Gadgets

Every company should treat customers like TIVO...

Ryan M. Hurst — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 04:12:10 GMT

In 2000 TIVO ran a series of advertisements featuring Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott, as part of that series of ads they also ran a contest, 1st prize of which was to be the new TIVO, I already had one TIVO but it was such a great product I wanted another for the bedroom, 2nd prize was a Football signed by both Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott.

I seldom enter these online contests but the promise of a free TIVO was irresistible so I entered, believe it or not I won! Though not the TIVO I was hoping for, I got the football.

Being a bit of a football neophyte I had no idea that the football itself was quite the prize, truth be told, at the time I hardly knew who both Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott were .

After receiving the football I read about both players, both formidable, one story I remember reading was about Lott, he had broken a finger and was told he could not play the rest of the season, his answer? Cut the finger off I want to play.

In any event winning the football give me a basic interest and appreciation for the sport, we started making it a family event to watch the super bowl; the football was kept in its original box and put in a safe place for storage.

Well early this year we got a new safe and I wanted to go through all of our collectables and make sure they were all safely stored in it, this included the football and while doing that I realized I had no documentation for the authenticity for the football!

On a whim I figure I would see if I could get TIVO to send me a letter confirming I was in-fact the winner of this great collectable, to that end I did a bit of digging and saw Doug Bieter was/is VP of Marketing (atleast in 2002 according to CNET) so I sent him a email with my story and my request.

He was SUPER helpfull and put me in contact with Jennifer Swenson who was able to send me just what I needed.

I have to say I have always liked TIVO, they have made a great product, additionally they have done a great job nurturing a user community for their products all the while developing a solid brand.

Doug and Jennifer could have easily told me to bugger-off but they did not and in this day-and-age where customer service is commonly considered a oxy moron the fact that they did not tells you allot about them, TIVO and the sort of business they want to run.

Thanks Doug and Jennifer!

Verizon FIOS is coming to my little part of Woodinville...

Ryan M. Hurst — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:08:03 GMT

About two months ago I got a letter in the mail introducing me to my new COMCAST Concierge Representative, this person was to be my channel into 1st class customer support from COMCAST; this is important because if you have ever tried to purchase services from COMCAST or get them to support the services they have already sold you its a challenge at best, they know you don't have many options and treat you as such.

My COMCAST Concierge guy was nice, and helpful he even answered questions via e-mail; frankly I was impressed but its clear from the discussion he did not have the same sort of power DirecTV gives its escelation CSR folks.

That being said, while I was impressed with my experience to be honest the thing that exited me the most was that the fact that COMCAST gave little old me this level of care meant that competition was coming, the uncaring COMCAST machinery knew soon I would have choices!

About two weeks ago, I confirmed this; when I came into my neighborhood surveyors were there marking phone, gas and power lines with their neon paints, I asked one of them what services were coming in and they told me it was Verizon with FIOS.

Yesterday when I came home there were a dozen or more guys working to plumb the infrastructure through my neighborhood, none of the ones I could find spoke english, they all spoke Spanish and I really only know two spanish phrases:

Donde esta el bano (Where is the bathroom)?
Una cervesa por favor (One beer please).

And unfortunatley these two phrases were not going to help me here (though they have served me well in the past). In any event though I don't know when they will be done, or when it will be live, but I do think I have a reasonable chance of getting service from Verizon FIOS in the not so distant future which is just great.

Why do I care? Well for one I really don't like the way COMCAST has treated me in the past, its also more expensive than the comparable Verizon offerings, more over Verizon FIOS offers down speeds as high as 50Mbps and up speeds as high as 20Mbps; that just doesn't compare to my COMCAST BLAST 16Mbps down and 950Kbps up.

The big deal for me is the up speed given the telecommuting I do, but moving to a cheaper service that is faster overall doesnt hurt.

Only time will tell when I can switch, but I strongly suspect I will.

How to enable folder monitoring in My Movies for extenders.

Ryan M. Hurst — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 03:39:53 GMT

One of the coolest features in My Movies is its ability to monitor folders for new titles and automatically download the meta-data for those titles; it has three modes of operation, these include:

Loose - My Movies will do its best to find the meta-data for the title and will use what it thinks is the best match of the results it finds.

Strict - My Movies will do its best to find the meta-data for the title but unlike loose will only use matches where there is a exact title match.

Confirmative - My Movies will do its best to find the meta-data for the title and will present you with what it thinks is the best match to confirm if you want to use that data or not.

I personally use the Confirmative mode (the default), this lessens the chance of me getting bad data into my collection, it does not eliminate it as a possibility as the search is done based on what My Movies thinks the title of the movie is only and titles are not unique (for example there is an Italian Job from 1969 and another from 2003).

You need to know a few more things to use folder monitoring successfully, for example how My Movies determines what it thinks the title for the movie is, since My Movies monitors folder creation it doesn't really have much to go on but it makes the best of the information it has, namely the name of the folder containing the playable media, for example if your monitoring \\servername\movies and you create a folder called "The Italian Job (1969)" it will search the My Movies web service for "The Italian Job" (e.g. dropping the (, [ and anything after them).

Another thing you should know before you start using file monitoring is when the feature is working, specifically folder monitoring happens in a background add-in within Media Center so if Media Center is not running folder monitoring isn't going to happen.

From an experience standpoint what this means is that when I add a title to the "movies" share (when in Confirmative mode), for example the "Italian Job (1969)", My Movies will search the web service for "Italian Job" which will result in me being prompted if the match it found for the title was right and if I want to use the data it found.

Finally the last thing you should know is what happens when you add content when Media Center is not running, the answer to this question is easy; when Media Center starts up it starts up the My Movies background add-in which then looks for changes since the last time it ran, if it finds any, it adds them just like it would have if the title was found while Media Center is running.

Now you should be asking yourselves, that was all find and good but wasn't he going to tell us how to get this mess working on extenders? The answer to that? why yes I am :)

In my home we don't actually watch content on the Media Center PC, we use Media Center Extenders as such folder monitoring doesn't work for me without a little dance, specifically enabling it for the Media Center Extender users.

The things is My Movies supports per-user settings, these settings are tweak-able inside the My Movies Collection Manager program but they edit the interactive users settings not the extender settings that doesn't mean it doesn't work though.

So how do you enable folder monitoring for extenders (thanks to rollinghippy at mymovies.name for the bellow step-by-step)?

Configure folder monitoring for the interactive user within Collection Manager (and any other settings you would like to have cloned to the extender user)
Open the registry editor and export HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MY MOVIES
Select the HKEY_USERS key and click "FILE - LOAD HIVE"
Open NTUSER.DAT in SYSTEMROOT:\USERS\MCX1
When asked for the Key Name enter "MCX1"
Edit the registry file you exported and do a Replace All for "HKEY_CURRENT_USER" with "HKEY_USERS\MCX1"
Import the edited registry file
Select the MCX1 key you loaded and click "FILE - UNLOAD HIVE" (You must unload the hive for the settings to be saved back in to NTUSER.DAT)

If you just followed these steps you have just set up the MCX1 user to have the exact same settings as the interactive user you configured with Collection Manager, now wash-rinse-repeat for each MCX user.

Ah, I just remembered two other things you should keep in mind with My Movies folder monitoring, it has two "control files" that you can put into the movie folder, one is called a ignore file (mymovies.ign) and the other is called a do-not-add (mymovies.dna) file.

If either of these control files exist in the movie folder folder monitoring will skip that folder, the .ign file is ephemeral in nature it will be deleted if its older than 6 hours, it exists to stop multiple instances (multiple users like in this extender case) from operating on the same movie at the same time, the .dna file is permanent (until you delete it) and it prevents My Movies from ever adding the file.

In summary with just a little bit of work extender users can also benefit from My Movies folder monitoring capability

We have achieved D1 status.

Ryan M. Hurst — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:02:57 GMT

Previously I wrote about us ordering a new car; I was just told the new car is in D1 status; according to the 300C Forums this is an indicator Chrysler uses to indicate the car has been scheduled to be built and a ship date has assigned.

This apperantly means that the car is two to three weeks out, meaning there is a chance the car will be here by the 31st of March; but only time will tell...

LemonLaw and our new car?

Ryan M. Hurst — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 20:29:54 GMT

We have been in the process of getting my wife's car replaced under the Washington Lemon Law since the process is not complete yet I don't want to disclose any details about this process but if I can once its complete I will.

That being said we have ordered a new car, and its on its way; we are doing an exchange so we have to stay in the same manufactures product line (in this case Chrysler); we have decided on a Jeep Grand Cherokee with the Overland trim package and the Mercedes 3.0L BlueTec diesel [it's the same engine used in the Mercedes ML320 CDL].

The vehicle we ordered is fully configured, the only thing it did not include was the Sirius Satellite TV option, which I just could not see us using; that being said there are always toys one can add, with that in mind I looked around a bit this weekend:

Remove vehicle in motion restrictions /w additional video input ($280-$350)
Add Night Vision Camera
- NAV-TV Thermal Imager
Improve performance (+44HP) AND mileage
- StarTech SD6

I was suprised not to fine three hacks/upgrades, a larger hard drive, a HD radio tuner and integration with a in-car PC that could use the touch screen capability; that being said who knows if we would ever do any additions to the car.

When chatting with folks about the decision to get this car they often ask why we chose to go Diesel, there are lots of good reasons check out these articles for some of them:

Diesel Overview
Diesel vs Regular Gasoline - Which is Better for the Environment?
Thrifty diesel powers "Cleanest Jeep Grand Cherokee ever"
Popular Mechanics: "Hybrids, beware of diesels"
Washington one of the first in the United States to offer low sulfur "clean diesel"

What you will see after reading these, is Diesel is more energy efficient than gas, Diesel engines last longer because they operate at lower compression, they require less maintenance (again due to lower compression) and overall are better for the environment than their gasoline counterparts.

If all goes well we will have the new car in two weeks, only time will tell.

LifeXtender and me..

Ryan M. Hurst — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 02:44:38 GMT

I think I have found an addition to my regular MCE build-outs, LifeXtender by Bobby DeRosa; this is a super easy to use front end to the favorite ComSkip.

For those not familiar with ComSkip, its a command line tool that implements heuristics to guess where commercials start and end, it then produces an output file that can be used as inputs to programs that can edit out these commercials.

Though I would like to see a few changes in the add-in like being a service vs a tray application and supporting commercial skipping through map files vs. re-authoring I have to say its one of the better add-ins out there and definitely worth running.

I have now officially added LifeXtender to my list of recommended "daily" add-ins including My Movies, Toub's Position Changer, and my own Add-In Launcher.

What does my video archive / NAS look like?

Ryan M. Hurst — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:00:45 GMT

Recently on the My Movies forum there was a thread added about a huge 48TB NAS that is being constructed by one of the members over there; it has a ton of great data on his project around performance, power consumption, etc.

I have been running a smaller and slightly older configuration for several years now, I have blogged about it several times but I figured I needed a post where I could continuously update its every changing configuration, so here I go hardware wise we have:

1 x AIC RMC3E2-PI2 /w Reduntant N+1 650W PSUs

1 x Tyan Thunder i7525 (S2676)

2 x Intel® Xeon® Processor 3.0 Ghz /w EMT64 and HT

12 x 750GB (3.75TB) Seagate SATA II

1 x Areca 16 Port SATA-II to PCI-X /w 1GB cache (non-ecc)

4 x 1GB (4GB) PC2-3200 DDR2 ECC Registered

1 x 100GB 2.5" SATA II Hitachi OS Drive

1 x 250GB 3.5" SATA II Maxtor Swap/Temp Drive

2 x Open Cable Receivers

1 x Pioneer DVR-K17

This machine is currently running x64 VISTA SP1, its set up with a dedicated 100GB NTFS OS partition/disk and another 250GB NTFS disk/partition for the swap file and the recorded tv/live TV buffer.

The RAID is set up in a RAID 6 coniguration which leaves me about 7.5TB of storage; this allows me to have two drives fail at the same time without concern.

I originally started this machine with 250GB drives in RAID 5, I then migrated to 500GB drives in RAID 5 and as you can see am now at 750GB drives in RAID 6; the Areca controller has been great since it supports online capacity expansion and dynamic re-build I have had 99.999% availability of the RAID partition since I put the machine together (that includes one drive failure/re-build too!).

Many have asked me why I do not run Windows Home Server (WHS) on this configuration, I would actually love to but this machine plays double duty for my home, it is both my NAS and my MCE machine (we use extenders exclusively for all video/audio content in the house) and doing so would require me to have a 2nd always on machine which I am not prepared to do at this point.

On that topic, I have considered running WHS or MCE in a virtual machines to get both configurations working on the same hardware but I frequently run at 80% CPU utilization when doing video work on the same box and without a hardware upgrade I could not do this in a hiccup free way.

Another related question I get is why RAID and not the redundancy model used by WHS, well for one I did this system in 2004/2005 timeframe and there was no WHS and two that model gets expensive when you get above a few discs, I also like that my redundancy is rooted in a enterprise grade hardware that is independent from software since I do lots of selfhosting on this machine.

If you want to see a picture of this machine, one is here.

Unfairplay

Ryan M. Hurst — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 03:50:13 GMT

What a great name for a technology, Fairplay; unfortunately it should be called Unfairplay.

Recently Apple announced that they have negotiated the inclusion of "iTunes/iPod Ready" digital copies on Fox DVDs, this is great news for those iPod users that aspire to take their legally purchased content with them.

These digital copies are thoughtfully provided in both WMV and H.264 encoding, a great step forward if you ask me; I applaud Apple for their negotiation of this deal, the problem with this I have is that this content is protected with Apples "Fairplay" DRM scheme.

Now to be clear I do not have a issue with the DRM, content owners rightfully wish to prevent the unauthorized distribution of their content. my problem is that Apple refuses to license their DRM scheme that they so craft-fully named "FairPlay" (unlike Microsoft and the Plays4Sure and Designed for Windows DRM).

The irony in that is Apple has convinced Fox to take standards that are available for anyone to implement (Windows Media Video [WMV] and H.264) and wrapped them in Apples proprietary non-licensable DRM making it only compatible with their products.

I don't know who I am most dissatisfied with Apple for their exclusionary practices or Fox for buying into them.

Computer controllable energy monitors…

Ryan M. Hurst — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:28:28 GMT

For a while I have been considering doing a Windows Media Center add-in to monitor and graph home energy consumption (check out http://bwired.nl for my inspiration); the problem is that I have been unable to find energy monitors that are computer controllable, that is until just recently.

The Brueltech unit runs $399, while the TED runs ~~$144~~ $188; this isn’t really a apples to apples comparison though as the Brueltech unit supports Zigbee. For those not in “the know” Zigbee is a wireless mesh networking protocol (much like Z-Wave).

What this means is that instead of having to rely on a direct USB connection to the PC one can use a USB to Zigbee adapter to talk to the Brueltech unit to get the measurement updates wirelessly, very cool IMHO.

Another potential difference is quality of the components Brultech does some level of commercial monitoring and claims that (as an example) their induction measurement sensors of a higher grade/quality than most; but hey I work in software what do I know of such things .

When I tell people about my desire to do this project they normally ask me “why in the he-double-hockey-sticks would you want to do that?”; the answer to that question to some degree is because I can. After all every once in a while one must re-prove their uber geekiness; but there is more to it, studies have shown that having knowledge of electrical consumption and the associated costs alone can contribute to a reduction in electrical usage.

Then if one combines such a system with a automated home (via say Z-Wave devices) one can monitor usage in relationship to device power state to infer power consumption, with that data a intelligent system could make recommendations on changes in usage or automatically make adjustments in usage to reduce electrical use.

My plan (however half baked) started as a plan to develop a class library of sorts for home automation, a set of abstract base classes in .NET for interacting with devices independent of their protocols (X10, Z-Wave, Insteon, ZigBee, etc) the problem was that control without insight was not by itself compelling enough for me to undergo this project, the insights that these devices offer could change that equation enough to get me off my duff and do this.

Only time will tell, at $399 I will have to probably put the project on hold for a few months; maybe Brultech and/or TED will get me evaluation unit for cheap to play with.

[Update 1/11/08 2:16PM] I have had some great email exchanges with the folks at Brultech and they have been great; in this exchange I have learned more about the differences between the TED and the Brultech offering, some of which include:

The $144 price for the TED does not include software., the software is an additional $44.
~~The TED does not have the ability to download data from non-volatile memory (data logger).~~
The ECM-1220 processes the energy consumption for each panel phase individually; this is greatly convenient when it comes to analyzing which loads are operated. For instance, if the power of both phases increase simultaneously, it is safe to say that the load is a 240V load, narrowing down which load this may represent. The same applies for 120V loads. If a load cycles on phase A this eliminates the possibility of any 240V load or any phase B loads. Software can be developed to analyze the load signature of various appliances and generate an energy audit report. This would be useful in assessing various load efficiencies (appliance requiring maintenance or replacement).
The TED uses PLC (power line carrier) method of communication. This limits picking up the signal on 50% of the receptacles (on the same phase the MTU unit is wired to) without the adition of a inexpensive phase coupler. Even with this, some people have said that the signal from their TEDs will drop out occasionally.

Since in my application I plan on having a always on PC monitoring the device I am not sure there is a big value for the #2, that being said that is dependent on the reliability of the device advertising the energy usage (see #4 for a potential concern here).

#3 in particular sounds like a very important reason to consider the Brultech offering, the primary value of a project like this is analysis and not having discrete data per phase would certainly limit that ability.

More updates as I have them

[Update 2/12/08 2:16PM] I have finally heard back from the folks over at The Energy Detective, the manufacturers of the TED; they have finished their API but unfortunately the terms of the API prevent me from including support for their device in the project I have envisioned.

This is really unfortunate because it looks like a good device, and when designing an abstraction one really does need to validate that design with several implementations; oh-well.

With that being said they also corrected me on two points in the blog, I have ~~marked~~ these above; I apologize for spreading miss-information, that’s the wonderful thing about the web though, so much information you start to think you know it all .

In addition the above corrections they raised alternate perspectives on the values of the two different design properties offered by the Brultech product and their own:

Dual phase load monitoring - Knowing the load for any given circuit can be useful, but for the average user per-phase measurements is of little value.
PLC vs. ZIGBEE – PLC can be made to work across both phases through installing a very inexpensive impassive phase coupler more over in their experience the RF nature of ZigBee introduces as much or more problems than PLC.

The net of this is that I guess I will now have to start looking around for another device that I can design these classes around, again I will update you when I know more.

DIR-655 and Momento 100 != compatible?

Ryan M. Hurst — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 01:21:14 GMT

The other day I replaced my WBR-1310 with a DIR-655, however I found that its default configuration would not work with my Momento picture frame; its likley this is a issue with the picture frame and not the DIR-655; in any event I found a nice blog post at SharpStyle Labs explaining what Mike had to do to get it working at his home.

The core changes one has to make on the DIR-655 included:

Disable WPS.
Set it up for WPA only.
Set it up for TKIP only.

The issue here is likley in the CE image that the Memento 100 uses, but its VERY concerning that these devices require one to weaken the security of their home network to use; I hope they come out with their update soon.