Internet Televisions Crush Household TVs

Guest writer David Samuel takes a look at the ongoing changes in viewing habits. 

In a nation renowned for its couch potatoes, you would expect TV’s in U.S. households to be more popular than ever with the plethora of recent technology advancements including HD TVs & 3D TVs. However, for the first time since 1992 U.S. households’ containing a television has declined by over 2%. While the decline is small, the shift in power is immense.

This change can be explained by the explosion of high-speed internet – from 2007 to 2009 broadband internet connections across American households increased by nearly two thirds; this is the most recently available data.

In January 2010, the Consumer Electronics Association (CE) revealed that sales of televisions fell by 1%, while sales of internet-enabled televisions increased by a monstrous 150%. Households across the globe with broadband internet connection are progressively turning to the internet as their principal media portal.

It’s estimated that in 2011 internet TV’s as well as 3D TV sales will grow by over 60% in the U.S due to increased content from videos games, TV events, Blu-ray films and HD sporting events. Other electrical equipment, such as high definition audio units, is also increasing in popularity due to this demand.

The internet generation is no longer buying traditional televisions and are instead opting to stream media over the internet. In the future more households will have a mission control like layout, where both the TV and internet will be consumed. But, what will this cocktail media viewing unit be called? I quite like Media Viewing Device (MVD) – that’s my call – what’s yours?

Biography:

David Samuel is an electronic media consultant, with over 13 years’ involvement with some of the leading electronic retailers. David’s awareness and market intelligence make him one of the best equipped experts around. While specializing in HD TVs, David’s knowledge covers a wider spectrum of consumer electronics.

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Burn Your CDs/DVDs With Free CDBurnerXP

If you’re looking for value in a CD/DVD burner (and what can be better than free), then CDBurnerXP (last updated November 24, 2010), is definitely a significant freeware application.

The fairly simple interface makes it a breeze to use for even the most inexperienced user, although it should be said that some users have mentioned that the interface has some confusing aspects.  Hmm, I don’t see it.

I have burned dozens of CDs/DVDs in the last year using this free application, and in every case, CDBurnerXP did the job flawlessly.

If you’re looking for a free CD/DVD burner application to do what it says it will do, with an easy to work with interface, then CDBurnerXP could be the program you’ve been looking for.

The following screen captures illustrate just how “one click simple” it is to burn an ISO for example, using CDBurnerXP.

Now, how hard is that?

Quick facts:

Burn audio-CDs with, and without gaps between tracks

Burn on the fly (you don’t have to image the disc in advance)

Rip Audio-CDs to a Hard Drive

Obtains track-information (ID3-tags) from the Internet

Burn and create ISO-files

Create bootable discs

Drag-and-drop

Multilanguage interface

Customizable with many settings

Data verification after burn,

Simple cover printing

Supports most IDE, USB, FireWire and SCSI drives

Free – (for both personal and corporate use)

No adware, malicious components, or restrictions

System Requirements: Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Win 7 (64 bit compatible)

Additional Requirements: .NET Framework 2.0

Download at: Cdburnerxp

Bonus: A portable version of this application is also available. Click on “more download options”, on the download page.

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Free CDBurnerXP – Burn Baby, Burn!

If you’re looking for value (and what can be better than free), CDBurnerXP is definitely a significant freeware application.

The fairly simple interface makes it a breeze for even the most inexperienced user, although it should be said that some users have mentioned that the interface has some confusing aspects.

A disadvantage for some potential users may be the necessity to download and install .Net Framework 2.0, which is a 22.4 MB Microsoft application (280 MB on install), that will take at least an hour to download over a dial-up Internet connection. Contrasting with that is the approximately ten minutes, or so, download time on even a slower cable Internet connection.

I have burned, at least, several hundred CDs in the last year using this free application, and in every case CDBurnerXP did the job flawlessly.

If you’re looking for a free burner application to do what it says it will do, with an easy to work with interface, then CDBurnerXP could be the program you’ve been looking for.

Quick facts:

Burn audio-CDs with, and without gaps between tracks

Burn on the fly (you don’t have to image the disc in advance)

Rip Audio-CDs to a Hard Drive

Obtains track-information (ID3-tags) from the Internet

Burn and create ISO-files

Create bootable discs

Drag-and-drop

Multilanguage interface

Customizable with many settings

Data verification after burn,

Simple cover printing

Supports most IDE, USB, FireWire and SCSI drives

Free – (for both personal and corporate use)

No adware, malicious components, or restrictions

System Requirements: Windows 2000/XP/Vista

Additional Requirements: .NET Framework 2.0

Download at: Download.com

The Best Free CD/DVD Tool – CDBurnerXP

A few weeks ago I helped a friend decide on, and purchase, a new computer – an AM2/X2 Dual Core 2.5 GHz box with 4 Gig of Memory, a 160 GIG 7200RPM SATA and of course a DVD Drive – all this for $299.00.

At this price, the operating system was not included; but still, not a bad deal! The O/S from his old machine would be installed on this new machine; so no problem.

Where he did have a problem though, was he lacked a CD/DVD burning suite. Into this gap stepped CDBurnerXP, a free burner application which will write CDs and DVDs and, for those on the leading edge, Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs.

If your looking for value (and what can be better than free), CDBurnerXP is definitely a significant freeware application. The fairly simple interface makes it a breeze for even the most inexperienced user, although it should be said that some users have mentioned that the interface has some confusing aspects.

A disadvantage for some potential users may be the necessity to download and install .Net Framework 2.0, which is a 22.4 MB Microsoft application (280 MB on install), that will take at least an hour to download over a dial-up Internet connection.

Since my friend is in the music business (he’s a well known local musician), and sells his CDs at his gigs, this application got a real workout during the first few weeks after I installed it on his system. The several hundred CDs he copied and burned (of his own music), were all flawlessly reproduced by CDBurnerXP.

If you’re looking for a free burner application to do what it says it will do with an easy to work with interface then CDBurnerXP could be the program you’ve been looking for.

Quick facts:

Burn audio-CDs with, and without gaps between tracks

Burn on the fly (you don’t have to image the disc in advance)

Rip Audio-CDs to a Hard Drive

Obtains track-information (ID3-tags) from the Internet

Burn and create ISO-files

Create bootable discs

Drag-and-drop

Multilanguage interface

Customizable with many settings

Data verification after burn,

Simple cover printing

Supports most IDE, USB, FireWire and SCSI drives

Free – (for both personal and corporate use)

No adware, malicious components, or restrictions

System Requirements: 2000/XP/Vista

Additional Requirements: .NET Framework 2.0

Download at: Download.com

Free CD/DVD File Recovery Tool – CD Recovery Toolbox Free

So how many coasters do you have that started life as critical backup CD/DVD’s, or the CD/DVD’s that you entrusted to store a lifetime of photo memories? Well if you’re like most of us, you may have more than one.

As a long term file storage medium, CD/DVD’s are, in effect, all-purpose, durable and, generally inexpensive. The difficulty in relying on this storage medium however is; they aren’t always as reliable as we sometimes seem to think.

An Internet friend, the owner of Aplus Computer Aid in Menlo Park, California, – a very competent Techno Geek – was telling me just this week, “An older system of mine decided that it would not boot into Windows (XP), and then—with a determination that would make a Missouri mule proud—resisted all resuscitation efforts. No problem (I said to myself.. it was still early in the day). I’ll just re-mount a “ghost image” backup from the DVD’s I made last week.”

He went on to say “One of the 4 DVD’s was “corrupted”. As in “unreadable”. As in.. that backup is totally useless to me. Four wasted discs. Caught me a little off guard, too… I pay extra to buy the best blanks, and the company to which I am alluding has never given me a “bad burn” before.”

So you’re not alone in turning what you may consider to be, unusable/unreadable CD/DVD’s into expensive coasters. But there is a solution that can help you to recover damaged data that you may have considered unrecoverable. Stepping into the picture is CD Recovery Toolbox, a free CD/DVD file recovery tool.

This small, free application was designed to recover damaged files on CD, DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-Ray disks. It can recover files that have been lost as a result of physical damage to the disk, (scratches, chips, and so on), or as a result of a bad or inaccurate recording.

The program scans damaged CD and DVD disks and produces a listing of files and folders on the media, which it can recover. Be aware however, that depending on the degree of damage, there may be files that the application cannot recover.

In testing this product’s file recovery ability on a severely scratched and chipped disk, I’m happy to say that it recovered 934 files out of a total of 936, that Windows could not read, and it did this in less than 2 minutes

Data recovery is generally a complex process but even beginners will have an easy time with this application based on it’s step-by step wizard, which makes the use of the tool very simple and convenient.

Quick facts:

• Recovers files/folders from CD and DVD’s
• Recovers files larger than 4 Gb
• Detects lack of free space on the designated storage hard

Requirements: Windows 98/ME/2K/XP/2K3/Vista

Download at: Download.com

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