Shola's Home Gadgets

Update 2009: The original article is no longer available on the internet.

If you really do need a product that will allow you to connect a computer to a CRT TV for whatever reason, then you might be interested in the TV One scan converter listed below, which I currently use to connect my macbook laptop to a TV or video mixer in church (see article at the bottom of page).



Do you have a large screen Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) TV and wished you could connect your computer to it and obtain a decent picture, well have a look a the link below, I haven't tried the circuit, but it does look promising.

Reasons for connecting your computer to a large screen CRT TV include playing computer games, using your computer as a DVD player or just plain surfing the net on a huge screen.

If you have a large screen CRT TV that is far from giving up the ghost, you might try this before you shell out some money on buying a flat panel LCD or plasma screen.
The picture quality will not be the same, but the effect might just be.

You will need soldering skills or you can ask a friend to help with the soldering.

More Reading
Connect your computer to a video mixer

Remember the Sony Ericsson requirements that my new mobile phone was supposed to meet?

Well here is an update on how my Sony Ericsson K750i mobile phone scores against that list.

Camera Phone- This phone has surpassed this requirement as shown by my separate Hang Gliding photos blog. For my upcoming flying adventure, most of the photos I will be taking are either going to be of the landscapes I will be flying over, people I meet or places I visit, and the camera on the SE K750i will meet those functions without a problem. I might be carrying along a second camera, but that will be in the support vehicle.

Phone - I don't have any demanding requirements here, I need to be able to make and receive calls without too much ado, and the SE K750i does that.

Calendar - I use my office outlook calendar a lot to help me keep track of my personal activities, and since I got the SE K750i, I now have a full copy of my office calendar on both my SE K750i as well as my home PC, so now I won't forget to pay an important bill because I've got a day off work.

FM radio - I'm not sure why I put this on my requirements list, as now that I have the phone, I hardly use the FM radio! It might have something to do with the fact that the reception on the radio is not very good inside buildings, and that since the headphones act as the antenna, you need to leave it hanging free to provide decent reception.

Voice Recorder - The Sony Ericsson K750i does have a voice recorder which will allow me to record notes as I undertake my adventure, but unfortunately the audio clips are not recorded in MP3 format, so I will not be able to podcast directly using these recordings. If anyone knows or has found an easy way of converting these recordings to MP3 format, please let me know, As that would really make life easy for me if I'm able to podcast directly from the SE K750i.

MP3 Player - I have used the MP3 player on the SE K750i more than I anticipated, a favourite use of mine being listening to the Bible. I'm not a sophisticated user, so can't comment on playlists, as I just have one playlist which just repeats the MP3 tracks that I listen to. If you are really interested in a phone with a better MP3 player, you could check out Sony Ericsson's W800i, or if you are an iTunes fan, Motorola's ROKR.

One added bonus for me has been the email function of the phone. I'm not a SMS addict, and thus don't like using mobile phones to send text as it takes too long to type out a decent message (at least for me it does), but my Virgin Mobile tariff includes standard wap access in my monthly free minutes bundle, so I can send pictures and a some text to my blog without incurring extra charges, thus saving me 35p for each picture message I would have sent.
By the way I was unable to get picture messaging to work with Flickr, so at the moment if you want to moblog and are on Virgin, then picture messaging will not work with Flickr, it seems Virgin's MMS to email gateway changes the way the picture is sent, and thus the picture is not recognised by Flickr. I also tried sending a MMS message to my home address, and that did not come out as well, so don't waste you money trying to send a picture or other MMS message to an email address via Virgin. MMS to other mobile phones seems to work okay though.

So in a nutshell I'm happy with my Sony Ericsson K750i mobile phone.

If you are looking for some ideas on Home Automation in your home, have a look at Palm Lodge.

I got the Jabra BT130 bluetooth headset as part of the package when I bought my Sony Ericsson K750i mobile phone. I didn't choose this particular model, as there wasn't an option to select a bluetooth headset model during the ordering process, so the Jabra BT130 just happened to be what I was sent.



The main reason for getting the headset was for use in the car when driving, as it is an offence to use your hands to hold a phone and talk while driving in the UK.



After opening the package, I put the Jabra BT130 on charge and had a little read of the manual, and to be honest there isn't really much to say about the headset.

With the Jabra BT130 fully charged and switched on, I enabled bluetooth on my Sony Ericsson K750i, and paired it up with the headset, the default passcode on the headset is 0000 (4 zeros), and the manual does not give any information on changing this. My K750i discovered the headset without any problems, and I chose the in-car profile for the device, and that was it. I set the bluetooth visibility of my K750i to hidden having read an article on bluejacking.

All that I needed to do now is to make a call, this I did in the normal way, and the phone then asked if I wanted to transfer to headset to which I said yes, and bingo, the headset worked.

I have used the headset for a while now, and it has been working okay, no dropped calls, the sound quality good, and when the phone rings, all I have to do is tap the headset once and the call is answered. It also has a last dialled function, which is activated by pressing the headset button for about 1-2 secs, in summary, a useful bit of kit. The Jabra BT130 has a voice dial function which I haven't used, as I haven't set up any voice dialing on my SE K750i

The only problem I have with it, is that I can't seem to get it to sit comfortably in either of my ears, not sure if this is due to my ear (nothing special about it) or the headset design.

Okay this is not a true review, but merely my opinion of the Liteon LVW-5026 and how it meets up to my requirements of a DVD/HDD recorder

I got this player as my old Samsung 709 DVD player was on its last leg of providing service, the main problem with it was freezing while playing a lot of rented DVDs. So I needed a new DVD player, but also once in a while I need to transfer a home video onto DVD, so a DVD recorder would be useful as my computer does not have a DVD writer, but more importantly I need something my wife would be able to use. The HDD was added as a last requirement to allow us to record programs from the TV, as we don't have a VCR connected to our SKY digital receiver, A HDD recorder meaning we don't have to mess about with tapes.

Having set these requirements, I had a look at various models, and settled on the Liteon, based on their proven reliability in the DVD writer world, and affordability. The Liteon LVW-5026 is a multi format DVD recorder with a 80GB hard drive, there is the Liteon LVW 5045 which has a 160GB drive for those who need more storage space.

The first thing I noted about the Liteon LVW-5026 was it took a long time to boot up. Now I've never had a DVD/HDD recorder before, so I can't say if this is normal, but compared to my old faithful Samsung 709 DVD player it was too long.

Once it is booted up, there wasn't any problems playing DVDs, all my current DVDs (not a lot I must confess) play fine, this includes my region one DVDs. I got my Liteon from SVP and it looks like it was multi-region out of the box.
Some people on the Liteon User Forum have mentioned some problems with widescreen switch when playing DVDs, but I have not had any such problems with my player.

The DVD recorder works fine, though I have only used it with DVD +R media and CDs (to produce a VCD) without any problems. The DVD interface is very basic, so don't expect to be able to create fancy DVD menus, you will need a PC for that. This is a single layer recorder, so you can expect about 2 hours of video using standard Play quality, more if you reduce the quality.

The HDD recorder is simple to use, if you want to record the current program, just press the record button once after changing to HDD mode of course, this will set the recorder to record for 30mins, so 2 presses of the record button will give 1 hour etc. Pausing live TV again is just easy, press the timeshift button once and live TV is paused, as the recorder archives the current program to disk. You can also set up timed recordings, but note the recorder CAN NOT control a satellite or freeview receiver, this is not a problem for me, as I have SKY, and the receiver has an autoview function in the personal planner, so I put the required program in the personal planner with autoview, set the Liteon to record from the scart, and it works. If you have child protection on SKY you will need to disable this if recording a rated program other wise you will have a recording of a blue screen with enter your PIN. I don't have freeview so can't advise on how to use the Liteon LVW-5026 to do timed recordings with freeview, but you can go to the Liteon Users forum where you should be able to get some help.

One thing that I've noticed with timed recordings, is that expired recordings are not automatically deleted, something that Liteon needs to address, as one would expect this from a machine of this calibre.

Apart from the 2 negative points I've mentioned, I'm pretty happy with the machine, and I'm sure I will get to love it the more I use it.

Any questions leave a comment.