Rupee exchange rates iphone/android app

Rupya is a very cool app to check the rupee exchange rates on iphone/android. One can compare rates from all the banks.

Currently its showing rates for
Axis Bank, XOOM, Moneydart, ICICI bank, State Bank Of India, Kotak, Bank Of Baroda, Union Bank Of India

Here is the link on iphone App Sore
iphone/ipad Rupya App

Here is the link on Android App store

Android Rupya App

Rates can be compared on web also at www.remitmoney2india.com

Wirless Access Point / Ethernet Bridge

How do you connect your Blu-ray Player / XBox / Wii / PS3 with no built-in wi-fi support to internet , when your entertainment center is far from your home network router?

The best answer is to use Wireless Access Point with Ethernet Bridge functionality. These devices act as a client and connect to the existing wireless router and provides switch functionality with multiple Ethernet ports.

Here are some of the products that support this functionality

Zyxel WAP3205 Wireless N Router / Ethernet Bridge
NETGEAR 5 GHz Wireless-N HD Access Point/Bridge WNHDE111


Tags: Wireless Access Point as client, Ethernet bridge, wireless to wired, connect XBox to internet, connect Bluray-player to internet

LG BD590, Blu-Ray Player with Media Player, Built in Wifi and 250 GB Hard Disk

Anyone looking to buy Blu-Ray player would know, how difficult it is to choose one from dozens of features these players offers other than the basic need of playing Blu-Rays DVD's. Most of the consumers will be upgrading their existing DVD players, so one would like to have all the feature set that their old dvd player supports.

Here are some of the basic features that are expected from Blu-Ray-Player

- Bluray and DVD playback
- HDMI ( To connect to HDTV )
- Digital audio either optical or coax ( To connect to the old home theater system that does not have HDMI )
- Audio Codecs ( Dolby, DTS, AC3..)

If you are the one who has lot of media files collection compared to physical disks then you may wish to have

- USB support ( To connect external hard drives or USB drives )
- Different video codec's support ( Divx, Xvid, rm, wmv...)

If you have lot of videos that are captured from latest HD camcorder and if you want to play from your bluray player, then it has to support codecs like AVCHD

If you are online internet media addict, then you might expect to have

- Netflix support
- Pandora
- Amazon video on demand
- DLNA ( to watch media on your PC / mobile phone)

and to access the above internet services you need built-in Wi-Fi out the need to buy an extra external Wi-Fi USB adapter.

If you are a born videophile looking for some advanced features then you need
- 3:2/2:2 Pull-Down
- 24p playback support


If you need all the above features then you need to buy one Blu-Ray and then a media player like Roku / PopCorn Hour

Recently LG released a new Blu-Ray player combining all the media player features into the Bluray player. Checkout LG's BD570 which has got all the features mentioned above, Also BD590 has internal 250GB hard disk and you can just copy the media files directly to the player.

Tags: BD570 BD590 Blu-Ray player Hard Disk HDMI, LG Media Player Network Player, PopCorn Hour Roku

Enabling Subtitles on Comcast HD Box

When i subscribed for HD cable service from comcast, i have received the Motorola DCX3200 setup box. This has HDMI output and worked pretty good on connecting to my HDTV.

But by default the subtitles (closed captioning) is not working. Here is the procedure to enable the subtitles.

1) Power Off the setup Box

2) Keep Pressing Menu button till you get the "User Settings" screen.

3) Select "Closed Caption" settings and make it enable.

That's it, Power on the setup box and enjoy the subtitles..

Tags: Comcast HDMI HDTV motorola cable DCX3200 subtitle closed caption

VGA to HDMI adapter

I have recently upgraded my old 29" CRT TV to 50" Panasonic 50PX80U plasma TV(720p). I am enjoying all the free over-the-air HDTV channels and DVDs on the big screen.

However this model does not have the VGA input to connect my laptop. So i have used S-video to RCA cable to connect my laptop to my new TV. Since S-video output is only 640x480, the picture on the HDTV looked very much pixelated when enlarged to 1270x720. I could have bought the Panasonic 50PX85U which has VGA input also, But that was 200$ extra and i did not want to pay that much only for the VGA input.

After researching on the Internet, i have found two types of adapters which are below 100$. Initially i purchased this one which is around 50$

http://www.amazon.com/VGA-Audio-HDMI-Converter-Adapter/dp/B0015YWV1G/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1241321451&sr=8-3 (Not good, Don't buy)

But this one supports only 1024x768 resolution and when connected to TV, the picture has some bands at the corners. I returned this immediately and ordered the second one
for 60$

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0016SN49Y ( Good one, Amazon Link)

http://sewelldirect.com/Component-VGA-to-HDMI-Scaler-720p.asp ( Good one, Sewell Direct Link)

Right out of the box, This adapter worked great and this supports most VGA resolutions 1280x720, 1024x768 and 640x480. I highly recommend this product to watch the online videos from Hulu, youtube and Divx/WMV/Real video from the computer or laptop on the big screen HDTV. This adapter supports only 720p (1080p not supported ). But this still looks good even on 1080p TVs.

If you really want 1080p adapter you have to pay higher price for the adapter or upgrade your laptop with the new one which has HDMI interface.


Tags: hdmi vga hdmi laptop adapter cable transcoder 720p 1080p TV HDTV Panasonic 50PX80U

Open Source Alternative

This website has organized all the open source software against its competing commerical product. If you are looking for a open source alternative for any of the known commerical product just search here, you will be provided with tens of alternative software for your need.

omnitech gps review

Are you tempted to buy the irresistable deal for omnitech gps from staples? read on..

After checking the "Omnitech GPS" deal at staples, i was immediately tempted to buy looking its features like 4.3" screen, Text-To-Speech functionality, google-maps like UI and 170$ price tag when compared to hefty 350$ of garmin nuvi.

I almost decided to buy but staples has only one review. so, i googled to find more information/images in the web but of no use. After seraching it with the keyword "Destinator", i could finally crack down its details and the website of the product.

This is the website for the omnitech GPS, But in the website the word "omnitech" is mentioned nowhere ( Its there only in front page image, hidden from search engines.. )
http://www.navsupport.net/gps/15223/

Here is the link for the review of this GPS
http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/showthread.php?s=bb3f4b04227a16cdaaae9872751ab182&t=521001&page=2

It took more than one hour to find out the information even with google, so i decided to share this at one place, which might be useful..

Here is the User manual, checkout the screenshots, you will immediately notice the poor UI compared to garmin and tom tom.
http://www.navsupport.net/gps/15223/download/OmnitechGPS_UM_S19510V2_English.pdf
The mapping data is from navteq, so if you dont mind the user interface much, this is worth the money for the features it provides.

Anyway i am very much impressed with garmin UI, i would better wait till garmin nuvi 200W price drop below $200

Lately i noticed even the pharos GPS sold by Dell also looks some thing like this, seems to be pharos also uses the same UI ( presumably from destinator technologies http://www.destinatortechnologies.com/)


Tags: Omnitech GPS review staples deal destinator Garmin nuvi Tom Tom