TV

Apartment Cleanup

by

I spent the past 2 days trying to clean up the mess that is my apartment. It is not going well. I see no improvement to the situation. That is what happens when I decide to rearrange some piece of electronics gear. Everything gets moved around and messy. I should try and finish up tonight, but I am just tired. The events of last week have still not sunk in. It will eventually, but not yet.

Well I stopped writing and got off my but for a while and I cleaned up decent amount. I still want to tidy up a bit more. I have also decided to wipe my mini, and remove the XP partition on it. I also brought back my dedicated DVR Windows XP machine. The Beyond TV Link software and the dual booting the Mini was not cutting it for me. I will use my regular DVR machine on my TV until the Apple TV thing ships and then I will plug that into my TV as well. My Mini is now plugged into my KVM. My main Windows box is not feeling too well after the moving of stuff. I think the power supply went. It is over 2 years old so I don’t know what I am going to do to it just yet.

Still cleaning…

A Row to Myself

by

For some lucky reason I got an entire row (3 seats) to myself on my return trip back to NYC. I am presently at 39,001 feet and have traveled 2,222 miles (make that 2228 miles between when I saw the display and actually wrote the number since the display updated). I am over Lake Erie near Detroit according to the map. I got another refitted 757 with the setback LCD’s. I realized again that I don’t watch regular tv, and only use my DVR. that is because almost nothing on is worth watching. I have a few hours of TV I watch a week and that is it. 24 channels with nothing on. Go figure.

I had to take a Butabitol again today (yes I spell it differently each time I write it since I can never remember the dam spelling) on the plane. I felt like a head ache was on its way. Normally I would have waited or taken an alive instead, but since I had 4+ hours plus waiting for my bags ahead of me I couldn’t chance getting sick in flight. it probably was a cop out to goto the meds’, but my worst fear in the world is being somewhere so far away from home and not able to get home in time for me to crash with a bad migraine. Being stuck on a plane 2,400 miles from home kind of sets the stage for that potentially happening, so I played it safe. So far, so good. I am a bit hot, but I am surviving for now. I have about an hour or so left on the flight.

I spent most of the day at the airport. I was done with the convention earlier than I thought and I couldn’t get a earlier flight, since the next earlier one would have been too early. since I got an entire row to my own it turned out ok (so far).

I was able to get some work done on my laptop at the Delta lounge on my Verizon Air Card. I had several calls with Jayson reviewing issues. He is stepping up and taking charge of the ops team. It really helps. I am nudging him along but you cannot complain about the results. On the other hand there are others than need to get a bit motivated, but I can’t talk about that right now.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

The Ultimate Media Center

by

Do you know what the Ultimate Media Center setup is? Please tell me! I thought I found it a few years ago with Tivo, but then I wanted more so I had my Tivo hacked (Yes I didn’t want to deal with it myself so I had it done). Then I went out and built my own DVR with Beyond TV and thought that was perfect. Then I wanted more. I know I am demanding and all, but I keep upgrading and changing my DVR/TV setup.

Now I am on the fence between trying out Myth TV or just getting a dam DVR cable box from my provider and not bother anymore with the endless tinkering.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Sleepy Sunday

by

I was going to goto the Beer Garden today but felt like I was getting a migraine so I passed on the opportunity. Glad that I did. I crashed around 4PM and slept for a few hours. I felt like crap when I woke up so I did what I normally don’t do when I am home and getting a head ache. I medicated. I feel better now but I know it is only the prescription talking. I am hoping to be sleepy enough to goto bed soon and get a good night sleep.

The rest of the weekend I did some DVD and DVR watching. This week I was into The Wire. I watched season 2 and now I am on clearing out season 3 from my DVR. Man that is a good show.

Reminds me of Homicide Life on the Street. Back to the work grind tomorrow!

Technorati Tags: , ,

Home Entertainment System Update

by

In an about face I returned (by the time this posts I hope to have returned) the EyeTV 200. It was not as good as the Snapstream setup I have on my PC. It wouldn’t go full screen correctly on my 40″ LCD TV. It also didn’t have the ability to schedule season passes. I will go with the substantially cheaper option of getting another Hauppauge USB2 PVR off of ebay. There are not many of them but the price is right. I will plug it into my existing setup as a second tuner. If Apple comes out with a better DVR solution I will take a look at switching over, until then the last remaining Windows box that I rely on is my DVR box.

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

Video Redux

by

I finally took the time to look at an article that shows how to convert video from my DVR program to a format that works with my video iPod. Turns out it is a free video extractor (windows only) that will convert almost any video file (i am using a generic mpeg-2 file that worked flawlessly) into a compatible format for use on the video iPod. I ran a test this morning and it worked flawlessly. I programed my DVR computer to convert a bunch of other shows I have. I also programed my desktop to convert a bunch of misc video’s (a lot of them) to the same format. The conversions take allot of time so I am going to let them run overnight. While I sleep they will perform.

I also broke down and bought an Elgato EyeTV 200 for my Mini. it is not as elegant a system as my Beyond TV, but I wanted to use my Mini as part of the home entertainment center. Since my DVD player was going I removed it and now I have my Mini & my Media Center PC as my only components of my home entertainment center. The Tivo is now in the bedroom, and it will be gone as soon as I watch whats left on it. Tomorrow I hope to go through video’s I have and encode what I want to keep for use on the iPod and get rid of the rest. The other advantage of this conversion is the space savings. An hour long video in MPEG-2 is about 2 gigs, in the H.264 codec it is less than 500 meg. Not a bad savings.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Home Entertainment System

by

I have been using Snapstream’s Beyond TV for over a year now. I am hooked. I like the free aspect of the system (aka no monthly recurring charges). But lets be honest I paid a bunch for all the gear to make the system work. That is not a complaint, just an observation. Part of the cost was getting certain pieces of hardware and then replaceing them over time after I slowly learned I didn’t like them. Now a year later, 2 revisions of beyond tv later, & two comptuer setups later I am finally able to truly use my computer as a DVR. Right now I have it working so well (not trying to jinx myself) that I am about to cancel Tivo. Not because tivo is bad or anything (except for their evil policy of requiring a 1 year contract for new service), but because I can do everything I want to and sometimes more on my computer without a monthly fee.

The latest version of Beyond Media solved my DVD playback issues on my computer. Now I have a fully functioning Media Center PC. My DVR computer is hooked up to my TV. It plugs directly into the TV via a VGA connector. I have my firefly remote, Beyond TV, Beyond Media doing everything that a Windows Media Center PC would do for me. I have Beyond TV for my Tivo like DVR, and Beyond Media is finally working properly as a Media Center replacement. That means I can watch DVD’s on my computer with ease. I can also browse videos, photos and music right from my TV. personally I use my Mac for iTunes so I wont use the music function, but the photo album function is cool. Having the DVD player work is fantastic.

My next project is to get the entire setup to work in HD with my HDTV.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Road Trip

by

I took a work road trip today. Had to meet some people in our other office and several other people had other missions up there so we rented a van and drove up. Got allot done, and we tried to avoid the traffic from some storm that was coming up the coast. We didn’t really avoid the traffic. Got stuck in it from the GWB all the way to my house. I assume that everyone was stuck in it past that too.

After work I hopped out of the van by my house but instead of going home I hoped on the subway and went to heartland brewery to meet Jayson and John for dinner and drinks. I had fun. We talked and hung out. We need to schedule another poker night.

Freevo Version 4.0

by

I have been using Snapstream’s Beyond TV 3 for almost a year now. I have spoken before of how great a product it is. They just announced Beyond TV 4.0. Having no need for over the air HDTV tuning I bought the upgrade anyway. Truth be told I wanted to check out the Divix encoding option on the new version.

For a few months I have been pondering turning my custom built celeron pc into a media center box. I have been using Beyond TV as a PVR on my good HP box. I had been too lazy to reconfigure the setup. The announcement of the new version of Beyond TV got me thinking, upgrade. I did some research on decent PCI video cards that are compatible with my TV Tuner USB device. The computer I was going to use as the DVR has a built in video card that is not compatible, and since it is such a small PC it didn’t have an AGP slot. I found a good PNY card at Compusa for the unit. I also upgraded the 160gig drive in the computer to a bigger 250gig. I performed the hardware upgrade and checked that the gear worked. then I installed windows from scratch. All I put on the machine the latest windows updates, the USB IR drivers, the video capture card drivers, remote, and Beyond TV. I did some heavy rearranging of my living room and moved the computer to my entertainment center. I rigged it up to my computer using the computers built in VGA port (nice).

There were a few minor issues, but all in all the upgrade went well. I am running some test recordings now to verify the system works correctly, but so far it looks good. This setup actually fixed an issue I had with my old computer not working with the resolution of the HDTV I have. The new video card plugged into the VGA slot (vs the RCA slot on the old setup) fits the screen perfectly. What is weird is the resolution the computer is at is not the native resolution of the TV but it works, so I won’t complain.

Once I am happy with my new setup I can blow away the HP computer and rebuild it to use as a general workstation. I use my Powerbook as my main computer but I always need a Windows box around for something.

Now I am off to clean up all the dust and dirt I created and unearthed with all my moving of stuff around my living room.

Spooks Series 4

by

Spooks (MI-5 in the US) has completed its series 4 (season in the US). Thanks to the joys of the internet I was able to watch the entire series while living in the US even though it has not been broadcast here yet. The 10th and final episode was crazy. I for one can’t wait to see what happens to everyone next year. Isn’t that what good TV is about? Keeping you wanting more? I still haven’t found an american show as good as this in the genre.

Since I was able to get all the episodes so quick I now have to wait until the end of 2006 for more. Let the waiting begin…