Sony's misleading advertising 1

The new Sony Bravia LCD TVs boast 200Hz Motionflow technology and claim to have "the smoothest picture ever". Unfortunately, some of the explanations given for the technology are simplistic, or just downright misleading. They show pictures of a footballer with added frames, and have a little video on their website showing a flickbook with lots of frames looking smoother than one with fewer frames. All very convicing, and well, wrong.

The bottom line is the broadcast signal you are watching was only recorded at up to 50 Hz to 60 Hz or fields per second. That's all the information there is. There's nothing between those frames and no amount of post processing by the TV after the event will change that. What the Sony sets (and others) are doing is looking at two of those frames and making up other frames in between them by averaging the two actual frames. They're not real frames, so these sets aren't really giving you 200 Hz, they're just interpolating between the actual frames to smooth the transition that the eye sees.

Now if you look closely at the deepest explanation that Sony gives, you'll see them describe that interpolation process accurately enough. They say "the sharpness of each image frame is boosted by Image Blur Reduction before its contents are analysed and three 'in between' frames are added between it and the next frame. This spreads two frames worth of motion across five frames". So far so good until they conclude "so effectively 50 frames per second becomes 200". No, sorry, that's wrong. These are made up frames. It is not at all the same as a genuine 200 Hz frame rate and neither does it look it.

So even Sony's most detailed explanation has been hijacked by the marketing boys and made into an untruth. But of course, the evils of marketing don't stop there. Most explanations aren't even that detailed, and as the ideas become more and more like sound-bytes, so any attempts at accuracy become the first casualties.

This kind of deception is pretty inexcusable, not only because it's playing fast and loose with the truth but also, and perhaps worse, because it insults the consumer. It attempts to reduce the issue to a 'numbers game' at point of sale and as such it's deliberately aimed at the consumer who doesn't know better. Rather than educate, it's an attempt to befuddle with meaningless numbers, rather like the battle for megapixels in digital cameras.

But the good news is, this technology does actually improve the picture. Sony's new 200Hz-interpolated sets do have the smoothest motion I've seen on an LCD. Is it the smoothest picture ever? No, because a good plasma set still looks better by a reasonable margin to my eye, but these Sonys are the first LCD sets I might be convinced to watch sport on.

Stupid idea of the month—Toshiba laptop keyboards

I've ranted before about shiny screens on laptops and how unusable they are in many lighting situations. Now Toshiba has tried to go one better in the sheer stupidity stakes by equipping many of its new laptops with highly reflective keyboards.

Putting aside the fact that they look tacky, you can just about guarantee that at least one row of keys will be impossible to read at any give time because of reflections. This won't worry the experienced user who is a good touch typist, but the sort of people likely to buy a shiny bling-ridden laptop are also the users most likely to be hunt-and-peck typists who will be looking at their keyboards. Indeed, Toshiba's top-of-the-line business-oriented machines seem to have matte keys like the good old days.

And I thought laptop design stupidity had reached its limits--congratulations to Toshiba for raising the ante once againI

Should we root or 'rowt'?

When Australians take journeys, they follow routes and they pronounce them 'roots'. It's widely understood that Australian men in particular are always looking for quick ones. Why then do so many Australians insist upon calling their networking devices 'rowters'? Are we really so infantile that we can't pronounce a perfectly decent word correctly without descending into toilet-humour titters? Surely the defence that 'it's just too embarrassing' is a pretty feeble one.

Then there's the oft-heard 'American pronunciation' defence. Interestingly, though, plenty of Americans do in fact use the British pronunciation, and no less authority than Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary gives both pronunciations, but the British one first.

And of course, there is already a device pronounced 'rowter'. It's a woodworking tool, and its etymology is very different. So unless we are planning to carve channels in our networks, can't we just call them 'rooters' and get over it?

Never bond with chickens

Late last year, junior brought home two chicks that had been incubated as a class experiment, and they grew into chickens in the backyard. They were extremely free-range, wandering the garden by day and sleeping in a tree by night. I started building a coop, but didn't persevere as they seemed content in the treetops and I am naturally poor at finishing things around the home that I start.

One of the chickens, an Ancona, was a capable flyer and displayed mind-boggling intelligence on several occasions, then crowned off the display of intelligence by escaping a few weeks ago never to be seen again. The other, a New Hampshire Red, stayed and, whilst not as bright, was nevertheless a friendly, almost affectionate bird with whom we have been bonding over the last several weeks.

But all that came to an end this morning when I found her brutally decapitated and distributed over the back lawn. Despite my creating sheltered accomodation for her in her tree, she still insisted on sheltering and laying at ground level, and something had found her there overnight and attacked her. Might have been a fox, but more likely a cat. A rather gruesome and depressing sight in itself, but also one that reminded me of the perils of bonding with animals. We're always told of the positive mental health outcomes of pets and animals, but like many people I create very strong attachments to creatures feline or feathered, and find myself inordinately affected by their loss and often guilt-ridden as a result of the things I might have done to prevent that loss.

Over many years of caring for pets, for one doesn't really 'own' them, I have had responsibility for couple of cats, a guinuea pig, a turtle, a rat, several fish and birds aplenty, including budgies, galahs, parakeets, African Grey parrots and a cockatiel. I remember each one fondly, but in each case was deeply impacted upon by their demise/loss/escape. Am I one of that plethora of people who bond with animals to avoid bonding with humans, or was Gandhi right when he said "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated"?

Democracy at work?

The South Australian Government has just changed its mind about its approach to the aspects of health care for rural issues in response to public sentiment over the issue. It's described in the local rag as "an embarassing backflip", but surely improving policy in response to public opinion is simply effective democracy at work, and governments admitting they may have erred shows a rare humility and self-effacement that should be lauded rather than condemned.