You know what would work perfectly with that quad/matrixed decoder surround amplifier? A Laserdisc player, I'm serious, most Laserdiscs are encoded for "CX" 4 channel surround sound, and that amplifier hooks right up to it! All you need to do is use the 2x Analog audio outputs of the Laserdisc player and plug them into the quad amplifier and flick the setting on the front of the amplifier over to "Matrix" decode, and it will magically convert 2 channels of audio into 4-channel surround sound.

Note you also need to have a Laserdisc that says "Matrix encoded" or "Dolby Surround" or post-1987 "Dolby Pro-Logic" written on it to get the benefits of 4 true channels of audio, not just CX encoded! CX encoded is just a noise reducing technology, which is basically available on every single Laserdisc manufactured out there since the late 1970's until 2001 when all Laserdisc manufacturing ceased.

You know what would work perfectly with that quad/matrixed decoder surround amplifier? A Laserdisc player, I'm serious, most Laserdiscs are encoded for "CX" 4 channel surround sound, and that amplifier hooks right up to it! All you need to do is use the 2x Analog audio outputs of the Laserdisc player and plug them into the quad amplifier and flick the setting on the front of the amplifier over to "Matrix" decode, and it will magically convert 2 channels of audio into 4-channel surround sound.

Hold onto that amplifier with your dear life, they are becoming very very rare nowdays and complement the Analog audio soundtracks of a Laserdisc player perfectly!.

Personally, I have a Marantz 2275 re-capped with modern capacitors to make the high frequencies more responsive, I've got that hooked up to a Panasonic Laserdisc player (Best picture quality for a cheap LD player in my book), and I'm serious, whenever someone comes over they go "OH my god, I've never heard Aliens (or Blade Runner, 1982 Original Directors Cut Release) sound so good!"

The best part about laserdisc too is that most times the Laserdisc has been manufactured 1 year or less after the Movie was actually released in the theaters, so you get the film in its original format, with Wideband Analog FM audio to boot too!

Laserdisc looks best on a good Grundig 83cm CRT television set, or any Rear Projection tv set, or an actual Projection system, this takes care of the picture. But if you want to go a step further you can also collect PAL format Laserdiscs too.

I for example just purchased Blade Runner from Tokyo, Japan, off a seller on eBay, and as IMDB can tell you the movie was made in 1982, but the Laserdisc was manufactured in 1983, And its in 4:3 format, I don't have to worry about losing resolution with crappy Letterbox format either!.

What really makes it unique though, is that its actually got real genuine hairs falling down the screen, and Cigarette Burns in the top right hand corner whenever a reel change is made (Think Fight Club)

People's Jaws really drop though when I tell them that the copy of Blade Runner on Laserdisc they are watching is 29 years old though, lol, I'm actually planning on having a party for it once it reaches 30.

Having been a long time Shuttle fan since I was a kid, I wanted to record the STS-134 Launch, unfortunatley being in Australia this limits my options to only internet access for a station to watch the NASA TV feed on. So I go over to Ustream, but the Ustream feed doesn't work because there are too many viewers, bummer, so I go over to the NASA website to view it there, that works, hooray, I'm in luck, even though its terrible quality. Seeing as I had to go to sleep early in the afternoon, I decided I would record it, I fire up my copy of some paticular software and set it on the scope of the flash player window and go to bed. I wake up 10 hours later, to find that some application has popped up infront of the video stream capturing area warning me of something which isn't anywhere near as important as a shuttle launch. I sit here 10 hours later, having had a crap sleep because I got drunk the night before, sifting through video which has a popup window infront of it and is essentially totally useless. Why do I have to endure this? WHY? Can't NASA setup a relay station somewhere in Australia where they can send the live video feed over the internet and then convert it into DBS then send it up to an Optus D1 or D3 satellite as a free service? Whats so hard about that? Sure, It costs a great deal to get a 24/7 channel on an Australian coverage Satellite, But why have I had to wait and sit in the dark for the last 20 years and be forced to watch 5 minutes of footage cut up and voiced over by the local news outlets of JUST the launch? Shouldn't this be a global event? If another program pops up infront of the capture region on the very last Shuttle MIssion, I'm going to kill my computer.

We need to see some kind of lightweight VM machine running in a sandbox on the windows OS, which acts and looks just like a web browser to anybody using it, and saves downloaded files to a directory on the Windows desktop folder in a Directory named "Downloads". Today the majority of users certainly have the CPU power to pull it off, why not run it completely in RAM too to facilitate never having to access the hard drive. It would probably be the fastest web browser ever made, and the most secure.

What I would like to see is a combination of this technology along with laser technology to distribute throughout an entire room invisible laser light, along with a fiber optic cabling that is tacked onto the side of power line cabling, its a sensible combination of power distribution and data distribution all rolled into one single power cable, so every light socket then automatically becomes a high bandwidth laser reception and transmission point, and every portable device then transmits back to the light socket via means of laser. But that would be amazingly costly at least in today's market, a decade or two down the road and this might just be possible, would definatley be pretty cool to have every light socket and every room an access point for unlimited bandwidth with future proofing built into it.

I suppose you could have a CAT5 switch in every section of a building which feeds data to every light socket via means of CAT5, but uses a fiber backbone for the long haul back to a central point, that would prevent lightning from passing any further past that room or section of a building. But I would imagine maintenance after a lightning strike or power surge would then require the complete disassembly of the entire roof to remove all of the dead and melted CAT5 and power cabling, not too different to what would normally happen if a normal light socket got struck by lightning to be honest, definitely more costly however.

At least this is true in a single phase system, 3 phase systems can be twisted to a certian limited extent, its called Transposition. and is done to balance out the voltage and current of each phase with one another. Dunno what effect it would have on a single phase transmission system.

You can't twist power cable, bad things happen, like current appearing on the neutral line from the live line, and things like reflected power heating up the cable, instead of transmitting power the cable will then just act as a heater, and a large amount of current making it back to the transformer, burning that out and tripping fuses, among other things. Hence why you get a warning sticker on every appliance with a really long extension cord on it, please don't lay the power cable in a circular fashion. And connecting CAT5 to anywhere near where a light socket is, will be a spectacularly bad idea, for example: one outside light socket gets struck by lightning and the lightning then makes the very short (1-2 centimetre) trip to your ethernet socket then suddenly your entire network sees millions of volts over every switch and computer in the building before its finally earthed out in the equipment racks containing all of your servers.

http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=(%22building+illumination+apparatus%22.TTL.)&OS=ttl/%22building+illumination+apparatus%22&RS=TTL/%22building+illumination+apparatus%22 Go there and search for "BPL" and "BOPL"

And:

At least they are considering using shielded power cabling, aka "S-BPL", but I would think using WiFi would be a wiser choice, one lousy installation of S-BPL can wipe out half a building with radio interference, and what happens to the radio signal once it reaches the end of the line? aka the light socket? are they going to be installing shielded light sockets too? I Hardly think so.

Hi Hi :) Its a massive problem in some areas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK3MuTPlHS0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6sYD3C0jo8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGA4MCNeN7c

You forgot LED Light Emitting Diode :oP

From what I've read about this, while the LED lights are optical, the transmission line, aka the power line will still be used to carry data transmissions to and from the LED lights, I don't see how this or any other BPL tech being allowed by the FCC then again anything these days is allowed to pass through and transmit whatever it wants all over the Shortwave radio bands under FCC Part 15 rules, Plasma TV's being just one example which plasters the lower shortwave radio band with an insane amount of interference. Please lets stop using power lines for data transmissions, all it does is cause headaches and takes a dump all over the shortwave band! We've already got WiFi, we don't need yet another standard that is just going to end up plastering interference all over the entire street, and probably causing rife with our bodies as well. Just imagine what the implications would be of this, every person in your street or unit could then have a hardwired connection to your ethernet network as long as they knew the correct password, usually default, no need to use high powered wireless adapters anymore.... I can see how a means of optical data transfer would be a good idea over infrared, It would be more healthier for our brains than wireless, IRDA springs to mind, but as soon as you put the blanket over your laptop the signal drops out completely. Its a worthless technology which will just end up spluttering interference over the entire lower shortwave band, making the valuable and irreplacable shortwave band useless for long distance DX contacts, what happens when we need that band in times of emergency? Oh wait, we can't use it because somebody needs their broadband fix, doh!

Nevermind, it was 1993 when EPIC was concerned about the Clipper Chip installed in phone handsets.

Actually it was 1993 when EPIC requested FOI.