Archives for the 'Entertainment' Category
Apple TV and Boxee
The Apple TV always seemed like one of those devices that didn’t quite fit my needs. It lacks one very important component from being a good DVR, the actual TV tuner to record from. It lacks one thing from being a super DVD player… the DVD player. So what is it good for? Streaming media from the Internet or your home network, and it does it well. Out of the box, this device is very polished, but limited to YouTube as its source for Internet media. While this seems nice at first, it gets old very quick. This is where the ATV USB Creator comes in. This project has tapped into hidden resources of the Apple TV by exploiting a USB designed for Service Only, and opening up capabilities that were disabled by Apple. Probably one of the most important features is enabling SSH on the Apple TV so the device is now reachable via command line as well as through SFTP. The feature that caught my interest was the ability to add applications to the set available through the Apple TV interface. More specifically, I wanted to install Boxee to gain access to Hulu.com through my television. Boxee is in Alpha testing at this time, but I was given access to test, and test I did. Though the occasional bug does popup, its performance is very good. The only issue I’ve found is getting a decent wireless connection from my office to my television downstairs.
Would I recommend the Apple TV? If you are really into media and streaming media (videos, music, photos) to your television, and you’ve bought into the Apple way of doing things, this is a great addition. Otherwise, I would suggest a Linksys or Sonos media device.
Would I recommend Boxee? If the performance only gets better with Beta and Public Release, I can whole-heartedly recommend this as one of the best media center applications available.
NOTE: I got my Apple TV from Craigslist, and for quite a steal, I think. I paid $140 for the typical $229 device and it is in near mint condition.
QAM and Comcast
When I first became aware of QAM, I connected my HDTV to see what I could get. I was surprised to find some channels available in HD that I didn’t receive OTA. For example, I was getting USAHD, TBSHD, TNTHD, ESPN2HD and Music in HD. For local networks, I received all but PBS in HD. Comcast has since shifted the channels 3 or 4 times and removed all HD channels except NBC. I’d like to know if there is a rhyme or reason to their QAM programming or if it is just considered leakage? It certainly is good to know that Comcast could offer a full HD package without renting a cable box. BUT that wouldn’t make them money, would it? I’d be happy of they just offered a standalone HD package like Dish Network’s TurboHD.
Netflix Watch Instant new plans
When the Roku box was released allowing Netflix users to stream Watch Instant content from the Netflix servers to their TV, I thought to myself that if the box could stream content from hulu.com, a site featuring more current content as well as many old TV shows and movies, I would definitely make the purchase. Current episodes are now available for streaming, but it is not from hulu.com. Apparently Netflix has struck a deal to offer current episodes from popular shows through their Watch Instant service. This would directly compete with hulu.com unless, of course, this is the technology they are using. I haven’t taken the time to compare the two because Netflix doesn’t offer a Mac OS X option for Watch Instant. I’ll stick to hulu for my day-after TV viewing, but that roku box suddenly became more appealing.
Netflix Set-top delivery
Anyone reading tech news has surely heard of Roku’s latest offering, a Netflix set-top box (running Linux) that allows the user to watch movies and TV shows from their Watch Instantly Queue. Although I think this device is great, I think Netflix Watch Instant content is still lacking, and until Roku offers content from other sources, I won’t be adding this device to my collection. I’d really like to see Hulu.com step into the mix. I’d buy two boxes immediately if Hulu was combined with Netflix in the next firmware release.
HDTV with QAM tuner
Since starting to pay attention to the HDTV advertisements lately, I have noticed a feature that is being mentioned quite a bit. That feature is the QAM tuner, which comes integrated with most HDTVs. I had never heard of it until recently, and decided to look it up. I was surprised to find out that the QAM tuner can receive unscrambled television broadcasts sent by the cable provider through the standard cable lines. If you are wondering what this really means, it means that most cable companies are satisfying their FCC obligations by providing more broadcasts (some HD) outside of those being broadcast through your current setup. Extra Channels? Not really, most are just the same as you find on your Basic Cable package, but this varies on location, not just city. Specific areas can vary as well. For the record, I’m right between Katy and Cypress, Texas, Northwest of Houston and our cable provider is now Comcast (formerly TWC).
With my current setup, I have Basic Cable, with roughly 70 channels, and I have an OTA (Over-The-Air) HDTV Tuner pulling my local network broadcasts, which is about 10 channels. To my surprise, this Samsung HDTV Tuner I’m already using has a QAM tuner as well. I ran the cable line into my tuner and had it search out channels available. I found about 50 channels being broadcast between what we consider channel 75-100. I know that sounds like strange math, but anyone who has dealt with OTA broadcasts will confirm that many channels will feature subchannels. Our NBC affiliate has 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3. None go higher than X.3 with OTA, but with QAM, many will go as high as X.11, thus cramming many channels into the 25 range mentioned above. Of the 50 I found, only 5 were being broadcast in HD, but the good news is that 4 of those 5 I didn’t have access to prior to this. The new channels I found were USA HD, ESPN HD, National Geographic (in HD), Music In HD. The other channel was PBS, which I had access to with OTA and I must say, they do a phenomenal job with providing good HD content separate from their standard broadcast. Strangely missing from the HD broadcasts were the other major networks, NBC, ABC, CBS, WB, etc. I’m not going to rule them out just yet, because they may not have been broadcasting those particular shows in HD, but it was 8:00 PM CST when I did my test. We’ll see when I try again.
To find about more about QAM Tuners visit WikiPedia.For a good list of HD Channels and their listings, check out CNET’s HDTV Listings page.
New popup (tent) camper
As you may or may not know, I’ve been actively camping with my daughter this past year, and it has been very exciting. We are part of the YMCA program, Safari Princesses. This being my first year I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it has been nothing short of great. The people in our tribe are fantastic people and we all enjoy getting out to spend time with our daughters and giving them an opportunity to play freely. Now that this program is over for this year, I started planning for the next season. I found a good deal on a popup camper on Craigslist, and made the purchase. My girls couldn’t be more eager to go on the next campout. They’d be plenty happy camping in the driveway if I’d let them. Anyway, what most new buyers don’t realize and old buyers already know is that you aren’t just buying the camper. The are a lot of other expenses associated the purchase. Besides the obvious license registration, there may be some sales taxes, storage costs, maintenance costs. You’ll also find yourself needing to purchase items for camping you didn’t need before. It adds a new level of complexity, but it sure makes ‘roughing it’ pretty comfortable.
Quality HDTV Antennas now at Target.com
I posted about a year ago, maybe longer, about my HDTV experience with purchasing equipment, and what provided quality results. What I found was that online sources had more affordable HD antennas than any consumer electronics store. The brand I fell into online was Terrestrial Digital, which is now available through Target.com. Apparently, someone at Target realized how important these antennas were, or perhaps they got tired of people returning the typical indoor antennas that provide mostly lousy results.
Internet Sharing from Mac Mini to Tivo
Just recently I decided to try enabling Internet Sharing through my Mac Mini to have my Tivo, across the house, access through it’s Internet connection. The reason I wanted to do this was beause my wireless network is currently 802.11b, and transferring files from my Tivo to my computer over wireless takes several hours. Since the Mac Mini is hardwired to the network, I thought I’d take advantage of its unused Wifi card which features 802.11g. I bought a new USB Adapter for my Tivo and began the configuration. Everything seemed to be going okay until I tried to configure the Tivo to see the Mac on the network. It saw 6 of my neighbors, but no Mac. My conclusion is that the Mac’s built-in wireless card is not strong enough to penetrate walls and floors of a moderate size house. If it had an external antenna, it would have likely performed better.
My next step is to buy a new 802.11g router and a new PCMCIA card for my laptop. Once my entire network is on 802.11g, I assume I will have no problems getting files from my Tivo in a timely manner.
Roxio Toast 8 with Tivo Transfer
It seems Tivo has outsourced their TivoToGo initiative to the good folks over at Roxio. This is good and bad news for Mac users. The good news is that Tivo has finally addressed the issue of having TivoToGo for Windows, but not for Mac. The bad news is that in order to get TivoToGo for Mac, you have to purchase Toast from Roxio. Though being packaged with Toast,
Tivo Transfer, as they call it, seems loosely integrated with Toast and the only obvious tie it has with it is the burning of your recordings. I think this is a good idea to keep things from getting bloated. Sometimes I want to burn a Tivo recording to DVD, but most times I don’t. The overall interface is very easy to use.
One thing against this offering from Roxio is the fact that TivoDecode Manager just came out last month for no cost to the end user. The would seem more inline with the previous offerings from Tivo since we do pay for a subscription after all. Which should you go with? That depends on what you are looking for. If you need a cheap way to watch you recordings or back them up onto your Mac, stick with TivoDecode Manager, but if you want the ability to make DVDs from your recordings, and have the interface integration with Toast, go with Toast. I’ve personally been using Toast for burning on my Mac, so I’m kind of torn between the two options and might just go for both.
Apple TV - Does it meet my requirements?
After Steve Jobs pushed aside the Apple TV, Apple’s version of the Media Center [Extender], to carry on for 90 minutes about the iPhone, I began to wonder if the Apple TV would do what I need it to do. It boasts streaming from any PC running the latest version of iTunes, but one catch is that iTunes only supports videos encoded with H.264 and some MPEGs. This makes sense for iTunes because its primary job is getting Videos from the iTMS (iTunes Music Store) to the customer’s iPod. However, I don’t purchase my movies through iTunes. I prefer to encode my movies using the XVid or DivX codec. All of my DVD Players support this codec so it makes sense for me. In fact, with a simple codec install for QuickTime, I’m able to watch my videos perfectly using FrontRow on my Mac Mini. This brings me to my question. If my videos work in FrontRow, would they also work on the Apple TV? I’m guessing that the interface on the Apple TV is the next version of FrontRow, which might suggest I could watch my movies assuming they were stored locally on the 40GB internal HDD or an external HDD. Streaming may be a different beast altogether since it seems to ride on the shoulders of iTunes sharing features. I use iTunes to listen to music or look through photos on my Tivo, which tells me it is very capable of sharing across Wifi, but by why will they not add DivX/XVid support for iTunes?
A couple of other issues I have about this device is the lack of an optical drive, to replace DVD Players, and the name itself. I’m aware that it outputs through a TV, but why call it “Apple TV” when no TV Tuner is included. The only TV Shows you can watch on this device are those available for purchase through iTunes.
What does this all mean? I guess if I can get some answers to the above questions, I would likely buy this unit because the $299 sure seems a lot better than the $799 Mac Mini alternative, which provides everything I need including a DVD Player replacement for only $500 more [ouch].
Mac in a Subaru
I always find these to be very fascinating. The first one I saw was about a year ago when some person online had installed a Mac Mini in their Toyota Prius. This one is installed in a Subaru and the owner has posted many videos demonstrating its capabilities. This is one of the best uses I’ve seen for Front Row. I especially like that he is using his cellular phone’s Bluetooth connection to get Internet to his Carputer. I guess this means I need to make sure my next vehicle has some sort of touchscreen LCD in the dash somewhere. There is no amount of describing I could do to let you how awesome I think this is, so check out his video here.
Heroes on TV
After 5 weeks of pure goodness, my new favorite show is probably Heroes. The whole premise is just plain entertaining. It reminds me of what X-Men would be like if it were more realistic. Not everyone on the team needs to look like they just stepped out of GQ or Muscle & Fitness Magazines. It has real people discovering superhuman abilities, but also having to learn how to use them. This is very much like Spiderman in that aspect, but his abilities came overnight and via radio-active spider. Anyway, this is a great show and you should check it out on Monday nights. However, I would recommend catching the episodes in order so the story doesn’t escape you. There is a lot of character building throughout the first four episodes before the story really advances. My only fear with this show is that they drag it out way too long. Lost, my previous favorite, is starting to reach this point. Networks need good writers to write short-term masterpieces (3 seasons maximum), then shift those off to syndication to bring in residuals. This would be shows similar to Mini-Series, but with a minimum of one season and a maximum of 3 seasons. Other shows I’m digging this season:
- Prison Break - First season was put off for too long, which made way for good writing I guess. Now in the second season, the story continues to unfold and we get to see how deep the conspiracy flows.
- Studio 60 On Sunset Strip - Matthew Perry is finally showing us that he has great ensemble timing
- Nip/Tuck - (this maybe an exception since the storyline is ever changing) - This also pushes the limits of morality and the FCC everytime we watch it.
- Jericho - In its first season, this has great potential for a second season, but I don’t see it pushing much further than that. This is where I think the networks should design these to fill the larger than mini-series segment. Something sensational like a nuclear weapon going off nearby will lose its sensation after a couple of seasons.
- Lost (this is the 3rd season and it appears to be nowhere near a wrap up) - I’d hate to lose interest in what appears to be a great show.
- The O.C. (this maybe the last season - 4th is pushing my limit) - You can only watch the turmoils of the rich and pop-culture references for so long before it gets tiresome.