New AppleTV

I’m not an Apple insider nor have I actually used the new AppleTV which was revealed today by Steve Jobs. What I am though is an avid user of multimedia devices on my Home Theater. My current toy of choice is the spectacular Western Digital TV Live!, which literally plays everything*.

So I was a bit excited today to hear that Apple was rolling out a new model of their somewhat lame duck that is AppleTV. What they delivered was a big, fat, floppy turd on the chest of everyone at the conference. I was let down during the demonstration and even more let down after actually reading the technical specifications posted to Apple’s site.

And on that note, I present my Six Reasons why the new AppleTV is a Floppy Turd.

6. Apple has apparently missed the 1080p Wagon

Since the release of Quicktime 7 Apple has really been focusing it’s media efforts on HD content. Even Trailers posted to Apple’s site occasionally come in HD formats (470/720/1080p) and they look FANTASTIC! Anyone with a 1080p capable display can attest to this.  Then why, OH WHY has Apple decided that for an set top box which is supposed to deliver the “HD content people want”, would Apple limit the output to 720p @ 30fps?! In the age of 1080p @ 60fps Blu-Ray content and 3D television, Apple has apparently taken the path of “good enough” for it’s hobby device.

5. Only supports up to H.264 Level 3.1

This one really blows me away and also plays into my previous point. The standard accepted H.264 level for consoles is 4.0 (if not 4.1), which supports the Blu-Ray standard of 1080p @ 24fps in a decent bit-rate. Devices such as Western Digital TV Live! cost $99 as well, but support these advanced H.264 profiles. Why Apple?

4. Apple still has a hard-on for MP4 container

I’d expect in a device released in the year 2010 to support more container formats than just MP4, but alas, we’re dealing with Apple. And honestly, we’re dealing with a two headed monster. First, the Mp4 format is standard so most every console supports it. Even Microsoft has it’s weight behind the MP4 container due to it’s formalized standards, despite it’s technical short comings. The second is that other superior container formats, such as Matroska (MKV) aren’t exactly “standardized”, so major hardware manufacturers are hesitant to adopt it as a supported format. Not to say it HASN’T been adopted by anyone, there’s a good number of devices and set top boxes that DO support Matroska in glorious fashion.

3. Apple just used parts it already had

From a cost perspective, I can understand this choice… but it’s still a complete disappointment. From the looks of it, the new AppleTV is no more than an iPod Touch with an HDMI output adapter. It uses the same A4 Processor that is now in almost all Apple devices and I’m fairly sure will share the same PCB as the iPod Touch or possibly even the new iPod Nano. What grinds my gears on this is that even the HTC EVO 4G supports 1080p output of video (using the HDMI adapter), so how on earth does Apple reconcile that it’s new AppleTV, a media-playback-centric box, has less media capability than a mobile device?

2. You can stream to it, right?!

I guess. One of the features touted at the conference was that you’d be able to play movies from your iPad and watch them on your TV. But does it have to be YOUR iPad (tied to your account), or can your buddy bring over HIS iPad and watch one of HIS movies on YOUR AppleTV? I’m guessing no. Apple isn’t huge on content sharing.

My guess is the only time this will come in handy is when your wife leaves for work, you can finish watching the porn on your TV.

1. So then what is it good for?

It’s good for Apple to make money. It pumps up the sales volume and market penetration of their A4 platform which would otherwise only be moving out of their warehouses via mobile devices. It also acts as a point of sale for additional sales through iTunes. Sure, it’s only 99 Cents per show, but the only networks that are signed on are available in HD Over-The-Air (OTA) for free. So sure, you can say that AppleTV might save you money by using it versus having Cable, but as it stands right now, just watching the same shows OTA for free would be the cheapest solution.

I find it disappointing that Apple didn’t take this opportunity to strike into the HTPC market that they struck out on during the first release of AppleTV. Windows Media Center Edition is such a great platform for media playback and is being installed on smaller and smaller devices powered by Intel’s Atom platform.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m far from an Apple hater. I enjoy my iPhone4 and MacBook Pro as much as the next Apple Fanboi… I can just smell shit when I see it

*Does not, in fact, play everything… but supports a heck of a lot more than AppleTV!

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Soon after installing the GTX 295 I started experiencing strange issues. 3D Performance was in the pits, video playback had issues and even sound while playing a game was choppy and stuttered. I was at a loss for what could have been happening because I had the latest drivers from nVidia and did a fresh install of Windows 7 x64 Enterprise Edition.

Then I remembered last time I had the symptom of stuttering sound…

Many years ago when the only way you could get even basic RAID functionality was to utilize an add-in PCI card. This was before PCI-Express, so your card was limited to 32-bit/33Mhz standard PCI bus which was limited to 133MB/sec. Depending on your chipset or motherboard layout, you might be using onboard sound or an add-in PCI sound card.

During periods of heavy IO when using a PCI RAID card, the PCI bus would be saturated with data to the RAID card and there would be limited bandwidth for the sound card, causing chopping and stuttering sound. A workaround that sometimes worked was to put the sound card ahead of the RAID card in the PCI slots so it would have priority to/from the chipset.

Knowing this I started doing some research on what hardware my Dell Dimension 9200 was actually using. The chipset inside is the Intel P965 Express chipset, which after looking at the specifications appeared to me to be the obvious issue.

Intel P965 Express Chipset Diagram

The PCI Express slot provided by the Intel P964 Chipset is a fraction of what is available today by modern PCI Express 2.0 chipsets. It came down to the system not being able to quench the thirst of the nVidia GTX 295. Because of this, it was maxing out the available bandwidth on the northbridge and not allowing any other devices to be serviced.

Suspecting this, I upgraded my motherboard (which also required a new case, so needless to day the Dell Dimension 9200 is no longer) to a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P which sports the Intel P45 Express Chipset.

Intel P45 Express Chipset Diagram

All in all, this chipset provides more bandwidth across the board. When I upgraded I kept my Intel Q6600 processor and 4GB (4x 1GB DDR2-667) RAM and wouldn’t you know it, it solved all my problems! Games play super smooth and the sound is perfect.

So if you’ve recently upgraded to a newer video card and are experiencing strange performance issues, you might want to look into your motherboards ability to keep the video card’s higher processing ability quenched without sacrificing servicing additional components.

Cheers!

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Perhaps my expectations for it were too high, expecting things like plot and decent graphics…. you know things games aren’t expected to deliver (apparently).

My qualms with Borderlands are simple…

1. There is no plot, or at least none to the point I played. You’re a character, on a planet, in a town… all of which you know nothing about or the history of it. Because of this, the endless list of “quests” turns into a laundry, or “todo” list. It almost feels like work after a while.

2. The graphics, although stylized, were designed almost to compensate for the game engine’s terribly slow loading time. It’s a feature of the Unreal engine to load low-res textures as a place holder while the full res textures are loaded and rendered. Because of this if you venture through the world too quickly, your screen is awash in murky, flat textures. Some people see it as part of the style; I see it as a lame compensation for a poor game engine.

3. The AI is stupid. Do yourself a favor and play as a sniper. If you’re far enough away, even standing in the wide open, you can pick people off without them even moving! As a low level character it took me 60 shots, but I was able to kill a higher level character because he just stood in place while I was lighting him up.

I can see how this game strokes people’s egos in the sense that you continuously build up your character and find newer weapons (which I’ll admit, there are plenty of). The game lacks substance though, which to me is paramount when committing a large slice of my time to playing a game.

So I’ll follow the trend many user reviews are following and create an equation to describe borderlands:

(((Fallout 3 – Plot) – Graphics) – Production Value) + Weapons = Borderlands

Borderlands SUCKS!

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Just a quick update on the source code release for ApocBot!

I had nothing short of a complete meltdown over my holiday vacation while upgrading my PC. I won’t get into the details on why power supply manufacturers are evil for having modular cables that are keyed the same but are differently pinned (thus frying my hard drives), but needless to say it could be a blog post all on its own!

That being said, I’m back online now and getting back to finishing the code for release. I’ll post it here in a week or so once I get my VMs all set back up and finalize testing. Sorry for the delay

Cheers!

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The available alternatives out there didn’t seem technically feasible as most D-Link and Linksys offerings are merely Windows Media Center Extenders with “support for MPEG-4/ASP” (read: DivX) but no support for MPEG-4/AVC or MPEG-4/VC1. The option of setting up another HTPC for my home theater wouldn’t be financially viable because at a base price of about $399 I might as well invest in a Blu-Ray burner to watch my backups.

Enter the Western Digital TV Live HD Media Player…

Western Digital TV Live HD Media Player

While scouring the internets looking for solutions to my problem, I stumbled upon the recently released Western Digital Live HD Media Player. The specs fit the bill (and them some) for my technical expectations:

• VIDEO – AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4), MPG/MPEG, VOB, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/2/4, AVC, VC-1), MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), M2TS, WMV9
• AUDIO – MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital, DTS

Throw in the fact that it supports 1080p over HDMI and is only, it seemed like a no brainer!

The device itself is small. Hilariously small actually. Imagine a small box of 3.5″ floppy disks (if anyone actually remembers those)

Now, my home network setup is unique to my situation. I have two Apple Airport Extreme base stations extending the same network. My NAS is attached to one base station in my office. The Western Digital TV Live HD Media Player is attached to another Apple Airport Extreme base station on my home theater. I knew going into this situation that bandwidth would be an issue as playback of h.264/MKV video is bandwidth intensive and can sometimes require upwards of 50mbps depending on the quality.

My initial testing after hooking up the Western Digital TV Live HD Media Player showed that I was in fact having issues with wireless bandwidth from my Intel SS4200-E NAS to my home theater. The MKV playback of a 1080p MPEG-4/AVC video began stuttering and losing audio/video sync. I started to get disheartened because I thought my Apple Airport Extremes must have been connecting to each other at the highest possible speeds, right? Wrong.

Turns out I had room for improvement in my Wifi setup. I stumbled upon this blog post over on Engadget which talked about the speed differences between Apple’s 2.5Ghz “compatible” N and their 5Ghz modes. I checked my Apple Airport Extremes to see what my network was set at. You can do this by opening up the Airport Utility and selecting your primary base station. Under the wireless tab, you should be able to select your wireless mode.

Setting Apple Airport Extreme Radio Mode

After fiddling around with all the settings, I found that explicitly setting 802.11n with a 5Ghz radio frequency gave me much higher wifi throughput as I had previously running 802.11n in “b/g compatible” mode. The downside of this is not only 802.11n devices that support the 5ghz frequency are able to join my home network, meaning our iPhones are stuck to non-wifi mode while around the house.

Apple Airport Wirelss Setup for Western Digital TV Live HD Media Player

That aside, the Western Digital TV Live HD Media Player was able to play back all of my 1080p HD content without slowdown or playback issues. It would seem from other reviews on forums and across the internet might be having networking issues if they’re having trouble during playback. Granted, I can’t speak for every method of encoding h.264 (between different profiles & containers, it’d be hard to do a comprehensive test), but I can say that my files which I encoded with x264 and saved in an MKV container playback perfectly!

I couldn’t be happier with the Western Digital TV Live HD Media Player and I haven’t had a single issue yet. It’s able to connect to my Intel SS4200-E NAS (both UPNP Media Server and SMB) and browsing files is a sinch. Part of me wishes the interface allowed for more interactive content, such as Media Browser does for Windows Media Center by automatically loading movie information and covers based on the file name. I suppose these features might come at a future time, as Western Digital has just released the first firmware update for the TV Live HD Media Player and they seem to be on track for the next release shortly.

The only drawback I’ve run into thus far is the inability to play WMV files, which I suspect might be a licensing issue… but who knows. It might be coming in a future firmware update as well!

Hope this helps someone out there in the same situation I was in! Please leave any questions you might have and I’ll be more than happy to answer!

Cheers!

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What’s the big deal you ask? Well, from where I’m standing it would seem that historically cellular providers wanted to maintain a good bit of control over devices on their networks. Some providers limiting functionality to BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices depending on your level of service, while others such as Verizon installed their own Java based software platform on every phone.

Enter Android.

Android is an open source operating system for mobile devices, superficially targeting cell phones. I was floored when I was reading the initial release announcement and subsequent news articles regarding Android. Were cellular providers ready to release all control of the handset to the consumer? Safeguards be damned?

Contrary to my initial fears, it would seem that Android didn’t cause as many security concerns as I thought and honestly is probably the most widely used Linux distribution by the average user (including any desktop installations). So if anything, the “Year of the Linux Desktop” can be claimed as 2009 if you consider a smart phone a desktop

My previous concerns were brought back into the light recently with news articles about the Amazon Kindle being hacked to run Linux and the Android based Barnes & Noble Nook being unlocked as a fully functional Android device. My concerns?

As noted in the Nook article, these devices are now fully authorized cellular data network devices (free of charge, might I add) that are unlocked to be used for anything. Granted with the limited horsepower provided by these e-Readers prohibits many applications, but  it remains possible that in the future someone could hack a Nook or Kindle to be a free wireless modem.

See the problem?

I’m not saying open platforms aren’t the way to go. Nor am I arguing as a consumer that closed platforms offer any benefit for me. What I’m saying is that such issues bring up concerns for both the companies and the consumers on how to have open platforms and capitalist America living side by side.

That’s just my $0.02 anyways.

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• Basic Trade functionality is completed
  • Trade x for y (i.e. 4 Uncommons for 1 Rare)
  • Buy/Sell x for x (i.e. 6 Rares for 1 Ticket or 1 Ticket for 6 Rares)
• Smart Bot functionality is 70% Completed

Currently ApocBot is able to correctly identify cards that are selected during a trade and quote the stored price for the cards.  So far, so good!

Want some more info?

Okay, so here’s the big announce. I’m going to open source the Basic Trade functionality. I think it’s something that’s really fundamental and should have been included in the MTGO client to begin with. To that, I think it’s stilly to charge for such a basic function after writing it.

So now to answer some obvious questions:

Q: ZOMG! You’re going to open source it?!

A: Yes. ApocBot will be the first free, open source MTGO trade bot

Q: What license will it be released under?

A: I’m going to release it under GPL v3

Q: When?!

A: It’ll be available on this site by January 1st, 2010 I’ll need some beta testers to use it before I release the source, just to make sure I’m not going to cause more problems than good. I’ll send out a call for that within the coming weeks.

Q: What about SmartBot functionality?

A: I’m still working on SmartBot and to be honest, it has been more trouble than it’s worth. I’ll make a decision on that as soon as I think it’s at a functional point. Because I’m currently working full time, I’m only able to dedicate a couple hours a week to ApocBot so this might take a bit. Part of me open sorucing ApocBot in the first place is so the community can begin development of such a plugin or enhancement.

Q: What will I need to develop ApocBot?

A: ApocBot is written in Microsoft C# and you will need Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (with .NET 3.5) to develop. And Magic: The Gathering Online.. of course

So that’s that! What’s funny is I was mulling this post around in my head and how to handle a MTGO bot that I knew (a) wouldn’t make a ton of money and (b) should really be free anyways.

Please feel free to e-Mail me or leave any questions you might have here on this post and I’ll be more vigilant in getting back to everyone.

Cheers!

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I’ve been working on my first retail product and I’m really excited about it!

After trying to secure a 3rd party trading bot for Magic The Gathering Online (MTGO) v3 from Wizards of the Coast (WotC), I decided it was time to strike out on my own and write one. A lot of people had done so already using automation software (like AutoIT), but I went the path of a more professional software development environment and wrote it in .NET using C# and WCF.

WCF you ask? Yep! I don’t want to dive into the details too much at the moment but it will revolve around a central data hub providing real time updates to users of the application (vs. having to download and deploy a new version every time an update is published from WotC). There will be a bunch of good features as well!

I wanted to poll people on pricing though. I’ve seen prices for ‘Simple’ Magic Online trading bots for anywhere from $99 to $399! And to that, I haven’t even been able to find the price of a ‘Smart Bot’ anywhere, as it seems the people who build them keep the software to themselves.

What I’m thinking about doing is setting up a monthly pricing model. Here’s the matrix:

 Trade Bot: Your basic Magic Online trading bot. “Buying/Selling x Cards for x Tickets” or “Trading x Uncommons for x Rares”

Smart Bot: Each card in your library can be assigned a specific price. You’re running a Virtual Store on Magic Online.

Some features I’m working on for the Smart Bot will be:

• User Credit System (and ability to create Credit Network spanning multiple bots)
• Interactive Website Showing Sales History / Income Information

I’m offering a time based licensing because I think it’s the most fair pricing structure for this type of software.

So I’m curious to hear back from anyone who stumbles across this blog post! I want to hear features and requests you would have for such a piece of software! I know Magic Trading bots are a shadey business at best, but I wanted to try to make a legitimate alternative to having to pay a lot of money up front for a piece of software you might not like.

I’ll try to post some screen shots of the bot in action while I’m testing it. I’m really excited about this project!

Cheers!

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The DNS-323 has been a great NAS! I had my doubts at first with a D-Link product, since in the past their networking products that I’ve used haven’t been quality. So my issue was, how do I upgrade from a RAID1 on a two-drive NAS to a new fault tolerant system that has at LEAST 1.5TB of storage. I mean, if you’re going to upgrade you need to make it count, so doubling the capacity of my current NAS was the primary goal.

I did some research and with NewEgg running a sale on the hardware, I settled on the Intel SS4200-E NAS. On the spec sheet, this NAS met my requirements because it supported up to four drives, RAID5 and RAID10! Technical reviews I found of the device put it at the top of the chart when it comes to RAID5 performance.

The inhabitants of the Intel SS4200-E NAS was going to be four Hitachi 1TB drives.

Intel SS4200 NAS

Well, let me backtrack a bit and go over the problem that brought me to even write this post.

Because I already had two 750GB SATA drives in my D-Link DNS-323 NAS, my plan was to setup a 1TB RAID1 in the Intel SS4200-E using only TWO Hitachi 1TB drives. Once the data was copied over, I would re-purpose the 750GB SATA drives in my old NAS as an additional 750GB RAID1 in the Intel NAS. Sounds simple, right? Wrong.

The first major flaw I found with this unit is that it only allows ONE CONTAINER PER DEVICE. Meaning if you have 2x Drives, you’re running a RAID1 or RAID0. If you have 4x Drives, you’re running a RAID5 or RAID10. That’s it! There is no way with the Intel SS4200-E NAS to setup two containers! I could have two independant RAID1 containers, even though I was using four drives!

What the crap?! So much for a business class NAS from Intel!

So I ended up having to buy two more Hitachi 1TB drives (which isn’t too bad, being they’re only $79 on Amazon with FREE SHIPPING! ) and finally settled on a 2.7TB RAID5.

Hardware setup was super easy as the Intel SS4200-E is an ‘almost’ tool free setup. I say almost because some of the thumb screws SHOULD be tightened with a screw driver

Intel SS4200 NAS

The software, EMC LifeLine, is pretty well polished compared to the D-Link and other NAS offerings. It makes great use of AJAX to display real time system status information on the screens and gives you even small features that other NAS devices might overlook. Small things like LED brightness, which trust me, when your office is near the bedroom, this one is a huge feature!

Intel markets this NAS as an entry-level and SOHO NAS. So it’s very entry level, to a fault. Other features are lacking such as FTP support. Your only option with FTP is to turn it On or Off. That’s it! You can’t configure even basic options such as port, permissions of quotas. So be warned if you’re looking into using this NAS as anymore more than at home storage.

The Media Server that comes with it is alright. My XBox 360 saw it without issue and was able to stream all types of media off of it without issue (such as MP3 and DivX). My only gripe with the Media Server is that you have to manually re-scan for updates. I’m not sure if there’s an automatic timer, because there’s no option for that in the configuration.

All in all, I’m pleased with the Intel. It met my basic needs for a home NAS but I can see how it would be limiting for someone looking for more advanced features or someone who requires more ability to configure the small options.

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The case I’ve been using is a Morex 3677B case, which is fairly small but still allows enough room for a 2.5″ Hard Drive and a Slim Laptop CD/DVD drive.

A couple gotchas I ran into while upgrading from the VIA board to the new Intel Atom based board:

1. The Zotac IONITX board has only SATA connectors, no PATA connectors to be found! This was a road block as both my previous hard drive and slim CD/DVD drive were both PATA so I was forced to upgrade them as well. Luckily I was able to score a 320GB Seagate drive for only $79!
2. Zotac provides a small 50mm fan to use on the heatsink because the Dual Core N330 CPU as well as the nVidia northbridge require active cooling. Luckily the Morex case has a 50mm exhaust fan that sits close to the heatsink. I was able to flip it around and use it to blow onto the CPU.
3. Speaking of the heatsink, it’s about 1.5″ high and ALMOST comes too close to not fitting into the case. So it’s something to keep in mind when you’re working on your setup!

I’ve got everything hooked up and it was very easy to get the driver package installed. Because the Zotac IONITX came out so recently, the CD it came with had the latest drivers and the motherboard had the latest BIOS installed.

The ONE issue I’m having and still searching for a solution for is that using HDMI as the audio output, I’m getting audio distortion. I’ve tried different source materials and even tweaking the audio settings, but it’s still happening. Other than that, I’ve been super pleased with it’s performance! I mean, seriously, a computer the size of a shoe box showing four CPU’s (2 physical + hyper threading) and an nVidia graphics adapter!

Hope this helps someone out there in the market for upgrading their own HTPC as well!

Cheers!

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