A number of people have commented that after changing the color wheel, their red and blue colors are reversed. This is a different color wheel and a newer model set than is documented here, but, some report that by removing a jumper on the color wheel, the problem is resolved.

The jumper is as shown in this picture, below the yellow/white label.

Thanks to Tref for the picture!

And if you’re unsure about this.

Post from: Jangro.com

Reversed Red and Blue After Changing Samsung DLP Color Wheel

This guide will tell you how to reset the lamp counter on your Panasonic DLP television. This procedure is necessary to reset the indicator lamp that tells you that it’s time to replace your lamp.

After you have changed the lamp on your Panasonic DLP Television, you want to be sure to reset the lamp counter, or timer on the television. You really should only do this after you have replaced your DLP lamp. See here for information on replacing the lamp in your Panasonic DLP.

What does this mean? All lamps, lightbulbs, etc., have an expected life in hours. DLP televisions have an internal timer that tell you how many hours your lamp has operated. On some televisions you can actually view the number of hours; in others it is merely to display a “replace your lamp” message. On the Panasonic it is the latter.

The procedure for resetting your lamp is a little bit tricky. This is intentional so that you don’t do it accidentally.

1. Turn on the television.
2. Press the volume down button on the TV display (not the remote!)
3. While pressing the volume button, press the “split” or “PIP” button on your remote.

If it works, you’ll see a message like this, an the lamp indicator light will turn off. Success!

Enjoy your new lamp!

Post from: Jangro.com

How to Reset the Lamp Counter on your Panasonic DLP Television

This guide explains how to change the lamp in your Panasonic DLP television matching the part number TYLA1000 or TY-LA1000. This lamp replacement is compatible with at least a few dozen Panasonic models. See the list at the end of this post to see if yours matches.

How do you know when it is time to replace your lamp?

The sure sign that your lamp needs replacement is an indicator like this on your display. (yeah, NSS.)

However, you may determine that you need to change it sooner, either if the lamp won’t fire up at all (and therefore no message can display), or you find that the picture has dimmed significantly over time.

The best bet is to get a backup lamp BEFORE you need it. Lamps will die. They’re supposed to. They have a life expectancy of several thousand hours. This can be 1 to 10 years depending on your television viewing habits and other factors.

What lamp to buy?

There are two options when buying a replacement lamp:

1. Lamp and Housing
2. Bare lamp

Replacing the bare lamp requires some pretty involved procedures, possibly including the use of wire cutters and a soldering iron. That’s pretty serious stuff, and beyond the scope of this document. But if you feel comfortable with that, go for it. You also run more of a risk to end up with a lamp that is not from an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and may be an inferior product.

The safest bet is to go with the entire lamp and housing kit. It is much easier AND much faster. And it’s a 5 minute operation instead of an hour. This will matter if your lamp dies in the second quarter of the Super Bowl. Then what’s a quick change worth to you?

You can purchase the full lamp and housing at PartStore.com. I’ve had really good luck with those guys.

Replacement Instructions

1. Turn power off and wait until the power lamp stops blinking. This gives the lamp enough time to cool down and the fans to stop.

At this point, the safest thing is to wait at least an hour for the lamp to cool off sufficiently. If you do not wait, you could get a serious burn.

Forced Cooling: Some Panasonic models have a forced cooling feature. After the power button is turned off, during the time when the cooling fan is still in operation (within the first minute), press the VOL+ button on the television and a solid triangle button on the remote at the same time for at least 5 seconds. In this mode, the cooling fan will operate for 10 minutes. the lamp indicator will flash red five times every five seconds.

2. Unplug the set from the wall.

3. Remove the front cover on the television by placing your fingertips under the cover and pulling up from the television.

4. Loosen the lamp cover screw and remove the lamp cover.

5. Loosen the lamp housing screw with a screwdriver. Pull the unit out by the handle. (See picture to the right.)

6. Carefully insert the new lamp. Use caution to not touch the face of the lamp. Oil and residue from your hands can heat up and shorten the life of the lamp. Press the lamp firmly into place. There are connectors that must seat properly.

7. Tighten the screw on the lamp.

8. Replace the cover and tighten cover screw.

9. Replace the front cover.

10. Reset the lamp counter by following the instructions here: Reset Panasonic DLP Lamp Counter.

Compatible Models

The lamp and procedure described in this post is compatible with the following Panasonic television models.

PT-43LC14, PT43LCX64. PT44LCX65, PT-44LCX65-K,
PT50LC13, PT-50LC13-K, PT50LC14, PT50LCX63, PT50LCX64, PT52LCX15, PT52LCX15B, PT52LCX35, PT52LCX65, PT-52LCX65-K, PT60LC13, PT60LC14, PT60LCX63, PT60LCX64, PT60LCX64C, PT61LCX35, PT61LCX65, PT-61LCX65-K, TY50LC13C

Post from: Jangro.com

Panasonic DLP Lamp (TYLA1000) Replacement How-To

My GE Advantium Microwave Oven’s lamps burn out way too often. While it looks difficult to replace the one that lights up the inside of the microwave, it is actually very easy.

The oven has two halogen lamps in it, both identical. So you can purchase one or more replacements knowing that (a) they will burn out eventually, and (b) the lamps you purchase can be used in either location in the oven.

Replacing the lamp on the bottom is easy and obvious. Unscrew the single screw holding on the cover and you can access the lamp.

Replacing the lamp inside the oven is not difficult, but it is not at all obvious. That’s the focus of this how-to.

To get to the lamp, you need to remove the grate/air vent at the top front of the oven.

IMPORTANT: Before starting, you should unplug the microwave oven!

To remove the vent, you must remove the two screws at the top left and right corners. There are three screws up there, but you only need to remove the outermost two.

Before pulling off the cover, take note of how it is flush with the front of the microwave. It is easy to put it back on and not have it seated fully. The cover will pull right off, releasing from the top. Tilt it down towards you.

With the cover off, you can see a metal plate. The lamp is under it. To lift the plate, you need to remove three screws and two smaller covers that are covering the electrical components.

First screw on the left side:

Two screws on the right side holding down the plate and two covers.

Once the screws are removed, remove the cover shown in the above picture. That will expose another smaller cover that you can slide out by pulling it to the left.

With those covers removed, it looks like this. Even though the microwave is unpugged, be careful not to touch any of these electrical components.

Now you can lift the plate and locate the lamp. The lamp is in a shiny metal cover that you need to pinch to remove. (See the video for more detail.)

The lamp cover and lamp look like this once removed. To remove the lamp itself, slide it in the direction of the arrow.

Replace with the new lamp. It doesn’t matter which side faces down.

Reverse the steps to put it all back together!

Post from: Jangro.com

How to Replace the Lamp in your GE Advantium 120 Microwave Oven

A reader asks, “How long does a DLP lamp last?”

Under normal conditions, standard DLP lamps should last 7000-8000 hours. Your own lamp and television watching habits will vary, but if you watch TV…

• 2 hours a day, your lamp could last for more than 10 years
• 5 hours a day… 4 years
• 10 hours a day… 2 years

8000 hours. That’s a lot of Law and Order!

There are some things that could decrease the expected life of a lamp, such as widely varying room temperatures, poor ventilation around the television set, electrical spikes, as well as other factors.

Be sure to see this post on how to make your DLP lamps last longer.

DLP lamps are expensive, but considering how much viewing you get they don’t really seem to cost that much. A $300 lamp that lives a full life will cost merely $0.03 to $0.04 per hour!

And since there’s nothing worse than losing your lamp in the middle of the big game, you should consider getting yourself a back up lamp if your current lamp is getting up there in hours.

Post from: Jangro.com

How Long do DLP Lamps Last?

The projector lamps in DLP televisions can run upwards of two or three hundred dollars. So it goes without saying that when a lamp goes out it’s painful in the pocketbook. It is also painful that your television can stop working in an instant, without warning.

Here are a few tips to keep your DLP lamp lasting as long as possible.

“Dynamic Mode” may cause your lamp to run at a higher wattage. Some television sets, like Samsung DLPs have a “Dynamic Mode” which makes the picture look more, uh, dynamic. I think this means brighter, which certainly coincides with the information that can be gained from Samsung documentation that says this mode runs a lamp at 120W instead of the standard 100W. This can’t be good for a lamp!

Don’t plug your television into a switched outlet, like a power strip, where you use that to turn the set off and on. All projectors, and a DLP television is no exception, have fans that run for several seconds after the unit is switched off to cool the lamp down. Many cable boxes have power outlets in them to automate turning the television on and off. This is bad as well.

Don’t turn the TV on and off frequently. On and off cycles put a lot of wear and tear on the electronics of a television set, and particularly a high temperature, high powered lamp. If you know you’re going to be watching the television again soon, leave it on.

Be nice to your DLP lamp and it will hopefully serve you for several thousand hours.

Post from: Jangro.com

Three Ways to Make your DLP Lamps Last Longer

Are you a runner? Got an iPhone or a iPod Touch? If you answered yes to those two questions, you’re $20 away from an incredible online experience for runners ($30 if you have a Nano).

I’m talking about Nike Plus online where you can track your workouts, connect with friends (old or new) and get motivated with training programs or challenging others to competitions or just challenging yourself to reach a milestone.

Shawn and Missy from Affiliate Summit have challenged Affiliate Marketers to reach a collective goal of 5,000 miles between now and Affiliate Summit East 2010 in NYC in August.

I’ve used Nike Plus for a few years now, but almost a year ago my shoe-sensor’s battery died. I never replaced it and instead tried out some different iPhone running apps that took advantage of the iPhone’s GPS (321run and RunKeeper).

Wanting to participate in the Affiliate Summit challenge, I picked up a new sensor and at the same time I discovered that if you have an iPhone 3GS or an iPod Touch, you don’t need to use the receiver unit that’s required for the Nano. Apple actually built the receiver into the recent versions of these hardware devices. This must be the least talked about feature on the iPhone.

What do you buy?

How to Set it Up

Setting it up was a bit challenging though as there was little guidance from the documentation that came with the sensor. After a bit of fumbling, here’s the process for setting up your iPhone 3GS or iPod Touch with the Nike Plus sensor.

1. Put the sensor in your shoe. It goes under the insole of a specially equipped Nike shoe. The ones with the place for the sensor have a plus in their name. These are what I’m currently running in, the Nike Air Citius 2+ MSL (note the +)

2. Put the shoes on and walk around a bit to activate the sensor.

3. Go into the settings on your iPhone and find the Nike + iPod application settings. (Don’t go looking in the iPod settings like I did.)

4. Turn on the Nike + iPod feature.

5. While in that screen, click on “Sensor”. If you’ve been walking around, the sensor should be active and the iPhone should link up with it pretty quickly.

6. Go back to the home screen and Find the Nike + iPod app which should have magically appeared in your apps. If you’re like me, you’ll have a hard time finding it as it dropped into an empty spot among 8 pages of apps. I actually had to search for it before moving it here to my home screen.

Start up the app and you’re good to go!

Now sign up for the Affiliate Summit challenge.

See you in Nike Plus!

Post from: Jangro.com

How to Set Up Nike Plus on iPhone 3GS

I sold my soul to yet another wireless carrier (T-mobile) so I could be one of the first to try out the new Nexus One (N1). Gadgetlust has a firm hold on me.

I’ll likely be ditching the Droid and my Verizon contract because oddly, Verizon’s service sucks here (I figured they’d fix it after three years). I seem to be in a dead zone, so while the “Can you hear me now” guy is slogging through the bayous of Louisiana, there are some of us up here in Metro-west Boston who can’t get a consistent signal. Since I work at home, that’s a problem. The Verizon techs blame it on a body of water that’s not far from here. Apparently microwaves cannot pass across the flattest surface possible. I don’t know.

Having been an iPhone user since he first one came out, I didn’t like the Verizon Droid hardware very much. If I could have snapped the keyboard off and used the rest of the phone it would have been perfect. That’s essentially what the N1 is (but with much rounder edges).

While I think it is important to keep in mind when reading this that I’m a huge iPhone fan, that’s all I’m going to say about the iPhone in this review. Comparing the two is a subject for a different post, and a topic that’s being hammered on by the A-listers all weekend.

Here’s what I like about the Nexus One

(though most of this is Android 2.1 stuff)

• The hardware form factor. It is a great size. The case is slightly rubberized and seems like it will wear well without a third-party case.
• The glowing trackball is fun, but almost useless. The fact that it works as the camera button saves it.
• Google Apps integration. Gmail on Android kicks ass. Google Voice integration is extremely well done as well.
• Voice Search. Really cool, and it works very well.
• The camera hardware is nice. It takes great pictures and the LED flash is a nice thing to have in a pinch.
• Facebook phonebook is an awesome idea. (though the Facebook app still sucks)
• The multi-tasking is nice. Best part is the notifications, but it’s also nice to be able to listen to Pandora while doing other stuff, or take a call or tweet while the GPS is running.
• The turn-by-turn GPS works great
• There are finally some really great apps appearing. I think 2010 will bring us some well done Android apps.

Here’s what I don’t like

• The Marketplace. Finding apps is a total drag. Keyword searches often come up empty (though there MUST be an app for what I’m looking for) but more often a bunch of crap icon packs appear rather than what I’m looking for. And why isn’t there a great website for searching for apps?
• I can’t easily take a screenshot. srsly? I was really hoping they’d fix this one in 2.1.
• The touch screen seems to lose its mind sometimes and either stops responding entirely or I have to do the gesture a few times.
• The software keyboard is sluggish. I can easily get ahead of it and it drops keys. It seems like it could be better at not only catching every keystroke, but guessing which key I meant to press based on the previous one. There must be some intelligence available to look at key-tuplets to predict what key I’m intending to press.
• the bar for app development quality and standards is pretty low. Consistency across apps is not great, so it can be a mystery whether you need to to a long touch on the screen, look in the menu button, find another button, etc.
• The four hard-coded buttons at the bottom of the screen. They’re either too easy to press by accident, or too hard to press on purpose. Why aren’t these actual buttons anyway?

Bottom line

I’ve been really enjoying the N1 this week and I’m going to keep it. (and ditching the Droid), but I’m not giving up the iPhone. Even if I did, from the sounds of it, Apple would have me crawling back this summer. I’m resigned to keeping two phones.

Post from: Jangro.com

My First Week with a Google Nexus One

RSS isn’t quite dead yet. If you’re relying on the browser to provide access to your RSS feed, you’re leaving a bit too much to chance.

Understandably, we’ve all become very used to our browsers auto-detecting a blog’s RSS feeds and providing a link somewhere up in the browser interface.

Like in Firefox we have a convenient RSS button in the address bar:

Problem is, Google Chrome (at least on OS X) doesn’t have this basic browser feature yet (which is just ridiculous).

So when I’m using Chrome, I can’t easily subscribe to Chris Saad’s blog, for example:

Sure, I can enter the blog’s URL into Google reader. Or I could open up Firefox. But don’t make me work for it. An RSS link is basic stuff that should just be there in your blog’s template.

(Sorry to pick on you Chris. I see this all the time. Yours was just the final straw.)

Post from: Jangro.com

Hey, I can’t subscribe to your RSS feed!

We got Rockband 2 for Christmas as the “Family Gift”. read “for Dad”. We’ve been having a great time with it.

I will say, however, that I’m a bit disappointed with the songs that come with it. Maybe I’m just showing my age. Rockband is SO much easier if you actually know the song first. Without having the beat of the song in your head, it’s nearly impossible to move past “easy” mode.

It comes with 80 songs with the promise of another 20 available for download by entering a redemption code in on their website. This promotion was on the box, and the packaging.

After my wife hunted around for way too long for the mysterious redemption code, I jumped online and learned from some 12 year olds that the Wii version didn’t come with this code. Customers would have to wait for the online store to get these free songs.

Well, that was almost a year ago, and the online store is now available. I went in and checked and discovered the free songs.

Lo and behold, there are 20 free songs mixed in with hundreds of not-free songs. I don’t think I know any of them, but your mileage may vary. Particularly if you’re a grunge rocker.

Here they are in order of difficulty

1. Manifesto – “Burn You Down”
2. TheNewNo2 – “Crazy Tuesday”
3. GLaDOS and Jonathan Coulton – “Still Alive”
4. The CAB – “Bounce”
5. Hollywood Undead – “Young”
6. Lesley Roy – “I’m Gone I’m Going”
7. The Len Price 3 – “If I Ain’t Got You”
8. Dealership – “Database Corrupted”
9. Semi Precious Weapons – “Magnetic Baby”
10. Cocktail Slippers – “Give it to me”
11. Ghost Hourds – “Ashes to Fire”
12. Kutless – “The Feeling”
13. The 88 – “Sons and Daughters”
14. The Chevelles – “Get it On”
15. Tickle Me Pink – “The Time is Wrong”
16. X Japan – “I.V.”
17. Endeverafter – “I Wanna be Your Man”
18. Shaimus – “Like a Fool”
19. Underoath – “Desperate Times, Desperate Measures”
20. Authority Zero – “No Regrets”
21. Between the Buried and Me – “Prequel to the Sequel”

I think we’ll be buying some songs. Though we did also get the Beatles Rock Band game. My three year old can do the vocals to Yellow Submarine, the chorus anyway.

Post from: Jangro.com

RockBand 2 Wii: The Missing Redemption Code and Bonus Songs