Digital media players

I'm planning to write a bit about digital media players in the near future.

Recently, I played with a WD TV HD Live player, and it was nice, but I didn't like it as much as the Asus O!play Air that I've been using for a while. The WD was nice, but in the end, it lacked just a few key features that were deal-breakers for me. Specifically, I couldn't get it to send Dolby Digital to my receiver
in bitstream format... I just couldn't find an option to change that, so I couldn't get it to play 5.1 surround over HDMI.

Second, I couldn't just plug in the HDMI jack and have it work (fault of the TV, I'm sure) and then unplug it, take to to the bedroom tv at night and plug it in as composite... I had to go into the menus and reconfigure it when I moved it... Something my wife ain't gonna do ;)

Lastly, it can do YouTube, but cant follow my YouTube subscriptions properly, making YouTube useless unless you like to watch totally random stuff. Personally, I like following certain sportscasters, and I just wan to find their most recent posts, but I just can't do it.

The O!play Air by Asus can do all of that except the YouTube thing, but I've been reading that they are adding it with a firmware update... That, and I can just use PlayOn for YouTube anyway.

More info later when I can post again!

- Posted on the run (iPhone)

Not even enough time for a 5 minute thought? Really?

Yeah, I've been having trouble getting enough time to even post a 5 minute thought.

I've started an online college course, and it's eating up pretty much every available minute of my time. Well, that and this massive project I'm working on at work, so I don't even have time during the day to post stuff. I'm still trying to do better, for those couple of people who actually read this stuff :P

Anyway, today I ordered a Western Digital WD TV HD Live box. I already have an Asus O!Play Air box that my father in law uses, so I decided to get something different for my second Digital Media Player. I'm very interested in the hack-ability of these things. For example, I know the O!Play air can be tweaked if you log into it via Telnet... For example, you can permanently link network drives to it as if they were local if you "mount" the drives in just the right way within the Linux file system that it runs... I expect I'll be able to mess around similarly with the WD box. I'll post a review after I have it here to play with it.

That's it for now, I'll try to get back tomorrow with more!

Today's 5 minute thought

Last night, I had a power outage. It was about 4 in the morning when the power went out, and it was out for about an hour.

I sleep with a CPAP machine to help me breathe. When the power goes out, I wake up. Drat. And I can't go back to sleep without it, try as I might. So, yeah - I know exactly how long the power was out.

Anyway, as I always do when the power goes out, I went around the house and unplugged all the computers from the electrical outlets. This is something we've had to do for years and years and years... All of us home tech guys. Because when the power comes back ON, there's no telling how many volts will be coming down the wire for that initial spike. It certainly isn't guaranteed to be 110 volts.

Anyway, today's thought - Unplug your computers when the power goes out. Better safe than sorry.

Today’s 5 minute thought – Professional Gaming in the USA

Ok, so Football is America's sport, isn’t it?  I think most of us can agree on that.  What may not be so well known by many is that in other countries, many people enjoy watching professional video game players.  Starcraft is incredibly popular in Korea.

They’ve tried to bring professional gaming to the US.  And they’ve failed.  It just doesn’t catch on.  Noone seems to want to watch professional gaming on TV.  Why is that?

Well, I for one, would love to watch professional gaming on TV.  I’ve watched the attempts of the video game industry to bring televised video games to the US, and each time, I’m left screaming at the TV things like “What weapons did that guy use?” and “Yeah, I saw it go boom, but how did it happen??!?”.

It is my contention that the biggest problem with watching Video games on TV in the USA has been the lack of good sportscasters.  The games themselves are fine – we have some great players – but for us non-experts to watch the experts play, we need the guidance of the sportscasters to tell us what we’re not seeing.  We need to be told about the subtle nuances that we don’t see because we have never played on that level.

In American Football, when something unusual happens, the sportscasters are there to give us an instant refresh on the pertinent rule, or a reminder of a particular player’s background and stats.  We may not always remember that a particular player has never missed a field goal at 46 yards in the last 8 games, or we may have missed that the receiver had a pinky toe on the line when he caught that ball.  Would we still find football as interesting to watch on TV if the sportscasters only said “Wow, those guys sure are big!  I bet they can run fast!”

I’m paying close attention to the pre-release activity surrounding Blizzard’s forthcoming game Starcraft 2.  During the beta-testing, several very good Sportscasters have caught my attention.  On YouTube, you can easily find HDStarcraft and HuskyStarcraft “casting” matches of replays or even live games, and TotalBiscuit over at CynicalBrit.Com is getting into the action with a fun-to-listen-to style that keeps me coming back.

I’m really crossing my fingers that these guys get the attention they deserve.  They are the key element that needs to be nurtured if the Video Game industry wants to try one more time to bring Televised Professional Video Gaming to the USA.

Guilty!

Ok, so I’ve not been posting much.  At all.  Of anything.

That isn’t how I had planned to run this blog, so I’ve decided to set aside 5 minutes every day to just write whatever I’m thinking of, related to tech, even if it’s not a complete thought.

So, today, I wanted to take a moment to tell everyone about LastPass.  I’ve been using it for a few days now, and I really like it.  What is it?

LastPass is a password manager that plugs into your web browser.  It watches the websites you log into and loads up your passwords for you – just like Firefox, Chrome, or IE already do… but what it does extra is that it stores those passwords on the net, and syncs to any machine you’re using.

I have a BUNCH of computers.  I  have a laptop, a desktop, a new(ish) windows tablet, an iPhone, an iPod Touch, etc.  so, even though my web browsers offer to save passwords for  me, I still have to re-enter then on each different machine I use.  But, LastPass lets the automatically sync.

I recently started an online web course for college. (yeah, I'm returning to college after so many years).  Well, I used LastPass to store the passwords, and already every one of my machines knows my password to log onto the college website, so it’s very easy to shift back and forth from machine to machine.

Those of you who might be security conscious might enjoy knowing how the storage works – your passwords are stored in a file that is on your own hard drive.  The LastPass plug-in encrypts your passwords before storing them in the file.  It then syncs that encrypted file to the web.  So, your passwords never actually leave your machine without being encrypted.  Then, when you want to use one, your machine pulls down the encrypted file, you enter your master password, and it decrypts the file once it’s arrived on your machine with your master password.  Thus, the website, even though you can view your passwords online, it never actually sees your passwords themselves – they’re encrypted up there, and you must enter your master password to see them.  Very nice.

Well, that’s my 5 minute thought.  I’ll come back tomorrow with another 5 minute thought.

Absent…

Hey all!  I’m very sorry for the month long absence…  I have no excuse. 

I’m currently working on completing the next post in the series on the Holy Grail of home data storage.  I’ve actually completed my own build of the project that I was doing the review on, and I will be posting some photos of the finished (starter?) machine.

I will also be posting an article on an interesting comparison of the storage efficiencies between all of the systems I’ve reviewed.  I found it to be quite enlightening, and helped me finish deciding exactly what I was going to build.  I think you will all find it interesting as well.

In other news, we have the launch of Apple’s iPad coming up this week, and I will be watching that with much anticipation.  I own several iPod’s, one of which is an iPod Touch, which is closely related to the iPad, and I also own an iPhone, my new life partner ;)

Stay with me as I will be posting much more information soon!

Rollin' in the Carolina's 2010! Enjoy

It all started so innocently...



Then, the floodgates opened...



Then it started to get crowded...



People holding hands, having a good time...



Here's a group of men cruisiing. This is how it's done.



Before long, it really started to get crowded.



Here's some smooth mellow music. Many people decide to back this up a bit.



The DJ's were live-mixing all night long. The beat NEVER stopped.



Here is some more action from the sidelines



The group in the middle were having fun in their own way



Here's the women getting it on for the men to watch...



And here's the men's skate. One woman was really excited... right in my ear.



Enjoy!