The good folks over at Gizmodo had a recent post about a cool new gadget that looks interesting for video makers: Brando’s SATA HDD Multi-Media Player Adapter.

The $69.00 device is a multimedia interface for SATA hard drives (Both 3.5 inch and 2.5 inch), SDHC cards, and USB devices, that displays your video files via composite, component, or HDMI out.

Simply plug in your naked hard drive or card, and any MPEG, AVI, MP4, VOB, or DiVX file, will be playable on your HDTV.

This seems like a great way to show off your HD videos to family and clients, that’s portable, inexpensive and doesn’t require burning a Blu-ray disc, or lugging your laptop around.

I can see a wide range of uses ranging from viewing dailes to a cheap digital signage solution. It even comes with a remote control!

Wednesday, April 22, is the 39th annual Earth Day awareness celebration.

Back in 1970, when the sandal-wearing free-spirit hippie types first started this grass-roots celebration, I think people sort of laughed about it, but the era was a turbulent one with wars in the East, gas prices out of control, and rolling blackouts across the country.

Many people forgot about the conservation effort during the decadent 80s and 90s, and here we are again facing the same issues. Was it Santa Ana who said something like if we don’t learn from our mistakes we’re destined to repeat them?

Back in 1970, to commemorate the first  Earth Day, my old high school graduating class proudly labored in the hot sun for a week turning a slab of dry dead turf  into a cool eco-garden complete with algae, frogs, and various living organisms. When I went back for my 20-year reunion, that eco-garden had been cemented over. A testimony to the 1990s.

Little did we know in the 1970s how much we would depend on our electronics to get by every day in this new century. Today, we’ve become quite aware of energy conservation again and how much energy we waste.

But we video producers understand this as we  are a power hungry sort… we are always pulling power from some source for our myriad of gadgets, machines, and devices. In honor of the upcoming Earth Day, here are a few tips to help save and conserve sent to us from Greg Spector and Retrevo: Read the rest of this entry »

Onei Solutions has just unleashed a brand new 6.1 home theater speaker stand into the world! And I thought that it may be of some interest to Videomaker Readers to look at. After all we all watch TV, some of us are in the process of creating & compiling or already have a Home Theater set up that can make the average movie goer blush. Featuring six 15W speakers with a built in amp, HDMI ports and a VFD display, the piano-black finish looks very nice on the eyes. Currently available in the UK, it has not made it to the states yet.  Definitely an accessory worth considering for all or you renters and movie buyers out there…

I recently came across a story of that is gaining a significant amount of support behind it. And I wanted to know where it might lead us as cinematographers if it were to happen. There are a couple of similarities amongst two people that I found to be quite interesting. Both are artists, both are creative and very passionate and both only have the use of one eye. Here is where things get interesting; both have one prosthetic eye… which they hope to install a web cam into. Rob Spence is a filmmaker who hopes that installing a webcam in his eye socket would help him to become a so-called “lifecaster.” While Tanya Vlach is an artist who hopes that installing a webcam in her eye socket would become a source of “augmented reality.”

As a video enthusiast I found the story very compelling in that it makes me think of the days of when webcams first hit the market and now, the idea of inserting one into a human eye is not that far off from happening. What do you guys think?