There are three main categories of antennas:

• Omni-directional - Omni-directional antennas radiate RF in a fashion similar to the way a table or floor lamp radiates light. They are designed to provide general coverage in all directions.

• Semi-directional - Semi-directional antennas radiate RF in a fashion similar to the way a wall sconce is designed to radiate light away from the wall or the way a street lamp is designed to shine light down on a street or a parking lot, providing a directional light across a large area.

• Highly-directional - Highly-directional antennas radiate RF in a fashion similar to the way a spotlight is designed to focus light on a flag or a sign. Each type of antenna is designed with a different objective in mind.

My research had led me to believe that the best motherboard choice for my purposes was going to be a VIA EPIA which featured an embedded processor. After talking it over with VIA we dedicided that one of their MII motherboards would be best. Originally I wanted something fanless, like the MII6000, but due to availability we eventually settled on the MII10000. This motherboard features a 1.0 GHz VIA C3/ VIA Eden EBGA processor and the chipset is composed of a VIA CLE266 North Bridge and a VIA VT8235 South Bridge. The motherboard has some extras too, like built-in CF and PCMCIA readers.

Surface mount components are being used extensively these days. Most of the electronic gadgets that we use, such as mobile phones, digital cameras, CD players, LCDs, etc. use surface mount components extensively. A comprehensivetutorial on SMT components is available at Tutorialsweb.com. The contents are given briefly below:

PassiveComponents: Surface mount passive components including resistors, capacitors, and inductors were discussed.

Active Components: Examples of surface mount active components are diodes, Transistors, and ICs. ICs can be further divided in to the following categories:

• SOICs (Small Outline Integrated Circuits)
• SSOP (Shrink Small Outline Package)
• TSSOP (Thin Shrink Small Outline Package)
• SOJ (Small Outline J-leaded package) and others

Surface Mount Integrated circuits that are available in Quad-in-Line include the following:

• QFP (Quad Flat Pack)
• PGA (Pin Grid Array)
• BGA (Ball Grid Array)

Chip-on-Board (COB) is a special IC that uses bare die for bonding on to the PCB. It is commonly used where very high component density is required, and where lead lengths may affect the electrical parameters and thurs the functioning of the circuit.

Please visit the website for complete tutorials on SMTcomponents and SMTAssembly.

In this case, the subject is HDTV resolution, and 1080p resolution in particular. This seems to be on everyone's minds as we head into the holiday buying season and we're faced with more HDTV buying choices than ever before. Not a day goes by without someone asking whether they should just buy a "standard" 720p/1080i set or step up and pay the extra bucks for a higher-resolution 1080p set. Or what it all means. And so, I've tried to condense the whole discussion into a neat, little cheat sheet. Read on for the quick and dirty lowdown on 1080p.