3AW.com.au technology blogger, Risto Sampola, gives you regular technology tips and reviews. Read his latest below and feel free to place a question - he will answer it.

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Digital cameras have now almost entirely replaced their film-based counterparts and the popularity of digital cameras is such that most households nowadays seem to have one – or more. Once the initial investment has been made the act of snapping pictures and transferring them to your computer doesn’t really cost a bean. We snap pictures like there’s no tomorrow and our hard drives are bulging with photos galore. However, when it comes to showing off our photos, it’s all too often a case of ‘everybody gather around the computer’. It’s only if you ask someone to show you pictures from ten or more years ago that the photo album comes out. Printing digital pictures with good results isn’t that difficult and as a matter of fact it’s a very satisfying to complete a whole album with pictures you’ve printed, perhaps even edited, yourself.

First of all, if you want to find something, you’ll have to be organised. When I bought my first digital camera about ten years ago, I had one folder on my computer called ‘Photos’ and that’s where all the pictures went. Soon I realised I had to get organised, so while I still have that ‘Photos’ folder, now it’s full of sub-folders with relevant names and dates to make it a breeze to find a photo I might have taken at a particular event six years ago. I’ve also realised how many people keep the ‘dud shots’ too. If a photo is truly bad then just delete it as otherwise it’s just hogging up space on your hard drive and getting in the way of the good stuff. These house keeping rules also apply to pictures someone might have emailed you. Store the emailed pictures in an appropriately named folder as this will save you the hassle of trying to find that email every time you want to access the photos. And then delete or archive that email to keep your inbox manageable!

While it is possible to get your digital photos printed for you, the quality isn’t always the best possible, because the printers must favour volume over quality in order to stay in business. So if you choose to print them yourself then a photo printer is of course a must. Printers are stupid-cheap these days, but there is a catch - ink. Each manufacturer has their own ink cartridges and most models from a given manufacturer will also use different ink cartridges, so you’re stuck with buying the manufacturer’s inks and they can be pretty costly. There are third party companies who make compatible ink cartridges, but again there’s not a lot of quality assurance. For example, how much will the photo fade in ten years and how accurate are the colours. If you’re on the market for a new printer make sure you factor in the on going costs.

Some cheaper printers also use multi-colour cartridges, so if one colour has run out you’ll have to replace the entire cartridge even though the other colours may still have some ink left. As a matter of fact, some printers are so cheap that they must be sold at a loss to the manufacturer, because they know (or at least hope) you’ll more than make up the difference by shelling out for their inks for years to come. More ‘upmarket’ printers often have a separate ink cartridge for each colour and this allows you to replace each colour only when it has well and truly run out.  Also, bear in mind that the bundled ink cartridges your printer actually comes with are usually much smaller in volume than the replacement inks. This means that the often heard argument of, “It was cheaper to buy a new printer than new inks...” doesn’t always hold up to scrutiny.

There are two main ink types – dye and pigmentation. Most cheaper printers will use dye inks as they are lower in cost, but also offer higher brilliance and range of colours that can be reproduced. Pigmentation inks, on the other hand, offer a longer life and very little fading, even after a few decades. Another pigmentation ink advantage is their reduced bleeding of inks due to super-fast drying times, so images can be sharper and less smudged.

OK, so you’ve got a printer and ink and now all you need is some paper. Welcome to another myriad of products with most printer manufacturers selling their own brand paper and in a large variety. Then you have to add all the third party companies who make printer paper, but not printers. There’s glossy, matt, archival, semi-gloss, ultra-gloss, everyday paper... As a general guide, when it comes to photos, obviously stick to ‘photo paper’ and the choice of level of gloss is an individual preference, but personally I prefer semi-gloss. A lot of printer manufacturers pack a few different paper samples with their printers, which is of course a marketing exercise of sorts, but it will allow you to test them out before buying your own supplies. And when you do buy some, get it in bulk as it works out so much cheaper and as long as stored properly (away from heat and humidity) will keep for years. How the paper is cut will also usually have an impact on its pricing. I personally always print on A4 paper as this allows me to print four (roughly 6” x 4”) photos on a single sheet and I then use a scalpel and a steel ruler to cut the single A4 sheet. This works out quite a bit cheaper than buying ready cut 6x4’s and with two slices of the scalpel takes next to no time at all to cut to size. Most printers will ship with software that lets you choose how many photos per sheet you print to make this easy. As a last note on paper, please make sure you’ve selected the paper type you’re using from the printer’s utility menu. Selecting the wrong paper type can mean paper soaked in ink or not enough ink on absorbent paper.

While our film cameras didn’t give us much of a chance to tweak our photos, with digital images the world is your oyster. Even simple edits, like altering colour, contrast and brightness can have a huge impact on how the printed result will look. Removing red-eye is now relatively simple with basic photo editing software and the mere act of cropping a photo can have a huge effect on how the finished result displays. A beauty of a photo taken on a cloudy day might benefit from a little extra brightness, a slightly over exposed picture could benefit from a little extra contrast and so on. Sometimes a photo can look better in black&white, so try turning the picture monochrome, to see what effect that has – particularly handy for portraits and moody scenery shots. If you have a scanner you can also revisit some of those photos you took with a film camera some time ago, but may now have faded. Simply scan the photo and you can then edit it with more vibrant colours and then reprint it. While PC’s and Macs come with their own basic photo editing software nothing beats Photo Shop, which is an ‘industry standard’ photo editor. The full-blown version of Photo Shop is pretty expensive, but there is also a version called Photo Shop Elements, which comes in at around $150,- and includes the most often used tools of the full version and is also arguably more user friendly to novices. However, the ‘under the hood’ processing is pretty much the same, so the quality of results is superb. You can even download a free trial from its developers – www.adobe.com.au – highly recommended!

If you thought I’d get through this article without mentioning pixels... well, no such luck! A ‘pixel’ is a ‘picture element’ or in layman’s terms, a dot. Because digital involves numbers a digital photo is essentially a grid of dots with each dot being given a colour as this can be represented as a number – albeit as very large one. You may have heard the term DPI (dots per inch) and this refers to the resolution of the picture. The human eye cannot resolve lines thinner than 1/300th of an inch, so if a picture is printed at 300 DPI it is impossible for the naked eye to see any individual pixels. Your photo editing software will tell you the pixel dimensions of a photo and this way you can tell just how large you can print it without seeing the effects of ‘pixellation’. A bog-standard 5 Mega Pixel camera will output its photos at around 1944 x 2592 pixels, so if you divide each dimension by 300 you can quickly figure out how large you can print the picture without any signs of pixellation. In this case we would arrive at around 6.5” x 8.6”, which is smaller than A4, so if you were to print this picture out as A4 you would be able to detect a small amount of pixellation, but could possibly get away with it as we’re not pushing the envelope too far. However, printing it out at A3 would almost certainly result in a fairly jagged image when viewed close up. If a photo gets mounted to a frame with glass then you can sometimes get away with a little more pixellation as the glass hides it to an extent.

All in all it’s all a simple process and with a little practice you’ll be amazed at what you can achieve. So, go out and buy a new photo album (if you still remember what they look like!), get some quality paper and get cracking. The convenience and flexibility of home printing will always get you better results than the ‘bulk printers’ at your local shopping centre and the satisfaction an album full of pictures you’ve edited and printed yourself is the cherry on top. While I have photos emailed to me often, I cannot recall the day when someone last sent me a few ‘real photos’ in an envelope. Ah, how I miss those days!

Risto's Technology Blogs

Risto Sampola simplifies new technology for 3AW.com.au readers so you can make the informed purchasing decisions and learn how to trouble-shoot issues you may face with your technology.

Love them or loathe them, televisions are here to stay and just about every household has one- and some have several.

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They form the focal point of most living rooms, while some go to extraordinary lengths to set up dedicated TV rooms or so called ‘home cinemas’ or simply have an extra one in the bedroom, kid’s room, kitchen or games room. They inform us, entertain us and sometimes drive us to the point of wanting to throw something at them – but in the end, we’d probably find life tough going without one. Considering their importance and versatility, not forgetting cost, there is more to buying one than setting a budget and hitting the shops.

The very first thing you’ll obviously have to consider is the size of the screen as this will then dictate what models fall into your search criteria. And yes, it is possible to buy them too big! In the same way that you would not want to sit in the first row of most cinemas, buying a 56” screen only to watch it from six feet away will prove more of a distraction than enjoyment.

Our eyes can only focus on a small proportion of our ‘field of vision’, so a massive screen watched close up will only result in having to move your eyes around to follow the action as opposed to simply soaking it up. So no, bigger isn’t necessarily better! Before heading down to that electronics mega-mart, make a note of your intended position for your new TV and make sure you view your potential purchases from a similar distance away. In large stores there’s always the tendency to stand a little further back than you might be at your usual viewing position at home. As a general rule of thumb, take your viewing distance and half it to find your diagonal screen size.

Not that long ago most flat screen TV’s were simply referred to as ‘plasmas’, because that was the overwhelmingly dominant technology. Early LCD TV’s didn’t offer the brightness or contrast of plasma TV’s and also used to exhibit ‘ghosting’, which was most evident on fast moving materials, such as many sports broadcasts. This was due to the response time of the LCD screen, which was much slower than the plasma screens of a few years ago. However, as technology never stands still, the current generation of quality LCD screens have overcome these issues and now it is pretty fair to say the plasma advantage in this regard has been lost. 

In sales terms, around 2006, plasma TV’s lost their lead to LCD TV’s and now trail a long way behind. In most cases plasma TV’s are also more power hungry than their equivalent LCD counterparts, plus are only available in larger sizes, so if you’re looking at below around 40” screen sizes then plasmas are not really an option. You should still compare equivalent size plasma and LCD TV’s side by side as their pictures do have some differences. For example, some still argue that plasma screen offer deeper blacks than LCD, but if you’re planning on hooking up a computer to your TV on a regular basis then LCD usually offers far better picture quality.

If you’re buying a small flat screen TV for your bedroom then you might not absolutely need a full HD (High Definition) screen, but if you’re looking at a screen for your living room or home cinema then I would say full HD is pretty much a must. The ‘magic number’ to look for is 1080, which denotes the number of horizontal lines the picture is made up of – and all widescreen 1080 screens will in turn have 1920 vertical lines (1080 x 1920 pixels).

This is the highest TV screen resolution available and is unlikely to go any higher for several years to come as we are at the mercy of playback devices and broadcast resolutions. There are two different ways the screen is drawn – ‘progressive’ and ‘interlaced’, and are usually given as 1080p and 1080i respectively. In a nutshell, an interlaced screen will receive (and display) even lines first, followed by odd lines, which can cause subtle flicker and the bigger the screen the more noticeable this becomes. Progressively scanned displays show the entire screen (all lines) in one go, which results in a much smoother picture. For this reason I would definitely recommend a screen capable of 1080p – the best currently available and also the native format for Blu-Ray players.

Most flat screen TV’s offer a myriad of connections in the back panel and you need to make sure all that you’ll require is present and correct. HDMI is the most convenient way to connect HD equipment together as all audio and video information is channelled down a single cable – easy and tidy to connect with no cable-spaghetti kicking around, and again a standard connection for Blu-Ray players, most HD set top boxes and many new cable TV boxes. If you’re planning on hooking up a computer then a standard VGA connections offers great compatibility. While some computers offer S-Video and HDMI outputs they are nowhere near as commonplace as the humble old VGA. 

If you have an old DVD or VHS player you’ll need to check that these are also catered for, so as not to make your older gear obsolete just because you opted for a new TV. In an ideal world your new TV will have enough inputs to accommodate every piece of kit you own – or are about to purchase – to make sure you don’t have to go crawling around the back every time you want to switch from playing a VHS tape to playing a few games on the kids’ Xbox.

Travelling to the higher end of flat screen TV’s you’ll be greeted with jargon such as 24p and 200Hz refresh rates etc. Movies are usually shot at 24 frames per second, so if you have a TV with 24p compatibility and a playback device to match (Blu-Ray player with 24p) then this will get you as close to a cinema experience at home as possible. The refresh rate refers to how many times per second the screen is updated, so 200Hz means the screen is updated 200 times per second. Again this is there to help out with how smooth the image is, but some manufacturers are better at this than others, so again use your own eyes to judge their claims.

Carpenters often tell us to ‘measure twice and cut once’, so in that spirit I would encourage you to shop around very carefully and to consider every eventuality in the intended use to make sure you walk away with a winner. As always, if you have questions or comments, please feel free to leave one below and I’ll get back to you – as soon as the movie has finished...

KEY POINTS:

-How big? Bigger not always better – be realistic.
-Plasma TV’s used to dominate flat screen market, but not anymore
-LCD’s have improved a great deal and now offer advantages over plasma screens
-If it’s the main TV in the house, go full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels)
-‘Progressive scan’ usually offers better picture – look for 1080p
-Check the connectivity on offer – does it cater for everything you intend to use?
-24p equates to movie ‘frames per second’ for near cinema quality
-Higher refresh rates (if well done) can result in smoother motion

When asking Risto product specific questions please provide the brands and models of your equipment as this will allow him to respond with a more detailed reply.

Digital television broadcasts offer many advantages over their analogue counterparts and are something that after many years of talk is finally starting to come of age with Freeview (www.freeview.com.au).

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In addition to the already available (as of January 2009) digital TV channels, Freeview promises Australians an extra fifteen digital TV channels by the end of this year – and unlike Foxtel, it is totally free. If you already have a TV with a digital tuner you’re all set to receive these channels, but you’ll still need something to record your favourite programs, movies, sports etc. If you have an analogue TV you’re missing out in a big way...

Buying a new TV can be costly and perhaps you’re still debating whether to go for a plasma or LCD. For around the $100,- mark you can purchase a ‘digital set top box’. This device will receive its TV signal from your existing aerial, so as long as your current reception is good there’s no need to do anything in that department. However, if you’re willing to spend upwards of around $400,- then you’re in for a serious treat in the way of a digital set top box with a hard disk recorder. Plus remember, this is a one-off cost with no subscription fees to pay, so as an investment over a few years the cost is very low indeed. Also, as often the case is with technology – prices drop and features improve.

You’ll be able to receive all digital TV channels with excellent picture (right up to true High-Definition – ‘HD’) with pristine audio quality. Perhaps even more importantly, you’ll be able to record hours upon hours of TV direct to the built-in hard disk. As a yard stick, I would recommend devices with at least a 320GB (Giga Byte) hard drive – the bigger the better as it will give you more recording time. Some more high-end devices allow you to also connect external hard drives for extended recording time. Not only that, but with just about every device in this category you’ll also be able to record two channels at the same time, whilst watching a third. A sure fire cure to those “What do you want to watch?” arguments! There’s also the added bonus of being able to pause and rewind live TV. These set top boxes are usually configured to record TV at all times as a background process. If you’re watching a program and the phone rings or nature calls, simply press ‘Pause’ on you remote control, go about your business, and when you’re ready to resume watching you’ll pick up from the same spot.

A so called EPG (Electronic Program Guide) will show you all TV listings for every available channel, so recording a program is a simple as finding it in the on-screen EPG and then pressing ‘Set to record’. Much easier than the old VHS or DVD recorders – and as there are no tapes or disks to change you can go on holidays and when you come back you can have hours upon hours of your favourites waiting for you upon your return. Tapes and DVD’s have limited recording time, so unless someone is at home to put in a new blank one, all you’ll get is a couple of hours.

Most devices will also offer some kind of a folder structure, so you can easily find all those recorded programs. One folder for kids stuff, one for sport, one for movies and so on. The recorded program will display its real title, which is automatically tagged from the EPG, but you can also rename programs afterwards. Once you’ve finished watching a program you can of course keep it for future viewing or simply delete it to make more room for future recordings. You can also set up these devices to record an entire series, so if you’re a fan of a program broadcast on a, say weekly basis, then you can set it up to record it every week with one simple command – and never miss another show.


KEY FEATURES:

-Excellent picture and audio quality
-Receive numerous extra channels not available on analogue broadcasts
-Record two channels while watching a third
-Pause and rewind live TV programs
-Electronic Program Guide to see what’s on and easy recording
-Organise recorded material into folders for easy archiving
-Very long recording times

When asking Risto product specific questions please provide the brands and models of your equipment as this will allow him to respond with a more detailed reply.