tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-132593442024-03-13T16:40:41.052-04:00What's on HDTV?A blog about video (and, occasionally, audio) in the HDTV age.erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.comBlogger191125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-61626565416320303102017-09-02T18:22:00.002-04:002017-09-02T18:22:23.844-04:00Kanopy: How to Stream Thousands of Free Movies Using Your Library Card<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.kanopystreaming.com/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="290" src="https://image.roku.com/developer_channels/prod/a46084e450361b4a5285b9a63648f9d721b40dd4eb5ecc2312f3b0963e91e49d.png" width="125" /></a></div>
<a href="https://www.kanopystreaming.com/" target="_blank">Kanopy</a> is a source of some 30,000 streaming movies that you can access for free, using your library card. The movies Kanopy offers are mostly international and independent ones: classic cinema, art-house films, documentaries. Many of these come from the <a href="https://www.criterion.com/" target="_blank">Criterion Collection</a>. Criterion offers <a href="https://www.criterion.com/library/list_view?m=itunes&p=1&pp=all" target="_blank">close to 400 of its numerous films via Apple's iTunes</a> for a price, and I suspect the same films are available on Kanopy for free!<br />
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A <i>New York Times</i> article telling about Kanopy is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/watching/kanopy-criterion-collection-library-card.html" target="_blank">here</a>. The basic idea is that many, but by no means all, library systems offer Kanopy for free to their patrons.<br />
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Want to know if your local public library or your college/university library offers Kanopy? Go <a href="https://www.kanopystreaming.com/wayf" target="_blank">here</a> to find out. All you need to do is type in the name of your library. If it's on Kanopy's list, it will show up immediately. You can then enter your personal library card's identifying information. You will also need to create an account with Kanopy, by clicking on the "Sign up" button at the upper right of the browser tab. You'll specify a permanent email address and password for your Kanopy account at that point.<br />
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Once you have specified your local library account information and your Kanopy email address/password combination, you'll see something like this:<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-B5hj6-DKqeE/Wasq8XhvBKI/AAAAAAAACCU/oTNHwSJuJosLhMNcY38Kg0NkRinio214QCLcBGAs/s1600/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1164" data-original-width="1600" height="290" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-B5hj6-DKqeE/Wasq8XhvBKI/AAAAAAAACCU/oTNHwSJuJosLhMNcY38Kg0NkRinio214QCLcBGAs/s400/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz001.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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You can go ahead and find a movie you like and start watching it in your browser.<br />
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Don't want to watch it in a browser? You can also get the Kanopy app for Apple's iOS devices, such as iPhones and iPads, or for Android devices.<br />
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Want to watch the movies on a regular TV? You can do so by means of a Roku streaming player connected to the TV.<br />
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No Roku? If you have an Apple TV <i>and</i> one of Apple's iOS devices, go <a href="http://help.kanopystreaming.com/hc/en-us/articles/235869447-Watching-Kanopy-on-Apple-TV" target="_blank">here</a> to learn how to use Apple's AirPlay technology to “cast” videos from your Apple phone or tablet directly to your TV.<br />
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I bid you good streaming!<br />
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<br />erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-28631748620432829752016-01-12T05:21:00.000-05:002016-01-17T08:50:17.870-05:00Ripping Blu-ray Discs with Acrok Video Converter Ultimate for MacYou can make a copy of a movie from Blu-ray disc by using <a href="http://www.acrok.com/video-converter-ultimate-mac/" target="_blank">Acrok Video Converter Ultimate for Mac</a>. The copied file can be used with the streaming media server <a href="http://plex.tv/" target="_blank">Plex</a>. Here are the basics of ripping a Blu-ray on a Mac. (There is also a version of <a href="http://www.acrok.com/video-converter-ultimate/" target="_blank">Acrok Video Converter Ultimate for Windows</a>.)<br />
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You can click on the images to see larger versions:<br />
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Good luck!<br />
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P.S. The original, high-resolution video output format I use is excellent for use with Plex client apps that can support it. The Plex Media Server will automatically down-rez it for Plex apps that cannot handle video at such high resolution.<br />
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P.P.S. With appropriate modifications having to do with the differences between DVDs and Blu-rays, you can use this same procedure to rip DVDs.<br />
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<br />erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-53304291528903785212015-12-22T11:34:00.001-05:002015-12-22T19:05:40.920-05:00Plex, Part 2<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9-cg6G8furs/VnGROqgg3NI/AAAAAAAABp4/X-nKrHtzaEg/s1600/googleplus-photo-cb6f717c8cfd8b48df6dbb09aa369198.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="100" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9-cg6G8furs/VnGROqgg3NI/AAAAAAAABp4/X-nKrHtzaEg/s200/googleplus-photo-cb6f717c8cfd8b48df6dbb09aa369198.png" width="100"></a>Now, more about <a href="http://plex.tv/" target="_blank">Plex</a>.<br>
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Plex is software that can stream video files, audio files, photos, and other items from your computer to such devices as a "smart" TV, an Apple TV, an Android handheld device, an iPad or iPhone, a TiVo, or numerous other devices.<br>
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My main interest is in videos: particularly movies and other shows from television. I record them on my TiVo. Then I watch them, and if they're something I want to save and watch again, I move them to my computer using the free app <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/kmttg/" target="_blank">kmttg</a>. I can then delete them from the TiVo. To see them again, I stream them to the TiVo using Plex.<br>
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I can also watch them on my iPad or iPhone, again using Plex. And I can do this wherever I go. I don't have to be at home. I can stream them over Wi-Fi wherever Wi-Fi is available. I can also stream them over the cell phone network, if Wi-Fi isn't available.<br>
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Each device that can stream Plex files has a Plex app for that purpose. Some, such as a TiVo, come with the app already installed. Some, such as the iPad, want you to download the Plex app yourself. On an iPad, for example, you <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/plex/id383457673?mt=8" target="_blank">do that at the App Store</a>.<br>
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The app on a destination device — say, a TiVo — is only one side of the Plex equation. That app is sometimes called the Plex "client." The other side of the equation is the Plex Media Server which runs on your computer. The Plex Media Server is also sometimes known as the Plex Media <i>Manager</i>.<br>
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To download the Plex Media Server to your computer, visit <a href="https://plex.tv/downloads" target="_blank">this page</a>. Click on "COMPUTER" under Plex Media Server. You will be shown a screen which corresponds to the kind of computer you have. (Mine is a Mac.) You will click on the orange "DOWNLOAD" button. That brings up a screen that lets you decide where on your computer you want to save the downloaded file. I put mine on my desktop. You can indicate <i>your</i> desktop and click "Save."<br>
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A new file now shows up on your desktop. (In my case, the file is PlexMediaServer-0.9.12.19.1537-f38ac80-OSX.zip.) Double click it. It expands right on the desktop to become a Plex Media Server icon:<br>
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<b>Plex Media Server</b></h2>
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If you like, you can move the icon to another folder. On my Mac, I put it in my Applications folder.<br>
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You can install the Plex Media Server by double-clicking the Plex Media Server icon. Go <a href="https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200288586" target="_blank">here</a> for instructions and scroll down about a third of the way to "Server Installation." The actual procedure differs for each type of computer: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc.<br>
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On my Mac, the Plex Media Server puts a <b><span style="font-size: large;">></span></b> icon in the menu bar at the top of the screen:<br>
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Clicking on <b>Media Manager...</b> opens the Plex Media Server in my default browser, Chrome. (The Plex Media Server runs in a computer's web browser, such as Google Chrome, Safari, or Internet Explorer.)<br>
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Another way to open the Plex Media Server on a Mac is to click on its icon in the Mac's Dock:<br>
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<a href="http://vimeo.com/98564312" target="_blank">This video</a> shows how to set things up for the first time, once you've installed Plex Media Server and opened it in your browser. That video is just a quick once-over, and it whizzes by pretty fast. To access a more detailed guide to getting started with Plex, go <a href="https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200264746-Quick-Start-Step-by-Step" target="_blank">here</a>.<br>
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The first thing that Plex Media Server does, the very first time it's run, is to run through the steps in the Setup Wizard. Go <a href="https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200288896-Basic-Setup-Wizard" target="_blank">here</a> to learn more about the Setup Wizard. Accordingly, you will first create a Plex account, which is free, on the <a href="https://plex.tv/" target="_blank">Plex.tv website</a>.<br>
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Once you have an account, you will continue with the Get Started screen in your browser:<br>
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<a href="https://plexapp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/200608093/wizard_basic_setup.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://plexapp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/200608093/wizard_basic_setup.png"></a></div>
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Set it up to your satisfaction and click NEXT. This screen now appears:<br>
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You click on ADD LIBRARY at this point to go through the process of designating a folder that contains, say, movies residing on your computer:<br>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">First click Movies, then NEXT.</span></b></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Enter a name for your new Movies<br>library, then click NEXT.</b></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LvXONNXZj4s/VnmQjhb0xSI/AAAAAAAABq8/QKUX4OUO3TE/s1600/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LvXONNXZj4s/VnmQjhb0xSI/AAAAAAAABq8/QKUX4OUO3TE/s400/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz001.jpg" width="400"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">Click on BROWSE FOR MEDIA FOLDER.</span></b></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fXsKqIn3AxU/VnmQ0NcHlLI/AAAAAAAABrI/6n391abMJYE/s1600/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fXsKqIn3AxU/VnmQ0NcHlLI/AAAAAAAABrI/6n391abMJYE/s400/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz002.jpg" width="400"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">Find a folder that has movie<br>files in it and/or in its<br>subfolders; click ADD.</span></b></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HlbOGeINHZk/VnmRY_BowfI/AAAAAAAABrU/81pig1kFSS8/s1600/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HlbOGeINHZk/VnmRY_BowfI/AAAAAAAABrU/81pig1kFSS8/s400/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz001.jpg" width="400"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">Now click ADD LIBRARY.</span></b></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IGsMv_C_90Q/VnmR67zt0JI/AAAAAAAABrg/l7NBXOj_hb4/s1600/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="285" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IGsMv_C_90Q/VnmR67zt0JI/AAAAAAAABrg/l7NBXOj_hb4/s400/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz001.jpg" width="400"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>The result.</b></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KQJo-JTYpAg/VnmSamhYgGI/AAAAAAAABrs/KIareEpVOFg/s1600/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="182" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KQJo-JTYpAg/VnmSamhYgGI/AAAAAAAABrs/KIareEpVOFg/s400/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz002.jpg" width="400"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">A close-up view of the result.</span></b></td></tr>
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Any time I want to, I can edit my More Movies library:<br>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zIcFS3ssBdc/VnmTXv9J_dI/AAAAAAAABr4/ebP8fK8hYBY/s1600/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="358" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zIcFS3ssBdc/VnmTXv9J_dI/AAAAAAAABr4/ebP8fK8hYBY/s400/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz002.jpg" width="400"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Select Edit Library from the menu<br>at upper right of Plex in your<br>browser.</b></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u02ie8NeiOY/VnmUGsofFkI/AAAAAAAABsE/aPhYN7ajbpE/s1600/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="296" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u02ie8NeiOY/VnmUGsofFkI/AAAAAAAABsE/aPhYN7ajbpE/s400/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz001.jpg" width="400"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Click Add Folders, the<br>second item on the left.</b></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jvSWpdDOvdA/VnmUly78JrI/AAAAAAAABsQ/Wp7cWmb0s84/s1600/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="296" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jvSWpdDOvdA/VnmUly78JrI/AAAAAAAABsQ/Wp7cWmb0s84/s400/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz002.jpg" width="400"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Click BROWSE FOR MEDIA FOLDER,<br>as you did before. Once you have<br>designated a movies folder,<br>click SAVE CHANGES.</b></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br><div>
Once you have duly designated another movies folder and clicked SAVE CHANGES, then after several seconds you will see something like this close-up:<br>
<br>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nHi-7-C6Ung/VnmWBquaS3I/AAAAAAAABsc/Q4Vaw3Rv1Mo/s1600/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="132" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nHi-7-C6Ung/VnmWBquaS3I/AAAAAAAABsc/Q4Vaw3Rv1Mo/s400/Google%2BChromeScreenSnapz001.jpg" width="400"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>In this example, <i>The Children's Hour</i><br>and <i>Cool Hand Luke</i> have been added.</b></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br>
<br>You can expect more about Plex in a later post ...<br>
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<br></div>erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-45099535653609288792015-12-16T11:30:00.003-05:002015-12-22T09:39:13.434-05:00Plex, Part 1<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9-cg6G8furs/VnGROqgg3NI/AAAAAAAABp4/X-nKrHtzaEg/s1600/googleplus-photo-cb6f717c8cfd8b48df6dbb09aa369198.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="100" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9-cg6G8furs/VnGROqgg3NI/AAAAAAAABp4/X-nKrHtzaEg/s200/googleplus-photo-cb6f717c8cfd8b48df6dbb09aa369198.png" width="100" /></a>I've been away awhile. Now I'm back with a new post. It's about <a href="http://plex.tv/" target="_blank">Plex</a>.<br />
<br />
Plex is free software. It's a media <i>server</i>. It's a media <i>client</i>, i.e., it plays videos, audio files, and photos. It runs as a server/client on a Mac or a Windows PC. It runs as a client on a TiVo or on a touchscreen device (Android, iOS, Windows, or Windows Phone).<br />
<br />
The media it handles, as I say, includes video files, audio files, and photos. You can put these files on your computer and then play them on:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>That computer</li>
<li>Another computer</li>
<li>Your Android, iOS, Windows, and Windows Phone mobile devices</li>
<li>Your TiVo</li>
<li>Your Roku</li>
<li>Your PlayStation</li>
<li>Your Xbox</li>
<li>Your Apple TV</li>
<li>Your Chromecast</li>
<li>Your Vizio, Sony, LG, or Toshiba Smart TV</li>
<li>... and many more devices</li>
</ul>
<br />
Right now, I'm interested in using Plex to play movies and TV shows.<br />
<br />
In the past, I uploaded a raft of movies and TV shows from my TiVo to my iMac. To do this I used the free app <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/kmttg/" target="_blank">kmttg</a>. For some time, they've just been sitting there on some external hard drives, since I never really found the software I needed to play them without a lot of hassles. Then recently I rediscovered Plex.<br />
<br />
I'd tried using Plex before, but for some reason that I don't remember, it didn't score big with me. This time, it's scoring big.<br />
<br />
One huge reason is that my TiVo now hosts a Plex app. It didn't before. So I can now quite easily stream all those old uploads <i>back</i> to the TiVo for real-time viewing on a TV.<br />
<br />
On a computer, Plex lurks in the background until you click on its <b>Media Manager ...</b> menu item, at which time it opens in your browser:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/tRGGUiuAcDKIWoCZ4NOuTIHHkFGF49GfyxQn3QJAeRVtwxliT4fpZFo1JGL-Ksz57ktyZbS-2tY=s640-h400-e365" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/tRGGUiuAcDKIWoCZ4NOuTIHHkFGF49GfyxQn3QJAeRVtwxliT4fpZFo1JGL-Ksz57ktyZbS-2tY=s640-h400-e365" style="-webkit-user-select: none;" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
That image shows a bunch of movies, but when you're first starting, all you see is a lot of black space and a few cryptic icons, which I originally found a bit disconcerting. Here's a YouTube video that can help get <i>you</i> started:<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/E1XarhCUL8o" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
That video assumes you'll keep your videos on a NAS, a "<u>n</u>etwork <u>a</u>ttached <u>s</u>torage device." I don't have one of those, as I store all my stuff on external hard drives on my computer. But the video does give you an idea how to get started using the Plex Server interface.<br />
<br />
It also serves as a basic introduction to the Plex world, so I recommend that you watch it more than once. Notice that one of the things it emphasizes is that Plex can readily do both <i>transcoding</i> and <i>format conversion</i>, two terms that mean similar things. The basic idea is that a video file, let's say, may be in a format that will not play on an iPhone, for example. So Plex automatically recognizes that fact and converts it to a format that <i>will</i> play on the iPhone.<br />
<br />
That magic all works seamlessly, whether or not you are at home or using a mobile device half a work away.<br />
<br />
Another thing I like, as a hearing-impaired senior citizen, is that Plex plays <i><a href="https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200471133-Adding-Local-Subtitles-to-Your-Media" target="_blank">subtitles</a></i> that exist on your computer or NAS device. The subtitles can be in an embedded format or exist as external files.<br />
<br />
I'll have much more to say about Plex in later posts ...<br />
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<br />erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-45041516922698383312014-04-04T06:20:00.000-04:002014-04-04T11:47:57.062-04:00Mulling a TiVo Roamio (Part 7)<div class="p1">
In earlier posts <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/search/label/Mulling%20a%20TiVo%20Roamio" target="_blank">in this Mulling a TiVo Roamio series</a> I compared the costs of buying TiVo boxes with using the combination of Verizon FiOS DVR and two non-DVR settop boxes I now have. The TiVo units I opted for are one Roamio Plus DVR and two Mini extender boxes, along with a TiVo MoCA adapter that will let me network my current TiVo Premiere with the new TiVos.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
(I ordered my new TiVo gear online at <a href="http://tivo.com/">TiVo.com</a> last Saturday, by the way, and it arrived five days later, on Thursday. I will hook up the Roamio Plus soon, this coming Saturday. The other boxes will be hooked up later.)</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
My cost comparison involved buying lifetime service on the new TiVo boxes, to go with the lifetime plan I already have on my Premiere. I would thus receive a multi-system discount (MSD) on Roamio Plus lifetime service, I said, such that I would save enough in monthly outlays to cover my initial TiVo expenditures after just 32 months (26 months if I also give up <a href="https://aereo.com/" target="_blank">Aereo</a>).</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Buying the TiVo combination seemed a really smart move, partly because it has better capabilities than my current Verizon whole-house gear: more tuners for recording more shows at one time; more storage for holding more recorded material; the ability to stream live or recorded shows to my iPad or iPhone.</div>
<div class="p1">
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://o.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/adam/b03c3652c4acc1b51159f4950b288b1b/fios-quantum-tv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://o.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/adam/b03c3652c4acc1b51159f4950b288b1b/fios-quantum-tv.jpg" height="190" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Verizon FiOS's VMS1100<br />Quantum TV Media Server</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div class="p1">
Then yesterday a friend e-mailed me <a href="http://gizmodo.com/verizons-quantum-tv-dvr-records-up-to-12-channels-at-o-1555932485" target="_blank">a link to a Gizmodo story</a> about Verizon FiOS's latest settop box, the VMS1100 Quantum TV Media Server. I then went and found <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/01/verizon-fios-media-server-quantum-tv/" target="_blank">this story about the VMS1100 at Endgadget</a>. The VMS1100 is shown <a href="http://www.verizon.com/Support/Residential/TV/FiosTV/Receivers/Equipment+Issues/QuestionsOne/VMS1100.htm" target="_blank">on the Verizon website here</a>. An <a href="http://www.verizon.com/cs/groups/public/documents/adacct/vms1100_install_ops_manual-s.pdf" target="_blank">Installation & Operation Manual for the VMS1100 is here</a>.</div>
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The VMS1100 Media Server has six tuners and 1 terabyte of storage, as does the Roamio Plus. Impressive.</div>
<div class="p2">
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<div class="p1">
The Gizmodo story says of the VMS1100 that "you can add a second DVR unit to record up to 12 channels at once and feed 10 TVs at any given time," according to Verizon. So you can have two (or possibly more?) VMS1100s in your FiOS home hookup; the Installation & Operation Manual in fact states that you need a pair of VMS1100s if you want to feed more than five TVs at a time.</div>
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I suspect that you can do exactly the same thing with a pair of TiVo Roamio Pluses and the requisite number of Minis, but I do not know that for sure.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Gizmodo says that "it'll cost you $22 a month for the [first VMS1100] box, an extra $32 for the two-DVR, 12-tuner setup, plus $10 to connect additional TVs." Ignoring the double-DVR possibility, the monthly cost for one VMS1100 with two extender boxes seems to be $32 + $10 = $42. Or is that $10 for each additional TV, thus $52 for the three-TV setup?</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Gizmodo continues, "Perhaps more excitingly, a second phase of development will see Verizon transcoding its video so that the service also works with other hardware, like Xbox, Roku or iPad." That sounds intriguing ... but as far as use with an iPad is concerned, the Roamio Plus already streams live and recorded TV to TiVo's iPad app.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nrzWrjzMmf8/Uz6JH8Hel-I/AAAAAAAABXg/bDTQSmCAdmo/s1600/Google+ChromeScreenSnapz001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nrzWrjzMmf8/Uz6JH8Hel-I/AAAAAAAABXg/bDTQSmCAdmo/s1600/Google+ChromeScreenSnapz001.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Hookup diagram from the<br /><a href="http://www.verizon.com/cs/groups/public/documents/adacct/vms1100_install_ops_manual-s.pdf" target="_blank">VMS1100 Installation & Operation Manual</a><br />("Embedded MoCA" refers to support<br />for MoCA, which I talk about <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2014/03/mulling-tivo-roamio-part-2.html" target="_blank">here</a>.)</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div class="p1">
If a next-generation Verizon Media Server one day comes to use Xbox, Roku, etc. as whole-home extenders, it might be the case that apps situated on those devices would obviate Verizon's own extender set-top boxes (which I believe are called the IPC1100). That would pleasantly lower the consumer's monthly bill for equipment rental.</div>
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<div class="p1">
I note that TiVo does not currently support client apps running on Xbox, Roku, PlayStation, Wii, Apple TV, etc. The clients it now supports reside on handhelds such as the iPad and iPhone. So what Verizon seems to be planning would exceed what is now possible with the TiVo gear I am currently installing.</div>
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<div class="p1">
My earlier posts made the point that buying TiVos along with lifetime service plans saves money in the long run, compared to renting a Verizon multi-room hookup on a month-by-month basis. The big question is how many months the payback period is. I calculated the payback period to be 40 months for one new Roamio Plus and two new Mini boxes, based on Verizon's $40 charge for a three-TV DVR hookup and the $5/month cost of the CableCARD required for the Roamio Plus.</div>
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If the cost for a Verizon three-room hookup based on a VMS1100 Media Server exceeds $40, the payback period is concomitantly shorter.</div>
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<div class="p1">
I said <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2014/04/mulling-tivo-roamio-part-5.html" target="_blank">in an earlier post</a> that multi-room DVR service from a cable company might be costing you too much money. If you were to invest in TiVo gear, you might save on your overall monthly outlays. You might find that the cost of the TiVo option would be, over time, fully offset by those savings.</div>
<div class="p2">
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<div class="p1">
Yet there are two big risks. First, the TiVo gear one buys — I'd say the Roamio Plus DVR is more apt to fail than the Mini — may stop working after the limited warranty period of one year is up but before the anticipated payback period is complete.</div>
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Second, one's TiVo boxes may become outdated before payback is fully accomplished. One may find that some cable company brings out gear, such as Verizon's next-generation Media Server, that is even better than what's arriving even today, and one is meanwhile stuck with TiVo boxes one hasn't yet "paid for" with month-by-month savings.</div>
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erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-26103927643321330072014-04-02T10:14:00.001-04:002014-04-02T15:19:06.543-04:00Mulling a TiVo Roamio (Part 6)In the earlier posts of <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/search/label/Mulling%20a%20TiVo%20Roamio" target="_blank">my Mulling a TiVo Roamio series</a>, I've been describing how I intend to replace my current Verizon FiOS DVR box and two non-DVR cable boxes with gear I purchase from TiVo. The gear includes a TiVo Roamio Plus DVR ($400), a TiVo Mini ($100), and a TiVo MoCA Network Adapter ($50) for the TiVo Premiere I already own.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www1.pcmag.com/media/images/396680-tivo-roamio.jpg?thumb=y" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www1.pcmag.com/media/images/396680-tivo-roamio.jpg?thumb=y" height="120" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>TiVo Roamio Plus</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
As a result of <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2014/04/mulling-tivo-roamio-part-5.html" target="_blank">my last post</a>, I've come to think it would be best for me to buy lifetime service for the Roamio Plus and the Mini, instead of paying for TiVo service month by month. I can get lifetime service on my new gear at the following itemized costs:<br />
<br />
TiVo Roamio Plus lifetime service, $500<br />
TiVo Mini lifetime service, $150<br />
<br />
Total for lifetime service: $650<br />
<br />
Total for lifetime service <i>including</i> initial hardware cost: $550 (hardware) + $650 (lifetime service) = $1200<br />
<div>
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<div>
<div>
Now comes the crucial cost comparison.</div>
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<div>
With lifetime service on all my TiVo boxes, my current monthly outlay would be reduced by $40 (present cost of my Verizon boxes) - $5 (Verizon's charge for one extra CableCARD for the Roamio Plus) = $35 per month.</div>
<div>
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<div>
The payoff period for recouping my initial outlay, with lifetime service included, would be $1100 ÷ $35/month = approx. 35 months, or 2 yrs. and 11 mos. That compares with 40 months if I pay for TiVo service month by month.</div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
* * * * *</div>
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It gets even better. It looks like I would be eligible for a multi-system discount (MSD) on the Roamio Plus, based on my already having purchased lifetime service on the TiVo Premiere.</div>
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<div>
The amounts charged for TiVo's lifetime service plans, with and without multi-system discounts, are detailed <a href="http://support.tivo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/573" target="_blank">here</a>, and TiVo's terms of MSD eligibility are <a href="http://www.tivo.com/legal/terms" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.tivo.com/assets/images/shop/mini/tivo-mini.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="175" src="https://www.tivo.com/assets/images/shop/mini/tivo-mini.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>TiVo Mini</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Note that the TiVo Mini I intend to buy is not eligible for the MSD. But I might reduce my payoff period even further by taking advantage of TiVo's offer of the MSD on the Roamio Plus:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
TiVo Roamio Plus lifetime service with MSD, $400</div>
<div>
TiVo Mini lifetime service without MSD, $150</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Total for lifetime service: $550</div>
<div>
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<div>
Total for lifetime service <i>including</i> initial hardware cost: $550 (hardware) + $550 (lifetime service) = $1100</div>
<div>
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<div>
Time to payoff: $1100 ÷ $35/month = approx. 32 months, or 2 yrs. and 8 mos.</div>
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<div>
So, taking all the above into consideration, I might reduce my payoff period by 20%, from 40 months to 32 months, if I get lifetime service on the Roamio Plus and on the Mini, and I get the multi-system discount on the Roamio Plus.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />
* * * * *</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.ashmidang.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/aereo_logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.ashmidang.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/aereo_logo.jpg" width="100" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Aereo logo</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Further note: If I drop <a href="https://aereo.com/" target="_blank">Aereo</a>, the service I have which streams/records my local channels, and which I now get for $8 a month, my monthly savings would rise from $35/month to $43/month, and my time to payoff becomes $1100 ÷ $43/month = approx. 26 months, or 2 yrs and 2 mos.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In that scenario, the difference between 40 months and 26 months represents a 35% reduction in the length of my payoff period.</div>
<div>
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<div>
Dropping Aereo makes sense because I expect to be able to use the streaming ability of the Roamio Plus to view local channels on my iPad and my iPhone, just as I do now in Aereo.</div>
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erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-64478442888897234692014-04-01T10:30:00.003-04:002014-04-01T14:24:29.065-04:00Mulling a TiVo Roamio (Part 5)In the first four posts of <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/search/label/Mulling%20a%20TiVo%20Roamio" target="_blank">my Mulling a TiVo Roamio series</a>, I described how I intend to replace my current Verizon FiOS DVR box and two non-DVR boxes with gear I purchase from TiVo.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-osu-yDxW6dU/UzrNJMu38uI/AAAAAAAABXQ/BYuYCBW3tts/s1600/Google+ChromeScreenSnapz001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-osu-yDxW6dU/UzrNJMu38uI/AAAAAAAABXQ/BYuYCBW3tts/s1600/Google+ChromeScreenSnapz001.jpg" height="113" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Verizon FiOS DVR<br />(Cisco CHS-435)</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Specifically, I want to replace the Verizon DVR with a TiVo Roamio Plus, and the two other cable boxes with:<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>A new TiVo Mini, and</li>
<li>A 2010-model TiVo Premiere that I already have but use very little</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
I did a cost analysis in <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2014/03/mulling-roamio-part-4.html" target="_blank">Mulling a TiVo Roamio (Part 4)</a> in which I determined I'd be paying off the $550 cost of the new TiVo hardware in 3 yrs. and 4 mos., given that I'd be spending, on net, $14 a month less than my current $40/month outlay for a three-way multi-room DVR hookup from Verizon.<br />
<br />
It worked out that way in large part because I long ago purchased the Premiere along with "lifetime" TiVo service for that unit. What would my scenario look like if I were instead starting from scratch?<br />
<br />
Instead of relying on the Premiere (along with the TiVo MoCA network adapter it needs to be able to stream TV content from the Roamio) I would buy a second TiVo Mini (which, like the first, needs no adapter because it has MoCA support built in).<br />
<br />
See <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2014/03/mulling-tivo-roamio-part-2.html" target="_blank">Mulling a TiVo Roamio (Part 2)</a> for an explanation of what MoCA is and why it is needed.<br />
<br />
The hardware costs for this scenario would be:<br />
<br />
TiVo Roamio Plus, $400<br />
First TiVo Mini, $100<br />
<div>
Second TiVo Mini, $100</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Total: $600<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
The theoretical costs of TiVo service:<br />
<br />
For the Roamio Plus, $15 a month<br />
For the first Mini, $6 a month<br />
For the second Mini, $6 a month<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Total: $27 a month<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cetoncorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/CableCARD_motorola.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://cetoncorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/CableCARD_motorola.png" height="120" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Motorola "M-Card"<br />CableCARD is<br />the size of a calling card</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Under these assumptions, you'd be paying Verizon $5 a month for the Roamio Plus's required CableCARD. Note that the two Mini units require no CableCARDs.<br />
<br />
You'd be dropping the $40/month charge now paid for Verizon's boxes. So the saving in monthly outlays would come to $40 (present cost of Verizon boxes) - $27 (anticipated cost of TiVo service) - $5 (Verizon's charge for one CableCARD) = $8 per month.<br />
<br />
At that rate, the $600 up-front cost of TiVo hardware would be offset over the course of ($600 ÷ $8/month in net savings) = 75 months, or six years and three months.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * * * *</div>
<br />
Assume, now, that you'd opt for TiVo "lifetime" service, not monthly service (see <a href="http://support.tivo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/573" target="_blank">this page detailing TiVo's service plans</a>):<br />
<br />
For the Roamio Plus, $500<br />
For the first Mini, $150<br />
For the second Mini, $150<br />
<br />
Total: $800<br />
Total including cost of hardware: $800 + $600 = $1400<br />
<br />
Now your current monthly outlay would be reduced by $40 (present cost of Verizon boxes) - $5 (Verizon's charge for one CableCARD) = $35 per month.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
At that rate, the $1400 up-front costs of TiVo hardware and service would be offset over the course of ($600 ÷ $35/month in net savings) = 40 months, or three years and four months. Springing for TiVo lifetime service cuts your payback period nearly in half, from 75 months to 40. After 40 months, you could toss the TiVo boxes in the landfill and still have spent no more money than if you'd stayed with Verizon's gear!<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * * * *</div>
<br />
And that's the lesson. Each potential consumer's details will differ, but the general principle here is that multi-room DVR service from a cable company might be costing you too much money. If you were to invest in TiVo gear, you might save on your overall monthly outlays. You might find that the cost of the TiVo option would be, over time, fully offset by those savings.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
<br />erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-47396968210840051112014-03-31T15:38:00.002-04:002014-04-01T09:19:53.717-04:00Mulling a TiVo Roamio (Part 4)<a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2014/03/mulling-roamio-part-3.html" target="_blank">Last time</a>, I discussed a scenario in which I'd hypothetically buy a TiVo Roamio to replace my current Verizon FiOS DVR. In that scheme, I'd also buy a TiVo Mini to replace one of my two non-DVR Verizon boxes, with the Roamio able to send live or recorded TV programs to the Mini for viewing on the associated TV. My third TV would be served by the TiVo Premiere DVR I already have, and I'd relinquish the Verizon box now associated with that TV.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://support.brighthouse.com/media/video/equipment/wires/Coaxial_Cable.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://support.brighthouse.com/media/video/equipment/wires/Coaxial_Cable.jpg" height="122" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Coaxial TV cable</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
To get the Roamio to stream live and recorded fare to the TiVo app on my iPad, I'd buy a TiVo Stream external adapter for the Roamio. To each of the TiVos other than the Mini, I'd add TiVo's external MoCa network adapter, since MoCa is what allows these boxes to stream video fare over the coaxial cabling in my home. This cabling is what transmits the Verizon channels I subscribe to to my Verizon boxes, and it would remain in place even if I give up the Verizon boxes.<br />
<br />
That scenario would involve $530 in up-front hardware costs. It would save me the $40 I now pay every month to Verizon for my three boxes. I'd instead pay $5 for a new CableCARD for the Roamio (the Premiere already has a $5 CableCARD). The CableCARD would let the Roamio access all my current Verizon channels (though not the Verizon video-on-demand programs I now have access to). I'd also pay $21 a month to TiVo for service to my Roamio and Mini (the Premiere has lifetime service already paid for).<br />
<br />
On net, I'd be saving $14 a month ... which over a little more than 37 months would pay for the new TiVo hardware.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://www.tivo.com/shop/roamio" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://media.engadget.com/img/products/487/agi1/agi1-800.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://www.tivo.com/shop/roamio" target="_blank">TiVo Roamio Plus DVR ($400)</a></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
But now I have an even better scenario in mind. I'd change the Roamio, which costs $200, to a Roamio Plus, at $400. That would let me drop the $130 TiVo Stream unit I'd originally contemplated, as the Roamio Plus has the equivalent streaming functionality built in. It also has built-in MoCA compatibility, so I wouldn't need a $50 MoCA adapter for it. Accordingly, switching to a Roamio Plus would add just $20 to my total hardware cost.<br />
<br />
<div class="p1">
The revised hardware list would be:</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
TiVo Roamio Plus, $400<br />
TiVo MoCA network adapter for TiVo Premiere, $50<br />
TiVo Mini, $100<br />
<div>
<br />
Total: $550
<br />
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
</div>
<div class="p1">
The Roamio Plus records up to 150 HD hours using six tuners (for up to six simultaneous recordings) and fully 1 terabyte of storage, compared with 4 tuners/75 HD hours/500 GB. It has, as I say, TiVo Stream functionality and MoCA support built in. It can even stream live and recorded TV to the iPad (or iPhone) <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tivo/id401673976?mt=8" target="_blank">TiVo app</a> outside my home, wherever I have a WiFi connection; using the base Roamio and the TiVo Stream dongle, I would first have to download each recording to the iPad before leaving home, if I wanted to view it on the road. Those combined advantages seem to me to justify the extra $20 in up-front costs.</div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="p1">
The costs for TiVo monthly service in the Roamio Plus scenario would remain $21 a month. Dividing $550 by my overall monthly savings of $14 a month yields a time-to-hardware-payoff of just under 40 months, or 3 yrs. and 4 mos. It's only three months more than the payoff period in my original scenario.</div>
<br />
Next time, I mention some additional factors that bear upon my time-to-hardware-payoff calculations ...<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-33023347796671706622014-03-31T11:41:00.001-04:002014-04-01T09:19:35.420-04:00Mulling a TiVo Roamio (Part 3)In my <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2014/03/mulling-tivo-roamio-part-1.html" target="_blank">first post in this series</a>, I stated my desire to have all my TV and video streaming channels, all the time, on all my devices, wherever I go. After a nod toward "cord cutting" — getting rid of my Verizon FiOS TV service entirely, along with the three cable boxes in my home — I said the idea currently presents several hurdles. Then <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2014/03/mulling-tivo-roamio-part-2.html" target="_blank">in the second post</a> I took a detour to talk about MoCA, a technology that allows cable-TV companies such as Verizon to stream television programs from one DVR box to another box within a home, using the same coaxial cables that lead from the world outside the home to each box in the home.<br />
<br />
TiVo boxes <a href="http://www.tivo.com/my-account/how-to/what-moca" target="_blank">now likewise use MoCA</a> to provide the user with the same multi-room DVR experience. So now I'll go into more detail about my intention to replace my Verizon FiOS DVR and my two associated non-DVR cable boxes — I now have a three-way multi-room setup with Verizon — with TiVo gear.<br />
<br />
My first contemplated scenario would center on <a href="https://www.tivo.com/shop/roamio" target="_blank">a $200 TiVo Roamio DVR</a>. The Roamio is the entry-level DVR in the present TiVo lineup.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://stuwest.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/roamio_lf_w-remote.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://stuwest.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/roamio_lf_w-remote.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>TiVo Roamio DVR</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
More pricey options include the Roamio Plus ($400) and the top-of-the-line Roamio Pro ($600).<br />
<br />
Opting for a base Roamio, I'd have to augment it with <a href="https://www.tivo.com/shop/stream" target="_blank">a TiVo Stream unit</a> ($130) if I want to be able to stream Roamio-recorded TV programs to the TiVo app on my iPad.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.tivo.com/shop/detail/moca" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://www.tivo.com/assets/MoCA_Adapter_0.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>TiVo MoCA<br />Network Adapter ($50)</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Given that I already have a 2010-model <a href="https://www.tivo.com/shop/detail/tivo-premiere" target="_blank">TiVo Premiere</a> in my home, if I want it to be able to play the recordings made on the Roamio into its connected TV, I'd need to make the TiVo Premiere MoCA-capable by connecting it to a TiVo MoCA network adapter ($50).<br />
<br />
The MoCA adapter can be looked at <a href="https://www.tivo.com/shop/detail/moca" target="_blank">on this page</a> at the TiVo.com website. The page "How to connect your TiVo box to your home network, incl. using MoCA" is <a href="https://www.tivo.com/my-account/how-to/how-connect-your-tivo-box-your-home-network" target="_blank">here</a>. A page illustrating using a MoCA adapter with a TiVo Premiere is <a href="https://www.tivo.com/assets/images_assets/JoinMoCA_P2.png" target="_blank">here</a>. Using a MoCA adapter with a base Roamio is depicted <a href="https://www.tivo.com/assets/images_assets/JoinMoCA_Roamio.png" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="p1">
My third TV also now has a Verizon cable box on it, and currently, that box can play recordings streamed to it from my Verizon DVR. Relinquishing my Verizon DVR would eliminate that convenience, as that third Verizon cable box would be unable to stream recordings from either the Roamio or the Premiere. So, if I want to watch TiVo Roamio or Premiere recordings on my third TV, I would need to replace the third Verizon cable box with a <a href="https://www.tivo.com/shop/mini" target="_blank">TiVo Mini</a>, for $100.</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.tivo.com/assets/images/shop/mini/tivo-mini.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="175" src="https://www.tivo.com/assets/images/shop/mini/tivo-mini.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>TiVo Mini ($100)</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
The Mini, lacking a tuner or a hard drive, would not need its own CableCARD. The Mini is intrinsically MoCA-capable, so I would not need a MoCA adapter for it.</div>
<br />
So the list of TiVo hardware I'd need would be as follows:<br />
<br />
TiVo Roamio, $200<br />
TiVo Stream for the Roamio, $130<br />
TiVo MoCA network adapter for my base TiVo Roamio, $50<br />
TiVo MoCA network adapter for my TiVo Premiere, $50<br />
TiVo Mini, $100<br />
<br />
Total: $530<br />
<br />
<br />
Ongoing TiVo service is also required:<br />
<br />
For the Roamio, $15 a month<br />
For the Mini, $6 a month<br />
For the Premiere, $0 a month (I already have purchased lifetime service for the Premiere)<br />
<br />
Total: $21 a month<br />
<br />
<br />
In this scenario, I would give up all three of my Verizon cable boxes, including the DVR box, that now cost me $40 a month to rent, while I would add one additional CableCARD, for the Roamio, for $5 a month. (The Premiere already has its own $5/mo CableCARD.) Net monthly savings on my Verizon bill: $35.<br />
<br />
Overall, I would spend $35 - $21 = $14 less than I currently do each month. Dividing the total TiVo hardware cost of $530 by $14 in overall monthly savings, I calculate the TiVo hardware would pay for itself in a little more than 37 months, which is a bit more than three years.<br />
<br />
The basic Roamio has a 500GB hard drive that holds up to 75 hours of HD recordings/650 hours of SD recordings, while the Verizon DVR is a Cisco CHS-435 unit with a 160GB drive holding up to 18 hours HD/80 hours SD.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tivo/id401673976?mt=8" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FKDMRoGLEe4/UzmL1loFxZI/AAAAAAAABWw/Bbku8IFFLFI/s1600/iTunesScreenSnapz001.jpg" width="75" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>TiVo</b><br />
<b>iPad app</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The Roamio has four tuners and can record up to four shows at a time while playing back a fifth. The Verizon DVR has two tuners and can record two shows while playing back a third. So the TiVo Roamio is by far the more capacious and flexible unit. Plus, adding a TiVo Stream to it would let it stream live or recorded TV to the free <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tivo/id401673976?mt=8" target="_blank">TiVo iPad app</a>, a feature the Verizon DVR lacks.<br />
<div>
<br />
Fair warning: in later posts I'll modify this scenario to show what I consider to be an even better one ...<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-14746109413158658252014-03-31T09:45:00.000-04:002014-04-01T09:19:19.466-04:00Mulling a TiVo Roamio (Part 2)In <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2014/03/mulling-tivo-roamio-part-1.html" target="_blank">Mulling a TiVo Roamio (Part 1)</a> I talked about my desire to have all my TV and video streaming channels, all the time, on all my devices, wherever I go. After a nod toward "cord cutting" — getting rid of my Verizon FiOS TV service entirely, along with the three cable boxes in my home — I said the idea currently presents several hurdles.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, I could get pretty close to my dream of all my channels, all the time, on all my devices, wherever I go, if I buy some of the latest DVR boxes from TiVo. I said the centerpiece might be a <a href="https://www.tivo.com/shop/roamio" target="_blank">TiVo Roamio DVR</a>. In a later post, I'll talk in detail about that possibility, along with the other gear I'd need. For now, though, I want to mention how I'd tie multiple TiVo units together in a home network, such that recordings made on my Roamio could be viewed on my other TiVo units.<br />
<br />
The secret is MoCA.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.missingremote.com/legacy/img/stories/actiontec_moca_adapter/actiontec_moca.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.missingremote.com/legacy/img/stories/actiontec_moca_adapter/actiontec_moca.png" height="250" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>MoCA hookup in a typical household</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<div class="p1">
Whole-home, box-to-box streaming of TV content depends on MoCA. Formally, MoCA stands for "Multimedia over Coax Alliance." It uses coaxial cables in the home — the same interconnected physical cables that join all of the cable boxes and other devices to the outside cable network — to let a DVR (shown in Bedroom 1) stream recorded TV shows to other boxes and devices in the home.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
A Verizon FiOS installation automatically implements MoCA for its users. It may do so in the router that comes with Verizon's Internet service. I am also told it might do so in the Optical Network Terminal module attached to the wall of each customer's home. Truth to tell, I'm not exactly sure where FiOS's MoCA support is actually situated. Wherever it is, it would persist, I believe, if I gave up all of my Verizon cable boxes. (I would just use my existing network of interconnected physical cables to hook up the TiVo boxes I envision buying.)</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://uncrate.com/p/2010/03/tivo-premiere-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://uncrate.com/p/2010/03/tivo-premiere-2.jpg" height="120" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>TiVo Premiere DVR</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
That's good, because using a TiVo Roamio and my existing TiVo Premiere to shunt TV recordings to/from one another requires the use of MoCA — or else, if not MoCA, interconnected Ethernet cabling, which I do not happen to have installed. In-home video streaming requires more bandwidth than even the fastest WiFi network can provide, which is why either MoCA or Ethernet is needed.</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.tivo.com/assets/images/shop/mini/tivo-mini.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="175" src="https://www.tivo.com/assets/images/shop/mini/tivo-mini.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>TiVo Mini</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
If I also purchased a <a href="https://www.tivo.com/shop/mini" target="_blank">TiVo Mini</a> to act as a conduit to my third TV, it would receive both recorded and live TV fare from the Roamio and from the Premiere via MoCA. If I did not already have a MoCA network in my home, I would have to create one. I would attach a (second) MoCA network adapter to my existing Verizon-provided Actiontec router in order to do so.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="p1">
But I already have MoCA, courtesy of Verizon, so the second $50 MoCA adapter is unnecessary.</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Next, a fleshed-out version of my anticipated hardware purchase ...</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-33821440548841752562014-03-31T09:03:00.001-04:002014-04-01T09:19:03.964-04:00Mulling a TiVo Roamio (Part 1)<div class="p1">
"TV everywhere" is the buzz-phrase for watching ...</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">all your TV channels</li>
<li class="li1">all your online streaming video sources, such as Netflix</li>
<li class="li1">all your video-on-demand content</li>
<li class="li1">etc.</li>
</ul>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
... on every ...</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">TV</li>
<li class="li1">desktop computer</li>
<li class="li1">laptop</li>
<li class="li1">tablet</li>
<li class="li1">and smartphone that you own ...</li>
</ul>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
... anywhere in your home, and likewise when you are away from home as well.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
I've been thinking I'd like to make all that happen by "cutting the cord": getting rid of my Verizon FiOS cable TV service and the three Verizon cable boxes I now have in my home. (I'd expect to keep my FiOS broadband Internet and landline telephone services, though.)</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
TV content is increasingly available via online streaming, instead of over traditional copper wire or up-to-date fiber-optic cable physically connected to your house. Online TV streaming à la Netflix does accordingly seem to be the wave of the future. For one thing, it can — in concept at least — feed any video content to any digital device anywhere.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fox-sports-go/id711074743?mt=8" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://a1.mzstatic.com/us/r30/Purple6/v4/d8/cc/f0/d8ccf0aa-6a0f-fa6a-0fcd-7320091c5d8d/icon_256.png" height="100" width="100" /></a></div>
Presently, though, there seem to be several hurdles to my cutting the cord. For instance, there is as yet no way I can stream FOX Sports Channel, part of my current Verizon channel lineup, to my iPad's <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fox-sports-go/id711074743?mt=8" target="_blank">FOX Sports Go app</a> – as long as I stay with Verizon, that is. The FOX Sports Go app supports other cable TV outfits, but it doesn't support Verizon.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Even so, today's cable TV, whether it arrives at my house over copper wire or fiber-optic wire, seems to get me closer to "TV everywhere" than any other option available right now, including cord cutting.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://stuwest.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/roamio_lf_w-remote.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://stuwest.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/roamio_lf_w-remote.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>TiVo Roamio DVR, $200</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Which is why I've been looking into the latest DVRs <a href="https://www.tivo.com/shop/roamio" target="_blank">in TiVo's Roamio lineup</a>: the entry-level TiVo Roamio, the TiVo Roamio Plus, and the TiVo Roamio Pro.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
TiVo was an early pioneer in digital video recorders. More recently the cable companies have pretty much caught up, DVR-wise. The Verizon DVR I have right now is better than the 2010-model TiVo Premiere I also have in my home, in many of the ways I most care about. For instance, the TiVo Premiere never had the ability to stream video in real time to my three older TiVo units.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
(None of those older TiVos still work anyway, by the way, owing to power supply or hard drive issues, and I recently turned them in for recycling at my local Best Buy. And the Premiere itself has had to be replaced once, due to a faulty power supply. I am in fact a bit worried about the poor longevity record of TiVo units.)</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
But my Verizon DVR can't stream live TV or TV recordings to my iPad, as the Roamios can. (The plain-vanilla $200 Roamio, in contrast with the $400 Plus and $600 Pro, needs to be paired with a $130 TiVo Stream unit to do this.)</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/verizon-fios-mobile/id406387206?mt=8" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://www.whasapp.org/wp-content/plugins/RSSPoster_PRO/cache/bdfe2_mXxxjtzxiPhBBZ1N-7Eij2xp2nGYtgt_vy_mlnqbWt93LlIJlAXmFl6D3y45PQFDyw=w300" height="100" width="100" /></a></div>
True, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/verizon-fios-mobile/id406387206?mt=8" target="_blank">Verizon's FiOS Mobile iPad app</a> does let me watch certain live cable channels, but <i>only</i> certain ones. Not my local over-the-air channels, not my regional sports networks, and not every national cable channel is included in the list of iPad-available channels. Only a few of the channels that the iPad can stream work outside my home. I want all my channels, all the time, on all my devices, wherever I go.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Going the TiVo route, I could replace my Verizon DVR with a basic Roamio for $200, and add a TiVo Stream to it for $130. The Roamio would use a CableCARD from Verizon to receive the Verizon channels I subscribe to.</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
(Various posts at <a href="http://www.tivocommunity.com/home/" target="_blank">the TivoCommunity forum</a> indicate that I can pick up the CableCARD I need at the Verizon Store and install it myself. The correct "M-card" part number is 514517-017-00. I can go to <a href="http://www.verizon.com/cs/groups/public/documents/onecmsresource/11047_ccf_crm_cable_d97e.pdf" target="_blank">this web page</a> for full instructions on self-installing it. At the very end, the process requires entering an activation code that is specified on a Welcome Letter or Customer Receipt I will have received. If I have already completed the earlier steps given in the full procedure, I can also activate the CableCARD by going to <a href="http://www.verizon.com/fiostv/selfinstall/" target="_blank">this page</a>.)</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
I believe that combination of TiVo Roamio and TiVo Stream would be able to stream recordings to my existing TiVo Premiere, which already has a CableCARD, as long as I augment each unit, the Roamio and the Premiere, with a $50 MoCA network adapter from TiVo. If I did all that, I could relinquish the Verizon cable box now serving the TV with the Premiere hooked to it. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
(Optionally, I believe I might also hook a TiVo Stream to the Premiere, if I wanted to record iPad-streamable shows on the Premiere, too. However, that option might be overkill at this point; moreover, I'm not exactly sure whether my gear array would work with two TiVo Streams in it.)</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
My third TV also now has a Verizon cable box on it, and currently, that box can play recordings streamed from my Verizon DVR. Relinquishing my Verizon DVR would eliminate that convenience, as that third Verizon cable box would be unable to stream recordings from either the Roamio or the Premiere. So, if I want to watch TiVo recordings on my third TV, I would need to replace the third Verizon cable box with a TiVo Mini, for $100. The Mini, lacking a tuner or a hard drive, would not need its own CableCARD.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
</div>
<div class="p1">
Note that I would lose access to Verizon's video-on-demand content if I gave up all of my Verizon boxes, as CableCARDs are unable to access Verizon VOD.</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Next up, a discussion of MoCA ...</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
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erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-1436582580760509952014-03-23T11:21:00.000-04:002014-03-27T12:53:44.005-04:00Live TV Everywhere? (Part 2)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="p1">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.enzasbargains.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Verizon-logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.enzasbargains.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Verizon-logo.jpg" width="120" /></a></div>
<a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2014/03/live-tv-everywhere-part-1.html" target="_blank">Last time</a>, I talked about how a deal recently inked by Verizon and Intel may pave the way for getting rid of my clunky Verizon FiOS cable boxes, letting me stream cable TV over the Internet to all my TV screens, computers, and handheld devices.
<br />
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Now, the downside. Powerful interests just don't want "a virtual cable service that would sell a bundle of television channels to subscribers over the Internet," to borrow the words of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/business/media/gatekeepers-of-cable-tv-try-to-stop-intel.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&h" target="_blank">a New York Times article</a><span class="s2"> I cited last time. </span>Among them is the nation's biggest cable TV outfit, Comcast, which is currently trying to get federal approval to buy the next biggest cable outfit, Time Warner.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Only the satellite TV companies DirecTV and Dish Network serve more customers than Time Warner Cable does, per the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_system_operator" target="_blank">Wikipedia article on "multiple-system operators," or MSOs</a>. However, the satellite companies each serve <i>fewer</i> customers than the top cable dog, Comcast.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
All the cable-oriented MSOs are, by definition, companies that own a number of local cable TV outfits. I'll refer to them as cable TV "behemoths."<br />
<br />
Cable TV behemoths such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable have lucrative contracts with the cable channel owners, paying them copious quantities of cash for the rights to carry bundled groups of channels.</div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://worldsoccertalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/espn-logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://worldsoccertalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/espn-logo.jpg" width="120" /></a></div>
For example, Disney owns the various ESPN sports channels and insists that cable companies like Comcast pay for the less popular ones, such as ESPN Classic, if they want to carry the most-watched sports channel, ESPN itself. Meanwhile, Disney gets revenue from selling ads on <i>all</i> the channels in its ESPN group.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
That analysis comes from <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/amadoudiallo/2013/10/14/cable-tv-price-hikes-unsustainable/" target="_blank">a Forbes article</a> on the so-called "cable TV business model." And here's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/business/media/comcast-vs-the-cord-cutters.html?_r=2" target="_blank">a New York Times article</a> that discusses why MSOs are making life difficult for potential "cord cutters": cable customers like me who'd like to escape from the clutches of the cable TV behemoths entirely.</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
As an aspiring cord cutter, I'd like to ditch my current Verizon cable boxes and get every channel I want<br />
<br /></div>
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">online</li>
<li class="li1">on every screen I own</li>
<li class="li1">in my home or on handheld devices on the road</li>
<li class="li1">with all of my channels paid for à la carte, not bundled</li>
</ul>
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<a href="http://www.technewsplus.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Aereo-logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.technewsplus.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Aereo-logo.jpg" width="120" /></a></div>
Plus, I want a "cloud DVR," à la <a href="http://aereo.com/" target="_blank">Aereo</a>, the recent startup that sells online access to local over-the-air broadcast channels without the need for a cable or satellite TV box. My review of Aereo is <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2014/03/aereo-review.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
<div class="p3">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
What I want to know is: can my wish ever come true?<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
* * * * *</div>
</div>
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<a href="http://semiaccurate.com/assets/uploads/2011/07/Intel-logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://semiaccurate.com/assets/uploads/2011/07/Intel-logo.jpg" width="120" /></a></div>
It can't come true if the cable behemoths get their way. Afraid of cord cutters, they apparently have been pressuring channel providers to refuse to sell access to the likes of Intel. Yet Verizon has existing contracts with channel owners already. Moreover, Verizon is not, strictly speaking, a cable behemoth, since its FiOS network uses fiber-optic transmission, not copper wire.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
My ultimate wish is for what techies call "over the top" (OTT) TV.</div>
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<div class="p1">
"Over the top" is geek talk for online access to the likes of ABC, FOX, ESPN, CNN, and AMC, right alongside the likes of Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Redbox, and Hulu Plus. OTT would use one seamless and easily navigable interface which disguises the fact that the first group of content sources is made up of erstwhile over-the-air/cable channels, while the second group comprises content sources that have always resided online.</div>
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By its very nature, OTT delivery of video content could put all channels — note that Netflix, Amazon, etc. would become "channels" under this scheme — on every device and screen that can connect to the Internet. The connection can come in any broadband form:<br />
<br /></div>
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">wired hookups such as Ethernet cables</li>
<li class="li1">WiFi wireless, or</li>
<li class="li1">any 3G/4G cellular network, such as the one Verizon already has in place.</li>
</ul>
<div class="p1">
<br />
A <a href="http://mashable.com/2014/01/21/intel-oncue-failed/" target="_blank">column at Mashable.com</a> talks about how my OTT wish <i>almost</i> came true with Intel's OnCue Cloud TV platform project. The column mentions several kindred attempts to unify live TV with other entertainment content:<br />
<br /></div>
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1"><a href="http://www.comcast.com/x1" target="_blank">Comcast's "cutting edge" X1 box</a></li>
<li class="li3"><span class="s2"><a href="https://www.tivo.com/shop/roamio" target="_blank">TiVo's Roamio Plus DVR</a></span></li>
<li class="li3"><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/meet-xbox-one#adrenalinejunkie" target="_blank">Microsoft's Xbox One video game console</a></span></li>
</ul>
<div class="p1">
<br />
But the Mashable columnist, lamenting the demise of Intel's in-house OnCue project, says, "OnCue was the holy grail of television."</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
The columnist, Christina Warren, writes, "The problem wasn't so much getting the content providers to agree to offer content to Intel, but instead, the cost of that content." The cost of licensing content for OnCue, also once referred to as Intel TV, would have come to "hundreds of millions of dollars."</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
That number came from a Reuters article, "<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/20/us-intel-tv-insight-idUSBRE9AJ17620131120" target="_blank">For Intel, Hollywood dreams prove a leap too far</a>." Intel, the article says, "could not afford the distraction and expense" of developing OnCue at a time when its "massive" core business, the manufacture of computer chips, is "flagging."</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Intel, says Reuters, "has struggled to manage the transition from traditional personal computers to mobile devices. … [and] it has little experience selling consumer products, much less television programming." Because its core revenue generator has been underperforming, it now wants to refocus on what it does best. Hence the sale of OnCue to Verizon.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
But, the Reuters article suggests, OnCue would not have fulfilled my dreams entirely. For example, OnCue would not have offered TV channels completely à la carte. Channels would ostensibly have been "bundled right" — the less-popular channels would likely have been "sliced off" — but they would still have been bundled.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
What's more, OnCue would have centered on hardware, not content: a "black box" not unlike today's omnipresent cable box. It's not clear how big and clunky the black box would have been, but it seems to me that anything bigger than today's Apple TV or Roku, each not much larger than a hockey puck, would be too big.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p4">
</div>
<div class="p1">
Another OnCue problem, according to Reuters: "Viewers streaming previously aired shows from some networks would [not have been] allowed to fast-forward through commercials."</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Boo hiss to that constraint.<br />
<br />
Anyway, OnCue seemingly wasn't going to be my cord-cutting Holy Grail ... but perhaps Verizon's eventual take on the same OTT dream will turn out to be everything I wish for.<br />
<br />
Stay tuned for more on cord cutting ...</div>
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</div>
erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-40605198693350670922014-03-23T10:29:00.000-04:002014-03-23T10:58:33.165-04:00Live TV Everywhere? (Part 1)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://cdn.dmad.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/fios-triple-play-bundle-2012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://cdn.dmad.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/fios-triple-play-bundle-2012.jpg" height="85" width="200" /></a></div>
I have a desktop computer, a laptop, an iPad, and an iPhone. Each of the three TVs in my home is hooked to a cable box as part of my Verizon FiOS Triple Play bundle. One of those cable boxes doubles as a DVR that can feed TV recordings to the other two boxes. Two of my TVs connect to Apple TV streaming media players — and one of the TVs has a Roku streaming media player — that feed it video and audio content. And I also have two Sony PlayStation 3's that double as streaming media players.<br />
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
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Trouble is, no one device is capable of letting me view every single channel or content source I have legitimate access to.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
In Verizon's Prime HD package, I get a huge number of channels — most of which I never watch. I can look at many of these channels <i>only</i> through one of my Verizon boxes.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/mXxxjtzxiPhBBZ1N-7Eij2xp2nGYtgt_vy_mlnqbWt93LlIJlAXmFl6D3y45PQFDyw=w300" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/mXxxjtzxiPhBBZ1N-7Eij2xp2nGYtgt_vy_mlnqbWt93LlIJlAXmFl6D3y45PQFDyw=w300" height="100" width="100" /></a></div>
Verizon's FiOS Mobile app for the iPad can stream a certain number of those cable channels, but not all of them. For example, I can't stream most sports channels in FiOS Mobile. Adding to the confusion, only a subset of the FiOS Mobile app's live-streaming channels work outside my home.</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Meanwhile, just about every device I have can stream Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, and/or other streaming sources of content. Oddly, my Verizon cable boxes can't do that. So I have to keep a map in my head of what devices I <i>cannot</i> use for any given channel or streaming content source.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
The main problem lies with Verizon. Verizon could in concept let me view any duly authorized cable channel on any of my screens.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
It could also put apps — in Verizon-speak, "widgets" — on its cable boxes for Netflix and other streaming content sources. But that's a separate issue, to my mind, since I'm really hoping for a solution that would eliminate the clunky cable box entirely.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://mediaserver.pulse2.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/intel-oncue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://mediaserver.pulse2.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/intel-oncue.jpg" height="107" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>OnCue: the original,</b><br />
<b>pre-Verizon idea</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Recent developments suggest that in fact Verizon now envisions something very like what I want. Verizon has just purchased Intel Media, an arm of Intel that had until recently been developing OnCue, a technology designed to stream cable channels over the Internet.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
A New York Times discussion of the promising Intel-Verizon deal can be read <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/technology/verizon-to-expand-tv-services-with-intel-media-purchase.html?_r=0" target="_blank">here</a>. Bloomberg News had <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-13/verizon-said-near-agreement-to-buy-intel-s-start-up-tv-service.html" target="_blank">this</a> to say about the deal Well before the Verizon deal came along, the New York Times said <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/business/media/gatekeepers-of-cable-tv-try-to-stop-intel.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&h" target="_blank">this</a> of the Intel OnCue initiative.<br />
<br />
In my next installment, I'll talk about how I as an aspiring "cord cutter" want to ditch my cable boxes forever.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p4">
<br /></div>
erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-89531619798654795532014-03-04T14:27:00.000-05:002014-03-23T12:19:20.470-04:00Aereo: A Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Remember rooftop TV antennas? Remember rabbit ears? You probably don't have either of those old-fashioned gadgets — if you ever did — and use cable or satellite TV instead.<br />
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You may also be among the millions who stream video from Netflix or other online sources.<br />
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Now there's also <a href="https://aereo.com/" target="_blank">Aereo</a>.<br />
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Aereo lets you stream live television to your computer or laptop, whether a Mac or a PC, and to your handheld devices such as an iPad or iPhone — but for some reason, currently not to Android devices.<br />
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Apple's iOS devices — iPads, iPhones, iPod Touches — receive Aereo via their built-in Safari browser, not a freestanding app. However, you can place an Aereo icon on your home screen to use as a one-touch shortcut:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OObOF3wu--c/UxYosWDVB1I/AAAAAAAABVQ/xJZaCEgMQSE/s1600/Home+Screen+Icon.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OObOF3wu--c/UxYosWDVB1I/AAAAAAAABVQ/xJZaCEgMQSE/s1600/Home+Screen+Icon.png" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Aereo shortcut icon</b><b>, circled in red,</b><b> on</b><br />
<b>iPad home </b><b>screen</b></td></tr>
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If you have a $99 Apple TV settop box connected to your television, Aereo can send TV shows to it from a Mac, or from any of Apple's iOS-based handheld devices, by means of Apple's AirPlay technology.<br />
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If you have a Roku settop box — Roku is a $50-to-$100 Apple TV competitor — it can stream Aereo directly. Information about using Aereo on a Roku can be found at Aereo Support Center <a href="http://support.aereo.com/customer/portal/topics/431125-roku/articles" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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The catch? Well, there are a few. One, Aereo gives you only your local over-the-air broadcast stations (plus a few extras such as Bloomberg TV). Two, Aereo is not free; its basic cost is $8 a month (you can try Aereo for the first month for free). Three, Aereo is, as of this writing, available only in the following cities:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Atlanta</li>
<li>Austin</li>
<li>Baltimore</li>
<li>Birmingham, AL</li>
<li>Boston (also services southern Vermont and New Hampshire)</li>
<li>Chicago</li>
<li>Cincinnati (including northern Kentucky and southeastern Indiana)</li>
<li>Cleveland</li>
<li>Dallas</li>
<li>Denver</li>
<li>Detroit</li>
<li>Houston</li>
<li>Kansas City</li>
<li>Madison, WI</li>
<li>Miami</li>
<li>Minneapolis</li>
<li>Philadelphia</li>
<li>Pittsburgh</li>
<li>Providence, RI</li>
<li>Raleigh-Durham, NC</li>
<li>Salt Lake City (also services entire state of Utah)</li>
<li>Tampa</li>
<li>Washington D.C.</li>
</ul>
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Other cities remain on Aereo's waiting list.<br />
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Aereo also gives you the virtual equivalent of a digital video recorder, much like a TiVo. You can set Aereo's DVR to "record" any show that Aereo lets you watch live, instead of (or while) watching it at its time of broadcast. When you tell Aereo to record a program, it asks you whether you want to record just that one episode, all episodes, or episodes that are marked "New" in Aereo's program guide. If you pick either of these last two options, you can say how many episodes you want to retain before the oldest are erased. You can also rank to-be-recorded shows according to priority so that if there turns out to be a scheduling conflict, a less important show will give way to the more important one.<br />
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I think of Aereo's record function as a "save" function, since the "recording" does not take place on your computer or other personally owned device. It sits online, in the "cloud," from which you can stream it whenever you're ready. That's a good thing, since Aereo's video recordings would quickly chew up the on-board storage on, say, an iPad.<br />
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Behind the scenes, Aereo gives each customer his/her own mini-antenna that is located … well, we really don't know, or care, where Aereo places its antenna, which, I hear, is smaller than the size of a dime. This antenna picks up the digital signal for every TV station in the local broadcast market. When I watch Aereo, the signal from "my" personal Aereo mini-antenna is sent across the Internet to my house, where my computers, my iPad, my iPhone, my Roku, and my Apple TV (via AirPlay from other Apple devices) can use it.<br />
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The $8 a month basic fee gets you a single Aereo antenna; you can record one show at a time from it, saving up to 20 hours worth of TV shows. If you bump the fee to $12 a month, you get two antennas that let you record two shows at once, with a maximum of 60 hours saved at any given time. Either plan lets you authorize up to five devices for Aereo; note that each computer-based browser you authorize, such as Chrome, Safari, or Internet Explorer, counts as a separate device.<br />
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In my case, my TV market it the one in Baltimore, MD. Aereo's stations here include the local affiliates of ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CW, and PBS. The PBS station, called MPT for Maryland Public Television, also offers two ancillary channels: MPT 2 and, for speakers of Spanish, V-me. The NBC affiliate, WBAL-TV, also offers the MeTV channel featuring a selection of old TV shows.<br />
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There are also non-broadcast channels: MyNetworkTV, ThisTV, LiveWell, BounceTV, and ZUUS. I haven't sampled any of those yet. Nor have I signed up for Bloomberg TV.<br />
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Like a TiVo or cable-based DVR, Aereo gives me a program guide showing all the programs that are available on every channel through the next 13 days. In this iPad screen shot, the guide is on the right of the image:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Xu4QH-H3pgQ/UxY5_QXT1uI/AAAAAAAABVg/qPhmnhVBDx0/s1600/IMG_0096.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Xu4QH-H3pgQ/UxY5_QXT1uI/AAAAAAAABVg/qPhmnhVBDx0/s1600/IMG_0096.PNG" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Main Aereo screen w/ program guide shown at right</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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I can use this guide or the handy Aereo search function to find shows to watch or record.</div>
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I can watch live or recorded shows anywhere I choose to take any of my Aereo-capable devices, as long as I can get online from that location. If I am out and about, I can watch Aereo anyplace that offers free WiFi. I originally assumed this capability might include places outside my local TV market so I could watch my local shows, live or recorded, while on vacation. I have read, however, that Aereo does not currently let you roam in this fashion.</div>
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A remote WiFi connection, if it happens to be slow, may give the user lowered picture quality and/or stops, starts, and hesitations due to buffering delays. Yet my experiment with watching Aereo using a local public library's WiFi hookup gave me (I know because Aereo lets the user check the speed) a network speed of over 8 Mbps, enough to watch TV in High-quality mode without any problem.</div>
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However, at one of my local Panera Bread outlets I did experience problems. I saw poor-quality video, and the video stream sometimes stopped dead. I found that when the picture froze due to a slow connection on my iPad, it would not automatically restart. I had to hit Pause and then Play to get things moving again. Aereo's speed check was at the time saying my network speed was 1 Mbps, enough for only Low-quality video. </div>
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Note that having a slow connection has no effect on <i>recording</i> quality. Playback of those recordings, though, may be compromised — until you can restore a fast network connection, that is.</div>
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Also, Aereo works over a cellular 3G/4G connection, as opposed to WiFi, for those Aereo devices which are equipped to use cellular networks. You may find that sort of connection too slow for anything but Low video quality, and/or find that you churn through your monthly data limit real fast. However, my test (which was also made at the local public library, but with WiFi turned off on my iPad) gave me High video quality using cellular 3G!</div>
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Though I mostly use Aereo on my iPad, I have also used it with good results on my Mac computer, using either Chrome or Safari as my browser, and on my Roku settop device.<br />
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Here are some screen shots from my iPad:</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-G7AHBR-28iE/UxY6Zk5MLZI/AAAAAAAABVo/CNUMT-F15wA/s1600/IMG_0095.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-G7AHBR-28iE/UxY6Zk5MLZI/AAAAAAAABVo/CNUMT-F15wA/s1600/IMG_0095.PNG" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>The Aereo iPad shortcut's startup screen</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JUnqc2xYxPk/UxY6nQkHk4I/AAAAAAAABVw/yxIvNxVtBGs/s1600/IMG_0097.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JUnqc2xYxPk/UxY6nQkHk4I/AAAAAAAABVw/yxIvNxVtBGs/s1600/IMG_0097.PNG" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Watching a recording of "Jeopardy"</b></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--p_IwQG13fU/UxY63_sEMmI/AAAAAAAABV4/NK3wbAwyDoY/s1600/IMG_0098.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--p_IwQG13fU/UxY63_sEMmI/AAAAAAAABV4/NK3wbAwyDoY/s1600/IMG_0098.PNG" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>"Jeopardy" expanded to full screen<br />(The controls at top and bottom disappear<br />after a few seconds.)</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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In my home, the Aereo picture quality is quite good. Using my Roku settop box there, I watched Olympic ice hockey via Aereo on my large flat-screen TV. The video quality, though not precisely high-def, let me follow fast motion without complaint. However, I did notice occasional blocky pixellation when the scene changed abruptly.<br />
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Like a lot of people, I have a WiFi router that connects my house to my broadband Internet provider, Verizon FiOS. FiOS stands for <u>Fi</u>ber <u>O</u>ptic <u>S</u>ervice. It's not literally cable TV, since the signal is transmitted by underground fiber-optic cable, not copper wire. But functionally, aside from speed considerations, it is equivalent to cable TV.<br />
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Using my Internet connection and the in-home WiFi capability of my Verizon-provided router, I get enough online speed to watch Aereo shows at the High video-quality setting. At this setting the picture is, as I say, generally quite crisp. The picture optionally can fill the entire width of my iPad or computer screen, typically with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. The other quality settings, Low and Med(ium), give lower video quality but the same full-screen width. An Auto quality setting picks the highest video quality that the online Aereo connection can currently provide.<br />
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As one who is somewhat hearing-impaired, I am pleased to find that Aereo supports closed captioning (CC). On my iPad, though, I have to use the Auto quality setting to see the captions. On some programs the captions don't always display properly on the iPad, with the right side of lines of text getting chopped off. Aereo needs to work on its CC support on iOS devices, but it <i>is</i> there.<br />
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* * * * *</div>
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Is Aereo worth it? At $8 a month, I consider Aereo quite affordable. Aereo's reasonable pricing derives from the fact that the company doesn't pay NBC, CBS, et al. for the right to retransmit programming. Ordinary cable-TV companies — including Verizon FiOS — do. Aereo is being sued on that account, in a lawsuit headed for the Supreme Court.<br />
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Aereo argues that it's just selling you the use of an antenna (plus, of course, its "cloud DVR" functionality). I have no idea at all whether Aereo is on safe legal ground. If Aereo loses its case, the company conceivably might go poof. (However, rest assured that there's no allegation that Aereo's customers are doing anything illegal, and if Aereo does disappear, its customers would be out no more than one month's fee.)<br />
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Or Aereo might have to start paying money to its program sources, in which case its pricing to customers would surely go up. I wonder, given that Aereo can't offer a full range of cable channels, whether it would be able to survive, say, a doubling of its prices?<br />
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You might think the broadcast networks would love Aereo for bringing yet more eyeballs to their ads. But Aereo might help convince cable subscribers to "cut the cord" and just stream Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu, etc. — along with Aereo — to their computers, settop boxes, and handhelds. The likes of Comcast and Verizon in the cable industry hate the thought of that — as do the major TV networks, who receive dollars from cable companies for the right to carry their signals.<br />
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In my personal estimation, Cut-the-Cord Day hasn't actually arrived, but it might not be far off. There are channels on Verizon FiOS that I'm loath to give up, including the sports channels and WETA UK, the Washington, DC, outlet that broadcasts my favorite British shows. But a lot of those shows are out there on Netflix, and some sports fare can now be accessed online, without cable or satellite TV as an intermediary.<br />
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More about the ins and outs of cord-cutting can be read at:<br />
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/business/media/comcast-vs-the-cord-cutters.html?_r=1" target="_blank">Comcast vs. the Cord Cutters - NYTimes.com</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/amadoudiallo/2013/10/16/how-to-cut-the-cord-cable-tv/" target="_blank">Ready To Cut The Cable TV Cord? Here's How To Do It - Forbes.com</a></div>
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Of course, Verizon would still get a lot of my money anyway, if I cut my cable-TV cord, since I obtain broadband Internet access from them — plus, my Verizon Triple Play package includes phone service. I might one day drop Verizon as my cable TV provider and maybe even drop their landline phone service. But my broadband Internet service might cost <i>more</i> if I unbundled it, or else the savings from dropping cable TV might be vanishingly small. And I'd have to pay for a range of à la carte TV sources such as Netflix, Hulu, and Aereo (some of which I already use, admittedly) to make up for ditching Verizon cable.<br />
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It's a complicated choice. By the time I added it all up, I might be spending just as much money as before, if not more.</div>
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erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-2149919764362876612012-05-04T07:27:00.003-04:002012-05-04T07:54:40.137-04:00Using My Mac as a DVR w/ Elgato EyeTV HDI've converted my Mac into a DVR!<br />
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The secret: using Elgato's <a href="http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/EyeTV-HD/product1.en.html" target="_blank">EyeTV HD</a>. More about that <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=17rxz13UPpRDBfrvYZ5WpY7Yc_rq9NPZqPJzLEGB69dA" target="_blank">here</a> and here:<br />
<br />
<iframe height="500" src="https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=17rxz13UPpRDBfrvYZ5WpY7Yc_rq9NPZqPJzLEGB69dA&" width="100%"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
It's way cool!erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-6362467447598277592011-03-26T13:36:00.002-04:002012-05-02T05:44:18.582-04:00Check Out My "Streaming Media 101: Do You Hulu?" Google Doc<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
If you are, like many of us, baffled by the wide range of ways to stream videos from the Web to your computer <i>or</i> your television today, check out my "<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1tHPesIy6oi8Wd64tOJThejMJSE_CiOOduOqkujtoUw4" target="_blank">Streaming Media 101: Do You Hulu?</a>" Google Doc.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
The article is a work in progress, and I'm continually revising it and adding to it. If you have any questions or concerns that you would like me to address in the article, please feel free to leave a comment to this blog post telling me what changes or additions you'd like to see. Thanks.</div>
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<br /></div>erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-47596072418618562932011-02-16T10:47:00.484-05:002011-05-19T10:10:14.094-04:00Stream Movies Mac-to-Mac with VLCI wrote in <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2010/05/save-hd-recordings-on-your-mac-stream.html">Archive HDTV Recordings to Your Mac, Then Stream Them Back to Your TiVo!</a> about how I capture TiVo-made recordings to my iMac's external hard drives, then (though they have been erased from the TiVo) watch them once again via the TiVo itself.<br />
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In another blog, in <a href="http://itunesnotes.blogspot.com/2011/01/stream-itunes-movies-to-iphone.html" style="color: blue; text-decoration: none;">Stream iTunes Movies from Mac to iPhone Safari</a>, I talked about watching the same recordings — mostly old movies from Turner Classic Movies — in the Safari app on my iPhone. And in a pair of <a href="http://itunesnotes.blogspot.com/search/label/Movies%3A%20TiVo%20to%20Mac%20to%20Apple%20TV%20%2B%20iPhone" rel="tag" style="border-bottom-color: red; border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: purple; text-decoration: none;">Movies: TiVo to Mac to Apple TV + iPhone</a> posts, I detailed other, non-Safari ways to stream my archived movies to either an iPhone or an Apple TV.<br />
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See a pattern here? I like to <i>stream</i> archived video content from my Mac to other devices (including back to the original TiVo).<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><b><u>Streaming Mac-to-Mac</u></b></div><br />
One of the "other devices" that I've been neglecting is my "other" Mac, a MacBook Pro laptop. Bought several years ago, it hasn't really gotten much use of late — until now.<br />
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There are several Apple-approved ways to stream video content from one Mac to another across a home network centered on a WiFi router such as my Apple AirPort Base Station. For generality, I'll assume the two Macs in question are the "server" Mac (in my case, my iMac) and the "client" Mac (my MacBook Pro). To use standard Finder methods to connect the client Mac to the server Mac, I simply open a Finder window — <i>any</i> Finder window; that for the main hard drive, Macintosh HD, will do — on my client Mac's desktop. Then I look for the client Mac in the window's sidebar, under "SHARED."<br />
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(If you don't see your server Mac in the Finder window of your client Mac, you need to read the "Browsing for shared computers and file servers on your network" Mac Help page, which you can locate via the Help menu in the Finder.)<br />
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I double-click on the client Mac's icon in the server Mac Finder window's sidebar. After a few seconds I see "Connected as: Guest" in the Finder window. (Note that there is no indication on the server Mac that all this is going on.) A Guest connection's not good enough, though, so I click on the "Connect As ... " button in the Finder window to bring up a dialog asking for a name and password to access the file server that my server Mac appears to be, from the point of view of my client Mac. I enter those two items and click the "Connect" button.<br />
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Now I see, in the same Finder window on the client Mac, the "Connected as: <u>username</u>" confirmation that indicates I'm no longer a Guest on the server Mac. A list of my server Mac's various external hard drives (as well as certain other folders) appears in this window on the client Mac as well. At this point, I'll just open the particular folder that contains the particular movie I want to watch, and then drill down until I locate the actual movie file.<br />
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For purposes of this discussion, I'll be playing my archive copy of the classic 1944 movie <i>Gaslight</i>, starring Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, and Joseph Cotten. It's in a file called <b>Gaslight.mp4</b>, which has this fully specified file path on the server Mac:<br />
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<b>/Volumes/Segundo Dos/iTunes Videos on Segundo Dos/Gaslight/Gaslight.mp4</b><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><b><u>Streaming Using QuickTime Player</u></b></div><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.lacademy.edu/uploaded/Our_Community_Files/WRLA_Files/337272202430336541.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="100" src="http://www.lacademy.edu/uploaded/Our_Community_Files/WRLA_Files/337272202430336541.png" width="100" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">QuickTime Player's icon</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Once I drill down in the client Mac's Finder window to that <b>Gaslight.mp4</b> file, the easiest way to play it on the client Mac is to open it in QuickTime Player on that Mac. If on that Mac I have QuickTime Player set as the default app for playing <b>.mp4</b> files, all I have to do is double-click on the file's icon. A QuickTime Player window opens, and the movie starts to play.<br />
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If you <i>don't</i> have QuickTime Player set as your Mac's default <b>.mp4</b> player, you can either drag the file's icon to the the QuickTime Player icon in the dock, or else you can right-click (control-click) on the file's icon and choose QuickTime Player in the Open With part of the popup menu that you see.<br />
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That method works fine ... with qualifications. One, it doesn't pick up the subtitles that, using an app called ccextractor, I've derived from the original file's closed captions and put in a companion file called <b>Gaslight.srt</b>. (Slightly deaf, I like subtitles.) Two, in my household there are spots where my home WiFi network can't deliver the video to my client MacBook fast enough to avoid occasional stops, starts, and stutters. This happens because the amount of data that QuickTime Player caches in its playback buffer is small enough that if the network hiccups, the buffer runs out of data. I'd like to enlarge the QuickTime Player cache buffer, but I don't know how.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><b><u>Home Sharing Streaming: iTunes</u></b></div><br />
A second method is to stream the movie to my client Mac via the iTunes application. I have added the <b>Gaslight.mp4</b> file to my iTunes library on the server Mac, so on the client I can just look for it in "iTunes on iMac," found under "SHARED" on the left side of the main iTunes window (<i>not</i> the left side of a Finder Window). This in turn works because I have selected the "Turn On Home Sharing" item in the Advanced menu in iTunes on <i>both</i> Macs and entered into the resulting dialog the e-mail address and password for my account at the iTunes Store.<br />
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This time the movie plays in an iTunes window. The results are decent, but with the same qualifications as before. Plus, this particular method does no let me use the elapsed time "scrubber bar" to move easily to any arbitrary point in the movie. This is something I like to be able to do if I stopped watching the movie at time (say) 1 hr. 9 min. and want to quickly resume at that point. iTunes, when streaming the movie from a server in this way, won't let me "scrub" past the small amount of video material that it currently has accumulated in its buffer at any given moment in time.<br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><b><u>Home Sharing Streaming: Front Row</u></b></div><div><b><u><br />
</u></b></div><br />
Because I'm using Home Sharing, in theory I ought to be able to use a third way to stream my <b>Gaslight.mp4</b> file from server to client: Front Row.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.zath.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/front-row-mac-os-media-centre-software-main-menu-screenshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="292" src="http://www.zath.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/front-row-mac-os-media-centre-software-main-menu-screenshot.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<br />
Entering Front Row, either by using the Apple Remote of my server Mac or by typing Command-Esc from the keyboard, I navigate to the Sources menu and then open its "iTunes on iMac" item. After Front Row loads information from my "iTunes on iMac" library, it lets me select "Movies." From the onscreen list that I see then, I select "Gaslight," and I wait ... and wait ... and wait. No movie <i>ever</i> appears on my client Mac's screen ...<br />
<br />
There is something about Front Row (at least in Mac OS X "Leopard" version 10.5.8, which I'm running on both Macs) that simply <i>won't</i> let it stream movies from Home Sharing server to client, even though the same movie files stream reasonably well in QuickTime Player or in iTunes on the client Mac.<br />
<br />
So none of the three Apple-sanctioned methods fill my bill entirely. Enter VLC.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b><u>Streaming Using VLC</u></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="100" src="http://images1.videolan.org/images/largeVLC.png" width="100" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">VLC's icon</td></tr>
</tbody></table><a href="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/">VLC</a> is "a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player ... that plays most multimedia files as well as DVD, Audio CD, VCD, and various streaming protocols."<br />
<br />
In other words, if you have a computer video or audio file or a shiny digital disc that contains video or audio material, chances are VLC can play it. (The main exception: files that are copy-protected, such as movies you buy at the iTunes Store, won't let VLC play them.)<br />
<br />
<b>Gaslight.mp4</b>, as the <b>.mp4</b> filename extension implies, is an "MPEG-4 container file" — geek-speak for a file organized in the MPEG-4 format. Specifically, this MPEG-4 container file contains video information that was created by H.264 — H.264 is a "codec," i.e., a coder-decoder for digital video. I know which codec the <b>Gaslight.mp4</b> file uses because I myself created the file, using ImTOO HD Video Converter 6. In that application I selected the "H.264/MPEG-4 AVC" video codec in making the <b>Gaslight.mp4</b> file. (AVC is another name for H.264.)<br />
<br />
VLC is capable of playing MPEG-4/H.264 video files. Once I have a Finder window open on my client Mac that contains the <b>Gaslight.mp4</b> file, I just drag that file's icon to the VLC icon in my dock. VLC opens a player window in which the video begins playing. It's magic!<br />
<br />
On the client Mac I can also make VLC the default player for <b>.mp4</b> files. I do that by selecting any such file in Finder — <b>Gaslight.mp4</b> will do fine — and typing Command-I to bring up its Get Info window. In that window I use the Open with: drop-down menu to select VLC.1.1.7. I click on the Change All... button to "Use this application to open all documents like this." A dialog appears: "Are you sure you want to change all similar documents to open with the application VLC?/This change will apply to all documents with extension '.mp4'." I click Continue and then close the <b>Gaslight.mp4</b> Info window. Simple as that. Now all I have to do is double-click the <b>Gaslight.mp4</b> icon, and VLC opens the video in a player window on the client Mac.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Zy43sS52GmE/TWCxelBY8QI/AAAAAAAAAyk/m69kxzrU3WQ/s1600/Gaslight+Player+Window.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="245" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Zy43sS52GmE/TWCxelBY8QI/AAAAAAAAAyk/m69kxzrU3WQ/s400/Gaslight+Player+Window.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Very cool!</div>erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-6379534487208575602010-05-27T11:39:00.011-04:002010-05-28T02:54:17.148-04:00TiVo Premiere Is Here!There's a new kid on the block in TiVo town, the <a href="https://www3.tivo.com/store/boxes.do">TiVo Premiere</a>. Along with its more capacious brother, the Premiere XL — the XL's larger internal hard drive holds 156 hours of HD programming to 45 for the Premiere — it brings TiVo digital video recorders into their fourth generation.<br />
<br />
TiVos are "digital video recorders": boxes that let you record TV programs digitally. DVRs are like videocassette recorders without the cassettes — anybody remember VCRs? A TiVo DVR can be set up to "tape" dozens or even hundreds of your favorite programs on its internal hard drive, where they sit until you play them. You play them whenever.<br />
<br />
Personally, I'm extremely glad a TiVo is (finally) fast enough to stream back to itself high-def recordings that have been archived a computer, without pausing all the time because it can't buffer the received data fast enough. I'll talk more about that later. But, first ...<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"><b>Meet the TiVo Premiere</b></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"><b><br />
</b></span></div>Here's what the TiVo Premiere looks like (click to enlarge):<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.gadget.com/files/2010/04/tivo_premiere.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="http://www.gadget.com/files/2010/04/tivo_premiere.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<br />
Its height is considerably less than earlier TiVos'. So is its depth, front to back. It's as wide as the TiVo HD model it replaces.<br />
<br />
Its back panel offers a number of connection options:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm314/ilovehdtv/Other/Premiere/hardware/large/Premiere_back.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="111" src="http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm314/ilovehdtv/Other/Premiere/hardware/large/Premiere_back.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
The best way to connect the Premiere to a recent-model HDTV is via its HDMI (version 1.3) connector, which carries both video and audio. For HDTVs without HDMI input, the Premiere also offers red-blue-green component video connectors, to be used along with audio output from its optical digital connector — and, for antique TV sets, it has yellow-red-white A/V outputs. If you use the latter, the TiVo downconverts HD material to SD.<br />
<br />
Networking is done through the Ethernet port or (depending on what type network adapter you have) one of its two USB ports. If you don't have a home computer network, you'll hook a TiVo phone adapter (sold separately) to a USB port to connect the Premiere to the TiVo service to fetch electronic program guides and software updates.<br />
<br />
Notice that there are inputs for both cable (or Verizon FIOS) and over-the-air antenna, which can be used simultaneously.<br />
<br />
Popcorn handy? The TiVo Premiere comes with a 320 GB internal hard drive that can hold some 45 hours of HD programs, or over 400 hours of SD. You can mix and match HD and SD recordings on it. The Premiere XL's 1-terabyte internal drive holds up to 150 HD hours or up to 1,350 SD hours (!). You can keep track of how much space is left by looking at the <b>My Shows</b> menu:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://news.cnet.com/i/bto/20100302/MyShows_610x343.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="http://news.cnet.com/i/bto/20100302/MyShows_610x343.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<br />
Here, 7% of the drive has been filled.<br />
<br />
The image above of the <b>My Shows</b> screen shows the 720p high-definition user interface introduced with the TiVo Premiere; older models used an SD menu system with no visual graphics or picture-in-picture showing (at upper right) the currently tuned channel or currently playing program. The new menu system is based on Flash Lite and is supported (since it requires a lot of processing power) by a dual-core Broadcomm BCM7413 CPU.<br />
<br />
There have been criticisms concerning the sluggishness of the HD menus in responding to buttons on the remote. The software of the Premiere awaits an upgrade later this year that will allow it to use both processors in the Premiere's dual-core CPU. Right now, the software disables the second core, making user-interface response sluggish.<br />
<br />
The top part of HD user-interface screens such as <b>My Shows</b> is filled by a <b>Discovery Bar</b> that contains a scrollable row of selectable poster images for TV programs, movies, videos, and other fare that you may want to record or download.<br />
<br />
In a carryover from the Series3 TiVos, the Premiere allows you to record programs originated in 1080i and 720p HD. The original TiVo Series3 DVR was the first to do HD; Series2 and earlier TiVos were SD-only. The original Series3 was followed as an HD-capable TiVo by the less pricey TiVo HD, also a Series3, and its big brother the TiVo HD XL. The new Premiere adds 1080p to the list of supported video formats, a list which also includes 480i and 480p SD.<br />
<br />
If you are a TiVo newbie and you buy a TiVo Premiere (or any other TiVo), be aware that you can dispense with your present cable box; the TiVo replaces it. But in order to allow the TiVo Premiere to pick up digital cable channels, including premium channels, your cable company (or Verizon FIOS) needs to install an M-type CableCard in the Premiere. "M" stands for "multi-stream"; this one "M-card" allows the two tuners of the Premiere to receive two digital channels at one time. Some older TiVo models could accept two S-type ("single-stream") cards instead of one M-type card, but the Premiere has just one CableCard slot and forces you to use an M-card. The Premiere, by the way, also lets you connect an over-the-air antenna to it, in addition to its cable TV or Verizon FIOS input connection.<br />
<br />
The Premiere has spiffy high-definition (720p) user-interface menu screens. Like the <b>My Shows</b> screen pictured above, the outermost screen, called <b>TiVo Central</b> ...<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.gadgetreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Tivo-Premiere-Central-650x365.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="http://www.gadgetreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Tivo-Premiere-Central-650x365.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<br />
... shows you in one of its corners, the upper-right, a miniature picture-in-picture of the program that is currently playing. In a panel on the left side of the <b>TiVo Central</b> screen are the screen's main functions. Scroll to one of these, and the panel on the right side shows you its sub-functions.<br />
<br />
As shown by an earlier graphic, you can see your current list of recordings by selecting <b>My Shows</b>, which in older TiVos used to be called <b>Now Playing</b>. Twice-pressing the TiVo button at the top of the remote is a shortcut to the <b>My Shows</b> screen.<br />
<br />
The remote that comes with the Premiere ...<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://thecoolgadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/tivo-premium-dvr-remote-glossy-black.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://thecoolgadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/tivo-premium-dvr-remote-glossy-black.jpg" width="105" /></a></div><br />
<br />
... is <i>much</i> nicer than the crappy one that came with the TiVo HD and is something like the "Glo" remote that came with the original Series3. (Neither the TiVo HD nor the original Series3 is still available from TiVo.com, by the way. I have two TiVo HDs and an original Series3, in addition to my new TiVo Premiere.) The remote's buttons have a crisp, positive feel. The Select button is now where it should be: in the middle of the Top-Right-Bottom-Left ring, not below it. The Aspect (ratio) selection button has been renamed "Zoom."<br />
<br />
There are four new buttons on the Premiere remote. Coded yellow, blue, red, and green, they have functions that depend on which menu screen or activity you're in. For instance, the blue button toggles the way the programs in <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">My Shows</span> are sorted (by name or by date). The red button toggles between grouping <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">My Shows<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> items of the same name in folders to reduce clutter, or not doing so. Both of those buttons take on other roles when you are using the Premiere's <b>Search</b> capability, for instance, or when you use the Premiere's </span><span class="Apple-style-span">Browse TV</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> capabilities, etc. I have also read that the colored buttons do interesting things when you are accessing Video On Demand content, something I haven't confirmed.</span></span><br />
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The remote that comes with the basic Premiere isn't backlit, though the nicer remote for the XL is; the latter is also a "learning" remote that can adopt the behaviors of your other remotes and replace them.<br />
<br />
Coming soon for the Premiere and Premiere XL, an optional upgrade remote ...<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.hardwaresphere.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/tivo-premiere-dvr-qwerty-remote-control.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="http://www.hardwaresphere.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/tivo-premiere-dvr-qwerty-remote-control.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<br />
... has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and uses Bluetooth, which means you won't have to point it at the TiVo!<br />
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Oddly, the Premiere remote lacks the TiVo HD remote's slider switch to identify it as either Remote #1 or Remote #2. If you have a Premiere and another TiVo in the same room, as I do, <a href="http://support.tivo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/285">Controlling two TiVo boxes with separate remotes</a> tells how to pair each TiVo's remote to its appropriate TiVo. However, If you would like to control two TiVos with just the Premiere remote, you're out of luck. <a href="http://support.tivo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/284">Controlling two TiVo DVRs with one remote</a> can tell you how to use a non-Premiere remote with a "1-2 switch," such as that for TiVo HD, to control (say) a TiVo HD <i>and</i> a Premiere. You lose the A, B, C, and D color-coded button shortcuts for the Premiere HD menus if you do that.<br />
<br />
Also, if you own two Premieres and hook them to the same TV, you <i>have</i> to use two remotes.<br />
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There is much more to say about the sophisticated functionality of the TiVo Premiere, but at this point I'll just refer you to an in-depth technical review of the TiVo Premiere by K. Fowler ("bkdtv") in PDF form <a href="http://mysite.verizon.net/~fiosdvr/prem_review_01.pdf">here</a>.<br />
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<br />
<u><b>Multi-Room Viewing</b></u><br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The Premiere, as the first Series4 TiVo, lets you finally do a full range of network-y things with your TiVos, things that you could admittedly — with drawbacks — do before; now, with the Premiere, you can do them faster and better.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div>For instance, Series3 TiVos were the first to let you view recordings from TiVo #1 on TiVo #2 in a different room. This capability was dubbed multi-room viewing (MRV). Using a home Wi-Fi or Ethernet network, a copy of a program sitting on TiVo #1 could be sent to TiVo #2. You could play the copy on the receiving TiVo<i> </i>as it was being transferred, or you could wait until some future time to begin playback. So if you recorded a show on your living room TiVo on Saturday night and wanted to watch it in bed on Sunday morning, you could pull it up to your bedroom TiVo on Sunday and lie there in your pajamas watching it as it was being transferred.<br />
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Unfortunately, Series3 TiVos couldn't MRV recordings fast enough to keep the playback-during-copying capability from pausing repeatedly due to TiVo #2's buffer running short of incoming data.<br />
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The Premiere, like its predecessors, supports MRV. But the Premiere is faster than its elder brothers, so (if you have the right network gear; see below) the blue LED that indicates a MRV copy is in progress turns off faster, showing you that the copying is finished.<br />
<br />
In addition to MRV, Series3 TiVos — including the original Series3 and the TiVo HD — allowed you to copy TiVo recordings <i>to your computer</i> via your home network. Once on the computer, they could be deleted from the TiVo, if desired, thereby freeing space on the TiVo's hard drive. Then they could be copied back from the computer to any TiVo in your house whenever you wanted to watch them again. They could even be streamed back from your computer: you could view them at will <i>without</i> making a new copy of them on the TiVo.<br />
<br />
Sadly, though, the third-generation TiVos couldn't move data fast enough from your computer back to themselves, no matter how fast your network happened to be. So, though you could stream a high-definition recording from your computer to your TiVo, the TiVo kept pausing because it couldn't fill its buffer fast enough with incoming data.<br />
<br />
The TiVo Premiere is finally fast enough.<br />
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<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"><b>TiVo Premiere with 802.11n Networking</b></span></div><br />
<a href="http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm314/ilovehdtv/Other/Premiere/hardware/tivo_80211n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm314/ilovehdtv/Other/Premiere/hardware/tivo_80211n.jpg" width="191" /></a>If you are using an 802.11n router on your home network — check out the Netgear Rangemax WNDR3700 Dual Band Wireless-N Gigabit Router <a href="http://Netgear Rangemax WNDR3700 Dual Band Wireless-N Gigabit Route">at Amazon.com for under $135</a>; it's the router TiVo Inc. features on its website, for more money — and if to the Premiere you attach the new <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2010/05/tivo-wireless-n-adapter-arrives.html">TiVo Wireless-N Network Adapter</a> shown at right, you'll be able to wirelessly stream high-definition video from your computer archive to the Premiere and watch it in real time, <i>without</i> pauses. (Of course, if you are using wired Ethernet, which is even faster than wireless-N, the same is true.)<br />
<br />
The TiVo Premiere costs $299.99. You can <a href="https://www3.tivo.com/store/boxes.do">order it from TiVo Inc</a>. and add a Wireless-N Adapter for $67.49. A lifetime service plan — provided you already have another TiVo with a lifetime service plan — costs $199. Add enough extra dough for TiVo Inc. to UPS the hardware to you, and bob's your uncle.<br />
<br />
Don't believe the higher price shown for the N adapter on the TiVo website, by the way. If you order by phone (877 BUY-TIVO; 877 289-8486) and mention <a href="http://www.amazon.com/TiVo-AN0100-Wireless-Network-Adapter/dp/B0036OR924/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1274425059&sr=8-3">the lower price for the N adapter at Amazon.com</a>, then TiVo Inc. will match it or better (or so I found when I ordered my Premiere).<br />
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What is the TiVo service plan, you ask? Any TiVo needs to be fed with things like the program guide it consults to know when to record a program, as well as occasional updates to its operating software. These things come to it over your Internet-connected home network, as long as you have a paid subscription to the TiVo service. Ordinarily, you'll pay $12.95/month, $129/year, $299 for three years ... or $399 for "lifetime" service that lasts as long as the TiVo does. This "TiVo service," naturally, is in addition to your cable TV or Verizon FIOS subscription.<br />
<br />
If you buy a Premiere from TiVo.com, there are <i>service plan discounts</i> for present TiVo owners. If you presently have a TiVo that you've already paid for lifetime service on, and you now buy a Premiere or Premiere XL in a package deal from TiVo Inc., then a life-of-the-Premiere service plan is only, as I said earlier, $199. You don't even have to stop using the TiVo you already have!<br />
<br />
Of course, if you wind up with <i>two</i> TiVos in your home — a Premiere and a Series3, say — and you want to MRV recordings between them, you'll be well-advised to get a <i>second</i> TiVo Wireless-N Adapter for the other TiVo. Both TiVos have to be on the same 802.11n network to get MRV transfers going between them at wireless-N speed, so both need N adapters. You can't have one TiVo using 802.11g with a G adapter and the other using 802.11n with an N adapter, and expect them to talk to each other at wireless-N speed.<br />
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What is the G-to-N speed difference? 802.11g, or "G," is the familiar Wi-Fi standard that's been in use for the last ten years or so, and it runs at 2.4 GHz. For, oh, say, five years now, 802.11n, Or "N," which runs at over twice G speed, at 5.0 GHz, has been waiting in the wings to replace 802.11g. It's now ready for prime time. 5.0 GHz is, in my practical testing, a <i>lot</i> better than 2.4 GHz.<br />
<br />
As I indicated earlier, if you have a router that runs at G speed and doesn't support N, you'll probably want to replace it someday. But there's at least one other option. You can buy <i>an extra</i> TiVo Wireless-N Network Adapter and hook it to the Ethernet port of your G router as a "bridge" device. It serves as an N-speed conduit between the N adapters on your TiVos — assuming that you have two or more TiVos with N adapters.<br />
<br />
However, you don't have to buy all this new gear right away. If you have a G network in place, and/or if your existing TiVo uses a G adapter, fine. The N adapter you get for the TiVo Premiere will slow itself down to G speed for you. Later on, when you spring for an N adapter for each older TiVo in your home and you either upgrade to an N router or add an extra N adapter as a "bridge," the N adapter on the TiVo Premiere will automatically start using N speed.<br />
<br />
If you insist you'll <i>never</i> need N speed, you currently can still <a href="http://www.amazon.com/TiVo-AG0100-Wireless-Network-Adapter/dp/B000ER5G6C/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1274557193&sr=8-4">buy the TiVo Wireless-G adapter for around $40</a> and use it with the Premiere to interface with your G router and any other G-networked TiVos you have in your home. If you don't want to buy a TiVo Wireless-G adapter from Amazon, call TiVo Inc. at 877 BUY-TIVO (877 289-8486) and ask to have Amazon's typically lower price matched for you.<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b>Premiere Networking Speed</b></u><br />
<br />
How fast is the TiVo Premiere at doing networking tasks? I tested mine by transferring a 1 hr. 30 min. HD recording: "Foyle's War, Series V: Broken Souls," broadcast in HD on "Masterpiece Mystery"on a local PBS station recently and received in HD on Comcast cable.<br />
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Here are the transfers I tried, with transfer speeds in megabits per second shown in parentheses:<br />
<br />
<ol><li>From the TiVo HD that recorded it to my TiVo Premiere (22.22 Mb/s)</li>
<li>From the Premiere back to the TiVo HD (20.53 Mb/s)</li>
<li>From the Premiere to my iMac (20.62 Mb/s)</li>
<li>From the iMac back to the Premiere (46.65 Mb/s)</li>
</ol><br />
The Premiere-to-iMac transfer (#3) was done using the <b>kmttg</b> Java application in Mac OS X. The iMac-to-Premiere transfer (#4) was done using <b>pyTivoX</b>: specifically, its <b>pyTivo</b> functionality (as distinct from its <b>StreamBaby</b> functionality). In all cases, the transfers were done over an 802.11n network running at a nominal speed of 5.0 GHz, with both TiVos using wireless-N adapters. My network router is an Apple AirPort Extreme base station. The transfer speeds shown were obtained from the Premiere's <b>Messages & Settings/Settings/Network & Phone/View network diagnostics/Transfer history</b> menu.<br />
<br />
All of the transfers happened in much better than real time. That is to say, the rate at which the transfers took place far exceeded the playback speed of the recording — though I did not actually play the recording as the transfers were in progress.<br />
<br />
This particular recording's file size, 3.7 GB, was not very large for an hour-and-a-half HD show. Its nominal bitrate was only 5.98 Mb/s. (No wonder all of the transfers happened in <i>much</i> better than real time.)<br />
<br />
Most HD recordings that I have been working with originate at bitrates up to twice this one's. The highest bitrate of all the recordings that reside at the moment on my living room TiVo HD is 14.95 Mb/s, according to <b>kmttg</b>. The lowest transfer speed I saw in my testing, 20.53 Mb/s, far exceeds 14.95 Mb/s. Accordingly, I expect that <i>any</i> HD recording I make on any of my various TiVos will transfer to or from my Premiere in faster than real time, whether the device at the other end of the connection is my iMac or another TiVo.<br />
<br />
I also found that running the same kind of transfer tests using my living room TiVo HD or my original Series3 in the bedroom, rather than my TiVo Premiere, typically gives <i>slower</i>-than-real-time results when I try to transfer ("upload") recordings of HD material that have nominal bitrates over (say) 8 Mb/s from my iMac to the TiVo. The TiVo HD is slower than the original Series3, but neither older TiVo can upload typical HD material in real time. The fault is with the TiVos themselves; I have run these tests using both wireless-N and Ethernet connections and gotten approximately the same kind of results with both network types.<br />
<br />
I have found, accordingly, that the determining factor for transfer speeds in TiVo networking typically is the internal processing power of the TiVo making the transfer, and that when two TiVos are doing an MRV transfer, the speed is limited by that of the slower TiVo.<br />
<br />
Happily, I find that using wireless-N (or Ethernet) makes HD MRV go faster-than-real-time <i>even</i> for transfers between older-model TiVos, e.g., from the TiVo HD to the Series3. The throughput of MRV transfers between slower TiVos is facilitated by the fact that the "transport stream" of the recording does not have to be altered. When a recording is downloaded to a computer, on the other hand, the "transport stream" has to be "remuxed" into a "program stream" by the downloading TiVo, and if the TiVo has minimal processing power, the speed of the download suffers. However, the Premiere, with its faster processor, seems to do downloads about as fast as it does MRV.<br />
<br />
Because older, slower TiVos handle MRV transfers pretty well, a Premiere is not really needed if you just want to MRV HD material — as long as your network has at least wireless-N speed. Using wireless-G, the network speed becomes the limiting factor to throughput, whether the TiVos doing the MRV transfer are Premieres, older models, or a combination of the two.<br />
<br />
But a Premiere <i>is</i> needed (along with wireless-N or better networking) if you want to stream HD material in faster-than-real-time from a computer. Neither my TiVo HD nor my original Series3 can keep up with HD streaming from my iMac using pyTivoX's StreamBaby functionality. This is true whether I use wireless-N or Ethernet. Only the Premiere gives me fast enough StreamBaby streaming.<br />
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I have also found that the Premiere copies recordings back from my iMac, using the <i>non-streaming</i> pyTivo functionality of pyTiVoX, at faster speeds than I saw for any of the other transfer types I tested. The 46.65 Mb/s shown above for the upload from the iMac to the Premiere was <i>more than double</i> the 20.62 Mb/s of the same program's download from the Premiere to the iMac.<br />
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Thinking this result was possibly bogus, I tried additional uploads to see whether they would give me throughput speeds closer to those for the other three transfer types. The two other upload tests I tried gave me speeds of 37.59 Mb/s and 51.3 Mb/s! So it looks as if uploads — copying programs from a computer to a TiVo — are somehow privileged with the Premiere. They go much faster than other transfers, at least on my own particular wireless-N network. Also, the actual upload speed appears to be highly variable — 46.65 Mb/s; 37.59 Mb/s; 51.3 Mb/s — while throughputs for the other types of transfers seem to hover consistently in the low-20 Mb/s range.<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b>Useful TiVo Premiere Links</b></u><br />
<br />
<ul><li>You can read an in-depth technical review of the TiVo Premiere by K. Fowler ("bkdtv") in PDF form <a href="http://mysite.verizon.net/~fiosdvr/prem_review_01.pdf">here</a>.</li>
<li>The PCMag.com review of the Premiere is <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2361786,00.asp">here</a>.</li>
<li>The Endgadget review is <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/24/tivo-premiere-review/">here</a>.</li>
<li>The TiVo Premiere FAQ at the TiVo Community forum is <a href="http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=444083">here</a>.</li>
</ul>erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-81416254704877686752010-05-19T08:42:00.064-04:002010-06-24T09:26:20.750-04:00Archive HDTV Recordings to Your Mac, Then Stream Them Back to Your TiVo!It's not hard to turn your Mac or a PC into an archive for your TiVo recordings. Then you can delete the recordings from the TiVo itself, and play them from your Mac to your TiVo any time you want.<br />
<br />
I like to record classic movies from channels like TCM HD. Then I move them via my home wireless network to an external hard drive on my iMac. After that, I decode them into a non-copy-protected form that can be streamed back to a TiVo anytime I want to watch the movie again. Meanwhile, the original recording can be deleted from the TiVo's hard drive.<br />
<br />
In <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;"><a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2010/04/viva-pytivo.html" style="color: #956839; text-decoration: underline;">Viva pyTivo!</a></span> I detailed how I use the freeware pyTivoX app to send Mac media content to my TiVo units. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;"><a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2010/04/stream-baby-stream-pt-1.html" style="color: #956839; text-decoration: underline;">Stream, Baby, Stream</a></span> gave more information on the freeware StreamBaby app, which is what pyTivoX <i>actually</i> uses to stream media content to a TiVo. pyTivoX incorporates StreamBaby, so you don't have to install or configure StreamBaby on your Mac manually.<br />
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With pyTivoX-cum-StreamBaby you can, using the TiVo itself, pull archived TiVo recordings from your Mac back to your TiVo and watch them as they stream. Streaming Mac videos to a TiVo avoids having to make copies of them on the TiVo's hard drive, so if space is limited there, streaming is the way to go.<br />
<br />
But how do you get the original recordings from your TiVo to your Mac in the first place?<br />
<br />
An excellent way to download TiVo files and store them on a computer is to use <a href="http://code.google.com/p/kmttg/">kmttg</a>. kmttg, which is Java-based freeware, implements its own version of what is generally called "TiVo To Go," or TTG. kmttg downloads files from the TiVo and decodes them into non-copy-protected form. (It also allows you to do other neat things with the files it downloads and decodes, but I won't cover those here.) kmttg runs on several platforms, including the Mac which I use, an iMac running Mac OS X 10.5.8.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">If you want to use kmttg on your Mac, check out the official installation instructions <a href="http://code.google.com/p/kmttg/wiki/mac_osx_installation">here</a>. Also, you may want to make sure you have the latest version of Java on your Mac. You can do that by invoking the Software Update feature available on the Apple menu.</div><div><br />
</div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The same kmttg download package works on all supported platforms, and the current package as of this writing is <a href="http://kmttg.googlecode.com/files/kmttg_v0p7l.zip">kmttg_v0p7l.zip</a>. (The screen shots below were captured using an earlier version of kmttg.) On a Mac, download and unzip it to a folder named <b>kmttg_v0p7l</b>, then open the folder and launch <b>kmttg.jar</b>.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i>You may be warned that "kmttg.jar" is a Java application which was downloaded from the Internet. Are you sure you want to open it? You'll just click "Open."</i><br />
<br />
Then you'll see (click to enlarge):</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S9XBUYFwYFI/AAAAAAAAAfg/uyeJhcdL0Oo/s1600/Required+tools+not+detected.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="322" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S9XBUYFwYFI/AAAAAAAAAfg/uyeJhcdL0Oo/s400/Required+tools+not+detected.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S9XCodHsBGI/AAAAAAAAAfo/U0EbJykq2yI/s1600/Enter+MAK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br />
</a>What this means is that kmttg wants to download several free software tools, such as tivodecode, MEncoder, HandBrake, and FFmpeg, and to put them in appropriately named folders within the <b>kmttg_v0p7l</b> folder. Click "Yes." You'll then wait for several minutes while the downloads take place, and then you'll see (click to enlarge):</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S9XCodHsBGI/AAAAAAAAAfo/U0EbJykq2yI/s1600/Enter+MAK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="322" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S9XCodHsBGI/AAAAAAAAAfo/U0EbJykq2yI/s400/Enter+MAK.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The media access key, or MAK, of your TiVo is a ten-digit number you can discover by navigating to <span style="font-weight: bold;">TiVo Central -> Messages & Settings -> Account & System Information -> Media Access Key</span> on your TiVo. You enter it into the dialog box and click "OK." (If you have more than one TiVo, they all have the same MAK, so you just need to find one of them.)</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Now kmttg will give your Mac access the Now Playing list (NPL) for each of your TiVos. You just click on the name of any TiVo — such as, for me, "Bedroom TiVo" — and click the "Refresh" button. When the NPL appears after several seconds, you can scroll through it to find a movie or other recorded program to copy to your Mac. In the screen shot below (click to enlarge), I've selected "Shane," recorded from TCM HD:<br />
<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S9XFUsDETxI/AAAAAAAAAfw/U5kYr298WMA/s1600/Shane+from+TCM+HD.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="322" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S9XFUsDETxI/AAAAAAAAAfw/U5kYr298WMA/s400/Shane+from+TCM+HD.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Now comes a tricky part. You have to configure kmttg <i>in advance</i> to download your .TiVo files to whatever intended folder you have set up to receive them. In Finder, I created a <b>TiVo Transfers</b> folder on an external drive. Within it I created a <b>Just Transferred</b> folder.</div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Then I selected <b>File: Configure ...</b> at the upper left of the kmttg window. It brought up a dialog (click to enlarge):<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S_Lns2xyYWI/AAAAAAAAAio/-fUKvyNCf98/s1600/kmttg+file+settings.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="322" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S_Lns2xyYWI/AAAAAAAAAio/-fUKvyNCf98/s400/kmttg+file+settings.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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in which I configured where kmttg is to put the files it downloads or creates. In the box next to where it says <b>TiVo Output Dir</b> (for "directory") I double-clicked to bring up a folder selection dialog. In it I had to navigate to find the <b>Just Transferred</b> folder within the <b>TiVo Transfers</b> folder that I set up on my external hard drive (click to enlarge):</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S_LqW3kMuUI/AAAAAAAAAiw/rrCLFG5-xMc/s1600/kmttg+select+folder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="322" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S_LqW3kMuUI/AAAAAAAAAiw/rrCLFG5-xMc/s400/kmttg+select+folder.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<br />
I clicked <b>Choose Directory</b> once that folder was named in the <b>File:</b> box in the dialog. I also did the same thing for the other directories that kmttg configures via this dialog, including, crucially, the<b> .mpg Output Dir</b>.<br />
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In addition, I clicked check boxes to tell kmttg to <b>Remove .TiVo after file decrypt</b> — that meant that the downloaded TiVo file, after being decrypted into a more usable .mpg file that lacks copy protection, wouldn't permanently take up space on my Mac's external hard drive — and to <b>Overwrite existing files</b> in situations where I reinitiate jobs that have failed to run to completion previously.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">When all that was done, I saw (click to enlarge):</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S_Lns2xyYWI/AAAAAAAAAio/-fUKvyNCf98/s1600/kmttg+file+settings.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="322" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S_Lns2xyYWI/AAAAAAAAAio/-fUKvyNCf98/s400/kmttg+file+settings.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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At this point I clicked "OK," and kmttg was configured the way I wanted it.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Once you have everything configured, you need to select which kmttg services you want to use for the next job you initiate (click to enlarge):</div><div><br />
</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S_Lfzo68MYI/AAAAAAAAAiY/zLK9zcRNYQ8/s1600/kmttg+download.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="322" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S_Lfzo68MYI/AAAAAAAAAiY/zLK9zcRNYQ8/s400/kmttg+download.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
</div><div><br />
</div><div>Here I am using (in addition to the kmttg "download" functionality, which is assumed as a default) "metadata" and "decrypt," so I have clicked on each of those at the top of the kmttg window to turn on the check mark next to them. All of the other services have no check marks next to them.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I have in the screen shot above also initiated the transfer of "The Gallant Hours" from my Living Room TiVo. I did this by</div><div><ul><li>selecting the Living Room TiVo tab and clicking the Refresh button</li>
<li>selecting "The Gallant Hours" from the Now Playing list that appeared after several seconds</li>
<li>clicking the START JOBS button</li>
</ul>At the point at which the screen shot above was taken, the "metadata" job had already been executed, giving me a file in my receiving folder called The Gallant Hours (04_30_2010).mpg.txt. It contained:</div><div><br />
</div><blockquote><blockquote>title : The Gallant Hours</blockquote><blockquote>seriesTitle : The Gallant Hours</blockquote><blockquote>description : Adm. William F. "Bull" Halsey Jr. outwits Japanese Adm. Yamamoto in the 1942 Pacific. </blockquote><blockquote>time : 2010-04-30T06:15:00Z</blockquote><blockquote>mpaaRating : N8</blockquote><blockquote>movieYear : 1960</blockquote><blockquote>isEpisode : false</blockquote><blockquote>isEpisodic : false</blockquote><blockquote>showingBits : 1024</blockquote><blockquote>starRating : x6</blockquote><blockquote>displayMajorNumber : 890</blockquote><blockquote>callsign : TCMHD</blockquote><blockquote>vActor : Cagney|James</blockquote><blockquote>vActor : Weaver|Dennis</blockquote><blockquote>vActor : Costello|Ward</blockquote><blockquote>vActor : Jaeckel|Richard</blockquote><blockquote>vActor : Tremayne|Les</blockquote><blockquote>vActor : Burton|Robert</blockquote><blockquote>vActor : Bailey|Raymond</blockquote><blockquote>vActor : Reid|Carl Benton</blockquote><blockquote>vActor : Sande|Walter</blockquote><blockquote>vActor : Swenson|Karl</blockquote><blockquote>vActor : Landers|Harry</blockquote><blockquote>vActor : Carlyle|Richard</blockquote><blockquote>vActor : Lontoc|Leon</blockquote><blockquote>vActor : Yagi|James</blockquote><blockquote>vActor : Zaremba|John</blockquote><blockquote>vDirector : Montgomery|Robert</blockquote><blockquote>vProducer : Montgomery|Robert</blockquote><blockquote>vProgramGenre : Biography</blockquote><blockquote>vSeriesGenre : Biography</blockquote><blockquote>vSeriesGenre : Documentary</blockquote><blockquote>vSeriesGenre : Movies</blockquote></blockquote><div><br />
</div><div>A subset of this metadata will wind up being displayed by StreamBaby on my TV screen when I stream my recording of "The Gallant Hours" back to my TiVo.</div><div><br />
</div><div>You can see in the screen snap above that the "download" job is still in progress, and has been executing for 2 hours, 3 minutes, 19 seconds. The "decrypt" job is queued pending the completion of the "download" job.<br />
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Now, in the following screen shot (click to enlarge), the "decrypt" job has finally begun executing:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S_LmXL9sfLI/AAAAAAAAAig/9pKLr1dYowc/s1600/kmttg+decrypt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="322" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S_LmXL9sfLI/AAAAAAAAAig/9pKLr1dYowc/s400/kmttg+decrypt.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<br />
The "decrypt" job invokes an app, tivodecode, that decrypts the The Gallant Hours (04_30_2010).TiVo file that was just downloaded, making a file named The Gallant Hours (04_30_2010).mpg in the same directory. This .mpg file contains the entire original recording at the original bitrate, file size, and quality. The only difference is that it is unencrypted. StreamBaby can accordingly stream it back to a TiVo.<br />
<br />
kmttg offers a wide range of functionality beyond what I've just described, but this should be enough to get you started. You now know how to get kmttg, install it on your Mac, and begin using to to download, decrypt, and save metadata from recordings on your TiVo. These can be high-definition or standard-definition recordings — your choice. I generally download HD ... but be warned: HD takes a lot more time to download and a lot more space on your Mac's hard drives.<br />
<br />
And HD is just about impossible to stream back, without a lot of undesirable pauses, to any TiVo model other than the new TiVo Premiere. Only the Premiere can do network input/output fast enough to keep up with pause-free HD streaming. Older TiVo models simply cannot do this — I know, I have three of them. To get a Premiere to stream HD video in "real time," you'll also need to equip it with a wireless-N adapter, or hook it up to wired Ethernet, since anything slower is <i>too</i> slow for real-time HD streaming.<br />
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It is possible, though, to use the PyTivo part of PyTivoX to transfer archived HD (or SD) recordings back to a non-Premiere TiVo's Now Playing List (i.e., to the TiVo's own hard drive). You'll just have to initiate the transfer some time in advance of when you want to watch the recording. If you allow sufficient lead time, you'll be able to watch the program, pause-free, even while the transfer is still ongoing.<br />
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But for pause-free spur-of-the-moment streaming of HD material that you have archived to your Mac, consider getting a TiVo Premiere with a wireless-N adapter. I personally love my own Premiere/wireless-N setup for just that reason.<br />
<br />
</div></div></div>erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-70799342514795356302010-05-12T09:04:00.005-04:002010-06-04T09:55:44.000-04:00TiVo Wireless-N Adapter: First Impressions<a href="http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm314/ilovehdtv/Other/Premiere/hardware/tivo_80211n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm314/ilovehdtv/Other/Premiere/hardware/tivo_80211n.jpg" width="191" /></a>I wrote in <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2010/05/tivo-wireless-n-adapter-arrives.html">TiVo Wireless-N Adapter Arrives!</a> about a newer, faster way to network TiVo boxes wirelessly. It's the TiVo Wireless-N Network Adapter, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/TiVo-AN0100-Wireless-Network-Adapter/dp/B0036OR924">presently $70.35 at Amazon.com</a><br />
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This new adapter can replace the wireless-G adapter that you may now use on your TiVo, but it's a little different. It's bigger, for one thing: about the size of a cellphone. It plugs into the TiVo's Ethernet port, not a USB port. It also plugs into an external source of electrical power; the G adapter doesn't.<br />
<br />
The benefit? The N adapter can operate at 5.0 GHz, over twice the theoretical data delivery rate of the G adapter's 2.4 GHz.<br />
<br />
I bought two N adapters and tried them out on my bedroom TiVo Series3 and my living room TiVo HD. My main hope was to be able to stream HD movies from my Mac to either TiVo fast enough to avoid pauses for rebuffering. The G adapter couldn't even begin do that. With the G adapter, streaming HD movies became a chore of continually having playback interrupted by rebuffering pauses. Would the N adapter be fast enough?<br />
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Sadly, no. I'll discuss that result later, along with another significant problem I ran into. But, first ...<br />
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<u><b>Setup and installation</b></u><br />
<br />
I found my first adapter's setup and installation process to be difficult, though after I cleared those hurdles the setup of the second adapter was easy. I'll go into some detail about the hurdles I encountered with the first adapter in just a bit.<br />
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First I should note that the N adapter's included Installation Instructions booklet is generally well-organized and clearly written. Still, I ran into problems with the first adapter because at least one of the things it says is plain wrong, and there are also some things it doesn't tell you that maybe it should.<br />
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The booklet gives three options for doing the setup. (There is also mention of what you need to do if your TiVo currently uses a phone line instead of a computer network to connect to the TiVo service.)<br />
<br />
(1) The easiest setup method:<br />
<br />
This method applicable if you have a wireless-N router with a WPS button; WPS stands for "Wi-Fi Protected Setup." After you attend to basic hardware necessities like setting a switch on the adapter to the "Client" position, hooking up the adapter to its set of three interconnected cords and cables that end up forming a Y, plugging one of the Y's three cable ends into a standard power outlet, and hooking another of the three into the Ethernet port on your TiVo (the third end plugs into the adapter itself), you just press and hold down the WPS button on your N router until it starts blinking. Once the N router's WPS button starts blinking, you have one minute to press and hold down the WPS button on the adapter itself. When that button starts blinking, WPS automatically syncs your router's security (including its passphrase, etc.) with your adapter.<br />
<br />
When that WPS sync process is complete, a signal-strength LED on the adapter will turn either solid green or solid blue. If it's solid green, the adapter's operating in G mode, at 2.4 GHz; blue, at 5.0 GHz.<br />
<br />
My N router (an Apple AirPort Extreme base station) doesn't have a WPS button, so I couldn't use this easy-as-pie setup method.<br />
<br />
(2) The next-easiest setup method:<br />
<br />
This is what you do if you have a wireless-G (or wireless-B) router, but not a wireless-N router. To get your N adapter working using this method, you need a <i>pair</i> of TiVo Wireless-N Network adapters. You hook one of them to one of your G/B router's Ethernet ports, while the other N adapter is hooked to your TiVo's Ethernet port. The router-connected adapter's switch is set to "Bridge" instead of "Client"; the other's switch is set to "Client." You press and hold down the WPS button on the TiVo-connected adapter — there isn't a WPS button on the G/B router itself, remember — until the button starts blinking, then within one minute press and hold down the WPS button on the router-connected adapter until <i>it</i> starts blinking. At that point, WPS automatically syncs the two adapters. The signal-strength indicators on both adapters turn solid blue.<br />
<br />
This method didn't apply to me. I have an N router, albeit one with no WPS button.<br />
<br />
(3) The manual setup method ...<br />
<br />
... is the one I had to use, and it can be the hardest. Whether it's hard or easy depends on how you presently have your wireless router and your computer configured for networking.<br />
<br />
For me, setting up the first adapter of the two that I bought was hard. I had to overcome several hurdles. In a moment, I'll detail them. But first, I need to emphasize that overcoming those hurdles for the first adapter made setting up the second adapter a snap. I'm going to put the process I went through to set up the <i>first</i> adapter in blue below, so that if you don't want to read it all, you can easily skip ahead. And you probably <i>don't</i> need to read it if:<br />
<br />
<ul><li>You already have your computer's network preferences set to configure the IP address of its Ethernet connection "Using DHCP"</li>
<li>You have your computer's Wi-Fi/AirPort wireless adapter turned on</li>
<li>You don't use anything like pyTivo, pyTivoX, or StreamBaby to move content from your computer to your TiVo</li>
</ul><br />
That said, here's what I went through to get my first wireless-N adapter up and running:<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">After setting the switch on the first adapter that I received to "Client" and assembling its cords and cables, I was told by the Installation Instructions to hook the wireless-N adapter to an Ethernet port on my computer — not on my router, not on the TiVo that it would eventually connect to — in order that I could run the TiVo Network Adapter's Setup Wizard in my computer's web browser.<br />
<br />
Well, I was already using my iMac's only Ethernet port to connect it to my router/base station. So I had to disconnect that existing Ethernet cable from the back of my iMac. Then I hooked the Ethernet connector of the adapter into the vacated Ethernet port.<br />
<br />
Also, I had the AirPort wireless capability turned off on my Mac, which actually seemed fine because the Installation Instructions booklet says, wrongly, "You may need to disable your computer's wireless connection before proceeding." Yes, that turned out to be exactly wrong!<br />
<br />
Anyway, for reasons I won't go into here, I had Network Preferences on my Mac set up (under Built-in Internet) to configure "Using DHCP with manual address." I had set the Mac's manual IP address to 10.0.1.201. I would soon have to change that ...<br />
<br />
The Installation Instructions told me to go to 192.168.10.1 in my web browser — which is an IP address hard-coded into the firmware on the N adapter — in order to run Setup Wizard. However, when I did so, my browser reported not being able to find the web page associated with 192.168.10.1!<br />
<br />
After I diddled around with different ways of entering the 192.168.10.1 IP address into the browser's URL field and having no success whatsoever, I finally had a look at my iMac's Network Preferences. Lacking anything better to try, I changed my Built-in Ethernet IP-address configuration mode to just plain "Using DHCP," without "with manual address."<br />
<br />
Within seconds of my hitting the Apply button, my Mac's IP address changed from 10.0.1.201 to 10.0.1.12.<br />
<br />
Once that happened, my browser <i>was</i> able right away to find the Setup Wizard at 192.168.10.1. Moral: make sure you're not using a way of configuring your computer's Ethernet IP address other than "Using DHCP," or you may not be able to access 192.168.10.1 and run the Wireless-N Adapter Setup Wizard.<br />
<br />
That hurdle cleared, I started following the step-by-step instructions fed to me in my browser window by the Setup Wizard. Pretty quick, the Wizard asked me to select my wireless network from a list of those whose signals could be detected in the vicinity. Sadly, my own network was not on the list!<br />
<br />
Uh oh.<br />
<br />
I scratched my head vigorously for a minute and finally came up with: Well, sure. How could my network show up if ...<br />
<br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><ul><li>my computer was not connected via Ethernet to my router (since I had unplugged the Mac-to-router Ethernet cable in order to plug the Ethernet cable of the adapter into my Mac) and</li>
<li>my Mac had its AirPort wireless connectivity turned off?</li>
</ul></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><br />
I turned on my Mac's AirPort capability — contrary to the Installation Instruction I mentioned above — and my network finally appeared in the (duly refreshed via a button click) list in Setup Wizard. I then told the Wizard to connect to that network ... and after many, many long seconds of watching a progress bar inch its gradual way rightward ... was told that a connection could not be established!<br />
<br />
Oh, wonderful.<br />
<br />
What could be wrong now?<br />
<br />
Failing to think of a single blessed thing that I could do differently, I fell back on that age-old solution, "Why not just try it again and see if it works?"<br />
<br />
Guess what? After the progress bar inched and inched and inched rightward, I finally saw:</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S-q751DCvCI/AAAAAAAAAiQ/mdNjPppA35Y/s1600/Your+connection+is+successful!.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="315" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S-q751DCvCI/AAAAAAAAAiQ/mdNjPppA35Y/s400/Your+connection+is+successful!.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">It worked the second time around! Go figure!<br />
<br />
Next step: move the now-successfully-configured N adapter to my Series3 TiVo and hook it up there.<br />
<br />
To do that, at first I had to struggle with the adapter's Y-configuration of cords and cables once again, plus I had to add an extra power strip to my entertainment center, so I could plug in the adapter. Once that manual chore was over, I followed the Installation Instructions and tried to connect my TiVo to the TiVo service. To do so, I went to Messages & Settings > Settings > Phone & Network > Connect to TiVo service now" on the TiVo.<br />
<br />
After the usual long wait for "Preparing ... ", I was told that the attempt to connect had failed due to not finding a DHCP server.<br />
<br />
Sheesh!<br />
<br />
The TiVo's network settings screen at that point showed what I considered to be an unusual IP address it was 192.168.10.nn, as I recall. (Also, the type of network connection was shown — quite correctly, since the adapter goes into the TiVo's Ethernet port — as "Ethernet.")<br />
<br />
I had to change my network settings on the TiVo from "Get automatically from a DHCP server (typical)" — which is what the Troubleshooting section in the adapter instructions recommends — to "Let the DVR assign itself an IP address." Once I did that, my TiVo's IP address turned to the more usual 10.0.1.nn, and I was able to connect to the TiVo service. Oddly enough, during the process of coping with some further problems which I am about to describe, I tried reverting the TiVo's network settings to "Get automatically from a DHCP server (typical)," and I was pleased to see that the IP address of the TiVo remained 10.0.1.nn!<br />
<br />
Why did the IP address of the TiVo show up at first as 192.168.10.nn? I have no idea.<br />
<br />
Anyway, be aware at this point that I use pyTivoX on my Mac to share video files with my TiVo. pyTivoX incorporates StreamBaby, which is a way of streaming the same videos to the TiVo without having to move copies of them onto the TiVo's hard drive. So pyTivoX gives two ways for a video file to be shared: via Mac folders that show up in my TiVo Now Playing list, and via the same Mac folders that show up within a pyTivoX menu item that appears towards the bottom of the TiVo's Music, Photos, & Showcases menu.<br />
<br />
Confusingly, my pyTivoX video share folders now each showed up <i>twice</i> in the TiVo's NPL, but only one item of each seemingly identical pair worked properly. Later on, I realized that this problem could be cured by deleting all the video "share" folders from the pyTivoX configuration window, respecifying them all over again, and hitting the Apply button. (But hitting the Apply button <i>multiple</i> times during the reconfiguration process <i>causes</i> redundant entries to appear in the TiVo Now Playing list.)<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, the "pyTivoX - iMac.local" menu item that <i>should</i> have appeared towards the bottom of the TiVo's Music, Photos, & Showcases menu was missing. It was the second of these two problems which concerned me most. The TiVo's pyTivoX menu item unlocks the StreamBaby interface of pyTivoX.<br />
<br />
Streaming is slightly faster than copying. I won't go into the reasons for that here, but I wanted the fastest possible connection, so I set about figuring out why the pyTivoX menu item was missing from the TiVo.<br />
<br />
To do that, I figured I'd look at the streambaby.ini initialization file which pyTiVoX uses to configure StreamBaby. It's in the ~//Library/Application Support/pyTivoX folder. The file contained ip=10.0.1.201, the <i>former</i> IP address of the iMac running pyTivoX.<br />
<br />
10.0.1.201 was the right IP address <i>before</i> I changed my Network Preferences for Built-in Ethernet to configure the Mac's Built-in Ethernet port "Using DHCP," i.e., without using a "manual address." After that change, the Mac's IP address became 10.0.1.12. Yet the streambaby.ini file being used by pyTivoX still had ip=10.0.1.201.<br />
<br />
I fixed that problem by quitting pyTivoX, trashing my ~/Library/Application Support/pyTivoX folder, and then restarting pyTivoX on my iMac so that the streambaby.ini file and other key files in the folder would be recreated ... after which (irritatingly) I had to respecify my three video share folders in pyTivoX all over again, and hit the Apply button just once at the end of the process.<br />
<br />
When I went back to my TiVo after that, I found to my satisfaction that the pyTivoX menu item had duly reappeared near the bottom of the TiVo's Music, Photos, & Showcases menu. I was able to use it to stream videos from my Mac, and it all worked just fine.<br />
<br />
The moral here is that if you are using pyTivoX and you change your Mac's IP address in order to get a TiVo Wireless-N Network Adapter up and running — or for <i>any</i> other reason, at any time down the road — you need to re-initialize pyTivoX in the way I've just described.</span><br />
<br />
So, at this point, I finally had a working wireless-N adapter on one of my TiVos. It was time to test it out.<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"><b>Initial testing</b></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div>When I made my first tests of Mac-based movie playback on the TiVo Series 3 in my bedroom, using the first of my two new N adapters — the second had yet to arrive — I was disappointed to find that they played with a certain amount of pixellation and, now and then, some brief breaking up of the image. The flaws showed up only occasionally, but I knew they shouldn't be there at all, since the video files I was using contain no such flaws.<br />
<br />
I considered the possibility that the CPU of the TiVo, known not to be very powerful, simply couldn't keep up with rendering the image properly, given the increased speed at which the video file was now being copied to the TiVo. Maybe the TiVo couldn't do the work of buffering all that incoming data <i>and</i> properly rendering the image at the same time.<br />
<br />
If that was the case, I realized, there was probably going to be no cure for the problem.<br />
<br />
Of course, I knew that soon I would also be trying out the pyTivoX StreamBaby interface on the TiVo— I was using the pyTivoX non-streaming interface at this point — and perhaps <i>it</i> would function better.<br />
<br />
First, though, I thought I'd just try restarting the TiVo and hoping that would cure the problem. And it did! Moral of story: after installing a new N adapter, it is a good idea to restart your TiVo, even though it's not officially necessary to do so.<br />
<br />
After I got rid of the pixellation and other picture glitches in that way, I discovered <i>only then</i> that the pyTivoX menu item that should have appeared towards the bottom of the TiVo's Music, Photos, & Showcases menu was missing. I've already told in the section in <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">blue</span> above about what I had to do to fix that problem.<br />
<br />
Once it was fixed, I tried streaming HD video via the StreamBaby interface. It played flawlessly, and a 5-min. snippet of a recent TCM HD broadcast of the classic movie "High Society," having an average bitrate of 12,561 kbps, gave me no unwanted pauses when I streamed it to my bedroom Series3 TiVo! The same snippet, when played via the pyTivoX Now Playing list interface on the TiVo, did give me buffering underruns and hard pauses. That seemed to confirm my assumption that streaming works faster than playing the same file as it is being copied over the network to the TiVo's hard drive.<br />
<br />
That's key, so I'll repeat it: Streaming, using pyTiVoX's <i>StreamBaby</i> interface, works faster than playing the same video file as it is being copied over the network to the TiVo's hard drive, using pyTivoX's <i>main</i> interface. My first test of wireless-N speeds seemed to show that streaming <i>can</i> keep up with a fairly high average bitrate of 12,561 kbps.<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><u><b>Speed issues</b></u></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div>That result, alas, did not hold up for long. I'll tell why in a moment. First, some technical background:<br />
<br />
On the TiVo, in the menu hierarchy within the StreamBaby interface, you can see what the average bitrate of a video file is. When you see a number like 12,561 kbps, you know that it's the <i>average</i> bitrate of the file: the number of bits in the file divided by the number of seconds in the running time of the video. You can be sure that the moment-to-moment bitrate will fluctuate around this number, sometimes higher and sometimes lower. How much higher it gets, and how long it stays high, will likely determine whether there occurs a pause-inducing buffer underrun at any point during the streaming of the file.<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">If there <i>is</i> a buffer underrun, playback pauses. You have to hit Play again to get it to resume.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div>At any time during playback, you can hit the Play button on the TiVo remote to see how far ahead of the actual playback point the green bar is moving. The green bar indicates how much of the unplayed part of the video has already been buffered. The further ahead of the actual playback point the green bar is, the less the chance of a buffer underrun any time soon.<br />
<br />
In my experience, 12,561 kbps is a typical average bitrate for HD material. If that average bitrate won't stream without pausing, I knew my experiment with wireless-N would be (because I'm so interested in streaming HD video to my TiVos) something of a failure. So I was quite happy that my 5-min. test snippet didn't pause on my Series3 TiVo.<br />
<br />
However:<br />
<ul><li>It <i>did</i> pause on my living room TiVo HD, once I'd hooked the second N adapter to it at 5.0 GHz</li>
<li>The full-length movie that it was extracted from had a higher average bitrate, well over 13,000 kbps. Its playback stream <i>kept</i> pausing, over and over, on my TiVo HD and (to a lesser extent) on my Series3</li>
</ul>Not only that, but I could tell by looking at the green buffering bar on the TV screen when I hit Play on the TiVo remote that my 5-min. snippet was in imminent danger of incurring a buffer underrun just as it wrapped up on my Series 3, so I knew even at that point that my initial success story might not hold up.<br />
<br />
It didn't.<br />
<br />
Believe me, I tried to pull every rabbit I could out of every hat I could think of, but I could not find a way to achieve that last little increment of speed that would avert repeated buffering pauses on HD material. I even ran an Ethernet cable from the router in my upstairs office to the Series 3 in my upstairs bedroom and to the TiVo HD in my downstairs living room, since I would have bet the farm that shifting to Ethernet speed would cure the problem.<br />
<br />
It didn't.<br />
<br />
And, in further testing, the buffering pauses turned out to be just as rife with Ethernet as with wireless-N!<br />
<br />
It finally hit me that the only explanation — in my various tests I had eliminated all other possibilities — was that the network speed between my Mac and my TiVos was not the bottleneck.<br />
<br />
In fact, the bottleneck had to be the speed of the TiVo itself, and in particular, its slow CPU.<br />
<br />
The upshot here is that neither the original Series 3 TiVo nor the TiVo HD can keep up with HD video streamed via a wireless-N adapter. In fact, a TiVo HD is worse at it than an original Series 3.<br />
<br />
However, I have learned that the new TiVo Premiere, which is considered a Series 4 TiVo, <i>can</i> keep up. In fact, as I write this, I have a Premiere on order that I will test out as soon as I receive it. I'll report on that in a future post.<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"><b>MRV <i>is</i> faster</b></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div>Meanwhile, I have this to add about using wireless-N adapters for TiVo multi-room viewing (MRV) from a TiVo HD to a Series 3: it <i>is</i> fast enough to keep up with an HD program that is being watched as it is being MRV-transferred.<br />
<br />
In order to test that, I had first to receive my second wireless-N adapter, set it up, and hook it to the TiVo HD in my living room. That went without a hitch — though there was still one more problem to be dealt with, which I'll discuss momentarily. Once I had dealt with it, I tried MRV'ing HD programs from the living room TiVo HD to the bedroom Series 3. I found to my great satisfaction that there were basically no playback pauses!<br />
<br />
Specifically, I tried MRV'ing "High Society," the movie that I couldn't stream from my Mac to the bedroom Series 3 without repeated pauses, from the living room TiVo HD to the bedroom Series 3, and I was pleased to note that the green progress bar stayed about 30-40% ahead of the playback point!<br />
<br />
For instance, as playback reached the 15-min. mark the progress bar was at least about 20 min. ahead of playback, a 33% outpacing of playback. It could even (since the ticks on the bar are at crude 15 min. intervals apart) have been 40% ahead of playback. (I started playback immediately after initiating the MRV transfer, and I did not pause playback at all and let buffering gain an unfair advantage over playback.)<br />
<br />
This showed me that wireless-N is a tremendous success, compared with wireless-G, at speeding up MRV to the point where playback-amid-transferring can keep up with the transfer itself!<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"><b>Obtaining 5.0 GHz operation</b></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div>However, as I mentioned earlier, I had to confront yet another problem before I could get that success story to happen. I found that I had to reconfigure my N router, an Apple AirPort Extreme base station, to allow my two new N adapters to operate at their top 5.0 GHz speed.<br />
<br />
My N router has four "radio modes," two of which are important to this discussion:<br />
<br />
<ol><li>802.11n (802.11b/g compatible)</li>
<li>802.11n only (5 GHz)</li>
</ol><br />
I originally had my router using radio mode #1, "802.11n (802.11b/g compatible)," because I have several devices on my network that are not 802.11n-compatible, one of these being my iPhone, when it is in Wi-Fi mode. Using b/g compatibility radio mode on my N router allowed me to mix and match on my network G devices operating at 2.4 GHz and N devices at 5.0 GHz.<br />
<br />
I found, however, that when I had my N router in b/g compatibility mode, my TiVo Wireless-N Network Adapters did <i>not</i> operate at 5.0 GHz. They operated at 2.4 GHz instead!<br />
<br />
I could tell this simply by looking at the adapters. Each adapter has two LED status indicators, one for power and one for an active wireless network connection. When both indicators are a solid green, the adapter is connected to the network and operating at 2.4 GHz. When both are a solid blue, the adapter is connected to the network and operating at 5.0 GHz.<br />
<br />
With my router operating in b/g compatibility mode, both adapters had solid green indicators. They were operating at 2.4 GHz, meaning that they could transfer data no faster than wireless-G adapters!<br />
<br />
To get my adapters' indicators to turn solid blue, thereby switching to 5.0 GHz operation, I had to change the radio mode of my N router to mode #2, "802.11n only (5 GHz)." When I did that, the adapters' indicators automatically turned solid blue within about one minute of my making the change. I did not have to go through any rigmarole such as powering the adapters down and up again to get them to switch to the new rate of operation.<br />
<br />
<i>Update: Thanks to a comment by Anonymous (Paul) below, I now realize that my need to fiddle with the radio mode of my AirPort Extreme base station (AEBS) was due to the fact that it is not a current model AEBS. According to the Wikipedia article on Apple's AirPort product line, "On March 3, 2009, Apple unveiled a new AirPort Extreme with simultaneous dual-band 802.11 Draft-N radios. This allows full 802.11 Draft-N 2x2 communication in both 802.11 Draft-N bands at the same time."<br />
<br />
I interpret this as saying that newer AEBS's than mine output 2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz signals, both at the same time, as they provide 802.11n compatibility. If I had one of the newer AEBS's — mine is from circa 2005 — I believe I could have obtained blue status lights on my N adapter right away, after initial setup.<br />
<br />
I'm not familiar with the wider, non-Apple world of routers, but I have to think that some or all wireless-N routers that are available today do the same trick: generate both 2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz signals at the same time as they provide N-compatibility. If you have one of those dual-band N routers, fine. If not, you may have to get creative, as I did.</i><br />
<div><br />
</div>Switching my AirPort Extreme base station to 5.0 GHz operation was well and good, but it left me with another problem. With my AEBS in "802.11n only (5 GHz)" radio mode, none of my 802.11g devices could get on the network.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, I had at hand a ready solution to the problem. I have a second router, an older-model Apple AirPort base station, that operates in 802.11g mode. It can also use 802.11b mode or a b/g compatibility mode. It does not support 802.11n operation.<br />
<br />
I'll call these two routers my "N router" and my "G router."<br />
<br />
I won't bore you with the details, but it was possible to back-to-back the G router with the N router, with the former acting, technically speaking, as a "bridge" to the latter. The G router is in its 802.11g radio mode, while the N router is in its 802.11n-only mode. The N router connects to the Internet via a cable modem and "shares a public IP address" with the G router, and via the G router with all the G devices on my network.<br />
<br />
In short, by back-to-backing two routers, I created what Apple calls a "dual band, 5.0 GHz and 2.4 GHz network," with Internet access on both bands.<br />
<br />
Given this configuration, my two TiVo Wireless-N adapters now connect with the N router (ignoring the G router entirely) and operate at 5.0 GHz. Their indicators are a solid blue.<br />
<br />
I have no idea, though, why my TiVo wireless-N adapters operate at 2.4 GHz when my N router is in b/g compatibility mode. My intuition was that they would instead discover that my router is N-capable and would pick, as a default, 5.0 GHz operation instead. But my intuition was wrong. At least under the conditions of my tests, my adapters seemed to default to 2.4 GHz operation as long the router's radio mode supports it.<br />
<br />
For those who need 802.11g compatibility and don't have the wherewithal to back-to-back two routers in a dual-band configuration, I regret I can offer little further advice. It is not inconceivable that the problem is idiosyncratic to my Apple AirPort Extreme base station, and that other N routers would not present the same problem.<br />
<br />
However, I think anyone who wants to run an N router in b/g-compatibility radio mode needs to be aware that it may be hard or impossible to get TiVo Wireless-N Network Adapters to operate at 5.0 GHz in that situation ... unless, that is, he or she is willing to spring for an <i>extra</i> adapter. With one adapter in "client" mode at each TiVo and one in "bridge" mode at the router, the radio mode of the router itself drops out of the picture.<br />
<br />
With one TiVo Wireless-N Network Adapter acting as a bridge to one or more others, all the adapters will operate at 5.0 GHz, while the router can be in b/g-compatibility radio mode and can host N-capable and G-capable network devices independently of the TiVo adapters.<br />
<br />
At <a href="https://www3.tivo.com/buytivo/faqs/about-wirelessn/index.html">this page at TiVo.com</a> it says, under "What is the TiVo Wireless N Adapter Double Pack? Why would someone need a Double Pack?":<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote>TiVo Premiere users who want to move their entertainment content across their home network at n speeds, can do so even if they only have a slower B- or G-speed router. How? By plugging one TiVo Wireless N Adapter into their Premiere and another into their legacy B- or G-speed router, they can create an N-speed bridge. This N-speed bridge enables users to download HD entertainment and move it through their home network at much faster speeds and with great efficiency.</blockquote><br />
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I haven't tried a configuration using an N-speed bridge, but I have no reason to believe this capability of TiVo Wireless-N Adapters wouldn't work as advertised.erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-38644402465692172852010-05-10T10:10:00.003-04:002010-05-12T09:04:16.105-04:00TiVo Wireless-N Adapter Arrives!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31CTapmTAHL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 10px;"><img border="0" height="100" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31CTapmTAHL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" width="100" /></a></div>You can now get a wireless-N network adapter for your TiVo, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/TiVo-AN0100-Wireless-Network-Adapter/dp/B0036OR924">$68.31 at the time of this writing at Amazon.com</a>. I have one on order and will report back later as to how well it works.<br />
<br />
Wireless-N connections are nominally much faster than the wireless-G adapters TiVos have supported up to now. I now have one Series3 TiVo and two TiVo HDs. Each TiVo currently uses a wireless-G adapter.<br />
<br />
My main interest in speeding things up is that I like to archive HD movies from any of my TiVos to my Mac, via my home wireless network, and then, when the mood strikes, stream one of them out to a TiVo for viewing. My wireless-G connections are too slow to stream HD in real time.<br />
<br />
So, too, may be the wireless-N connection. I have made some experiments using wired Ethernet between the Apple AirPort Extreme base station that sits next to my Mac and my Series3 TiVo. I found that even wired-Ethernet speed can be too slow for delivering HD in real time ... and Ethernet is much faster than wireless-N.<br />
<br />
But I also found a seeming difference between the Mac-to-TiVo-on-Ethenet transfer speed when I initiated a transfer but chose not to start playing it as it was in progress, as compared with when I chose to watch the video being transferred <i>at the same time</i> as it was being transferred. The latter scenario was much faster, making it seem, pending further experimentation, that the TiVo won't maximize the transfer speed unless the transferred recording is <i>also</i> being played during the process of making the transfer.<br />
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Also, there are several ways to do a Mac-to-TiVo transfer. When I made the experiment I just mentioned, I had yet to begin using pyTivoX (incorporating StreamBaby and FFmpeg) as the Mac-to-TiVo software engine on my Mac. I was instead using plain old TiVo Desktop. The particular transfer engine I use on my Mac may make a difference.<br />
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<b><i>Stream remuxing</i></b><br />
<br />
Another X factor is that copying a recording from a TiVo to a computer causes "remuxing" to take place. The TiVo "remuxes" (i.e., re-multiplexes) the recorded "transport stream" stored on its hard drive into a single MPEG-2 "program stream" that can be stored on a PC or Mac and played there.<br />
<br />
I learned <a href="ttp://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7097289#A4">here</a>, at the TiVo Community Forum, that:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>High-definition recordings are stored on the TiVo’s hard drive as transport streams in a proprietary format. When you download a recording from the TiVo with a web browser (or TiVo Desktop), the TiVo remuxes the recorded streams stored on the hard drive into a single MPG file that can be played on a PC or Mac. This on-the-fly remuxing does not have any effect on quality, but it does cut throughput by 50-70% compared to MRV between two TiVos<br />
<br />
When transferring recordings between two TivoHD DVRs, throughput is about twice as fast (20-24Mbps typical), because recorded files are transferred just as they are stored on the hard drive.</blockquote><br />
In a book I have, Charles Poynton’s <i>Digital Video and HDTV</i>, the author indicates that an MPEG-2 “transport stream” (TS) is comprised of a bunch of relatively small packets and is designed for “transmission of multiple programs on relatively error-prone media.” (That seems to describe to a T the transmission of cable TV to a TiVo.) “Multiple programs” would encompass, I’d assume, the video portion and the audio portion of a single cablecast. In a TS there are multiple independent “program clock references” that synchronize the separate programs. This would seem to be how video and audio are kept in sync.<br />
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In an MPEG-2 “program stream” (PS), which is designed for storage on relatively error-free media such as a computer hard drive, there are also packets, but they can be large: up to 64 KB in length, where a TS packet is only 188 bytes in length. Furthermore, synchronization in a PS is achieved through a “system clock reference,” not through program clock references.<br />
<br />
So my guess is that in going from a TiVo to a computer, the recorded stream is converted by the TiVo from TS to PS — this is what "remuxing" means, I expect — which incurs CPU overhead on the TiVo and slows things down a lot. In going from the computer back to the TiVo, I’d assume the computer, whose CPU is relatively fast, takes responsibility for converting the PS back to a TS, and so the slowdown, if any, would not be as great.<br />
<br />
<b><i>Weak TiVo CPU power</i></b><br />
<br />
Yet another X factor is the fact (see the TiVo Community Forum thread mentioned earlier) that the CPU of a TiVo has little CPU power, compared to a Mac or PC. It was not designed to handle more than about 75 Mbps of total throughput. Each HD stream consumes up to 20 Mbps, so if you are tuned to two HD channels and also watching a third HD recording that is already on your TiVo, the CPU overhead of two buffered HD channels and one in-progress HD playback can consume 55-60 Mbps. That worst-case scenario leaves 15-20 Mbps for handling MRV and PC transfers. During such transfers the CPU is responsible for, among other things, any remuxing that has to be done, so in a worst-case scenario such as this one the slowness of the TiVo's CPU can override an otherwise fast wireless-N or wired-Ethernet transfer speed, I assume.<br />
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In other words, there are several possible factors that can "bottleneck" a transfer from a TiVo to a computer — or in the reverse direction — such that the speed of the network connection is not the limiting factor. If this is the case, then upgrading from wireless-G to wireless-N might make little or no practical difference.<br />
<br />
The same is not necessarily true, though, for TiVo multi-room viewing, since the need for the sending TiVo to remux the TS recorded on it is absent in that scenario.<br />
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<b><i>Sidestepping wireless-G bottlenecks</i></b><br />
<br />
However, in order to take advantage of potential wireless-N increase in MRV speeds, one needs to use a wireless-N adapter for <i>both</i> TiVos. A network path is only as fast as its slowest link. If there is a wireless-G link anywhere in the path between the two TiVos — or between <i>any</i> two devices on the wireless network — the network speed will be limited to that of wireless-G.<br />
<br />
This is why anyone who gets a wireless-N adapter for a TiVo needs to be aware that the wireless router being used is a possible bottleneck. Say you have a router that is limited to wireless-G operation (or wireless-B operation, which has the same top speed as wireless-G). TiVo #1 can still MRV recordings from itself to TiVo # 2, even if both TiVos have a wireless-N adapter ... but the wireless-G router that is in the signal path between the two TiVos will slow the process down to wireless-G speed!<br />
<br />
TiVo Inc. says the way around that is to hook an <i>extra</i> TiVo wireless-N adapter into an Ethernet port on the wireless-G router. That extra adapter acts as a "bridge" between any two outboard wireless-N adapters, hooked to their respective TiVos, and keeps the slowness of the wireless-G router from interfering with overall wireless-N transfer speeds.<br />
<br />
I have a wireless-N capable router, though — an Apple AirPort Extreme base station using wireless-N operating mode. However, I also have been employing AirPort Express units, three of them, as part of a "wireless distribution network" (WDS) in my home. My particular AirPort Express units are limited to wireless-G operation. (Newer AirPort Express models are N-capable.) My base station formerly treated my AirPort Express units as range-extending parts of itself, so anything such as a TiVo that uses my home network might (possibly) access the network through a slow link: a wireless-G AirPort Express.<br />
<br />
For now, I have simply unplugged my AirPort Express units and reconfigured my base station to stand alone in my home network. Having no WDS to extend the network range ensures that there cannot be a wireless-G unit in the signal path between any two of my TiVos or any one of them and my Mac.<br />
<br />
<b><i>Wireless-N adapter connection and configuration</i></b><br />
<br />
The TiVo wireless-N adapter is unlike the wireless-G adapter in that the former hooks up to the Ethernet port on the back of the TiVo, not a USB port. (If you have an older TiVo model that lacks an Ethernet port, you're out of luck. Also, for reasons I am not sure of, the wireless-N adapter will work only on TiVos that have two tuners. If your TiVo has just one tuner, again you're out of luck. Nor will the wireless-N adapter work with any "DIRECTV DVR with TiVo" models.)<br />
<br />
The TiVo wireless-N adapter must be plugged into an electrical power source such as a wall outlet or power strip. The wireless-G adapter draws its power from the USB port it plugs into. I judge from several recent posts to online forums that many potential adopters resent the wireless-N adapter's need to be plugged into external power.<br />
<br />
The TiVo wireless-N adapter cannot be configured from the TiVo itself, as the wireless-G adapter can. You have to connect it to an Ethernet port on your computer, and also to a power source, to tell it what wireless network to use (even if you have only one such network) and also to enter the security phrase or password allowing connection via that network. Once you do that initial configuration, you can simply hook the wireless-N adapter to any TiVo.<br />
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If you have a router with "Wi-fi Protected Setup," it's even easier. You connect the wireless-N adapter via its Ethernet cable to that router (plugging the adapter into a power source as well) and press a button (on the router, I assume) that will set up the wireless-N adapter automatically. Then you move the wireless-N adapter to the TiVo.<br />
<br />
My AirPort Extreme does not have this capability, so I can't test "Wi-fi Protected Setup."<br />
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<b><i>More later ...</i></b><br />
<br />
After I receive my wireless-N adapter and try it out, I'll report back on how it did ...erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-17267408627599508362010-04-17T11:34:00.007-04:002010-05-09T07:44:38.338-04:00Viva pyTivo!<a href="http://pytivo.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/PyTivo"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.krkeegan.com/uploads/pytivo.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.krkeegan.com/uploads/pytivo.gif" /></a></div>No sooner had I posted <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2010/04/stream-baby-stream-pt-1.html">Stream, Baby, Stream</a> about the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/streambaby/">StreamBaby</a> computer app than I discovered <a href="http://pytivo.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/PyTivo">pyTivo</a>. pyTivo, like StreamBaby, is software you use to play videos on your TiVo when they reside on your computer.<br />
<br />
pyTivo <i>incorporates</i> StreamBaby, which means your TiVo can stream a video to itself from a hard drive on your computer. Streaming the video lets you play it without making a copy on your TiVo's hard drive.<br />
<br />
pyTivo can also send videos to your TiVo <i>from</i> your computer, meaning that you at your computer can initiate copying a video file to the TiVo's hard drive, after which it can be played just as if the TiVo had recorded it in the usual way.<br />
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pyTivo can use TiVo-playable videos in formats that plain old TiVo Desktop software can't deal with.<br />
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Just as with StreamBaby, pyTivo does not require you to alter the software or hardware of your TiVo in any way. In fact, your TiVo continues to run the same old software downloaded to it by TiVo, Inc.<br />
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pyTivo, like StreamBaby, runs on various computer platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and others. I talk here mainly about running it on a Mac.<br />
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It is a good thing that there is a Mac version — called <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pytivox/">pyTivoX</a> — for, as I detailed in <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2010/04/stream-baby-stream-pt-1.html">Stream, Baby, Stream</a><a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2010/04/stream-baby-stream-pt-1.html"></a>, installing StreamBaby on a Mac is a bit of a bear. For one thing, StreamBaby installation requires you to obtain and install <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFmpeg</a>, the "complete, cross-platform solution" that lets your computer record, format-convert, and stream videos. pyTivoX <i>contains</i> FFmpeg from the get-go.<br />
<br />
Since pyTivo likewise contains StreamBaby, installing pyTivo obviates ever having to install and configure either StreamBaby or FFmpeg.<br />
<br />
To install pyTivoX version 1.3, click <a href="http://pytivox.googlecode.com/files/pyTivoX-1.3.dmg">here</a> for a download. (But first go <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pytivox/">here</a> to see if there's a later version.) pyTivoX downloads to a Mac as a disk image file with a .dmg extension, which, when opened, looks like this:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S70SOITNuFI/AAAAAAAAAeo/9scuHaWq1PQ/s1600/pyTivoX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S70SOITNuFI/AAAAAAAAAeo/9scuHaWq1PQ/s400/pyTivoX.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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You just drag the pyTivoX icon to your Applications folder, and your pyTivoX/StreamBaby/FFmpeg installation is finished!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S70Q0Jc0IUI/AAAAAAAAAeg/YRWJi2jkp0A/s1600/pyTivoX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="251" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S70Q0Jc0IUI/AAAAAAAAAeg/YRWJi2jkp0A/s400/pyTivoX.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
Now, open the pyTivoX application. Above is the pyTivoX window that you'll see. I simply clicked on the + sign and added my "TiVo Transfers" folder to be shared with my TiVos. (In geek parlance, such a folder or directory is called a "video share.")<br />
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I also clicked the Prefs button (the light switch) and enabled the use of StreamBaby <i>within</i> pyTivoX:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S70TKIM1ERI/AAAAAAAAAew/03s-JIhxUdQ/s1600/pyTivoX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="261" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S70TKIM1ERI/AAAAAAAAAew/03s-JIhxUdQ/s320/pyTivoX.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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And I also checked to make sure pyTivo itself was enabled. It was:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S70TiibSAHI/AAAAAAAAAe4/h7rjm9DNEDY/s1600/pyTivoX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S70TiibSAHI/AAAAAAAAAe4/h7rjm9DNEDY/s320/pyTivoX.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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In the General Prefs pane I needed to enter my TiVo.com username and password:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S70UCFdL5XI/AAAAAAAAAfA/amiWDx0cVH4/s1600/pyTivoX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S70UCFdL5XI/AAAAAAAAAfA/amiWDx0cVH4/s320/pyTivoX.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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That was important because the "push" functionality I talk more about later won't work if you don't supply those two pieces of information to pyTivoX.<br />
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Notice that nowhere is there any way for you to enter your TiVo's media access key, or MAK; I assume pyTivoX learns that from your account at TiVo.com. Nor do you have to enter the IP addresses of your computer or your TiVo. pyTivoX figures those out for itself.<br />
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After dismissing the Prefs window, I clicked the green Apply checkmark in the main window (which is pyTivoX's <i>only</i> window). At that point I went over to one of my TiVos and found something like this in my Now Playing list:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm314/ilovehdtv/Other/TiVo/pytivo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm314/ilovehdtv/Other/TiVo/pytivo.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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This is not mine, actually; it's "Rob's PC," which is the "share name" Rob (a Windows user?) gave in his pyTivo Shared Directories list to the folder or directory on his computer that contains his videos. Selecting it in the Now Playing list would bring up a list of that folder's files ... and its subfolders, if any, which themselves contain videos. Navigating down in that list on his TV screen, Rob can tell pyTivo to transfer any one of his videos to his TiVo.<br />
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That's pyTivoX as it affects the Now Playing list. Additionally, towards the bottom of the TiVo's <b>Music, Photos, & Showcases</b> menu — which you get to from the TiVo Central menu— you'll see something like <i>pyTivoX - iMac.local</i>, indicating that pyTivoX is running on a computer whose local hostname is <i>iMac.local</i>. If you run pyTivoX and your computer's hostname happens to be (say) <i>Powerhouse.local</i> — you set your Mac's hostname in Sharing Preferences, by the way — you'll see <i>pyTivoX - Powerhouse.local</i> instead.<br />
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The <b>Music, Photos, & Showcases</b> menu is pyTivoX's StreamBaby interface per se. It's the way you <i>stream</i> your videos from your computer for instant watching on the TiVo. It's a little bit easier to stream videos from this interface than to download them in the Now Playing list and then start watching them as they are downloading. Plus, using the StreamBaby interface keeps the TiVo from having to make room for a copy of the video on its own hard drive.<br />
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Here's the kind of thing you'll see after you select a video in pyTivoX's StreamBaby interface on your TiVo:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm314/ilovehdtv/Other/TiVo/push.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm314/ilovehdtv/Other/TiVo/push.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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This particular video has already started to play, so the top menu item says "Resume playing"; otherwise, it would simply say "Play." The second menu item from the top lets you snap right back to the beginning of the movie <i>if</i> you've already started playing it. If you haven't started playing the video, this item is not present in the menu at all.<br />
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"Quality" refers to the average bitrate of the video: the average amount of data per second that will be streamed to the TiVo. Here, "Same - 9769 kb/s" indicates that the size of the video file divided by its running time — its average bitrate — comes to 9,760 kilobytes per second. That's the <i>average</i> bitrate, not the <i>peak</i>, and the fact that the average bitrate is pretty high (anything over, say, 5,000 kb/s is quite high) suggests that occasional bitrate peaks might overload your local network's data delivery speed, causing playback to pause — and, unfortunately, to do so repeatedly. Whenever the playback pauses, you'll have to hit Play on the TiVo remote to get it to start again. You should wait and hit Play <i>after</i> you think there has been enough newly received data buffered on the TiVo to avoid another playback pause any time soon.<br />
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If you get tired of hitting Play after endlessly repeated pauses, you can change the StreamBaby Quality to any of several lower bitrates. StreamBaby will, via its self-contained copy of FFmpeg, do things like (I am guessing) drop every third video frame to reduce the peak bitrate to an acceptable level. That will ideally keep you from having to hit Play over and over and over on your TiVo remote, but it can cause playback to present more "strobing" to your eyes than they might appreciate. Strobing can make the playback seem blurry in fast-motion scenes.<br />
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The next menu item is interesting. "Push video:" tells StreamBaby to cause the Bedroom TiVo — in this example; you can select among all the TiVos in your house — to summon the entire video file. It will be transferred in its entirely to the Bedroom TiVo's hard drive, and it will then appear the Bedroom TiVo's Now Playing list, allowing it to be played like any other video recording. The benefits:<br />
<br />
<ol><li>You can push videos in the MPEG-4 h.264 (or AVC) format that plain old TiVo Transfer on your computer wouldn't let you transfer. These files as computer files usually have an .m4v or .mp4 extension, not the .TiVo or .mpg extensions associated with MPEG-2 files that TiVo Transfer can handle. (The movies and TV Shows in your iTunes library usually have an .m4v extension, by the way.) There's a catch, though. Videos you purchase from the iTunes Store are encrypted and need to be independently decrypted before the TiVo can play them at all. It's beyond the scope of my article to say how to do that.</li>
<li>You can also push and watch unencrypted videos in the familiar (if now outmoded) WMV format. </li>
<li>Pushing a video allows you to (after a sufficient amount of the file has been received and stored) play the video from your TiVo's Now Playing list without encountering irritating pauses or having to throttle down the bitrate to avoid them.</li>
</ol><br />
What's the difference between "pushing" and "streaming," again? With "pushing" you wind up with a copy of the original file in your TiVo's Now Playing list. With "streaming," you simply play the video without making a copy on the TiVo.<br />
<br />
Both of these options come from the StreamBaby interface on the TiVo, while a third option, "pulling" a copy of the video to the TiVo, comes from the pyTivoX interface proper. The pyTivoX interface is initiated directly from your TiVo's Now Playing list.<br />
<br />
"Pulling" the video over to the TiVo has the advantage of having pyTivoX "transcode" the video into a different format en route to the TiVo, and that may be necessary to do if for some reason the video file as it resides on your computer cannot be played "natively" on the TiVo.<br />
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So if you try "streaming" the video and it looks terrible or won't play at all, try "pulling" it instead. Go to the Now Playing list on the TiVo and scroll down until you see the name of any of your "share" folders. For example, in the earlier screenshot image "Rob's PC" is the name of a share folder. When selected on the TiVo, it opens up to show all of the video files it contains ... and also any subfolders. You can drill down through the subfolders to find the video you want. Select that video and then select "Transfer this recording." In a matter of seconds it will start to transfer. The blue LED will come on on the front of the TiVo, and you will be asked whether you want to start watching the video while the transfer is ongoing.<br />
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If you do start to watch, you may quickly find that playback pauses because the rate of transfer cannot keep up with the rate of playback. After a while, you hit the play button, see some more of the video ... and get another"hard pause." Let the transfer proceed for a while. Then resume play. You may find at that point that enough of the video has been transferred to keep playback from pausing henceforth.<br />
<br />
Or you may not. If not, just do something else for a while. When you come back to the video, you'll most likely find it at the top of your Now Playing list, and if the transfer is not yet complete, you'll see the "blue button" icon next to it. You can initiate playback now just as you would any other recording in the Now Playing list.<br />
<br />
<br />
So, those are the basics of the pyTivoX/StreamBaby/FFmpeg package for the Mac. Using it, you can watch any video file that sits on your computer — well, any video file that is in a format pyTivoX/StreamBaby/FFmpeg understands — on your TV, via your TiVo. Enjoy!erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-62795079341611478022010-04-05T17:49:00.009-04:002010-04-25T10:22:30.001-04:00Stream, Baby, Stream<div class="separator" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><a href="http://code.google.com/p/streambaby/"><img border="0" height="45" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3ofIt8MGOHM/S7j15GYHyCI/AAAAAAAAAeY/Qrrygp9HfRU/s200/streambaby.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Run <a href="http://code.google.com/p/streambaby/">StreamBaby</a> and it will stream video recordings from your computer to your TiVo. You fire StreamBaby up on your computer and let it sit there "listening" for the TiVo to command it to play a video. You go to your TiVo and from there select which video recording to play. Almost instantly, StreamBaby starts to stream the video through your TiVo into your TV.<br />
<br />
It is a bit like TiVo multi-room viewing, which allows one TiVo in your house to feed a video to a different TiVo in a different room. With MRV you can begin watching the video in the other room as soon as the stream has started to transfer; in that way StreamBaby is basically like MRV with, as a source device, a PC or Mac, not another TiVo.<br />
<br />
But StreamBaby is better than MRV. With MRV, if the bitrate of the program exceeds the speed of your network, you get a "hard pause" — one that will not automatically go back to playing the video after more of it has been streamed. You wait a bit, hit play, and pretty soon there's another hard pause. You manually go through the play-pause-play dance over and over and over again. Not wonderful.<br />
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StreamBaby will do the manual play-pause-play dance if you want it to, but it also gives you the option of throttling the bitrate down so that the video will play all the way through without interruption. That <i>is</i> wonderful.<br />
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And StreamBaby plays videos in a number of formats that the TiVo ordinarily can't deal with. For example, if on your computer you have a video in the MPEG-4/h.264/AVC format with the file extension .m4v, the TiVo ordinarily won't play it. StreamBaby plays it. StreamBaby plays .wmv, .avi, and .mkv videos too.<br />
<br />
StreamBaby will swiftly seek to anywhere in the video, and play the video from that point in time. MRV won't. And StreamBaby will also fast forward/rewind to any point in the video, with low-quality static images appearing on the screen as a preview. (Unfortunately, videos in the .mpg, or MPEG-2, format <i>don't</i> present those static "thumbnail" images readily the first time they are played, until the static thumbnails are all cached for later use. That takes about five minutes for a two-hour movie. The cache <i>is</i> saved for the next time the video is played, however.)<br />
<br />
StreamBaby lets you punch in, from the number pad on your TiVo remote, a sequence of digits, and then it will seek to that minute in the video. For example, if you punch in 1-8, minute 18 of the video will come up on your TV screen. Again, that's not something MRV can do.<br />
<br />
StreamBaby responds to other key presses on the TiVo remote. For instance, if you use the FF or REW button and then the skip-forward or skip-back button, StreamBaby will jump forward or back in 15-minute increments.<br />
<br />
StreamBaby remembers your position in a video when you stop watching and automatically starts at that position next time you watch. If you have more than one TiVo, it will do that even if you are using a different TiVo when you return to watching the video. Nice.<br />
<br />
And the thing that really sells this hard-of-hearing guy on StreamBaby is that it puts subtitles on the screen along with the video. You have to go to a bit of trouble to turn the closed captions embedded in the video itself into subtitles, or to otherwise obtain the subtitles file, but once you do that, StreamBaby shows them.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><u>StreamBaby First Use </u></b><br />
<br />
<i>After I wrote this, I learned about a much easier way to begin using StreamBaby — see <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2010/04/viva-pytivo.html">Viva pyTivo!</a></i><i><br />
</i><br />
<br />
StreamBaby runs under Windows, under Mac OS X, and also on Linux-based platforms. I'm using it on a Mac. According to the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/streambaby/">StreamBaby project website</a>, getting started with StreamBaby is relatively easy under Windows. However, on a Mac there are complications. I'll detail some of them here.<br />
<br />
(1) First, download the StreamBaby ZIP file from the website. At the time of this writing, it's the 0.29 version of StreamBaby, available <a href="http://streambaby.googlecode.com/files/streambaby-0.29.zip">here</a>. But check the website to make sure that there isn't a later version for you to download.<br />
<br />
(2) Unzip the ZIP file to get a folder called streambaby-0.29 (or whatever). You can put the folder wherever you want; I keep mine on my Desktop. In that folder, you're looking for the Unix executable named, appropriately, streambaby; it will run in Terminal. You're also looking for a crucial initialization file, streambaby.ini. Save a copy of the latter in its original form if you like, because you're going to modify the original to (among other things) point to the folders that contain the videos you want to stream.<br />
<br />
(3) Edit the original streambaby.ini file in TextEdit (drag the streambaby.ini icon to TextEdit on the Dock) to include the path to the top level of your video folder hierarchy. Here's mine:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-indent: 4em;"><b>dir.1=/Volumes/New 2TB Drive/TiVo Transfers</b></div><div style="text-indent: 4em;"><b>dir.1.name=TiVo Transfers</b></div><br />
Notice that I <i>also</i> told StreamBaby by what name it should call my top-level folder. That's optional. If you don't specify your own <b>dir.1.name</b>, the default one that comes in the .ini file is "My Videos." The <b>dir.1.name</b>, whatever it is, will show up on your TV screen later on.<br />
<br />
Notice also that there are embedded spaces in the <b>dir.1</b> path name to my "TiVo Transfers" folder, and also in the <b>dir.1.name</b>. They're fine. You <i>don't</i> have to put an "escape" character ('\', a backslash) in front of the spaces. In fact, the streambaby.ini file won't work right if you do.<br />
<br />
If you have no videos to stream using StreamBaby, then for the time being you will need to create (anywhere you like) an empty folder for this step. <br />
<br />
But how do you ascertain the <i>full path name</i> to your videos folder? Download <a href="http://epstewart.home.comcast.net/Copy%20Path.workflow.zip">Copy Path.workflow.zip</a> to your Desktop as a file named Copy Path (its extension, .workflow, is hidden), and then move or copy that file to become /Users/[username]<username>/Library/Workflows/Applications/Finder/Copy Path.workflow. Substitute your own username for </username>[username]<username><username>. It then becomes a Finder plugin. To use it, select any folder or file in Finder, right-click on its icon, and choose More -> Automator -> Copy Path. Wait a few seconds for the plugin to do its work. The full path name is now on your Clipboard and, in TextEdit, you can paste it into streambaby.ini as <b>dir.1</b>!</username></username><br />
<br />
In the streambaby.ini file, any line that begins with a '#" character is a comment. It has no effect. There are several of these in the original file to give you and idea of the kinds of things you can put in the file. (To find out <i>all</i> the things that can go in the file, click <a href="http://code.google.com/p/streambaby/wiki/StreamBabyIni">here</a>.)<br />
<br />
The active streambaby.ini file has to be <i>in the same folder</i> as the streambaby Unix executable.<br />
<br />
(4) Your mileage may vary on this one. I found I had to put<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-indent: 4em;"><b>ip=10.0.1.201</b></div><br />
<br />
in my streambaby.ini file to get StreamBaby to work for me. 10.0.1.201 is the IP address of my iMac, set in Network Preferences. In that Preferences panel I've set my Built-in Ethernet connection (I'm using that connection and not AirPort) to "Configure: Using DHCP with manual address" and have entered 10.0.1.201 as my IP address. My iMac connects via an Ethernet cable to my AirPort Extreme base station (which is basically a wireless access point/router/Ethernet hub) and I run another Ethernet cable from the base station to my TiVo Series3. StreamBaby works for me only if I include the above line in my streambaby.ini file. If you try StreamBaby (see below) and find its "Stream, Baby, Stream" menu item won't show up on your TiVo, you might try looking at Network Preferences to find out your Mac's current IP address and entering it as a line like the one above in your streambaby.ini.<br />
<br />
Don't forget to save your modified streambaby.ini file <i>before</i> you try to use StreamBaby. If you have <i>already</i> started StreamBaby on your Mac, you should quit it, modify streambaby.ini as desired, save the modified streambaby.ini, and restart StreamBaby from the Terminal window again. See below for more on how to do all that.<br />
<br />
(5) This next part is a bit complicated. Bear with me. To get certain parts of StreamBaby's functionality to work, you have to install <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFmpeg</a> on your Mac. That's not easy, but doable.<br />
<br />
First, download <a href="http://epstewart.home.comcast.net/ffmpeg.zip">this ffmpeg.zip file</a> to your Desktop. Then unzip it to put a folder called ffmpeg on the Desktop.<br />
<br />
You are going to copy the ffmpeg.bin file within that folder to the /usr/bin/ directory, and then you will copy all five of the other files (the ones with the .dylib extension) to /usr/lib/. To do those things, you need to open a window in Terminal and enter<br />
<br />
<div style="text-indent: 4em;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE; killall Finder;</b></span></div><br />
followed by hitting return. Copy and paste the above to avoid typing errors.<br />
<br />
That will cause hidden files and directories to show up in Finder. Next, navigate to /usr/bin/. /usr/ is at the top folder level on your main hard drive. /bin/ is one of the items at the top folder level within /usr/. Holding down the option key to make a copy, <i>not</i> move the original file, you need to drag ffmpeg.bin from the ffmpeg folder to /usr/bin/.<br />
<br />
Then go back out to the /usr/ directory and open its /lib/ subfolder. Option-drag all five of the .dylib files from the ffmpeg folder into that subfolder.<br />
<br />
Now go back to the Terminal window and enter (via copy and paste):<br />
<br />
<div style="text-indent: 4em;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE; killall Finder;</b></span></div><br />
That will restore all hidden files to being hidden in Finder. Congratulations, you have just installed FFmpeg along with its five dynamic libraries!<br />
<br />
(6) You're almost ready to try StreamBaby, but before you do, you'll need a video to try it out with. In Pt. 2 of this series I'll tell you how to create your own videos from recordings on your TiVo — you'll use your computer as an archive for them, plus decrypt them so they will stream in StreamBaby.<br />
<br />
For now, you'll just download <a href="http://epstewart.home.comcast.net/NxNW%20Clip.zip">NxNW Clip.zip</a> and unzip it to your Desktop. Then you'll edit<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-indent: 4em;"><b>dir.2=/Users/<username><username>[username]/Desktop/NxNW Clip</username></username></b></div><div style="text-indent: 4em;"><b>dir.2.name=</b><b>NxNW Clip</b></div><br />
into the streambaby.ini file, replacing <b><username></username><username>[username]</username></b> with your username. (Use the "Copy Path" Finder plugin mentioned earlier to simplify the whole thing.) Notice that this time, <b>dir.<u>2</u></b> and <b>dir.<u>2</u>.name</b> are used; this is your <i>second</i><b> </b>StreamBaby folder. You specified the first one earlier, even if you had to create an empty folder somewhere to do it.<br />
<br />
(7) Now that you have something to stream, it's time to fire up StreamBaby:<br />
<ul><li> Open a Finder window for your streambaby-0.29 (or whatever) folder</li>
<li>Launch the Terminal application (it's a good idea to keep Terminal in your Dock); open a new window in Terminal, if none opens automatically</li>
<li>Drag the streambaby Unix executable file to the Terminal window and hit return</li>
<li> Expect to see something like <i>04/05/10 16:56:22 Listener: added factory</i> and then <i>04/05/10 16:56:22 Main: streambaby ready & listening</i> in the Terminal window, while ...</li>
<li><b>com.unwiredappeal.tivo.streambaby.StreamBabyMain</b> opens as a separate application on your Mac; it's a Java app, and if it can't open properly, check that <a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=13259344&postID=6279507934161147802" name="Requirements:">Java 1.5 or above is installed on your Mac</a>; retry the above after you have obtained the latest release of Java for the Mac<br />
</li>
</ul>StreamBaby is now running, so it's time for the acid test.<br />
<br />
Go to your TiVo and from the <b>TiVo Central</b> menu choose <b>Music, Photos, & Showcases</b>. That will (after a couple of seconds of hesitation) bring up a list of items you can play, near the bottom of which (scroll down if necessary) is<b> Stream, Baby, Stream</b>.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://streambaby.googlecode.com/files/stream_baby_stream.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="http://streambaby.googlecode.com/files/stream_baby_stream.gif" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<br />
If you don't see it, check near the bottom of the list for <b>Enable Home Network Applications ...</b> . If you see that, select it and comply with the instructions: hit the Thumbs Up button on your remote three times, then hit Enter. After you navigate back to the bottom of the <b>Music, Photos, & Showcases</b> menu, you should now see <b><u>Disable</u> Home Network Applications ...</b> , just as in the picture above.<br />
<br />
Or, if you see the "Disable" option already, you have a more serious problem. One possibility is that StreamBaby is using an IP address that the TiVo is blind to (see above for how you specify an IP address in streambaby.ini). You <i>do</i> have your TiVo on a wired or wireless network <i>with</i> you Mac, correct?<br />
<br />
If so, then sorry, but solving problems like that is beyond the scope of this article. To get further advice, visit <a href="http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=416858">this thread</a> at the TiVo Community Forum.<br />
<br />
Once you do see <b>Stream, Baby, Stream</b> on your TiVo, select it. You should see a <b>NxNW Clip</b> screen with one item in its menu: <b>NxNW Clip</b>. Select that, and you should see <b>NxNW 1 min.mpg</b>. Select that, and you'll see a <b>Play</b> button, along with some others. Select <b>Play</b>. You will probably see a "Please Wait ..." icon and also some subtitles that begin playing even though there's no picture yet. After a few seconds, the picture and audio should snap in, and the subtitles will sync up with it.<br />
<br />
The subtitles come from the NxNW 1 min.srt file in the same folder as NxNW 1 min.mpg, by the way. They were extracted from the closed captions in the original TiVo recording. In a later post, I'll tell you how I did it ...<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, congratulations! You are just about ready to Stream, Baby, Stream ...erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-77975863246759635442009-12-12T19:29:00.000-05:002009-12-12T19:29:20.260-05:00Revisiting 1080p24 ("24p") on Blu-rayNot too long ago I posted <a href="http://whatsonhdtv.blogspot.com/2009/06/1080p24-24p-on-blu-ray.html">1080p24 ("24p") on Blu-ray</a> to talk about how, for the first time on home video, a motion picture is rendered on Blu-ray disc just the way it was recorded on film: at 24 full video frames per second. Using "progressive" 1080p video, films on Blu-ray can be stunningly realistic when viewed on a 1080p HDTV connected to the Blu-ray player via HDMI. In contrast, I said, DVDs generally <i>don't</i> store progressive video, at the 24 frames per second used by motion picture film, or at any other frame rate.<br />
<br />
Recently, an anonymous person added this comment to my post:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Dear Bonehead,<br />
<br />
I stopped reading your article partway through because you obviously know NOTHING about the DVD standard. NTSC DVD's support both "30fps" (interlaced video) and 24fps (progressive scan video); in fact, most Hollywood DVD's use 24fps when the original source is film to save on disc space (by eliminating 6 fps of interpolated data), as the DVD player will do 2:3 pulldown as necessary when outputting to an interlaced display. Blu-ray just adds extra resolution to the image, not a "breakthru" in frame rates or progressive scanning. Bother to do your research before blathering on the internet like you are some sort of expert. I don't know everything, but I do know something about DVD's, as I work with encoding and authoring them everyday for my job.<br />
</blockquote><br />
Now, I can take being called names like "Bonehead" when my name-caller has any kind of a good point to make. In this case though, not only was the anonymous commenter rude, but he was just plain wrong, to boot. So here is my rejoinder:<br />
<br />
<i>Sorry, you who so impolitely called me "Bonehead," but I beg to differ:<br />
<br />
On DVDs sold in the United States, film-derived video is recorded in such a way as to result in 480i output from a standard DVD player — that is, interlaced video with two fields per video frame, separated by a time interval of approx. 1/60 second between fields. The frame rate is thus approx. 30 frames per second.<br />
<br />
The typical "progressive scan" DVD player (one that does no "upconversion") can derive 30 complete, non-interlaced frames per second from film-based video on an NTSC DVD and output those frames as 480p video on a component-video connection, into a TV whose component-video input can handle the bandwidth of 480p. It cannot, however, output progressive video at 24 fps. Only a Blu-ray player, using a Blu-ray disc, can do that.<br />
<br />
To derive progressive output at 30 frames per second from film-based material, the progressive scan DVD player can simply take each video field and "double" the scan lines in it, to make up a full frame with 480 scan lines. This is the "line doubler" approach.<br />
<br />
A smarter approach is to do "3:2 pulldown compensation," a.k.a. "2:3 pulldown compensation" or "inverse telecine." Ideally, this process faithfully recreates the 24 frames per second of the original film —— but then 6 of those 24 frames are repeated(!) to bring the video-output frame rate up to 30 frames per second. This is done because few if any of the TVs that were available when progressive scan DVD players were introduced were able to accept video at 24 frames per second.<br />
<br />
On the DVD itself, the encoding is 480i. However, film-based material is usually — but not always — encoded in such a way that the video fields that need to be repeated (in "2:3 pulldown") to change the 24 frames per second of film into the 30 frames (or 60 fields) per second of NTSC video are flagged, with the DVD player being expected to use the flags to re-output the fields as necessary.<br />
<br />
This use of flags to tell the player how to do 2:3 pulldown is called "soft telecine." In "hard telecine," the fields are actually repeated on the disc. Few progressive scan DVD players know how to compensate for "hard telecine." They typically do know how to compensate for "soft telecine" — but, unfortunately, many DVDs using that type of encoding have portions where the flags are missing or improperly used, resulting in imperfections in the output cadence until the flags get back in sync.<br />
<br />
"Soft telecine" 480i DVDs record exactly 24 frames per second, or 48 fields per second. They accordingly bear a superficial resemblance to the "24p" recording of a film on Blu-ray, but the latter is truly recorded as progressive video at 24 frames per second, while the former records discrete fields of interlaced video at 48 fields per second.<br />
<br />
In saying the above, I realize that I am in disagreement with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24p">Wikipedia article on 24p</a>.<br />
<br />
The section "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24p#24p_on_DVD">24p on DVD</a>" states, "DVDs, however, are capable of storing the native 24p frames." This is possibly true. It also states, "Every Hollywood movie is laid to disc as a 24p ... stream." This is definitely not true.<br />
<br />
True 24p is at best an optional way to encode DVDs that is rarely if ever used. It is <u>not</u> actually used for "every Hollywood movie." See <a href="http://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/Telecine">this page</a> at the website dedicated to the Handbrake video transcoder software, if you don't believe me about most or all film-based NTSC DVDs being either "soft" or "hard" telecined. Also see <a href="http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-telecine.html">this page</a> about the MPlayer and MEncoder software. The format discussed at "11.2.2.2. Telecined" is the one used on virtually every film-based NTSC DVD.<br />
<br />
Still don't believe me? Let me refer you to perhaps the ultimate authority on DVDs, Jim Taylor, who wrote the book <b>DVD Demystified</b> and maintains the <a href="http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html">Official DVD FAQ</a>. He says, in "<a href="http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#1.40">What's a progressive DVD player?</a>":</i><br />
<br />
<blockquote><i>A progressive-scan DVD player converts the interlaced (480i or 576i) video from DVD into progressive (480p or 576p) format for connection to a progressive-scan display (31.5 kHz or higher) ... There's enormous confusion about whether DVD video is progressive or interlaced. Here's the one true answer: Progressive-source video (such as from film) is usually encoded on DVD as interlaced field pairs that can be reinterleaved by a progressive player to recreate the original progressive video.</i><br />
</blockquote><br />
OK, that's about the size of it, then. Virtually all NTSC DVDs in the United States that were sourced from film have telecined video encoded on them, which means interlaced, not progressive, video. Any more questions, Anonymous?erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259344.post-1373976821832305892009-12-05T10:45:00.094-05:002010-04-25T18:18:22.110-04:00TCM HD arrives!<a href="http://www.tcm.com/index.jsp" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://www.lyngsat-logo.com/logo/tv/tt/tcm_us_hd.jpg" style="float: left; height: 99px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 132px;" /></a>It's been a long time coming, but <a href="http://www.tcm.com/index.jsp">Turner Classic Movies</a> is now available in 1080i HD! The channel adored by lovers of, yes, <span style="font-style: italic;">classic</span> movies is not just a standard-def affair any more. As of November 28, 2009, Comcast — at least in my area of Baltimore County, Maryland — carries TCM HD. In my area, it's on digital channel 890. That means TCM HD ought to be coming to other cable systems soon, if it hasn't already.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.tcm.com/index.jsp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="96" src="http://www.saint.org/blog/uploaded_images/tcm-gangster-icon-769595.jpg" width="103" /></a>TCM has long been adored by millions of cable TV viewers because it screens movies of the past from its huge vault. It shows them uncut, sans commercials, in their original aspect ratio. The TCM database contains over 150,000 titles; surely not all of those appear on the TCM channel, but the number of films that do show up on TCM is gargantuan.</div><br />
<br />
<b>That "original aspect ratio" thing</b> is big, by the way. OAR applies to movies shot in wider than the 4:3 Academy ratio of Hollywood's Golden Age. TV screens used to be 4:3 too, so Golden Age movies fit them perfectly. But OAR rendering of widescreen flicks — as opposed to "panning and scanning" to fill the entire 4:3 TV screen with selected parts of the original film frame — meant putting letterboxing bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Many who were not celluloid cognoscenti hated the bars. The cognoscenti loved them.<br />
<br />
Along came today's 16:9 widescreen behemoths, and OAR <span style="font-style: italic;">still</span> meant putting letterboxing or "matte" bars at screen top and bottom, for the oodles of movies whose frame dimensions are notably wider than 1.7777...:1 (which is 16:9 reduced to a decimal value). CinemaScope from the 1950s, in particular, was 2.35:1!<br />
<br />
If you want to see <span style="font-style: italic;">all</span> of <span style="font-style: italic;">Around the World in 80 Days</span> (1956) or <span style="font-style: italic;">20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</span> (1954), among countless other memorable spectaculars of the era, you <span style="font-style: italic;">have</span> to see them in OAR.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">If you want to see great movies</span> shown to their best advantage on TV, you also need to see them in HD. People who have Blu-ray players know that. Still, it may be years before <span style="font-style: italic;">Around the World in 80 Days</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</span> show up on Blu-ray. Having TCM come into our homes in 1080i gives us hope that one day soon, even before said titles come to Blu-ray, such fare may be visible in a format putting over 2,000,000 pixels on the TV screen.<br />
<br />
But there remain obstacles. Whether TCM shows <span style="font-style: italic;">20,000 Leagues</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">ATW80</span> in glorious HD on its HD channel, or simply upconverts it from a standard-def version, is a huge question.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>It all has to do with how TCM's vault copy</b> of the title has been transferred from film to video.<br />
<br />
Today, film-to-video transfer is usually done using film scanners. These are devices that you feed a reel of celluloid into, wait a very long while while the scanner records every tiny detail of every film frame, and out comes a digital copy in a high-definition-plus video format such as 2K or even 4K.<br />
<br />
2K: that's "one K" — "K" refers to the power-of-two number 1,024, not 1,000 — multiplied by two, yielding 2,048, which is the number of pixels per row or video scan line in the digitally scanned 2K output. So each frame of video in the 2K output has 2,048 pixels in it. That makes its resolution <span style="font-style: italic;">better</span> than that of 1080i/1080p HD, because 1080i/p video frames have only 1,920 pixels per row.<br />
<br />
4K scans double the 2K per-row number, to 4,096 pixels per row.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>2K and 4K scans have varying numbers</b> of pixel rows. They <i>generally</i> have 1,152 and 2,304 pixel rows, respectively, for images using the 16:9 aspect ratio — see the Wikipedia article <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_resolutions#Movies">List of common resolutions</a>. Those numbers are 9/16 the number of pixels per row.<br />
<br />
CinemaScope and other super-wide film formats have aspect ratios that exceed 16:9, so for them, 2K/4K scans have fewer than 1,152/2,304 pixel rows. And there are many widescreen films whose frames have, say, the moderately narrow 1.66:1 aspect ratio, so 2K and 4K scans will have more than 1,152 and 2,304 pixel rows, respectively.<br />
<br />
But never mind the exact number of pixel rows. 2K or 4K resolution is still better than 1080i/p. The true figure of merit is how many pixels there are <i>per</i> row.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Here's a graphic from</span> the Wikipedia article <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_cinematography">Digital cinematography</a> that shows what's going on:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/13/Digital_cinema_formats.svg/518px-Digital_cinema_formats.svg.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/13/Digital_cinema_formats.svg/518px-Digital_cinema_formats.svg.png" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
<br />
The assumed aspect ratio in this illustration is 2.39:1, which is quite a bit wider, proportionally, than the 1.77:1 of 1080i/p or 720p HDTV. That means a 2K scan of the 2.39:1 film will have 857 pixel rows, and 4K will have 1,714 rows. (To get the number of pixel rows, divide 2,048 for 2K, or 4,096 for 4K, by 2.39, and round fractional values up.)<br />
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This illustration represents, for each resolution, the relative number of pixels per video frame in the scanner's output. As displayed on a video screen, of course, all the resolutions would exactly fill the width of the screen. But a 4K scan would have <span style="font-style: italic;">twice</span> the detail of 2K in the horizontal dimension <i>and</i> twice the detail in the vertical dimension. Hence, the respective sizes of the rectangles in the illustration represent not the image size but the <i>amount of detail</i> present in the various video scans.<br />
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1080i/p and 720p use a narrower-than-2.39:1 aspect ratio, 1.77:1, so when a 2.39:1 film is being scanned in OAR for 16:9 HDTV, letterboxing bars do generally need to be added. Some of the resolution that is available in the vertical dimension of the HDTV screen is accordingly wasted. Film cognoscenti don't mind; they'd rather see the film in OAR.<br />
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Moreover, the film scanner may eschew adding the letterboxing matte bars under the assumption that they will be added at some later stage of the film-to-TV-screen "bucket brigade."<br />
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<b><span style="font-weight: bold;">TCM HD might ideally like</span> to have 2K or 4K</b> scans for each film in its vaults. For showing on the 1080i TCM HD cable channel, each 2K/4K archive copy would need to be downconverted to 1080i.<br />
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Another option would be to start with, specifically, a 1080p scan of any given film. Each frame of the film would be scanned to a single frame of the film scanner's 1,920 x 1,080-pixel video output. There are 24 frames per second in film, so there would be 24 fps of video output from the scanner. Each video frame would represent the entirety of one (and only one) input film frame.<br />
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The result would be "1080p24" video, where the "p" says that the video frames are "progressive": they're not separated into two video "fields" per frame, with each digital video field carrying, in odd-even alternating sequence, just the odd-numbered or just the even-numbered pixel rows of the image. Video in which there are alternating fields is "interlaced." The "i" in 1080i says the video is interlaced.<br />
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Progressive video is more filmlike than interlaced video. Films on Blu-ray use progressive video at 24 fps, and many modern HDTVs can input 1080p24 video from a Blu-ray player over an HDMI connection. That gives the ultimate in video quality on an HDTV screen.<br />
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TCM HD is stuck with transmitting 1080i video. It can't use 1080p, because cable TV (even when digital) isn't able to carry that video format; 1080p uses too many bits per second of channel bandwidth. Cable TV has to use 1080i, not 1080p. Furthermore, cable TV has to use 1080i at 60 video <span style="font-style: italic;">fields</span> per second — "1080i60," it's called, or "1080i @ 60 Hz". That field rate amounts to 30 video <span style="font-style: italic;">frames</span> per second, but the second half of the information in each frame arrives 1/60 second later than the first half.<br />
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If TCM has in its vaults a 1080p24 video transfer of a film, it can convert it to 1080i60 for cablecast. There are technical issues that affect the video quality of the result, but the conversion itself is otherwise pretty straightforward.<br />
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<b>Among the technical issues involved</b> in converting 1080p24 to 1080i60 is the need to avoid "interlace artifacts." One of the most problematic of the interlace artifacts has to do with scene details that are very small — smaller in their vertical dimension than the height of two adjacent scan lines or pixel rows.<br />
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In interlaced scanning, such tiny scene elements can, either wholly or partially, briefly disappear. That can happen when, for example, there is a diagonal camera pan with respect to a stationary scene. In any given video field, a tiny element of the scene may happen to partially or wholly coincide with a pixel row that is missing in that field. If so, the detail simply isn't <i>fully</i> represented in the field — if it's there at all.<br />
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In the very next video field, the same detail may have moved slightly with respect to the frame of the picture, owing to the camera pan. Now the detail may show up in its entirety, or only partially, or (again) not at all. In the next field in the sequence, it may show up to a different extent — and so on.<br />
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To the eye, the result of all this fine detail being shown to varying degrees in successive video fields may be an impression of false shimmering or flickering in the picture.<br />
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This is why interlaced video is often filtered. In the vertical direction with respect to the video screen, a (today, usually digital) filter can be used to remove details of the picture that may cause shimmer.<br />
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Unfortunately, filtering to avoid interlace artifacts such as shimmer also reduces the amount of "good" vertical detail in the picture, softening the image somewhat even while retaining all of the image's <i>horizontal</i> detail.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Yet another option is for TCM HD</span> to convert to 1080i a lower-resolution film-to-video transfer for a given film.<br />
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For example, TCM might have in its vaults a DVD-quality transfer of, say, Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 classic <span style="font-style: italic;">Rear Window</span>. If it's DVD quality, that means it's probably in the 480i format. There are 480 pixel rows per field in the interlaced video, and there are (up to) 720 pixels per row. The pixels don't have the square shape of the pixels in the formats I just talked about, so when the image is spread across a wide 16:9 screen, the apparent resolution isn't as great as it might otherwise be.<br />
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(Actually, since <span style="font-style: italic;">Rear Window</span> was shot with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1, which is narrower than HDTV's 16:9, this film would likely be shown on TCM HD with thin <span style="font-style: italic;">vertical</span> letterboxing bars at the sides of the screen. Or, since the term "letterboxing" properly refers to <span style="font-style: italic;">horizontal</span> matte bars only, the term "pillarboxing" can be used instead.)<br />
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Moreover, there are 60 fields per second in this hypothetical 480i scan of <span style="font-style: italic;">Rear Window</span>. Since 60 <span style="font-style: italic;">fields</span> per second is not a multiple of 24 <i>frames</i> per second, some of the fields will have to be repeated an extra time. This creates so-called "telecine judder" — <span style="font-style: italic;">telecine</span> (which can be pronounced with three <i>or</i> four syllables) being how film was transferred to video before there were digital film scanners. That word, telecine, refers to the machine that was used, and also to the process of using it.<br />
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Telecine judder shows up quite readily when there is a smooth camera pan across a scene. It looks herky-jerky instead. (Fast pans always involve <span style="font-style: italic;">some</span> so-called "strobing," even when a pristine copy of the film is projected on a theater screen. Telecine judder simply accentuates it.)<br />
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<b>If TCM HD shows this "480i60"</b> (as it's technically called) hypothetical scan of <span style="font-style: italic;">Rear Window</span>, it must first be upconverted to 1080i60.<br />
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Converting among different digital video formats is called <span style="font-style: italic;">scaling</span>. Going from a lower resolution to a higher is <span style="font-style: italic;">scaling up</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">upscaling</span>. These are both synonyms for upconverting.<br />
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The result of upscaling 480i60 to 1080i60 would be noticeably less video resolution than true 1080i60, because video upconversion can <span style="font-style: italic;">never</span> increase true resolution.<br />
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There would be just as much telecine judder as in the 480i60 transfer.<br />
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Moreover, there could be nasty video artifacts visible in the image that results from the upconversion. Such artifacts might include aliasing, making for spurious moiré patterns in the picture:<br />
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<a href="http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/5670/nocturnealiasing1a.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/5670/nocturnealiasing1a.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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(Click the image to enlarge it, then look at the brick walls behind the girl to see the false moiré pattern.)<br />
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The aliasing/moiré artifact in a still picture such as that one can get worse when parts of the scene are in apparent motion. If a TV camera taking a picture of a brick wall zooms outward, when the apparently "moving" bricks get small enough, moiré can suddenly appear.<br />
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Similarly, upconverting a video image, done clumsily, can in effect add "tiny bricks" (false detail) that can then lead to the shimmering problem described earlier on camera pans, if the added false detail is not filtered out of the 1080i image (along with "good" detail, unfortunately).<br />
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In fact, technically speaking, aliasing, the moiré effect, and shimmering and similar interlace artifacts are <i>all</i> examples of the same underlying problem: image details that are, in size, too near to the sizes of individual pixels or (for interlaced video) pixel rows.<br />
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There are other artifacts, too, that can appear (or be accentuated) when upscaling digital video from a lower resolution to a higher is done. That's why it is to be hoped that TCM HD will ultimately replace its non-HD vault copies with 1080p, 2K, or 4K scans — or, better yet, 8K scans! — which can then be skillfully downconverted to 1080i with (hopefully) a minimum of visual artifacts.erichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05244758906105140609noreply@blogger.com5