If you follow me on Twitter, you already know that I spent today cleaning out my garage and assembling a new grill. My question for you guys this week is simple. What kind of digital home improvements have you done to your home or apartment? What would you like to do? 

What exactly is a digital home improvement? Well, it's simple. It's anything that adds 21st century technology to your home. Have you run Ethernet to free yourself from the tyranny of wireless networks? Did you install a streaming music solution, like the ones from Sonos or Logitech? Have you explored smart power, to more accurately tell when and how much power and gas you're using on a minute-by-minute basis? What about home automation? Are there any digital home improvements you'd like to see us tackle and write about? 
 
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Video posted by will on Sept. 4, 2010

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Nothing says extravagant like a 56” 21:9 cinema display--except, maybe, a 58” 21:9 cinema display with 3D. Philips has unveiled the 2010 rendition of its ridiculously wide cinema display with a few aesthetic improvements and a whole lot of new stuff going on behind the LCD. All of the internal enhancements are designed to make the TV handle 3D images without sacrificing picture quality.

Because 3D tends to darken images, Philips installed its Bright Pro technology, which uses 1500 LEDs to selectively brighten portions of the screen without washing out the blacks. The Active 3D technology (which requires a special pair of glasses, naturally) supposedly synchronizes the lenses with what’s on screen to maximize the 3D effect and minimize crosstalk. Theoretically, reducing crosstalk means stopping the image bleedthrough from one channel to the other.

Finally, the icing on the cake is Philips’ Ambilight technology, which projects light onto the walls around the device to make it look better and brighter. The Platinum 21:9 Cinema display is obviously an awesome TV, but with a UK price tag of about £3,500, or more than $5000, we have to wonder: who is the market for 21:9 displays?

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The new Apple TV is finally revealed, and it’s not quite the iOS 4 device we were expecting. It is, however, $99--a fairly average price for media players--and trying to re-focus the brand into a device solely intended for streaming content rather than storing it. But are there already devices on the market that do what Apple’s intending? Roku lowered their prices in anticipation of the new Apple TV, and Boxee had some interesting comments to make about Apple’s announcement.

Read on to see Apple TV, Google TV, Roku and Boxee duke it out in handy chart form.
 
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The original AppleTV was a device with an identity crisis. It would stream your media, but it wanted to store it too. Access to iTunes was baked in, but streaming and purchased content was something of an afterthought. It was a device caught in a transition period, trying to cater to both local and remotely stored content.
Made for media streaming, not storage.
Made for media streaming, not storage.
That was four years ago. Today, Apple has revamped their set-top device. Now it has a focus, and the new AppleTV is all about streaming. It pulls content from other sources through either Ethernet or Wi-Fi, and acts as a bridge to your TV. But its functionality goes deeper than that.

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Video posted by AHR on Sept. 1, 2010

Quick Look at Epic Citadel on the iPad and iPhone

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Apple is just about ready to unleash this year's iPod updates at their Fall Event press conference in San Francisco. Buzz about a revamped Apple TV, iTunes streaming, and a radically redesigned iPod Nano are the leading rumors, and we'll have all the details as they go live in the post below. Apple is also streaming this event live-- the first time they've done so for any product announcement in years -- apparently to test the capabilities of a massive new server farm (in anticipation of a a future streaming iTunes feature, perhaps?) . The sure-to-be-hammered feed will be available on Apple.com beginning 10AM PDT for Mac and iOS only.

Which rumors will turn out to be true, and which will go up in smoke? Discuss in the comments section below--the Steve Jobs reality distortion field is about to be turned on!

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There’s video on the web, and then there’s web video. Hulu is video on the web. Netflix Instant Streaming on the web. These services are fantastic because of how they deliver content--they’ve liberated television from the confines of network scheduling and movies from the the disc. Web video is a different beast--it’s the beast that distracts you with ninja cats, impossible video game headshots and freakish pop music mash-ups. There’s a lot of brilliant content out there, but by and large it’s passed around over Twitter or Digg as a quick source of amusement between efforts to be productive.

But is that how it has to be? As Technology Review points out, Vimeo and Roku have already given us a way to turn web video into video on the web--to legitimize it, turn it into a form of entertainment that has a place in the living room.

With a new Apple TV potentially being unveiled today, Google TV coming in the fall, and the Boxee Box joining the fray, now’s the perfect time to dive into web video and see what Roku’s up to--and what the other media players will be doing by the end of the year.
 
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Just like clockwork, Apple's annual fall event is scheduled for tomorrow, and the internet rumor machine has just about kicked into high gear. We don't know for sure what to expect, but that doesn't mean we can't scour the internet and indulge some speculation of our own. 

Join in on the prediction fun below. 
 
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Hot on the heels of our recent discussion of OLED technology comes LG's announcement of an LED television using new Nano Lightning technology. Aside from the unsurprisingly futuristic-sounding name, let's go over the list of claims LG makes about this new tech. Better picture? Check. Thinner hardware? Check. Better power efficiency? That too. 3D? Sure, if you're into that kind of thing.    

This all sounds great in a press release, but what exactly is Nano Lighting?   
 
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Here at Tested, our vision of the future involves spaceships, robot spouses and Netflix queues to the brain. What it does not involve, however, is awkward, socially-alienating glasses — the sort that today's 3D televisions gleefully force us to wear.

Perhaps it's for that reason that we're cautiously optimistic about the prospect of glasses-free 3D. After all, looking your significant other in the eye during a romantic movie just isn't as sexy with a couple of bulky active shutters in the way. But the reality is, that glasses-free nirvana may be further off than we think. Applying natural 3D on a larger scale can be problematic, and it's going to take some serious technological leaps for those issues to be overcome.

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Is  Hulu Plus worth it? That was the question that immediately followed the announcement of Hulu’s long-rumored subscription service. While the $9.99/month plan still contains ads, it also provides more episodes—including back seasons of certain series. If Plus’ extra content is worth the cost and commercials, then it might be worth your while. And so the question became “How much extra content is Hulu Plus offering?” Research firm One Touch Intelligence decided to answer that question by conducting a  comprehensive census of what’s available on Hulu.com and Hulu Plus. Below is a sample of the data they collected.

But maybe there’s another question we should ask: Is Hulu Plus worth it when compared to  Netflix Instant? For a dollar less than Plus, Netflix offers full access to their steaming catalog in addition to a one-at-a-time DVD rental. That seems like a good deal. But let’s see how their content compares with the Hulu.com/Plus sample data.

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