William C Bonner

Member since: Jul 8th, 2005

William C Bonner's Latest Comments

Blog Activity

Blog	# of Comments
TUAW.com	1 Comment
Engadget	76 Comments
Download Squad	20 Comments
Engadget HD	73 Comments
The Wireless Report	18 Comments
Engadget Mobile	13 Comments

Recent Comments:

Is 1080p enough resolution for everything? (Engadget HD)

May 1st 2010 11:08AM I would agree that "HD" is ruining the real resolution race in that because of economies of scale, HD makes itself inexpensive, and nothing larger gets built. OTOH, I really like that I can get an HD monitor for under $150.

Nielsen finds 53% of homes have HDTVs, but only 46% can receive an HD signal (Engadget HD)

Apr 29th 2010 10:52PM I find the terms really confusing, and the chart hard to read.

As a person who cut the cable cord a few years back, I pretty much only watch things in HD, and am Broadcast Only. I do watch things in SD when they are on the subchannels.

How would you change the TiVo Premiere? (Engadget)

Apr 24th 2010 7:28PM Having had a first generation TiVo since 2000, and now having a TiVo HD with a 500GB HD installed that I've had since 2007, I'm fairly confident I know what I want. I've also got a decent Windows 7 machine with a HDHomeRun dual tuner on my network.

1. Seasons Passes should be portable. The same goes with the history of what I've given a thumbs up or down to.

2. The units should embrace the network. If I get a second unit, they should be able to share the same seasons pass and distribute the recording duties across the second unit. They should essentially be clustered, for both storage resources and tuner resources.

3. It would be nice if i could work around in the user interface while a program was running in the background, either with transparency, or picture in picture thumbnail style.

4. If I'm watching something and I notice that the tuners are in use, it would be nice if I could hit the info button and find out what is on the tuner. (If I'm watching live TV, and both tuners are recording, I can hit the info button and find out what's on the other tuner. Why not the same if I'm watching a third program.)

There are plenty of other things that I'd like improved on, but the network clustering and closed nature of the tivo is what is making me look towards windows media center going forward.

Why do CableCARD host devices still cost so much? (Engadget HD)

Apr 19th 2010 10:27AM Cable Card is somewhat like bluetooth in its adoption. Only after bluetooth had been declared dead several times did it really gain acceptance.

When TVs were available with cablecard slots, it was still too early, and you couldn't get a cable card from your average cable company. I'm still amazed in the number of TVs sold as opposed to simply monitors. I figure most people use a cable box or a DVR, avoiding the TV tuner in their TV entirely. I'd love to see a current poll on how many people use internal TV tuners on their TVs. (exclusively, occasionally, never, for over the air only, or for cable systems)

iPhone OS 4 not coming to the iPad until the fall (Engadget)

Apr 8th 2010 8:23PM By announcing the next iPhone OS with multitasking now but not releasing it till the fall, Apple gets to slap MS around (with their announcement of the next Windows Phone OS without multitasking) without having to compare actual products.

One more brilliant move in the PR marketing war.

Entelligence: Mobile multitasking is mostly a myth (Engadget)

Mar 26th 2010 8:49PM Part of the windows mobile multitasking problem is that for the first several generations of windows mobile Microsoft made the guidelines for an app to always stay loaded after it had first been loaded. It made the app more responsive when switching to it a second time, but it made the app always use resources once it had been loaded.

If all apps were built with an explicit option to exit them, then there would be less need to go to a task manager and kill the app.

I like multitasking in my OS, but I also like to know what is using the resources, and be able to only have the tools I want to be running.

Research firm shocks the internet, says most viewers loved NBC's Olympics coverage (Engadget HD)

Mar 22nd 2010 8:22PM I wish that I could have watched the opening and closing ceremonies with the music, but without the commentary. I don't know what the capabilities of HD programming are, but it would be really nice if during the opening ceremonies, I could pick which audio stream I was listening to. Perhaps have the main stream being with commentary, but mentioning that you could switch to audio program 2 for no commentary, and audio 3 for Spanish, or whatever other language made sense. I'd prefer the main program with no commentary in 5.1 surround.

I did not enjoy the artistry of the ceremony at all with Bob and Matt blathering on about everything.

Two years ago, after the Beijing ceremonies, I found torrents from Australian TV of broadcast that didn't have the constant commentary, and I much preferred watching that to the NBC broadcast. Plus since NBC broadcast the show in prime time already, my download delay wasn't significantly later than what was available locally.

I would argue that NBC needs to embrace the DVR as part of the changing landscape of TV or they are going to go the same way as newspapers have done relating to the internet in general. Live TV can be greatly enhanced with web content. Look at the NFL and the statistics that are available about live games in progress. Watching a game in HD while having all of the updated statistics on a laptop nearby greatly enhances the game, and is one of the few times that I watch tv LIVE. If I could have watched the particular ski racing events live, with constant timing information and leaderboards on my computer, I probably would have watched more of the olympics, live, and suffered through ads that I didn't care about for doing so.

Since I knew all of the events had already happened, I recorded entire sections of shows on my DVR, and fast forwarded through 90% of the things that didn't interest me, watching only the events that interested me and not many of the commercials. Plus, I knew that I could go to the vancouver2010.com website and look at when the events actually happened, and who metalled in each event LIVE.

Engadget's CES giveaway: win an Engadget t-shirt! (Engadget)

Jan 10th 2010 12:34AM I'll take one

Engadget's Black Friday giveaway, part six: win an HTC HD2! (Engadget)

Nov 27th 2009 11:27PM Wow. Cool

Pixar talks about what it took to upgrade Toy Story to 3D (Engadget HD)

Oct 6th 2009 9:53PM While in general I dislike 3D movies, the statement that the distance between the cameras makes a difference in the 3D effect is interesting to me.

I get headaches when I try to watch 3D movies. I've always wondered if it has anythign to do with the size of my head vs the "average size" and the resulting distance between my pupils. I don't have an enormous head, but I'm also not a small person. If the images are at the wrong focal length for a particular viewer, it could make the eye muscles constantly fight to adjust for it. Or at least that's my thinking.

Wim.