Lifesperience

Nostalgia is a powerful force, and with the Nintendo Entertainment System past its 30th anniversary, there are now more choices than ever to play those classic, over-sized cartridges from your youth.  With numerous clone systems out there ranging from under $20 , and all the way up to $500, how does the RetroUSB AVS stack up to the competition coming in at $185 before shipping/taxes?  Let's find out. Upon receiving the RetroUSB AVS , the first noticeable characteristic is that the box itself looks and feels like some cheap Chinese product that you'd likely find at a site like Aliexpress, or in your local Chinatown. Upon opening the box, the experience isn't particularly elegant. It took some work to get the inside cardboard to come out of the box.  The strong suction kept a tight grip and almost made me rip the cardboard in an attempt to get the AVS out of its own packaging.  Once it was finally out, the contents were an HDMI cable, a Mini (not Micro) U...

I've praised it before, and with time, Google's Chromecast has been improving at a steady rate.  Last week, with an update to the FilmON app, users can now broadcast live local TV to their televisions or monitors. While it may seem redundant to some to beam live TV to a TV set, in actuality, it may prove very useful to some.  For instance, you may be in a low reception area for a certain channel on your over the air antenna, or maybe your provider doesn't provide a particular station that you would like to watch where you live.   With FilmON streaming live TV over the internet directly to the Chromecast, it may be a great solution to some folks.   Perhaps you have an old monitor with an HDMI port.  Now it can be used as a TV. Some of you sports fans may be able to watch otherwise blocked games this way. Admittedly,  FilmON is not the best looking app in the Play store, nor is it the most intuitive, however, it gets the job done deliv...

Every man or gal cave needs a surround sound system These days, no home theater is complete unless one has some kind of surround sound system.  A great surround sound envelops the user in incredibly immersive sound from all angles and can really bring a movie, or a recording of a concert to life. For the last seven years, I have used an old JVC 5.1 surround sound unit that had a receiver with an upconverting 5 carousel DVD player attached to it and a ton of wires.  With most modern consoles offering their own upconverting DVD drives, Blu-Ray drives, and digital streaming boxes, such as the Roku, Google Chromecast, and Amazon Fire, the receiver and cables were overkill for my entertainment center and living room.  In an effort to simplify things, I started to look towards soundbars, but I did not want "virtual" surround sound.  In my years of experience, of trying and testing out virtual systems, none have ever come close to replicating a true 5.1 system.  ...

To put it bluntly, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey rocks! The show features famed astrophysicist superstar  Neil Degrasse Tyson  as host in place of the late Carl Sagan  and is produced by Seth McFarlane and Anne Druyan who co-wrote the original series. Add modern special effects along with up-to-date science facts and you now have the potential for an excellent program. Tyson on the Ship of imagination Debuting a week ago on ten networks, Cosmos will continue to air on two, which are Fox and the National Geographic channel.  Fox will air the show at 9pm on Sunday nights (after Family Guy) while National Geographic will air the following night on Mondays at 10pm with bonus material. If you're wondering what the show is about, according to Tyson, " The goal is to convey why science matters to the person, to our society, to us as shepherds of this planet. It involves presenting science in ways that connect to you, so Cosmos can influence you not only intelle...

I remember back in the late 90's and early 2000's when manufacturers tried to push internet appliances to the masses that were clearly not ready for prime time.  They were slow, extremely limited, and expensive.  Compared to the computers of even those times, they just were not very compelling items to buy and so most of them vanished into obscurity. Enter Google's " Chrome OS" which is meant to someday be a full on operating system (according to Google) but for now is primed to be a low cost and entry level OS for basic internet needs. It has the same idea as those older internet appliances but just works a whole lot better.  The OS is basically a Chrome browser that is disguised as a desktop OS with your data and apps stored in the cloud.  This makes Chrome OS a light weight, snappy operating system that can be installed on a variety of low cost devices.  Google already has laptops and netbooks based on Chrome OS on the market and as of today their partne...

August DTA240 Cutting the cord is a trend that has gained momentum in the U.S. over the last year.  Cable companies have seen record numbers of customers cut the cord on many of their TV services due to the unreasonable price increases and contract politics of  pay TV.   At the moment, I am one of those subscribers and have recently gone the Internet only route with an Antenna, and a Roku. As someone who has had cable for over a decade, I have been used to my broadcast channels in HD.  Luckily, over the air broadcasts are now 1080i HD signals as well.   I had some "rabbit ear" style antennas and setting those up, I was able to receive most of the basic stations minus ABC and WPIX in New York City.  The stations that did come in were clear, much clearer than my cable signal most of the time due to there being less compression.   With that said, I do not like rabbit ears sticking out of my clean looking set up so I went on amazon and came acros...