Tivo

One Remote to Rule Them All

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One of the major challanges I have had with my TV / Media Center setup has been that in order to use Plex and my Google TV device for my media archive I needed to have two remotes.  One universal remote (Harmony One) for all my compoents except for the Sony Google TV.  This has been a minor annoyance for me however MC would prefer a simple setup.

She has been ok with the 2 remote setup but as I attempt to get rid of our Tivo and move to a different way to watch and record live TV i want to ensure we simplify and get everything down to one remote control.  I have settled for now on using Kodi for everything TV related.  Kodi has a plug in for Plex to allow me access to my media library.  It also has a plugin for HDHome Run to allow live TV streaming from the cable card HDHomeRun PRIME.

I got harmony home control to work with Kodi on Mac using Flirc and my tv with Bose.  Getting everything to run on one remote proved challenging but I got it working well enough to be ready to turn off the Google tv / TiVo setup I have.

Plex On AppleTV

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I have had an AppleTV since the first generation one came out years ago. When the second-generation one came out I pick that up and sold the original on eBay. I have loved the idea of an AppleTV for years. I have even made my own homegrown media center on several occasions. If you read this blog you’ll read about several of those iterations. The problem is in practice I really haven’t had huge luck with the AppleTVs. The second-generation AppleTV I currently have has been replaced with a Mac Mini running Plex media center. That has been my media center of choice for a while. I have tried the Boxer box, and the Roku. with both of those I was hoping to plug into my media centers the a library, and with the Roku to use it as a front end for Plex. neither of those options worked out very well. All along the AppleTV has been powered on but not plugged into my TV. I would plug it in to music, but not really using it for TV. I have been generally lazy and didn’t want to jailbreak it. The Mac Mini has functioned generally well so I was in no rush to try anything different again. since my move I have had some more buggy experiences with the Mac Mini then the previous two years or so I’ve had it. It wasn’t enough for me to go making drastic changes, that is until I read that the Plex team had made a front end for the jailbroken AppleTV. So I gave jailbreaking a shot. At first I thought I had bricked the AppleTV, but after about two days of leaving it plugged in and I forgot about it. I turned on my TV and it had worked. I got really lucky.

After the small drama in jailbreaking, it was trivial to get Plex installed. After it was installed I ran into some problems with choppiness of the video. I fixed that by tweaking some of the bit rate settings. Since then it has been working perfectly. I got even luckier when less than a week after I had configured Plex Apple announced that Hulu is now available on the device. I covered that in another blog post.

For right now the AppleTV is now my main media center. I still have my Mac Mini. It’s needed to run the Plex server, and host all the videos and music on my Drobo. it is just not plugged into my TV anymore. It has been an pre-smooth experience so far. MC likes it that she can stream music again directly to the AppleTV without me having to plug it in or read it up since it is now always attached to the television.

We still have a TiVo, and use it for a DVR. Longer-term I would love to find a way to use Hulu, the Internet, and my AppleTV to replace TiVo and and really expensive cable bill. We are not quite there yet in trying that out.

Friday TV

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Since I was being lazy Friday night, I watched a bunch of TV. I went through my Tivo and watched a bunch of stuff I missed since I had plans most of the week. After watching most of the good stuff (still a ton of crap on there) I watched some semi live TV. I say semi live since I don’t start watching anything until it has been on for at least 15 minutes so I can safely fast forward through the commercials. Gotta love Tivo!

I ended up watching the first episode of Dollhouse. It was pretty good, but lets see if Fox cancels it like they did the last Joss Whedon show. For now it is programed into my Tivo.

I also watched the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica. It was really good this week. I though John Hodgman as the brain surgeon was great. I loved his little bit of comedy in his scenes. I am not sure if he was supposed to be funny but he was. The regular doc is always funny so he fit right in.

Another Long Monday

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Today started off on a negitive. Well lets face it, all Monday’s do, but this one started off with getting a call from work at 6:30. That is never good. It then was hectic for most of the morning and early afternoon. By then all of the excitment from the weekend was squared away. Then it was time to focus on other outstanding issues. I was thankful when it was after hours, even though I can’t recall where 3-5PM went!

I had to take something for a brewing Migraine. Thankfully the drugs worked, but I am not happy that I had to take something. I am trying to limit the meds, but major head ache makes you take stuff.

Other than that the evening was ok. I cooked up some crab cakes for dinner. Checked my mail and tried to clean off some shows built up on my Tivo.

Supercharging My TivoHD

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When I moved into my new apartment last August I got digital cable but I opted to not get a cable box. Instead I got a TivoHD and two CableCARD’s. The TivoHD and CableCARD combo has been fantastic. I got two CableCARD’s to use in the Tivo. I figured it could handle two, and two cards was still cheaper than renting one cable box. The issue was when the cable guy came to setup the cards I didn’t have the Tivo so he configured on in my TV and it worked great, but after the initial test the second one didn’t seem to work. I tried several tests with one and two configurations of the cards in my Tivo and always got no luck with one of the cards (always the same card). I wasn’t in a rush to call in the issue since I would have to either pay to have a service visit or go into their office to swap the card.

I finally broke down and wanted to fix the issue with the second card so I can record two shows at once with the Tivo. After over a year of procrastinating I finally called to figure out what was wrong with the second CableCARD. The rep I spoke to didn’t really have much of a clue so I wasn’t confident she would figure out the issue, but I got lucky. She sent some sort of signal boost to my TV and then after two hours both cards were working normally. I was very happy. Now I can record two shows in HD at once! Mmmm HD. I don’t even know how often I will need this function but it was a problem that I finally wanted to have resolved!

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8mm Film Conversion

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Being in technology I have tried to digitize as much stuff as possible. I have been scanning documents since 2000. I have been using a Tivo vs VCR’s since 2001. Over the years (since 1995 actually) I have made it a project to scan as many photos that I could. In the past 8 years all new photos have been in digitial format making archiving them easy. I still have a long way to go scanning all my families old photos, but I have allot of the really good ones scanned already.

The one area of digital archiving that I have had an issue with was old videos. I have done crude conversions of VCR tapes to AVI a few years ago of my Bar Mitzvah video and my sisters sweet sixteen video. The source material wasn’t so great so the quality of the video wasn’t so hot. I never was able to clean it up using final cut since I would have had to do a bunch of converting to different file formats. The biggest amount of video that my parents have of me and my sister growing up is on 8mm however. Converting that to some sort of digital media is not something you can do a good job of doing yourself. I have looked for places locally that would do the job, but wasn’t too happy with the selection (aka I thought most of them seemed kind of shady). Last year I found two different places online that looked like they were very reputable and did this sort of digital archiving all the time. I proceeded to loose the links to the sites and tossed out hours of research. I promised my mom that I would convert all the 8mm video to DVD. I thought she would be really happy but didn’t seem to into it. I think she just didn’t want that as her birthday gift:( Well last week I decided to find the sites I researched last year. I found them and selected one of them to send in my videos to.

I ended up choosing The Home Movie Depot. At first I was going to send in one reel of 25′ to see how the quality was. I was also concerned about the fact that I was shipping irreplaceable family history, and I didn’t have any backups. After reading the reviews of the site, and weighing all my options I just decided to send in everything. I figured there aren’t many places that look like they can do this type of work very well, and if I didn’t convert them they wouldn’t be looked at anyway. I also want to get them onto another format before the film goes bad. I don’t even know if the film is still good now, but the two canisters I opened looked ok.

I am waiting for the Home Movie Depot to send me the packing materials to ship in my 20 25′ reels and two 350′ reels. For something like this I paid extra for the packing materials as well as overnight shipping. I heard from a logistics guy I know that overnight is always better for sensitive stuff since it has less of a chance to get lost. Once I send in the film it will be about 2 weeks until I get them back on DVD. I also paid to have the original AVI’s they create put onto a hard drive. That way I should be able to create my own DVD’s and add sound tracks and stuff to the video’s.

I am excited to see these films once I get them back. I remember being little and watching them with the family. It was always a production to get out the projector and look at them. I don’t think I have seen then in at least 25 years. If this comes out well, I will send in any remaining slides my dad hasn’t scanned to just get those done also. The process for the film conversion isn’t cheap but if it does what I want it to, the cost is worth it. I will probably write more about this once I get the film back.

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The Do Nothing Weekend

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My plans for this weekend are very simple, I am to do nothing. I am happy to report that as of noon Sunday I am successful in that mission. My goal is to stay in and kick the remnants of my cold so I am fresh and normal for next week. I may have stayed in, but the cold is not 100% gone yet. I am coughing a little, that is actually a new development. My noise is still slightly stuffed up, but better than before. My throat is still slightly soar. An improvement over last week yes, but I am still not my normal self yet.

I missed my nephews birthday party yesterday due to this cold. As much as I am upset that I missed it, I am glad I didn’t have to do all that traveling to get there. That and there would be tons of kids over, and I don’t want to get anyone else sick. Instead I sat around and watched allot of TV. I have all but cleaned out my backlog of things to watch on my Tivo and Apple TV.

It is weird to think that it was 95 degrees out yesterday and currently 93 degrees outside when I am cool and comfortable with the AC on low in my apartment. I will say this, my current apartment stays cool. In my last two apartments before this without AC on high the place would be sweltering with the temperature in the 90’s outside. When I woke up this morning my living room was a bit warm but not completely unlivable when the AC was off for more than 12 hours. There is allot to be said for that!

I am not sure what the agenda holds for today, but probably more of the same lying around letting the meds kill my cold. Maybe I will get some more writing in this afternoon if I am in the mood.

Carrier

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I don’t normally watch PBS, but I saw the advertisement for Carrier a few weeks ago. I programed up the Tivo and finally got to watch all of it recently. I thought it was an amazing documentary. They seemed to gloss over some stuff with lots of music, but I think all in all it was really well done. That is hard to say to many TV shows recently, documentaries or not. Well done TV is rare, and the 10 hours of Carrier were worth the watch for me!

The Harmony

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I am like most people (or at least people that I know). I have allot of remote controls needed to watch TV. At last count I had 6. I have wanted a universal remote for years, but for almost as long as I can remember there have been universal remotes that just haven’t done what they were supposed to do. I remember my teenage years at home and my dad had at least 3 “universal” remotes sitting along with the remotes for the TV, VCR, & Cable. None of them did everything they were supposed to. I have also had the same problem, so for years I gave up.

I had almost lost hope in technology solving this problem that it had created, until I read the reviews of the Harmony 1. I had read and heard great things about the Harmony remotes, but they were expensive and seemed difficult to teach the remote how to do stuff. Because of that I avoided them. Then I read about the Harmony 1, and I was impressed. Now granted it did seem that other of the more recent Harmony remotes by Logitech did the same thing, but 1 was the latest model that was in my price range. After reading CNET’s review and talking to a friend or two I went and shelled out the $250 for the remote. Yes you heard me right, it was $250 plus tax for a remote control. Let me tell you it is worth every penny!

I have what you would call a slightly more complicated entertainment system setup than most. I was skeptical that it could be programed easily enough for all the stuff I have. I can safely say now more than a week later that this remote works as advertised. It took me about 30-45 minutes to program in all my devices, and activities but after that it worked on the very first attempt to use my setup. My entertainment setup is complicated because I have a TV, Tivo HD, stereo receiver, DVD player, Apple TV, Xbox 360, and a HDMI switcher (KVM) to cycle between everything. That means the Harmony needs to know to switch the KVM to one channel, the receiver to another channel, use the receiver to change volume, use the Tivo to change channels and know all the special Tivo buttons just for me to watch some TV. It also needs to know what to do when i want to switch to the Apple TV to watch TV and listen to music, but like i said on the very first attempt the remote knew what to do. I was amazed. The only remote the Harmony needed a little extra assistance understanding was my Tivo remote. Everything else it knew how it functioned right away. The online database of devices was very thorough. It even knew my HDMI switcher model. I was impressed and still am. I am waiting for the day I come home from work and the Harmony just gives me a run down of what I missed on the TV that day!

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