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 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 shortcomings. 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!

ME TOO AND IT WAS DRIVING ME UP THE FUCKING WALL!

After I updated my 15-inch Macbook Pro to 10.5.8 I noticed right away that my wireless performance was in the crapper. Ping times to Google jumped up to an AVERAGE of 300ms, sometimes as high at 1,500ms! Any other wireless device in the house? 40-50ms! So it was obvious, after pulling my hair out thinking it was an issue with my Airport Extreme base stations or Verizon FIOS.

Luckily my friend Joe (who has been suffering the same issue), pointed me towards a link on Apple Support that not only admits that the 10.5.8 update breaks “some” Intel based laptops, but they also released a fix! What was their fix?

It basically rolls back your wireless drivers to 10.5.7!

http://support.apple.com/downloads/AirPort_Client_Update_for_MacBook_and_MacBook_Pro

I hope this helps out anyone else who thought they were losing their mind!

Cheers!

The problem? Well, there are actually two:

First – It’s a violation of AT&T’s terms of service and you MIGHT get into a little trouble for enabling it.

Second – It’s nothing new. There have been hacks around for years that would allow you to use your Blackberry as a Bluetooth Modem for free, versus paying the $60 to enable a Smart Phone tethering plan through AT&T. What IS unique about this situation is that tethering was a HIGHLY PUBLICIZED missing feature from the iPhone 3.0 firmware for AT&T customers, so it’s compromise has drawn much more attention as previous “work arounds” have.

So what’s AT&T and iPhone owners everywhere to do?

The only solution I see to this problem would require AT&T to do something it hasn’t done…. I think ever: Put the customer first.

We all know that the “Unlimited” data plan you buy from AT&T for your iPhone (be it EDGE or 3G) really isn’t “Unlimited” and if you were to dig into your contract or Terms of Service (TOS), you would see that AT&T decides to not use the Marriam-Webster definition of “Unlimited”, but have decided on a new definition: “5GB/month”

I understand business involves some negotiation and some give and take, so as a consumer, I’d be willing to make the following agreement with AT&T:

I will agree to allow you to LOWER the bandwidth limit on the standard “unlimited” plan to 1GB, if you agree to not charge extra for tethering support and setup a tiered pricing plan for bandwidth where 5GB/mo is $40, 10GB/mo is $60, and so on.

Now honestly, AT&T, consumers of America, did that hurt too bad? No, of course not. It’s a perfectly fine compromise.

Do I think that’s what will ACTUALLY happen? No, of course not.

What I picture happening is AT&T will probably bring the iPhone tethering plan in line with their current Smart Phone tethering plans ($60/mo), and start charging people who are currently not signed up for this plan an astronomical gateway fee for using their “WAP” gateway on a per kilobyte bases (say, $1 per kilobyte).

Which would mean this picture would end up costing you $40 on your monthly bill:

AT&T will charge you for this!

Will AT&T cancel or suspend users who are currently using the “hack” to access tethering? Of course not! Why cut a paying customer from their base and give that money to a competitor, especially when they can charge you huge penalties!

So my suggestion to anyone using tethering is to just use at your own risk and know that what your does DOES violate your Terms Of Service. This way when you get a $1,000,000 bill from AT&T because you decided to bit torrent some Norwegian Porno while driving to Fresno, you won’t be left looking like our $40 man pictured above!

Cheers!

Turns out that the MP4 files made by the Samsung NV24HD camera are a of a non-standard H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format. So what’s to do?

Well, if you’re an Apple user (which I assume you are since you’re reading blog entry about iMovie ), then you’re in luck. There’s a tool you can download called ffmpegX which allows you to convert the MP4 files to iMovie compatible MOV MPEG-4 files. In addition, ffmpegx can convert video files to a multitude of formats inlcuding iPod, iPhone and DivX formats. So even if your issue isnt EXACTLY the video files from the Samsung NV24HD camera, ffmpegx is still a great utility to use for video transcoding/covnverting in OSX

Screen Shot of ffmpegX

The only down side I had to doing this was the time it took to convert. It took over two hours to encode a 25 minute movie at 640×480 on my 2.4ghz Macbook Pro. So if you’re planning to use this method, plan to leave your Mac plugged in for a while.

Also, I’ve yet to try newer iMovie ’09 which also just may fix this issue. When I’m able to get my hot little hands on a copy of iLife ’09, I’ll be sure to let everyone know if it works out!

Hope this post is able to help out my fellow Samsung and Apple users out there!

Cheers!

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Cheers!

My projects as of late have mostly been electronic in nature. I’ve actually had three projects on the burner:

Replacement of the capacitors on my Mortal Kombat 2 arcade machine’s CRT controller

This was far more time consuming that I thought it would be. Not because it took me an actually long time to desolder and replace the capacitors on the board, but ordering the CORRECT caps and waiting for them to be delivered took the most time. I decided to use Mouser for my components and they delivered as promised. I posted pictures of my extracting the CRT controller here. From what I was able to gather with some Google-Fu and the few English markings on the board, I determined it was a Wei-Ya C829HR CRT board. Of course there aren’t any cap kits for this board (for whatever reason), so I had to order all the caps (about 30) one by one getting their voltage and capacitance from the one’s that are currently on the board. The one cap that I wasn’t able to find (easily) a replacement for was this monster bipolar 75v 4.7uf cap.

FINALLY finishing my Replica 1 computer (which I posted about starting here… over a year ago)

I know, totally lame right? I’d like to say it got put down during the move and I forgot but I literally think it was just the time of year and I was tired of freezing my ass off in the garage with only the glow of a soldering iron to keep me warm So I picked back up the kit and finished soldering the rest of the 50-or so IC pins and fired it up. I got a response on the video port but when I reset I get random giberish. I checked and the oscillator is clocked in at 1mhz and voltage at the test points looks OK. I’m thinking it’s probably a bad rom. I’m currently e-mailing the project creator and he’s been very helpful!

Building a Blue Box

This year I decided to be Woz for Halloween (I figured Fat Nerd is an outfit I’d be able to pull off ) and I wanted to have a sweet accessory to go with my outfit of a vintage apple shirt, name tag and rockin facial har. I decided what cooler than actually building a function blue box! I found this schematic which seems to be the defacto one that everyone since the 80′s has been using. The down side? Exar no longer makes the XR2207 voltage controlled oscillators. I tried to get samples straight from the company, but no luck. I was able to find them through some IC resellers, but they wanted $30 per chip, so F’ that noise!

Again, I activated some hardcore Google-Fu and found this slick project by a website called ProjectMF.org. He used a PIC microcontroller to generate the frequencies which is waaaaay easier and makes sense in a more modern world I used his schematics and again ordered the parts from Mouser. I was able to solder together the power supply portion and will fire up the PIC programmer later this week! Super cool!

So anyways, I haven’t been hacking away on the code or software projects lately but I find my creativitiy comes and goes through phases. I’m just in a hardware one right now, but I’m sure sooner or later I’ll fire up Visual Studio again

Cheers!

For example, I selected the new Ben Folds song Hiroshima and it created the following playlist based on the songs that are on my iPod:

1. Ben Folds – Hiroshima
2. William Shatner – It Hasn’t Happened Yet
3. Counting Crows – A Murder of One
4. Weezer – Only In Dreams
5. R.E.M. – Bad Day
6. Beck – Loser
7. The Offspring – Hammerhead
8. Cake – The Distance
9. Tom Petty – The Waiting
10. Ben Folds – Give Judy My Notice
11. Blues Traveler – Hook
12. Steve Miller Band – Take The Money and Run
13. Beck – Where It’s At
14. They Might Be Giants – Particle Man
15. Counting Crows – Raining in Baltimore
16. Weezer – Surf Wax America
17. R.E.M. – Imitation of Life
18. Oasis – Hey Now!
19. Green Day – Long View
20. No Doubt – Spider Webs
21. Disturbed – Down With the Sickness
22. Ben Folds – Rock This Bitch
23. Tom Petty – American Girl
24. Beck – Devil’s Haircut
25. William Shatner – That’s Me Trying

So as you can see, not only do I have a pretty diverse selection of music on my iPhone but the Genius Playilst generation is pretty smart! Big ups to Apple adding this because it’s 2008 and the ‘shuffle’ feature is soooooo 1995

I suggest everyone give it a shot! It does take a bit of time though. My modest selection of ~600 took about ten minutes to generate the information for. I’m not sure if this had anything to do with data transfer speeds because I was using my MacBook Pro over wireless while the music resided on my NAS.

Also as an additional point I have to also say that I’m a big fan of the new Ben Folds album, Way To Normal. This is probably one of the more FUN records he’s put out since Rockin’ The Suburbs in 2001. A few choice tracks are (of course) Hiroshima and also Bitch Went Nuts.

Ben Folds - Way To Normal

Also as a little window into my life, Ben Folds – The Luckiest was our wedding song. It WAS going to be Andrew W.K. – Really In Love … but we changed it at the last minute in an effort to not take years off my in-laws life

I recently purchased a MacBook Pro for the sole purpose of developing software for the Mac/iPhone platform. It’s completely unknown to me and currently the XCode IDE looks nothing if not completely confusing compared to the friently intuitive interface of Microsoft Visual Studio that I’m used to

What brought me to this point? Well, two things.

First, I’ve been wanting to dive into Objective-C for a little over a year now and started dabbling with it a while back on my old G4 Powerbook. I was impressed with the coolness of it, but being that I was developing on a G4 Powerbook, I was limited as by this time Apple had begun the mass migration to Intel based systems.

Second is that I want to develop applications for the iPhone. Not to make a mint or anything, more or less because I think I have some good ideas on programs people would use. Like how Apple provided the iTunes controller, well, hows about a WWWinamp controller for the iPhone? Perhaps one that lets you search your library locally on the iPhone without even connecting to WWWinamp?

I started down this path because there’s currently a program for sale on the iTunes App Store that lets you control your instance of WinAmp remotely… for $4.99!!! What the crap?! I was floored that the author would expect that kinda money for a program when there are PLENTY of other FREE alternatives out on the web (like WinAmp Remote, AjaxAmp or WWWinamp). I made it my mission to release a comparable program

It’s just going to take a month or so to ramp up on the new IDE and learn how to do SOAP calls and whatnot. Should be a fun adventure though! My wife begins the final semester of her Teaching Credential program in a couple weeks, so I’ll have four nights a week alone to myself to nerd out and gorge on Hot Pockets!

I have another version of WWWinamp in the works as well. This is basically some code modernization for sections that I wrote over a year ago. Updating things to use Generic Methods and whatnot. You know, fun .NET stuff

Cheers!

I’ve taken the “beta” tag off of it as it seems the recode of the HTTP request processing seemed to work without issue and no bugs were reported (other than the ‘paging’ issue, which really was a defect in the script parser).

Changes for this version are:

• [HTTP] Daemon will now start if a WinAmp instance is not found
• [HTTP] Able to specify max number of HTTP threads to process (Default 25)
• [Script Parser] Fixed “Paging” issue when searching through the Libary
• [Script Parser] Script Files (*.wwa) will be run from the same folder as the file requesting them
• WinAmp Handles will be updated if a new instance is detected

Be sure to use the latest config file included with this release as it has a new key value, WWWinamp.HTTP.ListeningThreads, which tells the HTTP daemon how many threads to use max. This is set to 25 by default if no key is found, but it will throw an error. So if you don’t want to use the packaged configuration file because you’ve hacked together your own, you can manually add this key with any value you’d like.

This value isn’t a huge addition but it can help maintain system stability under heavy load. This way WWWinamp won’t spin up an infinite amount of threads if there’s heavy resource contention or there’s a problem that is causing threads to hang.

Also, the other ‘fixes’ were requests made by? ‘dawolf’ here in my blog so I suggest more people get involved and we can make WWWinamp better!

In addition, if you’ve made your own skin and want to share it, please feel free to contact me and I can post it here to my blog for others to use.

As for future releases, they may be a little slow in the coming month. I’m going to be diving into the iPhone SDK and Objective-C programming using XCode on my Apple. I think a remote media interface would be totally awsome if I can have a native WWWinamp application on the iPhone talk to the WWWinamp server using WCF/SOAP. It’d be way easier than using the webkit crap and I could make it have a lot more functionality (perhaps tuning in to a shoutcast stream VIA the iPhone?). Anyways, just thought I’d give you guys a little bit of information on that.

Cheers!

WWWinamp v4.2 Build 2990 – Download (56k)

It was then announced that the official iPhone SDK which runs natively on the iPhone will be released later this month. So soon you’ll have a host of local applications which will most likely include 3rd party media players. It then dawned on me, if a user could use WWWinamp from the iPhone with an interface that interacted nicely on the iPhone, then someone’s iPhone could act as a remote control from ANYWHERE allowing them access to their home media library.

Well, this is just a heads up that I’m currently working on a skin for WWWinamp that will let it work on the iPhone (better)! Soon you all will be able to control your media center or home copy of WWWinamp from anywhere using your Apple iPhone!

I’m still working on the organizing the data on the screen in a manner that makes sense and is easy to use. All the functionality that comes with the default skin will be included in the iPhone version, including cover art and all the Winamp Playlist functions.

It’s actually pretty sweet controlling Winamp from an Apple iPhone and I hope I can polish this up and put out a beta version this weekend. I’m still trying to fish up some resources on the WebKit API and the WebKit specific tags to make things integrate nicely.

Keep your browsers posted here for updates in the coming days!