watch tHe skies

Whilst worshipping at the Apple Centre yesterday, I had a go on the Apple TV device. I must say it’s a very nice piece of kit - Apple’s approach to usability certainly shines through and is very simple to operate compared to my very clumsy Netgear EVA700.

However videos from iTunes look pretty awful on a big screen, which means the only way to get a decent picture is to code your own videos from DVDs. This however is a painfully lengthy process. Unfortunately for Apple I don’t see how this device can really take off until it provides a function in iTunes to rip DVDs to movie files… most people don’t want to mess with third party recoding devices and won’t want to repurchase a movie from iTunes store if they already have it on DVD, and more importantly, they shouldn’t have to.

So with the completion of my media streaming project, the gadget monster has retired to its cave and is snoring loudly. It seems to have missed the furor around the PS3 and is quite happy that we can now watch our home movies, movie trailers, photos and all of the DVDs I’ve encoded, from the comfort of our sofas.

As regular reader(s) know, I abandoned the Apple TV idea because I couldn’t be bothered to code everything, wasn’t sure that iTunes was man enough for 100gb of video and didn’t see the point as iTunes UK only sells music videos which don’t make for an entertaining evening in front of the TV. (more…)

When Apple announced a 3 week delay to delivering my shiny new Apple TV I took the opportunity to creep away from the gadget monster and ponder it all. The conclusion I came to was that Apple TV wasn’t right for me.

I have tonne of Xvids and I really can’t be bothered to transcode them all - what I needed was an xvid media streamer. I decided upon the netgear EVA700, a swish new device that plays every format under the sun. And so it arrived and I set towards getting it set up. The first problem was getting the device to connect to the wireless network - it found it and accessed it ok but the device seems to ignore DHCP and make up its own address. This wouldn’t be a problem but for the menus from hell - I started to believe that netgear was an oxymoron.

I was also staggered to find that this netgear product won’t talk to the netgeat sc101 network storage box without a PC running a media server somewhere in the mix. Crazy. Still I persevered and soon xvids were streaming on to my TV, with good image and sound quality, excellent. I did have to abandon windows media 11 as the media server because, er, well, it sucks donkeys and can’t handle more than 2gig of shared media without crashing the PC. All our photos are similarly transmitted, although without thumbnails to guide you it is a bit tricky to find the image you want. But what I really wanted it for was the convenience of watching Xvids on the telly, and that it does nicely.

Come on guys, you saw this one coming, didn’t you? It was bound to happen at some point and now I can finally confirm that yes I have ordered an Apple TV unit. I had been umming and aaahing about it for some time, but when Jenny started hassling me about clearing out the DVDs “can’t we have them on the computer?” I thought “aha, a wife-endorsed technology”, and so it became true.

So the idea is that I will rip our DVD collection to the PC and synchronise them with the Apple TV. It’s only got 40gb so I will have to be choosy about what goes on the unit, but it will also allow her to flick through all of our photos stored on the PC, something that she has wanted for some time.

Unfortunately the units aren’t shipping until the end of the month, so I have a few more weeks to wait. Which is probably a good thing as it will take a few weeks to rip DVDs to the PC. It is a pity that itunes won’t rip DVDs the same way that it does for CDs, because ripping a DVD and converting it to a format that Apple TV can play is a lengthy process, taking around the same time as the running time of the movie. Hopefully the launch of Apple TV in the UK will coincide with TV shows and movies being available on itunes store, so we can forget the trip to the shops to buy \ hire the DVD.

So i’ve been thinking a lot about Apple TV and how it might change the way that people deal with media. At the moment, most people are still listening to CDs and watching DVDs in their lounge, with some people having found “work arounds” for digital files, through media streamers, media centre PCs and plugging their video ipods in to their tellies to view photos and tv shows (albeit with poor resolution). Apple’s latest innovation is about to change that. (more…)

So it would seem that Sony have finally accepted defeat after spending millions of dollars producing MP3 players that no-one bought, because they have released their first iPod accessory. The snazzily titled “iPod^® Audio Docking StationCPF-IP001” is a lovely looking bit of kit, providing a quality speaker system to your beloved iPod, for just $249. I must say it looks very nice and it leaves me wondering Sony’s strategy (if they have one) in this marketplace. Perhaps they are going to concentrate on MP3 phones, because with the iPhone being a top-end product price-wise, the market for low-end MP3 player \ phones is definitely one that they are strong in, and it would appear to be a growing market, particularly with the kids who wander down our road with music blaring in a kind of sad, tinny, chav update of the 80s ghetto-blaster.

The other day, after only 3 months’ use my lovely MDA Vario II coughed and died on me. Its light was extinguished quite literally when the backlight failed to come on any more making the screen barely readable even if you were standing on the surface of the sun (ok I know that the sun is in fact a ball of plasma, or superheated gases but let’s be honest, if you were within ten thousand miles of the sun, checking your smartphone is likely the last thing on your mind, as your mind has probably been burnt away with the rest of you).

Still I managed to call T-Mobile who, after having me turn the phone off and on again several times at the request of a stream of increasingly egg-headed technical support people, concluded that the phone was, indeed, knackered. They immediately despatched a new one by elf (this is what they do to keep the money coming in when Santa isn’t paying overtime), and it arrived within 8 working hours, which is rather marvellous.

So all is right with the world and, even better, I have a brand spanking new phone which works much better than the one I dropped, or should say, failed all on it’s own…

So today, Apple announced two more steps in their plan for world domination, in the form of the iPhone and Apple TV.

The iPhone is a widescreen video ipod with a touch interface and, strangely, a phone. Fortunately for my bank account it’s only available in the US (hits UK in Q4/07), however it comes in 4g and 8g configurations and looks very nice indeed.

Also the previously talked about Apple TV is finally available. This is shipping in the UK in Q1/07 and costs the princely sum of £199. The box synchronised with iTunes (using a 40gb drive) on your PC to allow you to watch movies, listen to music and browse your photo collection all from your TV. Unfortunately its video out options don’t sit well with my current configuration and it doesn’t have onboard wifi which means another box in the lounge. So for the time being I will wait and watch, at least until a SCART adaptor is provided by the third party acessory community.

The main thing of interest for me is the new UI for the iPhone, as it is surely a sign of things to come for the impending video iPod, and I would imagine that by the end of 2007, all iPods will use it, and cover flow will be the navigational tool of choice, like flicking through your vinyl whilst sitting on the bus…

My gadget budget has dropped severely since Jen went on maternity leave in April. So I now am restricted to hunting out bargains on ebay to sate my gadget appetite.

So my latest attempt to streamline life is to capture all of my ideas (bright, dim, and outright stupid) on voice recorder, less they sink back in to the depths of my psyche without being given the attention that they deserve.

So after some searching I acquired a right bargain of an Olympus WS-200 digital voice recorder off ebay. A little larger than a memory stick, with a stereo mike and direct USB connection, this is a dream of a little device that fits snugly in to your hand and could easily, using a shirt mike, allow you to be “wired” to record conversationss with druglords and the like in true Miami Vice style. Where would I hide the unit itself in such a situation I hear you ask? Alimentary, my dear Watson. 128mb RAM means I can ramble on to myself for hours and record the insanity for posterity, or even convert it to text using some clever software I have still to find.

So I have the device, I just need an idea to record on it. However, I suspect that my ideas department has stage fright, because not even a single outlandish concept has bubbled up from the depths of my psyche since I’ve had the recorder in my pocket. It, like me, probably feels like a bit of a prat, in a David Brent stylee, actually recording my mad ramblings. Perhaps I need to eliminate my stage fright before the brainstorms return…

So I’ve been volunteering today at every opportunity to go out in the car to run errands. This was driven by the sonic bliss I am currently experiencing from the Dension Icelink now feeding my music at near CD quality through my car stereo.

I cannot believe that I’ve been living with substandard FM modulated music for so long!

The only disappointment is that the VW head units don’t currently support ID3 tags. However I can live without this until I change cars in 08!