Review of DL.TV

From the company that brought you Cranky Geeks and The 1up Show comes Digital Life TV, a 50-minute tech talk show hosted by Patrick Norton and Robert Heron. Fans of the show liken it to TechTV’s The Screen Savers, which was also hosted by Patrick Norton. The show airs live, online from San Francisco every Tuesday and Thursday at 4pm PST and is subsequently available for download. With no press or marketing, the first episode aired in August 2005 and developed a large following of loyal fans, who contribute to the show via their tech-savvy questions.

Airing live the day of broadcast and available for download the next day, the episodes range from 30 minutes to an hour depending on the topics covered. Topics are tagged and searchable for easy use, whether you’re looking for something general or for specific information about the latest Dell and Apple battery recalls. The show proclaims it’s “for tech fans by tech fans,” but although the language is fairly complex and tech-specific, the hosts often break down concepts and vocabulary for the layman viewer. Norton, Heron, and their guests explore new products and other current events in the tech industry. The boys have a quirky hosting style, on display as Episode 89

opens with a moment of silence for Pluto after it was downgraded from planet status or when they answer a viewer’s question about using laptop locks while in the loo at Starbucks. Though the holds a wealth of information and is useful to tech fans and average consumers alike.

Product and software demonstrations are notably thorough, as you would expect on such a lengthy tech show. An in depth look at the Image Modeler software used by Pixel Corps’s Alex Lindsay gives a super-cool step-by-step demonstration, taking four pictures of a man’s head and converting it into a rotating digital 3D image.