resolution

Windows 8, Google+, Bluetooth: My geeky 2013 resolutions

I could have been a better geek in 2012. When it comes down to it, there just aren't enough hours in a day to do all the gaming, social networking, rooting, modding, and general geekery we'd like to. When forced to make the choice between a family vacation or staying home to indulge in nerdy pleasures like crunching the data generated by the newly flashed firmware on my Wi-Fi router, that trusty old Linksys model and my other devices tend to be the ones that get scorned.

But I resolve that this New Year will be different. … Read more

iPad Mini: What we don't know

The so-called "iPad Mini" is the Sasquatch of the gadget world. Rumored for years, the smaller iPad looms ever closer to reality, with rumors of an imminent announcement and release ramping up nearly every day.

The gadget blogosphere, bolstered by a recent flurry of leaked photos and specs, seems to be taking the existence of the iPad Mini as an inevitability. But even assuming that the Mini is real -- and that it's coming soon -- there are some key unknowns. Here are the biggest and most important ones.… Read more

How many pixels can Apple pack into a 4-inch screen?

A bigger screen on the iPhone 5 means more pixels in order to maintain the Retina branding. So, what can we expect exactly?

I asked Paul Semenza, senior vice president of analyst services at NPD DisplaySearch.

"To the best of our knowledge, the display will be 4 inches, with the same 326 ppi [pixels per inch] resolution, which would make it 1,136x640," he said, confirming current speculation.

That would keep the ppi ahead of popular phones like the 4.8-inch Samsung Galaxy S III (306 ppi at 1,280x720 resolution) and the 4.7-inch HTC One X (… Read more

Why a longer iPhone 5 screen needs to happen

For months, we've heard talk of an iPhone 5 with a longer screen. The latest stories around the Internet suggest not only that this is a likely reality, but that iOS 6 supports this new resolution: 640x1,136 pixels, to be exact. That's an extra 176 pixels longer than the current iPhone's 640x960 display.

When I heard of the next iPhone's longer screen, I thought: I'd just prefer a slightly bigger screen, not necessarily a longer one. My current iPhone 4S feels like it has a perfect aspect ratio. Why change it?

Then I thought about it, and quickly changed my tune.… Read more

A great-sounding pocket recorder: Zoom H2n

I wrote about Zoom's nifty $99 H1 pocket recorder last year, and really loved its sound, so I was curious to see how the H2n recorder measured up. It's a bit shorter, just 4.5 inches high, but fatter and a little heavier. The H2n's body is shiny black plastic, but it feels more solidly built than the H1.

It has four recording modes: Mid-Side (MS) stereo, 90 degree X/Y stereo, two-channel, and four-channel surround modes. The H2n can record MP3 files (48 to 320 Kbps) or WAV files (44.1-kHz/16-bit to 96-kHz/24-bit). The &… Read more

Onkyo to offer Dolby TrueHD 5.1 channel music downloads

At the end of May, Onkyo will start selling Dolby TrueHD 5.1-channel music downloads, first in Japan, and by the fall of this year worldwide. That's either a brave or foolhardy move.

Multichannel music formats -- starting with quadraphonic LPs and tapes in the early 1970s, DTS encoded surround CDs in the 1990s, and DVD Audio and SACD in the early 2000s -- have all suffered from a lack of consumer demand. Very, very few surround releases were initially recorded in surround; most rock and jazz titles are remixed from older stereo recordings. The Blu-ray format has now … Read more

Stunning high-resolution photo shows Earth's many hues

Most people are familiar with NASA's quintessential photograph of Earth -- semi-transparent white clouds sweeping over beige and green swaths of land surrounded by dark blue water.

While that picture's mesmerizing, a photo has emerged showing the planet in even more color and detail, and according to some, it could be among the highest-resolution single pictures ever taken of Earth. It was shot by Russian scientists aboard their weather satellite, the Elektro-L (to download the photo and see a zoomable image, click here). … Read more

Convert your images with AVD Batch Converter

Certain image formats are better suited to particular tasks than others, so if you do a lot of work with digital images it makes sense to have a program that can easily convert between a variety of formats. AVD Batch Converter is definitely not the fanciest file converter we've encountered, but if you need a no-frills way to convert batches of images from one format to another, it can get the job done.

The program's interface is intuitive, if not particularly attractive. Three panes let users navigate to specific directories, view a selected directory's contents, and preview … Read more

TV and movies on new iPad look better, but not by much

When I directly compared the screens of old iPad 2 and the new iPad, I immediately noticed the improvement in resolution in text and some graphics, like the Apps icons. Being a TV reviewer, however, I was curious to see if there was any major improvement when watching movies and TV shows.

I spent a few hours this weekend looking at common video sources side-by-side, one on an old iPad 2 (1,024x768-pixel resolution) and one on the new iPad (2,048x1,536 pixels). Despite the massive boost in resolution, and what Apple claims is a 44 percent increase in … Read more