Samsung UN46F5500AF

These days, you can get a great HDTV at a great price if you don't need top-end features including 3D. (And who really needs 3D these days?) Samsung's F5500 series is proof of that. There's no 3D support, and the set is decidedly mid level, but it offers an impressive array of connected features and very good picture quality to boot. It doesn't quite beat the 55-inch Vizio M551D-A2R on bang for your buck, but the 46-inch $749.99 (direct) UN46F5500 we tested is an excellent deal.

Design
Looking plain and unassuming without seeming cheap, the F5500 has a flat black bezel with only a Samsung logo on the bottom bezel. The screen sits on a silver plastic four-legged base that lets it pivot left and right. A four-way joystick on the back near the lower-right corner controls the HDTV and lets you navigate the menu system. On the back, two USB and two HDMI ports can be found next to the antenna connection facing the right side of the screen. The remaining HDMI port, Ethernet port (if you don't want to use the HDTV's built-in Wi-Fi), component and composite inputs, and optical audio, mini-jack audio, and infrared blaster outputs face back.

The remote is a simple rectangular wand filled with rectangular buttons, a somewhat frustrating aspect of Samsung remotes without touch pads. The navigation buttons are shaped nearly the same as the surrounding menu buttons, so it's easy to hit Return or Exit when you're navigating menus without looking directly at the remote. The volume and channel rockers are easy to find under your thumb, as is the hexagonal Smart Hub button that brings up the media navigation menu.

Features
While the F5500's physical design is plain, Samsung put a lot of work into its software design and features. The set uses Samsung's Smart Hub menu, which divides content into live TV, movies and TV shows, social features, apps, and local media. The Live TV menu has its own channel guide, and can control your cable or satellite box with the included IR blaster. The Movie and TV show menu offers a selection of on-demand titles you can purchase from Samsung, but you might prefer the apps menu's selection of more standard services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube, and HBO Go. The Apps menu also features a full Web browser, but navigating the Web and entering text on a standard TV remote is very awkward. The social tab tracks your Facebook and Twitter activity, and the local media tab can load content on connected USB drives, networked DLNA media servers, and media stored through the Samsung Link cloud service.

These content tabs use Samsung's S Recommend feature to refine suggestions for what to watch, keeping track of your viewing habits and adjusting the movies, shows, and channels it displays first to reflect them. If you want it to work with your television, you'll have to set it up to control your cable or satellite box.

Besides the features in the Smart Hub tabs, you can also mirror your smartphone or tablet screen with Miracast, found in the F5500's Network settings menu as Wireless Display. Samsung heavily pushes its AllShare features for sending media from a Samsung smartphone or tablet to the HDTV, and it worked flawlessly in my tests. I had no problem streaming a movie from my Google Nexus 7 tablet. Screen mirroring is more tricky; the screen showed up as a wireless display to the Nexus 7, but it couldn't make a connection. Samsung devices might communicate a little more smoothly through Samsung's AllShare software, but you should be able to use any DLNA-enabled device.

Performance
We test HDTVs with a Klein K10-A colorimeter, SpectraCal's CalMAN 5 diagnostic software, and DisplayMate test patterns with a basic dark room calibration for brightness and contrast. The F5500 gets satisfyingly bright at 316.360 cd/m², but it doesn't get too dark with a black level of 0.084 cd/m². The contrast ratio is a solid 3,754:1, but the Editors' Choice Vizio M551D-A2R edges it out with a black level of 0.031 cd/m² and a contrast ratio of almost double at 7,145:1 even with the Vizio's dimmer (221.492 cd/m² peak brightness) screen.

As shown in the chart above, colors fare very well out of the box. With the color temperature presets at the warmest setting but no other changes made the F5500 showed nearly spot-on white, blue, and green colors. Red was slightly oversaturated, but not enough to visibly tint the picture. For the most accurate colors, use the Movie mode with color temperature set to Warm2.

I watched Piranha and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance on the set, and they both looked very good. The murky underwater scenes and bright surface scenes of Piranha were colorful and crisp, and the darker scenes showed deep blacks and strong detail. The rampant fire of Ghost Rider's powers were warm and bright in otherwise very dark scenes, highlighting the screen's strong contrast.

Under typical viewing conditions, the UN46F5500AF consumes 106 watts with all power saving features disabled. At the Low Eco mode setting, the screen darkens the picture noticeably, but keeps it watchable while consuming 66 watts. The Medium Eco setting borders on too dark and requires 47 watts, and the High Eco setting darkens the screen too much to watch.

The Samsung F5500 series of LED HDTVs offers a very good picture and an impressive array of smart services and features. It isn't the darkest panel, and it doesn't offer 3D, but for the price, you get a lot of screen. If you want a bigger picture and similarly strong performance, the Editors' Choice Vizio M551D-A2R offers a solid bump in size for a slightly higher price (compared with the 46-inch model we reviewed), and if you're willing to pay a bit more than that, the 55-inch Panasonic TC-L55ET60 offers excellent performance along with a 3D picture and a more stylish design.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/Frq5hUJXANM/0,2817,2425259,00.asp
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How Director Brett Ratner Evolved From Party Boy to $450 Million Warner Bros. Mogul

This story first appeared in the Nov. 1 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

The last night of filming on Hercules: The Thracian Wars in Budapest, with just a few hours to go on this chilly October evening before the movie wraps at 6 a.m. Even after eight months of seven-day weeks, during which he often has worked 16 or 17 hours straight, director Brett Ratner bubbles with enthusiasm as he sits hunched before three monitors in a cavelike set at the Origo Studios, where a body double for Dwayne Johnson is chained to a wall, from which he soon will break free.

An end-of-semester quality pervades the place. Several crewmembers pause to say their goodbyes, and Ratner himself will leave imminently for London. After that, he'll head home to Beverly Hills before moving on to Shanghai, where he'll take meetings with his RatPac Entertainment partner, billionaire James Packer ("We're gonna explore what we're gonna explore"). Later, the two will share a vacation at Packer's polo horse ranch in Argentina. "Feeling sentimental?" a producer yells out. "No way," says Ratner with a laugh.

PHOTOS: The Redemption of Brett Ratner: Photos of the 'Hercules' Helmer

Despite an easygoing manner, the 44-year-old director has his share of neuroses. His leg twitches a mile a minute, and his nails are bitten to the quick. He admits to being a "germophobe" ("I'm more of a hypochondriac -- I grew up in a house of doctors") and confesses to a fear of planes ("I'm scared of flying -- terrified"). Contrary to his party-boy reputation, he avoids so much as a hint of alcohol, let alone anything heavier, and says even in his school days, he was too focused on films to think of anything else: "I never tried a drink to this day. I've never had a sip of alcohol -- a sip of alcohol, ever. I've never had a drug. No interest."

In person, he appears more grounded than the larger-than-life frat boy many have encountered through the media, that permanent partier whose exaggerated portrait in an Entourage episode made even insiders believe he was just a glorified social butterfly.

PHOTOS: Brett Ratner Photographs Clients of L.A. Homeless Employment Nonprofit Chrysalis

He's warm, generous and surprisingly sweet, with a notable absence of malice -- and much more circumspect than the guy who quipped "rehearsal's for fags" during a Howard Stern interview (after which he apologized so profusely, he was given GLAAD's Ally Award) or the boorish fellow whose crude comments about performing oral sex on Lindsay Lohan contributed (along with the "fag" joke) to his forced resignation as Oscar producer in 2011, a move that made him a public pinata for months.

Sometimes it's hard to connect this rumpled, direct, self-proclaimed "fat guy" with the tabloid staple who has dated models and actresses and even tennis sensation Serena Williams. "People mistake the fact that I'm fun for somebody who's not serious," he says. "But I'm the opposite of what people think I am."

That became clear Sept. 30 when Hollywood let forth a collective gasp at the news that Ratner and Packer were two of the key players behind a $450 million slate deal with Warner Bros., a joint venture between RatPac and Dune Capital Partners that will cover 75 films, or nearly all of the storied studio's product over a four-year period. It's not just the first time in recent years that Warners has agreed to take a financial partner across its complete body of work; it's also the first time a director has been involved in any such undertaking.

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros. Closes $450 Million Financing Deal With Dune, Brett Ratner's RatPac

"Filmmakers have raised money for a movie before," notes Ratner, "but not for a slate of an entire studio's movies. And when the [profits start coming], this will pay for more than $1 billion of production."

How much actually ends up being invested will depend on the success of the individual films and the money that then is plowed back in through the RatPac-Dune Entertainment deal, but the slate's first release, Gravity, already has grossed $284 million worldwide (and counting).

"They're on board to finance the lion's share of our slate going forward," says Warners CEO Kevin Tsujihara, who had his first face-to-face meeting with Ratner and Packer regarding the deal Oct. 21 during a breakfast in the executive's Burbank offices. As for Ratner: "He is an innovative guy with a lot of experience in the film business. He has been around for a long time, he understands how films get put together, and while this is a passive deal, it's always great to have partners who understand our business."

STORY: Brett Ratner Donates $1 Million to Academy Museum

Ratner is a bundle of contradictions -- a "big kid" (in his words) who's involved in one of the most significant film-financing pacts in years; a refined student of movie history who chooses to make ultra-commercial popcorn pictures; a man who's dated some of the most beautiful women in the world and yet whose closest friends are "all over the age of 70."

Although his $100 million-plus MGM/Paramount feature Hercules seems unlikely ever to earn a best picture Oscar, Ratner also is the man who was tapped to rescue the Academy Awards until that went awry, a major regret for this passionate lover of all things film.

He hardly can contain his enthusiasm for cinema, and the giants who have stamped it, and seems thrilled to show this reporter an e-mail from Oliver Stone, in which Stone teasingly refers to Ratner's Budapest location shoot as his "Hungarian rhapsody." Days after we meet, he bombards me with pictures of himself alongside other "masters," from Amour's Michael Haneke to The French Connection's William Friedkin. He tells me three times, excitedly, that his production designer, Jean-Vincent Puzos, also worked on Amour.

He loves talking about his mentors, Hollywood legends Warren Beatty, Robert Towne and Robert Evans (he shows them early cuts of his films and even lived in Evans' house for two years). And he's equally intense about his collection of movie memorabilia, which includes 100-plus Polaroids that were taken during the 1970s as wardrobe continuity shots for the first two Godfather films, along with a pair of miniature silver boxing gloves that Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro presented their crew as wrap gifts on Raging Bull.

VIDEO: Brett Ratner Accepts GLAAD Award: 'I Learned a Valuable Lesson'

"You know what my dream movie-memorabilia is?" he asks. "The necklace from Rosemary's Baby."

Ratner has asked his friend Roman Polanski about that object, but "Roman doesn't have it," he sighs. Polanski is just one of his "besties"; the two hang out together in Paris, and Ratner will release Polanski's 1972 documentary about race-car driver Jackie Stewart, Weekend of a Champion, with a Nov. 7 premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

His boundless joie de vivre spills over on other filmmakers he doesn't know so well (he produced an Emmy-nominated American Masters film on Woody Allen) as well as subjects that spark his considerable curiosity, from Erno Rubik, inventor of the eponymous Cube (about whom he's planning one of his many documentaries) to film books, several of which he has reprinted at considerable expense through his RatPac Press, including Lawrence Grobel's Conversations With Brando.

Such positivity is almost irresistible; it affects this reporter, the crew and the vast line of human beings linked in an endless chain that ultimately leads to Ratner. But it also runs the risk of making the director seem more bubbly than brilliant. Too many people use the word "boyish" to describe him; too few speak of his work. And that gnaws at him, risks chipping away at what he calls his "pathological happiness."

"At the end of the day, whether I finance a slate of Warner Bros. movies [or pursue anything else], I'm still a director," he insists.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/news/~3/oyNd_1Ru0SI/how-director-brett-ratner-evolved-650017
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WORLD SERIES WATCH: Cards take 1-0 lead after 4

BOSTON (AP) — A look at Game 2 of the World Series at Fenway Park on Thursday night as the St. Louis Cardinals take on the Boston Red Sox:

___

TURNING TWO: Big double play turned by the Cardinals to help Michael Wacha in the fourth inning.

Pedroia leads off with a Wall ball that clangs loudly off the Green Monster scoreboard. Matt Holliday played it fairly well — perhaps a good sign for St. Louis fans worried about how Holliday, a shaky defender at times, would adjust to left field in Fenway Park.

Pedroia slides easily into second with a double anyway, and David Ortiz walks. But then, Wacha gets Mike Napoli to ground into a 6-4-3 double play started by Daniel Descalso, starting at shortstop tonight instead of Pete Kozma, who made two errors in the opener.

Jonny Gomes pops out to end the inning. Cardinals lead 1-0 after four.

___

ON THE BOARD: Cardinals take a 1-0 lead in the fourth inning.

Holliday led off with a triple to the triangle in deep right-center. His drive hit the low wall by the bullpens and caromed away from center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury, one of those odd angles and bounces at Fenway Park.

Matt Adams lined out to a diving Dustin Pedroia at second base, but Yadier Molina knocks in the run with a chopper over the mound. Pedroia looks home before throwing to first, making sure to get an out. Not an easy play.

___

BASE HIT: Ellsbury's broken-bat single with two outs in the third inning is Boston's first hit off Wacha. Ellsbury gets stranded when Shane Victorino flies out.

___

FORGOTTEN MAN: John Lackey has been overshadowed throughout this postseason. He faced David Price in the division series and then Justin Verlander in the ALCS.

Beat 'em both.

Tonight, it's rookie sensation Michael Wacha opposing Lackey on the mound. After flirting with a couple of no-hitters and going 3-0 with a 0.43 ERA in three playoff starts, Wacha has been receiving all sorts of fanfare. He recently walked into a restaurant in St. Louis and found a milkshake named after him on the menu.

Wacha has earned all the attention — but don't sleep on Lackey. He relishes a big-game challenge and has plenty of October success himself to draw on. After all, Lackey was a rookie in 2002 when he won Game 7 of the World Series for the Angels against Barry Bonds and the San Francisco Giants.

Now, it's Wacha who is the rising young star and Lackey the crafty veteran who came back from Tommy John surgery this year.

One generation faces the next. Definitely one of the things that makes baseball — all sports, really — so much fun.

Game 2 is scoreless after 2½ innings. Both pitchers appear to be on top of their game. Could be a tight duel all night at quiet Fenway.

___

BELTRAN BACK: Star outfielder Carlos Beltran felt good enough to start for the Cardinals, a day after he bruised his ribs while banging into the short bullpen wall to take away a grand slam from David Ortiz.

Beltran was batting second and back in right field. He singled in his first at-bat in front of a diving Jonny Gomes in left field.

Beltran waited his whole career to play in the World Series. He then struck out in the first inning Wednesday night, got hurt in the second and left in the third. Not quite the debut he hoped for.

He's one of the best postseason players ever, and hoped to help the Cardinals bounce back from an embarrassing 8-1 loss in the opener.

___

LOOKING AT LESTER: A day after a reversed call by umpires created commotion, there was another ruckus before Game 2. This one involved the glove of Red Sox ace Jon Lester, and developed into a did-he-or-didn't he deal.

A Cardinals minor league pitcher named Tyler Melling posted a screen shot on Twitter that showed a green substance in Lester's mitt. Melling added: "Jon Lester using a little Vaseline inside the glove tonight?"

Shades of allegations against Detroit pitcher Kenny Rogers in the 2006 Series, right?

Anyhow, Lester insisted before Game 2 that he only uses rosin — that he got no extra help in pitching 7 2-3 shutout innings in the opener.

Major League Baseball looked into the matter and said it couldn't draw any conclusions from the video it studied.

"There were no complaints from the Cardinals and the umpires never detected anything indicating a foreign substance throughout the game," MLB said in a statement.

___

MO-MENT: Mariano Rivera was honored — again — at Fenway Park — again — with the Commissioner's Historic Achievement Award before Game 2 of the World Series.

Baseball's career saves leader wore a suit and had his family with him on the field. Big Papi stood nearby clapping, and Rivera acknowledged the cheering crowd at Fenway.

Red Sox fans have been lauded several times for the class they've shown this year in saluting Rivera, who retired after the regular season. And that's been warranted. Wonder, though, whether they would feel so warm and fuzzy about him if not for Boston's big comeback in the 2004 AL championship series against Rivera and the rival New York Yankees.

Rivera's signature entrance song, Metallica's "Enter Sandman," played at Fenway when he was saluted on the field. A few minutes later, five-time Grammy Award winner James Taylor performed the national anthem.

The pregame pomp also included former Boston stars Pedro Martinez, Jason Varitek and others throwing out first pitches. David Ortiz presented the balls, then caught one of the pitches.

___

LINEUP CHANGE: Cardinals shortstop Pete Kozma's two errors in Game 1 earned him a spot on the St. Louis bench. Manager Mike Matheny tweaked his lineup, pulling Kozma and putting Daniel Descalso in his place.

Kozma has made several nifty pickups in the postseason and has developed a reputation for getting key hits. He's also been on the wrong end of some kooky plays.

There's not much time to get things right in October. So while Kozma settles down, Descalso is in there, batting ninth.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/world-series-watch-cards-1-0-lead-4-013432367--spt.html
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Hailee Steinfeld: Sirius XM Cutie

Heading out for more promotional duties for her highly anticipated film "Ender's Game," Hailee Steinfeld stopped by Sirius XM studios in New York City on Wednesday (October 23).

The 16-year-old actress donned a leopard shirt with black leather pants as she enjoyed a cold beverage on the busy street.

Recently, Miss Steinfeld discussed how excited she was when she first heard about her role based on the bestseller by Orson Scott Card sci-fi flick.

"Reading the script, I thought, 'How much fun is this going to be to film?" Hailee stated. "When you go back through [the book], it has some really serious elements that really came into perspective when we were thrown into this boot camp. Thankfully, we were able to have some fun but it was intense."

Also discussing her co-star Harrison Ford, the "True Grit" star joked, "Lots of people will ask if I even known who Harrison Ford is. His work was definitely carried across my generation. Working with him was just the coolest experience."

In regards to her role as Petra, Miss Steinfeld said, "Somewhere in their story, every character I have played really comes through as a young woman, learns to stick up for themselves, creates their own voice and becomes comfortable in their own skin - I really love that."

Source: http://celebrity-gossip.net/hailee-steinfeld/hailee-steinfeld-sirius-xm-cutie-949094
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BBM for iPhone line ups over, fast access now for everyone

When BlackBerry Messenger for iPhone debuted there was a waiting list to gain access. That's always a good way to mitigate against massive server loads, but not a great way to satisfy everyone who wants on now, now, now. Well, looks like the waiting list is a thing of the past, and millions of downloads later, the gates are wide open for anyone and everyone who wants in.

If you haven't tried BBM for iPhone yet, now's your chance. If you have, let me know what you think.

• Free - Download now

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/824dq8Lfmio/story01.htm
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No. 20 S Carolina rallies past No. 5 Mizzou in 2OT

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Hobbled by a sprained left knee, Connor Shaw asked Steve Spurrier if he could play Saturday night at Missouri.

The South Carolina coach obliged, calling on Shaw in the third quarter down with the Gamecocks down 17 and starter Dylan Thompson struggling.

Shaw threw for 201 yards and three touchdowns in relief, engineering three fourth-quarter drives and helping the Gamecocks score on their final five possessions to stun No. 5 Missouri 27-24 in two overtimes.

"Dylan played awfully well most of the time he's played," Spurrier said. "It was do or die. We had no chance in the division if we didn't win this one."

Elliott Fry's 40-yard field goal proved to be the game-winner after Missouri's Andrew Baggett clanked a 24-yard attempt off the left goal post.

"He's a competitor," coach Gary Pinkel said of his kicker. "You know, that's his job and it's his responsibility. Last week, he made five. . It's not one guy here. We all could have done something different to help win that football game."

Shaw extended the game in the first overtime with a 15-yard touchdown pass on fourth down in the Gamecocks' first overtime to match the Tigers' Marcus Murphy's 1-yard scamper.

Missouri (7-1, 3-1) could have all but locked up the SEC East with a victory, instead South Carolina (6-2, 4-2) moves to within one game of the Tigers for the division lead, with home games against Mississippi State and Florida remaining.

Shaw engineered fourth-quarter scoring drives of 65, 69 and 63 yards, and the Gamecocks knotted the score at 17 on a two-yard reception by Nick Jones with 42 seconds remaining. Ellington scored his first touchdown on a 6-yard catch with 12:13 remaining, and Elliott Fry added a 20-yard field goal with 5:03 left.

Thompson started his third career game for the Gamecocks, throwing for 222 yards. The Gamecocks outgained Missouri 498-404, but couldn't convert until Shaw entered.

Mike Davis caught three screen passes on South Carolina's final scoring drive in regulation, partly making up for two fumbles in the first half. The Gamecocks turned the ball over three consecutive times in the second quarter, helping Missouri take a 14-0 halftime lead.

Davis, who led the conference with 125.6 rushing yards per game entering the night, committed his first miscue at the Missouri 29-yard line with 12:30 remaining in the half, and his second halted a 71-yard drive at the Tigers' 2-yard line with 5:46 left. He finished the night with 51 rushing yards and 99 receiving yards while backup Shon Carson added 27 on the ground and 14 through the air.

Spurrier noted that despite the fumbles, Davis' key role down the stretch helped the Gamecocks come back.

"I didn't lose hope at all," Davis said. "Our guys, tonight we came together."

Davis' second fumble set the stage for a 96-yard touchdown pass from Maty Mauk to L'Damian Washington for Missouri. Two yards deep in his own end zone, Mauk found Washington streaking toward the middle of the field for an easy first down, and then the receiver eluded two tackles at his 45-yard line before being untouched the rest of the way. The pass was Missouri's longest since a 98-yarder from Pete Woods to Joe Stewart at Nebraska in 1976.

Mauk struggled out of the gate, throwing a pass dropped by defender Sharrod Golightly and then an interception to Kaiwan Lewis, a far cry from the 41-yard pass and 20-yard touchdown toss he threw in his opening attempts last week in a 36-17 win against Florida. But Mauk then completed three of his next four to set up Missouri's first touchdown, an 11-yard scamper by Murphy with 1:23 left in the first quarter.

Mauk finished with 249 yards and a touchdown in his second career start, while Murphy totaled 53 yards on the ground.

The Tigers added a 27-yard field goal by Baggett with 6:46 left in the third quarter before he missed a 46-yarder in the fourth quarter wide left.

"I told our football team," Pinkel said. "The loss will not define us. What will define this football team is how we deal with it. . It stings, you feel awful. You feel terrible, and that's OK. But we've got to get going. We have a real good football team."

The Tigers still control the SEC East race, but should South Carolina win its final two conference games, they'll have to win their remaining four games starting next week at home against Tennessee to clinch a trip to Atlanta Dec. 7.

• Sports & Recreation
• American Football
• South Carolina
• Steve Spurrier
• Connor Shaw

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/no-20-carolina-rallies-past-no-5-mizzou-040832366--spt.html
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T-Mobile HTC One Android 4.3 update now live

Big update for HTC One owners on T-Mobile US

Right on schedule, the Android 4.3 update for the HTC One on T-Mobile US has begun rolling out, bringing T-Mo's version of HTC's flagship up to the latest platform version. The update also brings some extra features to HTC's Sense 5 UI, including new video highlight themes, Instagram support in BlinkFeed and greater control over the way "home" and "menu" button functionality works.

If you're rocking an HTC One on T-Mobile, hit the comments and let us know how you're getting on. Next up is Verizon's HTC One, which launched with Android 4.2 and already has many of the new Sense features. That device is due to get Android 4.3 around the end of the month.

Source: Android Central forums

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/4XWSEWs5cvA/story01.htm
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