Xbox 360

I Can Finally Stop Tinkering With my Media Center, For Now…

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I make a conscious effort to limit what personal family details I post however I do enjoy writing this blog. That means I typically focus my writing around technology. I find tech interesting and it’s a huge part of my life. Not the largest part however big enough that there are plenty of topics to write about. Looking back at my blog posts over the past few months I thought I talked extensively about my media center setup challanges. I was surprised then to realize that I haven’t written about my evolving use of my Apple TV 4 since I purchased it late last year: My New Apple TV.

I was happy that on day one the new Apple TV ran the latest version of the Plex app. The challenge I had was that Plex is only half of my media center/TV watching set up. Content purchased from the iTunes store makes up part of the other half of my use case. Live TV takes up the rest. The big roadblock after I got my Apple TV was it couldn’t stream live TV. I have a HDHome Run from Silicon Dust that takes my cable card and streams my cable TV to any networked device that can receive it. The Apple TV does not natively support this. Silicon dust does not have their own app for the Apple TV (yet anyway). Initially that was extremely frustrating. It required me to maintain other device just so we can watch live TV. That complicated media center use for my wife. Ease-of-use is critical for her and I. For her she just wanted it to work reliably. For me I don’t want to get frantic calls or texts that my daughters can’t watch curious George because something hokey is going on.

Luckily for me after the new year I stumbled across not one but two applications in the Apple TV app store that supported streaming TV from an HDHome Run. I got into the beta program of one app however there were some challenges with the audio being out of sync with the video. That was a problem that I had with my Kodi Media Center on my Raspberry Pi. I then found the second app which cost about $15 buy however it was out of beta and it looked too promising not to try it. I am so glad I did. It worked perfectly. Now I was able to have Plex, iTunes, and live TV all on my Apple TV. That enabled me to simplify the media center substantially and thus make it easier to use.

The streaming TV app works pretty flawlessly. I was able to clean up the cables and devices in my media Center when I no longer needed my android TV, Raspberry Pi OSMC, and Mac Mini running Plex. All those devices at one time or another were testbeds that failed in one way or another. I still have one Raspberry Pi plugged into an HDMI cable in my media Center however that is usually just for when I’m building something. My media center experience is not dependent on it though.

Experimenting and finding the most optimal set up for us for TV/media consumption took a pretty long time. I am glad the technology caught up to to the requirements that I was looking for. The setup has been pretty stable for the past several months. I haven’t made any major changes to it since getting the T streaming app. I have been adding additional apps to the Apple TV however the basic configuration doesn’t change. I do want to try getting a game controller and seeing if there are any good games on the Apple TV.  I no longer have an Xbox 360 so at present nomgaming platform of any kind. Of course I haven’t played an Xbox game in four years don’t miss it all that much most of the time.

Desk Reorg

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At home tonight I decided to reorganize my desk, again. About two weeks ago I moved things around on my desk(s). I have two desks and a little desk/cart arranged in an L shape since I can’t get the middle piece of my desk system in the color lament of the desks I have. So I have a make shift L. It actually looks pretty good. I love my Anthro Desks! I have been tweaking the setup since I got the smaller desk I used to make the L. Two weeks ago I took away my setup for my work laptop since i thought it was cluttered and put my media center iMac there in stead. I ended up not really using the monitor I freed up from the laptop setup so it was just sitting there idle.

Yesterday I got the idea to try a 2nd monitor on my iMac setup again. I also had the need for that laptop setup (using the laptop only wasn’t cutting it) so I decided to reorganize everything. I moved the media center iMac back to the center part of the L, returned the Dell monitor to setup my laptop again, and then broke out my old Apple 23″ cinema display to use as my second monitor alongside my 24″ iMac. I am not going to really be able to sell the Cinema Display since it is 3 years old so I might as well try to use it.

I know it sounds like allot of monitors, and it kinda is. But I accumulated everything over time. I actually have extra stuff I need to get rid of or give away that didn’t even make it to this configuration. I will use the main display on my 24″ iMac for personal stuff, the 23″ display on that iMac now sports a full screen XP VM that I can do work on. My 20″ iMac will remain as my media center and used for video processing and controlling my Apple TV & xbox 360 media centers. The other setup will be for my work laptop so I can do other work stuff on it.

Once I clean up everything I will take another Panorama picture of everything. Right now check out the before Panorama photos I took a few months ago when I still had my Macbook setup.

Desk Panorama Take 2

Before

After, TBD…

Two Offices In One Day

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Today I started off in the office down town. I worked there for the morning and took care of a few meetings. Then at lunch time I went up to midtown for lunch and meetings the rest of the afternoon. It was a productive day. I stayed later than I anticipated but I was glad to get allot of work done!

Nothing spectacular happened at home tonight. Just relaxed and played a bit too much Xbox 360. I don’t do it all the time but I go through spurts of actively playing. I think I started one of those cycles on Sunday.

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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