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Roll up, roll up for the magical mystery Arduino tour
If this news isn't as obvious as John Obvious: Professor of Obvious studies at Cambridge University: we love Arduino 'round these parts. Phil and Limor of Adafruit Industries took a tour of the Italian foundry's Turin factory and took a gallery of pics (and video!) on the way. It's a great insight into how the building process works for the modding tool, and you can head on down to our source link to check out the gallery in full -- we've also included a direct link to the video as the guys walk down the production line in our more coverage link. We're so good to you, you know.
This may be the best HDTV Sports Sunday yet
2006 really is the year high definition is taking over, and today's sports lineup proves it. Say what you will about NBC's HD Olympics coverage, the Daytona 500 is just kicking off and it may not even be the biggest event today. With speedskating and bobsled finals tonight, plus the always exciting ice dancing, the Olympics have a lot to offer, as well as some little thing called the NBA All-Star Game.Sure the Super Bowl got all the attention, but any of these events by themselves would be great, and to have all three on one day is mind boggling, luckily the 500 is so early, or I'd have some difficult choices to make with my DVR. Too bad the weather isn't better at Daytona as it's more impressive when it's not so overcast, hopefully it will clear up as the day goes on. Still, those wall mounted-cameras are for my money the most exciting shot in sports.But it has been a great weekend, because we've already had ongoing Olympics coverage, yesterdays Busch series race (was that in HD? I missed it) and the NBA All-Star Friday and Saturday night activities. Speaking of, did anybody else check out the Slam Dunk competition last night? I love Nate Robinson but Iguodala got robbed, his from-behind-the-backboard dunk was one of my favorite ever, plus JR Smith already did the behind the back dunk last year.
HDTV Olympic coverage in North America: who's got more?
We were stoked earlier this month to find that NBC will have over 416 hours of Olympic coverage from Torino, but we must have ticked off the Canadians. CBC is touting over 1,000 hours of Olympic coverage for Canadian viewers, but only 39 of those hours will be in high-def. That works out to be approximately 4% of the Canadian coverage in HD, while a bulk of ours will be high-def. Still, this is a positive step as it marks Canada's very first year of the games in high-def. Now all that needs to happen is for us to win more Winter Sports medals than them. Oh wait, we did the last time around, 34-17. Yikes!
NBC offers 416 hours of Olympics in HDTV
Hope you have 17.3 days of free time next month because that's how long 416 hours is. NBC announced that much high-def coverage of the 2006 Winter Olympic Games from Torino, so we're already looking for a few spare terabytes of storage on our WMCE PC. If you just have to plan your calendar events in advance, you might as well jot "Busy" from February 10th to the 26th for the games. Stock on up spare remote batteries too since you'll be flipping between NBC, USA, MSNBC, and CNBC. Given that NBC is currently the only high-def channel in that lineup, you might be able to park your HDTV there for the live HD simulcasts in 5.1 Surround.
NBC to Broadcast Winter Olympics in HD, 5.1 surround
Dolby is kind enough to let us know that if any figure skaters should happen to be clubbed in the kneecap, we will be able to hear their plaintive wails in full 5.1 surround sound. I certainly hope the Winter Olympics broadcast is better than the Summer Olympics. While it was very high quality, it was worthless because it was a day behind. Yeah I watched every moment of it in on both broadcasts thanks to my dual tuner DVR because I'm an addict. However, if I want to see two men in tights lay down on top of each other and slide down a hill I'll go see Brokeback Mountain then I should be able to see it live and in HD.
