I ordered my Sony GPS-CS3KA about a month ago and it’s been on back-order ever since. I few days ago, I received an email telling me that the item has been shipped. I have to assume that I must be the few very first people who will receive this device, and therefore, I want to document my un-boxing event!
First up, the packaging…
The box has a fold out design that allows more area to talk/explain on what this device does.
Zooming into the Quick Start Guide inside the ‘fold-out’ of the box…
Here’s what the back of the box looks like….
It is interesting to see that the Device itself is made in China, yet the CD-Rom is actually made in Japan. Wouldn’t it makes more financial sense to have the entire thing made, and packaged, in China?
Here are what inside the box. Some manuals, warranty cards, special offer on accessories, an USB cable, a see-through plastic pouch (looks water-proof), and the device itself.
Here’s a close-up shot of the plastic pouch to store the GPS device.
Here’s what the whole thing looks like if you choose to put the GPS unit inside the pouch. Although it is a bit ugly, I believe I will certainly be using this pouch so that I can belt-clip it to my camcorder or camera.
Here are a few shots of the battery compartment. There is also a slot for the memory stick too. (Looks like I will have to go into detail of what that memory slot is used for.
I’m going to charged up my battery tonight and take this to photo-shoot the religious event that I will be attending tomorrow. I’ll provide further update on the software and the entire process of linking GPS data with pictures on separate devices.
If you have anything that you want me to check/photograph, please leave me a comment below.
I celebrated New Year’s Eve countdown at home, with my lovely wife sitting next to me (and baby’s sleeping), watching “Dick Clark New Year’s Eve Countdown with Ryan what’s-his-name” in HD. It was just a so-so event, and I still don’t buy that there were 1 million people in Times Square last night. Patches of emptied area were clearly visible during the show, even right before countdown. I don’t understand why the officials had the need to fabricate numbers, but I guess the U.S. need such a ‘count’ to re-establish themselves around the world on newspaper/web on New Year’s Day. The countdown-Ball-dropping event is beginning to look pathetic. Come on, wake up! Look around the world to see what others are doing to ring in the New Year!
Australia has been impressive in the past years, being one of the first to hit the new year mark.
Hong Kong’s fireworks show that circled around the IFC is just fantastic! (I’m still looking for some ‘official’ video of the fireworks show.)
Taipei 101’s fireworks is another impressive display
These are some of the countries around the world that really took advantage of their iconic structures, spent some money, and celebrated the new year. Instead spending all that money on a gigantic crystal/LED ball, I think NYC needs to start thinking out of the box soon!
When I bought my HD Camcorder during my wife’s pregnancy, I've spent tremendous amount of time looking for an online video hosting site that can accommodate High Definition video hosting. There weren’t that many, but I was still able pick out Motionbox, ViddYou, Dailymotion, Viddler, and Vimeo. Since this post is not about a comparison among these video hosting sites, I’m not going to go into details on the Pros and Cons of each one (Not that I would remember anyway!). But I clearly remember that one of the big reason why I chose Vimeo is because it’s a free service, the clean layout of its site, and the UI is friendly. I have since uploaded, on last count, 90 videos under my son’s User Name, and I have been very happy about Vimeo’s services in the past 12 months. That was until Vimeo decided to launch a Vimeo Plus service back in mid-October. Vimeo Plus is a paid services that allows Users to play embedded video in HD, and more. But as I was trying to determine if paying the extra $5 or so per month is worth it, I noticed that in addition to offering a premium service, Vimeo is also reducing its ‘basic/free’ service! Specifically, by reducing me to only upload 1 video per week is just non-sense! It used to be unlimited for as long as I stay within the 500mb per week limit. By then, I know I need to start looking for an alternate solution. Until then, to go around the 1 video per week limit, I switched back to YouTube.
What I want to do with this post is to embed the same video, 1 from YouTube, and 1 from Vimeo to see how does the quality between the two embedded video player match up. **But before I start, I want to state that the embedding from Vimeo is NOT HD (because you have to pay to get Embed-HD). Likewise, I don’t think the embedded quality from YouTube is HD either. Unless I use the “fmt=22”, which according to a YouTube Engineer, it’s pushed out at 720p.
Let’s start by quickly reviewing the customize-able options from both sites. When you click on the ‘Embed’ button from Vimeo, you’ll get a fancy pop-up window on your screen, whereas, YouTube’s Share/Customize options are displayed on the side-bar to the right of the page.
A closer look at the Customize panel will show that both sites allow some sort of color customization. While Vimeo allows the options of displaying the ‘On-screen Info’ like Byline and Title, YouTube allows the option of showing the Border or Related Videos. YouTube also prompts the User with 4 pre-set dimensions for its Video Player, while Vimeo simply just opens it up to allow its Users to define the customizable dimension.
So how do the videos compare when embedded?
This embedded video below comes straight from YouTube without any hack in the video quality:
Now, the video below has a 'High Quality' 'format 18' hack
And finally, the 'format 22' hack. Please note that my laptop's video card (or is it the CPU?) just couldn't handle the ‘format 22’ load. I hope it works well on yours.
I understand that a night-time video is not the best way to judge video quality. But that’s all I have for now. I will upload a day-time video for comparison at a later time. Also, when you’re comparing these videos, do not just look at the initial ‘cover shot.’ Click the start button, let the video roll for a few second, pause it, and study the details. If you can pause it at around the same time among these videos, I think it would be a better comparison.
My personal opinion/conclusion is that after reviewing these videos, I don’t see why I would pay for the service of Vimeo Plus. Although there are features here and there that are unique to Vimeo, they just couldn’t justify the cost of even $0.16 per day.
Just a week or so ago, I was getting all excited when I noticed that YouTube was offering the option of “Watch in HD”, if the video source was uploaded in High Definition.
Back then, I asked myself: “I wonder when will I be able to embed my uploaded HD videos in 16:9 format?”
This evening, as I was embedding a video to my son’s blog, I noticed that the option of choosing the video dimension was made available under the ‘Customize’ button.
Way to go! YouTube! Although you’re a bit late to the HD (or Wide Screen Format) arena. It’s still better than never! Thanks!
