol by it,

You should be able to see the folder structure on the hard drive, browse to the video you want to play,

The next screen will show the title of the file, hit Play, you will get a message telling you a media update is required (about 4 meg) you will need to sign into Xbox live, if you haven’t already, do so and hit Play again.

Choose Download Update and the Optional Media Update the Confirm Download,

You’re done, go back and play the file.

If you want to know how to do the same with your Playstation 3 See Here

  • Share/Bookmark
December 7, 2009 | glennmward | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Playstation 3 – Playing Video Files and Movies on your PS3

ps3_slim_videoIn the past I have exported my DVD’s to play on my iPod or laptop while I am out of the country or out and about to save carrying them all around with me. I wanted explore ways to play these on the television.

Using the PS3 plug the hard drive into the USB port. On the Playstation scroll over to the Movie symbol then scroll down and locate your USB Device next press Triangle NOT the Cross and choose Display All you should now be able to see all the files on your device. Navigate to your video and hit X.

If you want to know how to the same on your Xbox 360 the See Here
and if you want to learn how to stream your media from your Macbook Pro to your PS3 See Here

  • Share/Bookmark
December 1, 2009 | glennmward | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Understanding Resolution and Frame Dimensions – Video, Web and Print

Screen_Resolution_DimensionsResolution seems to be a subject that baffles a lot of people with different platforms (TVs, monitors, mobiles) different mediums (video, print, web) and also different pixels per inch which effects the overall size and quality of your image.

Let’s start with pixels per inch and keep it basic. Pixels per inch is the amount of small dots of color per square inch. As a rule 300 pixels per inch is the bare minimum for print while 72 pixels per inch is suffice for web based output, admittedly as PC monitors resolution has increased over the past few years I often find myself producing an image with a 150 px per inch in order to produce the better results. It all depends on your intended output. For video output I did a few tests in order to confidently advise you for best results. I created two identical images in Photoshop with the same physical dimensions, I used the Film and Video presets found after hitting new. I produced one at 72px and the other at 300px and saved them out as a png, I then brought the two images into Adobe Premiere Pro in separate time lines, I exported them using the same full quality DV setting and then oped them up side by side and played them. I asked my colleagues which they thought was produced with the higher res images and they consistently couldn’t identify it. In this case it seems that the resolution of the input file does not noticeably effect output.

See (URL Coming Soon)… for more information on export settings using Adobe Media Encoder and other such programs.

Print Resolution
With print resolution as mentioned earlier, 300 px is the minimum px per inch for a decent quality. When setting up your workspace you should be concerned with the physical size of the output, for example A4 is 210 mm x 297 mm with 300 px. Photoshop has presets for most print outputs so have a look and familiarise yourself with these.

Web Resolution
When I began studying my Design for Digital Media Minor, the standard size to construct a website was around the 800 px wide. The resolution of computer now vary and this size meaning that the websites began to look very small in the browser. By analysing google analytics user traffic it soon became obvious to design you site to a greater width. Today popular website width sizes are above 1000 px wide although many more dynamic CSS driven layouts will be sized based on a percentage of the browser window for consistency. As mentioned before you graphics should have a pixel resolution of 72 px per inch and above.

Screen Dimensions
640 x 480
800 x 600
1024 x 768
1280 x 800
1280 x 960
1600 x 1000
1680 x 1050
1920 x 1080

Video Resolution and Dimensions
There are two aspects to take into account here. The production of graphics for your video projects and the resolution you wish to output your video for the intended viewing platform. The production of graphics I touched upon earlier so let’s get to know video dimensions. The landscape has changed recently with the emergence of multiple mobile platforms alongside the popularity of High Definition on the consumer market.

Television Dimensions
There are 3 main television dimensions you should be aware of, there are variations but combinations i.e. widescreen (also see …) but use these as a starting point.
DV Pal, 720 x 576
Consumer HD, 1280 x 720
Pro HD, 1920 x 1080

Blu Ray and HDTV Dimensions
720 x 576
1280 x 720
1440 x 1080
1920 x 1080

Other Device Dimensions
There are many other devices now on the market that are all geared up to display video so often we might want to output at a format suitable for these.
Mobile Phones (3GPP)
128 x 96
176 x 144
320 x 240
640 x 480

iPhone
450 x 360
600 x 480

iPod
640 x 480 Large
320 x 240 Small

Sony PSP
320 x 240
368 x 208 High Quality

Other mobile frame dimensions, 176 x 208, 176 x 220, 208 x 320, 240 x 320 and 352 x 416.

Web Video Dimensions
Youtube
SD 640 x 480
Widescreen HD 1280 x 720
Widescreen SD 640 x 360

Myspace Video
320 x 240

Yahoo Video
320 x 240

(Dimensions may vary slightly)

Aspect Ratio
At this stage I just want to distinguish between what i mean by dimensions and how it differs to aspect ratio. All the dimensions I have touched upon up until now have referred to a 4:3 aspect ratio, this means for every 4 vertical pixels there are 3 vertical pixels. Most will have come across widescreen by now in their digital lifes and this has an aspect ratio of 16:9.

  • Share/Bookmark
October 9, 2009 | glennmward | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »