Rants and Raves

IPTV has come a long way since the early 90′s and for most of the nation we’re on the edge of an era where digital entertainment in the home will be carried throughout our home (and enter our home) over a conventional data network.

At the moment, most media player devices are vendor specific in what they will do (ie, the U-Verse set-top box is an IPTV device, but is very limited in what it provides beyond allowing a consumer access to the U-Verse servers) — though there are some general purpose devices.

Sure, you can attach a Media PC or Home Entertainment PC, a XBox 360, a PS3, or a Wii to your entertainment system and use it as a somewhat general purpose media player — but it’s not really designed to provide a good user experience for media (they’re intended for general computing or gaming) – or you can purchase one of a growing number of media devices that are being offered that are targeted specifically to provide for a reasonably good consumer experience.

There are also a number of BluRay players that have media player capabilities — but since I consider BluRay a dying media format (and have since the day the format wars were decided) — I see no reason to invest in a player that’s likely to go the way of the 8-track; nor do I see a reason to pay for over priced discs (particularly when I already own a license for the material in another format, and no longer subscribe to making the MPAA richer when they offer me nothing).

There are also a number of display panels that have media player capabilities — but you’re going to find that the display panels that use the best display technology don’t contain the wizzy features to allow for streaming media. So my advice, is buy a solid panel and just realize that you’re going to have an external box (I don’t know of anyone who’s built a cable-card type module for IPTV at the consumer level let).

That leaves us with just the stand along devices — and if you decide that NetFlix is an absolute requirement you come down to three devices currently: Roku Streaming Player; Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ HD Media Player; and Western Digital TV Live Plus HD Media Player.

For my money the Roku is a joke — and I’m just going to pass right over it since I’ve already given it more attention than it deserves.

Both the Seagate and the Western Digital devices look like they have potential (note, only the WDBABX0000NBK is worth considering, the other models are in the same bucket as the Roku)/

The WD TV Live Plus; however, specifically supports the “play to” feature of Windows Media Player — which means you should be able to play any content on the device that you can play on a Windows 7 machine… which opens you up to a much larger potential source for entertainment.

Let me be clear at this point that I haven’t tried any of these devices for myself — I’m just in the phase of trying to figure out which would be worth my time to look at… once I have a device (and hopefully I’ll be happy with the first I get) I’ll write up a detailed post on the feature set — if you’re in a hurry, just read over the capabilities of each of the possibilities and decide what features you have to have to eliminate the number of possibilities down; and before you do that, if you haven’t looked at the value of the NetFlix streaming feature — acquaint yourself with that, and you too will likely consider it a “must have”.

Tags: Communications, Entertainment, Hardware, Shopping, Technology by roger
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Last week was the National Spelling Bee and this year the finals were televised on ESPN  and the “championship” round was televised in prime time on ABC.

Now first of all let’s be adult.  The only reason that the National Spelling Bee was on TV was money – everyone involved wanted to make as much as they could… and that’s really the bottom line of what drives TV (within the framework of regulations set forth by the Federal Communications Commission).

The thing about this that caused quite a ruckus is that ESPS halted the sixth round in the middle; so what was televised during prime time was going to be the last part of the round currently in progress, and then any rounds that would follow.

Now this isn’t something they decided at the last minute; it was clearly stated in the terms of the contract — and the contract wasn’t so long that you could say no reasonable person would have read and been familiar with the terms.

If the ESPN broadcast concludes during a semifinal round, spellers who have not spelled in the round will advance to the championship finals for the conclusion of the last semifinals round.

There are many that will say that this simply wasn’t fair to the children involved — and I’ll say you’re damn right.  But what wasn’t fair was televising the competition the way it was — making the contestants part of a commercial endeavor for networks, sponsors, broadcasters, and advertising to maximize their profit was simply unthinkable…

Somewhere along the path to present day American’s have simply lost sight of simple core values… and now we live our lives focused on television and letting television dictate to us the terms of living our life.  Sure, many delude themselves into thinking that their DVR gives them the control, but in the end it is the commercialization of television that really has control… and it can be seen most clearly on networks like ESPN that focus on sports.

If you want to take control — take the remote control and turn off the television.

Tags: Entertainment by roger
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After thinking over AT&T U-Verse service I’m going to have to make the call that it’s something you’ll have to consider long and hard and figure out if the cost makes it something that’s worth it to you.

AT&T is a horrible company to do business with; but then again, so likely is the company your get your video, telephone, and internet services from now — so that might be a wash.

AT&T is a company that doesn’t engender trust is the least — and you’ll have to keep documentation and follow up on them on just about every aspect of your order, your service, your rebates, your rewards, your bills, etc; but then again, that’s probably all true of almost every company you do business with now — so that might be a wash.

The prices are high; so unless the service offerings are a good fit for exactly what you want (and you can take advantage of some of the bundle discounts) you might want to deal with separate companies for each of the services.

The only real positive thing I can say about AT&T U-Verse is that there isn’t a long term contract; in fact there’s not really a contract of any sort (as long as you ignore the fact that you will need to retain the service for some period of time to actually get your rebates and rewards).

One thing I suspect we’ll see as the economy continues to stagnate is that companies will do more to retain existing customers; so you might find that pricing becomes much more flexible (I’ve already been offered a “free” upgrade to U450 service with the top-tier internet for 90-days… of course I’m pretty sure they’re betting on me forgetting to downgrade [I said "no thanks"]).

Tags: Communications, Entertainment, Internet, Technology by roger
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AT&T offers three separate services through their U-Verse branded advance communications offering.  This post will deal with video.

U-Verse video isn’t a traditional cable service; rather it’s a feature rich digital entertainment service.

When you have AT&T U-Verse video you can select standard set-top boxes for televisions or two different levels of digital video recorders [DVR] (I don’t see why you’d need more than a single DVR since you can watch the content of the DVR from any set-top box).  The televisions in your home can be connected via the existing coax plant or preferably through CAT5 cabling (which would also allow computers to be connected as well).

Your installer will present you will a plan for cabling all your televisions to the system.  And while you may incur additional installation charges if you decide you want it done differently, I found my installer more than willing to work with me to make me happy (I didn’t ask him for anything unreasonable or substantially more difficult than he suggested).

The DVRs and set-tops boxes require registration with the AT&T video servers, and there’s a great potential for things going wrong in that process — so you might find during installation a defective piece of equipment makes the install take much longer than it should — but if your installer is like mine, your service will work correctly before he leaves.

The number of channels you get depends on the service level plan you choose; and whether or not you get high definition depends on whether or not your pay for it (it’s not free, and I think it’s only included in the U450 plan).

Also, pay close attention to the terms and conditions of any promotion you plan on redeeming as to what plan you have to subscribe to and how long you have to keep it… again, AT&T doesn’t engender trust, and any mistake you make they will be sure to use it against you (in fact, from what I’ve found you’ll end up fighting for the rewards you’re clearly eligible for).

The DVR can record up to four different programs at once; and you can play back multiple programs while recording (there’s going to be a limit — it’s not really advertised, at least not clearly).

The DVR and set-top boxes are based on Microsoft Windows CE; whether or not that’s the source of some of the problems are not I can’t say — but there are problems… lots of problems.

I find one of the first things you’ll have to learn is how to reset/reboot the box… and it’s the only way to resolve things like:

• All (or at least many) of your recorded programs disappear from the listing;
• You can’t play a recorded program;
• You can’t use any features when playing a recorded program (like fast forward, etc);

Remember, when you reset/reboot the box you’ll interrupt anything being recorded — and generally you’ll find you have the “same” program twice, actually the older listing is the first part, the newer listing is the second part — and there will be some missing content (re-record it if you want to watch it all).

I also find that video glitches fairly often, particularly when another program starts / finishes recording… often recording have glitches in them; of course you’ll see “line drops” just like with digital cable once in a while as well.

The DVR / set-top boxes are slow to respond, and freeze on occasion (sometimes they become responsive after a few moments, sometimes they don’t).

I don’t have HD service, but I can only imagine that the problems get worse with the higher data rates HD demands.

If you feel “antenna” quality video is good enough, you’ll be happy with AT&T U-Verse service — but keep in mind that I find satellite and digital cable equally horrible — and satellite boxes and advance cable boxes are just as buggy… which is probably one of the reasons I likely won’t keep the service.

AT&T U-Verse also offers video on demand (VOD) service — that means you can watch a number of programs any time you like; and they offer a number of “free” VOD selections as well as a large catalog of pay-per-view VOD programs (though I believe you can watch those several times within a window once you pay for them).

The DVR has the ability to record a single program or a series; however, since AT&T doesn’t seem to provide sufficient meta information in the program guide you might find that when you record a series you miss episodes (particularly when there’s a “marathon”) or you get double recording of the same series.  My feeling is that this SUCKS, it simply isn’t that hard to “remember” what I’ve already recorded in a series, and only record it a second time if there was a problem with the initial recording… and of course, how hard is it to figure out episodes of a series that haven’t been recorded (even if they’re shown at an alternate time).

Over all my feeling is that the AT&T U-Verse video offering is weak; very weak… buggy; very buggy… and expensive; very expensive.

I’m not much of a TV fan — I prefer to watch movies and programs commercial free, and I prefer not to deal with Mid evil video playback technology (particularly when I’m being charged premium prices).

Tags: Entertainment by roger
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I signed up for AT&T U-Verse service about two months ago — I’ve already made a post on that, but I decide to go ahead and do a series of posts on it.

This post will be an over view of what it is; then I’ll do a post on each of the services that are part of it.

The first thing to say about AT&T U-Verse is that it is offered by a company that I think very little of; a company that does not engender trust (in fact I’m suspicious of them at every turn — they seem to make mistake after mistake after mistake — and all their mistakes benefit them).  The sad thing is you might not have any substantially better company in your area to receive similar services from — so it’s not necessarily choosing the best, but often choosing the one that gives you that most without costing you the most.

U-Verse in short is AT&T’s name for an “advance” set of services — voice, television, and internet.

AT&T’s system generally provides these services to the home over copper (fibre is required in fairly close proximity as well).  The technology is called FTTN (fibre-to-the-node) and while they do have some FTTP (fibre-to-the-premises) it’s only found in extremely dense areas.

With FTTN a VRAD (video-ready-access-device) is present between the Central Office and the end node consumer; in FTTP it isn’t.  VRADs are generally fairly large pieces of equipment similar to a cable company’s “head-end” (used for digital cable deployment) and much larger than a TELCO’s mini-DSLAMs (used for DSL deployment via copper from fibre from the Central Office DSLAM).

The services offered via U-Verse are: voice (“land line” telephone), television (“cable” tv as well as video on demand), and internet (“high speed” broadband).

When the service is installed it’s likely the installers will work in a team; the outside cable will be run by one person (generally the entry copper from the pole will be replaced) and new inside wiring is run.

It’s important to note that all services are digital.

Voice is provided by voice over IP (VoIP) technology; television is provided through ip video (including live and video on demand [VOD]); and of course the internet service is the core of everything (though an optional part).

The center of the system in the home is a residential gateway which handles all three of the services (along with a battery backup unit — mainly to insure that emergency services work in power outages).

Many people ask the question if they can use their own residential equipment rather than what AT&T provides.  The answer simply is NO.  Currently you must use the AT&T equipment — you may use your equipment in addition to the AT&T residential gateway, or remove your equipment and use exclusively the AT&T provided equipment.

I’ll cover the details of each service with respect to the gateway in the following posts — but your installer will work with you to provide a reasonable installation that should provide you with voice, television, and internet services much as you currently have.

The gateway itself has one WAN side connection, two telephone jacks  (it’s not clear to me whether it’s cable of three lines or four lines, but currently you can only subscribe for two lines of service), four 100-Base-T Ethernet (LAN) connections, one wireless (802.11-N) radio, one USB connection (for a PC), one “F” connector for video, and one Ethernet “broadband” connection (I’m not sure what this is for, it’s got a piece of transparent tape over it on my unit).

Initially the set-top boxes and DVR units must be cabled directly to the unit to insure proper discover; after they are configured you can use a switch if you want more ports; or you can connect your router to the gateway if you like (you will need to reconfigure the gateway if you do this to allow your gateway to work as before).

If everything goes well in the installation, once the wiring is in place the gateway, set-top boxes, and DVR units will register and come online within a few minutes — however, AT&T seems to have quite a few units that are defective, so don’t be surprised if there are some problems.

I had ordered one DVR and two set-top boxes (mainly because I wanted the maximum installation I could get for free).  One of the set-top boxes was DOA (dead-on-arrival), one of the set-top boxes worked (but I decided I didn’t really want to keep it so the install took it back), and the DVR unit wasn’t completely dead, but was defective.  Fortunately the installer had another unit he could replace it with — but since the unit had worked well enough to register itself it took quite sometime for the installer to find someone at AT&T support who was able to clear out the previous registration so my “new” DVR could register.

We also had some issues with the voice service; but by the time the DVR issues were resolved a reboot of the gateway seemed to download the proper service configuration and both inbound and outbound calling worked.

I will note that my install was originally scheduled for a Saturday (it was the first day I could select); and AT&T never informed me that they had moved my installation date to the following Monday.  I found out when I called them 15-minutes before the close of the installation window.  I was more than a little pissed since I had changed my plans Saturday to accommodate them, and now I had to change my plans for Monday as well!

Over all I give my installer fairly high marks for doing a good job (though he still owes me a jack — AT&T doesn’t give there installers a very good supply of equipment or parts); but like almost every AT&T system, it’s brittle and almost appears designed to fail.

The one short coming of my install is that he really didn’t know a great deal about configuring the gateway for a “complex” network; but since that isn’t something AT&T technically supports I can’t fault him on that, and I certainly knew enough to figure out what needed to be changed (the 2Wire device they use could be considered a “pro-sumer” grade device, so it capable of meeting most needs, but don’t expect it to have highly technical descriptions of the various settings).

I will say, that after the initial installation the system appeared to work… though before you place your order you’ll want to read my next three posts as well as do a price-feature comparison with what you have now.

Also, you may find that it turns out to be less expensive to order more services than you want.  For example, if you only want internet service — it’s cheaper to order enough service to get a free installation (well, it’s not free — I found no way to avoid the $29 activation fee — but it’s easy to see how to avoid the $149 installation fee).  If you order a bundle, the installation fee is waived; if you downgrade in the first thirty (30) days there’s a $5 fee — so as the installer is leaving, call and downgrade — save $144 of the installation fee… though taking advantage of some of the rewards and promotions may actually make it less expensive to have more services for longer.

Oh, and one last word — make sure you keep copies of everything you “read” online to do with any promotional credits, rewards, requirements.  As I’ve already said, AT&T does not engender trust.

Tags: Communications, Entertainment, Internet, Technology by roger
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A little over a year ago one of my friends with a Mac wanted to get into re-encoding video; I knew about the tools to do it on a PC, but none of the tools really had a OS-X port at that time, so I set out on a quest to find tools that could enable a person who didn’t know much about video encoding to accomplish it.

One of the first tools I stumbled on was HandBrake; it was an Open Source project leveraging off of a number of other Open Source products intended on creating a cross platform suite of tools for video encoding that was reasonably straight forward to use and produced reasonable good results.

Well, the version I tested was a near total failure… but the project showed promise and I keep tabs on it for quite some time.

Over the past year it’s steadily improved.  In fact, I’m probably being a little hard on it, since right after I played with an early version a much improved version was available that did work, and did allow my friend to accomplish what he wanted.

Last month HandBrake released a new version — a much improved version.

With Windows, OS-X, and Linux versions you can try out HandBrake for yourself and see the results.

I did two separate tests (and for some reason I always use the same two DVD titles — Saving Private Ryan, and Lord of the Rings — the reason is that both movies have a wide range of  video type from near still images to sweeping panoramic views to everything in motion (blowing up)…

I had two separate machines (a Q9300 and a Q9400 both with 8GB of DDR2) doing the encodes, and did both normal and high profiles; one test was H.264 into a MPEG4 container with AAC created from the AC3 5.1 track; the other was H.264 into a MKV container with AAC created from the AC3 5.1 track in addition to AC3 5.1 pass-through and Dolby Surround pass-through with [soft] subtitles.

For the high profiles: Lord of the Rings took a little over three hours; Saving Private Ryan took just under two and a half hours — so don’t get in a hurry, in fact, run it over night and don’t bother the computer(s).

The high profile achieved about a 2:1 reduction in size; the normal profile achieved about a 4:1 reduction in size.  The high profile’s video was stunning, the normal profile’s video was acceptable.  The AAC audio was acceptable; the AC3 5.1 was identical to the source, and in perfect sync.

There are a number of advantages to keeping your video in a MPEG4 or MKV container verses a DVD image… it’s much easier to catalog and play, and of course it’s smaller (well, you could keep the MPEG2-TS in a MKV and it would be identically sized, but I see little reason for that).

The downside of RIPping your DVDs is that you lose the navigation stream and the extra material.  Do you care???

HandBrake will read source material in just about any format imaginable (and in almost any container as well)… you can take a look at it’s capabilities and features online.

I’ve got some VCR capture streams in DV video that I’m encoding now — trying a few of the more advanced settings in HandBrake to see how it works (well, that’s not really testing HandBrake, that’s testing the H.264 encoder).  My expectation is that once I get the settings right, it will do a fine job; but with video captures you should never expect the first try to be the best (well, I’m never that lucky).

While HandBrake is very easy to use, your ability to get really good results from it is going to partially depend on how willing you are to learn a little about video re-encoding (which will require a little reading and a little experimentation).   But that said, NO product is going to magically just do the right thing in every case…

Overall I would say that HandBrake is one of the best video encoders you’re going to find, and you cannot beat the price — FREE!

Here’s some additional notes.

For Windows 7 you will want to download the DivX trial and just install the MKV splitter (nothing else is needed) so that Windows 7 can play media in a MKV container using it’s native CODECs.

With Windows Media Play 12 and Media Center I haven’t figured out how to switch audio streams; so make sure you encode with the audio stream you want as a default as the first stream.  With Media Player Classic and Media Player Classic Home Cinema it’s easy to select the audio stream.  Also, Windows Media Player will not render AC3 pass-through streams, it will just pass them through the SPDIF/Toslink to your receiver — so you won’t get any sound if you’re trying to play it on your PC.

Don’t delete any of your source material until you are certain that you are happy with the results; and you might want to backup your source material and keep it for six months or so just to be sure (yeah — I know it’s big; but a DVD will fit on a DVD).

Handbrake

Tags: Computers, Digital Media, Entertainment, Linux, Mac, Software, Technology, Windows by roger
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Samhain is the name for the Gaelic festival you probably know better as Halloween (All Saints’ Eve or All Hallows’ Eve).

For an excellent article on the history of Halloween and the origins of many of the traditions we know, read up on Wikipedia — you might be surprised by what you read.

Halloween on Wikipedia

Tags: Entertainment, General, History by roger
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I ran across this site while reading on the web.  The HDX 1000 and HDX 900 look like they could be interesting devices to hookup to your high definition panel to give you options in how you acquire and manage your content.

I haven’t played with one, so all I have to go by is what’s on the web site.

http://www.hdx1080.com/

Tags: Digital Media, Entertainment, Technology by roger
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From July 1, 2008 until September 30, 2008 Chase is offering 5% cash back on eligible travel and entertainment purchases.

So beyond the 3% cash back on certain categories they always offer; and 1% on all other purchases you can now get 5% cash back for a limited time on airline, hotels, rental cars, and fine dining when you spend more than $300 per month (that should be easy to do with any of those in the mix, particularly if it’s business expenses).

You do need to opt into this program, and if you haven’t gotten a letter from Chase inviting you, I’d say just go ahead and call 800-603-2265.

If you don’t have a Chase Freedom MasterCard or VISA, then maybe you should consider taking advantage of their services and rewards.

NOTES:

• If you want cash back, you maximize your reward by waiting until you have $200 because you get a check for $250! Other than that some of their travel and give cards are pretty good deals if they would save you money that you would have spent otherwise.
• Discover is apparently running a promotion as well. I’m not a Discover card holder so I don’t know the specifics of it.
• My picks for cards are: Citi Rewards Dividend (Citibank); Chase Freedom Rewards (Chase); and Citi Cash Returns (Citibank). There are also a few other cards that give good rewards provided you do a great deal of business with particular vendors.
• I would stay away from Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Capital One — their cards generally don’t pay bonuses or use some lame bonus programs.  And while you might want a credit card from your credit union, it’s unlikely they will have a decent reward program.
• Beyond rewards, many credit cards also provide rental car insurance, warranty extensions, lost/damage protection on items you buy, etc.  It’s always advisable to read the benefits that come with your credit card; many financial institutions off great benefits just because very few people ever bother to read the literature that comes with their cards and take advantage of the programs, so it really just makes them look good in all the comparisons and doesn’t end up costing them much at all.

As always, remember you can use credit cards to your advantage as long as you use them wisely.

Tags: Credit Cards, Dining Out, Entertainment, Finance by roger
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When in the Mission and looking for some tasty Mexican food, try these:

• Pancho Villa, (415) 864-8840, 3071 16th (one other location in San Mateo)
• El Faro, (415) 647-2716, 2399 Folsom (two other locations in SF)
• La Taqueria, (415) 285-7117, 2889 Mission
• El Farolito, (415) 377-5500, 4817 Mission

 Also, for fun, read up on the history of the San Francisco Burrito.

Tags: Deals, Dining Out, Entertainment, Food, Mexican by roger
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