IEEE Spectrum December, 2010 - 23

of an anonymous subcontractor
by finding the manufacturer's
signature model-Sharp's Aquos
line of HDTVs, for instance, or
Sony's Bravia-and noting what
the smallest screen size was for
that model line. It was a good
bet that any screen below that
size would be knockoff priced
and knockoff quality. Today,
though, Bravias come as small
as 22 inches-a size that Sony
itself is unlikely to manufacture.
Although there's no substitute
for seeing the television on the
showroom floor, Steinberg
says, extra points go to the
savvy shopper who goes home
afterward, researches the
alternatives, and buys the chosen
set on the retailer's Web site.
(When searching the Web by
the name of the desired set and
retailer, it pays to include the
phrase "coupon code"; you might
be able to knock another 10 to
20 percent off the retail price.)
Finally, consider the merits
of putting the Internet on
the TV itself. Samsung, LG,
Sony, and Vizio are among
the manufacturers adding net
connectivity to their top-tier
HDTV models-complete with
apps that provide access to
social networking sites, Netflix
and other streaming video,
and online music services
like Pandora and Last.fm. But,
Steinberg adds, remember that
the best deal might still be to
buy a "dumb" set and connect
to the Internet via another box.
"If you purchase a
PlayStation 3 for $300, for
example," he says, "You're
getting a Blu-ray player that
also has a massive library of
content with the ability to
stream music, movies and
photos, and download games."
-Mark Anderson
spectrum.ieee.org

SQuiNT-FRee: When appliances go
digital, some difficult tasks become easy.
the brother Quattro 6000d sewing
machine shown here has a camera
above the needle plate that shows the
stitching area on a built-in Lcd screen.
photo: Brother InternatIonal

a differenT kind of mulTiTHreading

today's sewing machines are sophisticated embedded
systems with exacting precision, automated stitch control,
and touch-screen interfaces

M

y Aunt Yetta sewed quilts-
and most of her family's clothes-
on an antique treadle sewing
machine that was powered by her foot.
The next 50 years of technological
innovation added electricity and the
zigzag stitch-and that was fine. As
long as a machine could stitch patches
of fabric to one another to create a
quilt top (called piecing) and could
sew together the quilt's bottom and
top layers with batting in between
(the actual quilting), we quilters could
make our pretty blankets, quietly
upgrading from one machine to
another without missing a stitch.
Today, though, if you open up a highend sewing machine, you'll find that
inside it's eerily akin to your latest PC-
jammed full of printed circuit boards,
USB ports, memory cards, and user
interfaces driven by touch screens.

Even a modest sewing machine has
hundreds of built-in stitches, and the
expensive models-wow. Bernina's stitch
regulator, a gizmo that attaches to higherend machines, ensures that free-motion
quilting stitches are even; the device reads
the movement of the fabric as you push
it past the needle and adjusts the motor
speed accordingly. One Brother model's
LCD offers a "needle's-eye view" that
lets a quilter line up the work exactly;
precision is an important consideration
for many quilting techniques. (One look
at my own wandering quilting rows
shows why.) Other features recognize
the distance between the seam line and
the edge of the fabric, even on gentle
curves. Quilters care about quarter-inch
seams because even slight inaccuracies
in quilt blocks, of which there may
be hundreds, compound themselves
across a quilt that's three meters wide.
dEcEmbEr 2010 * iEEE SpEctrum * NA

21
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum December, 2010
