We’re recording in Norm’s living room this week while we move offices, but there’s still a lot to go over! Kishore, Jeremy, and Norm talk about their favorite projects they saw at Maker Faire, the recent Star Trek fan event, Pebble’s new products, and rumors of a new XBox. Plus, the ISS’s inflatable module in a moment of science.
One Day Builds
Adam embarks on one of his most ambitious builds yet: fulfil…
Show And Tell
Adam recently completed a build of the royal St. Edwards cro…
Making
Viewers often ask to see Adam working in real-time, so this …
One Day Builds
Adam and Norm assemble a beautifully machined replica prop k…
One Day Builds
One of the ways Adam has been getting through lockdown has b…
Making
Adam unboxes and performs a quick test of this novel new hel…
Making
When Adam visited Weta Workshop early last year, he stopped …
One Day Builds
Adam tackles a shop shelf build that he's been putting off f…
Show And Tell
Time for a model kit build! This steampunk-inspired mechanic…
One Day Builds
Adam reveals his surprise Christmas present for his wife--a …
(video is still being processed, so it’ll be up on youtube tonight.)
Auto-pay (even if audio off) video ads aren’t the best way to remind me to sign into my account 🙁
(double post)
When you going to review the Hot Toys DeLorean Time Machine you got hiding out back there?
I’m skeptical of the reasons why 4k hasn’t blown up or that HDR is making people nervous. Those concepts make a lot of sense to a technical minded minority but I think they sound like marketing BS to most consumers. I think HD caught on because the form factor of TVs changed, they went from being cubes to narrow rectangles. Increased resolution and progressive scan is meaningless to almost anyone, and difficult to take advantage of for anyone but the wealthy. My hunch is that while people intentionally upgraded to HD TVs from SD, almost nobody is going to upgrade to 4K or HDR. Instead those will become the standard on new products and and current HD TVs will stay in homes until they irreparably fail.
Yeah, I’m a little surprised Microsoft (X-Box) would even bother with 4K. Sony, of course, has skin in the game regarding 4K so they’re of course going that route with the Playstation.
Agree. I feel like this is the only “forum” I have to log into at least once a week. Can we turn this “feature” off?
Oh no, Kishore’s mic is off 🙁
that thing was AMAZING. Lights up, beautiful detail, especially on Marty. I thought was going to straight up steal it.
Just super low with the weird setup. Be fixed next week.
Any premium members who can’t make the sale… Let me know if you really really want something. I’ll do my best. PM me with details. Be specific.
You don’t have to tell me. I’m a bit of a fan of the car and the film so even though it was spends it was a no brainier purchase for me. It’s so big I have yet to figure out where I’m going to display it.
video is up!
Hey Tested, great podcast but I felt I had to signup to say that you could use a hardware engineer on the Tested crew and the podcast. I really like the fact that you have a semi-rotating roster with a scientist, tech enthusiasts, entrepreneurs (Will :P) and all, but when talking about tech like Project Ara, Pebble and even batteries an engineer’s insight could bridge the gap between hard science and the implementation side of things. I think Jeremy comes close to filling this role with his experience with the Game Frame.
I think I know why Apple is rumoured to be adding that OLED touchstrip…and it is because they are hoping to throw a bone to Music and Video producers who have been looking to move away from Apple. Many people in these industries have been traditionally used either a Macbook if they have a small studio set-up, and eventually going up to a Mac Pro. But people have been very frustrated with the Mac Pro due to it’s design. It just doesn’t easily fit physically into the modern studio. The lack of RAM expandablity, 16 Gig is not enough for many of today’s Music and Video production, along with the lack of upgradablity for the video cards, or anything other than Thunderbolt, which the computer industry has been slow to adapt…and threatens to the next “Firewire”.
Because of this, people are either building “hackintoshes”, or moving to Windows or Linux as their production platform.
Where the OLED touchstrip appeals to producers is that we tend to use what is know as a “scribble strip” originally was a piece of masking tape that was placed on a mixing board to label which channels were which instruments, and later as computerized mixing boards became popular, to create custom buttons that you can assign macros to. When you are using a computer for audio or video production, most programs have maps for the keyboard that assign various functions to each key…and this OLED touchstrip would, in theory, give us the ability to create macros without changing the default standard keyboard maps.
Or that’s my theory…I could simply be full of tapioca. 🙂
Hey Norm, consider using a pair of headphones plugged into your laptop next time. You’ll probably get much better sound and they’re easier to hold up to the mic.
(Also consider letting Kishore’s voice inside the house next time… sounds like he’s standing outside the door.)
Still, always good content from you guys!!
Norm,
On the subject of earbuds being tested. I can’t wear ear buds with the silicone tips. Can y’all throw a quick list together of whats out there for non-ear canal earbuds with mics? I’d like some bluetooth ones but no one makes anything. The buds I’ve been using are out of production and the right ear dies after 6 months. I’ve amassed quite a lot of store credit with the manufacturer.
Yes I know they’re not as good and everything but I can’t wear the other ones.
Hi Norm:
RE: 4K monitors — I found out that many UHD 4K TVs can be used as computer monitors and they are less expensive. Look for 60mhz refresh rates at 4K and that it has the ports to support the throughput from your PC.
Check out.
http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-usage/pc-monitor/best
Longtime watcher. Great job.
tl;dr – Lumia phones are dead. Microsoft still believes in phones and mobile. The platform is not “dead” like many clickbait articles claim; Windows 10 Mobile = Windows 10. The “Surface Phone” will be premium, with a focus on enterprise security and Continuum. Running virtual win32 apps will likely be heavily pushed and I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a fancy docking setup. And it seems like many of the higher ups that worked on Lumia Imaging are still with Microsoft, so enthusiasts that want a phone from Microsoft will likely still get something that checks all the boxes for a consumer.
Great show guys, especially considering that you’re inbetween spaces.
Such a bummer about the Ara announcement. Unlike the panel, I was looking forward to a more ecologically-minded approach to mobile, even if there was a poorer cost to performance ratio… I find the Apple consumer model socially and ecologically irresponsible, and I’d pay a little extra to subvert it in the marketplace. I guess I’ll have to hope something like Fairphone makes it over here.
As for Oculus, aren’t they just doing the same thing Apple’s always done? I may be making a very naive comparison, but it’s unclear why it’s a good model for one company and not for the other (from this layman’s perspective).
Sometimes backpedalling is the same thing as backpaddling. (from Wikipedia article on Hydrocycle)
i like the garage audio vibe 🙂
re captain america: i’m comparatively uninformed on, and deeply uninterested in marvel/dc comics, but captain america has been the single most obnoxious thing in that space i’m being confronted with. it’s been kind of bearable before, but with the films, that shitebucket is everywhere. that people unironically like a superhero manifestation of the USA being this valorous, perfect supersoldier is just beyond everything. the best thing about it until now has been stucky fandom.
but making him an agent of a terrorist organisation makes him less unbearable. for real-world parallels, for being a setup for some actually interesting writing, and for the irony of bringing out the numbnuts who are claiming to burn their captain america books if marvel’s going ahead with making him a nazi.
I have often wondered…is Norm the owner of that house?
New intro bump… INTERESTING.
*adjusts glasses*
I believe the Star Trek fan film you’re referring to is “Axanar.”