It's been a couple years now since Mavromatic launched and it's time for an update. First thing in the works is upgrading the system to the latest version of MT or WordPress. This comment spam is killing me... I've had to disable it since it was causing performance issues due to the constant scripts hitting my blog. After that is all under control, I will update the look and feel a bit. My focus will remain the same -- Home Automation and Home Theaters/Entertainment are still my passion. I will also be attending CES this year, so good stuff are in the works.

Mavromatic was hit with a mega dose of comment spam over the last few weeks. I do have plans on upgrading to the lastest version of Moveable Type which will hopefully combat this spam problem. Unfortunately, while cleaning up the spam comments, I may have deleted legit, non-spam comments, if that is the case, please repost them.

As for a quick update of things happening around here, the ABC Broadband Streaming Player I worked on won an Emmy. The whole team is pretty excited about the news and you can be sure than the next version, which is launching in the Fall will exceed the previous Emmy Award winning player.

I've also been busy working on my personal projects, in particular, my home control interface/server. That's why the lack of postings on the site. I'm almost done with the HAI OmniPro II connection library and should be ready to post a full entry about it shortly.

I'm addicted to these things! Anyone that knows me, knows that I've got a real sweet tooth, so when the three o'clock hour comes around I don't get the mocha, instead I go downstairs to Starbucks and pick up a dessert. Lately, I've been on this mint brownie binge. I have even bought two, with the intent of storing one for the next morning, only to find out that you can't... because they will dry out if not properly sealed. If you love the individually wrapped Andres Chocolate Mints, then get your soon-to-be-fat-ass over to your local Starbucks (not all Starbucks carry the same items, so you may need to go to a few locations) and pick up one of these big mint brownies! Rumor has it that they were/are invented/made by the same people that make the Andres Chocolate Mints -- I think it's true... because it looks like there are little bits of Andres Chocolate Mints on top of the rich moist chocolate. Oh, and for you health concious folks, here is the Nutritional Data.

Sorry for the lack of real posts lately, but I'm in the process of reviewing a few new gadgets, the TrackStick is one of them... so far it's a neat little gadget! More to come...

Ok, so we ended with year with some crazy offbeat entry... oh well, I just wanted to say thank you to all the Mavromatic readers out there for another successful year. You've all made it a very enjoyable one... we talked home theaters and automation. I posted over 250 entries and received over a million unique impressions from all over the world! I know I learned a lot this year and hope to continue to for many more years to come! We can be sure that 2006 will bring us new gadgets, home theater and home automation products and I even hope to share some of my new projects with you all. So until then, Happy New Year, and I'll talk to you all in 2006.

Cheers!
Danny Mavromatis

UPDATE: RSS AD's removed... I didn't like the way they looked.

Just a little heads up, I'm giving Yahoo!'s sponsored RSS feed ads a try, why? To better serve all you Mavromatic subscribers (and to earn me some extra Christmas money, to buy more gadgets to review of course!). If you find them too pervasive or just plain stupid, let me know and I may yank them -- or figure out a way to limit them. So far I'm not too impressed... their system seems to only want to promote their service. Anyways, bare with me while I work out this little issues. Cheers!

"We've never been broadcasting in High Definition before, this is our first show ever, and we did research, did some focus groups and it turns out that 1 American in like 500,000 has high definition TV... so for you couple of folks watching tonight..."

Well Dave, I must be that one in my neighborhood and you guys did a fantastic job with your first HD show! CBS went with 1080i HD, rather than 720p. I personally prefer a progressive 720p rather than an interlaced 1080i, but can live with it. I took a few screen grabs this morning for anyone interested in seeing what they are missing with regular television. They were captured via Windows Media Center using the sophisticated "Print Screen" button, then pasted into Paint, and saved as PNG (lossless). I then brought them into Photoshop and cropped to their proper aspect ratio and saved as JPEG (100%). Check them out... you will be amazed at how much more detail and lifelike the HD grabs are compared to the SD ones.

A few more details about my setup... The SD version we are comparing to is from KIRO-TV, our Seattle CBS affiliate, the signal was pulled down via a Squareshooter HDTV antenna (100% signal strength). The SD content was broadcasted over HD, that's why the SD content even looks this good -- you won't see any cable system noise in these SD grabs! The HD version is using the same setup, instead the content is sent down in pure OTA High Definition.

Enjoy!

- Screen Grab 1 -- David Letterman SD/HD
- Screen Grab 2 -- Paul Shaffer SD/HD
- Screen Grab 3 -- Rupert Jee (via handheld camera) SD/HD


Related: The Late Show with David Letterman in HD!