In this brief television tech segment, host Gloria introduces Tod Maffin for a weekly technology guide. Tod first explains how audio compression works: using the MP3 format, individual songs are reduced in size, allowing many more tracks to fit on a single CD, but the resulting data CD cannot be played on standard CD players and requires a computer. He illustrates the concept with a visual of paper representing bits of music. The conversation then shifts to household energy use. Tod describes a V.C. Hydro‑provided power‑monitoring gadget that measures the current draw of various home office devices (phone, LCD monitor, Pentium 4 PC, high‑speed modem, coffee warmer). He teases the audience about which device consumes the most power, noting that the answer is not the coffee maker. The segment is interspersed with informal banter between Tod, Gloria, and co‑host Ian, including jokes about cooking without salt and driving without a licence. Overall, the piece blends a casual, conversational tone with concise technical explanations of audio compression and home energy monitoring.
Chapters
And now for our weekly guide to the world of technology, Tod Maffin's here. Hi, Tod.
Hi, Gloria.
You know, we talk about the increase in technology in our lives today. There seems to be a fine—
Can you make my food without salt? Pouvez-vous préparer mon repas sans sel? Or my personal favorite, poutine! Poutine! I didn't ask for poutine! Yeah, well, they're still working on that one, but I guess, uh, my guess is it's probably on its way anyway.
Tod, I'm amazed you can do all that and drive too.
I know, and you know the funny thing is, Ian, I don't even have a license.
That's 'cause of course you have to be 16 to drive. Tod, see you next Friday.
Okay, bye, Ian. It looks like this, and if you can imagine, we have a very high-tech budget for this sort of thing, so imagine these pieces of paper are bits of music, individual songs. You can see that you can fit, on average, using just sort of regular audio, you can fit about, I don't know, 5, 6 songs, 7 songs sometimes, you know, depending on the length of the songs. Well, what you do with compression technology is that takes the song and basically squashes it down to a smaller size. The size of the file format that's used is called MP3, is the most common one, and this is why you hear a lot about MP3s. So what that means is that as a result, that individual song is now smaller, so you can actually pile a whole bunch of songs onto a single CD, and you can have many, many more. Now what's the problem with the CD? It doesn't play in regular CD players now because these are squashed and compressed down. They become data files. So until now, only a computer could really play a data CD with audio on it. Does that make any sense so far?
It makes a little bit of sense.
Okay, so what we've done in the past is we've had, we've had—
Here's a topic we have not talked about in 18 months: power and cost. How much you end up paying to, to run all those devices you have in your home.
And, you know, and it's not just all the gadgets that I have. I think everyone has that concern. I mean, just take a look around. I think I've got an average home office. I've got a few I've got a phone, I've got an LCD monitor, I've got a Pentium 4, I've got a high-speed modem, and I've got a coffee warmer. We all have our addictions. And so anyway, V.C. Hydro came in earlier today and had a look around. You can see this gadget that he's got here actually measures the amount of current being pulled at any given moment from all of these devices. And there were a couple of surprises in that. In fact, can you guess what, out of all of these things, what the biggest draw on power is?
Well, the coffee maker would be, but I think that was— you were just kind of mentioning that.
Frivolously, right? In fact, it's not. I have to say, if you try and do this on a plane, you look like an idiot. They ask you to leave. Not that I'm bitter. But, um, so you just kind of put this on and you plug it into the computer or into your TV set, either one, and you can start to see everything. It's like a— you can see sort of the 60-inch image of everything over your head. Where'd you go?
You see, it's possible that you don't look weird only on a plane, if you know what I'm trying to say. Uh, but I don't even know if you can hear me.
That's nice, that's nice. I can hear you. Where are you though?
But what are you watching? Anyway, Tod, we'll see you at least next week.
