Elgato turbo.264 mini-review

A couple months back, the people at elgato sent me a turbo.264 to test out. It's a USB-based hardware encoder for converting any video file to AppleTV or iPod format and comes with software that controls the device. It's a small black plastic stick not much larger than a keychain thumb drive and their site boasts large speed improvements over other conversion methods.

On my Mac Pro desktop (quad core, 2.16Ghz), my results were mixed. Comparing against the best AppleTV/iPod/iPhone converter I know, VisualHub, I did not see any speed improvements when converting an identical file using both the turbo.264 and VisualHub (with VisualHub set to the highest quality setting for AppleTV output). The software application that comes with the turbo.264 doesn't offer any quality settings beyond the output (AppleTV/iPod high quality/iPod low quality) and shows preview keyframes. I assume if I was using an older powerbook or slower macbook I might see some of the advertised speed differences.

On the positive side, the video quality on output files was great. I encoded several identical source files in both VisualHub and turbo.264 and even with VisualHub's settings on the highest "go nuts!" quality, video playback on my AppleTV was smoother and sharper with the turbo.264 output.

So in the end, I didn't see any speed increases, but video quality was noticeably better when using the turbo.264 over a software-only solution like VisualHub. Is the turbo.264 worth the ~$100 price versus a $23 piece of shareware? Possibly, if you're using a laptop mac or older G4 hardware, but for me the quality difference isn't enough to justify the price difference.

July 26, 2007 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (11)

A week with AppleTV: A Review

AppleTV is the long awaited living room component of the iTunes/iLife/iMac/iPod world created by Apple. A little over a week ago mine arrived and after 20 minutes or so of setup I was enjoying my entire iTunes library on my TV. Let me just say upfront that despite a few drawbacks, I really like AppleTV and I suspect anyone with a decent home theater system and a decent sized media collection in iTunes would also find it handy.

The positives

Setup was a breeze as I connected the AppleTV unit to my A/V rack with component and digital audio cables. I'm a heavy user of iTunes and the iTunes Music Store, so I was happy to see all my content was easily streamed in just a matter of minutes. A month or so ago I got the new Apple Airport Extreme (with wireless n) and with the AppleTV about 25 feet away, everything in my iTunes library streamed without a glitch.

Like TiVo, the AppleTV is all about the interface. With a simple remote and a simple list view, it's easy to surf through an entire library of movies, tv shows, and music across several computers. It seems like you'd need more buttons on a remote and you'd need more options in a video interface, but like the iPod the beauty is in the simple but powerful interface. There's nothing in the way and you can get to any file on any computer in your house with just a few clicks.

I found the buying process for new movies and TV shows easy and fast, with most films downloading within an hour (usually around 1.5Gb in size) and TV shows downloading in 20 minutes or so. While that's not instant, it's a heck of a lot faster than Netflix and beats going out to the video store. I usually didn't wait for my AppleTV to sync with my main computer, instead just streaming the newly downloaded shows right to the device. Video quality from the iTunes Store is about 640x480, which puts most video somewhere better than most cable channels but not as good as standard DVD format. With high action movies, this becomes obvious, but with most TV shows and especially with anything animated, you barely notice. Since the system is only designed for widescreen TVs, there's never any need to adjust aspect ratios or zoom in on cropped video -- everything filmed in 16:9 fills your screen.

Overall, I'd say the video quality was on par with DVDs I've converted to divx or xvid -- it's far from perfect but good enough for most video.

The negatives

The biggest drawback to AppleTV is the price, at $300 for the unit itself, on top of the widescreen TV you need to own as well as the $2-$15 you'll spend on each show or movie. However, if you compare to similar devices that enable viewing of downloadable movies, an Amazon Unbox powered TiVo goes from $200-800 with movies going for similar prices, and HD movies downloaded to an Xbox360 or PS3 will set you back $400-600 before you ever buy a single movie. Then again, those other devices play games and record TV while the AppleTV does nothing but stream media.

I was surprised the unit didn't ship with any video cables, especially when people continue to be scammed over high HDMI cable prices. For $300, Apple should have thrown a short $5 cable into the box. I was also surprised that the video specs touted 720p playback capabilities, but the iTunes Movie Store doesn't actually sell movies in that format. I really thought they'd up the quality in time for the release of AppleTV.

My personal music/movie/photo collection runs around 120Gb in size, so I found the included 40Gb drive inadequate for anything other than a few movies and all my photos, but since video streaming was smooth on my network I stopped syncing it all to the device. Luckily, guides have already sprung up to let you upgrade the hard drive to something larger.

Conclusions

Overall, I'm happy with my AppleTV. I've used iTunes as my music organizer for the past five years so it was easy to move my content over to my TV. Buying shows and movies is a snap and it's great to be able to enjoy them on a full-sized TV in a living room instead of crowding people around your monitor. I could see myself dropping Netflix someday if the iTunes store ever offered cheap rental prices (as opposed to requiring you to "buy" them at full price). Though the unit seems expensive, I'd say the alternatives are right up there in terms of cost, and though it's not HD quality, I found movies looked much better on my AppleTV when compared to the movies I downloaded from Amazon Unbox to my HD Tivo.

If you follow any sort of video podcast, this device is perfect. No longer are you bound to a computer or your tiny iPod screen, with AppleTV you can finally enjoy many free video podcasts as they were meant to be shown -- on a large set.

I'm also interested in seeing what hackers do with the device. The AppleTV is sort of like a smaller Mac Mini, running a real OS on a real computer, and it serves as a good reference device for people to tinker. I can't wait until someone releases a real-time transcoder that can stream any video format on the fly. For the moment, I've found VisualHub on the Mac to be a godsend. You can throw a video file in almost any format at VisualHub and it'll quickly convert it to an AppleTV friendly format.

Bottom line: If you're an iPod owner and you use iTunes for music and video and always wanted an easy way to move that content into your living room, I'd say AppleTV is a great buy. For others, it's probably a bit too costly to consider.

April 1, 2007 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (12)

The Sony 46" 1080p XBR2 Review

After months of research and testing, I recently purchased a Sony Bravia 1080p 46" XBR2 tv set. What follows are my experiences with the unit.

Out of the Box

Unpacking was simple and straightforward and Sony thankfully has cut way back on packaging material. It took me a couple hours to properly mount it on my existing wall-mount, due to vast differences between my old plasma set and the back design of the Sony (different screws, placement, etc).

As with most new flat-panel TVs, the default configuration after turning it on is too bright and too blown out, color-wise. HD cable looked harsh, Blu-Ray movies looked too contrast-y, and video games hurt my eyes. CNET and the AVS Forum have some good calibration guides with all the settings you'd want. Personally, I went with CNET's settings but I toned down the filter from warm2 to warm1 and I followed the AVS forum settings for the DRC feature.

Picture Quality

With the new calibration settings in place, the picture quality really shined. 1080i cable feeds looked amazing, DVDs looked great, Blu-Ray a little better. While my Nintendo Wii (at 480p) looked a little worse than my previous EDTV plasma, my new Sony PS3 (review coming soon) outputting at 1080p looked absolutely fantastic with perfectly sharp text and life-like reflections. I didn't detect any cloudiness defects in dark scenes that some reviewers on amazon have found. During high action playback or fast camera pans, the 8ms response time did show slight pixelation at the edges of objects on screen, but not as bad as previous LCD TVs I'd looked at a year or two ago.

Standard definition TV looks pretty good on this set, much better than I expected (I'd read review after review of every 1080p LCD set on the market and how analog cable channels looked bad). With my Series 3 TiVo set at best quality, even analog cable channels are sharp enough to not show artifacts during anything but the highest action scenes.

Conclusions

I'm happy with the purchase and loving the bigger screensize (I went from 37" to 46"). I'm not a huge gamer, but games are definitely more fun and easier to play the larger your screen is. In regards to this set's resolution versus my old ED plasma, I would have to say there is a difference, but from 7 feet away on the couch it's not a huge one I was expecting. I'll write more about that point in an upcoming post.

I have the Sony wall mounted above a fireplace, in a living room with lots of windows. The brightness of the LCD shines through day and night, and definitely out-performs my old plasma in bright daylight. All my video sources are connected with a single HDMI cable (hooked to my Denon A/V unit), so I don't have to do much switching or even use the remote beyond turning it on (which I already programmed my other remotes to do) and I haven't had to use the included speakers because I've got 5.1 surround sound instead. After initial setup, it just plain works.

List price on the TV is $3799, but it's available at Amazon now for $3299 and I found street prices at most stores ranging from $3400-3600 for this model (Jan/07).

January 5, 2007 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (14)

Holiday Gadget Guide: BDI's Avion line and the Slingbox Pro

I just uploaded a review of my newest addition to my home theater: a BDI Avion 8528 audio/video cabinet. I'm very pleased with and can't say enough good things about it: it looks incredible and functions well -- something few a/v furniture companies get right. My full review contains all the details.

I also extended my earlier Slingbox review posted here last month over on the Gadget Guide.

December 5, 2006 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Denon AVR-2307CI Review

Over on the Holiday Gadget Guide, I posted my review of Denon's $799 A/V unit with the iPod adapter. Overall I'm really happy with it, everything sounds great and instead of 8 or 9 cables leading to the back of my TV, there's just one HDMI cable handling output (all video inputs go to the Denon unit). I was impressed by the easy setup and I've currently got six different sources all playing nicely on the unit.

November 22, 2006 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (0)

The first 24 hours with a Wii

After a bit of struggle, a few failures, and a lot of waiting, I found myself yesterday morning standing in a store with a Wii in my hand. I've been reading about the system and looking forward to the innovate controller for months, so I was happy that I became one of the lucky few to score one. Now, it's not a video recorder by any means, but they are going to end up in a lot of home theater setups this xmas, so I figured I might as well post a review here.

The packaging and setup are top-notch, right up there with buying a new iPod. The instructions are pretty simple and most of the behavior of menus is intuitive. Unfortunately, the device only ships with RCA cables for hookup, with component video cables going to stores in a few weeks. It tops out at 480p, but that's ok because most games aren't photorealistic, where HD could really shine.

I'm a casual gamer in that the only current system I have is the DS lite, and that's mostly for playing tetris on plane flights or before I go to bed. I have an old xbox I use more for movie streaming than games but I used to spend hours on playstation 1 and 2s before I got rid of them years ago. The Wii is obviously light-hearted fun and has games and an aesthetic to match. It isn't aimed at hardcore gamers (the xbox360 and ps3 have you covered), but more towards casual and non-gamers.

I bought a few games for it but so far I've had the most fun with the sports game that came with the system. Playing tennis, boxing, and golfing using a virtual controller is a blast. My wife, who rarely plays games loved boxing.  Even though the sports games have an obvious unfinished look (characters don't have legs or arms), the games use the motion-sensing remote in the most interesting ways. I can't wait until proper golf, boxing, and other sports titles come out.

Among the other games, the motion controller isn't used as extensively for play. Excite Truck is a lot of fun, mixing semi-realistic looks with simple gameplay that even kids could control by tilting left and right, forwards and back. The Tony Hawk title is similar, using the controller to steer and go faster, along with a lot of button combos to do tricks. I also bought Zelda, but I've barely scratched the surface of it.

One cool aspect of the Wii is that it ships with built in WiFi. Once on my network it downloaded updates and I could buy old school nintendo games from its online store. I tried it out by picking up Donkey Kong and Mario Brothers (NES) and it worked great, with each game about $5. Games downloaded in just a minute or so and are playable indefinitely.

Another thing I'm looking forward to is the multiplayer aspects of the Wii. Extra controllers are in short supply now, but I'll pick up a few extras when they're easily available. As much fun a Wii game can be, four people in your living room driving cars, hitting tennis rackets, or fighting with swords is infinitely more enjoyable. Nintendo's Gamecube was famous for multiplayer abilities so I suspect once I get more controllers and more games get released, it'll be a fun thing for parties.

Overall, I'm happy with it and can see it being interesting long after the newness wears off. It's fairly cheap ($250) compared with most game systems and is great for kids and casual gamers. That games that shipped on launch day are enough to blow minds and I'm looking forward to all the games that will use the motion controller in the future. While the xbox360 and ps3 have much more realistic games and audio/visual capabilities, the Wii is just plain fun.

November 20, 2006 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (8)

Tivo Series 3 Review, Holiday Gift Guide reveiws

After owning a Series 3 TiVo for a couple months, I sat down to write up my thoughts on it, which I've posted over here. There aren't a lot of surprises: it's a great box but really expensive, making it a difficult decision for even fans of TiVo.

The review is part of Federated Media's (they handle ads here for me) new Holiday Gadget Guide featuring posts from a variety of popular tech blogs, running from today through the end of this year. I'll be posting a new review of a Home Theater/PVR product each week until Christmas.

Next week I'll be covering the Denon AVR-2307CI home theater amp and the iPod integration that goes with it.

November 15, 2006 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (6)

Slingbox and the Series 3 TiVo

I'm a big believer in having only one TV in the house, but I do sometimes like to watch lightweight comedy shows while I work on my computer and it would be handy if I could watch last night's TiVo'd programs when I'm riding on my bike trainer. Since multi-room viewing (MRV) isn't an option in the Series 3 TiVo, I looked around for any hacks that would allow for extracting video and streaming across the network.

Lucky for me, a quite popular product already exists and as I found out, it's dead simple to add it to a s3 TiVo. I was concerned that I'd have to disrupt my home theater setup and pipe video into the slingbox (as HDMI) and out as a lower quality stream (component video) to my TV. Turns out, the s3 TiVo outputs video to all outputs at once.

The setup literally took five minutes from the time I started to the time the Colbert Report was playing on my desktop. I downloaded the mac beta client and installed it on my mac. I connected RCA cables from the TiVo to the slingbox and placed the IR blaster near the front of the TiVo. I walked to my computer, connected to the slingbox, configured briefly, and was done.

I still remember seeing a slingbox for the first time almost two years ago, so I know I'm late to the game, but thanks to the way video output works on the s3 TiVo, adding a Slingbox Pro or Slingbox AV is trivial and won't disrupt your current setup.

I haven't tried watching TV away from home yet, but I can do both of the things I set out to do: I can watch TV in a window on my desktop and I can use a laptop in the garage to watch some TV while I spin out the miles on my bike. The video quality on my 802.11g wireless network is very high, just about as good as standard def output on the TiVo.

November 6, 2006 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (5)

Usability tweaks in the Series 3 Remote

I love my new series 3 TiVo and I'll post a review in the next few days, but one thing keeps jumping out at me whenever I use it, and it's the new remote. After using it for a couple weeks, I have to say I don't like it, and I've figured out the problem.

Take a look at the button layout of an old Tivo remote and compare to the new one:

Did you notice how the volume/channel rockers moved up, and the thumbs up/down moved down? That little change is a big problem.

I've had a total of five TiVos over the past six years and with all of them, I've been able to use it by feel, without looking, thanks to the simple tight layout. All the normal things I do when watching TV like change channels, alter volume, and fast forward are within easy reach. You can leave your thumb in one spot and reach them all. The direction/select stuff was always at the top, but once you learned how far to "jump up" the remote with your thumb, it was easy to select a show, then start watching it and changing volume while zipping through the boring parts.

With the new remote, it's taking a long time to learn how to jump over those thumbs up/down buttons without looking. Now, maybe it's my muscle memory here that is the problem, but I've used other remotes and they often keep the most frequently used buttons together within easy reach.

Here's a highlighted view of my remotes, showing the differences:

I know that years of research went into the remote design. In my past interview with the head of user experience at TiVo, she covered the design of the remotes. I am surprised by these changes, since I don't often rate shows after the first couple weeks I own a TiVo. To help the suggested recordings engine, I might triple thumbs up the 4-5 shows I love and do the opposite with the ones I dislike, but after that early learning period, I don't use it at all. With the new remote, the ratings buttons are always there in the way.

On the other hand, I use the volume button constantly. Every channel has different volume levels and even within a single recording the ads are going to be much louder and dialogue is going to be quieter than action sequences. With a baby in the house, I'm using the volume button more than the fast forward these days, so from the moment I started using it, I noticed this new change.

Another minor quibble: the play/ffwd/rwd/slow area now has bigger buttons which is a good thing, but the buttons have sharp edges and similar shapes. With the old remote, the buttons are much smoother when your thumb is resting on them and the less important ones (like the slow button, which I use maybe once a month during an instant replay of sports, but otherwise not at all) are much smaller and less likely to be hit by accident.

Again, maybe it's just me and I realize these may sound like minor quibbles, but I definitely feel like the new remote isn't as easy to use and I'm constantly looking down at the remote to make sure I'm hitting the right button, which is something I haven't had to do in years with the previous TiVo remote designs. I'd love to hear the reasoning behind the change in the button layout.

October 3, 2006 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (20)

iSquint: killer OSX app for video iPods

I wanted to see what all the hype was about, so I broke down and upgraded my iPod to a new black 60Gb video model last week. I moved over the iTunes videos I'd bought but soon after looked around for programs to help move existing movie files onto the iPod.

Handbrake (and Handbrake lite) are well-known free OSX programs that will convert your DVDs into iPod video formats. There are many useful guides out there for using it.

From the Handbrake lite site, I quickly found iSquint, for converting video on your hard drive into iPod format. The application can convert virtually any video format and in all the things I've thrown at it, everything has worked great. It's pretty amazing actually -- no matter the bitrate of audio, the compression format of video, no matter the source of the video... everything ends up in a compatible format. So that means if you've got a few random bittorrent episodes of a TV show in all sorts of crazy formats, chances are it'll work just fine in iSquint.

After using it for a week or two, about the only thing I'd suggest is that the default quality settings sometimes degrade the audio and video slightly too much, but the fix is easy: I just up the quality one notch higher on the sliders. Conversion is fairly fast on my 2Ghz G5 iMac, with video recompression going about 2x real-time (it takes maybe a half hour to convert 1 hour of video). Whenever I want to use iSquint, I let it do its thing when I go to bed, so it's not really in my way or dragging down my typical activities.

If you have a mac and a video iPod and were wondering how best to convert existing movie files you have on your hard drive, iSquint is the easiest and most straightforward option I've found.

For PC Users: word on the street is Videora works pretty much the same as a great video converter.

February 27, 2006 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

BeyondTV 4: The Review

Richard over at FreshArrival has posted a lengthy review of BeyondTV 4 after using it for a couple months. There are screenshots of it in action, a tip on how to create a custom background image, and an explanation of some pretty sophisticated recording conflict resolution. Sounds like the test rig was an older PC so there's no coverage of the OTA HD recording and playback features, but still a good in-depth review of the latest home theater PC software.

January 26, 2006 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Comcast HD DVR Review

Summary
After using a Comcast HD DVR (a Motorola 6412) for a couple months I'm hooked on HDTV. I can't help but compare the experience to using a TiVo and while this DVR falls way short of the TiVo experience, it works well enough in the basic sense to keep me using it. It has some bugs, but there aren't many choices if you want your HDTV from anything other than an antenna. I renew my hope for CableCARD support, so that alternate devices could be used.

Introduction
After five years of being a happy TiVo customer (first with standalone units, then with DirecTV units) it was time to finally try out HDTV and to do that meant I had only a couple options in my area: try a cable company HD DVR or a satellite company HD DVR.  I'd done the DirecTV thing for the past couple years and their HD offerings were pretty minimal (and required buying a ~$500 box) though they claim they will have the most programming by 2007 when their new satellites are operational. I decided to go with Comcast, since it was simple, cheap, and here right now.

I know I'm a bit behind the times here, the unit from Motorola has been out for over a year and was first covered here two years ago. There are several older posts about it, namely how to transfer content to a mac using firewire that I'll try out later on. At the moment TiVo doesn't offer a HDTV recorder except for the one that DirecTV offers, and they're phasing it out as they deploy new MPEG4 content the HD TiVo unit can't decode.

Is HDTV worth all the fuss?
I've seen HDTV demos for years now and I never really saw anything impressive about it. What I've figured out is that you can't really get a sense for how good HD content is if you're looking at an unfamiliar TV set playing unfamiliar content. The wonder of HD wasn't driven home to me until I saw a TV show I'd been watching for the past year or so in standard definition. It also helped that I looked at standard def content on my low-end plasma TV for a year before getting HD. After everything was set up and I recorded a few familiar HD shows, I got to see what all the fuss is about. HD programs look pretty incredible, especially those with lots of outdoor shots. I was seeing detail I'd never seen before. After having HDTV for a couple months, I've realized that when there's nothing recorded and I start channel surfing, I keep it limited to just the dozen or so HD channels.

Now that plasma and LCD TVs are starting at $1,500 or so, if you've ever wanted to try out HDTV, now is the time to do it.

Some of the good things about the Comcast HD DVR experience
The first good thing about this unit is that it's fairly cheap. You don't have to buy any box and they charge $9.95 a month for the DVR service. That's cheaper than buying a TiVo box and sending TiVo $12.95/month. After turning the unit on, the first thing to jump out was the interface was fairly clean and unobtrusive. The remote is pretty good and did a good job talking to my TV and A/V system, though I couldn't configure the volume to work with just the A/V volume instead of the TV volume.

Recording shows instantly is just one click without the need to confirm and recorded HD shows are perfectly crisp. There are two tuners which can independently record while you watch something else on the hard drive, so conflicts are infrequent, but just in case there is the equivalent of a season pass priority list that the Comcast unit uses for figuring out what to tape when both tuners are already taping something. One nice feature is the 30-second skip, which I use more often than the default ffw/rwd controls. I didn't have to enable a hack or anything, it seemed to just be there when I programmed my Harmony remote.

One other nice feature is that the unit tells you how full it is at all times. Whenever you pull up the recorded shows listing, you can see if the hard drive is 27% full or 77% full and you can remove shows after you've viewed them to get a sense of how much time is left. HD recording takes up a lot of space, so as a result the maximum HD recording time is about 12-14 hours total.

Now, onto the ways this unit could be improved.

Some of the bad things about the Comcast HD DVR experience
Since this unit has been out for over a year, I've heard lots of feedback from readers here and friends that have one. I've heard about lots of software bugs, buggy playback, and mixed reviews of the DVR user interface. I'll break down my biggest problems one by one.

Lag time in the interface
The first bug I noticed was one I heard about: there is a lag between when you push a button, and when something happens. As a result, you get no feedback and you assume that the button push didn't go through, so you push it again. A few moments later, and two or more button pushes get registered by the device and in some instances that cancels what you wanted to do. It's infuriating when this happens.

There is loads of research behind this frustration on my and many other users' behalf -- the only acceptable lag time is very short, and beyond that users start to wonder if their device is functioning properly. TiVo does a great job rectifying this by giving you an audio cue that it received the button push, and TiVo also does a good job of putting up temporary "waiting..." screens. The worst experience with my Comcast box was once while I was fast forwarding some commercials during a football game, only to have the play/ffw buttons not work after the commercials were over. I hit play about ten times while I watched 10 minutes of a crucial game fly past before the commands could "take" and return to normal play. The lag was about 20 seconds where no button push did anything as the box was locked in fast forward mode.

Setting season passes sucks
TiVo does a pretty good job letting you find shows and set passes. As a result, I often tracked 50 or more TV shows. I realized that after two months, I only have season passes set for 8 or 9 shows because the process is such a pain. On a TiVo, you can search pretty easily for shows by surfing around an alphabet and spelling out the name of the show. On the Comcast box, you get five boxes for letters, and they all are set to A. You then have to manually step through the alphabet on each letter to find your show. Pushing "down" 20 times to find "P" takes about 3-5 times as long as simply picking "P" from a grid on a TiVo. The process is such a pain that I rarely set season passes and usually do so from the guide interface, which adds it as an option to the set recording screen.

Since I have so few season passes and I have two tuners, I haven't run into any conflicts yet, so I can't tell if the conflict notification/resolution is any good or if it just drops lower priority shows without telling you first.

Small hard drive, so many missing TiVo features
I'll admit that I'm spoiled. I've had a TiVo with 300Gb of storage in it and I've had a completely hacked DirecTiVo box that I could stream video from and stream music to. The Comcast box ships with a 120Gb hard drive and given that HDTV storage requirements are so high (about 10Gb per hour), the drive is much too small for an active box. I barely record anything and I'm always above 50% full. It'd be nice if they could bump it up to at least 250Gb, as hard drives are still getting cheaper everyday.

I also miss all the great features from TiVo. Stuff like wishlists matching actors, genre, or even show formats, and all the suggested recording features to help find new shows. I miss having a web interface so I could tell what's recorded from the comfort of my computer, before I head into the living room to watch TV. I miss the helpful sounds, the fast guide, and all the other great little parts of TiVo.

Conclusion
Don't get me wrong, the good outweighs the bad but after using a TiVo for so many years, the Comcast box just barely works enough for me to keep using it. If you've never had a DVR before, it'll probably be a great new device. If you've got a HDTV and haven't tried hi def content before, this is a great option.

Thanks to the proprietary nature of business, if you want to record non-over the air HD, at the moment you have to go through a cable or satellite company. Hopefully someday, the cable companies will open up their spec so that software packages like Windows Media Center and hardware like a HD TiVo can record this stuff. TiVo has been saying for a while that in 2006 they'll be launching a TiVo/Comcast box and I'm counting the days until that happens. Given the great HD channels plus a TiVo interface, I think that would be the ultimate package and get me excited about TiVo again.

November 2, 2005 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (308) | TrackBack

Things we love: the Harmony 880 remote

Summary: Harmony's new 880 flagship remote is a virtual swiss-army-knife that can talk to your TiVo, TV, stereo, xbox, overhead fans, and even x10 lighting systems. Instead of worrying about various sources, you instead program macros through a wizard, so when you click "Watch TV" it turns 5 devices on and sets the tuners and options properly.

After using one for the past couple weeks on my wildly varied home theater system, I'm hooked and loving it. Full review after the jump.

For the first time in five years, I'm TiVoless. I've replaced my DirecTiVo with a Comcast HD DVR by Motorola (more on that in a future post), but the first thing that stuck out was the included universal remote couldn't talk to my A/V unit that controls speaker volume. Not being able to control volume from the remote was a deal-breaker, so I had to look elsewhere for a remote.

I've been watching Harmony for years, after first hearing their virtues from other designers that raved about the remote's simple interface. Their pricing used to be fairly high, but with a recent acquisition of the company by Logitech, they've opened up their lines to more affordable price points.

Their full line includes several models, each offering various levels of device support and each remote designed in it's own way. I decided to go for the gusto, getting their high-end 880 that offered all the bells and whistles.

Setup
Once you remove the remote from the packaging, insert the rechargeable battery (nice perk, never have to fish for AA batteries again), and charge it up a bit, you simply load some software on your PC or Mac and plug the included USB cable into the remote. The setup and customization process takes place online, through a special harmony website that offers simple wizards to help set up each device, your custom buttons, and your custom activities.

I was most impressed with the plethora of devices that Harmony's site keeps track of. I only remembered the manufacturer and part of the model number ("it's 250 or something") on my home theater receiver, but the Harmony site figured it out. Once the devices are entered, you walk through activities, in which I setup "Watch PVR", "Watch a DVD", "Play music CD", and "Play a Game" as my macros. In each, I could set where the audio goes to (xbox uses the TV speakers, movies and PVR, the surround sound receiver). Tweaking each device within an activity can sometimes be a pain because you're kind of forced into the wizard system and have to remember which question controls just the one aspect you want to change. My welcome screen is shown below.

Daily Use
I've had this device for a couple weeks and so far it's worked pretty well. For each activity, I realized I had to adjust the custom buttons that show up in the color screen area, and that's been a slight pain to get each one right. I've also found the wizards at the Harmony website are great for general stuff, but when you want to do something very specific or custom, it's sometimes tough within the wizard system -- it's kind of like corporation automated phone systems getting in the way when you just want to chat up your friend Carl in Accounting. I have a bit of a weird placement in my house, with the TV up on a wall now and the AV components down below, and the remote still turns on all the devices properly about 90% of the time. When my aim isn't quite right, there's a simple way to turn on the missed device by using the remote's help assistant.

The Good
I like the remote's familiar (and possibly infringing :) peanut shape, and I love the idea of making everything you do with your home entertainment center based on simple phrases. When I had to leave instructions for a babysitter to watch TV, it took up two pages of description and amounted to about a dozen separate steps. Now, you just hit "Watch PVR" and you're golden. It's nice to see a product that lets people attach normal human language instead of having to think like a robot ("source set to cable on device 1, source set to aux on device 2, and then source set to HDMI on device 3").

I was most impressed to find out the remote could issue codes my included default TV remote couldn't do. When switching between sources, I have to slowly step through each of the seven inputs, but the Harmony remote revealed there are remote codes to jump directly to each of the seven connections. That's pretty impressive and makes it work much smoother than even me switching devices by hand.

The Bad
As good as the remote's shape and ease of setup is, I don't like the buttons themselves. There seems to be no attention paid to users that want to do many basic things without having to look down. TiVo's controllers have always been great at that, giving each button a distinct shape, feel, and size. All the basic ffwd, rwd, rec, and pause buttons are similar shapes and sizes on the remote. If I close my eyes and pick it up, I could only tell you where the volume and channel changing buttons are, the rest aren't distinct at all. I've noticed some of the other Harmony remotes (like the 688) seem to have smarter button layouts and designs.

As I mentioned, the setup wizards on the Harmony site are great for first timers, but I've found them frustrating on revisits to tweak my current settings. I kind of wish there was an alternate, direct way to modify an activity without being forced to answer a zillion questions first. Lastly, the price is kind of high, though it certainly can be the last remote you ever need to buy with the included rechargeable battery and cradle, constantly updated website with codes, and the extensive device support.

Summary
This remote can talk to every IR device in my house, and I can set complex configuration tasks that fire from a single button. The remote won't gobble up batteries and can be updated for any new device I buy. I finally have a truly universal remote control and it's nice to reduce the coffee table clutter to just one remote. While the price is kind of high, it's lived up to my expectations and impressed me with its flexibility. I'm happy with it and I'll be suggesting it to all my friends in search of a truly universal remote.

Rating: I'd give it a 4 out of 5
Price: list is $250, about the cheapest I've seen it is around $235
Requires: Mac or PC with an internet connection and a USB port.
Buy it Now: I got mine from Amazon and it showed up a day and a half later.

September 28, 2005 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (49) | TrackBack

Akimbo review: Engadget

Engadget has a full review of Akimbo including screenshots and a rundown of features. It sounds like it has promise as an IPTV set top box, with a full featured OS and friendly interface, but looks like it'll come into its own once more programming is available.

June 5, 2005 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

CNET's guide to choosing a PVR

CNET has posted a guide to choosing PVRs. Their questions boil down to "Does your cable or satellite provider offer a free or discounted DVR?", "Do you need high-def recording?", "Are you willing to pay a premium for the real TiVo?" and "Do you want to archive your recordings to DVD?" I'm going to keep this link around for the next time someone asks me which PVR is right for them; copying and pasting is a lot easier on me than careful consideration of a person's unique needs.

March 2, 2005 in How-To, Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Humax DRT-800 Review

Levi Wallach posted a comprehensive review of his new Humax DRT-800 TiVo/DVD-recorder. I've heard nothing but good things about these units and this review is much of the same. He shows off pretty much every aspect of it and explains how each part works.

I love that TiVo makes DVD menus that look just like a TiVo, that's a great idea and way to show off the service to those that don't have it and might borrow a DVD from time to time. I also love the idea of using a TiVo remote to control a DVD player. I'm often using the TiVo controller for volume when watching a movie and I often forget that the pause and ffw buttons don't actually control the movie I'm watching, though I wish they could.

February 14, 2005 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The PTVnet DirecTiVo upgrade drive review

Let's face it, DirecTV customers with the combo DirecTiVo boxes have been left in the cold for the past few years when it comes to TiVo announcements. Thanks to an agreement that shifted DirecTiVo customers to DirecTV's control, folks with the units haven't got to use the Home Media Option for the two years it has been out, and there's no sign of when TiVo ToGo or the Home Media Engine developer's toolkit will arrive for the units.

But that doesn't mean DirecTiVo owners don't have options. I've been happily using a PTVnet upgrade drive in my Philips DSR7000 (series 2 DirecTiVo) for the past couple months and I felt it was time to share all the possibilities this upgrade offers.

Stranded by DirecTV

When I first got a DirecTiVo combo unit in early 2002, It was a series one version and I activated it through TiVo.com. I paid for it just like a regular TiVo and got software upgrades at the same time as regular TiVo owners. Soon after, DirecTV stopped handling just the satellite subscriptions and instead moved to control both the TiVo subscription fees and the channel lineups. This made it easier to sign up a new box, since you just had to call one number to get both the TiVo running and your satellite channels paid for, but it also produced a fork in the codebase, where the software for DirecTiVo boxes was now under DirecTV's ultimate control instead of TiVo. This is when things started to go sour for customers.

The turning point was when series 2 DirecTiVos became readily available. Like the standalone TiVos, these new boxes offered all sorts of capabilities with their new hardware. The USB ports could enable wired and wireless networking. The faster processors could do more intense tasks. But unlike the standalone owners that quickly got to take advantage of their new hardware, DirecTiVo has remained essentially unchanged for almost three years. While DirecTV has left its users behind the innovation curve, the healthy hacking underground has been toiling away at various projects for over six years, and the projects have reached levels of maturity in terms of interface and features. The PVTnet upgrade drive draws upon the best projects.

Opening up with the PTVnet drive

The PTVnet upgrade drive fills a void, letting you talk to your DirecTiVo box over a network and opens up a world of possibilities afforded by the hardware. It includes the following:

• Enables single, large drives that go beyond the 137Gb limit (with the LBA48 hack)
• USB ports work (usb 2.0 even) with wired and wireless adapters
• Comes preconfigured with TiVoWebPlus (a web front-end to your TiVo), telnet, FTP, and a small handul of utilities

Installation

I got a prototype version of their 160Gb drive upgrade, padded and packed in a box with a sheet of instructions for installation.

The installation was as smooth as could be, taking only about five minutes to take the case off, swap my old hard drive with the new one, and button it all back up. The obvious drawback is that you lose all your settings and recordings by moving to a new disk, and as always keep away from both the power supply (lower left of the drive) and the white ribbon connector to the top right of the drive.

After it booted up (complete with custom screens) and grabbed the satellite info in setup, a quick reboot later and my old Linksys WUSB11 wireless adapter lit up and grabbed an IP off my router's DHCP server.

Using the web to control your TiVo

Definitely the coolest aspect of the upgrade was getting TiVoWebPlus. This differs from the tivo.com integration dubbed TiVo Central, where standalone Series 2 tivo owners can search for shows and set recordings. Unlike TiVo Central, this is actually running on your TiVo, so when you hit record the show will be added to your ToDo list immediately. If you open up your network to allow outside connections to your TiVo this also lets you set recordings from anywhere on earth.

Every web browser on my home network has a bookmark to the Now Showing list, like the screenshot above. It lets you know what is stored on the TiVo, and if necessary, lets you delete recordings immediately, through the web interface. I only have one TV in the house, and frequently work for hours upstairs in my home office. This page lets me know if there's anything worth watching the next time I take a break.

Clicking on an episode will show you info on it, and what episodes are soon to come (and whether or not they are new, which also helps plan recordings)

The one feature I use most often is definitely the search engine (above is a result for "American"). Even with the upgraded Series 2 hardware, my DirecTiVo box is still slow and clunky to find new shows and set them to record. Given that every computer has a handy keyboard attached, when I think of a show I'd like to add to my season pass list, I grab a laptop and pull this page up. It lets me search for any text string and I can record them in just a couple clicks, without having to use my remote to key in words or get stuck waiting a minute or two at the end for a season pass to get added.

Clicking on your search results brings up an info screen like this one.

Show details feature the additional info about original air dates, which no DirecTiVo can currently do. I love knowing whether or not next week's Saturday Night Live is a repeat from last seaon or not. Setting a season pass and single recording is just a click away and you will be notified immediately if there are any conflicts.

Every feature from the TiVo user interface is included in the package, letting you see the ToDo list of recordings set, the season passes, and what is currently showing. The TiVoWebPlus install also includes HackMan, a script manager that lets you turn features off and on, like an included Caller ID hack.

The info screens offer all the geeky info you'll ever need, including a way to find out how much free space is on the drive, and how that space is being used up.

Other features and extending the package

The other features mentioned at the start of this review, the large drive and the other network services, are great additions that round out the package. The LBA48 hack extends the limit that most TiVos have where the biggest free space they could see on a drive was 137Gb. With this fix in place, instead of running two drives with their added heat and noise, you can stick with a single large drive (as big as 300Gb).

The other network services are handy for any additional hacks you want to try out. As I explained last month here, I used the built-in FTP server and telnet server to upload some scripts that let me show off my TiVo's contents and upcoming recordings. It was all fairly straightforward, requring me to simply connect, poke around directories, upload scripts, make them active via chmod, and they ran just fine after a restart of TiVoWebPlus.

Of course, once you've got networking into a TiVo, the limits are almost endless, though I didn't want to push it further (I'm still new to linux stuff and tcl scripts). I've heard updating the OS to a 4.0 version with Home Media Networking is possible. Adding video hacks and streaming is also possible if you know what you're doing and where to find the scripts.

Conclusion

The obvious question is whether or not the upgrade is worth the cost. I'd say it is worth it, especially if you haven't upgraded your DirecTiVo's hard drive yet, since plain old upgrade drives have comparable price tags. If you're interested in networking or hacking a DirecTiVo, this definitely opens it up and gives you a useful way to interact with your TiVo.

Now that I've had this setup for a couple months, I can't see how I could live without it. I've never liked the limits of using a remote to key in show titles when searching and the way a TiVo UI lags for a minute after setting a recording is frustrating. This package solves those problems and opens up a whole world of fun tricks and features that rekindled my interest in playing with my DirecTiVo. I'm planning to move to a HD DirecTiVo soon and the first upgrade for it will be one of these drives. Building up season passes and finding shows is just so much faster in a web browser compared with using the TiVo UI.

URL: http://www.ptvupgrade.com/networking/PTVnet.html
Cost:: $199-449, depending on how many hours of storage you'd like
Compatibility: Series 2 DirecTiVo models: Hughes HDVR2, SD-DVR40, SD-DVR80, SD-DVR120, Philips DSR7000, DSR704, DSR7000, RCA DVR39, DVR40, DVR80, DVR120,Samsung SIR-S4040R, SIR-S4080R, SIR-S4120R, Hughes HR10-250 HDTV

February 6, 2005 in DirecTV, Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBack

Beyond TV: A PC PVR for Mortals

Editor's note: For this review of SnapStream's new BeyondTV product, I decided to let friend and fellow book author Paul Bausch do a quick review (since they advertise here, I thought it would be a conflict of interest to review it myself). Last year I reviewed their previous Snapstream product and this looks like a nice update.

It’s hard to believe we’ve had streaming video for over 70 years. Well, ok, we don’t normally think of television as streaming video—but I’ve found it hard not to think of TV this way since I added it to my PC.

I remember my first glimpse at what we currently call streaming video. I downloaded the Real Media Player, and the video was sort of like TV, only tiny, pixilated, and endlessly buffering, buffering. Early streaming video was sort of like watching TV with a VCR. You could watch it when you wanted, pause the video, move around in the action with a slider. All in all, it was pretty bad. I had no idea at the time that a PC would become a better place to watch television.

When TiVo arrived, I snatched one up right away. TiVo is basically a PC in disguise, which brought the good features of streaming video to my television, with some added intelligence about program schedules and my personal viewing preferences. After using TiVo for several years, I noticed the DIY PVR software like Freevo, and MythTV popping up. I was always tempted to try them so I could have even more control over the video. I consider myself a technical person, but I’ve never compiled my own Linux kernel, so these options seemed out of reach for me. Which brings me to the point of this review: SnapStream has put together PVR software for mere technical mortals.

The Interface

I’m very familiar with TiVo’s interface, so finding my way around Beyond TV was second-nature. The interface is set up for all-remote, push-button access—you wouldn’t even need a keyboard or mouse attached. (Though they are handy for speeding up the search/record process if they are attached.)

Like the TiVo Series 2, you can view your shows by series, or as a list:

Because all shows are simply files on your machine, the list mirrors what you’ll find if you browse the SnapStream shows folder:

And because all of the shows are standard mpeg files, you don’t even need Beyond TV to view them. Here’s a look at an episode of Futurama playing in the open source Media Player Classic:

For me, the best part about this is if I’m going on a trip, I can simply copy some of these files over to my laptop and view them with a lightweight player. Instant Futurama on the plane! Not to mention opening the files in an editor so I can quote video clips on my weblog, or share clips with others. (I’m talking about fair use only here, of course.) Saving video files in a completely accessible format gives me the control over the video I've been looking for.

Adding Programs

Beyond TV has season-pass style recording. You can search by keyword or title:

Or browse the lineup.

Clicking a program will give you the option to record the episode, or set up a recurring recording for the series:

All of the channel guide info comes from SnapStream, and is updated every few days. Beyond TV differs from TiVo in a key way: there are no continuing subscription fees for program guide data. The one-time fee of $70 for the software is all you pay to have continuing access to the guide.

Nice Extras

Another nice feature is Skip Forward. Instead of hiding the commercial-skipping option as a back-door feature, Beyond TV has skip forward as a customizable feature in the settings. You can adjust the skip forward button to jump ahead as many seconds as you’d like:

Because Beyond TV is remote-centric, it’s almost a necessity. The video capture device I’m using is Hauppauge’s WinTV PVR USB-2, which ships with a fairly standard remote:

It’s not as nicely designed as the TiVo remote, but it works perfectly with Beyond TV. The only feature I found missing was instant-access to the full schedule of programs—there’s no “Guide” button.

Beyond TV supports multiple tuners, and I was lucky enough to test drive a two-tuner setup.

Basically this means I could record one program while I watched another, or I could record both shows at the same time. This worked well, and I didn't even notice the hard drive grinding away at the extra work. The drawback to implementing this, of course, is the cost of the extra tuner, but it's a nice option.

The final perk is that Beyond TV itself is also a web server. If you open up port 8129 on your home network's firewall, you can access most of Beyond TV's functionality through a browser from any location with web access. I can see that this would be handy for setting up last-minute recordings from the coffee shop, but I haven't actually used this feature yet.

A Note of Caution

There are a couple of caveats to consider before you rush out and replace your TiVo with a Windows box running Beyond TV. Be sure to check out the hardware requirements very carefully. I tried to install the program on a four-year-old laptop without much success. Beyond TV needs the latest and greatest .NET framework and Windows Media Player 10, so you'll want to be sure your Windows software is completely up-to-date before installing. Also, the video quality of the Hauppauge PVR isn’t as crisp as my television, and the Beyond TV picture is only as a good as the capture device can provide. Beyond TV has a free trial version, and you should definitely try it out first.

I’m not ready to replace my TiVo, but I will be using Beyond TV in addition to TiVo. Piping cable into my computer feels like the next step in streaming video, and Beyond TV makes this 70-year-old technology feel like something new.

December 7, 2004 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (33) | TrackBack

PVR Comparisons

PVR Comparisons is a great site for information and (best of all) screenshots of many popular PVR models available today. I'm often asked by people if they should go with their cable company's free or cheap recorder or pony up the dough for a TiVo, and I usually list the pros and cons of the decision, but this site serves as a great information resource for the plethora of choices. They cover all aspects of each unit including capabilities, cost, and features as part of every review. This master feature chart is a good overview of everything out there.

I had no idea what the comcast DVR looked like until I saw this (ack, the colors! the fonts! man, that's an ugly UI). It's an exhaustive resource without equal, and I certainly hope they keep updating it.

November 19, 2004 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack

El Gato EyeTV 200 DVR review

I've always been fascinated by EyeTV, the software/hardware PVR for macs, but they've never granted me one for review. Powerbook Central got their hands on a new firewire-based model (the previous versions were all USB-based) and wrote up a comprehensive review.

It certainly sounds like it can do a good job, and being integrated with iMovie and other editing apps is an attractive option if you're using TV to build movies on. Combined with their thin client home theater component EyeHome, it sounds like it's pretty easy to share video with the rest of the house. Overall, a slick looking system that sounds like it does the job well.

November 16, 2004 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

G4 Tech TV Reviews Three New HDTV DVRs

G4techTV does a review of three of the new HDTV recorders. Noticeably absent is Microsoft's Media Center 2005. The Hughes HD 10-250 gets the highest marks and is the 'G4tech TV Lab Pick.'
-- Kevin Reynen

October 24, 2004 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Microsoft Media Center 2005 reviewed

Thomas Hawk has a great, lengthy review of the new Microsoft Media Center 2005, which he expected a bit more from, but it does sound like Microsoft's making some progress on it.

Highlights from the review:

• It only does over-the-air HDTV, but that's not entirely MS' fault. The cable and satellite folks have their own proprietary encryption schemes they're not into sharing with anyone.
• MCE will be available for purchase as a standalone product for the first time, instead of requiring you to buy a new PC. Could be a support nightmare for MS, but good on them for expanding the availability for build-it-yourself geeks.
• They've added the ability to buy and use Napster music and Movielink movies, which is novel. The Movielink thing is pretty comparable to the upcoming Netflix-TiVo deal, but Thomas says the video quality is low compared to uncompressed satallite, which makes sense, as you would want moves to be well under a gig a piece, while unencrypted movies could run several Gb in size and take days to download.
• They've tried to integrate the web a bit, letting you read hotmail onscreen and pay (!!!) to read RSS feeds through Newsgator.
• Overall, everything sounds snappier, but I think Thomas was underwhelmed mostly over the HDTV thing.

October 6, 2004 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (140) | TrackBack

Frauenfelder on S-A Explorer 8000

Mark Frauenfelder, founder and contributor to the weblog BoingBoing.net does not like the Scientific-Atlanta 8000.

So many other things suck about the user interface that I can't list them all. But the main UI problems include lack of keyword scheduling, way-too-slow fast-forwarding, no alpha character entry, and the inability to see how many hours of programming are available on the hard drive.

This last flaw hit home when the machine suddenly stopped recording shows. I tried everything I could to get it to work, including rebooting the system and calling Time Warner Cable customer service. They told me that they'd have to replace the unit, which would take five days.

Five days later a service technician came with a new box. I asked him if this problem was common, because Google returns a lot of pages from people who think the Explorer 8000 is a piece of junk. He said the system is fine as long as you didn't store too many shows on it. If you fill up the hard drive, the system freezes up, and there's no way a user can undo it. But how do you know when the disk is close to being full if there's no gage to tell you? The service tech's answer: "don't keep very many shows on the hard drive." That pretty much defeats the purpose of a DVR, doesn't it?

He also warned me not to put anything on top of it, as it was notorious for overheating and seizing up. I told him I was considering TiVo, but he insisted the Explorer 8000 was better than TiVo. How so, I asked? "We will give you a new one if it breaks," he said.

Anyone else have any stories, good or bad, about their S-A 8000?

Boing Boing: I hate this digital video recorder: Scientific-Atlanta Explorer 8000

August 16, 2004 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (58) | TrackBack

DivX for Grandma: a review of Alaska Air's video iPod

There has been a lot of speculation in the last year about when a personal video player would go mainstream in the US (they're pretty popular in Japan already), and many are waiting for Apple to take the lead and expand the iPod to serve video. Well, as I found out on a recent cross-country flight on Alaska Airlines, the technology is already here and it's pretty useful.

The digEplayer

I'll admit that it's not the most cutting-edge development, as personal video players have been seen in first class cabins for a few years now, and personal DVD players can be rented for one-way use at many airports. When I heard them mentioned at the start of my flight, I figured I'd pay the ten dollar charge (they're free in first class) and see if watching a movie on a small screen was comfortable and what types of music was offered. What eventually piqued my interest about the device was the technology being used.

After we got up to a safe altitude the attendents passed them out and as I was looking over the device I noticed something curious on the back. See for yourself:

I was surprised but impressed that a company called e.Digital had adopted an emerging internet video standard for consumer applications, figured out the studio licensing maze, and sold their services to a major airline. Compression formats like MP3 and DivX were popularized by underground internet trading networks but they've historically been difficult to use and the domain of expert users. In the past couple years however, consumer devices have fought Hollywood industry lawsuits in order to make those formats easy to use. In effect, e.Digital has created the first DivX player my grandmother can use. Kudos to the design team.

Looking inside and taking it for a spin

The device was called a "digEplayer 5500" and was easy to use with a directional wheel, play/pause/seek video controls, brightness and volume controls, and a couple navigation buttons. The display was a widescreen LCD around 7" in size. The main menu offered movies, sitcoms, and music, in addition to some airline info. The player was about the size of three iPods side by side, but still smaller than a laptop. It was about an inch thick and only weighed a pound or so.

The amount of content on the device was more that I would have guessed could fit. There were nine full length movies (three recently in theaters, the other six were common video rentals from the past 2-3 years), three TV shows (including the Simpsons!), and a selection of 10-15 songs in ten different genres. That's roughly 15 hours of video and about 6 hours of music. I would assume the player was hard drive based, to hold that amount of data (a 20Gb laptop drive would be my guess).

Movie and TV show playback was smooth, though the content was formated for a standard 4:3 tv set, and widened to fit the 16:9 screen on the handheld (which seems dumb, but I recognized the same "this movie has been formated to fit this screen" message at the start of films I've rented in fullscreen format, so they probably just ripped DivX versions of rental market films. I watched the Simpsons episode ("Lisa Gets an A") and Master and Commander in full. The screen was bright and crisp, and looked great in daytime light and during action sequences.

After I was done with the movie and show, I turned the device off to poke around a bit. The back pointed out it cleared FCC regs for home and office use, but other labels said it was limited to only commerical use on Alaska. Aside from the headphone jack on the side and a taped over DC power jack, the only other opening was a side door. I cracked it open and found what appeared to be a black cartridge-type pack. I believe it was the battery pack, though I couldn't get it to budge no matter how much I wiggled on the small strap sticking out of it. There's got to be a way to easily exchange content on the device for new films and music, but I could find no evidence of docking mechanisms. Perhaps the black brick was a removable hard drive. On bootup, the screen revealed it was running the "MicroOS 3.1".

Impressions

Overall, I had a great time using the device and it helped my five hour flight feel a lot shorter. Steve Jobs has said in the past that watching video on tiny screens was a bad movie experience, but I have to say it wasn't that bad for me. I had never seen Master and Commander before and I'm sure I would have enjoyed the epic's cannon blasts if they were on a 80 foot screen, but I still felt the suspense and action on the small monitor. By exposing airline passengers to this device, you get to see regular folks enjoy small, portable types of entertainment. And it makes sense to use a portable instead of installing screens in every seat (same could be said about in-car DVD systems, why not make them portable instead and entertain people in any car?).

What impresses me most from this device is that it appears to be a low cost box built with commoditiy parts, and it takes advantage of content encoding that was developed in the illicit world of online media trading. Small LCD screens are cheap (you can find a 5" LCD for around $50 on ebay), mp3 and divx decoders are just a few bucks for the chips, and laptop hard drives are readily available (they can be pricey though). Combined with a simple user interface, this device takes all the complexity of movie codecs, P2P networks, and file metadata, and turns it into a system that non-technical adults can enjoy.

Conclusions

After playing with the digEplayer for a few hours, I'm wondering why these units aren't widely available for movie and television show fans. The most obvious reason would be that Hollywood doesn't want you to make a copy of your purchased DVD for your handheld, nor do they want you to download a TV show you taped for playback on another device. I've long held that instead of calling Kazaa users criminals for going to such great lengths to find shows, songs, and movies they enjoy, content industries could instead be calling them customers (highly motivated customers, at that). Apple proved that if you gave people a reliable, speedy, easy-to-use source of music at a reasonable price, people would rather pay the small fee than go through the effort of obtaining free songs. There is MovieLink for films, but every review I've seen of the service talks about the hard to use software that only runs on certain configurations. Currently there's no easy way to get digitized TV shows other than searching underground networks for it.

It's clear why this device is only available for rental in a commercial setting -- Hollywood hasn't yet figured out a model they're comfortable with for distributing content to customers. The only barriers are social and legal, as the technology is already here.

May 5, 2004 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Snapstream reviewed

Snapstream is reviewed favorably by the AP tech writer.

Beyond TV [the name for the Snapstream software] also blows away the competition by letting you stream programs over the Internet for viewing on another computer. You're not limited to another room in the house like with TiVo's Home Media Option, which costs $99 and requires a second TiVo.

The software streams to Web browsers, so you don't have to buy another copy for remote viewing. It's fairly simple to enable security so strangers don't have access to your television signal or recordings.

Beyond TV handles all the personal video recorder basics well. Users can pause live TV, rewind and set up recordings — all without an advanced degree in VCR technology. And like TiVo's Home Media Option, recording can be scheduled over the Internet.

But SnapStream also added commercial break recognition, which vastly simplifies ad skipping. It also supports a variety of video formats and lets you easily convert to a more tightly compressed file.

If there are any Snapstream users among our readers, please feel free to leave us your thoughts on how it is working for you. What do you like/dislike about the system?

REVIEW: Proving That a PC Can Rival TiVo [news.yahoo.com]

March 4, 2004 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

PC Mag. reviews Weaknees

PC Magazine does a review of the Weaknees Tivo upgrade and comes away impressed, but not enough to keep the upgrade.

Here's something else I learned during my TiVo experience: I don't love TV enough to want TiVo or the service. If I miss an episode of Friends, I'm not crushed. If I have to watch something for a few moments to figure out what it is, I'm OK with that.

TiVo is a revolution, or at least part of one. Now there are so many PVR/DVR choices, including Media Center PCs, and we're starting to see units that fit as neatly into the home theater environment as the TiVo. Ultimately, all the minor quibbles I have will fade away. I envision a day when my TV will have TiVo capabilities, and I won't need a separate device to time-shift or pick up channel information.

I do think this reviewer has an important point. Most people will be happy enough with less-than-Tivo's-featureset if they don't have to pay the upfront and monthly fees. The cable and satellite providers who are adding PVR features to their boxes and adding a few dollars to the monthly bill will be tough to beat.

For those people who love TV, and want all of the best features and the easiest user-experience will pay for Tivo, but it's clear that that particular market is not nearly as big as Tivo had hoped.

The Real TiVo: A Supercharged Personal Video Recorder That Still Has Flaws [abcnews.go.com]

March 1, 2004 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

DishPlayer DVR 921

Mike Langberg of The Seattle Times tests out the HDTV compatible DVR from Dish Network. It's expensive but has all of the features that DVR-lovers have come to expect, and aside from a few small configuration quibbles, Langberg was enamored of it.

This 18-pound silver box, introduced in late December, is a satellite receiver for HD and standard channels from Dish Network; a tuner for receiving and recording local over-the-air HD broadcasts received through a roof antenna; and a DVR with a gigantic 250-gigabyte hard drive. That hard drive holds 25 hours of HD programming or a staggering 180 hours of regular TV.

There's just one big obstacle between me and digital nirvana: The 921 costs an eye-popping $999. While that would stretch my budget, it's a drop in the bucket for home-theater enthusiasts who've spent perhaps $6,000 for a big plasma TV and $3,000 for a neighborhood-shaking surround-sound system. Indeed, Dish Network says demand is so high that customers might have to wait several weeks to get a 921 delivered.

If anyone has experience with HDTV PVRs, we'd love to hear what is good/bad about them. I personally think that 250GB is way too little storage capacity. I'd like to see 1TB and a DVD-burner attached so you can record your favorite shows to DVD.
The Seattle Times: High-definition DVR is a high-quality product

January 25, 2004 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (45) | TrackBack

Dish DVR-921 Review

Over at dbstalk.com, there is an extensive review of the Dish Network's DVR-921, a PVR that can record regular satellite signals as well as both satellite HDTV and OTA HDTV signals on one box. It's a long review, about 8 pages and around 70 screenshots are posted of the interface, setup, and on-screen samples from the unit. Looks like an impressive unit that packs a lot of features.

It looks a bit pricey, at around a thousand dollars, but I'm impressed that it can record over the air HDTV broadcasts and those delivered on satellite HDTV pay channels like HBO-HD. It'll be interesting to see if the HDTV-Tivo does that whenever that finally comes out.

December 25, 2003 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (26) | TrackBack

Gateway Connected DVD player Review

About a month ago I started looking for a networked media device to join my home theater setup. I loved the Home Media Option in my Series 2 TiVo, espeically for playing music downstairs in my home theater system, but I switched to a DirecTiVo system recently that lacked HMO support.

I started my search by combing the landscape. My wishlist called for music, photo, and movie streaming on my wireless network and good audio and video connections to my home theater. After checking out what was available, I eventually settled on either the KiSS DVD with ethernet or the Gateway Connected DVD. When I found out the Gateway had recently added DivX streaming support, I decided to buy one (it was also about half the price of a KiSS DVD player).

First off, I started out by using a tip someone once told me. If you ever see a coupon code box in a checkout page, do a quick google search for "company name coupon code." Using this method, I found a "$20 off every purchase $199 or more" code, making my Gateway DVD player $179 at checkout.

Setup and Hardware

The unit showed up days later and consisted of a short, wide player in silver and chrome, with a remote and a laptop wireless card that slid into the appropriate slot on the back.

The Gateway DVD player, sitting below my DSR7000 DirecTiVo unit

I installed it with S-video and optical audio connections to my home theater receiver. It also offers progressive scan connections if you've got the equipment for it.

The Gateway controller

The controller is OK, offering a pretty simple point and select pad in the middle that was easy to use without having to look down. The network functions all reside along a column on the upper left side, which is fine but the main "connect" button is the only way to access network features and is buried in the next middle row. Since I use the connect button more than the DVD features, I wish it was bigger and located in a more prominent location. Another unfortunate design choice was making the forward/reverse seek buttons the same size as the forward/reverse chapter buttons, and putting them next to each other. This means if I want to jump back ten seconds I have to look down to find the correct rewind button. It would have been nice if they were special shapes and different in size so one could use the buttons by feel.

The Network setup screen

Since I run an open wireless network at home, setup was a snap. I started the unit up, checked the network setup and noticed it found my wireless access point upstairs and joined it. If I had a WEP password, this is the screen I would have entered it. Unfortunately, the Gateway doesn't support typing network names in directly, so if you're not broadcasting your access point ID, the gateway won't be able to find it (this is how I had my wireless network setup, security through obscurity).

Screenshot of the server application running on my PC

The server software installed easily on my Windows XP box and let me direct it where to find my music, video, and image files. At first I was surprised to see it ignored all my DivX movies, but I later found out my unit shipped with the latest firmware on the DVD player, but the server software was out of date. If you want to be safe, download the server software from this Gateway Support Page (which required quite a bit of digging on their site to find, as it's not listed under support files for the device). Once I had the new software my DivX movies were all added to the list. I set a schedule to do a nightly re-index, but I did find it a drag that it couldn't keep track of my music directory automatically. If I ripped a new CD, I'd have to tell the software to re-index my collection to see the new files.

Music

Once all my mp3s were indexed, I started listening to music whenever I was downstairs doing chores (making dinner, doing dishes) or relaxing without the TV on.

Surfing the musicians list on TV

Once you've got 3000 songs by hundreds of artists in a database, it's often a challenge to find and listen to music. The programs I typically use on my desktop, iTunes and Winamp, handle the problem in different ways but both do a good job of making and managing playlists and letting you listen to all music on random. Since the Gateway is limited in interface and controls over a PC, I found it to be a bit cumbersome to find certain artists or randomize large chunks of my collection. Near as I can tell it isn't possible to play all your songs randomly, so I usually would pick an artist and listen to all their music, or pick a genre and listen to all tracks within it. I found the next problem being if I wanted to hear "Pink Martini", I had to scroll through the 10-15 artists listed on each screen all the way down to number 370 of my 440 artist collection (that's where the P's started). The scrolling was quite slow and the only shortcut is to guess a number in the list that it should jump to.

Playing music from a playlist

Playlist files are supposed to be indexed but I didn't notice any in my library. The only playlists I could get to work were the ones I made with the Gateway server software, which was easy (it was very iTunes like, you name a new list then drag tracks to it), but lame that it ignored my existing lists. Once I had a few good playlists created for each mood I found myself using the playlist feature most of all.

Images

The number of images on my hard drive is about the same as my mp3 collection, with thousands of loosely organized (by directory name) images downloaded from digital cameras. I quickly found out the server software's scanner was a bit too good at finding images, and would grab any gif or jpg on the drives I pointed it to, including all the incidental little files within software applications.

Image playing in a slideshow

Once I weeded out all the photos except for my digital camera output, I still had the same problems negotiating thousands of items with a simple remote. It did have a nice feature where it automatically grouped photos found in a directory as unique, but playlists seemed the way to go when browsing a specific set of images. Slideshows were pretty basic though I didn't notice any controls for setting how long imag