Finlux 32FLD882H - brief review

This will be really short, since it really does not deserve more.

TV broadcast programs become more and more redundant with time and for me they are already old story (official local news are the only get my serious attention). Anyway, the point is that we needed a simple LCD TV to replace my old and bulky 28'' CRT TV.

We bought Finlux 32FLD882H on sale because of the price and couple of obvious features. Before you start searching for the specs - save your time - it doesn't worth it. If I have to buy it again (even cheaper) probably I would not do it.

Pros: (only in comparison to my old CRT)

• VGA and HDMI inputs, (DTV that is a standard nowadays, not an advantage)
• The best of all - AVL (Automatic Volume Limits). It normalizes the sound level, so the abnormally loud commercial breaks are just leveled down!

Cons: (taking into account that this a cheap TV-set)

• Very bad picture quality.
• Sound that does not sound stereo at all...
• Humming noise - this is really bad! Can't believe it that someone can make TV that is not quiet...
• The first labels from the remote control start to peel off on the second day!?
• bulky remote control (not that I use it anyway...) 
• No support for DTVB-C (Digital Video Broadcasting - Cable) - there is only support for DTVB-T ( - Terrestrial)
• many more...

Overall assessment: BAD! Perhaps, sale price is the only reasonable price for this TV... If you are serious about LCD TV - wake up, you are in the wrong section in the shop...

Update 20.01.2013: To be completely fair, 2 years later the TV is working just fine without any problems or hassles. It feels like money well spent for what one gets.

Select wifi channel in a crowded neighborhood

It seems that this will become a routine task for me.

Recently, I was suffering from serious network speed deterioration. I use an 802.11g wireless router to connect my computers and mobile phone to internet. As it turns out, there are about 24 wireless access points "visible" from my computer. Earlier, an year or so, I have easily selected channel 11 since most of my neighbors were using the default channel 6. Anyway, a quick check with NetStumbler reviled the horrible situation - all of my closest neighbors were using channel 11 - same as me...

Well, it was looking quite OK to move back to channel 6 since that channel looked least crowded and with the weakest signal. I did it.

Today, I have tried another tool inSSIDer that again reviled  a horrible situation. My neighbors were using routers that span over 2 channels, and the first program showed only one of them. After reconsideration I have moved to channel 4 - you can easily see the reason for that on the screen  snapshot  (the bold red curve is for my router). It could be particularly bad. Apparently one of my neighbors delivers stronger signal than my own router located in the same room as the computer... 

It is obvious that I will need to check the frequency spectra quite often... and inSSIDer will be the best tool for that.

Update: There is one more complication. Newer routers can also automatically select the best channel(s) that make my efforts useless. It seems that the easiest and better solution is to upgrade my old router, in other words, buy newer.

Samsung Jet S8000: use as modem (via Bluetooth) to connect to Internet

One way to use your phone Internet connection on your computer is through Samsung New PC Studio (NPS). It is very simple. Connect the phone to the computer by USB cable and choose "Internet Connector" from NPS. This, of course, requires NPS to be installed and running on the computer - a bit inconvenient for a small Netbook computer or for a quick share to some other computer.

Connection over Bluetooth
This solution has the advantage that any computer with Bluetooth can be paired to the phone and consequently to use the phone as modem to connect to Internet via your telephone provider.This is extremely convenient for occasional uses where you need quick access to Internet from a computer - because the phone browser is not rendering the page at all (what a surprise), to use your regular e-mail client or just because you want to use the keyboard to type your message..

Here are the key point you need to accomplish to make it work:

1) Make sure you have paired the devices, so the computer can connect to the phone.

2) In you hardware options, modem section, find something that says "Standard Modem over Bluetooth", select the advanced options and enter the following extra initialization command  AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","internet". /make sure you have enabled the Bluetooth on the computer first/

3) The number you have to dial is "*99#" /without the quote marks/. Another alternatives, if the default does not work for you, are "*99***#", "*99***1#", "*99***2#"

4) Depending on your provider you might need to provide user and password on the dial dialog.

Note: Point 2 is specific for Samsung Jet S8000 devices. All my previous phones were just fine without this additional initialization command.

Hint: Although you might be able get Turbo3G connection on the phone, the Bluetooth connection will still remain the speed bottleneck. The latest versions of the Opera browser have the so called "Turbo" mode where the data is compressed and optimized for slow connection - just the case.

This configuration works for me at two different computers that run WinXP SP3, with Jet firmware S8000XPJA1.

Sennheiser RS 170 Wireless Headphones: review

First to mention some decent and fair reviews:

• TrustedReviews
• YouTube by (ThatSnazzyiPhoneGuy)

This should be quite enough to get the overall picture. I will just stress on some personal observations that might overlap partially with the reviews above.

Overall impression: Ultimate sound performance for it's class - any comparison to other headphones I have previously experienced (TMR-RF850R and MDR-RF840RK) leads to imaginary results! This is really how wireless headphones should be made. Worth every cent I have spent!

Let me mention few distinctive features that are still worth mentioning.

Samsung Jet S8000: eduroam settings

Very briefly, for those that might be interested to connect theirs Jets to the eduroam roaming network. Here are the settings that I use and are confirmed to work at Uppsala University and KTH, Stockholm (S8000XPIJ7 and S8000XPJA1 firmwares):

1. SSID: eduroam
   
2. Auth type: WPA2
3. Encryption type: AES
4. 802.1x settings ===============
   4.1 use 802.1x: selected
   4.2 Validate certificate: unselected
   4.3 EAP-Method: EAP-TTLS
   4.4 Authentication type: PAP
   4.5 Username: username@user.uu.se
   4.6 Password: passwordA
5. Everything else left unchanged

Here you can find some really nice instructions (in Swedish) for other devices or OS:

• iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad
• Android
• Windows Mobile