Visual Media
Documentary of '60s tech-art synergy
This documentary is a wonderful testament to what can happen when bright folks from different disciplines get together to make stuff. In 1966, 30 engineers from Bell Labs collaborated with a number of modern artists in New York to create a series of pieces/experiments. Open Score by Robert Rauschenberg, the first release in a 10-part DVD series on these pieces, captures what is essentially a high-tech indoor tennis match. Two players rallied with racquets wired with FM transmitters that amplified each stroke. As the lights in the room dimmed, the whole event coalesced into a participatory, multi-media "happening." Since engineers reappropriated infrared lenses -- primarily a military tool back then -- the artists were able to film and project shots of the crowd.
A combo of 16mm performance footage and more recent interviews, the documentary is short (35 min.) but totally inspirational. These days we're used to SRL shows and Maker Faires and the melding of science and art. We've come along way since C.P. Snow suggested the dangers of intellectual isolationism. Watching the old footage and listening to the collaborators reflect on the evening really emphasizes the beauty and importance of such cross-pollination(s).
You may feel inclined to tinker. You'll likely feel a renewed appreciation for collaboration. More than anything, you'll be reminded not to pigeonhole. Tom Robbins said it best: "There are two kinds of people in this world: those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world, and those who are smart enough to know better."
Just ask engineer Larry Heilos: "I got a deeper appreciation for the artist, per say. I began to realize that, hey, while they were doing things that were different, they were really just people like the rest of us, with some tremendous imagination and with some forethought as to what they could work with and what was available to them. Very stimulating."
-- Steven Leckart
9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering
Part I: Open Score by Robert Rauschenberg
DVD
$22
Available from Amazon
Released by Microcinema International
[Netflix doesn't carry it (yet), but there's a preview here. There's also a book on this subject, which I have not read - sl]
Free, web-based photo editing
I've seen many quick and dirty photo editing programs via web browser, but this Flash-based editor definitely takes the cake. Hands down, the ease of use is the best part. As you work, little windows pop up with explanations, but I've never needed them because of the usability. For a professional photographer or someone looking to get into the nitty gritty of what's outlined in the Pro Digital Photographer's Handbook, the program would be mostly unpractical for regular use, but it's certainly beneficial as an emergency tool (getting stuck at someone else's computer, etc.) or doing stuff on the fly. It's obviously not a replacement for Photoshop, but if you're a consumer who can't afford Photoshop or you just want to fool around, this is a great, really intuitive option.
It has the standard rotate, crop and resize functions, as well as exposure control and color settings. The color settings are basic. You can adjust hue, saturation and contrast in a variety of ways. Although the adjustment is somewhat crude -- and it's unlikely you'll be able to use this interface to 'save' a bad photo the way you might be able to in Photoshop -- you'll definitely be able to make a good photo "pop."
What amazes me about Picnik is the exposure control. It has brightness and contrast settings, but I wasn't impressed until I saw the "advanced" option, which displays a histogram. What's most impressive is that you can set the shadow (black point) and highlights (white point) separately! In Photoshop this is called "Levels" (often considered the most popular exposure adjustment tool). There are a few drawbacks with Picnik's exposure control. The histogram isn't all that accurate, and it's a little rough when setting your white and black points. All-in-all, it's probably not that practical as a visual guide, but just the ability to set white and black points at all is what impresses me as a photographer.
Picnik also has a bunch of "creative tools" (essentially "filters" in Photoshop). What's great is the ability to adjust most of these effects. Most online programs allow you only to simply set a photo to B&W or Sepia tone. This program allows for adjustments so that you can gradually set a color hue, or go crazy. You can determine the amount of the effect to add, and have more control over the look of your photo. Some of these filters add some really glamorous effects, everything from vignette to soften (reminiscent of high school glamour shots in the 80s). And the "coming soon" buttons obviously suggest additional filters are on the way.
One of the biggest selling points is how it integrates Picasa and Flickr. You can search and download photos from any public Flickr account seamlessly, and Picnik also allows you to email photos to sites like Photobucket, TypePad and even Walmart (Walmart's own online photo editing software is nothing compared to Picnik). Moreover, close Picnik and come back the next day: your image is cached. Picnik sends a cookie to your browser, so when you return, you can pick up right where you left off. And the best, albeit most basic, function to me is the ability simply to save the image to your computer. In an age of proprietary everything, having the option to upload a photo, edit it, then just save it to your computer is golden.
The main cons here are that it seems you can only upload one photo at a time (which may just be part of the beta), and there's no selection "lasso" tool (as in Photoshop). If a particular area of the photo is out of wack, maybe the left side is too dark, there is no way to select just that side for editing. Another feature Picnik could add would be a method for viewing thumbnails or maybe running a slideshow and allowing you to tag images.
Overall, though, for a free service that's quite new, this is really impressive and a lot of fun.
-- Jeremy Rue
Picnik Photo Editor
Free!
Available from Picnik, Inc.
Shoot steady video
This stabilizer fits most any video camera and makes all handheld shots steadier, as the weight of the camera is distributed across your body. It is made out of lightweight PVC and the handles are covered with a thick foam cushion, so it's very comfortable. The unit is also machined, as the tubing is strategically bent and shaped at the correct angles. Some devices advertised online are cobbled together 100% from the Home Depot plumbing aisle -- and they look it. This sharp-looking device doesn't draw any attention to itself. It also costs less than any other comparable unit I've seen, and works just as well. While there are many plans on the Internet for making your own stabilizers and mounts, this one is manufactured well enough and at a cheap enough price to not have to build something that looks, well, like I built it. My wife and I run a small video company doing mostly weddings and other events and about half of our shooting time is spent in less-than-ideal conditions. Using the Spiderbrace 2 really helps keep the camera steady for long periods of time, and you are not burdened with a tripod or other unwieldy device should you need to move positions.
-- David McKnight
Spiderbrace Video Camera Stabilizer
$70
Available from and manufactured by SpiderBrace, Inc.
Connecting the dots
This is a comic book version of the 911 Commission Report. No joke. It takes the narrative of the official National Commission Report and transforms it into a page-turning thriller. It's a very fast read. Their visual timeline of the four hijacked flights is scarily clarifying. The artists do a marvelous job of weaving the many threads that lead up to the event of 911. In fact before reading this I had not appreciated how interconnected the many previous encounters with the jihad network were. This graphic book also reveals in simple pictures how seriously the government bungled many early clues, how sadly it bungled its real-time response to the events and how it continues to bungle the complexity of this new world. The comic does all this while remaining faithful to the the Commission's text, yet underscoring its clarity by telling the story in pictures. It's a showcase for the power of the cartoon media. Highly recommended.
-- KK
The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation
Sid Jacobson, Ernie Colon
2006, 144 pages
$12
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
 
Portable light evolution
Hard to say what this Brian Eno invention is. Part book, part screen saver, part gallery painting, part DVD video, part music, part software. It slices and dices your perceptions! The accompanying book in this package makes it clear that this an art piece that is normally exhibited in a large room. Here it comes disguised as DVD that you load onto your computer (Windows or Mac). When you fire it up, it starts to slowly generate paintings constructed by random layering of several hundred of Eno's foundational images. Very S--l---o--w---l---y each painting melts into the next painting, so that the total number of image permutations tops out at 77 million. While the images shift, Eno's ambient music also swirls in the background. Like an extremely slow screen saver, the result is ambient painting. But instead of happening in a gallery this evolution of paint happens in your space.
As I spent time watching these lovely paintings gradually, almost imperceptibly, evolve into another image, I had a epiphany. These 77 Million Paintings are not about colors, space, or painting -- but time. The reason audiences will spend hours watching gallery installations of this same DVD is that their "nows" are elongated. If they are like me, they wait anxiously for the first image to change (Hurry up, man, this is slow), but by the time the fifth one is changing , it no longer seems slow, and by the 20th, you are in some eternal zen now. It is quite remarkable how colored lights can change time.
Besides the handsome 52-page book written by Eno, and the software, there's also a DVD interview of him discussing the project. A very nice package.
-- KK
77 Million Paintings by Brian Eno
$32
Available from Amazon
77 Million Paintings website
A shopper's guide to graphic novels
Okay, so you've read Maus. What's next? This book will turn you onto a hundred more great graphic novels (you know, comics for adults) that "will change your life." If you've been wondering what all the fuss is about, this guide is a great way to get into the only part of book publishing that is growing (the graphic novel section of large bookstores can be measured in yards). The author, fan-boy Paul Gravett, selects graphic novels that are contemporary (not classic super-heroes), easily found, in book form (rather than serial magazines), and are beyond mere colorful fantasy, and not just dark teenage angst. They are great stories, with very personal art, in a wonderful cross between cinema and text. This guide is smartly designed and a joy to use. You get sample pages from choice works, Gravett's insightful comments and analysis, related books, and plenty of context to tell what you can expect from each book. It's one of the best shopper guides I've seen.
-- KK
Graphic Novels: Everything You Need to Know
Paul Gravett
2005, 192 pages
$16
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
Blankets
How does a boy raised to obey the Bible reconcile his deep faith and the stirrings of sexual attraction? Craig Thompson pieces together his answer, first by going back to the small cruelties inflicted on him by his parents, and to his guilt over failing to protect his younger brother. He blends these scenes with the slow unfolding of him falling in love with Raina, a girl he meets at church camp. Nothing is rushed, as here Thompson shows the first nearness of their bodies and frees them from confining panel borders. "Blankets" refers not only to the Wisconsin snow, but also to the bed that he an his brother once shared, and to the quilt that Raina makes him.
More...
Bargain off-the-shelf TiVo alternative
My favorite technology of the week is our Windows Media Center PC. At home we resisted a TiVo or any DVR for years because we hardly watch any television, but as the kids got older and more numerous we found ourselves putting them in front of the TV more often to have a few moments to ourselves. Random cartoons are just awful, so we finally had a good reason to get a DVR: to limit the kids to just the TV that's worth watching.
As it happened, my wife needed a new PC. We realized that by picking one with Media Center 2005 pre-installed we could get a DVR essentially for free (or, to be precise, $150 extra to add a dual-tuner TV card and a remote control to the configuration). You can now find Media Center PCs for less than $700. Anti-DRM zealots who think we should have home-brewed our own open-source DVR instead are invited to make this case to my wife.
The cool thing about the latest (2005) version of Windows Media Center is that it can run in the background of a regular PC. So as far as my wife is concerned, it's just her standard workhorse PC, sitting in the study. But while she's doing email and such, it's recording TV on a 400 gig hard drive or streaming it to TVs around the house. Since we already had the cable TV line coming to the study for the cable modem, installing the PC was simply a matter of a Radio Shack adapter that split the coax into three--one to the cable modem and one to each of the PC's twin tuners.
The other cool thing about Media Center 2005 is the way it works with "extenders", which are set-top boxes that you place next to each TV you want connected to the DVR. This allows the Media Center to act as a central media server for the whole house, giving any TV simultaneous access to the same recorded content. We already had an Xbox on one TV, so turning that into an extender just required inserting a disk. We bought a wireless Linksys extender for the other TV.
For us, Media Centers have five big advantages over traditional DVRs, including TiVo.
* No monthly fees.
* Centralized storage means that all TVs around the house have instant access to the same content.
* Unlimited storage capacity.
* Can stream all the other media on your PC to any TV, including music and home videos.
* By DVR standards, it's a relatively open platform (certainly compared to the DVRs offered by your cable company), and there are an increasing number of plug-ins that expand its features.
Don't forget that the Media Center PC route also effectively gives you a free TV (the PC itself). All told, our total investment was about $440, which gave us the equivalent of three DVRs and one LCD TV, with all the advantages of centralized media serving. You really can't beat that with dedicated devices.
There are, to be fair, a few disadvantages, too. It's a Windows PC, so you have to restart it once in a while. If you do that while the kids are watching television upstairs, they're going to yelp. And because it's a PC that's running all sorts of other software, there is the risk you'll install something funky that messes things up. I put in a new sound card and the DVR stopped recording TV sound until I undid most of the changes. Finally, the Linksys extender, which is the only hardware extender available and feels a bit V1.0, freezes every now and then and has to be restarted.
At its core, the Media Center is a platform for unlimited-choice TV. It connects the Internet to the TV screens around your house via a simple, TiVo-like interface. Right now, most of the video content comes over the broadcast network. But that content can just as easily come from the web, and independent video marketplaces such as Brightcove and Akimbo are planning to release their services as Media Center plug-ins to deliver just that. It feels like a glimpse of the future.
-- Chris Anderson
Gateway Windows Media Center
$700
Available from
Office Depot
How to make stop-action figures
With digital editing tools, stop-action animation (think Wallace and Gromit, or Tim Burton) has become more forgiving to make and therefore more new artists are trying their hand at it, making stop-action film more common in commercials, shorts and MTV-ish channels. But it's really difficult to make a decent flexible figure for stop-action that will not move unless you want it to, but will move exactly as you want it to when you do, and even more challenging to make one that looks alive. I know I've tried. There's really no other way to do this; you have to make a special armature figure. I can't imagine there are more than five readers of Cool Tools interested in how to make a really good latex puppet for use in animated videos and films. But for you five, here's some gold: an all-you-need-to-know step-by-step DVD from a gal (Kathi Zung) in New York City who's perhaps the only professional animated latex puppet maker in the galaxy. She does everything in her loft kitchen, and is very eager to tell you what she has learned. It's as thorough a workshop course as I've seen, with no detail or potential problem unattended.
-- KK
Do it Yourself Foam Latex Puppetmaking 101
$25
Zung Studio
Recursive MTV
My bet is that future generations will consider Michel Gondry an original genius on the order of M.C. Esher and J.S. Bach. Gondry is a French filmmaker of music videos and amazing clever shorts. He specializes in radically playful creations, many of them which point to themselves in the recursive manner of the best creations of Esher and Bach. His films circle around in strange loops, mess with paradoxical perspective and POV, and explore the edges of linear reality with the spirit of a 12-year-old boy. He's recently made feature films (one is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), but his best work is still showcased in these 27 brilliant short films and astounding music videos collected here. They are utterly arresting, even now long after they were made. I am reminded of a Annie Dillard quote that says (paraphrasing) that when a creation refers to its form as well as its content, then it refers to art.
-- KK
From Kylie Minogue's music video "Come Into My World." She circumnavigates a city block, while additional copies of herself join on top of multiple layers of background jokes. It's as if a snake with its tail in its mouth begins to unroll into a larger more colorful dancing dragon.
The Work of Director Michel Gondry
2003, 400 minutes
$15
Available from
Amazon
or from Netflix
Desktop animation how-to
All films will become animations. That prediction is based on the rate at which special effects become standard effects in big-budget films. Even a "live action" movie these days is composed frame by frame, and the skills and logic of animation take over. An ordinary digital camera, a hi-end PC or Mac, with iMovie software or equivalent, gives anyone the tools to do cinematic animation without tears. The Complete Animation Course is the best of many recent books riding the re-newed popularity of animated films. This guide is a great how-to orientation for making your own animated film using affordable technology. It introduces you to classic animation basics, and the many methods which combine old fashioned techniques (cartoon, paper collages, claymation) with computer based tools. I found it had just the right level of detail -- sufficient to get you going without bogging down in how to do what's already been done.
The Complete Animation Course is not as thorough on basic technique as the new Digital Edition of Kit Laybourne's classic The Animation Book, but it is far more up-to-date and digitally oriented. The Animation Book goes deep; there's none better for grasping the secrets of traditional cell animation. Many of those techniques are still essential. The Complete Animation Course goes fast: there's none better if you want to use a digital camera, scanner, and home computer to make an animated short.
-- KK
Sample excerpts:
Twelve Principles of Animation
1. Squash and Stretch.
2. Anticipation. This is setting up the action before it happens, usually with a slight movement in the opposite direction to the main one.
3. Staging. This is related to the way the film as a whole is "shot," considering angles, framing, and scene length.
4. Straight-ahead Action and Pose-to-Pose. Straight-ahead action starts at one point and finishes at another in a single continuous movement, such as running, whereas pose-to-pose is a variety of actions in one scene requiring clearly delineated key frames to mark the action's extreme point. How the in-betweens are executed can alter the whole rhythm of the action.
5. Follow-through and Overlapping Action. Follow-through is the opposite of anticipation. When a character stops, certain parts remain in motion, such as hair or clothes. Overlapping action is when the follow-through of one action becomes the anticipation of the next one.
6. Slow In -- Slow Out. This means using more drawings at the beginning and end of an action and fewer in the middle. This creates a more lifelike feeling to the movement.
7. Arcs. These are used to describe natural movement. All actions create circular movements because they usually pivot around a central point, usually a joint. Arcs are also used to describe a line of action through a character.
8. Secondary Action is just that, another action that takes place at the same time as the main one. This may be something as simple as turning the head from side to side during a walk sequence.
9. Timing. This is something that can't be taught. In the same way that comedians who rely on it to get the most from their gags have to learn it through experience, you too will get it right only through practice. Timing is how you get characters to interact naturally. Timing also has to do with the technical side of deciding how many drawings are used to portray an action.
10. Exaggeration. This is the enhancement of a physical attribute or movement, but don't make the mistake of exaggerating the exaggeration.
11. Solid Drawing. This conveys a sense of three-dimensionality through linework, color, and shading.
12. Appeal This is giving personality to the characters you draw. If you can convey it without the sound track, you know you are on the right track.
These are not hard and fast rules, but they have been found to work since the early days of animation. Bear them in mind at the storyboard stage and your animation will definitely have more fluidity and believability.
In these two shots, from Rustboy by Brian Taylor, we can see the dramatic effect shaders and lighting can have on a scene. The top picture is the flat model produced by the software while you are working on it. The picture below is a fully rendered scene, with all the shaders, textures, and lighting added to give it depth, atmosphere, and believability.
The Complete Animation Course: The Principles, Practice, and Techniques of Successful Animation
Chris Patmore
2003, 160 pages
$17
Amazon
The Animation Book: A Complete Guide to Animated Filmmaking -- from Flip-books to Sound Cartoons to 3-D Animation
Kit Laybourne
1998, 426 pages
$17
Amazon
Pocket video recorder and player
I commute 2 hours a day by train and also frequently fly coast-to-coast, so I'm always looking for a good portable entertainment device. My laptop is fine to use once in a while, but for my daily commute I just don't want to bother lugging it around. I have a portable DVD player and an iPod, but neither quite does the job...the iPod is great for music, but nothing else. Same for the DVD player and DVDs. Carrying them both at the same time is worse than having a laptop. I haven't been impressed enough with portable video players to actually buy one. Then I came across the Archos AV420. Now that I've had it, I'm surprised I don't hear more about them.
The AV420 is made for watching videos, playing music and viewing photos, and it's pretty good at all three. Music-wise it's primarily made for MP3s (and WMAs), which is fine by me since I'm not a fan of Apple's DRM on iTunes. For video it uses MPEG-4 SP, which is not my first choice but is serviceable. And it will store and view any size JPEG for photos.
Since the MP3 player part works like most others based on MusicMatch, I won't waste time on it, other than to say it's fine for what it is. Same for photo viewing and storage. Video is where it gets interesting, since the AV420 is really a pocket-sized VCR with some fledgling Tivo-like abilities. Hook it up to your TV and you can record whatever is on, and you can also schedule recordings, including having the AV420 change channels with its IR suction cup attachment. You can do some rudimentary Tivo-style scheduling through a My Yahoo! Account but, since I have a Tivo and can dump recorded files directly into the AV420, I haven't bothered with it. The AV420 has 20 GB of storage, enough for about 40 hours of video.
You can also record DVDs to the AV420 for playback on the built-in LCD screen, a brilliant 3.5 TFT. Unfortunately the AV420 will pick up macrovision encoding from standard DVD players, meaning you can't play recorded DVDs from the AV420 to an external device like a TV. Since I bought it to watch on the train, this isn't an issue for me, but could be a deal breaker for some. On the plus side, if you're only going to playback the video on the built-in LCD, you can record the file at a lower resolution to save space. It will still look great on the LCD, since the screen is lower resolution than a TV.
You connect the AV420 to your computer via USB2, and since an XP machine will see it as an external drive, you can store anything you want on it (though it will only display the previously mentioned files). Very handy. It also has a CF card reader that can take an adapter so it can read most digital camera storage cards. I plan to use this on vacation to free up my meager 256K SD card when it's full rather than carrying extra cards.
The AV420 has a docking cradle that is a bit of a nightmare in terms of design -- a total of six 2-foot-long composite cables and an S-video cable dangle out the back, in addition to the power cable -- but is perfectly functional otherwise, though I wish it had component inputs/outputs. That, aside from the macrovision, is the only real drawback for me. Battery life for video is 4 hours, but on the 20BG version the small rechargeable battery can be switched out so you can buy a second one for long trips. For me, 4 hours is fine for video, and that goes up to something like 12 for audio if you don't use the LCD screen.
The street price of the AV420 is $450, and it tends to get two reactions. Either, wow, that's pricey, I can buy a Mac Mini for that. Or, wow, that's only $100 more than a photo iPod -- what a bargain! I obviously fall in the latter category.
-- Craig Engler
$467
Available from Amazon
Or slightly cheaper at $449 from J&R
Manufactured by Archos
No-service fee Tivo
If you want Tivo, but don't want to subscribe to the monthly Tivo fee ($13), or the very high lifetime fee ($300), then this basic Tivo box is great.
It is the least expensive Tivo box which offers the Tivo Basic features. This is a no-fee service which allows you to program the Tivo either by manually specifying a time and channel, like a regular VCR, or you can choose to record from a 3-day-in-advance programming guide. You can store up to 80 hours on the Basic (highest compression) quality. On the Best quality, which I use exclusively, much less compression occurs, and you get about 24 hours.
Pros: The Tivo interface is exactly the same, except items that are only accessible to the Tivo Plus paid service subscribers do not appear on several menu pages.
Cons: No advance Tivo features, like season pass, or search lists to snag future shows based on keywords. And the 1 button, 30 second commercial skip is not supported on this unit. You can still scan forward/backwards in one of 3 speeds, just like a normal Tivo box, so honestly, I really don't miss it. Also, the remote control is not the same as an elegantly designed Tivo remote. (In addition to the buttons for Tivo control, there are buttons used for the DVD control.) Tivo Basic does not have the Wish list feature.
Summary: The Tivo Basic feature is great if you just want simple time shifting capabilities, and the convenience of random access, high-speed scanning of a digital recorder. With no subscription fees.
-- Jaime Villacorte
Toshiba SD-H400 80GB
$210
From discounters such as
Overstock.com
Or $275 from Amazon
Amazon
Manufactured by
Toshiba
Easy stop-motion and time-lapse video
From my 7-year-old son's stop-animation of the Hulk action figure.
This is a very cool application that creates stop-motion and time-lapse videos. For years my kids and I have been making claymation episodes, doll and figure animations, paper cutout sequences, and fun time-lapse movies with our family handy-cam, but our primitive method of simply blinking the on-button has always been less than satisfactory. Our brain-dead way creates three problems: the interval is too long (jerky movement), you can't see what motion should be next, and you can't edit out goofs when you make a boo-boo -- which is 100% certain.
iStopMotion software is a much better way to do animation, and it solves all three problems. You connect a live video feed from your camera to your computer (via USB or Firewire) and then you control the film from your keyboard -- or this is cool -- via voice command! After you capture a frame, the program overlays that frame as transparent layer over the current camera view so you can see exactly where you need to move next. You can even request the last 5 frames (onion skinning animators call it) to get a sense of direction and trajectory, which allows a very fine tuning of the motion. And you can edit mistakes, and do redos on the fly. All this is simple enough that my 7-year-old could instantly manage it. Yet it is sophisticated enough that film students use this software for thesis projects. Making time-lapse films is even easier.
The joy of this tool is that your computer screen rather than your camera screen drives the animation. The downside is that you either need to do all your filming within cable reach of your desktop, or else on a laptop (with sufficient shade on the screen outdoors). The closer you can get your screen to your "stage" the better. When you are done animating, or time-lapsing, it is very easy to export the Quicktime file to iMovie to add a soundtrack and titles.
There are three programs in this genre and all three run on Mac OSX. I've tried all three (iStopMotion, FrameThief, and Stop-Motion Studio) and iStopMotion is by far the superior. It has the most features, ease of use, speed and stability. It is also the best designed. Check out the entertaining examples completed by folks on the iStopMotion website.
-- KK
iStopMotion
$40 (free demo for 7 days)
Better than the average small-time cineplex
Five years ago we moved our video habit from a tiny 13-inch monitor that was hardly bigger than most laptop screens to showing DVDs on something a little bigger -- like a wall-sized movie screen. It's been pure joy since.
What we had in mind was an assemble-it-yourself home theater.
I considered big TV screens and large flat panel displays, but in the end choose a projection system as the most reasonable way to go. Finding an inexpensive screen was not difficult; you can try eBay for a real bargain. I bought a new one that was 6 feet by 8 feet. Yep, it's big. We hung our huge screen on a wall; it rolls right up and disappears when not needed.
To project the DVD image I bought the cheapest, smallest, computer projector I could find, the kind of portable conference projector you see advertised in airline magazines. You can get a good one now for $800 (see below).
In addition to the small projector we also added surround sound to the room using five strategically placed Bose speakers, each no bigger than a softball, and one woofer hidden beneath a table. The result: With a good DVD offering 5.1 surround sound, the experience is as about as good as our rinky-dink local half-plex theater.
Is it perfect? No. Our cheap home theater quality does not match the experience of viewing a good print on a large screen in a good theater. Also, because of the large windows in our room, we use the theater mostly at night. With a projector of 2000 lumens you can watch during the day, but you don't get the full theatrical experience unless the room is dark. The projector has a fan in it so it is not as silent as a TV or a flat panel, but in a large room with the surround sound cranked up you won't notice the hum at all.
Our set-up includes our trusty old VCR that also plugs into the projector. The quality of a lot of tapes projected on this scale is, let me put it this way, less than one desires. But the total effect is still better than on a small screen. DVDs on the other hand are crisp enough. Another down side is that the expensive bulbs in the projectors are rated to have a lifespan of several hundred hours; however after 5 years of running a couple of movies a week we are still on the original bulb. It is, of course, possible to run a TV signal onto the screen, too, say, for sports events.
When I first researched this idea I discovered a couple of things. First, salesmen of the projectors report that a lot of other people had the same idea: this was the low-rent way of making a home theater, even though the manufacturer's literature and the home theater publications have ignored this use because the cheap projectors aren't optimized for TV. But the cheapest "home theater projectors" I could find started at $6,000, and these monsters needed expert "set up." Forget it.
Secondly, all you need is the cheapest projector. Essentially the quality of even the low-end projectors exceeds the quality of video. It's not necessary to get super-duper res, because while this will improve a computer display's image, it won't do much for a signal from a DVD or VCR.
Five years ago the cheapest projector was the Sony VPL-CS1. It still works fine for us. We have also used the Sanyo ProX-III, a little larger box, slightly more money, same result. I have not tried it, but Epson is now selling a portable projector, the PowerLite S1 for $800 street price. It is being sold as a home theater projector. The main distinguishing feature at the low end is lumens -- the brightness. The difference of a few hundred lumens will not be noticeable; the level has to double before you can perceive the increase. If you show at night, a lumen level of 1000 is probably all you'll need.
We combined our Sony with a Pioneer Dolby DVD player and receiver with the aforementioned Bose 5.1 surround sound speaker system. Our screen is a Da-Lite model; I picked a mid-range quality screen (not flat white, but not the highest reflectivity either). From about 12 feet away the projector will completely fill a 6-foot high by 8-foot wide screen. This size screen is large enough that wide-screen mode (which doesn't fill the screen) is still plenty big.
All the electronic gear sits compactly hidden beneath a tiny end table, on the floor. (By design the projector angles upward slightly so it fills the screen from the floor perfectly.) Most visitors to the room don't have any idea that it can transform into a serviceable home theater in the time it takes to roll down the screen.
Now that most films can be rented or bought on DVD, we only venture into a movie house a couple of times a year, primarily when we want to see something early, while everyone else does. The rest of the year, the home theater is more than adequate.
And if you do need to project a computer, you've got a fine unit at your service. Just unplug and carry.
-- KK
Epson PowerLite S1
$838
Amazon
Putting eyes on the web
Stand alone web cams have been around for a few years but only recently have dropped in price to a few hundred dollars. Stand alone web cams differ from standard web cams in that they have a server and connectivity built in making them independent of a computer. That means you can put these web cams somewhere far from a computer (say in a cabin, or the top of a building) as long as you have a phone or ethernet connection. The cameras made by Axis seem to be the most compact and well-designed. These cams use a Linux-based server and come with an ethernet port so you just plug it into the network, assign it a public IP address, and presto, you are live on the web. Far from a network, you could even plug the camera into a phone modem and have a PC call the camera to see the images. We've had an Axis working in our office window for a few months without problems. There is a choice of models depending on whether the camera will be indoors, outdoors, or wants sound, etc.
-- Alexander Rose
Axis 2100 Standalone Network WEB Camera
manufactured by AXIS
Item #155185
$280
available from PC Connection
888-213-0260
Axis remote network cam used as a London "Jam Cam" for web-based monitoring of traffic. Can be viewed here
Liberating TV
Personal Video Recorders like TiVo are the coolest bit of lifestyle kit to come along since, what? The computer? The cellphone? The answering machine? These are like an answering machine for your TV. You can watch shows whenever the hell you want, skip over the annoying "messages" (commercials and late night talk show guests that bore you) and put shows on pause to answer the door, eat dinner, listen to the annoying messages on your phone answering machine, etc. We have a mixed household, with an unrepentant TV addict (me) and a devout TVphobe (my wife). The PVR allows me to record or pause what I want and watch it when she's not around. I've only used ReplayTV, but TiVo is definitely the front-runner in the market now and the hands-down fave among geeks and gadget weenies 'cause of its use of Linux and a more hacker-friendly attitude from the manufacturer.
-- Gareth Branwyn
TiVo
$200 -$400, $13 Monthly service
877-289-8486
On demand movies by mail
Netflix rents DVDs on an all-you-can-watch subscription basis. You can rent as many movies as you want (but no more than three at a time) by paying $20 per month. That includes free shipping coming and going, a task made easy by handy mailers. Great selection, shades of the video-on-demand world coming. It’s filmaholic heaven.
—Richard Kadrey
Netflix
Cheap DVD plays all regions of the world
A wonder of our globalized economy:
As everyone knows, DVD players are sold encoded to a particular region to block imported DVDs from playing. However the *cheapest* DVD players are manufactured for low-price sales world-wide, and are thus engineered with (a) easily re-programmable regional coding (only one unit to make) and (b) chips that convert PAL signals (a system used over much of the world) to NTSC signals (a system used primarily in the United States and Japan).
The CyberHome CH-DVD 500 progressive scan DVD player (available at Amazon, Target, and elsewhere) is sold for about $80. Among other machines, it can be easily reprogrammed using the remote in accordance with instructions accessible to the Google-literate. You can then watch any DVD manufactured anywhere in the world at home.
CyberHome CH-DVD 500 Progressive Scan DVD Player
$80
Amazon
There are many sources for international DVDs, including the national Amazon sites - Japan, France, UK, Germany - as well as CDJapan.com, and yesasia.com., among others. A very large proportion of the titles are digitally subtitled in English, and usually indicated as such on the sites.
What can you get? Depends on what you like: British television comedies and drama, uncut and uninterrupted, years before local release if ever; Japanese animation and the new wave of Japanese horror films; the massive (ten films a month) restoration and release of the Shaw Bros. film and television library from Hong Kong; classic releases of Bergman films from Artificial Eye in London (Fanny and Alexander uncut); French noir from the fifties and sixties, and on and on. The best place I know of for international DVD obsessives is called dvdtalk.com. The international forum, which has tons of shopping information and stuff about individual releases ("Von Trier's Kingdom with subtitles out in Denmark on August 1!": that sort of thing) is nerd-out.com. Here is the URL for the CyberHome hack specifically.
-- Dennis Dort
Most complete guide to non-US films
Great movies, maybe the best movies, are made in other countries, often in a language other than English. With the advent of DVDs, there is no need to wait until they show up in an art film house ñ if they ever do. This is the best guide to non-English movies in print. I prefer it because unlike other anthologies of ìforeignî films, this one was written by a single author, and therefore has the benefit of comparative reviews and context.
Videohoundís World Cinema:The Adventurerís Guide
to Movie Watching
Elliot Wilhelm
1999, 559 pages
$20
Visible Ink Press
Amazon
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How to fake it
How to fake just about anything. Makes use of the newest (styrofoam) and oldest (plaster) prop materials. Prop making skills are easily transferred, too. A lot of this fakery can go a long way in real life architectural and interior decorating.
The Theater Props Handbook
Thurston James
2000, 270 pages
$30
Players Press Inc.
Studio City, CA
Amazon
 Cut the sleeve from a length of PVC water pipe. Slide the components into the pipe and secure the assembly with hot glue. Set the unit into a candle holder and decorate it with wax drippings melted onto it from a real candle.
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