April 2009 Entries

How to Connect Your Digital Converter Box

If you're one of the millions of people who purchased a digital converter box for the switchover from analog to digital TV transmissions, you may be wondering what next. Well, the folks at Zenith have put up a website to guide you through installation: conectyourbox.com. The government also has a page up. You'll find some basic step-by-step instructions. They recommend using a coaxial cable and you'll need an antenna that supports both VHF and UHF TV signals.  Here goes: Step 1: Connect your antenna to the converter box: Step 2: Connect a coaxial cable from the "To TV" jack on the converter...

Bell'O Helps You Get it Up

The HDTV that is. The home theater furniture designer Bell'o has a new HDTV cabinet (the WAVS-326/$499) on the way that can be assembled without tools. It is, they promise, "ready to assemble" and supports most flat panel sets up to 46 inches. If your flat panel doesn't have a stand, you can spring for the optional mounting accessory (the PP-59, for $199). As someone who is officially banned from undertaking house projects more significant than picture hanging or light bulb changing, I admit that the idea of furniture assembly without tools is definitely appealing. The idea of resting my $2,000...

Amazon on Demand Goes HD

One of the first things you hear shortly after you announce to the world that you're having a baby is "get a Netflix subscription." It lands somewhere between "congratulations" and "kiss sleep goodbye." It's certainly understandable advice: the last thing you need to be doing is running needless errands when there are diapers to change. (Actually, that's the best time to run errands.) Well the babies came but I held out against Netflix. Not for any ideological reason - I recognize its utility - but because I was already using my TiVo to download videos on demand from Amazon.com. It was...

New Dad, Same Confusion

Hi everyone. My name is Greg Scoblete and I'll be taking over this space from our fearless leader Jerry Grossman. By way of introduction, I've been covering consumer electronics for close to a decade. I've been a father for a little over three years (two kids, boy and a younger girl). My wife had insisted I use my inaugural post to extol the virtues of fatherhood and not gadgets, but the two often have more parallels than initially meet the eye (with the obvious caveat that I love my kids more than my electronics. There, I said it.) Kids bring a...