Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff looks dot com. Hi there, everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Polette,
Speaker 1: and I'm the tech editor here at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Sitting across from me, as usual, is senior
Speaker 1: writer Jonathan Strickland's Hey there everyone, Mellow times, mellow tis times.
Speaker 1: Can you picture that? That's a rainy day outside? Is
Speaker 1: It's kind of a nasty day in Atlanta. It's a
Speaker 1: good day for a podcast. Yeah, yeah, why don't we
Speaker 1: do one of those? Let's let's start it off with
Speaker 1: a little listener mail. This listener mail comes from Andrew.
Speaker 1: Andrew says, Hey, tech crew, I was just wondering what
Speaker 1: the difference is between the different image file types such
Speaker 1: as gift, jpeg, tiff, bitmap sixteen color, two fifty six color,
Speaker 1: twenty four bit. Any help you could give would be
Speaker 1: much appreciated. Well, Andrew, that's what this podcast is all about.
Speaker 1: Different image file types. Yea, yeah, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of Actually you talked talked about a lot of different things. Um,
Speaker 1: there are several different file types and for good reason.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of them are used for print
Speaker 1: and those are your TIFFs and EPs files, and there
Speaker 1: are lots and lots of other really highly specialized file
Speaker 1: a lot of proprietary ones, but those two are the
Speaker 1: two you know, generic ones. And then there are things
Speaker 1: like uh, you know, used for the web, which are
Speaker 1: your gifts. I found out that's the way the creator
Speaker 1: pronounced it. You know, I've been calling a gift for
Speaker 1: a long time. Uh yeah, what is dot dot com
Speaker 1: is great for this kind of stuff and the JPEGs,
Speaker 1: and there are tons and tons and tons of other ones,
Speaker 1: uh that are related to that. You know that you
Speaker 1: would find that you might stick in a word documentary,
Speaker 1: things like that bitmap images or pings right, um, And
Speaker 1: really most of this comes down to lossy versus lossless compression.
Speaker 1: So those of you who have listened to our podcasts
Speaker 1: on MP three's, you know that that is a an
Speaker 1: audio file compression format, and it's a lossy compression format,
Speaker 1: meaning that as you compress the file, you lose some
Speaker 1: of the information in that file. So in the case
Speaker 1: of MP three's, that means that you might get an
Speaker 1: audio file that doesn't sound quite as good as the
Speaker 1: original recording, And of course, depending on the bit rate
Speaker 1: you choose, if you choose a really low one, it
Speaker 1: might sound really kind of poor compared to the original. Well,
Speaker 1: the same sort of thing holds true for image files.
Speaker 1: If you have a lossy format, there's a chance that
Speaker 1: the image that you get, uh, isn't going to look
Speaker 1: as good as the original source that that you you know,
Speaker 1: the original version of that image. That's right. UM. Basically,
Speaker 1: in any image file, any digital image file, UM, it's
Speaker 1: a file that contains information. It's just like a word
Speaker 1: processing document. It's just like a music file. UM. Basically,
Speaker 1: you have data and you need something that will read
Speaker 1: the data. And the way that data is organized and
Speaker 1: the file the program that you used to read the file.
Speaker 1: You know, those are all contingent on a number of
Speaker 1: different things, and all these different file formats are UM
Speaker 1: geared for specific purposes. For example, you wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: use a tiff file for a web page for a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons, one being that most browsers can't read
Speaker 1: TIF files. That would be my number one, that would
Speaker 1: be way up there. But even if browsers could read them,
Speaker 1: you probably wouldn't want to use them because the file
Speaker 1: sizes are going to be much much larger than a
Speaker 1: JPEG of the same kind of picture. Yeah, TIFF stands
Speaker 1: for tagged image file format and UM it's it's very
Speaker 1: very popular because it's used it's used in instances where
Speaker 1: you want high quality. It can actually store pages worth
Speaker 1: of information and it can actually include metadata information about
Speaker 1: that file UM, which is why it's used by you know,
Speaker 1: people like archivists museums often use these and they can
Speaker 1: be huge, huge, huge files, and you can you can
Speaker 1: use these also if you want to print images and
Speaker 1: have the print quality be very high. Because something that
Speaker 1: looks good on your screen, I'm sure we're all familiar
Speaker 1: with this, when you print it out on on a printer,
Speaker 1: it may not look nearly as good in printed format
Speaker 1: as it did on a screen. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: the whole dots per inch thing. And I mean, there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different factors that go into that.
Speaker 1: TIP files tend to be one of the ones that
Speaker 1: are are used heavily in the print industry, and uh
Speaker 1: EPs files encapsulated PostScript are also used heavily in the
Speaker 1: print industry. Now they don't. They're not often UM they
Speaker 1: don't have the ability to hold a lot of pages.
Speaker 1: It's basically one page age and it's often used with
Speaker 1: UM with vector images more so than than TIFF files. Now,
Speaker 1: before I get into that, I would like to point
Speaker 1: out that what Jonathan was saying especially true for these
Speaker 1: print file formats like EPs and TIFF, because UM, these
Speaker 1: are formats that you are going to see UH used
Speaker 1: in high resolution situations where you have three hundred, six hundred,
Speaker 1: twelve hundred or even more UM dots or pixels per inch,
Speaker 1: depending on whether you're printing or actually viewing the file
Speaker 1: and UM. And that's the thing is, I mean, they're
Speaker 1: they're often huge. Now, they don't absolutely have to be
Speaker 1: UM just like you can use one of the web
Speaker 1: typical file formats and have them be ginormous because they're
Speaker 1: you know, very large and size, you know, physical size
Speaker 1: and hold a lot of information. But I mean these
Speaker 1: are the kinds of UH formats that do particularly well
Speaker 1: UM now, and there there is that one difference in
Speaker 1: EPs and well most of these others um it can
Speaker 1: actually support vector graphics. Now, what's a vector graphic you
Speaker 1: might ask, or graphic? UM? I was totally waiting for
Speaker 1: an airplane quote there anyway. UM, vector graphics are basically
Speaker 1: line arn't drawings that they're mathematical in shape. Say, you know,
Speaker 1: you can use Adobe Illustrator to create these or fireworks
Speaker 1: or some of those other programs, and you could maybe
Speaker 1: use UM, you know, create a star for example. Well,
Speaker 1: if you're doing this in a vector graphics image program
Speaker 1: where you're actually drawing this by hand or you know,
Speaker 1: with a mouse, UM, you basically that's a mathematical representation
Speaker 1: of that drawing. It can be resized, it can be
Speaker 1: made larger or smaller as you need to, and it's
Speaker 1: not going to cause any degradation in the file quality. UM,
Speaker 1: which is really cool because you can't do that with
Speaker 1: a raster or bitmap image because each of those little
Speaker 1: pixels you see on the screen are all that there.
Speaker 1: You can shrink them, but you can't make them larger
Speaker 1: because the computer is gonna have to make up stuff
Speaker 1: that goes in between those pixels. And it's just kind
Speaker 1: of a blue green. I can throw another blue green
Speaker 1: in here, Otherwise it just spreads out and you'd have
Speaker 1: a lot of little dots. That's why if you blow
Speaker 1: up a picture that was shot at a specific size
Speaker 1: and you try to blow it up to make a
Speaker 1: poster out of it, you're gonna see a lot of
Speaker 1: artifacts and errors in that image. Is gonna look kind
Speaker 1: of blocky, it's gonna look the color is not gonna
Speaker 1: look right. Um. Yeah, there are a lot of problems
Speaker 1: if you try to go beyond what the resolution allows.
Speaker 1: And that's uh so, tiff and EPs are primarily used
Speaker 1: for print now. The others are stuff that you probably
Speaker 1: see far more frequently, things like the jeff and jpeg
Speaker 1: and occasionally the ping and uh so ping that would
Speaker 1: be another lossless storage format. Yeah, so mostly, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's it's funny because when you were talking about
Speaker 1: compression earlier, that's the aventually what we're doing with JPEGs
Speaker 1: and pings, I mean, to get them down on the web.
Speaker 1: You know, file sizes on the web. We're a real
Speaker 1: problem when everybody was using dial up modems because you know,
Speaker 1: if you had these gigantic files on on your website,
Speaker 1: all these images, I mean, you're downloading every image that's
Speaker 1: on a website. So if every file is you know,
Speaker 1: half a meg and size, then suddenly every web page
Speaker 1: you look at is fifty megs, and it's going to
Speaker 1: take ten minutes to look at and people aren't going
Speaker 1: to visit your website very often, right, Yeah, a delay
Speaker 1: of over a few seconds is pretty frustrating for the
Speaker 1: average web user, especially, I mean even now in broadband,
Speaker 1: we've become accustomed to speed, and when it starts to
Speaker 1: take longer, well we decide that's not a place worth
Speaker 1: visiting and we go somewhere else. Um. So now PNG
Speaker 1: uses ZIP compression yea, which I used quite a bit
Speaker 1: in other forms of a file compression. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be. It's it's lostless and um, as long
Speaker 1: as you have the right uh, the right software to
Speaker 1: decode that to unzip, then you're fine. You can view
Speaker 1: it and there's no problem. Um. And of course that's
Speaker 1: one of those that's widely available. So that makes the
Speaker 1: PNG format pretty attractive. It's still fairly rare. Um, it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily something you're gonna run into a lot compared
Speaker 1: to the JPEG and Jeff's. Yes, as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: the PING was sort of supposed to be a competitor
Speaker 1: to the JEFF. UM. See that the Jeff uses l
Speaker 1: z W compression actually named for the people who invented it, lampl,
Speaker 1: Zev and Welch their last names. Um. See, the thing
Speaker 1: is the Jeff is owned by unities, uh, and you
Speaker 1: can license it. As a matter of fact, if you
Speaker 1: have a website and you have Jeff's on it, you're
Speaker 1: supposed to obtain a license from unitis in order to
Speaker 1: do this. This is not necessarily a paid transaction. But
Speaker 1: the thing is, people said, you know what, I don't
Speaker 1: want I want to use something that is free for
Speaker 1: me to use, which is why people were using, Um,
Speaker 1: we're switching to JPEGs so often. But JPEGs do better
Speaker 1: with certain kinds of images because of the compression that
Speaker 1: they use and Jeff's use. You know. Basically people use
Speaker 1: JPEGs for photos and Jeffs for drawings. Yeah. And the
Speaker 1: reason for that is that JPEGs are are better at
Speaker 1: handling images that have sort of a continuous color range
Speaker 1: in them. Um, they can handle images that have lots
Speaker 1: and lots of different colors. So if you were to
Speaker 1: take an image of say the sky, let'sen you take
Speaker 1: a photo of the sky, there's gonna be lots of
Speaker 1: different and it's a sunny day. All right, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be a lot of different of versions of the color blue.
Speaker 1: It's not just gonna all be one blue color, you know,
Speaker 1: the same color of blue. Right, It's gonna be a gradient,
Speaker 1: especially like late in the day, you know, as the
Speaker 1: sun is setting more early in the day, when the
Speaker 1: sun is rising right where you'll you might get it,
Speaker 1: you know, darker towards the horizon or whatever. Uh, You're
Speaker 1: gonna get a lot of different versions of the color blue.
Speaker 1: And with something like a JPEG that can handle that gradation,
Speaker 1: it can handle that continuous change of colors. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the compression format that JPEGs us is a lossy format,
Speaker 1: so you do lose information as you compress. But the
Speaker 1: nice thing about JPEG is you can control how compressed
Speaker 1: the file is. Yes, yes, that's true. So if you
Speaker 1: use a low level of compression, you know the file
Speaker 1: size is going to be larger. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you're gonna retain more information. If you compress the heck
Speaker 1: out of it, you're gonna lose a lot of information,
Speaker 1: but the file size will be nice and tiny. You know.
Speaker 1: It's funny because um, these file formats have been in
Speaker 1: use for quite some time now, and there have been
Speaker 1: many efforts to try to upgrade them. I mean, paying
Speaker 1: is just one of them. JPEG two thousand is another.
Speaker 1: It's a refinement of the jpegh wealth theoretically it's a refinement.
Speaker 1: It's actually a completely different way of compressing the file.
Speaker 1: And um, you know, the idea is to get it
Speaker 1: as you know, keep as much information as possible, um,
Speaker 1: you know, without creating artifacts, with creating a you know,
Speaker 1: giving a better color range. Um. The thing is that
Speaker 1: right at the moment, there's really nothing that's replacing the
Speaker 1: JPEG and the JEFF on the website despite these advances.
Speaker 1: And we should also mention that, you know, we were
Speaker 1: talking about the JPEGs really good for for images that
Speaker 1: have continuous color gradations. Jeff's really good for images that
Speaker 1: don't have that, um have have maybe some uh some
Speaker 1: clearly defined images. Now Jeff is capable of showing up
Speaker 1: to two fifty six colors in a single image. If
Speaker 1: the image has more than two hundred and fifty six colors,
Speaker 1: it's going to fudge a bit. It's gonna you're gonna
Speaker 1: end up with the compression, You're gonna end up having
Speaker 1: colors that are close to what the original color is
Speaker 1: supposed to be but aren't exactly the same, So just
Speaker 1: tend to be really good for things like graphics, not
Speaker 1: necessarily pictures. Um, pictures isn't like photographs, so JPEGs are
Speaker 1: better for photos are better for for graphic images. You
Speaker 1: think about the fact that you should be able to
Speaker 1: see or at least your computer probably tells you you
Speaker 1: can see millions of colors, and Jeff is only showing
Speaker 1: you two hundred and fifty six of those colors. Probably
Speaker 1: gives you a good idea of why people are trying,
Speaker 1: you know, have tried to improve upon the the Jeff
Speaker 1: is in UH file that now. UM. You know, one
Speaker 1: time people were really concerned about the two D sixteen
Speaker 1: Web safe colors, and I don't really see people talking
Speaker 1: about that nearly as often as they used to. UM.
Speaker 1: But basically, these were the two D and sixteen UH
Speaker 1: colors that could be rendered on both Windows and Macintosh
Speaker 1: platforms because UM, the gamma in those and in the
Speaker 1: two systems is a little bit different. UM. But you know,
Speaker 1: you really don't see that nearly as often. And you
Speaker 1: also don't see the other big Jeff proponent, which was
Speaker 1: the animated Jeff I used to allow you too. Well,
Speaker 1: it still does allow you to create a Jeff that
Speaker 1: has multiple pan else. Now, of course people use flash
Speaker 1: and they don't really use you know, animated gifts anymore.
Speaker 1: But now he also asked about bitmap files. Now, bitmaps
Speaker 1: a proprietary image file format from Microsoft. Well, okay, bitmapped
Speaker 1: images are or raster images used in a generic sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, jpeg is a bitmapped image, sure, but bitmap
Speaker 1: as a file form exactly. Yes, I'm glad you did
Speaker 1: clear that up so that that maybe heads off a
Speaker 1: little listener mail because we'll Yeah. So BMP is specifically
Speaker 1: is the uncompressed proprietary file format that Microsoft created. Um not,
Speaker 1: you don't see a lot of it. I used to
Speaker 1: actually use bitmap images quite a quite a bit in
Speaker 1: my old job, and that was because the software we
Speaker 1: used it was all Microsoft Office software, and occasionally I
Speaker 1: would need to take images from the web or from
Speaker 1: from certain other kinds of files, whether they be um
Speaker 1: uh charts, graphs, pie charts, the sort of stuff. Sometimes
Speaker 1: bitmap was the best option to to go with when
Speaker 1: importing it into something like power Point. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was on Microsoft UH format in the first place, so
Speaker 1: of course you would expect it to work pretty well
Speaker 1: within their suite of programs, and um, often I would
Speaker 1: find that that would create the best image for those
Speaker 1: sorts of applications. Outside of that, haven't seen a whole
Speaker 1: lot of use for it, right right, Yeah, it's still
Speaker 1: in use though, I mean people, it's it's still I
Speaker 1: still see attachments as as dot b MP files from
Speaker 1: time to time, not very frequently, um, you know, so
Speaker 1: it's it's just less in use. And then he also
Speaker 1: brought up a bit depth to yes, yes, which has
Speaker 1: to do with color, right, yes, Yes, the amount of
Speaker 1: basically the amount of colors in the image. And that's
Speaker 1: that's when you were talking about the two color sort
Speaker 1: in the in the jift fun like a one bit
Speaker 1: would be something that has to be black or white
Speaker 1: because it's either white or black. That's the one bit,
Speaker 1: So you know, like a zero and a one type
Speaker 1: of thing. Um, yeah, that's essentially what that refers to.
Speaker 1: The different bits kind of talk about the different levels
Speaker 1: of color. So I guess sixteen, but I think that's
Speaker 1: gray scale. It would be the various versions of grass.
Speaker 1: I suppose you could have a sixteen bit color as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gray scale I think is sixteen bit. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's basically the bit depth is uh.
Speaker 1: And it's not just an image that can have bit depth.
Speaker 1: I mean your your computer monitor has a bit depth
Speaker 1: and um, it's basically the range of color that is
Speaker 1: able that it's able to display. So, I mean an
Speaker 1: image file can be limited to a certain amount of
Speaker 1: bit depth in which you know, and and that's good
Speaker 1: for a web image because if you have a uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a sixteen bit image and a thirty two
Speaker 1: bit image, you know, if you're trying to keep the
Speaker 1: file size down, you can limit the bit depth and
Speaker 1: would have reduced that just compressed it a little bit
Speaker 1: more to try to to keep the file size to
Speaker 1: a minimum. I decided to look it up just to
Speaker 1: make sure. Yeah again heading off the listener, sixteen bits, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it actually uh, the tiff files, PNG files and uh, well,
Speaker 1: the TIP and P and g fils they can do
Speaker 1: gray scale as a eight or sixteen bits um JPEGs
Speaker 1: it's eight bits. So I knew I had heard about
Speaker 1: the sixteen bits somewhere, and then I had to look
Speaker 1: it up and see exactly where that was and uh,
Speaker 1: and it is important, it's just not the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that most people are thinking about probably when they're
Speaker 1: when they're creating. Now there's the the braw UH format,
Speaker 1: which some people say isn't technically a format, um, but
Speaker 1: it's basically a capture mode on your on a lot
Speaker 1: of digital cameras, especially higher end digital cameras and uh,
Speaker 1: professional photographers. You know, probably just about everybody uses the
Speaker 1: raw setting and basically gives you everything that's coming through
Speaker 1: the lens. The biggest downside on the raw format is
Speaker 1: that every manufacturer has its own variation of the raw format.
Speaker 1: So yeah, because it's not a it's not a standardized right.
Speaker 1: Since it's not standardized, that means that you know, the
Speaker 1: raw images you take with one digital camera from one
Speaker 1: manufacturer may not may not be at all the same
Speaker 1: as the kind that you take on a totally different
Speaker 1: camera from a totally different manufacturer, but it will give
Speaker 1: you a lot better quality and it is lossless, right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, just keep that in mind. The that it
Speaker 1: is not a technical you know I s O certified
Speaker 1: file format, and you may find some other image files
Speaker 1: out there as well. There's things like PSD files which
Speaker 1: a photo or PSP which would be paint shop proh. Yes,
Speaker 1: so there are other proprietary files out there. Of course
Speaker 1: those aren't nearly as UM, you know, widespread as the
Speaker 1: JPEG and Jeff's yep, ye, working Jeff as much as
Speaker 1: I can to make up for my my your Jeff
Speaker 1: my gift gaff or was it my Jeff jaff? I'm
Speaker 1: so confused now, yes, yeah, UM, a PSD. Actually, that's
Speaker 1: that's interesting that you would mention that, because UM designers
Speaker 1: are probably gonna be more familiar with the PSD file. UM.
Speaker 1: One of the cool things about working with Photoshop is
Speaker 1: that you can create files with multiple layers UM. Then
Speaker 1: you can save it as a variety of different files. Now, UM,
Speaker 1: a Photoshop document, when you're actually working with it, you
Speaker 1: can have tons and tons of different layers UM that
Speaker 1: you can use to apply. For example, I'm using UH
Speaker 1: right now for one of the classes I'm taking for
Speaker 1: my graduate degree. UM. I am basically marking up websites
Speaker 1: to talk about the different parts, and I am creating
Speaker 1: different layers that draw attention to different ones so that
Speaker 1: I can say, Okay, in this example, we're talking about
Speaker 1: sections A and G. In this example, we're talking about B, C,
Speaker 1: D N F. Well, in this case, I have multiple layers,
Speaker 1: and I can turn on the ones that I want
Speaker 1: to display, save the file, then turn those off and
Speaker 1: turn the other ones on for the next one. Well,
Speaker 1: the problem is that when you leave the layers on,
Speaker 1: you can't save. It is really anything other than the
Speaker 1: Photoshop document. If you want to make a JPEG or
Speaker 1: a ping or whatever out of it, you're going to
Speaker 1: have to flatten the image in order to do that
Speaker 1: because it doesn't those file formats don't necessarily support multiple layers.
Speaker 1: But it is very cool and in that it allows
Speaker 1: you to do that. And another one created by Adobe
Speaker 1: would be the uh PDF, a portable document format which
Speaker 1: so many people you use now UM and that is
Speaker 1: really an image in a lot of cases. You know,
Speaker 1: it can be a scan of an article. UM, it
Speaker 1: could be a form that allows you to fill it out,
Speaker 1: but it is you know, it's sort of pinch hits
Speaker 1: as a file format, an image file format in some cases.
Speaker 1: One of the cool things about it is especially for businesses,
Speaker 1: which really why one of the reasons why they support
Speaker 1: it so much is that, um, you can't modify it.
Speaker 1: So if you stand out a thing, is they please
Speaker 1: review this. They can put notes on it, they can
Speaker 1: you know, say these different things, but they can't go
Speaker 1: change it and then send it out to people, which
Speaker 1: can be really infuriating when you're the creative person actually
Speaker 1: making the documentary. Why didn't you send that out? The
Speaker 1: nice thing is not only not only do you not
Speaker 1: have to worry about the modifying it, but the software
Speaker 1: to view it is readily available. Yes, anyone can download
Speaker 1: a free viewer to view PDF files and it's built
Speaker 1: into browsers now as a plug in. Um. It's even
Speaker 1: supported widely in the operating systems now, at least far
Speaker 1: more than it was. That it's uh it's initial release, right.
Speaker 1: I remember when you had to actually hunt down the
Speaker 1: little the plug in and and downloaded and and install it.
Speaker 1: It's not not the case anymore. Yeah. I doubt that
Speaker 1: Adobe technically considers it a you know, an image file format,
Speaker 1: but it sort of production well, yeah, I don't really
Speaker 1: have any other image file for well and true. I
Speaker 1: hope that answers your question to your satisfaction. I guess
Speaker 1: that leads us to our second instance of listener mail,
Speaker 1: and this listener mail comes from Robert from San Antonio, Texas,
Speaker 1: where folks know what listener mail is supposed to sound like.
Speaker 1: He says, while working over the weekend, I was able
Speaker 1: to catch up on several of your episodes. I've never
Speaker 1: written into a podcast before, but thought i could share
Speaker 1: some personal experience on an item which crosses over between
Speaker 1: your video game and stuff you can hook up to
Speaker 1: your TV podcasts that may interest your fans. I'm referring
Speaker 1: to the original Xbox. It can be modeled. It can
Speaker 1: be moded, which allows you to install specialized media playing
Speaker 1: software and to upgrade the hard drive. I currently have
Speaker 1: two of them and have a five d gigabyte hard
Speaker 1: drive in each. This allows me to store tons of
Speaker 1: media locally. But more importantly, it has a built in
Speaker 1: n I C allowing network access. Using Xbox Media Center,
Speaker 1: I can stream media content from my media server, and
Speaker 1: with the addition of a new piece of software called
Speaker 1: play On, I have access to all sorts of online
Speaker 1: media contents such as streams from Hulu, PBS, ESPN, Crackle, Adults, Swim,
Speaker 1: and many many more. It plays a variety of video formats,
Speaker 1: including a v I, DIVIX x VID and many more.
Speaker 1: As a bonus, it up converts to ten A d I,
Speaker 1: so the image on an h D t V is
Speaker 1: pretty good. So for a fraction of the cost of
Speaker 1: an ht PC or Apple TV, you get a networked
Speaker 1: media player that can stream media from within your network
Speaker 1: or even from online content providers. Really cool. These consoles
Speaker 1: are a decade old yet can still be considered a
Speaker 1: contender for King of Media Centers. Thanks and keep up
Speaker 1: the good work, Robert. Yeah, Robert, that's a great point. Yes,
Speaker 1: you can modify your Xbox and create a media center
Speaker 1: out of it. Uh, just for you guys out there
Speaker 1: who are curious, I mean, not that it really matters anymore,
Speaker 1: because the Xbox is pretty much out of out of
Speaker 1: production anyway. It violates the warranty. Oh yes, Microsoft's not
Speaker 1: really thrilled with people who open up the Xbox and
Speaker 1: modify it. They can't really do anything to stop you.
Speaker 1: It's not against the law. Um, if you were to
Speaker 1: modify your Xbox in such a way that it changes
Speaker 1: the way it behaves in online play, Microsoft could step
Speaker 1: in and and possibly deactivate your Xbox Live account. But
Speaker 1: apart from that, there's really no you know, no punishment
Speaker 1: for doing this, unless, of course, you screw up and
Speaker 1: ruin your xbox. I would I would add to that
Speaker 1: that I would appreciate it if you do this, do
Speaker 1: me in personal favor and don't electrocute yourself what you
Speaker 1: could do. Yeah, don't you start mucking around with the
Speaker 1: enters of things that have Step one, don't have it
Speaker 1: plugged in. Step to be very careful when you whenever
Speaker 1: you try and modify any form of electronics, because even
Speaker 1: if something's unplugged doesn't that doesn't necessarily mean it can't
Speaker 1: hurt you. Yeah, I would recommend finding a guide, either
Speaker 1: online or a book, and following those instructions very carefully. Um,
Speaker 1: you probably want to have a little experience with things
Speaker 1: like soldering, because often you have to solder certain news
Speaker 1: circuits in in order to get it to behave the
Speaker 1: way you want it to. But it is completely do
Speaker 1: it yourself sort of project that anyone can tackle with
Speaker 1: the right patients and uh and skill. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: challenging you know, involves a squirrel and attractor. But I
Speaker 1: can What did I get the wrong instructions? You need
Speaker 1: to invite me over to your house. Sometimes I gotta
Speaker 1: see how you set up your entertainment system. So, Robert,
Speaker 1: thanks so much. If any of you have any tips
Speaker 1: or questions, comments, anything like that, you can write us
Speaker 1: our emailed This is tech stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. You can visit our blogs at hou stuf
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Speaker 1: can watch tech stuff live as Crispy and I bring
Speaker 1: you the latest tech news. That's one pm Eastern. That's right,
Speaker 1: one pm Eastern. Thank you, Chrispy. That was very helpful. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: please watch us because Lord knows we're not under enough
Speaker 1: pressure as it is. Uh. And if you want to
Speaker 1: learn are about image files and all things computer related,
Speaker 1: why don't you pop on over the house stuff works
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