David Ranada

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Other Tech
Roll Your Own HDTV
David Ranada  |  Sep 19, 2005

Nothing beats using home movies to evaluate TVs. You choose what to shoot so you can stress a specific aspect of screen performance. Since you're the cameraman, you know precisely what each scene is supposed to look like.

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Custom Installation How-To
Samsung DVD-HD931 Upconverting DVD Player
David Ranada  |  Oct 26, 2003
Photos by Tony Cordoza You can get a hint of what's up with Samsung's top-of-the-line DVD player from its model number. The "HD" in DVD-HD931 signifies that it has a special output for "upconverted" DVD video signals that closely match the capabilities of high-definition TVs.
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Custom Installation How-To
Samsung DVD-V2500 DVD Player/VCR
David Ranada  |  Mar 25, 2003
Most of the Samsung DVD players we've tested have had something "different" about them. There were, for example, a couple of models with Nuon game-playing capability, and the last one we looked at could reproduce still pictures stored on Memory Stick flash-memory cards.
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Other Tech
SED: A New Player in the Flat-Panel Game
David Ranada  |  Jan 08, 2006

Canon's prototype 36-inch, 720p SED panel.

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Custom Installation How-To
Sharp DV-HR300 DVR/DVD Recorder
David Ranada  |  May 27, 2004

For a lot of reasons, a DVD recorder equipped with a hard-disk drive makes a lot of sense. Sharp's stylish DV-HR300, which contains a drive with an 80-gigabyte (GB) capacity, is a good example of the advantages of such an arrangement.

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Other Tech
Shopping Made Simple: DVD Recorders
David Ranada  |  Oct 19, 2003
Photo by John Wilkes Visiting a local Circuit City recently, I saw several customers in front of the display of DVD recorders, mulling over the three or four models shown. Unfortunately, that's all they were doing - mulling. Although each of them probably yearned to replace an aging VCR with a shiny new DVD recorder, nobody had the gumption to lay down the bucks.
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Other Tech
Shopping Made Simple: DVD Recorders
David Ranada  |  Jul 21, 2004

DVD recorders are well on their way to making VCRs obsolete.

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Other Tech
Smooth Operator
David Ranada  |  Dec 05, 2005

Even as HDTV takes hold, there are people (including me) looking for the "next big thing" that will improve video's realism. My recent experience with InterVideo's popular WinDVD DVD-player program for PCs has shown me one of the possibilities.

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Other Tech
Spraying for Mosquitos
David Ranada  |  Jun 15, 2006

06/16/2006 - The news wires have recently been carrying stories on how teens around the world have hijacked a signal in the near-ultrasonic range originally developed by a company in Wales to disperse groups of loitering youth. The signal has been turned instead into a ringtone for cellular phones.

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Custom Installation How-To
Super Recorders
David Ranada  |  Sep 22, 2003
Photos by Tony Cordoza You know a recording medium is going in or out of fashion when you can't find any blanks on the store shelves. Such a revelation hit me in the aisle for blank DVDs and CDs at a Best Buy here in New York City. There were shelf labels for all five recordable DVD formats - DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM - but precious few of the discs.
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