May 102013
Evolution: Part 2
List Price: $ 1.99
Price: $ 1.99
Parrot MKi9200 Advanced Color Display Bluetooth Hands-Free Music Kit
- Full system dedicated to keeping connected and entertained in your car
- 2.4-inch high-resolution TFT color screen lets you see who is calling
- Double microphone technology eliminates background and surrounding noise, including noise from inside the car
- Listen to your digital music in the car: compatible with all music sources, such as iPods, iPhones, and more
- Cutting-edge telephony functions like automatic phonebook synchronization, training-free multi-speaker voice recognition, and more
The MKi system is a unique range of Bluetooth hands%2Dfree car kits which install in every car%2E It combines the latest communication technologies with a full set of services dedicated to music%2E Once paired with your Bluetooth mobile phone%2C the MKi enables you to establish in a few seconds any phone conversations in your vehicle without needing to handle the telephone%2C even leaving it in your pocket%2E Connection with your mobile is madein a completely transparent way%2E The user%2Dindepe
List Price: $ 249.99
Price: $ 249.99
Daniel Jackson returns for the 7th season of “Stargate SG-1″,
Looking back on the seventh season of “Stargate SG-1″ it seems clear that the show was caught between the idea that this was the final season and an impulse to retool the series to keep in going into an eighth season. In short, I think if they knew then what they know now they would have done things differently, especially with the question of Richard Dean Anderson’s status for season nine. When the new president made Dr. Elizabeth Weir (Jessica Steen) the new civilian head of the Stargate project that had a lot of interesting possibilities, both because of her gender and because she had an extensive background in diplomatic negotiations. But the two-part “Lost City” that ends this season becomes more about stopping Anubis from destroying the Earth than retooling the show and Weir is going to end up on “Stargate: Atlantis” (to be played by Torri Higginson). There is a lot that happens in those last three episodes, when President Hayes (William Devane) takes office and Anubis attacks, with the potential for more all sorts of interesting ramifications, more so than with what happens when the season starts.
That is when Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) returns from being an ascended being, albeit on an alien world without his memory (“Fallen”). This required getting rid of Jonas Quinn (Corin Nemec) to get the old gang back together again, which happens when Anubis download Jonas’ memory and the Goa’uld attack Kelowna (“Homecoming”). Wisely, this is not the last appearance of Jonas for the season (“Fallout”) as he becomes another one of recurring guest characters that are a major strength of the series. There are several Daniel Jackson stories that make a point of giving the actor interesting things to do, such as “Lifeboat,” where his mind becomes a resting place for a bunch of alien minds, “Enemy Mine,” which requires Jackson to show diplomatic skills, and big time flashbacks in “Chimera,” to before Daniel first saw the Stargate. Overall, Jackson comes running to the rescue more often than any other character during this season (e.g., “Resurrection”).
I understand now that Anderson had a reduced workload for Season 7 of “Stargate SG-1,” and there are some interesting attempts to make the best of that situation, as when O’Neill is transformed into a teenage boy (“Fragile Balance”). For the most part the main tactic is to make O’Neill a supporting character and let the other characters do the heavy lifting. But when I look over the 21 episodes for the season it becomes clear that Teal’c (Christopher Judge) is primarily a supporting player for the year as well, with “Orpheus” and “Birthright” being the only episodes to really focus on Teal’c. You do have to admit, that nobody on the show milks a stare better than the big fella.
Overall, Season 7 is really Samantha Carter’s season and Amanda Tapping has several episodes where she pretty much goes it alone. “Space Race” has her joining an alien pilot for a little intergalactic competition, while “Death Knell” finds Carter being hunted by the supers soldiers of Anubis after an attack on Earth’s secret off-world base. In “Grace” Carter literally ends up alone when the Prometheus is attacked and she wakes up to find herself the only one on a ship drifting in deep space. The other characters show up as the angels of her better nature, which is the only way that Sam and Jack are ever going to have an honest conversation. She even has an actual boyfriend for an episode “Chimera,” in a concerted effort to get rid of the “black widow” label that has plagued Carter. The unrequited love between Carter and O’Neill is pitch perfect, so just let them keep their unspoken thoughts and give this woman a social life. Of course we have to take this to an extreme and that would be the fantasies of Jay Felger (“Avenger 2.0″).
The whole Anubis/Lost City bit ends up being equal parts time to beat another bigger and badder system lord and find a fitting end point for the series that can also work as a transition to the spinoff. In your free time you can speculate as to what they would have done differently knowing that there was going to be an eighth season of “Stargate SG-1,” but I have to think there would have been some significant changes that would not have wrapped up things so quickly and conveniently. Besides, having read my Dante I have been patiently waiting for Robert Kinsey (Ronny Cox) to receive his comeuppance, and with everything that was happening in those final episodes that was a notable anticlimax.
The two main tensions in Season 7 are between the need to keep coming up with a bigger threat for SG-1 to face and the desire to keep the characters real. The former is represented by the super soldiers engineered by Anubis (“Evolution, Part 1″) and Kinsey becoming Vice President (“Inauguration”), while the latter is at the heart of the two-part “Heroes,” when reporter Emmett Bregman (Saul Rubinke)…
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|To the Rescue,
Stargate fans old and new hail Season 7 as the most anticipated season yet. The return of Dr. Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) allows for a common nostalgic feeling among the shows viewers. Leaving after Season 5, his replacement Jonas Quinn (Corin Nemec, Season 6) added to the adventure, but left many SG-1 fans calling Season 6 “boring” and “tame”. Diehard SG-1 fans acknowledge Season 6 adventures, but look to Season 7 as a new beginning.
On the list of favorites, Season 7 saw the greatest changes and challenges ever to be seen in the SG-1 universe. Seasons 1 and 2 offered adventures leading up to the defeat of Apophis, one of the greatest threats SG-1 ever faced. Season 7 offers a new, long awaited nemesis, Anubis, a dark and very diabolical Gou’ald, whom for his past transgressions, was cast out of the “High Council of System Lords” and into exile. Mid-Season, SG-1 has been given hints toward the evils Anubis has been cooking up while in his exile. These evils are confirmed at the end of the season, which allow for SG-1 fans old and new to enjoy some well deserved butt kicking, which hasn’t been seen for several seasons, but also allow for the writers to set a platform for Season 8 and new franchise, SG-Atlantis. Also, season 7 sees the promotion of General Hammond (Don S. Davis) and then end of Dr. Janet Frasier (Teryl Rothery).
Overall, Season 7 is plentiful in story, and if you missed an episode on Sci-Fi, you missed too much. Attention to detail on-screen and in story is phenomenal, and I would recommend to any new SG-1 fans to purchase this season and enjoy! And of course to old SG-1 Fans, if you skipped Season 6, don’t worry; you can get right back on track with Season 7 and the return Michael Shanks.
Thanks for reading. Hope this helps in your decision to buy!
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|Major widespread defect!,
I have tried purchasing this DVD set through many retailers including Best Buy, Borders, Amazon and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM HAS THE SAME DEFECT W/ THE LAST EPISODE. How can everyone still be selling this if it has a widespread defect across many major retailers?? Why isn’t something being done about this?
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|Self Installed MKi9200,
I finally installed a hard wired bluetooth hands free system in my car after using an earpiece for months/years. The MKi9200 is OUTSTANDING; I wish I had installed one a long time ago. The installation for my 2006 Trailblazer required a wiring harness from one of the Parrot vendors listed on their website which costs an extra $75. Regardless, the voice recognition feature is perfect and the radio mute feature works seamlessly with my factory stereo. The calls are crystal clear and everyone can hear me without any difficulties. I found the installation fairly easy and would recommend this product to anyone who is tired of charging, turning on/off, and finding, your blue tooth ear piece.
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|Need bluetooth, like mp3s, no aux jack, look no further!!,
This is a very capable bluetooth system. Parrot has made a great product. If self-installing, it is strongly recommend that you utilize the harness recommended by the manufacturer on their website. This could have been a complicated install, but it was actually plug and play. The mki9200 was installed in a 2005 Honda Accord Hybrid with Navigation. Many diagnostic functions of the car are inextricably integrated with the NAV/stereo system, so I was definitely not going to take out the NAV. Furthermore, the Navigation/stereo work great. The problem that needed to be solved was getting a way to play mp3 without using an FM transmitter (FM transmitters are notorious for horrible sound/interference, etc.) and getting bluetooth in this vehicle without replacing the NAV/stereo system. This is where the Parrot Mki9200 answered all these needs. The hardest part of the install was getting to the back of the nav/stereo system, once there, unplugged the nav/stereo, plugged the harness (recommended by parrot) inbetween the unplugged connectors, like a plug sandwich if you will. This way you don’t even use the multi-colored spaghetti bundle of wires from parrot, the harness replaces all of those. From the new harness, the middle of the new plug sandwich, it becomes very obvious where each plug then goes, such as to the parrot brain unit, to the display, inputs such as USB, line in, and an IPOD connector. In addition to those options, you can also utilize flash memory cards which plug into the back of the mini display unit. With the ever increasing size and decreasing price of flash memory, this makes this unit very capable of storing a great amount of music, or interfacing with a wide variety of devices, like ipods and such. Was planning to get my wife an ipod, however, the bluetooth audio through the parrot sounds fantastic using a Blackberry. (Make sure to go through the audio setting menu and try different settings, made a huge difference for me, went from mediocre sounding music to crystal clear. Also using the phone bluetooth mode, make sure to adjust the microphone setting if people are not hearing you clearly, I switched ours from automatic to +2db and it works great now. All in all this product has exceeded our expectations. If you do not have an aux jack in your car, need bluetooth, and like music, this system is for you. Keep in mind any music operated through the parrot is controlled via the parrot including the volume and other settings and through the parrot’s own amplification which is surprisingly strong and crisp. This product gets the highest endorsement from me.
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|Fantastic solution,
This unit reminds me of an apple product at its best — it does exactly what it is supposed to do, elegantly and intuitively.
About a year ago, I installed a USA-Spec solution to play my i-pod through my factory stereo. It had taken a while to find a hard-wired ipod solution which allowed continued use of satellite radio, which was very important. The USA-Spec did the job, but with a number of significant limitations. First, while it displayed track information through the factory stereo display, the limitations of that display (a single line of text) made it less than ideal. Second, I found the control of the ipod through the factory stereo awkward — it was hard to scroll through artists, albums, tracks, etc., due to frequent lags in loading the information and automatically selecting the displayed menu selection after a few seconds. Basically, this product did provide a hard-wired ipod connection and retained my factory satellite, but the limitations on the interface left me not using it very much.
I stumbled on the Parrot looking for a bluetooth phone selection, and initially assumed it would be another add-on. Based upon other reviews here and elsewhere, though, I decided to give this model a try because it offered both bluetooth and ipod and other inputs for audio
Also based upon other reviews, I purchased both the honda harness and the installcard installation. The parrot arrived next day (thanks, Prime!) from Amazon, the harness second day from Crutchfield. The installcard worked well — first an email with information about the card, the online selection of installer and preferred date, then a call from installcard to confirm the appointment.
The installation went fine with one fairly significant exception. When I got in the car at the installer’s, everything seemed to work except the microphone. I didn’t have time to get the installer to open up the stereo and figure out the problem and took it home. Once I got it home, I opened the stereo (thanks to the information sent by Crutchfield), and realized the microphone problem was an easy one to fix — the installer hadn’t pushed the microphone jack all the way into the port. There is a sort of keyhole in the port and I just lined the jack up with it, inserted all the way, and twisted a quarter turn. With that, the microphone worked like magic.
My basic impressions, after a week with the device:
(1) it takes probably twenty seconds to boot, which is not a problem.
(2) it found and synced with my motorola droid automatically and perfectly.
(3) the voice recognition is perfect — i can mumble at times and it hasn’t missed a voice command yet.
(4) the steering wheel control and video display work perfectly and intuitively. If you have an ipod and can navigate it, you can navigate with this device.
(5) I like that the parrot audibly states where you are when navigating through the menu.
(6) The ipod interface works great — again, just like an ipod, complete with album art displayed on the screen.
(7) The first two days, I had problems with the device periodically rebooting for no apparent reason. When I updated the firmware (also easy to do), that problem has not recurred.
(8) The integration with the stereo is great — when you place or receive a call, it automatically cuts out the audio (whether through the factory stereo or the parrot itself). When the call ends, it goes back to the audio.
(9) I have seen some complaints with sound quality in a couple of reviews, and I can’t disagree more. While initially had a problem with it not playing audio in all speakers, the firmware update solved that as well. Any audio hardwired (through the 30 pin ipod connection, or the mini jack) is perfect. The bluetooth streaming from the droid sounds good too — not quite up to the quality of a hard-wired connection, but very close).
A note for Honda users — after ordering this device but before it arrived, I began to worry about whether I would be able to continue to use the factory satellite. That concern was unfounded as factory stero seems to retain all of its functions. My non-technical perception of this device is that when in use it simply mutes the output from the factory stereo to the speakers, essentially taking over the stereo. When not it use, the parrot simply sits silently in the background, allowing the factory stereo to work as usual.
If you hadn’t guessed, I recommend this device whole-heartedly. It would be worth the price for either its handling of the ipod or its bluetooth phone connection. The fact that it does both as nearly perfectly as I can imagine is amazing.
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