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Category: Media

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MythTV 0.22 Final to Be Released Next Week

Terra Theme
Terra Theme

As you may know, MythTV 0.22 has gotten to  release candidates, but now, the team has announced the final version, barring any new critical issues, will be released next week.

Since the initial release candidate two weeks ago, more than 50 updates were submitted.

We’re not sure whether we like the new default theme in actual use, but it doesn’t show of the possibilities the new MythUI offers, and is visually appealing. Our biggest issue was that highlighted items on the new theme have a light box around them which does not contrast significantly.

We’ll be continuing to cover MythTV and the 0.22 release, discussing some of the tricks, tips, and issues we’ve come across.

Published on October 31, 2009
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The Future of Internet Video

A server used for the My Home
Image via Wikipedia

We like Hulu. We think it is a great service, and like any services that offer good content at the wonderfully low-low price of free. However, Hulu is considering adding a premium product…where they could offer things they don’t offer now at a premium.

Some people, despite its free nature, don’t like Hulu. And it hasn’t exactly made a great deal of profit. Mark Cuban wrote today on the subject of Internet Video vs the Cable Company DVR. As the owner of HDNet, a television channel offered on cable, he may be biased though. But the fact that content providers, cable companies, and the other organizations involved just don’t get the possibilities is not one we can argue with.

Cuban makes the case for better cable hardware with better improved features and remote access so you can enjoy your programs on the go. Beyond that, there is also the network DVR, where the videos are stored on a cable company server, instead of in the house. The library of On-Demand programming offered by all carriers continues to increase.

Cuban makes the point that with the current limitations of Internet based video, cable may be the more popular option for the foreseeable future. At least, in that regard, we agree.  If you are paying for something, you should receive good quality service at a good price.

Published on October 24, 2009
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MythTV 0.22 Release Candidate 1

Component video cable with RCA connections.
Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday, MythTV unveiled its version 0.22 Release Candidate 1. It has been almost two years since version 0.21 was released, and the change brings a great deal of welcome changes.

  • Support for the HD-PVR 1212 – The Hauppauge HD-PVR captures analog HD video and digital audio from component video inputs and outputs them over USB using the H264 codec. Since cable companies are encrypting almost all of their content, this device ensures the analog loophole can be exploited. We’ve been using the development version of 0.22 for this reason ever since our cable company shut off our other alternative.
  • VDPAU Support – VDPAU is a feature of certain Nvidia graphics cards that permits offload of processor intensive video decoding, include the H264 codec the HD-PVR uses, from the system processor to the graphics card. Thus a slow system can play back HD content without problem.
  • The User Interface has been ported to a new standard, MythUI. It allows for inheritance and menu animation, and takes layout and behavior away from the program and puts it under the control of the theme. And surprisingly, that simplifies things.
  • Automatic Prioritization, which keeps track of what you watch and uses it to increase the priority of shows watched closer to their recording times over shows that are not.
  • A New Channel Scanner – This is a big one, as instead of adding channels when found, it allows you to decide which channels to select, dividing them into New channels, Old Channels, and several different channel types. For example, every time we scan we find a variety of foreign-language channels. Since we don’t speak those languages, it is pointless to add them. This allows us to tell the system to ignore them on scan.
  • HDHomeRun Multi-Rec Support – Multi-Rec has been supported under MythTV for DVB devices for a while. This extends it to the popular HDHomeRun, which we also happen to have. Digital TV, both cable and broadcast, allows for multiple subchannels to be embedded on the same channel frequency. Multirec allows two subchannels from the same channel to be recorded at once, instead of discarding all but the one you are watching. It means that if your cable system puts the local NBC and CBS affiliate on the same channel, you can record them simultaneously on the same tuner.
  • A score of bug fixes and general handling improvements too numerous to list, but can be checked in the Release Notes.
  • MythBrowser now has support for flash and javascript, which means it could be used for Hulu and other Streaming sites(We have yet to test this feature).
  • MythNews, the RSS reader, now has podcast support(We have yet to test this feature).
  • MythVideo now supports videos stored on the backend. Previously, this required adding the videos as NFS shares. New video metadata grabber scripts are now part of the package, and several other features. The networked option is still in its infancy, and is considered beta till the next version.

There are some additional features that you can review, but essentially, MythTV 0.22 is everything we hoped for after all these months. It can only get better from here. And for US residents, the only possible way this software would not be a great addition to your tech offerings is if the cable company locks down their system so much as to prevent you from using it.

Published on October 15, 2009
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Hulu unveils Desktop for Linux – Another Shot at Boxee?

Image representing hulu as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

Hulu, the online movie streaming site, released a version of its Desktop software for linux.

Now, we’re Linux people, so we love that a company has released Linux software. But we can’t help but think back to how this affects Boxee. Hulu asked them to remove support, then unveiled their desktop app, and have now extended it to every OS Boxee supports, even going a step further, because they offer both Fedora and Ubuntu options in both 32 and 64 bit, where Boxee offers only Ubuntu 32.

Since we use Fedora 64, we’re pleased by this and will be testing the product and have a review soon. The lack of stability under Fedora and/or 64-bit has limited our use of Boxee, which is the point. We want to use Boxee regularly, but we can’t.

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Published on October 8, 2009
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Western Digital Unveils Two New Media Options

The WD Media Player is a great device in both price and features. It plays almost any file off of a USB-connected flash or hard drive.

Details have been leaked of the next generation WD-TV-2, which adds a network connection for streaming video from a network connected drive. This device could replace the old computers we currently have connected to some televisions for easy media playback from our network server, although we may hold out for an Ion computer. Either way, it looks like a good update. More to come as details are available.

Western Digital has also added a discount option. The WD TV Mini. It is smaller than the current box and loses HDMI and full 1080p in favor of analog HD and SD outputs only.

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Published on August 19, 2009
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More on the Analog Loophole

Component video cable with RCA connections.
Image via Wikipedia

In our previous post on the subject, we discussed the Analog Loophole, and how we were using the HD-PVR 1212 to capture HD video.

We’d had some problems, and reduced the quality to 720p and AAC analog audio only. After a week, on Thursday night we switched back to AC3 digital audio delivered using an optical toslink cable. So far, the recordings are stable. Our next step will be to switch from 720p only to 1080i only. And we ultimately hope to allow both 720p and 1080i to record, so that we can record both HD formats that are broadcast without any scaling.

But, what if they close the Analog Loophole? There is a solution out there. GeekTonic recently had a guest-post on the subject. It discusses the HD-Fury2 It provides an HDMI input, and a component video output. The HD-Fury2 and the HD-PVR will work together, so even if they turn off the component outputs, this will enable an analog path.

Why do we need the analog loophole? Well, our cable company encrypts almost everything. If they missed something, any day it could be gone. We have, in addition to the HD-PVR, a Silicondust HDHomeRun, with is a dual digital tuner that works with cable and broadcast. One day, we came home and they’d encrypted TNT-HD, one of the few channels outside of broadcast they offered.

We use the Silicondust HDHomerun for unencrypted cable and broadcast, mostly to allow us to record cable and broadcast channels simultaneously, although us not to have to rely exclusively on the one cable box hooked into the system. The HDHomerun is a very well supported device. The developers are very involved, and continue to release new firmware. The latest version of the firmware improves channel scanning and handling, among other things.

Like anything, you have to find the solution that works for you. Even if we lost cable entirely tomorrow, we could switch to Broadcast and maintain a good selection of programming. We choose however, to continue to push what we can do and learn and explore new things.  More on this to come.

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Published on August 16, 2009
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The HD-PVR and MythTV

HDPVR
Image by Geek Tonic via Flickr

For years now, we have run a MythTV DVR. It is a Linux-based software package that turns a computer into a digital video-recorder, complete with scheduling of programs.

We started with a single cable box with an active firewire connection to change the channel and a PVR-250 card we got cheap. That encoded the composite output from the box to MPEG2.

Eventually, we got the hang of firewire, discovered a bunch of tricks to get it to cooperate without crashing, and we’re working almost entirely off of cable with firewire, using a digital tuner to add redundancy on broadcast stations.

Then one day, the cable company shut down every firewire connection. The channel changing still works, but not streaming directly from the box. So we ordered the HD-PVR 1212.

The HD-PVR turns high definition component video and analog or digital audio into H264-encoded files. Ultra-compressed, and requiring a good CPU to decode. It exploits the so-called “analog loophole“, allowing one to record HD video off of an HD source.

And MythTV will support it in Version 0.22. Some have backported the device support to 0.21, the current stable version. So, we upgraded our installation(after a backup) to the 0.22 ‘bleeding’ version. You use development versions at your own risk. Unless you are contributing to the process with information, complaints about things not working will be ignored, mostly.

The HD-PVR seemed very buggy under Version 0.22, capturing at all resolutions, 480i, 720p, 1080i, with AC3 audio. And all of the files were filled with corruption, making it hard to play them back. So, the other night, despite the notation that the ability of the HD-PVR to handle multiple resolutions at a time had been stabilized, we reverted to 720p and AAC analog audio. So far, it has made everything rock solid. We’re doing tests of this over this weekend, after which we’ll try bringing back AC3 audio and/or 1080i, to see how high a quality we can get with complete stability.

The HD-PVR is a decent device that is developing better Linux-based support.  It is unfortunately the best option for recording HD video from other sources, as any digital options are shut down by the content providers.

More on our efforts in this area when all tests are complete.

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Published on August 7, 2009
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Roundup: Acceptable Use

ABC News Special Report ident, circa 2006
Image via Wikipedia

The MPAA, well known for its lack of insight on the subject of fair use…namely what we are allowed to do with content we’ve purchased,  maintained during a recent hearing at the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress that videorecording a TV set playing back a DVD is an acceptable analog alternative to breaking copy protection on a DVD(Video available here).  These meetings take place every few years. In 2006, professors were granted an exemption in order to break copy protection on DVDs so that they could utilize high quality video clips in classroom teaching.

Elsewhere, research indicates more than 40% of U.S. Households under 35 watch Internet Video on their TVs(note the emphasis) at least once a month. The idea that consumers can get good content to watch from free or cheap online sources and watch it on their TV sets using a variety of methods is not one that is good for cable companies. These companies can either improve their on-demand services and ensure that everything that is free online can be accessed on-demand for free, or pressure their content providers to keep as much content off the internet as possible. Even if they do, there is plenty of web-exclusive content to enjoy.

For those of us trying to enjoy our fair use rights and thinking about downsizing your cable bill, here are some stories we’ve been monitoring:

  • XBMC, the popular multi-platform media center software, has released version 9.04, code-named Babylon. The release incorporates many improvements over previous versions. Check it out.
  • A hack has been released that will allow any computer to emulate the OCUR compliant BIOS, permitting any Windows computer to support digital cable with a Cablecard. The hack can be easily modified, should countermeasures be enacted.  We never understood why the cable companies should care. You are still paying for cable, after all.
  • TV Squad reports that ABC News is increasing its Youtube presence. The site will feature news from several ABC programs, like Good Morning America, 20/20, Nightline, ABC World News, and This Week with George Stephanopoulos.  Another reason to dump the TV.
  • TV Squad also taught us the Food Network offers a website, Food2.com, where they offer video recipes and web only shows for your enjoyment.
  • Boxee, continuing to gather support, has launched a contest for developers to encourage new plugin applications. Recent new plugins for Boxee include the highdefnow HD feed, who has given Boxee users direct access to their files which means you’ll get the smoothest playback from Boxee, without the same stuttering that a flash player might produce. This is a perfect example of content providers working with Boxee to promote their content.
  • Jumping on the Twitter Bandwagon, ABC’s Nightline news anchors are going to host a weekly online news program that uses Twitter for debate and questions. The show, called NightTline will air its first episode Wednesday at 12:30PM EST. It will air not only on the Nightline website, but on ABC News Now, offered as a subchannel on many ABC stations and cable systems.
  • With the signing of Disney to the Hulu family, it leaves CBS as the only major network not offering such content on Hulu, preferring its own media player. Meanwhile, CBS does offer content on Youtube.
  • Speaking of Youtube content for CBS, MGM, Lionsgate and Starz, who made content available last month, most users complain that the content is lacking and limited. But we hardly expected them to put their A-game on Youtube.
  • Time Warner Cable, defeated in its attempts to start metered bandwidth, another method for the cable companies to slow-down the growth of internet-based video, declared that it is not giving up on its hopes to implement the feature, but merely withdrew due to negative public opinion.
  • Netflix, not only a respected DVD-by-mail company, but slowly being known for its on-demand streaming, reported it isn’t particularly concerned about iTunes or Hulu as competition, but the DVD Kiosk, such as Redbox. Cheap $1 rentals are one of the reasons that people leave their Netflix subscriptions. With the gradual closing of video stores, the kiosk is becoming more ubiqitous. The company is concerned that if the kiosk companies get their costs down even further, they could very well be in more stores and locations…practically on every street corner. However, what these machines lack is the extensive library that Netflix offers. Unless you can order any DVD online, and have it delivered into the kiosk to be picked up, in addition to its standard stock of DVDs, then Netflix will always have a place.
  • Netflix also reports more streaming deals will be coming. The company had a “tremendous amount” of consumer electronics deals on the way, We’ll just wait for Linux. If not, the Roku Box still looks good to us, if they can get media streaming from the home computer added to it.
  • PBS Launched an Online Portal for full-length versions of some of its programs. Previously, while PBS had content online, it was not always easy to find. It can be found at pbs.org/video.

There is more to come. We monitor hundreds of stories, but there are only so many hours in the day, and we do have a day job. Coming soon, we will be taking our Streaming Video Guide from a different post, cleaning it up, and updating it into a permanent and regularly updated page on our site.

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Published on May 12, 2009
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The Future of Video

Back of a Blu-ray Disc. I took this.
Image via Wikipedia

Our two pet interests right now seem to be netbooks and video, although there are a lot of other things we find interesting.

Engadget HD asked yesterday whether or not people are still buying DVDs. A poll of people reading a site with HD in the name, indicating the bulk of the readers are likely serious video enthusiasts, more likely to be new technology adopters. However, that said, why are people not buying DVDs in such numbers as they once did?

Some of that is definitely blu-ray. But the price point for blu-ray, especially in this economy, is still not at the level where everything would buy one. A DVD player can be had for dirt cheap. So, yes, people are still buying DVDs. Those economizing are renting them, with Netflix, or even using their computer to watch free or paid content.

Avner Ronen, the CEO of Boxee, commented on Thursday that content companies and cable and IPTV service providers alike are trying to “use their leverage to better survive or avoid change” that is coming to the media industry. “No one likes change except Obama,” he quipped.

Cable programmers receive $22 billion in subscriber fees each year, which makes those providers, and the cable companies who pay the fees to ensure their customers have access to such content, reluctant to change. Recognizing that the web won’t wait for them indefinitely, many cable companies are planning to offer access to online content as part of their subscription-based plans. Private companies like Netflix could even buy those rights as well, allowing them to get into this market.

Mark Cuban responded to Ronen’s comments about how the future of video programming is ala carte with his own thoughts. Mark Cuban is the chairman of HDNet, an all HD programming network, among other things. (Please forgive me for the disjointed nature of the rest of this post, as I try to consolidate a lot of blog comments into a coherent thread)

Why does he, like so many other internet people think content producers are stupid ? Has he, along with so many others pushing internet video not noticed what is happening to the revenues of the content and distribution industries ? Ad Revenues are falling. Quickly. DVD sales are slowing. The per subscriber fees they are getting paid are going up. Not only are they going up, they are consistent.

Now I dont know about you, but for HDNet and my other content companies, we tend to be very nice to those of our customers who pay us every month. Commentary from cable networks and their content producers are saying the same thing. They can’t afford to upset the people who pay the bills.

We agree, the cable company initiative to bring things online for subscribers has a good chance of success because it makes these service contingent on cable subscriptions, and the content providers are very likely to agree to that unless another way to make more money on streaming media is offered. And the cable company keeps increasing rates, perhaps because of falling revenues. But if they don’t get it under control, more and more subscribers will flee.

Cuban goes on the endorse metered Internet, which is a likely alternative manner that cable companies who act as broadband service providers might use to ensure their revenues.

Ronen responded, with a post on the Boxee Blog, maintaining it is not the bundled offering that is going away, but the concept of a channel and the idea that the cable company is the one deciding what content is included in the bundle. As he puts it(we cleaned it up a bit for readability):

As a cable channel your primary concern is your ability to negotiate your way into the basic cable package with as many cable operators, and to get the highest fee for it.

In an Internet/on-demand world your primary concern is the quality of your content, since you are held accountable by the consumer. if consumers want your content they will be willing to pay for it either with cash or with their time (watching ads).

I understand it is a lucrative business. You invest in 1-3 originally produced (or exclusively licensed) core programs, come up with 5-7 cheap to produce shows, license a bunch of syndicated content, get cable companies to carry it and voila! you’ve got a great business. But this model breaks in an on-demand world, and while it may take a few years, the change is inevitable.

Cuban shot back his own reply, pointing out that the Video-On-Demand model works better if the cable company is delivering it with unlimited bandwidth to your device. We tend to agree that the limiting factor on the future of IPTV is bandwidth, but bandwidth to the house continues to increase as user demand encourages infrastructure increase. We have no good way of summarizing his thoughts on why channels will always exist, so we include an excerpt of it here.

The concept of “users always want choice” really really sounds nice. It makes for a great panel argument. But the reality is that its not true. Ultimate choice requires work. Consumers like to think they have choice, but their consumption habits say they prefer easy. Youtube is the perfect example. Millions upon millions of choices that never get seen. The videos that get posted and expected to be seen are the ones from traditional media and providers that already have an audience, ala jon stewart. The rest have to fight for an audience.

TV Guide and guide listings provided onscreen by the cable company allow people to plan what they want to watch, coupled with DVRs to allow them to decided when to watch it. That means people are already migrating to ala carte. Millions of choices may not be seen on TV as well. We know we can’t devote the time to search through 24 hours of programming on the hundreds of channels our cable company bundles in to get the ones we really want.

Having online content as part of a cable subscription is good, but having it as the only option is bad. Competition and variety encourages not only innovation, but keeps prices from being overly inflated. As Avner put it…

I would love for my Cable/Telco providers to focus on being great network providers rather than try to decide what content i should or should not have access to, what application i should or should not run, invent new standards for Interactive TV, Enhanced TV, whatever TV. all with the goal of trying to maintain control, so they don’t lose a grip of their lucrative business model.

Their network infrastructure is a great asset. Their billing relationship with the user is another one. They should try to build their future business around these two foundations.

Innovation in the living room will not come from the set-top makers or the networks. If you would like to see the wild creativity of the Internet come to the TV screen, well you need to let the Internet come to the TV screen..

The arguments and comments seem to go on forever. But what it boils down to is this: no content provider would hurt their profit margins partnering for a subscription-based internet alternative to cable as cable subscribers look for less expensive alternatives. Cable isn’t dead and likely won’t be if they change and grow with the times. People are willing to watch commercials on their computer to get content legally, ala Hulu. US internet infrastructure needs to keep up with the increased bandwidth demand this technology is generating. And finally…things will change. We just have to wait and see how.

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Published on March 22, 2009
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Streaming Video Update

Boxee iPhone app
Image by nwistheone via Flickr

On Tuesday, we’re heading down to the Boxee NYC meetup. For those of you not coming(probably a lot of people), they will stream it live here. We’ll blog a bit about the experience of hanging out with 650+ Boxee enthusiasts when we get back from it. The meetup will launch a new version of the Boxee Alpha, as well as discussing some of the changes planned for when the product moves into beta. seveal guest content providers, such as Blip.tv, a surprise guest, and a q&a session.

A few other things that we’ve spotted:

  • Boxee released an iPhone app to allow the iPhone to act as a remote control. For those of you with iPhones, the screenshots look like this is a wonderful addition to their offerings.
  • In a recent post, we mentioned that Windows Media Center users were having trouble with guide data. Engadget reports that some, but not all of that has been resolved after they blogged about it. They have restored analog guide data which was used to populate digital channels, which means it is still not entirely accurate.
  • In our search for new media hardware and apps, we cannot always present our own reviews, as we don’t have the money to buy everything we like the sound of(Someone can send us free things though, and we guarantee we’ll review them fully). Engadget reviewed the Popcorn Hour A-110. The Popcorn Hour line of products sounds very promising, even if used only as a media streamer from your computer. The final line of their review of the item sums it up: “While it can do just about anything, we didn’t find it super easy and wouldn’t expect those without a fundamental knowledge of networking and video to be able figure how to make it do anything useful. But for those who like to tinker, you’re in for a real treat.” We like to tinker, but we hope firmware and future updates will enhance the product offering.  If so, we are in the market for a set top device that can play all the stuff we normally use an HTPC to play.
  • iPlayer, the BBC’s internet streaming player, may bump itself up to HD offerings as soon as April. Unfortunately, the BBC doesn’t allow us here in the US to stream using their player…at least not officially.
  • The daughter of a Spanish city councilor used her mom’s 3G modem to download episodes of Lost, not realizing that the size of the episodes would end up costing $40,000 in data fees, or $300 an episode.

Otherwise, we continue to look for new news on easy streaming video, and to make plans to enhance our broadcast offerings, mostly by trying to pick up stations farther away.

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Published on March 20, 2009
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