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Digital TV Continues Its March Toward June

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Another 158 stations will be shutting off their analog broadcast before June 12, the revised shutoff date. Fifty-eight of those stations are PBS stations, many of which cannot afford the continual expense of analog broadcasts. The FCC could prohibit a station from shutting down early to make sure that people can get at least one station broadcasting in analog in their area. Here is the list of all 158 in PDF Format.

We predict as time continues, more stations will opt to switch to digital early. Month to month, more people prepare for the digital transition, stations feel more confident with the early switch. It may be by the end, only some of the network affiliates will be left.

Engadget HD points out that Windows Media Center is not quite ready for the digital transition. It needs to release some patches to provide proper guide data for digital broadcast channels. We prefer MythTV, an open-source DVR which, in combination with Schedules Direct(a $20 a year nonprofit TV listings service), has fairly accurate scheduling data and has great support for OTA(cable as well, but cable providers often encrypt channels).

The irony of digital broadcasts is that, without moving our old roof-mounted antenna which was installed with the building a quarter century ago, we’ve had a wide variance in quality. We picked up cable around 2000, when the quality of network broadcasts in analog dropped to the point it was difficult to watch. That kept us off analog till last year, when we bought an indoor antenna to see what we could pick up, and ultimately reconnected a wire to the old antenna on the roof. Since then, without again touching the antenna on the roof at all, the digital reception has decreased to lose us two local PBS affiliates, and a local MyNetwork affiliate. We may need to replace or investigate that one of these days.

On a positive note though, the stations we do get are crystal clear. Which is certainly an advantage. More on this later…

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Published on March 19, 2009
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Netbooks, Glorious Netbooks

Asus Eee PC 1000HA vs. MSI Wind U100 - 8
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We just acquired our first netbook. We’ve been thinking about getting one of these for our mobile computing needs, but we held off, and we’re happy we did. The first netbook, the Asus Eee had a 7″ screen, a small solid state drive, a Celeron processor, and limited RAM, caught our interest for its small size.

Now, most netbooks have 10″ screens, solid state drives have been tabled till they become more stable and reliable, replaced with more conventional hard drives. Most of them use the Intel Atom N270 CPU. They are optimized for low power consumption. Ironically, while the Atom chipset is optimized for low power, the Intel chipset it is paired with is not so much, and the CPU accounts for only 20% of the total power consuption of most netbooks. Being as most use the same chipset and motherboard, there is little variation on that front between not only the various Eee models, but the MSI Wind, the Acer Aspire, and the HP Mini.

Whereas initially, netbooks ran a stripped down Linux distribution, which many replaced with other distributions, or Windows. Now, most ship with Windows XP, although Microsoft has a version of Windows 7 which will be for netbook use.  Windows 7 may has some major limitations though, especially in the Starter version likely to end up on netbooks, but it is a major improvement over Windows Vista. We’ll stick with Linux though.

After all that, we’ve bought a MSI Wind to enjoy. The Wind was available to us in a U100 or U120 configuration. We got the U100 for only $299. Unlike the U120, it offers an extra slot for an additional GB of RAM. The 120 is more streamlined, and offered additional battery life. We opted to buy an extra battery separately. We have thoughts of upgrading it with additional RAM and possibly a new wireless card.

The Wind will serve us well on the go, small enough to be carried around anywhere we go, without the bulkiness of a regular laptop. We may even write some entries on it. More to come on this.

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Published on March 19, 2009
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New iPod Shuffle locks out Unapproved Accessories

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The new iPod Shuffle, to many people’s frustrations, moves the controls off of the unit onto the headphones. Most found this means that non-Apple headphones will require a special dongle that includes the new three-button controller. As Engadget put it, “if you want to use your own cans[headphones]: assuming the adapter will cost between $20 and $30 like most other Apple accessories, you’re looking at minimum $100 outlay for the new shuffle, and at that point you might as well pick up a $150 iPod nano.”

Now, this new Shuffle uses a specialt chip to lock out aftermarket accessories that aren’t authorized by Apple. This chip can’t legally be reverse-engineered, and thus Apple now controls the headphone and adaptor market for the Shuffle, because you have to have the chip in order to produce an accessory with the necessary control buttons.

Thus, Apple, which already has a serious command of the music player market share, has ensured they will control and tax every part of the iPod purchase, headphones, chargers, music…and will force users to repurchase things they already own, ie headphones, to be compatible.

Crunchgear, which has a picture of the DRM chip, points out that Apple has a long history of creating “authenticated” hardware and this definitely could be a situation where Apple is adding lock-in controls to their hardware if not actual DRM. It is one of our pet peeves with Apple dating back years. Their attempt to control the process at every level, giving little or no freedom to the user. They’d relaxed somewhat, but now this philosophy is back.

We’re told that Apple offered to sell developers the chip for $1 in a bundle with a $2 microphone, costs which are then multiplied and passed on to consumers. There are also authentication chips inside the new Apple Earphones with Remote and Mic, and the In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic. It is not technically a DRM chip, as many said, it is merely a controller that sends signals in a proprietary format. But they could have easily put that in the device instead of the headphones, if they wished.

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Published on March 16, 2009
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Dvorak Likes Linux – Good or Bad?

Dvorak hosting Episode 19 of CrankyGeeks.
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We like John C. Dvorak. He’s a well known tech pundit, very outspoken, and interesting to read. However, one of the most interesting aspects of reading Dvorak is how often we disagree with him.

Dvorak has finally discovered Ubuntu 8.10, four months after the current version was released.

Many of its problems, for me, stem from its inability to run on my overloaded hardware, or the occasional driver that makes the OS impossible to use without hand-tweaking something or other.

To disagree with Mr. Dvorak, Linux has made great strides in hardware support, with both independent developers and hardware manufacturers working to ensure support. The simplest way to ensure you don’t come across a device that isn’t supported under Linux is to check before you buy it. Most devices are. So far, since we switched to Linux, we’ve only found a noname GPS receiver, a Canon Scanner, and a Radio Shack postal scale failing to work under it. But we usually check before we buy. Most minor hardware issues can usually be resolved with a little online searching. Even he admits Linux support is increasing on new hardware.

He does point out many good things about Linux during his exploration of Ubuntu.

  • The lightweight nature of it makes it perfect for older machines. Many distributions offer lower memory(RAM or HD) alternatives to programs, such as Abiword instead of OpenOffice, XFCE or Sugar instead of Gnome or KDE, etc.
  • “There is probably a Linux program that will substitute for just about any Windows programs with as much or more functionality.” Not sure we agree with him on Photoshop vs. Gimp, but we’re not artists.
  • Linux is mostly immune to malware and viruses, as the bulk of such things are written for Windows.
  • The Windows registry is ultimately flawed. It is an increasingly unwieldy database that over time, slows Windows to a crawl.

He does note that the Linux desktops are not as polished as Windows. However, we’re not sure whether or not he tried Compiz Fusion, which enables all those nice windows animations. We loved watching them, but we loved speed more, and ultimately turned them off. For productivity use, we’d rather simplify.

Even the French police recognize the wonder of Linux. They’ve saved millions by migrating to Ubuntu. Currently, they are running Ubuntu on about 5,000 workstations with long term plans to have their entire organization (90,000 workstations) running Ubuntu by 2015. Their budget has been reduced by seventy percent without losing any functionality.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Comment with your thoughts.

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Published on March 12, 2009
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Kindle All Over the Place

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PC Magazine has a great article this week about the success of the Kindle, entitled Amazon’s Kindle Secret is in the Software. In it, Dan Costa argues that the announcement of a free Kindle Reader for the iPhone cements Amazon’s leadership role in the e-book market.

If you didn’t hear, Amazon released a Kindle reader for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Not only will it allow you access to the content you’ve purchased on the Kindle(if you have such content), but it will take you to where you left off, and allow you to view, but not edit, annotations and bookmarks you made on the Kindle. Thus, it seems to be for people who have already bought a Kindle, and wish to use their iPhone as a secondary reading device. And you need a computer to buy the books, it is apparently not easy to do from the iPhone itself(Disclosure: None here owns an iPhone)

What Amazon offers through Kindle is a DRM system for e-books. While the DRM is up to the content providers, most publishers have opted to lock up their books. Now, they are allowing content providers to enable or disable the text-to-speech options for their books. It is this closed format that allows Amazon to have collected over 230,000 titles in Kindle format. The Kindle doesn’t support ePub, the open digital book standard sponsored by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF).

As Costa puts it:

Open-minded publishers like Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, have already balked at joining Amazon’s single-source, single-file-format delivery system. As the market grows, so will the demand for alternatives. Even Apple supports multiple file formats on the iPod.

We object to any locked device. We understand DRM, but any good device should support alternative choices. As O’Reilly Radar points out, Amazon wants to own not only the hardware market, and the e-book format market. By releasing applications for other devices, they can do that. Techfragments predicts that a desktop and/or web-based version is probably in the works. The sync that allows you to pick up where you left off on the iPhone from your Kindle could work well on the desktop. And with hardcover book sized netbooks becoming popular, this will be another platform they can offer.

Amazon pushing the books over the devices will allow them greater long-term profit and control of the market. They can continue to offer free applications, offer a hardware device, and reap the benefits on all fronts.

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Published on March 8, 2009
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Less than Four Percent Not Ready for DTV

Since mid-February, the original digital television transition date, more than a half-million homes have prepared themselves for the revised transition date of June 12. As of March 1st, 3.9% are unprepared, compared to 5.1% a month earlier.

In a surprising move, older households(55+) are still the most ready of the groups, with the least ready under 35. Of course, these under 35s may have cable, and thus need no change, or dumped cable in favor of Netflix or IPTV. The statistics Nielson provides do not cover why this might be.

Assuming these statistics are accurate, what do you think? We’d love to hear your comments.

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Published on March 8, 2009
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Amazon Video on Demand Support Making the Rounds

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PlayOn has added streaming support for Amazon’s Video on Demand service as well as content from free internet network, Revision3. PlayOn, as you might remember, is a software that allows streaming from a PC to several compatible media streaming devices. PlayOn supports Hulu, CBS.com, ESPN.com, CNN.com, YouTube, and Netflix, and is working on ABC.

We are not quite sure why this is acceptable, and Hulu’s content providers shut down Boxee support. It hardly seems fair. PlayOn could be seen as just as much of a cable-killer as Boxee, or MyMediaPlayer.

Amazon Video on Demand support in HD is still in the testing phase on Tivo. Which is particularly odd. It has been so for over three months now. There may be some problems with the high-definition implementation on the Amazon end, either technical or licensing. Considering the quality, people will start trying to hack it for their own purposes. The technical implementation will thus have to be secure. And the content providers get nervous about any new rollout and want to put limits on it.

We’re impressed with the continual technological breakthroughs allow real-time streaming of high-quality video. We know they’ll continue to get better. We’ll be here to watch.

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Published on March 8, 2009
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Cable and DVD Revenue Drops

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We keep trying to keep on top of the changing video watching market. Another of those wonderful articles from the New York Times came onto our desktop on Sunday, about how cable is being cut. It is no wonder the people at Hulu are getting pressure.

“So many of my friends treated cable as a utility, that it wasn’t a home until it was set up,” said Nick Jackson, 24, who lives on the Lower East Side and works in publishing. “I basically chose Internet over the cable.”

They are right, cable isn’t a utility. Internet, unless you use it for business, as we are doing(if you call blogging business), isn’t a utility. But, if you have to choose, internet clearly can bring you much video-watching pleasure. One percent of adults view televisions shows online daily, and eight percent watch shows at least once a week, up from six percent last year. This number can only grow, and the eight percent of adults who watch video online “strongly agree that they now watch TV less often.”

The cable companies are receiving more calls from people who are evaluating their bills and looking to save.

In the DVD market, rentals are doing better than sales. The emerging consumer tendency to rent rather than buy their movies is not good news for studios, because they keep a relatively small share of each rental dollar. Fox is even trying to convince people to buy instead of rent by selling stripped down versions to rental outlets and keeping the premium extras for buyers. One of the first discs with this treatment will be Slumdog Millionaire, where extras like deleted scenes and commentaries go retail only on the DVD. So far the Blu-Ray versions aren’t affected, but that may be coming,

Not everyone is with us, but we like extras. But we can see why a rental copy may make sense. Most people want to see the movie, and don’t bother with deleted scenes or director’s commentary. We think it is value-added though, and there is certainly a place for it in the market.

Disney is trying to get in on rentals, by launching a subscription-based online movie and TV rental service from the company’s huge video library.

And the cable and satellite companies continue to be interested in preventing their customers from dumping service by starting their own online on-demand services. As DirecTV sees it… “in the past, when a company tries to stop or block something from happening, it’s usually failed.” It might even get us the ala carte level of programming, if they offer pick-and-choose options that the standard cable service never would offer.

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Published on March 6, 2009
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Hulu on Boxee is Back…Sort Of

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In a blog post today, Avner Ronen announced a new Boxee update. In characterizing the issues with Hulu, he said that “the fact that it’s becoming easy to consume Internet video on a TV brings into question many of the industry’s business models that developed before the web.” And this is the center of the problem with Hulu, or rather their content providers. Apparently, the industry gets it, but they need time to adjust to the new reality.

But, since users won’t wait, and are taking matters into their own hands, with hacks to reenable Hulu content in different ways, Boxee has  “decided to enable access to their favorite content using a new built-in RSS reader optimized for video. like IE, Firefox, or Google reader, the RSS reader supports Google Video, Yahoo!, YouTube and feeds from many other websites. while it’s not as attractive or robust as our previous Hulu application, it will additionally support Hulu’s public RSS feeds.”

The new version will also include an Application Store, allowing users to install new applications and plugins from official and third-party repositories, as well as an Auto-Update feature. This is not a stable release…that is set for the Boxee Meetup on March 24th(which we hope to attend, schedule permitting). They are planning to share some concrete plans for the beta there. We hope for them to work on some of the code that makes Boxee(and XBMC) very Ubuntu-centric. Then they can cover the whole Linux market.

The new RSS video feed reader is not specifically designed for Hulu content. By itself, it is a good addition, as it will allow users to add in video content from RSS feeds without writing plugins. Plugins are a superior choice, as they can be customized for the content. But, it is a solution that keeps expanding Boxee’s reach. And it is certainly better than our kludge, which we’ve reenabled, which creates a menu out of the RSS feed, and launches Firefox, sets the video to start and play fullscreen.

In the meantime, at least Boxee is trying on both ends…enabling a Hulu alternative option and continuing to negotiate. We’ll keep an eye on both.

Update: Hulu has blocked the new Boxee browser from accessing the Hulu site. As they put it. “this is a disappointing development since their RSS feeds are publicly available, and our browser, while optimized for a great 10 ft video experience, is no different in how it accesses this content than Internet Explorer, Firefox, Flock, Opera or any of the other browsers out there.” Either way, Hulu is playing hardball.

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Published on March 6, 2009
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Getting a Copy of Fedora

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No matter how much we learn, there is always more we can learn. We hate to be regurgitating comments to our own blog posts, but we continue to admit it when we’ve learned something new. But another comment from the head of the Fedora Project prompted us to write this post, on how to get a copy of Fedora if we’ve sold you on the idea of trying it out.

If you aren’t certain whether you want to install Fedora to a computer, you can try a Live CD. Fedora comes in two basic flavors(until the next version, where there will be a change in architectures). A 32-bit and a 64-bit version. We use the 64-bit version, as our processors can handle it. You may need to check. 64-bit only comes into play if you have more than 3.5GB of RAM, but if your processor can handle it, why not use the version that matches your computer?

In addition to the OS installation DVDs, you can get a Live CD which will launch a fully operational version of Fedora off a CD, or install that image to a USB drive so your settings will be saved in between boots. The basic version is a standard desktop which can be used to install the base operating system, after which the remaining packages you want will be installed and downloaded. This is also the design Ubuntu offers.

The nice thing about Live CDs is that you can test drive the OS without committing to it. The standard Live CD,called the Desktop Edition uses Gnome as its default desktop. Fedora offers an alternate KDE Live CD. It also offers some custom spins, which is defined as “a community release that has been created using one of the Fedora remixing tools, preferably either Pungi (regular images) or livecd-creator (Live CD/DVD’s). Custom spins should be strict subset’s of packages available in the official Fedora repositories.” Which means no official spins which add MP3 or DVD codecs can be hosted by Fedora. Current official Spins include:

  • XFCE – A version of the Fedora Desktop Live CD that uses XFCE as the desktop instead of Gnome or KDE
  • BROFFICE – Fedora will have for the first time the BrOffice.org brand for the office suite. This spin is intended to be a Brazilian Portuguese localized spin that provides the legal brand for OpenOffice.org in Brazil.
  • FEL – Fedora Electronic Lab, a high-end hardware design and simulation platform. This platform provides different hardware design flows based on the semiconductor industry’s current trend. FEL maps in new design, simulation and verification methodologies with opensource EDA software.
  • DEVELOPER – Live DVD jam-packed with various development applications, such as Eclipse, Anjuta, git, cvs, lynx, emacs, and a hex editor; and build tools like GCC, Inkscape, Koji, createrepo, mock, rpmdevtools, rpmlint and much more.
  • AOS – A JeOS spin for building pre-installed, pre-configured, system images. The Spin consists of a small set of packages upon which the appliance building tools can be used. The spin is part of the Appliance Tools feature. This feature consists of a tools and meta-data that make it easier for anyone (ISVs, developers, OEMS, etc) to create and deploy virtual appliances.
  • EDU-MATH – Educational spin tailored toward mathematics and scientific applications
  • GAMES – A LiveCD with a showcase of games from Fedora. Here’s a list of included games.

Fedora offers direct download of ISOs, torrents, and Jigdo. We mentioned Jigdo in a previous post. It is a JIGsaw DOwnloader. It takes RPM package files and assembles them into an install image. We had wondered why the custom spins and Live CDs are not offered this way, and had sent several emails asking, with no response, till the Head of the Fedora Project(maybe we should name him a Gadget Wisdom correspondent) came back with this answer.

Jeroen van Meeuwen from our Spins SIG was kind enough to send me this information on Jigdo:

“The jigdo method of distribution basically works as follows: for every file in a .iso that you tell jigdo is available from somewhere else, it strips the file (or slice, or piece of the .iso jigsaw) from the .iso leaving you with a relatively small .iso.template (only the parts of the .iso that are not available from somewhere else) and a list of files you can get from somewhere else.

“Now, with installation media, this means there’s a small part of the .iso you need to download in the form of a .iso.template, while the rest (install.img, and all RPMs) is available from any mirror (and you are going to use the closest and fastest one).

“With Live media however, the contents of the .iso is just a few files. Some of them are really small (vmlinuz0, initrd0.img), while others are very large and make up 99% of the size of the .iso (osmin.img and squashfs.img). Splitting those slices from the .iso isn’t very useful, because you would end up downloading a small .iso.template, several very small files, and then one single beast of a file (squashfs.img).”

Hopefully this helps clarify our jigdo availability. Thanks for the question!

So, our assumption that this would be helpful was incorrect, and we learned something new. We look forward to sharing other things we don’t know as we share and enhance our Fedora knowledge.

And for the Fedora Project…give it a shot. You certainly have a lot of ways to experience it, from full immersion to merely dipping your toes in. Hmm…maybe we should become a Fedora Ambassador, although we have yet to get someone to switch to Fedora for good. We came rather close with one person, but he fell off the wagon and went back to Microsoft.

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Published on March 5, 2009
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