Yahoodeeo – coming soon?

April 13, 2006 eirikso7 Comments

Screenshot of Yahoo TV

Edit, it’s official! From www.meedio.com, April 18, 2006:

Important News About Meedio

Today is a big day for the team here at Meedio; we have sold most of our technology to Yahoo!

David Brott, Jeff (beergeek), Kenny (fasttech), Pedro (flea0) and I are joining Yahoo!â€™s Digital Home team. Weâ€™ve had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Yahoo! in the past few months and we love the way they are developing the best, most user-friendly services for the Digital Home.

Yahoo announced their Yahoo! GO – TV at CES in Las Vegas in January. I have been following some rumors about Yahoo buying Meedio. This could be interesting for the media center comunity. Yahoo buying such a powerful desktop application for presenting media on your TV will strengthen their position as a media distributor. And it actually makes sense. Why build it from scratch if you can buy a very good solution?

If you look at the screenshot from this page at Yahoo you’ll see that there is a “Flickr”-choice on the page. Cool. Seems like we can expect a tight integration into Flickr. Now when will Yahoo buy YouTube? Or when will we see a proper plugin for YouTube in Windows Media Center Edition?

Meedio is extremely powerful, fast and configurable. They also have some nice possibilities for advanced home control through HouseBot. If Yahoo buys it and throw some money on it you will have serious competition for some of the other platforms. The web is turning into a very good platform for delivering rich media like music and video. With podcasting and download services like TVTonic, Democracy and Akimbo you can start to deliver some high quality video as well.

Follow the rumors at the Meedio forum here, here and here. And they’re discussing over at HTPC News as well.

(Thanks, Trond A)

Perfect adjustment of your LCD

April 6, 2006 eirikso20 Comments

When connecting my QPVision 37″ LCD to my media center through DVI I had no problems running the native resolution of 1366×768 on the screen. This gave me one-to-one pixel mapping and a completely sharp picture.

However, my friend Staale ran into some problems that seem to be quite common. He did some tests and created a simple and very effective test pattern that can help you find the right resolution.

It seems like quite a bit of LCD screens that has a resolution of 1366×768 report to the screen cards that the correct resolution is 1360×768. Seems like a small difference, but when you run 1360×768 on a screen that actually is 1366×768 the screen sometimes does a bit of scaling that makes parts of the picture slightly unfocused.

Here is an example. The first picture is taken as a super close up of the screen in 1360×768. The next one is the same area on the same screen forced to 1366×768 through the advanced settings in the screen card driver:

And here is a detail of those images:

The difference seems big here, but it can be difficult to detect and that is where Staale’s brilliant test pattern comes in. It is a simple grid of black and white pixels that will clearly reveal a screen that is not mapped one-to-one. You can download the image here:

GIF (3 k)
PNG (4 k)
BMP (1,2 MB)

It should never be converted to a JPG. Any lossy compression will destroy the file.

Download it and insert it as your desktop pattern. Centered and not streched.

If your screen looks like this:

…then you have a perfect one-to-one pixel mapping.

If it looks like this:

Screenshot of problem with the pixel mapping

…then you have a problem with your pixel mapping.

Unfortunately it can be difficult to solve the problem. It depends on the screen, your screen card, the firmware in the screen, your screen card drivers, the software you use etc… It involves advanced tools and might even put you into serious trouble with your screen and the image from your computer.

For relatively new Nvidia screen cards and drivers you have options to take complete control of the refresh rates and resolution to the screen. You can also try playing around with PowerStrip. Or, use AVS Forum. An excellent source of information on advanced use of media equipment.

Digg this story here.

And please feel free to comment if you have solutions to this problem for specific setups.

How to waste your company’s money and make an utterly stupid audio format

March 24, 2006 eirikso3 Comments

1. Be careful about timing.
Find an exact point when the majority of the users of existing formats are willing to change their habit. Around 1999 something happened to the way people wanted to consume music.

2. Analyze what this change is all about.
At this point people clearly moved towards more availability and was actually willing to sacrifice quality for the availability. Uncompressed audio was compressed and moved quickly between devices. Welcome MP3, Napster, iPod etc…

3. Now plan a format that is exactly the oposite of what people want
Welcome Super Audio CD (SACD). It was released in 1999. Most of you haven’t even heard about it. It is a very high quality audio format that is so insanely well protected that it won’t play on any of your existing devices.

It’s five channels but it won’t play on your new five channel home theatre. It’s digital but it won’t play on your new media center PC. Or Mac. Or Linux box.

This is just as stupid as it would be to launch a digital version of the good old Compact Cassette at the point when people got used to portable CD players and the professionals that wanted recording capabilities already had the high quality DAT system.

Oh. Wait. Someone did exactly that.

Or failing to understand that a special little disk with very low storage capabilities is not the way to go when people are used to carrying around their complete music library. Eh. Someone did that too…

Building a quiet bleeding edge PC

March 17, 2006 eirikso3 Comments

Yesterday ExtremeTech featured an article about building a quiet but high performing computer for gaming. When building a computer that you want to place in your living room as a media center the question of noise is more important than the question of performance.

You need some power, but not the same kind of bleeding edge processor and graphics that gamers need to drive their advanced 3D action.

That’s why it’s interesting to have a look at people that have tried to silence a very powerful PC. By using the same methods and simply replacing some of the components with slightly lower performing components you can end up with a seriously silent media center PC.

Of course there’s always the question of looks. The important wife acceptance factor (WAF). The computer that ExtremeTech have built does not fit in on top of your amplifier. It looks too much like a regular PC. To solve that, I can simply recommend my own solution: a well ventilated cabinet with a silent fan in a noise reducing mount.

(Via Slashdot)

Run WinXP on a Mac

March 16, 2006 eirikso2 Comments

The contest is over. You can now run WinXP on the 17- and 20-inch iMacs, MacBook Pro, and new Mac Mini.

It’s just a question of time before someone manage to run MediaPortal, GBPVR, Meedio or a full Windows Media Center Edition on the new MacMini. A computer that has a seriously cool form factor as a media center. It looks good. It’s quiet.

Throw in two Hauppauge PVR-USB2 and a 1 TB external disk and you have a very nice HTPC.

This could bring a complete Media Center solution with TV-functionallity, an electronic program guide and a large user base to the Mac before Apple gets its act together and completes Front Row. But both CenterStage and MediaCentral seems to be alive and kicking. Maybe sticking to native OSX is a good idea after all? I need to get hold of a MacMini to do some tests…

ShowShifter is for sale

March 15, 2006 eirikso3 Comments

One of the pioneers in the media center software market has shut down and are selling all their assets.

ShowShifter was one of the first true media center softwares out there. And the first package that I used in my living room. I still miss the usability of the Music Library in that package. They had truly excellent navigation and a very easy possibility to make playlists from the remote.

They also supported offline recompression at a very early stage and had a great user community making plugins and enhancing the product. They did some bad mistakes and was simply too late featuring a proper electronic program guide and support for hardware encoding cards.

Now you can buy the remains of the company, the source code and probably their database of users.

So if owning a mediacenter is not enough, buy yourself a complete company. Or you can support the best brains from the users. They would like to purchase Showshifter and make it into a project run by the community: Help save Showshifter!

Recommended HTPC hardware

March 14, 2006 eirikso19 Comments

Because hardware changes fast it is difficult to make a list of recommendations that will last more than a couple of weeks. But people keeps asking, so here’s a quick list of some good equipment if you want to build yourself a home theatre computer.

Cabinet
The expensive but perfect:
mCubed HFX

The cheaper one:
Silverstone LC03 (review)

Power supply
Silverstone ST30NF (review)

TV-Card
Hauppauge PVR-500

Screen card
Nvidia GeForce 6600GT (review)
Note
I don’t know if this card fits in any of the cabinets recommended here. My main message is: choose a Nvidia GeForce 6600GT that is as silent as possible but still will fit into the case you choose.

CPU
As powerful AMD Athlon 64 as you can afford. The AMD processors has a “cool’n quiet” technology that makes them perfect for HTPCs. Lately people have also started using Pentium M processors in HTPCs. The selection of mainboards that support the Pentium M is not big, but this processor is perfect for a silent computer for your living room.

Memory
at least 512 MB (preferably 1 GIG)

Disk
As large as possible. Cool. Quiet. In general the seagate Barracuda 7200 disks has been quite good. The best qolution is to mount the disk in a 5 1/4″ bay in a special silencer to avoid vibrations. The Nexus DiskTwin is a good choice.

Fans and coolers
Zalman has a good selection of silent coolers and fans

Complete systems
Hush Technologies has fanless HTPC systems
In Norway a company caled Vendur can deliver complete fanless systems
For small media servers Mini-ITX.com is a good source
Niveus media has some beautiful and expensive systems
Voodoo Media Centers are also worth a look

But these things change fast and you should always do a bit of research before buying. Some good resources:
HTPC News
Good Media Center Blogs
AVS Forum

Screen technologies. LCD or Plasma?

March 13, 2006 eirikso8 Comments

People keeps asking me what I would recommend for a home theatre PC (HTPC). LCD or Plasma? In general I would recommend a good LCD. I know that the problems with burn in have been close to eliminated on the best plasma screens. Still, I find the crisp and clean LCD picture with absolutely no burn in problem preferable. A quick roundup:

Cathode Ray Tube (CRT)
First of all, it is perfectly OK to use your old tube. A standard cathode ray tube (CRT) connected to a PC through S-Video or even composite video should work fine if you adjust your screen card and use a proper media center software. The whole point of these softwares is to give you a front end from your computer that looks good even on low resolution television screens.

A quick trouble shooting tip: if you get a black and white signal from your PC when connecting through S-Video you probably have to select the correct output (S-Video ro Y/C) in your screen settings. If you get black and white when connecting through composite you probably have to take a look at the video format settings. Choosing NTSC when you have a PAL television could give you a black and white picture.

Liquid Chrystal Display (LCD)
LCD has been used for computer screens for some time. For the last couple of years they have been able to produce them big enough for use as television sets. Only half a year ago it was a problem that the contrast ratio (the difference between black and white) was too low. Resulting in loss of detail in dark and bright scenes. Now, that is about to end. Some of the vendors has introduced LCDs with contrast ratios of 3000:1 and 5000:1. Earlier that was only possible for Plasma displays. Another problem was response time. Bad response times could result in problems with fast moving video. Now, most LCD screens have a response time of 8 milliseconds or better. That should be enough for most people watching video or playing games on their screen.

Plasma
Plasma screens traditionally gives better contrast ratio, a more correct black level and in general a slightly more soft picture. Half a year ago a good plasma would without doubt outperform a good LCD in quality for watching movies. Right now that have changed because of better LCD panels. In general you have to pay more for a proper high resolution plasma compared to a high resolution LCD (a resolution of 1280 x 720 or more).

And for the people that want more than a quick round up:
Wikipedia: CRT, LCD, Plasma
Comparison: Plasma vs. LCD TVs

And yes, the pictures in this post are all super close ups of the described technologies. With compliments to my new Canon S2 IS!

Dagbladet today

March 9, 2006 eirikso13 Comments

Today there is an article about media centers in the norwegian newspaper Dagbladet. They have asked me about different solutions and give a quick overview of what all this is about.

I will also attend to a net meeting at dagbladet.no on tuesday 14th at 1300 CET. This meeting will be in Norwegian.

Please also feel free to post any questions or comments on this post in my blog.

To make it easier for Dagbladet’s readers I will give you a quick roundup of some media center links and advice:
– The complete list of software solutions
– A quick roundup of some of the systems I have tried
– An update with links to other articles as well
– Converting DVR-MS files from your media center
– Placeshifting, your media everywhere!
– Remote control your music collection in MCE
– Everything in the HTPC category

Update:
The Goatse joke was already taken, so I chose to wear my BoingBoing tee. 🙂

Update2:
Link to the story on dagbladet.no (Thanks, Jon)

How to control your amplifier from the MCE IR-blaster

February 25, 2006 eirikso32 Comments

I just upgraded my home entertainment system with a Pioneer VSX-915 amplifier. Meaning that I now connect my Home Theatre PC to the amp digitally through SPDIF.

To control the volume properly I have to use the volume on the amplifier and not adjust the volume out of my Media Center. The easiest solution is of course to use the remote of the amp, but I don’t want to use two remotes. I only want one remote in my living room and that is the MCE remote.

If you have a relatively new MCE remote you can easily program it to control your amplifier directly. The new MCE remotes has three programable buttons. The TV On / Off and the volume. You program the remote as described here.

But, I have my amplifier inside a cabinet. I could of course buy some kind of IR repeater to catch the remote signal outside the cabinet and beam it out inside to the amplifier.

But hey, the MCE remote reciever can be programmed as well, and it even includes a IR blaster to do exactly what you want: beam out IR signals to control a set top box (…or an amplifier).

This is what you need:
Continue reading “How to control your amplifier from the MCE IR-blaster” →