The DVR Debate

In the old days, DVRs needed hard drives...but if Cablevision has their way, nary a truck will roll out to your home to replace your ancient digital cable box with the latest and greatest DVR technology.

Cablevision (and I would imagine other cable companies) are planning to introduce "remote storage" DVRs. This will allow them to give cable TV subscribers DVR'ing goodness without ever sending a guy with all-too-low-slung jeans out to crouch behind your entertainment center and give your tube some new tech juice. Nope, they'll be able to do it with a flick of the switch (and a ka-ching to their pocket books since our droopy-jeaned cable guy will be stuck at home wondering if his fashion faux-paus caused his early retirement).

I've always kind of wondered about this. What if there was some large box in the sky that recorded everything and let you watch stuff when you wanted to? Well there is sort of. I had a friend back in the days of yore (well, I'm not THAT old) that worked at an operations center for a major cable company in Los Angeles. One evening, my buddies and I crashed the operations center with a box full of pizza and a ice cold beers to surprise our technically-entrenched friend. He gave us the grand tour and there it was. A computer the size of your kitchen. No, not your refrigerator, or your kitchen sink, but your ENTIRE kitchen. This bad boy ran some ancient version of Windows and held all of the TV shows for two whole weeks. He said the shows were delivered to this thing via sattelite and then doled out to some other gadgetry that turned them into dumb old analog signals for deliver to dumb old analog cable boxes and TVs. Think of it as a medieval Tivo in the sky, if you will.

With the advent of digial TV, there really is no excuse for not giving people whatever choice they want. I mean honestly, I pay my $20 per month for my two Tivos and my $40 for basic extended cable each month, why can't I watch what I want, when I want, where I want? Well it all comes down to the mighty and ever-persitent dollar. They'll make you believe that this technology is state of the art and will cost them more money than it would take to rebuild the sun and the moon if ever they fell out of the sky. In reality though, I've seen the kitchen-sized Tivo in the sky that held the key to all of this back when I was in college. I bet that thing is the size of a refrigerator now and costs less than your kid's college diploma to get going and load up with all of the world's TV shows. We could call it the TV fridge. I bet the guys publically crying about copyright and violation of terms of use are secretly patting each other on the back on how they're going to get a bigger slice of your paycheck, all because they can make you think that it's a really tough thing to make sure their TV fridge is plugged in and loaded up when in fact all it takes is a few college kids paid with late night pizza and ice cold beer.

Breaking Out In a Cold Sweat

My first after-market hard drive cost me about $250 and was 212 megabytes. I bought it to supplement the 40MB C drive in my 386. And yeah...I still have the drive (dead of course) sitting here at my desk to remind me of my technological roots.

Now I see this: Coming soon: The 8-terabyte desktop | CNET News.com.

VooDoo PC, a very high end PC maker is planning on dropping a 8-9 TB (terabyte)...(TERABYTE!!!) beast for around 8-9K...I don't know about you, but I'm about ready to sell my car to get one of these things. I'm been chomping at the bit for some new hardware as I'm still running on a crappy (yet venerable) old AMD 750Mhz box with a max'd out ram at 512MB. Yeah you heard me...talk about oldschool.

Anyhow...I just need to figure out how I can shoehorn a measly 12-grand out of my tight little budget (what you didn't think I was going to run this bad boy on an only monitor? I need a nice 30 inch flat panel of course!) and get myself on the waiting list for one of these things. Where'd I put my bank robbery plans again? Ah, here they are....

MSNTV 2 Wireless Testing

My MSNTV2 question answering time has been severely restricted due to a host of new projects. They have been trickling in at a rate of one to two every couple of days, but I still have bout 20 questions in the hopper.

So what have I been doing? Well, around here in Silicon Valley (and the country) a host of free wireless broadband services have been popping up. Cities are providing these as a way to get everyone over the evil dialup speed bump and onto the broadband highway. I decided to figure out if MSNTV2 would work with these networks.

My first test was with MetroFi in Cupertino, California just a block or two from Apple's headquarters. The test seemed to go quite well except I was unable to actually register over wireless and video playback was choppy (MetroFi only gives you 300Kbps which is barely enough for one user to watch videos smoothly let alone be shared between many users).

If you are already a registered MSNTV2 user, you could just pop on a wireless USB adapter and connect to the free network and you should be on your way. All you'll pay is $9.95 per month for MSNTV2 and enjoy broadband speeds (well 300Kbps barely qualifies in my opinion, but WAY better than creaky old dialup). Imagine that...broadband for only $9.95 per month (dialup is $21.95 still and is slow as ever).

Disney launches MovieBeam

Here's the deal:

Payperview movie box from Disney that stores about 100 movies ready for you to watch at any time (well sort of)
Box = $300 (ouch)
No subscription fees
Movies are delivered over the air via an antenna and stored on to the box
Each movie costs $1.99 to $4.99 to watch for 24 hours (double ouch)
They claim "UP TO 10" new movies each week (which means the first week you have it, you'll ge the direct to Moviebeam classics of Lion King 2 1/2 and Lilo and Stitch 3.2)

They claim instant retrieval of any movie in their (so far paltry) collection. The good news it does have recent flicks (including such awesome blockbusters as Herbie Fully Loaded and Jessica Simpson's psychological terror flick Dukes of Hazzard). Anyway, the math works out such that if you watch 2 movies per week in HD, you'll spend about $520 plus the $300 to get the box...a whopping $820 bucks! If you watch that many movies, you may as well pay for HBO, Cinemax, and Showtme and grab yourself a Tivo or Media Center....it'll cost you less and I guarantee you'll get more than two decent movies to watch each week. The only issue is that it won't be in HD of course, but that will be fixed as soon as Tivo drops HD Tivo or you pick up a Windows Vista Ultimate powered PC.

At any rate MovieBeam seems to be a MovieBust...just another gawdawful attempt by Disney and company to make cash from poor rich unsuspecting 12 year olds who really want to watch Jessica Simpson reprise the role of Daisy Dukes in glorious HD over and over.

See For Yourself.

MSNTV 2 Linux Cluster

I was wondering when someone would figure out how to get into our little MSNTV 2 box. It's not like we did much to keep folks out, but it seems to have taken this fellow a little bit of effort. Anyway, congrats to this guy for getting Linux to boot on the box. Quite the mad professor, eh?

Thanks for the tip, Eric!

12 drive bays...and a partridge in a pear tree

While bumming around the net this morning, I noticed a really interesting looking case from a company called OrigenAE. This thing has 12 (holy cow!) drivebays, a 12" LCD touch screen that flips down to reveal the drive the DVD drive and what not.

I think if I would have attended CES 2006 and seen this thing I would have either:

1) Broken down and cried tears of joy
2) Got down on my knees and worshipped my new pagan idol
3) (Probably) both

I can't wait to see this thing in person...just hoping the price tag won't keep me away like a 50 foot restraining order on an episode of Cops.

See For Yourself.

SnapStream Goes Off the Deep End

Holy Cow...Snapstream, makers of the pretty cool Media Center alternative BeyondTV, bring to you Godzilla, the unholy 11 tuner beast PVR. This is THE one piece of hardware that you need to own if 11 of your favorite shows are on at the same time. 11...that's right 11 shows simultaneously. This is just frickin ridiculous (yet extremely cool in a totally unnecessary, Ferrari-stuck-in-traffic sort of way).

Now, all you have to do is find 11 pairs of eyeballs to watch 11 shows at the same time :)

See For Yourself. [via PVRBlog]

Philip wants to put a TV Tuner in you Cellphone

I don't know what to think here. On the one hand, having a TV tuner in your cellphone would seem cool at first glance. But then I start thinking of the kind of shows that I can pull off the air (nightmares of everything on the WB and UPN flash in my head) and I'm instantly turned off. Will I be able to record shows from said tuner on my cellphone? Probably not until someone figures out a good/fast/cheap way to pop a Divx encoder onto a gargantuan NAND Flash that Apple has been gobbling up lately. Will I be able to skip commercials? Will I be able to transfer show that I record (assuming that I can record them) to my PC or Tivo or video iPod? I'm going to guess (correct me if I'm wrong) no. In that case, this looks like a case of minaturizing the old Casio pocket black and white TV and shoving it into your cellphone's plastic shell along side the other gadgetry in there.

[via gizmodo]

I"P"TV (P is for Porn)

So where is this all heading? Well think of it this way...there's this whole boat of new technologies floating around and what happens when there are new methods to deliver content? Decentralization of traditional media forces? Well, maybe. Tech companies make a killing in the stock market? Yeah, probably. Porn? Definitely. That's right boys and girls (hey, 50% of the internet porn market is for women), porn is taking the lead in content deliver schemes yet again.

Take XTV for example. These guys give you a box that uses your cable or dsl broadband to deliver 70 channels of porn directly to your TV for $30/month! Yeah you heard me...70 channels. They even offer a free trial! (enter code: ppv100801 to get 2 free pay per view movies with your free trial). I couldn't believe this when I saw it in this month's Maxim magazine, but it makes perfect sense. Microsoft and SBC along with a large handful of companies around the world are trying to get IPTV off the ground and porn takes the lead. This is just like when broadband came about...porn distributors were all over it while the big boys have been trying to figure it out and have started offering content online. I even saw a CNBC interview with the CEO of Vivid video (the largest producer and distriutor of porn) say that he's all over offering video to the mobile broadband space and is even trying to get on the iTunes Music Store! iTunes "After Dark" anyone?

TV 2.0 catch up

So it's been a while since my last real post and here's a recap of transgressions in the TV world since then:

• Apple drops the bomb with iPod Video and iTunes with Pay Per Download Video (PPDV?). By the way, if you want a FREE IPOD VIDEO, just click. These are the same guys that had the freebie deal before, but now they're giving away the latest and greatest iPod nanos and videos. The best part is that some of the deals are quite good. For example, the Citi Dividend card is AWESOME. Hongyun and I have one and we use it for our groceries and gas purchases. It gives us 5% back (up to $300 per year) on these kinds of purchases and since gas and groceries are always getting more expensive, it really does work out nicely...consider it a $300 bonus at the end of the year to buy some Xbox 360 games to go with the new Xbox 360 dropping next week (you did preorder one didn't you? If not, good luck explaining it to your kid).
• Steve Jobs uses Pixar's rock and hard place relationship with Disney to finagle episodes of LOST for the iTunes Store.
• Netflix drops the ball and gives up on trying to fulfill rental requests through streaming video. Reason: movie studios are bone heads and prefer people pirating their content than makign a few bucks through rentals each time the content is viewed. Imagine this: a movie distributed via P2P, but is wrapped in a special file format that locks it for certain folks or randomly unlocks it (have Windows Media Player check a server to unlock the content, the server will randomly handout freeviews to 1 in 10 folks...the others have to pay $2 to watch the movie). Talk about viral....maybe they'll figure it out before it's too late...maybe not.
• NBC and CBS announce plans to give people shows without commercials on demand for 99 cents. So lame. Let me count the reasons why:
  1. Bitter that they couldn't pull a deal with Apple to get into iTunes
  2. Can I download them to a portable device or laptop to watch them on the go? No.
  3. Why wouldn't I just pay for a Tivo for $13/month and get all the shows I want commercial free? Sure I have to push buttons, but it's easy. Also Tivo lets me transfer them to my laptop (although I loathe the Tivo Desktop software...that's some scary piece of code they released-Mac users, considers yourselves lucky for not having to deal with the crap fest).
• AOL and Time Warner FINALLY figured out what to do with their alliance. Took them long enough. When they first merged 5 years ago, the idea that went through my brain was wow-that's a natural fit. AOL's got the eyeballs, TW's got the content AND the broadband. It took them 5 whole years to get their heads out of their asses and figure it out. Anyway, it looks like it's going to be too late for them to make a big splash since Microsoft may buy AOL. The dialup Internet Acess business is definitely the slow boat to nowhere in the tech world. We haven't heard anything official on the inside so who knows what's going on.

All about flash cards and USB readers for MSNTV2

I've finally got around to putting this little guide together about USB card readers and flash cards in general.

I cover topics like what a flash card is and why one would need one. I know to most of the techie world this is like saying gravity exists, but to many MSNTV 2 users, these things are a mystery. Well, they are a mystery no more...behold:

MyTVLife.com's -- All about Flash Cards and USB Card Readers.

MSNTV2 Compatible Printer LIst

I've updated the printer list. It now includes information on the latest supported models and printers that support 4x6 printing.

MSN TV 2 - Compatible USB Printers 1.2

Why Buy Used?

MSN TV 2 has announced a rebate of $100 starting today through the holiday season. Buy from Amazon.com and you'll get the box for $79 after rebate! Amazon is also giving away free super saver shipping as well and as the usual no tax outside of WA state.

See for yourself.

Xbox 360 Photos in the Wild

Some kid posts photos of himself playing Halo2 on an Xbox360 and gets his stepdad in trouble. Hehe...I'm glad I didn't post any photos of these things. I see them here all of the time. The Xbox hardware guys are working hard on them (even on weekends usually) and I get to catch a glimpse of them now and again (yes they look exactly like the one in the photo after the jump). No, I'm not going to post the photo here...not even the one the kid took cause I don't care to make trouble when it's not that big a deal. The folks at 360 Hacker are making entirely too big a deal of the photos ("is it real? no it's not! etc"). Anyway, I posted there saying that it looks real to me (even the little dongle sticking out of the top looks like what I've seen around here). Link.

Windows Media Center Keyboard

Now here's a nice keyboard. Backlit keys! Woohoo! Does it work with MSNTV2? Maybe...if it's IR then we may have a chance. If it's bluetooth, kiss your MSNTV2-with-super-cool-keyboard dreams goodbye...

PVR Rundown

Are you confused by the current state of affairs in the PVR world? What is a PVR you ask (where have YOU been?)? A PVR is basically a time shifting device for TV content. Wha?? It records stuff so you can watch it later. "But isn't that what a VCR does?" you ask. Oh pishaw! Did you ever really learn how to figure out how to program your VCR? I mean, I could have figured out how to launch the Space Shuttle in the time it took me to figure out the various arcane interfaces to programming the VCR. Well think of the Tivo and other PVRs as devices that let you pick a show with an on screen program guide (like your old school TV Guide, except on the TV) and it will record it. No fuss, no muss.

While there are many free services out there, I pay for my Tivo service because it works extremely well and is unbelievably easy to use. My wife loves both of the Tivos we have because we can sling shows back and forth between them depending on where we are choosing to "relax" (I use the word relax in quotes because she's using doing her artwork while I work on this site or my other site). In the end, I may switch to SageTV or Windows Media Center, but I need to get a 21st century PC at home first. Yes, I still have an ancient Pentium 3 750Mhz at home. Pathetic, but that thing still runs fine (I don't play many PC games so it works just fine with the web and email).

Anyway, if you're interested in finding out more about the world of PVRs, check out PCWorld.com - TV Time Shifters. It's a great high level overview of the state of affairs in the PVR world.

Mini USB TV Tuners

Wow...TV Stick and TV Tiny are two very tiny TV Tuners for your laptop (or desktop for that matter). Now I know what you guys are thinking and no it won't work with MSN TV 2. It'd be cool if we could get it to work, but I doubt that it would (driver footprint, memory, etc.). I'll talk to some developers to see what they think.

On TV recording: I bought myself a dual tuner WinTV PCI 500 for my desktop to record shows. I ended up using SageTV. While the user interface is not so hot (functional but not sexy like Windows Media Center), the product is pretty solid and there is a dedicated following of enthusiasts that have alternate user interfaces that make the product much more usuable (but still not so pretty). Anyway, I think the TV Tiny may have a place in my bag some day (now only if it could pull down cable TV).

Get the dirt here:TrustedReviews - TV Stick and TV Tiny

Creative Zen Portable Media Center...the saga continues

Part 1 is here

Part 2:
DVD ripping to the Zen: not really. I used a piece of software called DVDDecrypter that ripped the first "The Apprentice: Season One" DVD with no problems. Then I tried another piece of software called Win2AVI or something that compressed the video into a WMV file. Woohoo!

While I'm starting to really like the little Zen PMC, it's still too much of a hassle for me to enjoy the DVDs that I own. I'm not going to go through and rip all of my DVDs manually (who has that much hard drive space?) and then feed each file to the compression tool. Yikes! I know, I know...I can probably script something to do this, but I'm definitely not in the mood these days (with the trip to China coming up in a day or two). Plus one of the developers at MSN TV is a Linux fiend and he has some sort of setup at home that he uses to automate this process. I'm going to have to bug him about this so I can make a little Linux converter box. Maybe I'll hack the AMD Geode thing (assuming I can get my hands on one) and have it spit out the files to a gigantic file server (that has yet to be built).

Not to go off on a tangent, but I've always dreamed of having a gigantic file server filled with all of my media. I mean ALL of it. I would rip the hundred or...

so DVDs that I own, the few thousand songs that I own, all of my photos, and other random videos that I find. I figure I'd need about 2 or 3 terabytes for the first 5 years this thing is in operation. Hmmm...mental note: investigate homegrown disk arrays. Then all of my PCs and MSN TV 2s and whatever else I can stick ethernet or wireless onto would be uber connected to this one content source. Oh yeah, it'd be nice if it were a DVR too...then I can stream this stuff to all of my PCs/devices. Oh yeah (#2), would be great if I could have secure access to it from the Internet, so I can enjoy all of my media files where ever there is Internet connectivity (like Borders at Santana Row). We hang out there so much that I decided to spring for their wireless service...it's great, but now if I could build this thing. What would I call it? Hmm...LifeServer? Hehehe...sounds like "LifeSavers" candy. How about the Burma Superstar (man I love the food there)?

Anyway back to the Zen PMC. I decided what the heck...let's take the plunge. I loaded up Windows Media Player with all of my music and photos as well as the stuff I've collected off the web. I also put the home videos from our trip to Thailand last year on there. The process was pretty lengthy as WMP had to transcode (fancy word for translate) everything to smaller files. Part way through, I started fiddling with the settings and found that I could specify the quality level of the videos and songs. I put both quite high but that didn't change the time. Their copying and transcoding algorithm is pretty good...WMP will transcode what it needs and in the background transfer whatever doesn't need to be transcoded. Neat. Anyway after a couple hours of leaving WMP and the Zen to their tango (while I worked on my Test Specs for the next MSN TV 2 software update), the process completed and there it was...like my iPods except black (not white) and fat (not skinny). It was fully loaded with all of photos from the past year and Thailand trip. If I have time, I'll load all previous year photos tonight. It also had pretty high quality versions of my home videos and funny clips from around the Internet.

I guess the real test is taking it on the road with me (which is what I intend to do). I have a feeling that while this version of the Zen may not be right for me, I think a future, slimmer, larger-screen-endowed future model will be something that I will have to pick up (especially if I build Burma Superstar with Windows Media Center 2005 or 2006).

Creative Zen Portable Media Center Review (Finally!)

HOW-TO: BroadSnatching to a Portable Media Center - Engadget - www.engadget.com

I haven't had much use for the Creative Zen Portable Media Center device that has been hanging around my office as of late. I was quite excited to try it out, but I quickly realized that it was quite useless without a Media Center PC (not even DVD ripping under fair-use laws are supported!). Sigh! So sadly, the neat little video brick took a back seat to all of the other gadgets populating my office.

Until today. After reading Engadget's "Broadsnatching" how-to, I was inspired to try. So try I did...iPodder didn't quite work as advertised (it kept downloading only the first enclosure in the RSS feed so yet another sigh). I searched around and found Nimiq which quite simply works.

I followed the rest of the instructions and pretty soon my harddrive was filling up with all sorts of random content. My favorites (of course) being Channel 9 vids.

I've gotten all sorts of random stuff from blogdigger so far and am hoping someone aggregates categories of good video content like tv show and movie clips among other things.

So far the experience has been pretty neat. it's great to finally use the little Creative Zen, but getting the content to the device takes a LONG time due to a conversion process that Windows Media Player does to "convert" files to something the PMC can understand.

After I waited and waited for a while, the files finally arrived (at which point I discovered I can set the files to convert when my PC is not doing other things so I will leave my laptop on tonight and see what I can grab).

Regardless, this alone is making the Creative Zen Portable Media Center a joy to play with. Now if only I can rip a DVD onto the thing...no matter, I'm already investigating various pieces of software to aid me ripping DVDs that I rightfully own onto this thing so I can watch them.

The catch:

Final exam in Psychology tomorrow...need to finish test specs and other work goodness before Thursday...why?

Because Friday I will be running around doing last minute shopping and packing...why?

Because Saturday at 8:30am, I'll be on my way to China with my wife for a 3 week vacation.

Note: when the vacation begins, I will mostly be out of contact as my ability connect to the Internet in China may not be as regular as the near-Internet-umbilical cord status that I enjoy here. I will do my best to check-in on the FAQs and comments once in a whiile, but no guarantees on a quick (or any) replies. Then again, I don't guarantee replies even if I'm here, but I do generally get back to most of you fairly quickly (most of you that have asked questions in the FAQ and that have emailed me can vouch for me).

Creative Zen Portable Media Center

Just got my hands on the Portable Media Center from Creative Labs. It's just a demo unit, but I can keep it for week or so. I'll put it through it's paces and post a review!