A Journey Into the World of Class A

What is hot, extremely inefficient, but sounds really nice? A Class A amplifier.

A lot of times associated with tube amplifiers, a class A amp can be just as effective using transistors. Listening to the Leo Laporte podcast at Twit.tv, lead me to the Home Theater Geeks podcast found on the same site, which in turn, I found myself listening to a podcast featuring Nelson Pass form Pass Labs. Get inspired by the podcast with Nelson Pass HERE!

The above rendering is my concept for the enclosure of my class A amplifier project. If you ever dabbled in, or want to jump into the world of electronics, building a class A amplifier might be the perfect project to get you started. You can find all the info you need to get going at, Pass Labs, Pass DIY, and First Watt. All the help you need can be found at diyAudio. Due to the lower wattages a modest class A will output, you may want to research speakers that are more efficient thatn the typical offering such as the Jordan JX92S at Jordan-USA. Alternately, these can make very nice headphone amplifiers.

Designs can be as simple as some spare parts and light bulbs such as below, or as complex as you like to squeeze out every last drop of distortion as possible and maximize efficiency. So round up some parts and have fun!

This image is from the De-Lite Amplifier PDF by Nelson Pass, taken by Dana Brock.

Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player - Part 2

Upon opening the box, I was surprised at how small the unit was.  It is dwarfed by the Vantec HD dock as you can see in my test setup.  Out of the box  I had some trouble playing one .SRT subtitle file, and the subtitles started at the top of the bottom third of the screen.  Also if there were more than one line to the subtitle the lines were spaced very far apart.  Very distracting.

Imediately I checked the Western Digital website for a firmware update.  Indeed there was.  Ver. 1.01.02 dated 12/2/08.  After updating the problems I was haver were fixed.  The subtitle that wouldn't play worked perfectly.  And, the subtitles were at the bottom where they should be and the line spacing was corrected.  I also noticed some additions to the setup menu, including subtitle size.

So far all the files I have tested work fine, including the .mkv's which I really wanted this unit for.  I am very pleased with the operation and menu system.  The only improvement that I can see so far is that they need to give an option to change the subtitle color.  The only option right now is white, which can be hard to read on bright scenes.  The option of yellow would be very nice.  Of course hardsubbed video subtitles look great.

WD also offers GPL code for third party developers, which I find awesome.  (Sony please take a hint.)

Amazon has it here:

Western Digital HD Media Player with .mkv support! - Part 1

Finally .mkv support in a stand alone media player!! The new  Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player.

I have been waiting for something like this for a while now. I am looking forward to seeing if this thing will do all they say it will. As of now I use a philips DVP5992/37 in conjunction with the Vantec NexStar hard drive dock, and a 500gb bare drive to watch my media. Although I am limited to DivX videos and 720p only. It is a little finicky with GMC too. Looks like the WD player is just what I need.

Another bonus is fat32 support. External drive formats include: FAT32, NTFS, HFS+ (no journaling)

From the Western Digital website:

File Formats Supported

Music - MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV/PCM/LPCM, AAC, FLAC, Dolby Digital, AIF/AIFF, MKA

Graphics - JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG Video -MPEG1/2/4, WMV9, AVI(MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV, MOV (MPEG4, H.264)

Playlist - PLS, M3U, WPL Subtitle -SRT (UTF-8)

Note:
- MPEG2/4, H.264, and WMV9 supports up to 1920x1080p 24fps, 1920x1080i 30fps, 1280x720p 60fps resolution.
- An audio receiver is required for surround sound output.
- AAC/Dolby Digital decodes in 2 channel output only.
- JPEG does not support CMYK or lossless.
- BMP supports uncompressed format only.
- TIF/TIFF supports single layer only.

See Part 2! Here

Amazon has it here: