Category: Entertainment

An interesting gadget I tested a bit on Gizmo before her late haul out (tomorrow, actually) is the Simrad (and Lowrance) SonicHub “Marine Audio Server” discussed here in May.  I’m pretty impressed so far.  The screen above may be a bit disconcerting because the NSE had a little trouble displaying the (difficult) title of the iTunes TV show I’d selected (which should read, “El espectáculo ¡Seamos saludables ahora! (The Get Healthy Now Show)”) and Elmo seems disjointed in the particular frame captured (though the video looked fine in motion), but I’m now confident about the concept.  That is to say, I can arrive at the boat with all sorts of music and video on an iPod or iPhone, stick the device safely away in the SonicHub dock, and then manage it from any NSE (or NSO) on the boat’s SimNet/N2K network. And of course there’s more…

Here’s what excites me about innovations like the Navico’s SonicHub:  If you’re going to spend fairly big bucks on what is essentially a dedicated waterproof computer with goodies like an extra bright screen and custom soft keys — like a Lowrance HDS or a Simrad NSE — plus a rugged NMEA 2000 sensor network running around your boat, why not have them do as many display and networking tasks as possible?  I first heard about SonicHub last weekend — in a very pleasant way — and now that I understand more of the details, it sure looks like a winner…

How sweet it is!  I would get a kick out of this photo taken yesterday at the Sanctuary Cove Boat Show in Australia regardless, but in fact I spent part of the day installing a Fusion stereo on Gizmo and I’d meant to write soon about the company’s just released iPod/iPhone docks.  Plus there was a major marine entertainment product launch at the show which Fusion may have something to do with…

This handsome Clarion CMV1 was announced more than a year ago, but I missed it somehow even though it does all sorts of things that I think could be great on some boats.  It can play DVDs on that 3.5-inch 480×234 pixel screen and/or output the video via RCA cable to a bigger screen, like an MFD that isn’t doing much else when you’re parked.  And it can do the same thing with iPod video, though that feature mysteriously entails a special cable.  It even has an RCA input so you could use it to display an onboard video camera.  Of course, there’s more…

What’s it going to take before more boaters realize how thoroughly Fusion is reinventing marine stereo? The new RA-200 introduced in Miami is not only an attractively smaller and less expensive ($170 retail) unit, but it includes neat new features that aren’t even in the higher-end series yet. These guys can’t help themselves!…

The lighting was tough for photography, but the quiet, sunny Camden breakfast spot was a fine place for Todd Crocker to demo Fusion’s latest 600 series of “True Marine” stereos.  When Todd visited in 2008, he had the very innovative 500 series to show off, which I later tested myself and then wrote up for PMY.  If you check the links, you’ll know I liked the MS-IP500 a lot; but I like the new models even more…

Of course the big news about KVH’s new TracVision HD7 is that it can receive all three of DirecTV’s main satellites at once, which means that using multiple TVs/DVRs at once — or keeping up with Guide data coming down from sat 101 — are not the problems they can be with a one-satellite-at-a-time solution like the Intellian D4. But first check out the iPhone/iTouch app that communicates via WiFi to the HD7’s antenna control unit. Not only can it be used to switch the dome to one of the secondary satellites that carry some oddball channels, also to download system updates at home, or wherever, for later one tap transfer to the ACU. There are alternate ways to accomplish these tasks, to be sure, but isn’t this a slick option?  Not that a HD7 user should need to mess with it much…

One way to know that you’re really getting high definition TV is to stumble on to a close up of Muammar Gadhafi’s face. Holy crap, what has this guy been doing to himself?  But aside from that jolt, setting up and using Intellian’s D4 HD sat tv system went smooth and easy.  Mounted the dome on Gizmo’s boat deck, ran one coax cable to the ACU (the small box top left) and one to the DirecTV receiver; ran a USB cable from ACU to receiver, and an HDMI cable from receiver to HD TV; and finally powered the former with 12v DC and the latter two with 120v AC.  After a few minutes of automatic antenna searching, holy crap I had access to some 587 channels!  (Or so the receiver claims; a lot are pay-to-view, and who’s going to count anyway?)  The amazing thing is that when I switch channels — especially between Standard and High Def — the D4 often has to switch satellites and frequencies, but it’s hardly noticeable.  The pause is about 3-5 seconds in my experience, and that’s quite a technological achievement…