Camp HD

Samsung i8910 Omnia HD Pictures

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Hulu.com is popularly known as a free online video service that offers hit TV shows including Family Guy, 30 Rock, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Lost, The Tonight Show with Conan o Brien, The Simpsons, Naruto Shippuden etc. etc. etc.

It says there FREE! yes absolutely BUT only if you reside within the United Sates of America (USA). If you really like TV shows like these and you happen to be residing outside America then poor you, Hulu won’t allow you to stream their videos period. 

A typical content message when you try to watch hulu videos outside US would be this:

We’re sorry, currently our video library can only be streamed within the United States. For more information on Hulu’s international availability, click here.

Over the past month, Hotspot Shield has become the main application to sneak and bypass IP filtering of Hulu but unfortunately, that didn’t last long. Hulu finally blocked users who are using Hotspot Shield to stream their videos and left us nothing again. Sure you can use third party VPN but how much are you willing to pay for their service? Wouldn’t be nice that everything in your internet would be free (specially watching TV shows)?

Ok, enough said. After Hotspot Shield, I have discovered that an application of AOL called AOL Desktop can let you stream Hulu videos in any part of the world. What it does is, it changes your IP address into a US IP address and that in return will make Hulu videos accessible right away.

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Optimizing and Fine Tuning your HDTV

HDTV Basic Optimization

Understanding the basic functionality of your HDTV’s remote control can do a lot to optimize the viewing experience of your HDTV. Electrical showrooms display HDTV’s with a view to creating maximum impact. This often means for example that brightness levels are set to high for the average user, and can be to the detriment of the viewing experience in the home. The good news is that these type of setting can easily be optimized.

Room Lighting

Most of the time, lights are being turned off when we are about to watch a movie. The suggested recommendation for HDTV is to use controlled lighting to deliver a better HD picture. Unless you’re watching it through a projector or you’re sitting at a minimum viewing distance, you shouldn’t watch a movie in a complete darkness. This often result to eyestrain.

• For bright plasmas and smaller direct-view sets, the ideal setup is to place a dim light directly behind the TV and leave the rest of the room dark.
• You should also prevent any light in the room from reflecting off the TV, as glare will hamper image fidelity.
• Watching at night is best, but if you watch during the day, thick curtains will really improve the picture.

Brightness

What is Brightness? This is also called black level. This actually adjusts how dark the black section of the picture appears.

What it does? Excessive brightness can result in a two-dimensional, washed-out look with reduced color saturation. Images with brightness set too low lose detail in shadows, and distinctions between dark areas disappear in pools of black.

How to set the brightness of HDTV?

Turn up the brightness to full, then reduce until just at the point you notice a loss of shadow detail – for example, when people’s eyes disappear into the depths under their brows, then you’ve set brightness too low. Some plasma, LCD, DLP, and LCoS TVs won’t ever look black, so you’ll need a setup disc to properly configure their brightness.

Contrast

What is Contrast? Also called picture or white level, contrast controls the intensity of the white parts of the image and determines the overall light output of the display.

How to set the contrast of HDTV?

Display a still image from DVD of a white object with some visible details – such as someone wearing a white button-up shirt or a shot of a glacier from the Ice Age DVD. Adjust the control up all the way, then reduce it until you can make out all the details in the white (such as buttons on a shirt or cracks in the ice). In general, TVs look best when contrast is set between 30 and 50 percent.

Color

What is color? Also called saturation, this control adjusts how intense the colors look.

What it does? When there’s too much color, the set looks garish and unrealistic. It’s most noticeable with reds, which are often accentuated (pushed) by the TV’s color decoder. On the other hand, too little color diminishes the impact of the picture, making it look drab. Setting color to zero results in a black-and-white image.

How to set the color of HDTV?

If available find an image of someone with light, delicate skin tones, preferably a close-up of a face, on a DVD. Turn up the color control until it looks like the person has sunburn, then reduce it until the skin looks natural, without too much red. If the rest of the colors look too drab, you can increase color slightly at the expense of accurate skin tones.