Yesterday, the premiere of Tekzilla got released. Tekzilla is a technology related show hosted by Jessica Corbin and Patrick Norton. The show delivers product reviews, computer help, tech tips plus do it yourself projects. The show has everything tech, from iPods to camcorders, HD to the Internet, anything and everything.

I initially was disappointed because this show was replacing one of my old favourites, InDigital. This tainted what I though about it and went into watching the first episode expecting it to suck. Now that I have seen it, I don’t think that it was that InDigital was ending, I don’t think that it was because something was replacing it, it was because I will miss the host I have grown to love over the past two years. I will miss Hahn and Wil.

Anyway, the episode blew me away. I loved it, really loved it. There is not much I can say about this show but you have to check it out. I do believe Revision3 has a winner here and I can’t wait to see it grow as time goes on. I would hope that we do see special guests on the show to make it more lively and interesting, and no, I’m not saying Patrick and Jessica are boring or will become boring, far from it actually.

The first episode was basic. They showed a great review on a video on demand box, they had some great tips on making better looking videos by showing camera techniques, they showed a battery hack to use a big 12 battery to power your handheld devices and they also showed you a nice piece of software for RAM diagnostics. You really have to check out the show yourself to witness how great it is. If I was rating this show, five dragons out of five dragons.

It had been 11 months since I bought my last external hard drive. All the drives in my house were close to maxing out. Between the 3 hard drives, the external, the one in the desktop and the one in the laptop, there was 30gb of free space combined. Some people would think that is a lot of space, others would say that it is time for a new drive. I knew it was definitely time for a new drive.

The past week, I have downloaded heaps of TV shows due to the releases of the new seasons. I ended up downloading about 25 different shows this week. If each episode is 350mb, thats about 9gb for the week. I would definitely be needing another drive if I planned on downloading full season of each of these shows.

This morning, we were going to the local computer shop to pick up a monitor for the old computer. The previous one had died (and smelt bad too I may add.) We got a nice 19″ LCD monitor, a major upgrade from the 5 year old 15″ CRT display. While picking up that, I grabbed an external drive off the shelf, a Western Digital My Book 500gb. This hard drive will be plenty of room for the next 11 months, hopefully. I currently have plans on getting another drive of double capacity in 11 months time just to start a nice trend.

I copied all the TV shows, movies, and PSP games from my old drive to the new one, leaving only documents and video podcasts to take up space on the old external drive. I really like this external drive too, it is much better than any other one I have seen and tried. It looks very nice and words nice too. The best feature of the drive is that there are no buttons, no switches, it turns it self of with the computer or if you safely remove the drive. This means that I don’t have to worry about powering the drive and such. This would be perfect as a second storage drive for a desktop computer as it would power up and down with the computer without the user having to do anything.

The total of all drives at home now reach 1000gb, which sounds like a lot of storage but really it isn’t. I could easily use it in a short period of time. I am extremely happy with my purchase and would definitely recommend a Western Digital My Book to anyone looking for an external drive. Now I just need to download more TV shows to store on it and need more time to watch everything. Then in a year or so, its time for a terabyte drive for me!

Today was the day I had been counting down to for a few months now. I had a countdown gadget on my sidebar to assist with the counting down the this date. Finally it was here, Volume Two of Heroes, my favourite TV Show ever.

After watching a few of the previews released, I became worried that everything was going to be different from season one. Yes, things were different from season one, including the introduction of many new characters, new heroes. They didn’t really answer the main questions we were left with in season one except for one, are the Petrelli brothers alive. They also managed to add many new questions to the list.

Overall, I really enjoyed this episode of Heroes. I am not going to spoil it for you but if you haven’t already seen it, definitely go and download and watch the episode. If you haven’t seen the first season, you are an idiot, and you should probably go get the DVD set (or download them all for free.) This is going to be another awesome season of Heroes coming up!

Ten days ago, I posted complaining about VLC and one of the point mentioned was the bad quality of the video, more specifically, HD video.

I watched a H.264 HD video. I was disappointed with the quality becuase it was not as good as the quality Quicktime offered. It was extremely apparent when the podcast, Diggnation, displayed websites which were crystal clear and readable in Quicktime, but were slightly pixelated and harder to read in VLC.

I now retract hat I have said. The reason the quality didn’t look as good as it did in Quicktime is due to the fact that Quicktime opens the video in its original size whereas VLC Player scales the video down so all the controls and everything fits on the screen.

Quicktime makes the player adjust to the size of the video, in this case, HD Diggnation is 720p (1280×720). The resolution of my monitor is 1280×800 and what ends up happening is the player controls get chopped off. For me to control it, I have to move the player so the topbar goes offscreen. If I want to exit the video, I have to then drag it down. I can always put it in fullscreen and not worry about it but sometimes I want to do other things or want to be notified of events in the taskbar.

VLC doesn’t let it happen. It scales the video down so the player controls fit on the screen. The disadvantage is that you get loss of quality and a little pixelation due to it scaling the video down. This thing was, I didn’t realize thing until I accidentally put it into fullscreen and found that the quality was perfect and the pixelation gone. This is great, but I am a little disappointed in it. VLC didn’t tell me that it had scaled it down so everything would fit on the screen. When opening a video that is bigger than the real estate it has to work with, it should either prompt me and ask what to do, scale down or go fullscreen or otherwise alert me on what it is doing. Another thing is that 1:1 original size isn’t the original size, it has scaled it down and hasn’t told me. 1:1 original should mean that, the original size, and it should do that regardless of the space or at least give some sort of message.

I don’t think VLC is perfect but I have to admit, it’s pretty darn close. I suppose I am just a fussy person that wants things perfect and other people wouldn’t have issues with it. I will give VLC the award for best alternative player, especially for Quicktime, I have given up on that.

Today, season 3 of Prison Break returned. This is the first of many fall shows returning in the next 2 or so weeks. This season of Prison Break doesn’t seem as interesting, or as good as the following season but lets give it a chance. Many new characters were introduced in this episode which leaves me with some questions as well as a little confusion. I am getting the sense that in this season, we will finally see the bigger picture of what is going on. Hopefully they don’t drag this show out for a fourth season because then they are just dragging the horse for a bit too long.

Now it is time for two of my favourite TV shows (I have a lot of favourite shows) to go into Hiatus for the Summer. Monk and Psych aired their 9th episode of the season yesterday and are now having a break and returning back in the middle of January 2008.

Monk was unusual and wasn’t as good as it normally was. It was very random and confusing and didn’t have the same “interesting” case(s) that it normally did. Still worth watching but it didn’t meet up to its normal standard. What Monk lacked, Psych had. It was a great episode, the best out of all the episodes that have aired to date in my opinion. The last scene was something that had been building up in the series for a long time now. It was somewhat expected but the creators put a spin on it and made it interesting by making something that was nothing happen, which we pretty funny and well done.

Well now these series are having a break, it will free up 1 and 1/2 hours a week. It can make room in my schedule for the other shows that are returning in the next few weeks. I could also save another hour by only watching Diggnation once a week but is that really necessary?

Today is the day Diggnation come out for members. Usually on this day, I would download Xvid Diggnation from a mirror. Unfortunately the mirror I use isn’t mirroring this week and I cannot find an alternative so I can get Diggnation early. This makes me uneasy because I am missing out and it has also ruined my Saturday Schedule.

Generally how it goes is on Saturday, I download Diggnation early in Xvid format to watch at night time. Then the next day, Sunday, I download the Quicktime HD H.264 and watch it at night then again too. This has been my weekend schedule for the past… 3 weeks now (I think) and I do not like my schedule being disrupted.

I am also thinking about downloading Diggnation a 3rd time each week, once in iTunes so I can put it on my iPod Classic when I get it. I’m not sure if it is worth it though. I wish I could just throw the Quicktime HD or Xvid onto it but iPods don’t support it. I vote for DivX/XviD support in Apple products!!!