What's on HDTV?

Check Out My "Streaming Media 101: Do You Hulu?" Google Doc

2011-03-26T13:36:00.002-04:00

If you are, like many of us, baffled by the wide range of ways to stream videos from the Web to your computer or your television today, check out my "Streaming Media 101: Do You Hulu?" Google Doc.

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.

Stream Movies Mac-to-Mac with VLC

2011-02-16T10:47:00.484-05:00

I wrote in Archive HDTV Recordings to Your Mac, Then Stream Them Back to Your TiVo! 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.

In another blog, in Stream iTunes Movies from Mac to iPhone Safari, 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 Movies: TiVo to Mac to Apple TV + iPhone posts, I detailed other, non-Safari ways to stream my archived movies to either an iPhone or an Apple TV.

See a pattern here? I like to stream archived video content from my Mac to other devices (including back to the original TiVo).

Streaming Mac-to-Mac

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.

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 — any 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."

(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.)

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.

Now I see, in the same Finder window on the client Mac, the "Connected as: username" 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.

For purposes of this discussion, I'll be playing my archive copy of the classic 1944 movie Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, and Joseph Cotten. It's in a file called Gaslight.mp4, which has this fully specified file path on the server Mac:

/Volumes/Segundo Dos/iTunes Videos on Segundo Dos/Gaslight/Gaslight.mp4

Streaming Using QuickTime Player

QuickTime Player's icon

Once I drill down in the client Mac's Finder window to that Gaslight.mp4 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 .mp4 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.

If you don't have QuickTime Player set as your Mac's default .mp4 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.

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 Gaslight.srt. (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.

Home Sharing Streaming: iTunes

A second method is to stream the movie to my client Mac via the iTunes application. I have added the Gaslight.mp4 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 (not 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 both Macs and entered into the resulting dialog the e-mail address and password for my account at the iTunes Store.

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.

Home Sharing Streaming: Front Row

Because I'm using Home Sharing, in theory I ought to be able to use a third way to stream my Gaslight.mp4 file from server to client: Front Row.

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 ever appears on my client Mac's screen ...

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 won't 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.

So none of the three Apple-sanctioned methods fill my bill entirely. Enter VLC.

Streaming Using VLC

VLC's icon

VLC 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."

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.)

Gaslight.mp4, as the .mp4 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 Gaslight.mp4 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 Gaslight.mp4 file. (AVC is another name for H.264.)

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 Gaslight.mp4 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!

On the client Mac I can also make VLC the default player for .mp4 files. I do that by selecting any such file in Finder — Gaslight.mp4 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 Gaslight.mp4 Info window. Simple as that. Now all I have to do is double-click the Gaslight.mp4 icon, and VLC opens the video in a player window on the client Mac.

Very cool!

TiVo Premiere Is Here!

2010-05-27T11:39:00.011-04:00

There's a new kid on the block in TiVo town, the TiVo Premiere. 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.

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.

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 ...

Meet the TiVo Premiere

Here's what the TiVo Premiere looks like (click to enlarge):

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.

Its back panel offers a number of connection options:

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.

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.

Notice that there are inputs for both cable (or Verizon FIOS) and over-the-air antenna, which can be used simultaneously.

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 My Shows menu:

Here, 7% of the drive has been filled.

The image above of the My Shows 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.

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.

The top part of HD user-interface screens such as My Shows is filled by a Discovery Bar 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.

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.

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.

The Premiere has spiffy high-definition (720p) user-interface menu screens. Like the My Shows screen pictured above, the outermost screen, called TiVo Central ...

... 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 TiVo Central screen are the screen's main functions. Scroll to one of these, and the panel on the right side shows you its sub-functions.

As shown by an earlier graphic, you can see your current list of recordings by selecting My Shows, which in older TiVos used to be called Now Playing. Twice-pressing the TiVo button at the top of the remote is a shortcut to the My Shows screen.

The remote that comes with the Premiere ...

... is much 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."

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 My Shows are sorted (by name or by date). The red button toggles between grouping My Shows 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 Search capability, for instance, or when you use the Premiere's Browse TV 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.

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.

Coming soon for the Premiere and Premiere XL, an optional upgrade remote ...

... has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and uses Bluetooth, which means you won't have to point it at the TiVo!

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, Controlling two TiVo boxes with separate remotes 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. Controlling two TiVo DVRs with one remote 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 and a Premiere. You lose the A, B, C, and D color-coded button shortcuts for the Premiere HD menus if you do that.

Also, if you own two Premieres and hook them to the same TV, you have to use two remotes.

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 here.

Multi-Room Viewing

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

In addition to MRV, Series3 TiVos — including the original Series3 and the TiVo HD — allowed you to copy TiVo recordings to your computer 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 without making a new copy of them on the TiVo.

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.

The TiVo Premiere is finally fast enough.

TiVo Premiere with 802.11n Networking

If you are using an 802.11n router on your home network — check out the Netgear Rangemax WNDR3700 Dual Band Wireless-N Gigabit Router at Amazon.com for under $135; it's the router TiVo Inc. features on its website, for more money — and if to the Premiere you attach the new TiVo Wireless-N Network Adapter 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, without pauses. (Of course, if you are using wired Ethernet, which is even faster than wireless-N, the same is true.)

The TiVo Premiere costs $299.99. You can order it from TiVo Inc. 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.

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 the lower price for the N adapter at Amazon.com, then TiVo Inc. will match it or better (or so I found when I ordered my Premiere).

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.

If you buy a Premiere from TiVo.com, there are service plan discounts 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!

Of course, if you wind up with two 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 second 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.

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 lot better than 2.4 GHz.

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 an extra 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.

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.

If you insist you'll never need N speed, you currently can still buy the TiVo Wireless-G adapter for around $40 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.

Premiere Networking Speed

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.

Here are the transfers I tried, with transfer speeds in megabits per second shown in parentheses:

From the TiVo HD that recorded it to my TiVo Premiere (22.22 Mb/s)
From the Premiere back to the TiVo HD (20.53 Mb/s)
From the Premiere to my iMac (20.62 Mb/s)
From the iMac back to the Premiere (46.65 Mb/s)

The Premiere-to-iMac transfer (#3) was done using the kmttg Java application in Mac OS X. The iMac-to-Premiere transfer (#4) was done using pyTivoX: specifically, its pyTivo functionality (as distinct from its StreamBaby 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 Messages & Settings/Settings/Network & Phone/View network diagnostics/Transfer history menu.

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.

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 much better than real time.)

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 kmttg. The lowest transfer speed I saw in my testing, 20.53 Mb/s, far exceeds 14.95 Mb/s. Accordingly, I expect that any 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.

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 slower-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.

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.

Happily, I find that using wireless-N (or Ethernet) makes HD MRV go faster-than-real-time even 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.

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.

But a Premiere is 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.

I have also found that the Premiere copies recordings back from my iMac, using the non-streaming 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 more than double the 20.62 Mb/s of the same program's download from the Premiere to the iMac.

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.

Useful TiVo Premiere Links

You can read an in-depth technical review of the TiVo Premiere by K. Fowler ("bkdtv") in PDF form here.
The PCMag.com review of the Premiere is here.
The Endgadget review is here.
The TiVo Premiere FAQ at the TiVo Community forum is here.

Archive HDTV Recordings to Your Mac, Then Stream Them Back to Your TiVo!

2010-05-19T08:42:00.064-04:00

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.

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.

In Viva pyTivo! I detailed how I use the freeware pyTivoX app to send Mac media content to my TiVo units. Stream, Baby, Stream gave more information on the freeware StreamBaby app, which is what pyTivoX actually 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.

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.

But how do you get the original recordings from your TiVo to your Mac in the first place?

An excellent way to download TiVo files and store them on a computer is to use kmttg. 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.

If you want to use kmttg on your Mac, check out the official installation instructions here. 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.

The same kmttg download package works on all supported platforms, and the current package as of this writing is kmttg_v0p7l.zip. (The screen shots below were captured using an earlier version of kmttg.) On a Mac, download and unzip it to a folder named kmttg_v0p7l, then open the folder and launch kmttg.jar.

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."

Then you'll see (click to enlarge):

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 kmttg_v0p7l folder. Click "Yes." You'll then wait for several minutes while the downloads take place, and then you'll see (click to enlarge):

The media access key, or MAK, of your TiVo is a ten-digit number you can discover by navigating to TiVo Central -> Messages & Settings -> Account & System Information -> Media Access Key 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.)

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:

Now comes a tricky part. You have to configure kmttg in advance to download your .TiVo files to whatever intended folder you have set up to receive them. In Finder, I created a TiVo Transfers folder on an external drive. Within it I created a Just Transferred folder.

Then I selected File: Configure ... at the upper left of the kmttg window. It brought up a dialog (click to enlarge):

in which I configured where kmttg is to put the files it downloads or creates. In the box next to where it says TiVo Output Dir (for "directory") I double-clicked to bring up a folder selection dialog. In it I had to navigate to find the Just Transferred folder within the TiVo Transfers folder that I set up on my external hard drive (click to enlarge):

I clicked Choose Directory once that folder was named in the File: box in the dialog. I also did the same thing for the other directories that kmttg configures via this dialog, including, crucially, the .mpg Output Dir.

In addition, I clicked check boxes to tell kmttg to Remove .TiVo after file decrypt — 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 Overwrite existing files in situations where I reinitiate jobs that have failed to run to completion previously.

When all that was done, I saw (click to enlarge):

At this point I clicked "OK," and kmttg was configured the way I wanted it.

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):

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.

I have in the screen shot above also initiated the transfer of "The Gallant Hours" from my Living Room TiVo. I did this by

selecting the Living Room TiVo tab and clicking the Refresh button
selecting "The Gallant Hours" from the Now Playing list that appeared after several seconds
clicking the START JOBS button

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:

title : The Gallant Hours
seriesTitle : The Gallant Hours
description : Adm. William F. "Bull" Halsey Jr. outwits Japanese Adm. Yamamoto in the 1942 Pacific.
time : 2010-04-30T06:15:00Z
mpaaRating : N8
movieYear : 1960
isEpisode : false
isEpisodic : false
showingBits : 1024
starRating : x6
displayMajorNumber : 890
callsign : TCMHD
vActor : Cagney|James
vActor : Weaver|Dennis
vActor : Costello|Ward
vActor : Jaeckel|Richard
vActor : Tremayne|Les
vActor : Burton|Robert
vActor : Bailey|Raymond
vActor : Reid|Carl Benton
vActor : Sande|Walter
vActor : Swenson|Karl
vActor : Landers|Harry
vActor : Carlyle|Richard
vActor : Lontoc|Leon
vActor : Yagi|James
vActor : Zaremba|John
vDirector : Montgomery|Robert
vProducer : Montgomery|Robert
vProgramGenre : Biography
vSeriesGenre : Biography
vSeriesGenre : Documentary
vSeriesGenre : Movies

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.

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.

Now, in the following screen shot (click to enlarge), the "decrypt" job has finally begun executing:

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.

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.

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 too slow for real-time HD streaming.

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.

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.

TiVo Wireless-N Adapter: First Impressions

2010-05-12T09:04:00.005-04:00

I wrote in TiVo Wireless-N Adapter Arrives! about a newer, faster way to network TiVo boxes wirelessly. It's the TiVo Wireless-N Network Adapter, presently $70.35 at Amazon.com

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.

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.

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?

Sadly, no. I'll discuss that result later, along with another significant problem I ran into. But, first ...

Setup and installation

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.

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.

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.)

(1) The easiest setup method:

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.

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.

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.

(2) The next-easiest setup method:

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 pair 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 it starts blinking. At that point, WPS automatically syncs the two adapters. The signal-strength indicators on both adapters turn solid blue.

This method didn't apply to me. I have an N router, albeit one with no WPS button.

(3) The manual setup method ...

... 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.

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 first adapter in blue below, so that if you don't want to read it all, you can easily skip ahead. And you probably don't need to read it if:

You already have your computer's network preferences set to configure the IP address of its Ethernet connection "Using DHCP"
You have your computer's Wi-Fi/AirPort wireless adapter turned on
You don't use anything like pyTivo, pyTivoX, or StreamBaby to move content from your computer to your TiVo

That said, here's what I went through to get my first wireless-N adapter up and running:

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.

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.

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!

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 ...

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!

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."

Within seconds of my hitting the Apply button, my Mac's IP address changed from 10.0.1.201 to 10.0.1.12.

Once that happened, my browser was 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.

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!

Uh oh.

I scratched my head vigorously for a minute and finally came up with: Well, sure. How could my network show up if ...

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
my Mac had its AirPort wireless connectivity turned off?

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!

Oh, wonderful.

What could be wrong now?

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?"

Guess what? After the progress bar inched and inched and inched rightward, I finally saw:

It worked the second time around! Go figure!

Next step: move the now-successfully-configured N adapter to my Series3 TiVo and hook it up there.

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.

After the usual long wait for "Preparing ... ", I was told that the attempt to connect had failed due to not finding a DHCP server.

Sheesh!

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.")

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!

Why did the IP address of the TiVo show up at first as 192.168.10.nn? I have no idea.

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.

Confusingly, my pyTivoX video share folders now each showed up twice 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 multiple times during the reconfiguration process causes redundant entries to appear in the TiVo Now Playing list.)

Meanwhile, the "pyTivoX - iMac.local" menu item that should 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.

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.

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 former IP address of the iMac running pyTivoX.

10.0.1.201 was the right IP address before 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.

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.

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.

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 any other reason, at any time down the road — you need to re-initialize pyTivoX in the way I've just described.

So, at this point, I finally had a working wireless-N adapter on one of my TiVos. It was time to test it out.

Initial testing

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.

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 and properly rendering the image at the same time.

If that was the case, I realized, there was probably going to be no cure for the problem.

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 it would function better.

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.

After I got rid of the pixellation and other picture glitches in that way, I discovered only then 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 blue above about what I had to do to fix that problem.

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.

That's key, so I'll repeat it: Streaming, using pyTiVoX's StreamBaby 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 main interface. My first test of wireless-N speeds seemed to show that streaming can keep up with a fairly high average bitrate of 12,561 kbps.

Speed issues

That result, alas, did not hold up for long. I'll tell why in a moment. First, some technical background:

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 average 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.

If there is a buffer underrun, playback pauses. You have to hit Play again to get it to resume.

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.

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.

However:

It did pause on my living room TiVo HD, once I'd hooked the second N adapter to it at 5.0 GHz
The full-length movie that it was extracted from had a higher average bitrate, well over 13,000 kbps. Its playback stream kept pausing, over and over, on my TiVo HD and (to a lesser extent) on my Series3

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.

It didn't.

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.

It didn't.

And, in further testing, the buffering pauses turned out to be just as rife with Ethernet as with wireless-N!

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.

In fact, the bottleneck had to be the speed of the TiVo itself, and in particular, its slow CPU.

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.

However, I have learned that the new TiVo Premiere, which is considered a Series 4 TiVo, can 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.

MRV is faster

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 is fast enough to keep up with an HD program that is being watched as it is being MRV-transferred.

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!

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!

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.)

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!

Obtaining 5.0 GHz operation

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.

My N router has four "radio modes," two of which are important to this discussion:

802.11n (802.11b/g compatible)
802.11n only (5 GHz)

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.

I found, however, that when I had my N router in b/g compatibility mode, my TiVo Wireless-N Network Adapters did not operate at 5.0 GHz. They operated at 2.4 GHz instead!

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.

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!

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'll call these two routers my "N router" and my "G router."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 extra 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.

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.

At this page at TiVo.com it says, under "What is the TiVo Wireless N Adapter Double Pack? Why would someone need a Double Pack?":

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.

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.

TiVo Wireless-N Adapter Arrives!

2010-05-10T10:10:00.003-04:00

You can now get a wireless-N network adapter for your TiVo, $68.31 at the time of this writing at Amazon.com. I have one on order and will report back later as to how well it works.

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.

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.

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.

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 at the same time 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 also being played during the process of making the transfer.

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.

Stream remuxing

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.

I learned here, at the TiVo Community Forum, that:

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

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.

In a book I have, Charles Poynton’s Digital Video and HDTV, 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.

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.

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.

Weak TiVo CPU power

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.

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.

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.

Sidestepping wireless-G bottlenecks

However, in order to take advantage of potential wireless-N increase in MRV speeds, one needs to use a wireless-N adapter for both 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 any two devices on the wireless network — the network speed will be limited to that of wireless-G.

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!

TiVo Inc. says the way around that is to hook an extra 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.

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.

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.

Wireless-N adapter connection and configuration

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.)

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.

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.

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.

My AirPort Extreme does not have this capability, so I can't test "Wi-fi Protected Setup."

More later ...

After I receive my wireless-N adapter and try it out, I'll report back on how it did ...

Viva pyTivo!

2010-04-17T11:34:00.007-04:00

No sooner had I posted Stream, Baby, Stream about the StreamBaby computer app than I discovered pyTivo. pyTivo, like StreamBaby, is software you use to play videos on your TiVo when they reside on your computer.

pyTivo incorporates 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.

pyTivo can also send videos to your TiVo from 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.

pyTivo can use TiVo-playable videos in formats that plain old TiVo Desktop software can't deal with.

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.

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.

It is a good thing that there is a Mac version — called pyTivoX — for, as I detailed in Stream, Baby, Stream , installing StreamBaby on a Mac is a bit of a bear. For one thing, StreamBaby installation requires you to obtain and install FFmpeg, the "complete, cross-platform solution" that lets your computer record, format-convert, and stream videos. pyTivoX contains FFmpeg from the get-go.

Since pyTivo likewise contains StreamBaby, installing pyTivo obviates ever having to install and configure either StreamBaby or FFmpeg.

To install pyTivoX version 1.3, click here for a download. (But first go here 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:

You just drag the pyTivoX icon to your Applications folder, and your pyTivoX/StreamBaby/FFmpeg installation is finished!

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.")

I also clicked the Prefs button (the light switch) and enabled the use of StreamBaby within pyTivoX:

And I also checked to make sure pyTivo itself was enabled. It was:

In the General Prefs pane I needed to enter my TiVo.com username and password:

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.

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.

After dismissing the Prefs window, I clicked the green Apply checkmark in the main window (which is pyTivoX's only window). At that point I went over to one of my TiVos and found something like this in my Now Playing list:

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.

That's pyTivoX as it affects the Now Playing list. Additionally, towards the bottom of the TiVo's Music, Photos, & Showcases menu — which you get to from the TiVo Central menu— you'll see something like pyTivoX - iMac.local, indicating that pyTivoX is running on a computer whose local hostname is iMac.local. If you run pyTivoX and your computer's hostname happens to be (say) Powerhouse.local — you set your Mac's hostname in Sharing Preferences, by the way — you'll see pyTivoX - Powerhouse.local instead.

The Music, Photos, & Showcases menu is pyTivoX's StreamBaby interface per se. It's the way you stream 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.

Here's the kind of thing you'll see after you select a video in pyTivoX's StreamBaby interface on your TiVo:

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 if you've already started playing it. If you haven't started playing the video, this item is not present in the menu at all.

"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 average bitrate, not the peak, 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 after you think there has been enough newly received data buffered on the TiVo to avoid another playback pause any time soon.

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.

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:

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.
You can also push and watch unencrypted videos in the familiar (if now outmoded) WMV format.
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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Stream, Baby, Stream

2010-04-05T17:49:00.009-04:00

Run StreamBaby 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.

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.

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.

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 is wonderful.

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.

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 don't 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 is saved for the next time the video is played, however.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

StreamBaby First Use

After I wrote this, I learned about a much easier way to begin using StreamBaby — see Viva pyTivo!

StreamBaby runs under Windows, under Mac OS X, and also on Linux-based platforms. I'm using it on a Mac. According to the StreamBaby project website, getting started with StreamBaby is relatively easy under Windows. However, on a Mac there are complications. I'll detail some of them here.

(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 here. But check the website to make sure that there isn't a later version for you to download.

(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.

(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:

dir.1=/Volumes/New 2TB Drive/TiVo Transfers

dir.1.name=TiVo Transfers

Notice that I also told StreamBaby by what name it should call my top-level folder. That's optional. If you don't specify your own dir.1.name, the default one that comes in the .ini file is "My Videos." The dir.1.name, whatever it is, will show up on your TV screen later on.

Notice also that there are embedded spaces in the dir.1 path name to my "TiVo Transfers" folder, and also in the dir.1.name. They're fine. You don't 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.

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.

But how do you ascertain the full path name to your videos folder? Download Copy Path.workflow.zip 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]/Library/Workflows/Applications/Finder/Copy Path.workflow. Substitute your own username for [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 dir.1!

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 all the things that can go in the file, click here.)

The active streambaby.ini file has to be in the same folder as the streambaby Unix executable.

(4) Your mileage may vary on this one. I found I had to put

ip=10.0.1.201

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.

Don't forget to save your modified streambaby.ini file before you try to use StreamBaby. If you have already 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.

(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 FFmpeg on your Mac. That's not easy, but doable.

First, download this ffmpeg.zip file to your Desktop. Then unzip it to put a folder called ffmpeg on the Desktop.

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

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE; killall Finder;

followed by hitting return. Copy and paste the above to avoid typing errors.

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, not move the original file, you need to drag ffmpeg.bin from the ffmpeg folder to /usr/bin/.

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.

Now go back to the Terminal window and enter (via copy and paste):

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE; killall Finder;

That will restore all hidden files to being hidden in Finder. Congratulations, you have just installed FFmpeg along with its five dynamic libraries!

(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.

For now, you'll just download NxNW Clip.zip and unzip it to your Desktop. Then you'll edit

dir.2=/Users/[username]/Desktop/NxNW Clip

dir.2.name=NxNW Clip

into the streambaby.ini file, replacing [username] with your username. (Use the "Copy Path" Finder plugin mentioned earlier to simplify the whole thing.) Notice that this time, dir.2 and dir.2.name are used; this is your second StreamBaby folder. You specified the first one earlier, even if you had to create an empty folder somewhere to do it.

(7) Now that you have something to stream, it's time to fire up StreamBaby:

Open a Finder window for your streambaby-0.29 (or whatever) folder
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
Drag the streambaby Unix executable file to the Terminal window and hit return
Expect to see something like 04/05/10 16:56:22 Listener: added factory and then 04/05/10 16:56:22 Main: streambaby ready & listening in the Terminal window, while ...
com.unwiredappeal.tivo.streambaby.StreamBabyMain opens as a separate application on your Mac; it's a Java app, and if it can't open properly, check that Java 1.5 or above is installed on your Mac; retry the above after you have obtained the latest release of Java for the Mac

StreamBaby is now running, so it's time for the acid test.

Go to your TiVo and from the TiVo Central menu choose Music, Photos, & Showcases. 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 Stream, Baby, Stream.

If you don't see it, check near the bottom of the list for Enable Home Network Applications ... . 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 Music, Photos, & Showcases menu, you should now see Disable Home Network Applications ... , just as in the picture above.

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 do have your TiVo on a wired or wireless network with you Mac, correct?

If so, then sorry, but solving problems like that is beyond the scope of this article. To get further advice, visit this thread at the TiVo Community Forum.

Once you do see Stream, Baby, Stream on your TiVo, select it. You should see a NxNW Clip screen with one item in its menu: NxNW Clip. Select that, and you should see NxNW 1 min.mpg. Select that, and you'll see a Play button, along with some others. Select Play. 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.

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 ...

Meanwhile, congratulations! You are just about ready to Stream, Baby, Stream ...

Revisiting 1080p24 ("24p") on Blu-ray

2009-12-12T19:29:00.000-05:00

Not too long ago I posted 1080p24 ("24p") on Blu-ray 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 don't store progressive video, at the 24 frames per second used by motion picture film, or at any other frame rate.

Recently, an anonymous person added this comment to my post:

Dear Bonehead,

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.

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:

Sorry, you who so impolitely called me "Bonehead," but I beg to differ:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

In saying the above, I realize that I am in disagreement with the Wikipedia article on 24p.

The section "24p on DVD" 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.

True 24p is at best an optional way to encode DVDs that is rarely if ever used. It is not actually used for "every Hollywood movie." See this page 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 this page 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.

Still don't believe me? Let me refer you to perhaps the ultimate authority on DVDs, Jim Taylor, who wrote the book DVD Demystified and maintains the Official DVD FAQ. He says, in "What's a progressive DVD player?":

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.

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?

TCM HD arrives!

2009-12-05T10:45:00.094-05:00

It's been a long time coming, but Turner Classic Movies is now available in 1080i HD! The channel adored by lovers of, yes, classic 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.

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.

That "original aspect ratio" thing 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.

Along came today's 16:9 widescreen behemoths, and OAR still 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!

If you want to see all of Around the World in 80 Days (1956) or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), among countless other memorable spectaculars of the era, you have to see them in OAR.

If you want to see great movies 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 Around the World in 80 Days and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea 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.

But there remain obstacles. Whether TCM shows 20,000 Leagues or ATW80 in glorious HD on its HD channel, or simply upconverts it from a standard-def version, is a huge question.

It all has to do with how TCM's vault copy of the title has been transferred from film to video.

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.

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 better than that of 1080i/1080p HD, because 1080i/p video frames have only 1,920 pixels per row.

4K scans double the 2K per-row number, to 4,096 pixels per row.

2K and 4K scans have varying numbers of pixel rows. They generally have 1,152 and 2,304 pixel rows, respectively, for images using the 16:9 aspect ratio — see the Wikipedia article List of common resolutions. Those numbers are 9/16 the number of pixels per row.

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.

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 per row.

Here's a graphic from the Wikipedia article Digital cinematography that shows what's going on:

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.)

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 twice the detail of 2K in the horizontal dimension and twice the detail in the vertical dimension. Hence, the respective sizes of the rectangles in the illustration represent not the image size but the amount of detail present in the various video scans.

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.

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."

TCM HD might ideally like to have 2K or 4K 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 fields per second — "1080i60," it's called, or "1080i @ 60 Hz". That field rate amounts to 30 video frames per second, but the second half of the information in each frame arrives 1/60 second later than the first half.

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.

Among the technical issues involved 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.

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 fully represented in the field — if it's there at all.

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.

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.

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.

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 horizontal detail.

Yet another option is for TCM HD to convert to 1080i a lower-resolution film-to-video transfer for a given film.

For example, TCM might have in its vaults a DVD-quality transfer of, say, Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 classic Rear Window. 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.

(Actually, since Rear Window 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 vertical letterboxing bars at the sides of the screen. Or, since the term "letterboxing" properly refers to horizontal matte bars only, the term "pillarboxing" can be used instead.)

Moreover, there are 60 fields per second in this hypothetical 480i scan of Rear Window. Since 60 fields per second is not a multiple of 24 frames per second, some of the fields will have to be repeated an extra time. This creates so-called "telecine judder" — telecine (which can be pronounced with three or 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.

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 some so-called "strobing," even when a pristine copy of the film is projected on a theater screen. Telecine judder simply accentuates it.)

If TCM HD shows this "480i60" (as it's technically called) hypothetical scan of Rear Window, it must first be upconverted to 1080i60.

Converting among different digital video formats is called scaling. Going from a lower resolution to a higher is scaling up or upscaling. These are both synonyms for upconverting.

The result of upscaling 480i60 to 1080i60 would be noticeably less video resolution than true 1080i60, because video upconversion can never increase true resolution.

There would be just as much telecine judder as in the 480i60 transfer.

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:

(Click the image to enlarge it, then look at the brick walls behind the girl to see the false moiré pattern.)

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.

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).

In fact, technically speaking, aliasing, the moiré effect, and shimmering and similar interlace artifacts are all 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.

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.

Apple TV Potpourri

2009-11-29T11:41:00.010-05:00

It's been a while since I said much about my (count 'em, two) Apple TV units. About time I rectified that ...

In case you missed it — admittedly, an easy thing to do — Apple's Steve Jobs unveiled the Apple TV in Sept. 2006 as a sort of home theater-connected iPod on steroids. You were expected to connect the petite box, less than eight inches square, to a TV or home theater system. Then iTunes on your computer would sync songs, videos, podcasts, photos, and other digital content to it's hard drive, just as with an iPod or iPhone. You could then play that content through your home entertainment system and/or HDTV.

Apple shipped the first Apple TVs in March 2007 — to deafening silence, aside from the technorati, most of whom held their collective noses. Sales were abysmal. I won't detail all the complaints of that time, but the main issue was that Apple TV didn't do enough, and it did what it did slowly, unreliably, and generally badly.

Over the last 2 1/2 years, Apple has slowly addressed the gripes (most of them). Apple TV is now a pretty good product, and in the fourth quarter of 2008, as the economy was tanking, sales were actually triple those of the fourth quarter of 2007.

The Apple Store's Apple TV page currently shows the product at $229.00 with a 160-GB internal hard drive, the original 40-GB model having been retired. (The fact that the internal drive is so small by today's standards is less of an issue than you might think, because Apple TV easily streams iTunes content that doesn't reside on it.)

In 2007 Mr. Jobs famously (?) spoke of the Apple TV as a "hobby" of the folks at Apple, Inc., not a full-fledged business. The Mac, the iPhone/iPod, the iTunes Store — they're real businesses, Jobs said. Apple TV was something of a household pet in Cupertino. He of course was right about that.

That may change — not real soon, but in the not too distant future. This blogger thinks it will and hopes it does. The key will be that Apple TV is now seen by Apple more as an all-purpose media client, and less as an iPod on steroids.

This paragraph from the Wikipedia article on Apple TV gets at what I mean:

With the "Take Two" software update announced by Steve Jobs at Macworld 2008, Apple TV became capable of acting as a pure stand-alone device, no longer requiring a computer running iTunes on Mac OS X or Windows to stream or sync content to it. Jobs stated, "Apple TV was designed to be an accessory for iTunes and your computer. It was not what people wanted. We learned what people wanted was movies, movies, movies." Users can access the iTunes store directly through Apple TV to purchase movies, music, music videos, and television shows. Customers can also use Apple TV to rent standard or HD-quality movies. Until mid-March 2009, iTunes HD movies could only be purchased from Apple TV.

If your computer goes down, or if iTunes is not running, the only thing you lose is the ability to stream — not sync, but stream — content from it to Apple TV. You can still play your previously synced video, audio, and photo content (as long as it resides on Apple TV's hard drive; if not, Apple TV does want to stream it from iTunes instead). You can still grab content, including HD movies and TV shows, from the iTunes Store directly. You can still play YouTube videos and listen to Internet radio stations (this last being a welcome new feature).

OK, so Apple TV has become a real product, in my eyes at least. Herein, a potpourri of cool stuff about it:

First, there is now a neat iPhone/iPod Touch app called (naturally) Remote (web page here; App Store download link here) that turns your mobile device's touch screen into a way to control an Apple TV. It's free, and it works. It presents the iPhone/iTouch user with an interface very much like the iPod app itself, with the addition of a Control tab that does what Apple TV's Apple Remote does, but more easily and intuitively.

The Control tab in effect turns your touch screen into an Apple TV remote control. You drag your finger along the touch screen, either side-to-side or up and down, to do what the Apple remote (-->) does with its control ring and central Play/Pause/Select button.

The Apple Remote's Menu button, meanwhile, is replaced by a virtual Menu button (<--) in the Remote App — I'll call the app RA for short. The RA > or Exit button brings up various tabs for exiting the Control Tab and accessing "Playlists," an "Artists" list, a "Search" function, and "More": Albums, Audiobooks, Composers, Genres, Movies, Music Videos, Podcasts, Songs, and TV Shows.

In the right-bottom corner is an Options button used to display on your TV Apple TV commands: basically, Start Genius, Add to On-The-Go, Browse Artist, Browse Album, and Cancel.

RA also controls iTunes playback. If (as I do) you have Airport Express units installed on your home network and connected to your home entertainment center(s), RA can tell iTunes to select among those and your computer's own speakers.

In fact, RA seems in some sense to be leveraging the ability of Apple TV to turn itself into an AirTunes device, à la an Airport Express. I don't fully understand what's going on ... but never mind. The important thing is that RA controls Apple TV (or iTunes itself) wirelessly, using WiFi. Unlike with the the infrared Apple Remote, you don't have to be in the same room with Apple TV or a computer running iTunes. That's marvelous. I like to start music playing and wander (with my iPhone) into a different room. RA can direct operations truly remotely, even to the extent of letting me turn up or down the volume when need be, from anywhere in your house.

Another cool thing: RA displays, on the iPhone/iTouch's screen, the cover art of the music you're playing on Apple TV! Cover art also appears next to songs, albums, etc., as you flip through them in RA, looking for something to play.

Here is the take Christopher Breen of Macworld had on RA. (I'm not precisely sure what "Oooh" and "Feh" mean in his lexicon, BTW ... )

* * *

The next item in my Apple TV potpourri is about a neat website, Apple TV Junkie. ATVJ covers Apple TV in depth. I especially like its The More You Know page, where you can learn about such things as:

Using Third-party Remote Controls With Apple TV
Using AirTunes With Apple TV
Apple Remote Pairing
Streaming Photos From Applications To Your Apple TV
Streaming Radio On Your Apple TV (Apple TV 3.0 now does this effortlessly.)
Hacking the AppleTV: Get Your Boxee On (Boxee is a gateway to all sorts of online content not officially supported by Apple. To put it on Apple TV requires a "hack" though. The ATVJ article tells you how.)
Boxee Blog & Boxee On Twitter
Get The Super Bowl Theatrical Spots In HD On Your Apple TV
DIY Apple TV Home Media Server
Movie Rental Video Formats
Using Chapter Selection In Apple TV
Removing Menu Items from the Apple TV

Check it out!

VOD Video Quality Comparison

2009-11-27T20:20:00.019-05:00

In earlier Video On Demand posts, I've talked about using the Netflix Watch Instantly capability to stream movies and TV shows to your computer or — via a TiVo, a Sony PlayStation 3, or any other "Netflix-ready" device — directly to your HDTV screen. I've also talked about using the Amazon Video On Demand store to rent or purchase videos and then watch them in your computer browser or download them to a TiVo or other "Amazon-ready" device.

I haven't said much yet about the ability to rent or buy videos at the iTunes Store, via the iTunes application on your Mac or PC, as opposed to your web browser. The iTunes Store offers video content for iPhones and iPods, for the Apple TV, and for play on your desktop in iTunes.

I recently rented the 1958 classic horror flick The Fly at Amazon and iTunes and compared the quality of the video with that at Netflix. All these are standard-def versions.

Here is how a particularly useful frame of the movie looks in the Netflix version:

In the iTunes version:

And in the Amazon version:

To see what the differences are, you'll need to click on each of these images to enlarge them in your browser window. The best way to do that is to open each in a new tab in the same browser window, then click on each tab in turn to note the rather obvious differences.

First, rapidly alternate between the Netflix and Amazon versions. They're similar in frame size, but the Netflix covers just a tad more of the original 2.35:1 CinemaScope film frame — compare especially the amount of the grid of the depicted window screen that you can see at the left edge of the picture.

The Netflix image is also sharper. Look at the Roman numeral date MCMLVIII in both images. It's a little more legible in the Netflix than in the Amazon.

Now switch to the iTunes version. The MCMLVIII is downright blurry. The frame is stretched vertically to yield a subtly incorrect picture geometry. The left edge of the picture reveals less of the depicted screen than the Netflix version does — about as much as the Amazon version does. Also, the iTunes version looks duller and darker; the reddish brown background color isn't as vibrant.

In other words, the iTunes image is geared to the low available resolution and nonstandard aspect ratio of an iPhone/iPod screen. The subtle vertical stretching allows the image to use more of the mobile device's limited screen area than would otherwise be the case, given that (nearly) the entire width of the original (extremely wide) film frame is being shown.

Most users probably prefer the slight geometric distortion to having wider black bars at the top and bottom of the iPhone/iPod screen, so this is a compromise that makes some sense. However, if you are watching on a big computer monitor, the soft, stretched image looks pretty bad when compared, in full-screen mode on the same monitor, with the Netflix version — which, after all, is free to anyone with a Netflix-ready TV setup and a standard Netflix account.

Meanwhile, the Amazon version is just a tick inferior to the Netflix version, and far preferable to the iTunes version on any reasonably large screen. If you lack a Netflix-ready setup but have one that is Amazon-ready, you will lose little in terms of video quality (though you will have to pay for each rental or purchase).

Strictly speaking, this comparison applies only to this one movie; it may be that Amazon is better than Netflix for other titles. However, I think it likely that iTunes will be generally unable to match either Netflix or Amazon in terms of video quality, simply because it targets iPhones/iPods first, and bigger, higher-resolution viewscreens second.

An exception: HD content. You can buy or rent certain titles in HD from an Apple TV, for use on the Apple TV. I'll deal with that in a subsequent post.

Another exception: standard-def videos from the iTunes Store, when rented directly from an Apple TV (see this Apple Support document). They can have up to 720x480-pixel widescreen resolution, while the same titles rented from a computer or iPhone/iTouch max out at 640x480. (I rented The Fly from my computer.)

This exception applies only to iTunes Store rentals of videos. iStore video purchases are stuck with 640x480 resolution, no matter what device you use to make the purchase. 720x480 supposedly won't play on an iPhone/iTouch, only on an Apple TV. If you bought a video on your Apple TV and later tried to move it to your iPhone, it wouldn't play ... and Apple doesn't want to deal with the customer complaints when that happens.

An aside for techies:

(The main part of the article is done. If you don't want to be bored by a raft of technical detail, you can stop reading now.)

640x480-pixel anamorphic resolution squeezes a 16:9 widescreen picture into a nominally 4:3 video frame that uses "square" pixels: the individual pixels are exactly as wide as they are tall. The decoder expands the frame again into its original 16:9 aspect ratio, a process that is relatively easy when the pixels are square. Of course, after the pixels are "unsqueezed," they're no longer square, but having square pixels prior to the unsqueezing allows the decoding to be done by a processor of quite limited power, such as is found in an iPhone/iTouch.

720x480-pixel anamorphic widescreen, unsqueezed to 16:9, has non-square pixels both for the input to the decoder and for the output, so the strain on processing capacity is much greater — too great for an iPhone/iTouch. But the Apple TV has (somewhat) greater processing capacity, so 720x480-pixel anamorphic widescreen input works with it.

There are other potential ways in which videos that work on an Apple TV can be incompatible with an iPhone/iTouch. For example, if a video has a bitrate of over 1,500 kbps, iPhone/iTouch won't touch it. iPhone/iTouch can't use videos encoded with bidirectionally predictive frames (B-frames), either. B-frames allow for more compact files and hold down transmitted bitrates. If B-frames were allowed, 1,500 kbps could yield a sharper, more artifact-free image.

But the iPhone/iTouch, because of its tiny, low-resolution screen, can't render any sharper and better images than it does. Plus, higher bitrates require larger memories and faster processors in a decoding device, while B-frames likewise tax the decoding processor and require the frames of displayed video to be held in memory after they have been displayed, "wasting" available memory space. Apple made the compromises that it did in order that the processor speed and memory size of the iPhone/iTouch could be held within reason.

Now, these considerations don't apply at all to Netflix video streaming, for the simple reason that the list of Netflix-ready devices includes no mobile or portable devices.

What about Amazon VOD? Again, Amazon's official list of ways to watch their videos conspicuously fails to mention mobile or portable devices.

In its earlier incarnation as Amazon Unbox, the Amazon VOD service supported Microsoft PlaysForSure portable devices. Those were non-PC devices that were certified by Microsoft to be able to play anything their Windows Media Player app could play on a real computer. PlaysForSure certification was rebranded as "Certified for Windows Vista" in 2007.

Meanwhile, Microsoft had come out with it's own iTouch competitor, the Zune portable media player — and Zune cannot play all PlaysForSure content!

Remind you of anything? Such as: the iPhone/iPod Touch can't play all the content an Apple TV can play (including HD content).

The message here is that it is as yet extremely difficult — nay, impossible — to stream highest-quality video content that "plays for sure" on all manner of devices that turn out to be price-competitive in a competitive, real-world marketplace.

Amazon VOD Rentals

2009-11-26T15:39:00.017-05:00

In Amazon's Video On Demand I talked about buying videos from Amazon's VOD store. You can also rent many titles. As this is written, there are 17,327 rental titles and 23,459 titles that can be purchased.

Many of the rentals and to-buy titles are the same. For example, Borat, the 2006 Sacha Baron Cohen hit, costs $2.99 to rent, $5.49 to buy:

When you buy a TV show or movie, it goes permanently into your video library at Amazon.com:

But when you rent, the title is only temporarily in your library until it is downloaded to a device you own that can play it. After the download, you have 30 days to begin playing it on that device. Once you begin watching it, you have 24 hours to finish. When the 24 hours are up, the downloaded copy goes poof.

You can also play the rental on your computer, right in your web browser. Again, you have 24 hours to finish before it vanishes forever.

Here's me renting The Phantom of the Opera (2004). First, I search for "phantom of the opera" at the Amazon VOD store and get:

I click on "The Phantom of the Opera (Rental — 2009)" and see:

(I still have the option to buy the video, as you can see.) At this point I need to already have an Amazon.com account with a credit card or other default payment method on file, and 1-Click ordering enabled. After I click on "24 hour rental with 1-Click $2.99," after a few seconds during which Amazon is processing my order, I see:

I opt to click on the "Your Video Library" link at this point, to see:

Notice that this entry is truly a phantom. Come Dec. 26 at 4:01 PM, if I haven't watched it, it will vanish!

Going back to the "Thank you for your purchase" panel: it gives the options to "Watch Now," "Watch Later," or "Download." You should choose one of these very, very carefully, bearing in mind that "Once you download or start to watch this rental you can't change your viewing choice." That means your choice of a device such as a TiVo to download the rental to is irrevocable. You can't change your mind later and move it to a different device, or decide to play the rental instead in your browser window.

Likewise, if you start playing the rental in your browser, you can't change your mind and download it to your TiVo.

"Watch Now" is what you click to play the rental right in your browser window. "Watch Later" does nothing except leave the rental sitting in Your Video Library, awaiting further disposition. "Download" is the way to initiate a download to your TiVo or other device compatible with Amazon VOD. For purposes of this example, I'll click "Download."

Before I click it, I need to make sure the download is going to go to the right device, so I need to make a selection from the download device drop-down menu:

In this menu I see my two TiVo units, "Living Room TiVo" and "Bedroom," and one Windows computer, "Clone of winxp," running Amazon's Unbox viewer in Windows. (The Unbox software won't run on a Mac.) I want to send my download to my "Living Room TiVo," so I select that, click "Download," and see:

At this point the download has begun. My TiVo box shows a blue LED on its front panel, and if I look in its Now Playing list, I see "The Phantom of the Opera" with a simulated blue LED next to it. The same item appears (redundantly) in the folder representing my "Amazon Video On Demand" group.

I can begin playing the video almost immediately, thanks to the fact that this is a "progressive" download that does not require me to twiddle my thumbs until the whole video has been downloaded.

(If at this juncture I look, in my computer browser, again at my Amazon "Your Video Library," I note that "The Phantom of the Opera" has disappeared from it. Once the rental has begun downloading, that's it: it's no longer in the library.)

Getting back to my Living Room TiVo: whenever I begin playing the rental, before it actually starts I have to wade through a warning to the effect that I'll have just 24 hours to finish watching. When I confirm that starting the 24-hour clock ticking is what I truly intend to do, the video starts playing, just like any other video I have on the TiVo.

If I like, I can temporarily stop playing it — planning to come back to it later — whereupon it acquires a flashing red flag next to its entry in the Now Playing list. This is a warning that at a time 24 hours from when I began watching the rental, it will cease to exist — even if I haven't finished watching it! And sure enough, exactly 24 hours after I first hit Play, the downloaded file disappears from the TiVo.

Amazon's Video On Demand

2009-11-26T08:47:00.016-05:00

So far in my Netflix Streaming series, I've talked about the ability to stream Netflix video to your home computers-slash-HDTV screens. Now I'd like to branch out and discuss Amazon Video On Demand.

At Amazon.com's main page you can set the Search drop-down menu to Video On Demand, leave the search box empty, and click Go. If you do, you'll see this. As this post is being written on Nov. 26, 2009, there are 40,691 results, each a movie or TV show that you can rent or buy.

Many titles can be rented or bought — for example, Borat, the 2006 Sacha Baron Cohen hit:

This post covers buying. I'll talk about renting in a subsequent post.

Amazon VOD used to be called Amazon Unbox (Get it? It's a video you can buy, like a DVD or a Blu-ray. But it's not a DVD, so you can't hold it in your hand, it doesn't come in a box, there's no shrink wrap, etc.). Amazon Unbox has been around since Fall 2006; since Fall '08 it's been rebranded Amazon Video on Demand. Where Unbox required you to use a software player that worked only on Windows PCs, Amazon VOD works on PCs and Macs. You don't even need a special player now; a web browser is all you need. (Plus, there is still an Amazon Unbox player that you can use in Windows. Download it here.)

Say you'd like to watch every show in the entire first season of The West Wing. At Amazon's VOD shop, you type "West Wing" into the search box and see various seasons of the late, great NBC political drama at the top of the results:

If you click on Season 1, you'll see (click the image to enlarge):

Here's a close-up of the "Order Now" panel:

Assuming you already have an Amazon account with a credit card and 1-Click buying enabled, purchasing just the first episode for $1.99 is pretty straightforward — it's the default purchase, shown as "Now Playing" in the "Preview" column in the episode list. Scroll down in the list, and you can select other first-season episodes, either singly or as a group, by putting check marks by those you want. Each episode, purchased singly, is $1.99.

But you are interested in the entire season, so you would just click "Buy Season 1 with 1-Click $17.99."

Once you enter your Amazon password and confirm your purchase, all the videos become a permanent part of your online video library at Amazon. To see them listed there, click on "Your Video Library" in the Video On Demand menu bar in your browser window. You'll see a graphic labeled "The West Wing Season 1." Here is mine for Season 2 (I don't own Season 1):

(You can click on the screen image above to enlarge it. The "Your Video Library" tab at upper right is what you clicked on to arrive at this screen in the first place.)

Clicked on, the thumbnail graphic will expand to show all the individual episodes of The West Wing for that particular season:

Clicking on one of the episodes brings up:

You can elect to download the selected episode, or you can watch it right away.

Choosing the download option gives you:

In this case, my download destination is a TiVo video recorder in my "Bedroom." (I'd already downloaded it to my "Living Room TiVo," as the "Locations" entry indicates.)

You can download the videos you buy to various compatible computers and devices in your household, but you have to initiate the download from a computer browser. You can't manipulate your Amazon Video Library from a device such as a TiVo itself.

"Bedroom" is an available download destination for me, since I have already registered that TiVo with Amazon. To do that in my computer browser I went here, then clicked on Refresh list of registered TiVo DVRs. (Go here to confirm what TiVos you have already registered with Amazon, if any.) You can also register the TiVo from the TiVo box itself by selecting "Video on Demand" from the main TiVo menu, selecting "Amazon Video On Demand" from the next menu, and then following the on-screen registration instructions.

Once you have initiated an Amazon VOD download, within a minute or so the destination device will actually begin receiving the video. If the device is a TiVo, a blue LED lights up on its front to indicate that a download is in progress. You can go into its Now Playing list and see the video already listed there. While it is downloading, it will display an imitation of the blue front-panel LED next to its name.

If you want, you can start watching the video even while the download proceeds. This capability of watching an in-progress download is called "progressive download."

If you have a slow Internet connection, it is possible that the progressive download will not keep up with the playback — in which case you will be returned to the TiVo menu screen for the video. You can resume playback of the video at will, but you may have to wait a bit for enough of the video to be transferred to avoid further interruption.

If you prefer, you can bypass downloading the video to a TiVo or other compatible device and just watch it instantly on your computer, in your web browser:

(Click on the image above to see it full size. The grain in the image is a byproduct of my screen capture software and does not appear in the actual video.)

The Adobe Flash Player plugin must be installed in your browser for this to work.

Once the purchased video is in your Amazon VOD library online, you can play it in your browser any time you want, as often as you want.

Remember, watching an Amazon VOD video in your browser starts instantly, since the whole file is not actually downloaded. This is different from a progressive download, for which you may have to wait five minutes or so before beginning to watch the video. That's why if you elect to use the Amazon Unbox player on a Windows PC, you have to wait for enough of the video to be downloaded, before starting to watch.

You don't have to pay extra for each use of the video, whether in a browser window, in the Unbox player, or on a device like a TiVo. You can also re-download it at any time for free; if you delete it from Unbox or your TiVo you can get it back at will. This is the advantage of buying rather than renting.

However, if you will only be watching a video once or twice, and if Amazon offers it for rental rather than purchase, renting can save you money. Renting will be the topic of my next post ...

Of NeRDs and Silverlight

2009-11-22T09:21:00.031-05:00

My last post, Instant Netflix on PS3 and TiVo, was about how you can stream movies and TV shows directly from Netflix, via the Internet, to a home TV or computer screen. You don't even need to wait for a DVD in the mail.

Here I'd like to begin going into more depth about how Netflix accomplishes this magic. I'll discuss various topics, plus I'll give links to where you can find out more. Fair warning: I don't guarantee that all of my information is perfectly accurate or complete. I'll try to do the best I can.

You can stream Netflix content onto your computer via a Web browser, or you can stream it to a TV screen through any of several home entertainment devices: certain recent-model TVs that allow Internet access; certain set-top boxes such as TiVo DVRs; certain Blu-ray players that can get online using BD-Live connectivity; and certain game consoles like the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3. These non-computer devices that can stream Netflix are what Netflix calls Netflix-Ready Devices; I call them "NeRDs."

If you're using a computer, the magic formula enlists either Firefox or Safari, web browsers compatible with Silverlight, a plugin from Microsoft that plays video content from Netflix right in a browser window. Let's say you want to watch WALL-E, the 2008 Disney-Pixar hit. You encounter a WALL-E thumbnail at Netflix.com that has a white-on-blue "Play" button below it, or you pull up the dedicated page for the film and see a similar "Play on Computer" button. You click once and watch as a video player appears in your browser window.

But instead of seeing the movie, you get a warning that you need to download and install the software called Silverlight. Your browser offers to do the download, after which you use standard procedures to install it as a browser plugin. It all happens quickly and painlessly. Then you restart your browser and try WALL-E again, and after a few seconds of preliminaries — "Connecting to the Netflix movie server" / "Downloading movie information" / "Determining your video quality" / "Buffering" / "Acquiring content license" — the movie begins, all thanks to Silverlight!

What about those non-computer NeRDs? Home entertainment devices that can stream Netflix content don't use web browsers. They incorporate firmware (aka "system software") that, in turn, incorporates the same functionality as Silverlight. (For all I know, it is Silverlight in a different form ... but it isn't in the form of a browser plugin.)

An exception is the Sony PlayStation game console-cum-Blu-ray player, which won't get firmware that incorporates Silverlight functionality until late 2010. For now, that functionality comes on a Blu-ray disc that you slide into the PS3 each time you want to stream Netflix.

Silverlight (or its NeRD clones) enables Netflix's movie servers to select a bitrate that your network connection to the Netflix server can handle. Each movie is encoded several times, at various bitrates. The higher the bitrate, the better the picture and sound. But if the Internet connection can't keep up with the bitrate that is originally selected, the server won't get "return receipts" (technical term: acknowledgments) back from Silverlight in time. The server can then switch seamlessly to a lower bitrate, and Silverlight is capable of hiding what is going on from the user's eyes and ears.

So, during the "Determining your video quality" preliminary stage, the server cooperates with Silverlight to measure your network speed. Then it selects a bitrate that fits that speed.

Even so, sometimes acknowledgments begin arriving back late, or not at all ... in which case the server assumes some of the information it sends out in the form of message packets is getting lost. It arranges with Silverlight to start using smaller packets. The smaller the packet, the less the information that has to be retransmitted when a packet is lost. Cutting down the packet size saves retransmission overhead and allows the server to avoid dropping down to a lower bitrate. Ideally, playback quality remains the same.

If necessary, though, the server can go so far as to lower the bitrate. If the video is standard definition, 1,500 kbps (the highest SD bitrate that Netflix uses) can drop to 1,000 kbps, 500 kbps, or even as low as 375 kbps. (I'm getting this, by the way, from an article in The Netflix Blog called "Encoding for Streaming.")

When I watch an SD movie using my PlayStation 3, the PS3 lets me display the instantaneous bitrate on the TV screen. I find that the instantaneous bitrate varies widely. Frequently it goes well above 2,000 kbps. When there is little motion in the scene though, the bitrate drops well below 1,000 kbps. In other words, the instantaneous bitrate is variable. This is called "variable bitrate encoding," or VBR. The average bitrate, I assume, is the advertised 1,500 kbps.

Sometimes the speed of the network connection drops enough to cause problems if the original average bitrate isn't likewise dropped down to a lower bitrate.

In the VC-1 Advanced Profile (VC1AP) encoding that Netflix uses, according to the blog post, "each GOP [group-of-pictures; a "picture" is an individual "video frame"] header includes frame size and resolution, which allows [Netflix servers] to assemble a stream on the fly from different bitrate encodes as your broadband bandwidth fluctuates."

This happens without the user being aware of it, because Silverlight recognizes on-the-fly changes in bitrate by inspecting the parameters in the GOP headers, and it accommodates those changes automatically.

The result can, however, be a drop in perceived video quality. Lower average bitrates can mean more digital compression artifacts, hence messier-looking images. Or there can be fewer video frames per second in the lower-bitrate encode, so motion gets choppy.

However, the swings in instantaneous bitrate due to VBR encoding are a different story. They happen in response to the changing complexity of the moving image, just as they do on a DVD. In order for the viewer to perceive unchanging video quality, more bits are needed to encode highly complex images having a lot of fast motion, while fewer bits are needed for simple, static images.

When Netflix uses a 1,500-kbps encode, it is implicit that the instantaneous bitrate will sometimes be much higher than 1,500 kbps — and so the network connection has to be able to deliver more kilobits per second than the average bitrate implies. In other words, the speed of the connection must be fast enough to allow for the occasionally high overhead of VBR encoding.

What about high-definition encodes? At the time the Netflix blog article was written (Nov. 6, 2008) there were some 400 HD streams available. The article says HD is encoded in VC1AP at 3,800 kbps and again at 2,600 kbps. The video resolution in both cases is 720p, which means each video frame, with its 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, is made up of 720 rows of 1,280 pixels per row.

This is not "Full HD" 1080p encoding, such as is found on Blu-ray, or even 1080i, each of which would require each frame to contain 1,080 rows x 1,920 pixels.

There are 24 frames of 720p video per second for material transferred from film, mimicking the frame rate of film itself. Shot-to-video HD material is at 30 frames per second (25 fps for video material shot in the British PAL standard). Again, this is not as good as Blu-ray, which uses 60 fps for HD video material shot in the U.S. This type of encoding is referred to as 1080p60. Netflix uses 720p30 (or 720p24 for film-based material).

Netflix says it believes "using 1080p60 would require a bitrate out of reach for most domestic broadband today. We believe Moore's law will drive home broadband higher and higher enabling full 1080p60 encodes in a few years."

Another article from the Netflix blog, "Netflix Trying for Consistent Excellence on Streaming," gives more information about what goes on behind the scenes. Netflix streams use servers scattered around the country to avoid congested Internet "backbone" lines. The servers are organized into "content delivery networks" (CDNs). The CDN approach groups servers in regions that serve nearby users. The nodes of the CDNs cooperate with each other to satisfy requests for content by nearby users.

If several users are watching, say, WALL-E at 1,500 kbps, one particular server of one particular CDN is active for all of them. If that server encounters major congestion between itself and any particular user, that one user may develop problems with playback, or lowered video quality. Other WALL-E watchers may see no problems whatever.

In fact, Netflix says, the combination of server and network path may vary depending on what type of device the user is using. "Accordingly," the article says, "[individual] customers may see better performance on [an] Xbox than [on] their PC, or vice-versa."

Netflix's strategy is to keep as many users satisfied as possible, as much of the time as possible, while giving them the best possible video and audio quality. In addition, Netflix wants playback to begin as quickly as possible after the user has initiated it.

This sounds good ... but some users have complained that they typically have slow network connections and never get top-quality results. These users have asked to be able to pre-buffer content using the best-quality encode at the highest available bitrate. They say they don't mind if the start of playback is delayed until a hefty portion of the content — or all of it — has already been buffered.

So far, though, Netflix has not built such a pre-buffering option into Silverlight.

Instant Netflix on PS3 and TiVo

2009-11-19T11:31:00.068-05:00

Got Netflix? You and 11.1 million others in the U.S., as of 9/30/09; Netflix is huge. Unless yours is a so-called "limited" account, you have an Instant Queue (IQ) you can load up with movies that you can then watch instantly to your heart's content. You can do that on a computer. You can also do it on your TV screen, via a TiVo or other set-top-box, a game console such as a Sony PlayStation 3 or a Microsoft Xbox 360, certain models of Blu-ray player (typically, recent ones with BD-Live capability), or even certain TVs that have Internet connections. All these so-called Netflix-ready devices (NeRDs?) connect to the Internet via WiFi, or via an Ethernet cable if you use one.

It's taken me a while to catch on to Netflix streaming. I ignored it when, some time ago, my TiVo #1 began carrying Netflix (see this press release). Then, the other day, I was fiddling with my Sony PlayStation 3, which sits in my living room below my TiVo #2 unit and, just like that TiVo, feeds signals into my favorite flat panel TV. After a firmware upgrade, the PS3 alerted me that I could now use it to stream Netflix (see this press release). Seemingly, all I had to do was use the PS3's built-in browser and visit Netflix.com to begin streaming movies from my Netflix IQ. So I did.

Actually, the browser just let me link to Netflix to ask for an Instant Streaming Blu-ray Disc for the PS3. The disc had to be mailed to me. (I couldn't believe the software can't be downloaded!) Also, you'll need to be sure you've upgraded your PS3's firmware to version 3.01 or later, to allow the Netflix software to work.

Once you get the disc — which you keep and never mail back — you insert it in your PS3 and see an activation code come up on your TV screen. You have to run to your computer to enter that five-character code into this web page, because with the disc in the PS3, the PS3 can't use its own browser, or any of its normal functions(!). With the disc inserted, the PS3 becomes a dedicated Netflix streamer, until you eject the disc or use the Back button on the PS3's remote to idle the disc.

The dedication of the PS3 to Netflix streaming while the disc is active, by the way, is why you need to keep reinserting the disc each time you want to watch Netflix on the PS3. Netflix claims it used an external disc as the quickest and cheapest way to get streaming capability to the PS3, but rumors abound that the real reason was that the company's exclusivity arrangement with Microsoft (whose Xbox 360 already streamed Netflix) had to be worked around — technically — by keeping the Netflix interface off the PS3's Cross Media Bar (XMB). The XMB is the fancy menu system the PS3 uses to allow the user to navigate among the game console's various functions. The Xbox 360's equivalent is the Dashboard. Netflix seems to have felt constrained to keep its streaming function off the PS3's version of the Dashboard.

This is apparently a temporary situation. By late 2010, Netflix expects its software to be embedded in a new release of the PS3 firmware.

After you activate your shiny new disc on your PS3, you'll immediately see your IQ on the TV screen and can navigate to and begin watching any item in the queue. Play begins pretty quickly. It's not at all choppy or pixellated. The video and audio are, I find, basically of DVD quality. Netflix says here that it "automatically chooses the video quality to give you the best image possible based on the speed of your Internet connection. The faster your Internet connection, the higher the quality that we can deliver to you."

Did I mention that watching movies from your IQ is free? It's included with the cost of a regular (i.e., non-"limited") Netflix account! With Netflix, you don't have to pay extra for video-on-demand. Take that, cable companies!

Also, the PS3 Netflix application's attractive and easy-to-use interface lets you locate and add stuff to your Instant Queue, using just your PS3 remote. The IQ updates right away, so you can begin watching new items immediately.

But what you can't do is type in, say, "Kubrick," to see all the available films of Stanley Kubrick. You'll need to use your computer for that sort of thing. Or try the Instantwatcher iPhone app, which lets you manage your Instant Queue from an iPhone or iPod Touch:

There is also an Instantwatcher web site, which you may want to check out.

It gets better. My two TiVo units (as I'd been so blind to) also stream Netflix.

The user interface is different: it's TiVo-like, which has its good points and bad. A good point is that you can opt to have the Netflix IQ show up as a folder (appropriately, red) in your Now Playing list. The folder's individual titles can be sorted alphabetically. If you add (say) the entire first season of The Office to your IQ, it shows up as a subfolder within that folder.

A bad point is that there seems to be no way to add items to the IQ from the TiVo, as is easy to do from the PS3. (But once you add an item via the PS3, you can watch it right away on the TiVo, if you prefer. Or you can just watch it right on the PS3.)

It gets better still. Some of the content that you can stream from Netflix is in HD!

HD streaming works seemingly identically on my two TiVo units and on my PS3. On all of them, I seem to be finding that the resolution is always 720p, never 1080i/p, even on TV shows like The Office that are broadcast in 1080i. I guess the 720p limitation is a compromise to allow Internet streaming of HD content at all. Or it may be that if I had a really extremely fast Internet connection, I'd see 1080i — who knows? 720p looks great, anyway, so I'm not complaining.

You can get another blogger's take on HD content streaming from Netflix to the PS3 here.

Speaking of content, there are today some 17,000 titles at Netflix that can be streamed instantly. That may seem like a lot, until you stop to consider that Netflix has over 100,000 DVD titles (not to mention Blu-rays). It looks as if few if any of the very latest movie releases make it to Netflix streaming until they're past their period of hottest popularity.

That makes sense. Netflix streaming is essentially a free feature — for those who already pay for an account. Why should Netflix give away its most sought after titles? Plus, the movie studios probably wouldn't care much for it. In fact, I'd bet money that it won't be long until Netflix starts charging to stream stuff, either some or all of it.

Netflix says more on-demand titles arrive "every day," and I suppose one reason why it takes a while for new releases to appear may be that they have to be specially rendered into the necessary video format or formats. For example, if The Office is in 1080p on Blu-ray, it has to be converted to 720p for Netflix. If, as I suspect, there are different formats for different connection speeds, that only compounds the problem.

See other posts in my Netflix Streaming series for more ...

BD-Java Features of Blu-ray Discs and Players

2009-06-12T10:54:00.024-04:00

Thinking about a Blu-ray player for your next home video purchase? Good choice, but keep in mind ...

Once you decide to go Blu-ray, you are confronted with a welter of confusing features that some players and discs offer, and others do not. For instance, if you look at this list of available Blu-ray Discs at Blu-rayStats.com (click on the image below to see the list)

you see a table listing all the Blu-ray Discs yet issued, some 1,552 as of this writing. There are columns labeled "BD Java," "Pic in Pic," "Bonus View," and "BD Live." What do these mean?

In plain language, these have to do with whether a Blu-ray player, playing a Blu-ray Disc as opposed to a DVD, can do certain things: provide interactive menus that "pop up" over disc content; handle "picture-in-picture" video and audio content that plays over top of "regular" disc content; and/or access additional disc content that resides on the Internet, not on the disc.

All of these are optional disc features that, in order to work, have to be supported by capabilities in the player. Not all players support all the features, and not all discs contain all the features. Many Blu-ray Discs have none of these features.

In general, the later the date a model of Blu-ray player was introduced, the more likely it is that all of these disc features are supported. However, some older players can have their onboard firmware updated to support disc features not originally supported at the time the model was introduced ... as long as those players have all the necessary hardware.

Here's a rundown on the features and the computer language which supports them:

BD-Java: All of these features utilize the BD-Java computer language that is geared especially to Blu-ray. BD-Java is also called BD-J, or Blu-ray Disc Java. Basically, it's a programming language that all Blu-ray players support, in some version. Blu-ray players are actually (in addition to being able to play Blu-ray Discs) a kind of computer that runs BD-Java, and Blu-ray discs optionally take advantage of that.

Blu-ray discs that take advantage of BD-Java and the features it supports have to be "authored in BD-Java," which means they possess a different file structure on the disc than they would if they were just "ordinary" Blu-ray Discs that are not authored in BD-Java. Disc "authoring" is, simply, how the various pieces of information that are recorded on the disc are put together by the creators of the disc. Blu-ray discs are authored using files. Much like files on your computer, these files exist in a folder hierarchy on the disc. Blu-ray players, needless to say, hide the file structure/folder hierarchy from user view.

On the Blu-rayStats.com page mentioned above, discs that are authored in BD-Java are shown with a "Yes" under BD Java.

Interactive "pop-up" menus: BD-Java disc authoring opens the door to several user capabilities. One is simply the ability for a disc to provide interactive "pop-up" menus. Blu-ray Discs that are not authored in BD-Java must get by with "dumb" menus like those on DVDs, which really aren't "smart" or interactive and can't pop up while the disc continues to play. But Java-authored Blu-ray Discs can have truly interactive pop-up menus that use the BD-Java computer language and file structure.

Here is an example of a pop-up menu:

Not all Java-authored discs provide pop-up menus. Just because a disc is authored in BD-Java does not mean pop-up menus exist on the disc.

Nice as interactive pop-up menus are, most or all Blu-ray Discs which use pop-up menus unfortunately do not allow a Blu-ray Disc player to automatically resume a movie from any arbitrary point in the middle of the movie where the movie was stopped. This is a feature we are used to on DVDs and DVD players, and Blu-ray players also support it on those Blu-ray Discs that don't have pop-up menus. But there is something about discs with BD-Java pop-up menus that prevents this feature from working.

Blu-ray profiles: Every Blu-ray player supports BD-Java — and thus, at a minimum, pop-up menus — but there are three different levels, or "profiles," at which BD-Java support may be included in a playes, depending on when the player model was introduced.

Profile 1.0: The first level of BD-Java support is called Profile 1.0. All Blu-ray players, however early they were introduced, support Profile 1.0 of BD-Java, which is what allows discs to have pop-up menus. (Again, not all discs in fact have interactive pop-up menus, but all players support them if they are in fact present on a disc.)

Profile 1.1: The second level of BD-Java support is Profile 1.1, which has also been dubbed "Bonus View" or "Final Standard Profile" (though it isn't actually final). Profile 1.1 does what Profile 1.0 does — mainly, pop-up menus — plus adding the ability to play a "picture in picture" (PIP) as a secondary audio-video stream from a Blu-ray Disc that is programmed to show one.

If you can see a small window of (say) video commentary on the TV screen, where a director or actor talks about a scene being shown in the background, you may be seeing Bonus View in action. Here is an example from a German Blu-ray title, Neues vom Wixxer:

Blu-ray Discs that offer Bonus View are shown on the Blu-rayStats.com page with a "Yes" in the Bonus View column. If you invoke the "Has Bonus View" filter, you will see just the releases with Bonus View — 106 as of this writing. You can play these releases on Profile 1.0 players, but you can't access the Bonus View content.

Keep in mind that some Blu-ray Discs have been issued with PIP implemented by means of a second whole copy of the movie that is recorded separately on the disc with an inset audio-video program over top of the main picture. This is not Bonus View.

Bonus View-compatible players need to have additional hardware, above and beyond that required for Profile 1.0 players: 256 MB of "local storage" — a.k.a. "persistent storage" — such as flash memory or a hard drive (none was required for Profile 1.0); plus secondary video and audio decoders. If a Profile 1.0 player lacks these extra items, it can't be upgraded to Profile 1.1 via a simple firmware upgrade.

Blu-ray Discs that offer picture-in-picture content are shown separately on the Blu-rayStats.com page with a "Yes" in the Pic in Pic column. If you employ the "Has Bonus View" filter on that page, you can see that all Bonus View discs are "Pic in Pic" discs. However, there are some "Pic in Pic" discs that don't Bonus View ... and some that don't even use BD-Java.

For example, the movie "Blow" is shown as "Pic in Pic," but not as either "BD-Java" or "Bonus View." These discs don't use BD-Java, and they implement PIP with a second whole copy of the movie.

The movie "The Contract" is shown as having "Pic in Pic" and "Bonus View," but not as having "BD Java." That makes questionable sense. To the best of my understanding, Bonus View requires BD-Java.

Profile 2.0: This is the third (and supposedly final) level of BD-Java support in Blu-ray players — for videos, that is; there is a Profile 3.0 in the works for BD-Audio use.

To the capabilities of Profile 1.1/Bonus View/Final Standard Profile and of Profile 1.0, Profile 2.0 adds an Internet connection via an Ethernet port and/or via a wireless 802.11 (WiFi) adapter. This connection allows players to honor certain Blu-ray Disc titles' ability to access online content. The bonus material on the disc is augmented with additional bonus material from the Internet. This Internet-based extra content is "live" — it can change — and so Profile 2.0 is called "BD-Live."

Players that support Profile 2.0/BD-Live add extra "persistent storage," above and beyond that needed for Profile 1.1, with a minimum of 1 GB of storage being present to hold downloaded content and the like.

All the features of Profile 1.1 and Profile 1.0 are supported by Profile 2.0.

Again, a great many Blu-ray Discs don't make use of Profile 2.0/BD-Live. The ones that do are listed in Blu-rayStats.com with a "Yes" under BD Live. As of this writing only 177 are shown, when you invoke the "Has BD Live" filter ... and if you also invoke "Has Bonus View," there are only (as of this moment) 51 Blu-ray Discs released in the U.S. that use both.

Because Profile 2.0/BD-Live requires additional hardware beyond Profile 1.1/Bonus View/Final Standard Profile, unless that hardware happened to be included on a Profile 1.1/Profile 1.0 player, that player cannot be upgraded to Profile 2.0 via a firmware upgrade.

Confusingly, some earlier players that don't support Profile 2.0 do have an Ethernet port. These are strictly for firmware updates and can't be used to access downloadable BD-Live content. Hence, there is no way to upgrade these players to Profile 2.0. (What could they have been thinking?)

Can You Upgrade Blu-ray Discs?

Blu-ray discs have to be authored in BD-Java by their creators and programmed to use interactive pop-up menus and/or Bonus View picture-in-picture content and/or BD-Live content, if those capabilities are to be supported by the disc. (In theory, a disc could be authored with BD-Java and have none of these features.)

Since Blu-ray Discs are read-only, there is no way to "upgrade" a disc to use these features — even if the disc is authored in BD-Java — once the disc is made and is in the customer's hands. Accordingly, a title that was released without BD-Live capability may wind up being re-released in the future with it. The customer who wants to take advantage of BD-Live would have to buy the title a second time, assuming it is ever re-released. (An exception: if a disc includes BD-Live capability in the first place, the online content that it can access can be changed or amplified over time.)

Bookmarks: There is another BD-Java capability that is of interest: the ability for the user to create "bookmarks" that allow any point in a movie that is bookmarked by the user to be returned to at will. A bookmark is sort of like a home-brew chapter stop that the user creates on the fly, usually by pressing a button on the remote, then uses to select where playback of a program moves to or begins the next time the disc is used. A bookmark is sometimes called a "personal scene selection."

I have been unable to discover whether bookmarks officially require any particular BD-Java profile, but they do require that the bookmark capability, which is programmed in BD-Java, be explicitly included on a particular Bu-ray Disc. Hence, only certain discs support bookmarks.

However, I do know that disc-based bookmarks are saved by the Blu-ray player on its "local storage" — which makes sense, since the disc itself is read-only. Since Profile 1.0 does not require the player to have local storage, I assume that bookmarks need a player with Profile 1.1 or Profile 2.0. However, since Profile 2.0 is basically nothing more than the addition of BD-Live online content to Profile 1.1, I assume that all you really need to use disc-based bookmarks is a player with Profile 1.1.

For discs that use "pop-up" menus and accordingly cannot automatically resume playing a stopped disc at the point at which is was stopped, creating and later returning to a bookmark can be something of a workaround to the no-resume-play problem.

Finally, some questions that you may be asking are these:

Why this nasty, arbitrary, incremental approach to advanced disc-and-player features in the Blu-ray world?

Why did the potentates of Blu-ray produce so may player models that can't be upgraded, though they knew from day one what the eventual capabilities of players (and discs) would be?

Why are there, even now, so few Blu-ray Disc releases that take advantage of (any or all of) interactive pop-up menus, Bonus View content, and BD-Live content?

I don't claim to know all the answers, but here are some semi-educated guesses. First of all, for whatever reason, Blu-ray's competitor format HD DVD made it to market, with players and discs, earlier than Blu-ray. Blu-ray was playing catch-up.

And it knew catching up was hopeless if it waited until BD-Java disc authoring and the full set of features it would one day support were mature, fully developed technologies.

So the viziers of Blu-ray rushed their product to market with whatever capabilities were ready to go.

Meanwhile, HD DVD was designed in a dissimilar way, with no full-scale equivalent to BD-Java. So HD DVD could be there "firstest with the mostest," with features like picture-in-picture built in from the get-go.

To add injury to insult, rushing Blu-ray to market meant that the first disc releases could not be on dual-layer discs, since the facilities for manufacturing those discs weren't ready. Hence, single-layer releases were the norm. That's since been corrected. Plus, the advanced video codecs "VC-1" and "AVC" weren't yet supported by disc-mastering facilities, so MPEG-2 (the codec used on DVDs) had to be used. That, too, is ancient history. But for a while, the fact that MPEG-2 doesn't compress video nearly as compactly as VC-1 and AVC (also called MPEG4/h.264) meant that it was hard to shoehorn a movie into a single-layer disc without over-compressing it, harming visual quality. There were a lot of complaints that Blu-ray Discs didn't look as good as HD DVDs.

All in all, it's a wonder the Blu-ray format survived at all. But it did, and today it's alone on the battlefield. HD DVD is dead.

Unfortunately, though, the contortions Blu-ray had to go through to avoid having to run up a white flag have left us with a legacy of confusing profiles and player-and-disc features to contend with, as we try to be smart Blu-ray consumers.

For more on the different Blu-ray profiles, see http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9808376-1.html. For information about the way content on Blu-ray Discs is organized, "The Authoritative Blu-ray Disc (BD) FAQ" at http://www.emedialive.com/articles/readarticle.aspx?articleid=11392.

The State of the Blu-ray Art

2009-06-09T13:31:00.013-04:00

(The following contains several insets featuring some of the most attractive Blu-ray player models as of June 2009. Each inset provides basic information about the model, and is clickable. When you click on one of the insets, you will be taken to a CNET review of that model. To look at a list of all Blu-ray player models, listed in order by CNET Editors' rating, click here. This list does not include the Sony PlayStation 3 video game console, which doubles as an excellent Blu-ray player. That machine — to which the CNET Editors award 4 of 5 possible stars, and which is the Blu-ray player I myself own — is shown as one of the insets below.)

When I compiled Which Blu-ray Player for You? a year and a quarter ago, in March 2008, the world of home video was just getting used to the idea that one of the two competing high-def disc formats had abruptly emerged as the winner over the other, Blu-ray over HD DVD. Blu-ray as a commercial reality was not yet mature, truth to be told. One reason was the relative dearth of Blu-ray titles, along with their high prices compared with the established DVD format. A second reason was that Blu-ray players were generally super-expensive, and most of them lacked features and amenities that everyone knew were in the offing.

LG BD390

$375.00 - $399.95

Excellent image quality on Blu-ray movies; integrated 802.11n WiFi; Netflix, YouTube, and CinemaNow video streaming; superfast disc loading; plays music, videos, and pictures off a connected USB drive or over network; BD-Live Profile 2.0 compatible; onboard decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio; 7.1 analog outputs; 1GB onboard memory

but: Costs as much as a Sony PlayStation 3 combination Blu-ray-player and video game machine; CinemaNow doesn't stack up to Amazon Video On Demand.

Much has changed today. Although Blu-ray players and discs still command a premium price over DVD, the price spread is a lot smaller than before. There are over 1,500 Blu-ray titles available in America as of January 2009, according to Wikipedia. And this page at Blu-rayStats.com currently shows (scroll down) a total of 1,538 "features" in release on Blu-ray, as well as giving a line item on each of them. (If you click on each title, you get all sorts of useful information about that release.)

Most new movies that come out on DVD are being released on Blu-ray on the same day, and studios are gradually releasing BDs (Blu-ray discs) of their popular titles from the past. For a list of upcoming Blu-ray releases, click here. For another list of Blu-ray releases that you can already buy, click here. (A trivia question: what was the first Blu-ray Disc release, and when did it happen? Answer: The Funny Guy Collection (Napoleon Dynamite, Office Space, Young Frankenstein), on May 12, 2006.)

Also, the latest Blu-ray players all have the full complement of features and amenities anyone could expect.

Sony PlayStation 3

$309.95 - $399.99 (40 GB)

In addition to its ability to play PS3 video games: plays BD-Live Profile 2.0 Blu-ray discs; plays DVDs; onboard decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio; built-in Wi-Fi, 40GB hard drive; 1080p/24 video output via HDMI 1.3; upconverts DVDs to 1080p; networking via Ethernet or WiFi

but: No bitstream Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio output; ease of use requires separate purchase of Sony Bluetooth-compatible video remote; glossy black finish is a fingerprint magnet

Still, the Blu-ray takeoff has not been as rapid as was the DVD takeoff some dozen years ago. One reason (see this story) is that "just 26.5 million households in 2007 had the required high-def TV set for Blu-ray." DVD had the advantage of being able to look pretty close to its best on just about any TV. (Note that you don't really require a high-def TV for Blu-ray; any lesser TV will work fine, just not give you all the vaunted video resolution and detail.)

I've been piping a high-def picture from my Sony PlayStation 3 game console/Blu-ray player into a Samsung 52" 1920x1080p "Full HD" LCD HDTV since late last year, and I can attest that until you've seen a movie in Blu-ray high-def, you haven't really seen the movie on home video.

Samsung BD-P4600

$499.99

Unique design, can be wall-mounted; excellent image quality on Blu-ray movies; Wi-Fi USB dongle included; Netflix and Pandora streaming; superfast operational speed and disc loading; BD-Live Profile 2.0 compatible; onboard decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio; 1GB onboard memory; streams media off connected PC

but: Costs more than a Sony PlayStation 3; unusual design won't fit all decors; compartment for connectivity is cramped; PC streaming setup is difficult

With a state-of-the-art, "Full HD" 1080p TV and a Blu-ray player, you can see a picture that is 1,920 pixels across by 1,080 pixels down, with a widescreen 16:9 width-to-height ratio (the "aspect ratio"). Though DVD pictures can match that aspect ratio, they offer only 720 horizontal pixels by 480 vertical pixels, and their pixels have to be stretched horizontally to fill the wide screen — which robs the image of apparent detail."Full HD" 1080p on Blu-ray has fully six times the number of pixels as DVD, and thus six times the resolution.

Also, state-of-the-art Blu-ray allows movies to be shown at their native 24 frames per second, whereas DVDs are stuck with 60 fps. The latter might seem to be better, because the number is greater. But 24-fps movies have to be compromised to get 60 displayable TV frames per second out of them, by means of a technique called "3:2 pulldown." That's geek-speak for some of the information from a given film frame being repeated in different video frames. That happens in herky-jerky fashion, such that some of the frames of the "interlaced" 60-fps TV picture wind up coming from different — frequently, mismatched — film frames. Result: a mess.

Sony BDP-S360

$248.70 - $299.99

BD-Live Profile 2.0-compatible; excellent video quality on most Blu-ray movies; onboard decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio Essential (DTS-HD Master Audio Essential differs from standard DTS-HD Master Audio in that it lacks decoding for a few legacy DTS DVD soundtrack formats such as DTS 96/24, ES, ES Matrix, and Neo:6. It still decodes all the high-resolution Blu-ray DTS soundtracks)

but: Cannot access streaming video services such as Netflix; no Wi-Fi option; no eject button on the remote; relatively slow load times; recessed USB port

DVD players try to disentangle this mess as best they can, with varying degrees of success. A Blu-ray disc being played at 24 fps into a state-of-the-art TV, using "progressive" and not interlaced frames, simply bypasses "3:2 pulldown compensation" entirely, since 3:2 pulldown wasn't done in the first place! You see a picture that is not only superbly detailed, but one that is super-clean and artifact free. It really is like being in a movie theater. (See 1080p24 ("24p") on Blu-ray for more on 24-fps video from Blu-ray.)

So, why wouldn't you want to invest in Blu-ray?

Well, the obvious reason remains price. We would all like to see cheaper players — and they're coming. When the computer chips and the fancy blue-laser assembly that make up the guts of the player are manufactured in sufficient volume, costs will drop. The same thing happened with DVD: prices were high until chips were cheaper. (The red laser used by DVDs was already cheap, since CDs had used red lasers since the early 1980s. And, by the way, all Blu-ray players also incorporate red lasers, to play DVDs!)

DVD players got cheaper faster because (as noted above) all TV households could use them to reasonably good advantage. True, few TVs were widescreen in 1997, when DVD hit stores, but most consumers had as yet no idea their old 4:3 TVs were becoming obsolete. Today, everyone knows digital HDTVs are the state of the art. Lots of people haven't upgraded yet, but they know it's only a matter of time until they do. When and as they do, a Blu-ray player will suddenly seem mandatory for the bulk of them.

Blu-ray disc prices? They're all over the map right now. If you click here, you can check out all of the BDs sold at Amazon.com, sorted supposedly by price, low to high. (The number of results is at this moment fully 3,960, but I assume this number is inflated by some X-factor that I can't guess.) I find that Amazon's price sorting leaves something to be desired, but clearly there are numerous Blu-ray titles available for under $20.00. Many are under $15.00, and quite a few are under $10.00! An example: you can get hot titles like The Dark Knight, complete with BD-Live interactivity and an iPod-compatible "digital" version of the movie, for $23.99 instead of the $35.99 list price.

LG BD370

$223.00 - $311.02

Streams Netflix and YouTube; BD-Live Profile 2.0 compatible; onboard decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio Essential (lacks decoding for legacy DTS DVD soundtracks such as DTS 96/24, ES, ES Matrix, and Neo:6); relatively quick load times

but: Competitors offer better image quality on Blu-ray and DVD; no WiFi option

What's BD-Live interactivity? Also known as Profile 2.0 of the BD-Java computer language resident in every Blu-ray player, it is what extends Blu-ray disc interactivity to be able to access Internet-based (not just disc-based) added content! Not all titles use it, but those that do possess it require players that themselves implement Profile 2.0, assuming you want to use all of the features of the latest discs and access all the added content. Virtually all of the player models introduced in 2009 support Profile 2.0 — so, be warned! Don't buy an older model of Blu-ray player unless the price is so low, you can't pass it up.

Sony BD-P3600

$349.00 - $399.95

Excellent image quality on Blu-ray movies; Wi-Fi USB dongle included; Netflix and Pandora streaming; superfast operational speed and disc loading; BD-Live Profile 2.0 compatible; onboard decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio; 7.1 analog outputs; 1GB onboard memory; streams media off connected PC

but: Costs as much as a Sony PlayStation3; front-panel controls are located on top of player; PC streaming setup is difficult

Many of the player models introduced in 2009 or late 2008 are able to stream online video content from sources like Amazon, Netflix, CinemaNow, Pandora, and that perennial favorite, YouTube. Most do this via a wired (Ethernet) or wireless (WiFi or 802.11) home network, but some omit WiFi (and in my opinion should be avoided). Players that support WiFi are often compatible with a speed-boosting "draft" version of that standard, 802.11n, while others support only the familiar-but-poky 802.11b/g.

Some of the latest player models support DTS-HD Master Audio Essential, an audio codec that differs from standard DTS-HD Master Audio in that it lacks decoding for a few legacy DTS DVD soundtracks formats such as DTS 96/24, ES, ES Matrix, and Neo:6. DTS-HD Master Audio in all its lossless, 7.1-channel glory is, needless to say, still supported. This is a cost-saving measure, since it is cheaper to build a player that lacks the chips to decode the legacy formats.

1080p24 ("24p") on Blu-ray

2009-06-09T09:35:00.006-04:00

One of the best things about Blu-ray is that, for the first time on home video, a motion picture is rendered on disc just the way it was recorded on film. Both actual movie film and Blu-ray Discs that contain movies or TV shows shot of film record images at 24 frames per second. On a Blu-ray Disc, accordingly, film is transferred to video at a one-to-one ratio of film frames to video frames. When a Blu-ray Disc containing a movie or a TV show shot on film is output to an HDTV at, specifically, 1080p24 (a.k.a "24p") resolution, playback is notably smooth and free of distracting video artifacts.

On a DVD, film is transferred to video in a way that uses a different ratio of film frames to video frames. There are 30 video frames per second on a DVD, not the 24-fps rate of film. This frame-rate mismatch compromises a movie's ability to be displayed in a truly film-like fashion on a progressive-scan HDTV. DVD players do not support the 1080p24 output resolution because DVDs themselves do not.

The frame-rate mismatch makes no major difference when a DVD is played into a now-obsolete TV that uses a picture tube. But today's HDTVs don't use picture tubes, so the frame-rate mismatch causes the displayed picture to be slightly impaired. Blu-ray players and discs avoid the mismatch problem entirely.

Practical considerations:

In order to take advantage of the 24-fps frame rate of movies recorded on Blu-ray Discs, you need:

A Blu-ray player that supports 1080p24 output on HDMI
An HDTV that supports 1080p24 input on HDMI
An HDMI cable to connect the player to the HDTV
A Blu-ray Disc containing a movie or TV show shot on film
The right setup option(s) in the player and TV

(Ideally, the TV will automatically accept 1080p24 on HDMI and use it without anything special being done to its setup options. The same is typically true of a Blu-ray player when it is using its default "Auto" — for "automatic" — output resolution selection. Only in special cases would the player's automatic output setting need to be manually overridden.)

Background information:

The 30-fps method used to transfer films to DVD is used due to the fact that, in the United States, TV was originally standardized to provide 30 video frames each second, even though film uses 24 frames per second.

To avoid image flicker, in the NTSC television system that was used for decades until the recent digital television revolution, and is also used on DVDs sold in the U.S., each video frame is divided into two separate "fields" transmitted 1/60 second apart. Though they represent slightly different moments in time, the two fields of each video frame can be thought of as "interlaced" together, much as the fingers of two hands folded together are interlaced together into a single unit.

Today, the NTSC standard is being replaced in the "digital conversion." This conversion has actually been going on for several years, though today we are hearing a lot about the problems it will cause for consumers who are not ready for it when, on June 12, 2009, the plug is finally pulled on analog NTSC TV broadcasts. But all DVDs sold in the U.S. will continue to be recorded in a digital version of NTSC even after the digital conversion is done.

NTSC (which is analog video) and DVDs (on which NTSC-like video is recorded digitally) use two interlaced fields per video frame, whether the interlaced analog or digital video comes right from an NTSC video camera or is transferred to video from motion picture film. Each 1/30-sec. frame of interlaced video is made up of two fields, with each field taking 1/60 second.

Frames of NTSC or DVD video (and the two fields they are each subdivided into) are composed of numerous horizontal scan lines. These lines run across the screen from left to right, but since they are stacked on top of each other in the vertical direction to make a two-dimensional picture, they serve as a measure of the "vertical resolution" of the TV picture. In each NTSC frame there are 525 scan lines, though only 480 of them are visible on the TV screen (the others are in the so-called "vertical blanking interval" and don't show up on the screen). The vertical resolution of NTSC video (and of DVDs in the U.S.) is 480 lines.

The first field of each video frame contains that frame's even-numbered scan lines, starting at line 0 at the top of the screen: 0, 2, 4, etc. The second field contains the video frame's odd-numbered scan lines: 1, 3, 5, etc.

That is the way the original NTSC TV system's video signal, which is analog, not digital, is handled. For digital video such as is recorded on a DVD, the scan lines become pixel rows, and the blanking intervals are no longer needed, but the idea remains the same.

Thus, on a DVD sold in the U.S., there are video frames lasting 1/30 second each, with each frame containing two interlaced fields. Because the picture is recorded digitally, the scan lines are now rows of pixels: 480 pixel rows per video frame. The even-numbered pixel rows (0, 2, 4, etc.) are recorded as the first field of the video frame, while the odd-numbered pixel rows (1, 3, 5, etc.) are recorded as the other field of the same frame.

The scan lines or pixel rows of a single field of interlaced video are like an arrangement of slices of a scene viewed through a window, when the slices of the scene are separated by the partially opened slats of a venetian blind. For the second of the two fields in each video frame, the view and the slats simply exchange roles: the slats now contain picture information, while what was picture information becomes slats. This picture-slats alternation happens over and over again, with one alternation every 1/30 second.

Each field of normal, non-film-originated interlaced video records information from the video scene that occurs 1/60 second after the previous field, whether that field is in the same video frame or in the prior video frame. This delay between the two fields of a video frame (or between the first field of a new frame and the last field of the immediately prior frame) worked well with old, picture-tube based TVs, since those TVs would draw the two successive fields on the screen one after the other, at the exact same 60-fields-per-second rate at which the video camera captured them in the first place. Though the two fields were drawn on the TV screen one after another, 1/60 second apart, the fact that the glow of the phosphors on the picture tube's face decayed slowly, abetted by the "persistence of vision" of the human eye, made the two fields seem simultaneous.

When film at 24 frames per second is transferred to interlaced video at 60 fps, as for an analog NTSC broadcast or a standard digital DVD in the U.S., "2:3 pulldown" is used to match the disparate frame rates of film and video. But on a Blu-ray Disc, the same film is digitally recorded at its original 24 fps. A typical Blu-ray player today (but not the early Blu-ray player models from a few years ago when Blu-ray was first introduced) can play that recording into an up-to-date 1080p HDTV at 24 fps, using a digital HDMI connection between the Blu-ray player and the HDTV. The result is much better than even the best DVD can offer, even when the DVD is played on the same Blu-ray player and viewed on the very same TV.

With 2:3 pulldown for motion-picture film that is being transferred to video — a technique which is also called "3:2 pulldown" or "telecine" — film frames are scanned to make a new video field (not a video frame, a video field) every 1/60 second. (Find out more about telecine here; the word "telecine," by the way, is pronounced either with four syllables, or with three.)

After 2:3 pulldown, every group of five sequential video frames contains exactly three of those video frames whose fields both come from just one film frame. But two of the five video frames in a five-frame group contain fields that derive from two different film frames. These two (of every five) video frames can be called "dirty frames," since they do not come from a single, "clean" film frame.

In the illustration above, the first two of the five resulting video frames are "clean," coming entirely from film frames A and B, respectively. The fifth video frame is also "clean," since both of its fields come entirely from film frame D. But the third video frame has one field scanned from film frame B and one from film frame C, and so that video frame is "dirty." So is the fourth video frame, since it has one field from film frame C and one field from film frame D.

Film frames B and C (or C and D) may come from a single film camera shot and be only slightly different from one another — or even identical, if there is no motion in the scene. However, in a far worse case, they can cross an editing splice between two different film camera shots. If they do not cross a splice and are only slightly different, objects that are in motion from one film frame to the next film frame can develop edges that look serrated rather than smooth, when video frame 3 or video frame 4 in the illustration above is viewed on a progressive TV. If they come from different film shots and are accordingly grossly different, then when viewed on a progressive TV they can look a complete mess. They are not just "dirty," they are downright "filthy." Video frames that are "dirty," even "filthy," occur typically with 2:3 pulldown and can cause problems on progressive TV displays.

What does that name, "2:3 pulldown," actually mean? It means that the machine (called a "telecine") which scans the physical film and converts its frames into interlaced video for television transmission or DVD "pulls down" the film, using its sprocket holes, in a way that holds one frame of the film in place for 1/30 second, which is the time it takes to scan two 1/60-sec. video fields. Then it pulls the next film frame into position and holds it steady for the time it takes to scan not two but three 1/60-sec. video fields: 3/60, or 1/20, second. Then the next film frame generates two video fields, and then the next generates three fields ... and so on, and so on. That simple 2-3 alternation in the pulldown of the film in the telecine machine winds up creating a mixture or "clean" and "dirty" video frames like those in the illustration above.

Today's digital TVs are "progressive," not interlaced. They are designed to present each video frame intact, not divided into two alternating sets of interlaced scan lines. Progressive TVs can be thought of as using the scan lines in the picture all at once, 0, 1, 2, 3, etc., rather than using the even-numbered scan lines and then the odd-numbered scan lines.

The letter "p" is used to designate progressive scan. When we read that an HDTV is "1080p" (or "720p") the "p" stands for the fact that the TV uses a progressive, non-interlaced display. When we read that a certain TV or cable channel is "1080i," that means that its signal has the same 1,920-pixel by 1,080-pixel resolution as 1080p, but each video frame is transmitted as two interlaced fields, 1/60 second apart, not a progressive frame with all its scan lines used at once. (1080i is like NTSC video in that regard, in fact, except that NTSC, when digitized and recorded on DVD, is "480i" rather than 1080i. It has far fewer pixel rows/scan lines and much lower resolution.)

When video that has been recorded in interlaced fashion (first the even scan lines, then the odd) is shown on a progressive TV, it must first be "deinterlaced." For a 1080p HDTV, deinterlacing a received 1080i signal is a snap: just combine each pair of successive fields, transmitted 1/60 second apart, into a single frame, and show one frame every 1/30 second.

This results in a "1080i60" video input being displayed on the TV screen as "1080p30." The "30" designation after the "1080p" means that there are 30 progressive frames shown on screen each second, rather than 60 interlaced fields per second. Likewise, the designation "1080i60" for the input video signal means video with 60 interlaced fields per second, ostensibly intended for an interlaced display. (Sometimes these and similar designations contain an embedded slash: "1080p/30" or "1080i/60". And sometimes we see "1080p@30 Hz" or "1080i@60 Hz", indicating the screen "refresh rate" in cycles per second or Hertz.)

Typically in a 1080i60 video input stream, in each span of time that contains four film frames (4/24, or 1/6, second) there are five video frames that, after being deinterlaced, need to be flashed on a progressive HDTV's screen. The extra video frame magically appears because 2:3 pulldown is done, producing "dirty" video frames by creating two interlaced-video fields from some of the film frames and three interlaced-video fields from others. This is the same as what happens with 480i video, except it is done at an HDTV resolution.

The 2:3 pulldown cadence not only creates "dirty" frames when deinterlaced and displayed progressively, it also results in a somewhat herky-jerky rendition of the motion in the picture, called "telecine judder."

Films on Blu-ray discs avoid both "dirty" frames and telecine judder because a Blu-ray Disc is encoded at 1080p24, right on the disc. This means there are 24 full progressive-video frames recorded per second recorded on the disc, just as there are 24 film frames per second recorded on film. No 2:3 pulldown is done. (Often, by the way, the official designation "1080p24" is shortened to "24p".)

Provided that a Blu-ray player is capable of sending 1080p24 video direct to an HDTV, and provided that the TV is capable of accepting it and can put the received 1080p24 video right on screen without any sort of change being made to the picture content, there is no need for the player or TV to do 2:3 pulldown compensation (sometimes called "inverse telecine") at all. Nothing must be done to hide the serrated edges and other picture defects that are commonly associated with 2:3 pulldown's "dirty" frames, when they are used by a progressive display. Telecine judder disappears. Hence, Blu-ray Discs of a Hollywood feature film can be viewed with stunning, unprecedented fidelity to the original film.

Blu-ray players actually transmit 1080p24 video to the HDTV at 24 Hz, but the TV may use each field (say) three times in refreshing the screen at a refresh rate of 72 Hz. This can reduce visible flicker, which can fatigue the eyes. However, the actual content of the video changes at a rate of one field every 1/24 second. Since 72 Hz is a whole-number multiple of 24 Hz, there is no change to the picture content.

Some HDTVs using LCD panels now refresh the screen using a 120-Hz refresh rate, such that each frame of 1080p24 is used five times. (Likewise, each field of 1080i60 video input is deinterlaced, producing 1080p60, and then each frame of that is used twice to produce a 120-Hz refresh rate.)

Whatever the actual refresh rate, whether 72 Hz or 120 Hz, the video coming out of the Blu-ray player and being displayed on the screen is actually 1080p24. Its frames match those of the original film one-for-one.

That same film on DVD is recorded at 480i60, which means that each interlaced frame consists of two fields, each with 480 ÷ 2 = 240 rows of pixels. Each field takes 1/60 second, so the two fields of any given video frame take 1/30 second.

When 480i60 is shown on a progressive TV display, it must be deinterlaced. The simplest way is to use a "line doubler." A line doubler simply combines each pair of 480i60 fields into one whole frame and shows each whole frame twice, achieving in effect 480p60 video on the screen.

Line doublers work fine for 480i that derives from a video camera, but for 480i that derives from a film that has been subjected to 2:3 pulldown, line doublers make two of every five displayed video frames "dirty" ones. Even when these frames are not "filthy" — spanning splices between film camera shots — objects in motion tend to develop serrated edges. Fast motion results in edges with pronounced comblike "teeth." The result can be the picture artifact or defect known as visible "combing":

Combing artifacts are sometimes not-so-affectionately referred to as "jaggies." The problem shows up when line-doubler deinterlacing is done for progressive TV displays. For an interlaced display such as a CRT ("picture tube") there is no need for deinterlacing. Each field is drawn sequentially onto the phosphors of the picture tube, scan line by scan line, with each field appearing 1/60 sec. after the previous one. There is no visible combing.

With a progressive TV display, combing that results from deinterlacing can be reduced by having the TV do more sophisticated deinterlacing than a line doubler does. But it can often be eliminated entirely by a DVD player, before the TV even "sees" the video signal.

Digital 480i video on DVD can optionally be recorded using a "soft telecine" type of 2:3 pulldown. Recall that in 2:3 pulldown certain video fields are used twice, once in each of two successive video frames. "Soft telecine" is a way to use "flags" recorded on the DVD to say, in effect, "The video field you would normally expect to occur here is missing. Repeat the corresponding video field from the previous video frame instead."

A "progressive-scan DVD player" can change 480i on the disc to 480p for output to the TV (assuming the TV can accept the doubling of the rate at which the TV signal is input to it). Such a player can typically use the "soft telecine" flags, if they are present on a DVD, to eliminate "dirty" progressive frames in the deinterlaced output. The basic logic is simple: just ignore repeated fields entirely. However, the frame rate generally has to be padded out from 60 fields/30 frames per second to 60 progressive frames per second, so certain of these whole frames are repeated as necessary, instead of repeating fields as needed. This eliminates combing/jaggies, but it can result in a noticeable judder on screen.

There is one further problem with 2:3 pulldown on DVD. Some DVDs use a "hard telecine" instead of flags to accomplish 2:3 pulldown, such that repeated fields are actually encoded twice, and few DVD players are able to remove it. Likewise, many "soft telecine" DVDs are poorly encoded: the flags that tell when to repeat fields are missing or inserted in wrong places. This often happens near a chapter break, at which point even a sophisticated progressive-scan player can produce on-screen jaggies.

Blu-ray players, when they are used to play DVDs, have exactly the same problems with jaggies and judder as DVD player do. But when they are used to play Blu-Ray Discs made from movies or TV shows shot on film, playback is stunningly smooth and artifact free.

Getting My PlayStation 3 $150 Rebate, Continued

2009-02-08T15:18:00.003-05:00

In Good Deal on Sony PlayStation 3 (Update) and Getting My PlayStation 3 $150 Rebate I talked about my purchase of a Sony PlayStation 3 game console/Blu-ray player. I took advantage of a Sony online offer of a $150 rebate on the $399 player for anyone who successfully applied for a new Sony PlayStation credit card prior to the expiration of the offer at midnight, December 31, 2008.

As I explained in the earlier posts, I had some trouble jumping through all the correct hoops to get the rebate. As can be told from the heavy volume of comments my earlier posts generated, a number of other people also had trouble jumping through all the right hoops in the right order and at the right time.

I ultimately managed to do the right things to get the Sony Rewards website, through which I bought the PS3, to grant me access to the form to be used to apply for the rebate. That was on December 19, 2008. Today (February 8, 2009) I finally got email indicating that my application for a rebate has been approved:

So I expect the $150 rebate to show up in my PlayStation Card account by the end of this week.

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Aliasing on the PS3

2008-12-29T09:49:00.011-05:00

I talked about the various video resolutions the Sony PlayStation 3 is capable of generating in PlayStation 3 Video Resolutions. I got several comments from posters who complained that certain PS3 games give them problems, video-wise. One of the problems appears to be that of "aliasing." The game Resistance 2 in particular was singled out, though my research indicates that many other PS3 games are affected.

In general, aliasing in digital video causes areas of the moving picture to shimmer or flicker. The affected areas are those with the most fine-grained video detail.

If you stop the motion and look at a still frame of the video, the shimmering will stop, but you will see a spurious pattern overlaying the fine detail in the image. This often called a moiré pattern. As you step from one still frame to the next, the moiré pattern will writhe. Played at normal speed, the writhing becomes a shimmering.

You can think of any still or moving image as being made up of various visual frequencies. The frequencies, which can be represented as sine waves, are overlaid or superimposed atop one another so as to make up a recognizable image. The finer the detail in any portion of the image, the more prevalent the higher frequencies are in that portion of the image.

But digital video doesn't understand continuous sine waves. It chops the image up into pixels. The pixel grid is 1920 x 1080 pixels for 1080i/p, 1280 x 720 for 720p, and 720 x 480 for 480i/p.

The crux of the aliasing problem has to do with the fact that the pixel grid, however coarse or fine, imposes a limit on the highest visual frequency that can be accurately rendered by that grid. Since a pair of adjacent pixels can be thought of as being able to (crudely) represent the positive and negative swings of one complete cycle of a sine wave, the highest frequency that can be represented without aliasing is one that is just less than one-half the pixel-grid frequency (which is a square-wave frequency, rather than a sine-wave frequency).

If the square-wave frequency puts 1920 pixels across the screen, then fewer than 1920 ÷ 2 = 960 sine wave cycles can be accurately represented in the horizontal direction. A similar logic applies to the vertical dimension, or to visual information that uses both dimensions at once.

This is all a fancy way of saying that for any given video resolution there is a maximum visual frequency that can be represented, if aliasing is to be avoided.

Think of using a digital camcorder to make a video of a picket fence as you ride by it in your car. If you are zoomed in on the fence, the visual frequency of the pickets as they move by is relatively low, and you will get no aliasing. But if you gradually zoom out, at some point you will start to see aliasing. This is the point at which the visual frequency of the moving pickets climbs to half that of the pixel grid of the camcorder. Any frequency above that threshold will produce aliasing.

The aliasing potential in digital video is compounded whenever digital video is re-rendered or scaled.

If the video's native resolution is, say, 720p, and it is scaled to 1080p, aliasing can creep in. After all, each 720p frame is itself an image with various frequencies of visual information in it. Among those frequencies are those representing the square-wave 720p pixel grid itself. The square-wave frequency of the 1080p pixel grid is less than twice that of the 720p grid. So, unless some sort of anti-aliasing technique is used, simply scaling up from 720p to 1080p may introduce aliasing.

By similar logic, scaling up from 480i/p to 780p can introduce aliasing.

Video scalers accordingly use sophisticated digital filters to offset the potential for aliasing. Video scaling takes place in the PS3 when a game that is nominally in 720p is output at 1080p. Grid is such a game.

If the PS3 is set up to output Grid at its native 720p into a native-1080p TV, the TV itself will scale the video up to 1080p. (This is what I do.) In this example, the user has the option to let the PS3 or the TV do the upscaling. Possibly, one of the two choices as to which device does the upscaling will introduce less aliasing than the other.

Another possibility is that aliasing can be reduced or eliminated by telling the 1080p TV to use a one-for-one pixel mapping for 1080p input. My New Samsung LN52A650 TV has a picture-size setting called "Just Scan" that does this. Ordinarily, the 16:9 setting for HDMI input on this TV enlarges the picture slightly so that its edges lie outside the frame of the screen; this is called "overscan." It is done because some TV broadcasts have visual "garbage" at the edges of the picture, particularly at the top edge. Overscan hides the garbage.

Hiding the picture's edges requires re-scaling the picture slightly, which can in theory introduce aliasing. If your TV has a way to defeat overscan and your PS3 games evidence aliasing, you might try defeating the overscan ("just scanning") as a way to reduce or eliminate aliasing.

But I gather that most PS3 game aliasing problems lie deeper than this. For example, a post in this GameSpot forum thread reads:

All sony exlcusives offer AA the problem comes with ports. Since ports are done from 360 to ps3 the developers do whatever they can to have similar looking games with decent performance meaning they put all their "hard" work ito the 360 versions and port it over and take out certain details such as AA in order to maintain decent performance. But yes ps3 does offer AA look at Racvthet and clank Uncharted Resistance Heavenly Sword Ninja Gaiden. The only game with aliasing problems that i know of thats sony exclusive is GT5.

My interpretation is that AA ("anti-aliasing") is being done for some PS3 games and not for others. Most or all of the games written (usually by Sony) for the PS3 are "anti-aliased" such that the PS3 can scale them to any of its supported output resolutions without aliasing creeping in. On the other hand, games that are written for other game consoles such as the Xbox 360 and then ported to the PS3 are not necessarily "anti-aliased."

I gather that the Xbox does not internally scale game video. (I don't really know this; anyone who knows more should feel free to correct me.) If the game is 720p, it is output at 720p.

The PS3's games can scale to higher resolutions than they were written for. I think, but don't really know, that this is something the game itself chooses to take advantage of, or not. For instance, I believe Grid does not scale itself from its native 720p to 1080p.

I believe — but again, I don't really know — that this game-internal upscaling capability may be separate from the PS3's usual method of upscaling video.

Whether or not the upscaling is game-internal or done externally to the game by the PS3, it seems that some PS3 ports from Xbox 360 and other platforms introduce aliasing during upscaling. The forum poster I quoted seems to think that there could have been "anti-aliasing" included in the game ports, but, due to the negative effects of anti-aliasing on game performance, there wasn't.

I am going to investigate this subject further and post about what I learn. For now, those who are irritated by aliasing in their PS3 games should be aware that it may be the unavoidable result of how the games were ported to the PS3. There may be nothing "wrong" that they can fix by using different settings on the PS3 or the TV.

PlayStation 3 Video Resolutions

2008-12-23T12:52:00.014-05:00

As I've been reporting recently in this PlayStation 3 series of posts, I have a new PS3 80GB that I am getting a lot of enjoyment out of. In My New Sony PlayStation 3, Part II (Installation and Setup) I talked about how I went about installing and setting up the PS3 to work with my new TV. But I glossed over the complex topic of how the PS3, in combination with the TV, chooses its video resolutions.

The PS3's list of video output resolutions includes, in ascending order of quality:

Standard (NTSC) — i.e., 480i
480p
720p
1080i
1080p

The first, "Standard (NTSC)," is 480i. It's not available with an HDMI connection, which is the connection type I am using between my PS3 and My New Samsung LN52A650 TV, a brand new 52-inch 1080p flat-panel LCD HDTV. All five resolutions are available if you use a component video connection that carries three separate video signals (Y, Pb, Pr). If you are stuck with using either an S-video connection or an ordinary composite video connection, only 480i is available.

What These Resolutions Mean

The numbers 480, 720, and 1080 give the number of scan lines or pixel rows in each video frame — the more the better.

The "i" or "p" gives the type of scanning. The "i" suffix is for "interlaced scanning," while "p" is for "progressive scanning." In interlaced scanning, each video frame is divided into two fields, with just the odd-numbered pixel rows (rows 1, 3, 5, 7 etc.) in the first field that is sent across the connecting cable, and then just the even-numbered rows (rows 2, 4, 6, 8 etc.) in the second field. In progressive scanning, all pixel rows are sent at once, in their normal order. Progressive scanning is preferable. Interlaced scanning can cause picture flicker.

Each resolution offers a maximum number of pixels in each row. For 480i and 480p, which are standard-definition formats, it's often 720 pixels per row, but it can be 704, 640, or lower. Only when the number of pixels per 480i/480p row is 640 are the pixels square — assuming, that is, that they're destined for a screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio. The other 480i/480p pixels-per-line counts involve pixels that are not square on a 4:3 screen. (480i and 480p expect a 4:3 screen; stretched to fit a 16:9 screen, the pixels are never square. There would have to be fully 853 pixels per line to make them square.)

720p, 1080i, and 1080p are high-definition formats. For 720p, the pixels-per-line figure is 1,280. For 1080i and 1080p, it's 1,920. In all HD cases, the pixels are square. All HD resolutions are intended for a screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio.

1080p video, accordingly, might be fully specified as "1920 x 1080p" video. 1920 x 1080p video is sometimes called "Full HD." A Full HD television yields the best possible high-definition picture. I am using the expanded designation "1920 x 1080p" here in this post to show what "1080p" actually implies, but on the PS3's setup and menu screens you'll just see "1080p."

What we are talking about here are "content pixels," not "screen pixels": the number of pixels the PS3 will put in the content it sends to the TV. Actual TV screens may have a different number of pixels per row than the content from the PS3 that is being displayed on them. Some 1080p HDTVs have fewer than 1,920 pixels per row. They are not "Full HD." If they receive 1920 x 1080p content from the PS3, they will sacrifice resolution in the horizontal direction.

Frame and Field Rates

In addition to the various video resolutions, there are several possible frame rates (or, for interlaced scanning, field rates). 480i video usually has a field rate of 60 fields per second (though the rate is typically adjusted to 59.94 fields per second for broadcast purposes). 1080i also typically has 60 fields per second. (Notice that 60 fields per second is equivalent to 30 frames per second, as long as it is understood that the frames are being scanned using interlaced scanning. Again, progressive scanning does not use fields.)

720p video typically has 60 frames, not fields, per second.

1080p video is not used for broadcast purposes; only 1080i and 720p are true HDTV broadcast standards. On Blu-ray discs, 1080p video can be recorded, often with a frame rate of 24 fps — the same as motion-picture film.

Actually, I have found that on the limited number of Blu-ray discs I have had a chance to play so far, all of them being movie titles, the main movie is always recorded in 1080p/24, meaning that it uses 1920 x 1080 video, scanned progressively, at 24 frames per second. Bonus materials such as making-of documentaries and deleted footage typically use a lower resolution and/or a different frame/field rate.

What Resolution Is Actually Used by the PS3?

The answer to this question depends in part on whether the PS3 is playing a Blu-ray disc (BD), playing a DVD, or generating video in real time from a video game. Game video is the simplest to discuss. BD/DVD video adds extra wrinkles.

For video being generated in real time by a PS3 game, the PS3 will try to match the resolution and frame/field rate of the video-as-generated with a resolution and rate which it believes the TV can actually use.

The first step in this matching process comes during the initial setup of the PS3 — see My New Sony PlayStation 3, Part II (Installation and Setup). This part of the initial setup can be redone at any time by navigating to Settings —> Display Settings —> Video Output Settings from the home menu of the PS3 (see this discussion in the online PS3 User Guide).

You begin the process by designating which type of video connection you are using: HDMI (my type), component, S-Video, or composite. If you choose S-Video or composite video, you are restricted to using 480i output, period. If you choose component video, you can allow any or all of the five output resolutions listed above; you have to manually choose which ones to allow. If you choose HDMI, you can allow any and all output format(s) except 480i, and you can automatically or manually choose which ones to allow.

If you are configuring an HDMI connection automatically, the PS3 in effect asks the TV which formats it can use. It will internally put checkmarks by those the TV can use. If you are configuring HDMI video manually instead (or if you are configuring a component-video connection), then you will put check marks by the video resolutions you want the PS3 to allow as output. Your best bet is to check all those which you know your TV can use.

How do the Checkmarks Work?

Take, for example, the auto racing game Grid. It generates 720p output. My TV accepts 720p input, so my initial PS3 setup put a checkmark by 720p. When I play Grid, the Info button on my TV's remote brings up an overlay on the screen showing "1280 x 720 @ 60Hz." That means that the PS3 is using 720p video output, with 1,280 pixels per line, at 60 frames per second.

What Happens When the Program Source Doesn't Match a Checkmarked Output Format?

If I manually disable 720p video output from the PS3, Grid video has to be downconverted to the next lower resolution that is checkmarked. This is 480p, so the Info overlay on my TV screen shows "720 x 480 @ 60Hz." The PS3 output is 480p (otherwise I would see "720 x 480i @ 60Hz"). It has 720 pixels per line, and its frame rate is 60 fps.

Because of option settings I'm using on the PS3 and the TV, the picture actually looks about the same. It is not squeezed into a 4:3 box, but remains at the original widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio.

For HDMI connections, the 480p resolution cannot have its checkmark removed; the PS3 won't allow it. Otherwise, if you unchecked 720p, there would be no lower resolution to downconvert to.

What About Blu-ray Discs and DVDs?

Here's where we get into some confusing wrinkles.

First, DVDs. They contain 720 x 480i video at 60 interlaced fields per second. If you don't turn on BD/DVD "upscaling" (I'll discuss that in a minute) the PS3 will, or so I assume, output that 480i video as-is over any video connection but HDMI.

HDMI doesn't permit 480i output, so the PS3 "deinterlaces" 480i for HDMI to turn it into 480p. My TV's Info overlay shows "720 x 480 @ 60Hz."

If you have either HDMI or a composite video connection, you can turn on "BD/DVD upscaling." You do this by navigating to Settings —> Video Settings —> BD/DVD Upscaler and setting it to Normal. (Or, if it's already on, you can eliminate upscaling by turning it Off. You can also experiment with the Double Scale and Full Screen settings.)

The Normal setting causes the PS3 to upscale the 720 x 480i/60 video on the DVD to your highest checkmarked resolution (in my case, progressively scanned 1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz).

As for Blu-ray discs (BDs), the PS3 will likewise upscale all BD content to your highest checkmarked resolution, if necessary — as long as BD/DVD Upscaler is set to Normal. The output will use a 60 Hz frame (or field) rate.

If BD/DVD Upscaler is set to Off, no upscaling from BDs will occur.

But there is a third consideration, and it overrides all the others. If you navigate to Settings —> Video Settings —> BD 1080p 24 Hz Output (HDMI) and turn it On, the PS3 will detect 1080p BD video that was recorded at 24 Hz and output it directly at a resolution of 1080p 24 Hz (i.e., it will not be converted to a frame rate of 60 Hz).

This is so only for an HDMI connection; it does not work for the other types of connection. You should do it only when you know your TV can accept 1080p 24 Hz input. (If you are not sure whether your TV can handle 24 Hz 1080p input, set this option to Automatic; the PS3 will use 24 Hz output only if it determines the TV can handle it.)

If BD 1080p 24 Hz Output (HDMI) is On, it takes effect even if BD/DVD Upscaler is set to Off, and even if you do not have 1080p checkmarked in your list of available resolutions! If your TV cannot actually use 1080p 24 Hz input over HDMI, you should set this option to Automatic or Off.

But you want to use 1920 x 1080 24 Hz input whenever you can. This is because 24 fps is the frame rate of film, and whenever a movie is transferred to BD, it will be recorded at 1080p 24 Hz. If the PS3 has to convert it to 60 Hz, video quality can suffer, since 60 is not a multiple of 24. You may see unpleasant artifacts or extra judder in the picture that would never show up with direct 1080p 24 Hz output.

Good Deal on Sony PlayStation 3 (Update)

2008-12-23T09:40:00.003-05:00

I talked about the $150 rebate you can get on a Sony PlayStation 3 in Good Deal on Sony PlayStation 3 and again in Getting My PlayStation 3 $150 Rebate. Now I'd like to try to clear up some of the confusion the rebate offer (and my coverage of it) has generated.

You qualify for the $150 rebate on either a PS3 80GB or a PS3 160GB if you:

apply for a new Sony PlayStation Card (which is a VISA card from Chase Bank) before 12/31/08
using the card, buy a PS3 from an authorized Sony retailer by 03/07/2009

Some of the confusion came from the fact that more than one entry point to the rebate offer exists. I have concentrated on two particular entry points in my posts; there may be others. One of these entry points (click here) is for the Sony Rewards website. I'll refer to that website as SR. The other (click here) is for the SonyStyle website. I'll refer to that one as SS. I'll talk more about the SS entry point later on.

The SR entry point is unique in that from it you can "apply now" for the PlayStation Card, and, if you get instant credit approval, return to the offer and click on "redeem now." That will take you to the SR site, where you can use your new card to buy a PS3 and get the $150 rebate right away. To use the new card (which you haven't yet received in the mail) you must print out the confirmation page you got upon receiving approval online, or at least write down the account number, expiration date, and CVV2 code of the card. With this information, you will be allowed by the SR site to buy a PS3 on the new card right away, and the $150 rebate is (supposedly) applied immediately to your purchase.

If you don't "redeem now," I gather you can "redeem later" by going back to the original SR entry point and belatedly clicking "redeem now." As long as you have the card account number, expiration date, and CVV2 code, you should be good to go.

I ran into a problem because I didn't "redeem now," nor did I retain the crucial info that would allow me to do so later. Days later, when the new card came in the mail, I went back to the SR site and bought my PS3 on that card. That by itself did not allow the $150 rebate to be applied immediately.

Instead, I had to wait about two weeks more for an e-mail to show up in my inbox which told me how to obtain the rebate.

To claim your $150 rebate:

1. Register your new PlayStation Card at www.sony.com/playstationcard/register
2. Complete the Rebate Form, under Your Account
-- Rebate Name must include ‘PS-PS3 $150 Rebate’

3. Submit Rebate Form online

4. Print out and mail the completed Rebate Form with copy of your PS3 sales receipt to the address as indicated within 60 days from date of purchase

You can learn more about these instructions and dealing with the actual Rebate Form in Getting My PlayStation 3 $150 Rebate. When I posted that entry, I was going under the assumption that the same instructions/form might be used by anyone taking advantage of the rebate. But, no. You have to — (a) buy the PS3 — (b) at the SR site — (c) using the new PlayStation Card — to go this route.

As for the other entry point, the SS site, it does not offer a "redeem now" option, just an "apply now" link. That offer's fine print says:

PlayStation Card is issued by Chase Bank USA, NA, and is subject to credit approval. To qualify for this offer, you must apply for your new PlayStation Card by 12/31/08. In some instances an application may require additional processing, in which case instant approval will be unavailable. To qualify for the $150 card credit, you MUST purchase a PLAYSTATION 3 system with your new PlayStation Card ("PS3 Purchase") at an authorized Sony retailer such as Sony Style store and SonyStyle.com. Complete instructions will be sent upon your approval for the PlayStation Card via email. To receive card credit, your account must be opened by 01/31/2009 and PS3 Purchase must be made by 03/07/2009. Card credit will be posted to your PlayStation Card Statement within 8-12 weeks after PS3 Purchase. This promotional offer is available to new PlayStation Card accounts only and only one $150 card credit may be earned per PlayStation Card account. Existing PlayStation Card account holders or accounts are not eligible.

So you have until 12/31/08 to apply. You don't have to get approval by that date. If you "require additional processing" before approval is granted, and then get approved after 12/31/08, you're fine. Just create an account at SonyStyle.com prior to 1/31/09 and use your new card to buy a PS3 on that account at that site by 3/7/09. Need more information? "Complete instructions will be sent upon your approval for the PlayStation Card via email."

Notice that the same logic applies if you fail to get instant credit approval when you use the SR entry point. If approval and the card itself don't arrive until 2009, you can still get the rebate. You can do this at the SR site, as my own experience attests, or you can do it at the SS site.

A few more words to the wise:

Unless you go the instant "redeem now" route at the SR site, your rebate will be delayed until after the credit card bill comes due for the PS3 purchase itself. If you pay off that bill in timely fashion, the $150 rebate will offset future purchases on the PlayStation card, not the PS3 purchase per se.
Using either the SR site or the SS site to buy the PS3 will incur shipping/handling charges above and beyond the nominal price of the PS3.
If you have to wait until after your PS3 arrives before the instructions for the rebate show up in your e-mail, be aware that the Rebate Form you eventually fill out will probably want you to enter the 12-digit Universal Product Code (UPC) printed by the scanner bar code shown on the PS3 box. If you throw out the box, write down the UPC code. I failed to do that, so I had to "borrow" the UPC code shown on this web page: 711719801306. I later visited my local Best Buy and saw UPC 711719801504 on PS3 80GB boxes there. I don't know why there are multiple UPC codes, and I don't know whether failure to use the "right" UPC code will bollix up the rebate.

My New Sony PlayStation 3, Part II (Installation and Setup)

2008-12-20T15:32:00.016-05:00

As I said in My New Sony PlayStation 3, Part I, the Sony PlayStation 3 is a games machine and a Blu-ray player. I got it mostly for the latter. And, as I mentioned in Good Deal on Sony PlayStation 3, through the end of December 2008 you can get a $150 rebate on a PS3 by getting a Sony PlayStation VISA card with which you then buy the PS3.

I did that, and though actually getting the rebate turned out to be a bit harder than I had hoped, it looks like it's finally on its way (see Getting My PlayStation 3 $150 Rebate). Meanwhile, I'm really enjoying the advantages of Blu-ray high-def video when played by the PS3 through an HDMI cable into My New Samsung LN52A650 TV.

Installing my new PS3 was not hard. It replaced an existing DVD player, so as a preliminary step I removed that player and (strictly for aesthetic reasons) replaced the 6-ft.-plus HDMI cables I was originally using for it and my other video components with longer (10-ft.) HDMI cables. The shorter cables I originally used posed a problem because they were too short to sag down behind some furniture and hide themselves. Also, I was using a now-obsolete DVI to HDMI cable for the DVD player, along with a separate left-right stereo audio cable. HDMI carries audio as well as video, so it does not need a separate audio cable.

Yes, an HDMI connection is really the way to go with the PS3, but of course there are other options the PS3 offers for those whose TV lacks HDMI. You can use the PS3's AV MULTI OUT connector and:

an optional component video/stereo audio MULTI OUT cable
an optional S-Video/stereo audio MULTI OUT cable
a (supplied) composite video/stereo audio MULTI OUT cable

Optionally, if you don't want to use an analog audio connection, you can hook an optical-digital audio cable between the PS3 and your TV or AV receiver, as long as the TV or receiver supports it.

You have to supply the cable(s) yourself, unless you're using the supplied AV MULTI OUT-to-composite video and stereo audio cable, which (as does S-Video) limits you to 480i video output resolution.

I don't have an AV receiver yet for the entertainment center I've built around the new Samsung HDTV in my living room, so I didn't need to include a receiver in my PS3 cabling scheme. If I did have an up-to-date, HDMI 1.3-capable AV receiver, I would have run one HDMI cable from the PS3 to the receiver to deliver the audio and video signal, and a second HDMI cable from the receiver to the TV to pass along just the video.

My PS3 is sitting in a horizontal position, à la a DVD player, but I could have chosen to stand it vertically on one of its sides. In the horizontal position it presents a minor problem, in that its top surface is humped, so you can't stack other equipment on it. Luckily, I already had a custom-made acrylic riser from JMK Displays that I could set the PS3 beneath, with a TiVo HD unit on top of the riser.

Making the physical connection was a snap. I just hooked my HDMI cable to the TV and to the PS3. That was it!

At this point, if I had wanted to connect my PS3 to the Internet using a wired Ethernet connection, I would have plugged the Ethernet cable into the back of the PS3. Actually, I am using a wireless network, so that wasn't necessary.

Next I connected the PS3's power cable from the back of the PS3 to an electrical outlet (actually, to one of those on-the-wall outlet extenders that do basically what a power strip would do). Then I toggled the master on/off switch on the back of the PS3 to its "on" position. That put the PS3 in standby mode, with a red LED lit on its front. To get it out of standby mode, I pressed the 1/0 power button on the right side of the front of the system. The red LED turned green, and the system was fully on. (Another way to turn the system on is to press the PS button in the center of the controller.)

It was time to perform the initial setup process of the PS3. For that, I would need to activate the controller that came with the system.

The PS3 comes with a handheld DUALSHOCK 3 wireless controller, an improvement on Sony's earlier SIXAXIS controller, that is ideal for game play, but it is not very easy to use as a remote control for playing Blu-ray videos. (No remote comes with the PS3; you'll have to buy that separately. Sony offers this Bluetooth-compatible remote for $25.)

The Bluetooth-capable controller is usually used wirelessly, but when you install the PS3, you'll at first have to use the included USB cable to connect the controller to the PS3's USB 2.0 port (one of two on the front of the console). That automatically "pairs" (registers) the controller with the PS3 as its controller #1 (there can be up to seven controllers in use at any one time, I believe) and begins charging it (it doesn't have replaceable batteries).

So, again, you need to connect and "pair" your supplied controller right away, as soon as you hook up the PS3. One reason you need to do that is so that you can use the controller's buttons to interact with the PS3 during its initial onscreen setup process. This setup process consists of a series of steps that (a) utilize the TV's screen and (b) require some sort of input from you. It is in this way that the PS3 asks you various questions about how you want your unit's setup to proceed.

To repeat: in order to interact with the onscreen setup options, you'll be using the controller, and it will be (temporarily) plugged into the PS3 console via the supplied USB cable. This turned out to be a bit awkward for me: short cable, bad seating position with respect to a too-close screen. Also, since I had only a passing familiarity with using game-console controllers, I had a hard time figuring out what buttons to use for what. I was able to determine that I could use either the left of the controller's two "control stick" knobs or the array of four buttons on the left side of the controller (for up, down, left, right) to "move around" on the screen and choose from various options displayed there.

The currently selected option is always highlighted on the screen. To confirm a highlighted selection, you use the X ("Enter") button in the group of four on the right side of the controller. To back out of a selection or a whole screen before confirming it, or to cancel a pending selection, you use the O ("Back"/"Cancel") button.

When the setup process begins, you will first be asked what language the PS3 should communicate with you in. I chose English.

Next, you will be asked about which type of video connector you are using for your PS3-to-TV connection, and which video output resolutions to use. I cover this topic in PlayStation 3 Video Resolutions. In my particular case, I specified an HDMI connection and told the PS3 to automatically choose which video output formats to support.

Automatic choosing of output formats is, I believe, possible only when you are using an HDMI connection, as I am, and it applies as well to the automatic choosing at setup time of the audio output format(s) the PS3 is going to use. In my case, it looks as if the PS3 and my TV mutually agreed on converting whatever the selected audio track on a Blu-ray disc is — say, DTS-HD Master Audio at up to 7.1 channels — into Linear PCM 2.0-channel sound (since the TV is limited to reproducing lowly stereo sound).

As I said before, if for some reason you don't want the automatically chosen video and/or audio format, you can elect at setup time to manually specify the format(s) you want. You may in fact (I don't know) have to do this if you aren't using an HDMI connection. Until and unless you specify a better format, though, the PS3 will default to a format that is guaranteed to be usable.

For video, for example, this means defaulting to a standard-def, 480i video signal. When the setup process begins, this is what you'll see on the TV screen. As soon as you tell the PS3 at setup time to switch to using an HD video output signal, you'll then see the result come up right away on the TV screen, which is nice. (Of course, you have the right to stick with the SD signal during setup, and then switch to HD later on, by going into the PS3's Video Options menu and making the change.)

Another thing that must be decided at setup time is what aspect ratio ("TV screen size") your TV has. If you have automatically or manually determined the TV will always be given high-def input — 720p, 1080i, or 1080p — the widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio will be automatically chosen. But if you are using either 480p or "Standard (NTSC)" video output from the PS3 — the latter means 480i, by the way — you are given a chance to choose between 16:9 and 4:3.

All the above sounds terribly complicated, but I found the actual setup process to be quick and smooth ... because I am using HDMI, I just told the PS3 to work everything out with the TV and don't bother me with the details!

Once the initial setup is done, you'll get your first taste of the PS3's "home menu" on the TV screen. This "home menu" amounts to the "main screen" of the PS3's "XrossMediaBar" (or "XMB") menu system. It displays several categories across the screen. You navigate to a category using the controller, and once you do the items for that category will be seen stacked vertically around the chosen category, forming a cross.

If you navigate to the Settings category you can access all sorts of settings for your PS3, including revising the video and audio output settings chosen during initial setup. To revise the audio output settings, navigate to Settings —> Sound Settings, then press X on the controller to bring up Audio Output Settings.

To revise the video output formats, navigate to Settings —> Display Settings. Selecting that by pressing X on the controller gives you access to a list of possible settings, including Video Output Settings. Selecting that option lets you re-specify connector type, re-choose the video output formats you want to use, etc.

To find out more about not only how to use the Settings category but also how to use the PS3 in general, you'll want to visit the online PS3 User's Guide. The Settings category is documented specifically here. To see an index of all the topics covered in the guide, click here.

You can get on the Internet and look at the online User's Guide right from the PS3, right on your TV screen!

But before you do that you need to (a) set up your network settings for either a wired (Ethernet) connection or a wireless connection, and then (b) use the network to download and install the latest update to the PS3 system software, assuming your PS3 is like mine was and does not come with the latest update.

I'm assuming you have a broadband (DSL or cable modem) connection to the Internet already in place and connected to your home network. Also, if you are using an Ethernet cable from the PS3 to (say) a router on your (wired) home network, I assume it was plugged in earlier in the installation process. For Ethernet networking, just navigate to Settings —> Network Settings —> Internet Connection Settings in the PS3 home menu, select "Easy," and press the Right button on the controller (or move the left control stick rightward). The PS3 will figure out all the proper settings to get on the Internet.

If you have a wireless home network, as I do, your DSL or cable modem connects via an Ethernet cable to a wireless access point or router (mine is an Apple AirPort Extreme base station). The PS3 will be set up to "talk to" that access point/router wirelessly. This time, after you navigate to Settings —> Network Settings —> Internet Connection Settings in the home menu and select "Easy," you will select "Wireless" on the next screen that comes up, then "Scan" on the next. That brings up a list of wireless networks that your PS3 can "see." You select the network you want to use. Then you configure the usual wireless network security settings: password, encryption key, etc.

Now you can get on the Internet. For ordinary browsing, navigate to Network —> Internet Browser in the home menu. To see the User's Guide, go to Network —> Online Instruction Manuals and proceed from there.

Before you do that, though, you'd better use your Internet connection to download and install the latest PS3 system software. Go to and select Settings —> System Update —> Update via Internet in the PS3's menu system. The latest software will immediately begin downloading. An onscreen progress bar will keep you informed as to the status of the operation. Once the software is downloaded, it will immediately be installed, after which your PS3 system will automatically restart with the new software in place.

Now that you have the latest software, you are all set to look at the online User's Guide, which applies to that level of the software. However, if for some reason you do not have the latest software, you can choose to access the (earlier) User's Guide version that applies to it.

There is still one more thing you'll probably want to do during the installation of your PS3: if you have bought the optional Bluetooth-compatible remote to make it easier to work with Blu-ray discs, you'll need to register this so-called "BD remote control" with the PS3.

Once you have put the supplied pair of AA batteries in the remote, you turn on the PS3 (if it's not already on), navigate to Settings —> Accessory Settings —> Register Bluetooth Device, and press the X button. Next, select the "Register BD Remote Control" option. (Remember, you are doing this using the controller; the remote does not yet function.) Then follow the onscreen instructions, which tell you to press the Start and Enter buttons on the remote simultaneously, until the screen changes. Once the screen changes, the remote is registered and its buttons start to function.

It took me three attempts to get this to work. I have no idea why.

Another thing you'll probably want to do at this point is create a "User" identity for yourself. See this page in the online User's Guide.

The process involves navigating to Users —> Create New User in the home menu, then entering a user name. Once you do that, then while that user name is selected onscreen, you can press the Options button (the one with the triangle on it) to bring up a menu on the right side of the screen. The only item in this menu, Information, can be selected (press X), then press X again to "edit" the user. Editing consists of scrolling up or down through a list of icons to select the one you want to be used to represent the user (you) onscreen. (If you have photos stored on the PS3, you can make one of them your icon.)

Oh, and one more thing. How do you turn the PS3 off? You can press the 1/0 power button on the front of the system for about two seconds, until you hear a beep. But that's clumsy when you're several feet away from the console with a controller (or remote) in your hand. In that case, first you back out of whatever it is you're doing, usually by using the O button and then confirming that you want to stop play or whatever. Once you are back at the home menu, you select Users —> Turn Off System and confirm that you want the system turned off.

That's pretty clumsy too. It gets easier once you realize that the Users category is all the way at the left end of the cross, and then Turn Off System is all the way up. That means you can navigate to it with your eyes closed: left control stick hard left, then hard up.

Still, it would be nice if Sony would make pressing the PS button on the controller/remote turn the system off. Actually, though the printed Quick Reference Guide and the online User's Guide fail to mention this, if you press the PS button on the controller or remote for two seconds, then no matter what the system is doing, the PS3 asks you via the TV screen whether you want to turn off the system, or turn off the remote. If you select the former, it asks for confirmation that you do indeed want to turn off the system. If you give that confirmation, the system turns off!

Yes, it's still pretty clumsy. The reason it has to be clumsy is that powering the system off too readily can sometimes be done inappropriately, causing data loss or corruption or outright damage to the system. If you have to wade through a number of power-off selection/confirmation steps, it's unlikely you'll do any damage.

You'll notice that I have yet to talk about actually using the PS3 to do anything like actually watch a Blu-ray disc or play a PS3 game. Those topics will be covered starting in Part III of this series.

My New Sony PlayStation 3, Part I

2008-12-20T15:30:00.000-05:00

The Sony PlayStation 3 is a games machine and a Blu-ray player. I got it mostly for the latter purpose. I mentioned in Good Deal on Sony PlayStation 3 that I've bought a PlayStation 3 in hopes that I would be getting it for its normal price of $399.99 minus a $150 credit for getting a Sony PlayStation VISA card. I have run into problems actually securing the credit, but I do have the PS3, and I love it!

The PS3's nominal $400 price tag is a bit high, just for a Blu-ray player — but if my $150 credit comes through, my total outlay will be just a reasonable $250, plus shipping. For that amount, the buyer (me) gets what amounts to pretty much a state-of-the-art Blu-ray machine ... and a game player, too!

For those who have been living under a rock recently, Blu-ray is the videodisc format that is heir-presumptive to the DVD. Where a standard-definition DVD looks pretty darn good on an HDTV, a Blu-ray disc, or BD, is high-definition and looks superb. To play BDs, you need a Blu-ray player. It will also play DVDs just like a DVD player does, so your DVDs will never be orphans.

BD-Videos (commercially recorded BDs that physically look like DVDs, but aren't) can record movies and other fare in 1920 x 1080p high-definition. Movies use a frame rate of 24 frames per second, just as they do on film. My New Samsung LN52A650 TV, a 52-inch flat panel LCD HDTV, accepts 1920 x 1080p/24 input from the PlayStation over an HDMI cable, as will many current HDTV models on the market today. That means its 1920 x 1080p display screen is being fed, pixel for pixel, with exactly what's on the disc.

In other words, each pixel in the TV's array of 1,080 rows of 1,920 pixels per row has a different pixel to display every 1/24 second. Each screen pixel is equivalent to a tiny picture detail. You can't get better spatial resolution than that! Moreover, from movies shot at 24 fps you get every frame as is without the compromises inherent in conforming the video signal to a "normal" television rate of 60 fps.

Today, virtually any currently sold model of Blu-ray player, when combined with just about any current model of 1080p HDTV, and connected to it by HDMI, can do the same thing. This stunning video capability, even if it is head and shoulders above high-def broadcast TV, is nothing unique to either my PS3 or my Samsung TV. (It is unique, however, to the Blu-ray disc.)

Where the PS3 really excels, though, is in its support for BD-Live.

BD-Live is also known as BD-Video Profile 2.0, and not all current Blu-ray players support it. Many earlier players still on the market today support only Profile 1.1 — a.k.a. "Bonus View" — which is not BD-Live — and some very early Blu-ray players supported only the "Grace Period" profile, Profile 1.0.

BD-Live, if also supported by the particular disc you are playing on the PS3 or some other BD-Live capable Blu-ray player, allows richer interactive content, linked to over the Internet — assuming you do as I did and point your PS3 to a wireless (or Ethernet-based, wired) network in your home.

That's right: if your Blu-ray player is like the PS3 and supports BD-Live Profile 2.0, and if the disc you are playing also supports it, you can in effect hop on the Internet from your Blu-ray player and do things like play additional bonus material like director's commentaries. There are various types of interactive content unlike anything on DVD. Among the types of special BD-Live content that I have found with the BD of Disney's WALL-E, the first BD-Video I looked at, are chat rooms and interactive games based on the movie.

In the future, all new Blu-ray players and all newly released BD titles are expected to offer BD-Live. You should not — repeat, should not — buy a player today that does not support BD-Live, a.k.a. Profile 2.0. Remember: if you fail to heed this advice, you may wind up with a player that is already obsolescent.

People who bought any of the early PS3 models that were sold before BD-Live appeared on the market are the exception to the obsolescence rule. The PS3 has always been firmware-upgradable, and firmware upgrades (the current level is 2.50) have given it, among numerous other crucial improvements, BD-Live capability.

Getting My PlayStation 3 $150 Rebate

2008-12-19T09:09:00.005-05:00

I wrote in Good Deal on Sony PlayStation 3 about my purchase of a Sony PlayStation 3 80GB Blu-ray player-cum-games machine. The general idea was that obtaining a new "PlayStation Card" VISA card from Sony brought with it the benefit of a $150 rebate on the purchase of a new PlayStation 3 80GB or 160GB before the end of 2008.

One online offer to this effect is available here, and I'd say it's the best place for you to head for if you want to buy a PS3, because in addition to showing an "apply now" link for the credit card, it also has an instant "redeem now" link. You use "redeem now" after filling out the online "apply now" application for the card (which comes from Chase Bank) and getting, hopefully, instant approval. Once that is done, you write down your new card's account number, expiration date, and CVV2 code — or you just print out a copy of your application confirmation. Then you return to the offer page and click the "redeem now" button to order your PS3 system from the Sony Rewards website right away and "save $150 instantly."

Notice that going this route locks you into doing business with Sony Rewards, and not with (say) SonyStyle.com online, or a local store such as Best Buy. Sony Rewards (or any online store) will charge you shipping ... but the local outlet will charge you sales tax. You can buy the PS3 from any authorized dealer, online or local, and take advantage of the $150 rebate ... if you obtain a PlayStation Card and use it to buy the PS3.

But therein lies a tale.

I completely missed the opportunity to "redeem now" from Sony Rewards for some reason — ozone in the know zone I suppose. Upon being accepted for the card, I figured (wrongly) that I had to wait until I got my new card in the mail to redeem the rebate offer. Later on that same day, or possibly the next, I discovered my error and tried to retrace my steps and activate the "redeem now" at that time ... with no success. I had failed to write down the card number, expiration date, and CVV2 code of my PlayStation Card, and I could not retrieve them. Hence I was unable to place an order.

Once I did have the card in hand about a week later, I activated it with a phone call and then went right to the Sony Rewards site to place my PS3 order, using the new card. That went fine, but it ended up charging the card with the full $399.99 MSRP, plus shipping. (OK, I got a tiny reduction because a few "reward points" were awarded to me for opening a Sony Rewards account at that time.) But there was no "save $150 instantly" involved.

Well, I thought, maybe instructions as to how to get the rebate will show up in my e-mail inbox, in the order confirmation from Sony Rewards? No such luck. Maybe wait a day or two for instructions to arrive? No. Maybe they will magically appear in my inbox after the order actually ships? Uh uh.

I then used the "Contact" form at the Sony Rewards site to ask for clarification and was told (after a two-day wait for a response) to call 1-866-556-SONY (7669), as the problem I had was not one that could be dealt with via e-mail (!).

Calling the toll-free number, I was told to wait a week and then expect written instructions to arive via e-mail ... so I waited, and when the rebate instructions failed to materialize, I called the toll-free number again. I was then told I would get a phone call from a Rewards Administrator within two days. That was two days ago, and still no phone call ... but never mind. The desired set of instructions finally appeared in my e-mail inbox this morning!

The instructions came from the Sony Rewards site, but they seem to be applicable to any qualifying PS3 purchase from any authorized Sony retailer, not just the Sony Rewards store. You can click here to see a similar set of instructions. I reproduce them here:

To claim your $150 rebate:

1. Register your new PlayStation Card at www.sony.com/playstationcard/register
2. Complete the Rebate Form, under Your Account
-- Rebate Name must include ‘PS-PS3 $150 Rebate’

3. Submit Rebate Form online

4. Print out and mail the completed Rebate Form with copy of your PS3 sales receipt to the address as indicated within 60 days from date of purchase

You'll have to establish an account at Sony Rewards to do this. You can buy the PS3 elsewhere, but to get a rebate through Sony Rewards, you'll need to open an account for which you then register your PlayStation Card. Then, when you are logged in to the Sony Rewards website, you navigate to "Your Account" and click on "Rebate Form." What you should see is a form to fill out online. (This form should give "C8D8-C8D2-PS-PS3 $150 Rebate -Nov08" as the "Rebate Name." Make sure it does.) On it you will see, already filled in, such data as your first and last name, your street address, and your e-mail address. You will then fill in manually:

your PS3 purchase date
the name of the retailer (mine was "Sony Rewards")
the city and state of the store location (mine was "Park Ridge, NJ")
the total purchase amount (mine was $399.99)
the credit card number (mine was already filled in with all XXXX's except the last four digits)
the model number (I put "PlayStation 3 80GB")
the product price (I put $399.99 again)
the UPC (see below)

The UPC???

It's the 12-digit Universal Product Code associated with the scanner bar code shown on the PS3 box.

Only problem was, in my case I threw out the box. I had no idea what the UPC was. So I went to this web page where the UPC for a Sony PlayStation3 80GB is shown as 711719801306. That's what I used to fill in the UPC field on the rebate form.

When I clicked "Continue," the completed form appeared in condensed form in an overlay over the original form on my screen in my web browser. I clicked "Submit and Print" on the overlay and the form was simultaneously submitted online and printed on my computer printer.

But I still wasn't done. I had to mail the printed version of the form (now called a "Mail-in Rebate Document," by the way) along with a printout of my online order confirmation (in lieu of a copy of the hardcopy sales receipt a Best Buy would provide), to:

Sony Rewards Redemption Center
1 Sony Drive MD-2F4
Park Ridge, NJ 07656

Now, I've done all that. I just have to wait "8-12 weeks" for the $150 rebate to be credited to my PlayStation Card account.

Notice the gotcha here. Unless you are smarter than I was and use the instant "redeem now" link at the very outset to "save $150 instantly," the rebate (once it is credited) sits in your PlayStation Card account until you use the card again to buy at least $150 worth of stuff. My hope was to use the new card for just this one transaction, since I like to use another VISA card I have for all my credit purchases. Now I'll have to break out the new PlayStation card at least one more time, in order to take advantage of the $150 rebate.

Good Deal on Sony PlayStation 3

2008-11-28T11:16:00.028-05:00

Q.: The Sony PlayStation 3 (left) is:

1. A video game console that also plays Blu-ray discs and DVDs
2. A Blu-ray/DVD player that also plays video games
3. Both of the above

A.: 3. Both of the above (Yes, it was a trick question!)

This CNet review says the PlayStation 3 is about the best Blu-ray player around. The new Panasonic DMP-BD35 gives it a close run for its money and, at its roughly $250 street price, may nominally be the better value, if you have little interest in games. The PS3 with 80 GB of storage usually costs $150 more, at $399.99 MSRP.

But wait! Sony is offering this deal on a new PlayStation VISA credit card. Sign up for the card between now and the end of 2008 and you can use it to buy an 80 GB PS3 for $399, after which you will receive a $150 credit on the card! The net cost of the PS3/80: "as low as $249.99."

Update: OK, I pulled the trigger and applied for the PlayStation VISA card today. Got instant approval ... but I missed a trick at that point and failed to note my new card's account number and the CVV2 number. Had I done that, I could have immediately gone to this page at the Sony Rewards website and bought my PS3 without waiting to actually receive the VISA card in the mail. The VISA account number and magic CVV2 code that lets you use the card online were apparently given on the confirmation page that came up after I submitted my application and it was approved, according to this blog entry about the PS3 offer.

However, I didn't catch on to that fact. I closed the browser tab instead. Now I can't retrieve the vital information, no matter how creative I get with my browser's history window.

That means I'll just have to wait until I get the card in the mail.

If you want to do it the right way and not my way, you can click here to see a version of the offer that lets you (a) apply for the card first, then (b) redeem the offer immediately, as soon as approval has been granted. Just remember to note your VISA account and CVV2 numbers.

BTW, if you don't redeem the offer right away, and/or for some reason you don't want to buy your PS3 from the Sony Rewards site, you supposedly can use your new card to buy it at any authorized PlayStation dealer, and the $150 credit will just show up on your PlayStation VISA billing statement. OK, fine, but I'm not exactly sure how, if you buy it at (say) Amazon.com, the credit card people know you bought specifically a PS3 and should get the $150 credit. I plan to use the Sony Rewards site and sidestep any doubt in the matter, so I may never know.

Update #2: I just discovered that the PS3 doesn't come with a true remote to control Blu-ray play! You can use the game controller, but it's awkward.

This is from the CNet review:

Our only real complaint with the PS3's movie playback is the remote control issue. Accessing Blu-ray and DVD menus with the PS3 controller is functional, yet a bit awkward. Unfortunately, you won't be able to program a standard universal remote to control your PS3 as it lacks an infrared port. Thus, it needs to receive commands via Bluetooth. Not coincidentally, Sony offers a Bluetooth compatible remote for $25. Other options have surfaced to combat this issue, such as the Nyko Blu-Wave Infrared Remote and the USBIRX3 from Schmartz.com.

I've just ordered the Sony remote from Amazon for $20. (BTW, the Bluetooth approach of the PS3 beats the usual Blu-ray player's infrared-type remote in that Bluetooth does not need to a clear line of sight to the PS3.)

Update #3: I received the Sony PlayStation VISA card in the mail today, activated it, and ordered my PlayStation 3 80GB at the Sony Rewards website. This involved becoming a member of the website, which allows you to buy Sony stuff for reward points. Each reward point is worth a cent, so my $399.99 PS3 cost 39,999 points, minus the 50 points I got for joining, which came to 39,949 points. The shipping on the PS3 cost 3401 points, or $34.01, so the total for the transaction was 43,350 points. I had to buy the points, and so $433.50 was charged to my PlayStation VISA. I expect to get a $150 credit on the VISA account for the PS3 promotional discount. My final bill should be $283.50.

Update #4: Above I mentioned that I had failed to exercise the "redeem now" option on the Sony PlayStation card offer ... because the offer I was looking at was similar to this one, and did not include a "redeem now" option. I now find that purchasing the PlayStation 3 on my new card at the Sony Rewards website is not enough, all by itself, to trigger the $150 credit/rebate automatically. Today I have called 1-877-865-SONY (7669), the Sony Rewards contact number, and am now waiting for a callback "within two business days" from someone who can help me.

It boggles the mind, trying to explain why my use of my brand new Sony PlayStation card to purchase a PlayStation 3 at the Sony Rewards website did not automatically result in a $150 credit or rebate on the purchase, but that's what happened!

Apparently, the "Complete instructions [for the $150 card credit] will be sent upon your approval for the PlayStation Card via email" fine print on some of these offers is not true. I have received the card itself, but no email instructions as to how to obtain the $150 credit.

Update #5: I have finally received the instructions for how to get the $150 rebate. See Getting My PlayStation 3 $150 Rebate for details.

TiVo MRV — Use a Second Wrapper?

2008-11-23T10:10:00.008-05:00

Recently, in TiVo Multi-Room Viewing (Yet Again) and earlier TiVo Multi-Room Viewing entries to this blog I indicated my disappointment that my second TiVo DVR can't share recordings with my first TiVo if the recordings are copy-protected. I suggested that digital watermarking might be used on TiVo video recordings to enable tracking of the account from which a recorded program has been copied from one TiVo to another using Multi-Room Viewing (MRV).

I now have come to believe watermarking isn't the answer. I'll go into what the answer to the problem of using MRV on copy-protected material later in this entry. First, more about why watermarking isn't such a good idea.

In the following sample of a graphic image that has been given a watermark ...

... the identity of the image's creator has indelibly become part of the visible image. I suggested that something like this could be done with the video images associated with a TiVo recording when the recording is copied (a) to another TiVo using MRV, or (b) to a computer using TiVoToGo (TTG). The watermark could represent the 10-digit Media Access Key (MAK) of the recording TiVo(s) on a local home network, or else it could contain the user name on the TiVo account associated with the MAK.

After posting my last entry on the subject, I began to worry about whether a watermarking scheme to protect MRV is even feasible, so I started rummaging about in Google to see if watermarking has ever been seriously proposed for TiVo recordings.

It seems that the answer is only a highly qualified yes. In 2005, TiVo Inc. issued this press release indicating it would be using watermarking for TiVoToGo:

To discourage abuse or unlawful use of this feature, TiVo intends to employ "watermark" technologies on programs transferred to a portable device using the TiVoToGo feature that would enable tracking of the account from which a transferred program originated.

In other words, the "low-cost software [that users need to purchase] to facilitate the [TiVoToGo] transfer of content from the PC to ... portable devices" such as an iPod supposedly will watermark the transferred and reformatted content. For example on a Mac, Roxio's Toast Titanium software transfers a TiVo recording from the TiVo to the Mac, optionally decrypts it — since it is received in encrypted form — plays it on the Mac, makes a standard DVD of it, and/or converts it to a format compatible with an iPod.

I have made iPod-compatible copies of TiVo recordings in this way. I can't confirm that they're actually watermarked. They're certainly not visibly watermarked ... but watermarking can also be done invisibly.

Even if watermarking of TiVoToGo conversions is being done invisibly, it seemingly is not really what I'm looking for. The problem I've been fretting about with watermarking MRV transfers, as opposed to TTG conversions, is that in the latter the MPEG-2 video in the TiVo recording has to be decoded and then re-encoded in MPEG-4/h.264 format for (say) an iPod. The watermarking can be done rather easily between the decoding step and the re-encoding step.

But with MRV there is no decode/re-encode process. (Nor is there in TTG, prior to the actual format conversion which is the optional final step.) Instead, the intact MPEG-2 program stream as recorded on the TiVo, complete with the "wrapper" that the recording TiVo has added to the stream in order to encrypt it and keep it from being used in the absence of a TiVo-authorized decryption algorithm, is copied to the receiving TiVo as is. There is no convenient opportunity to watermark the video, visibly or invisibly.

So, if watermarking is out, what is in?

Watermarking is out, I repeat, due to the need to burrow down to an inner level of the information in the MPEG-2 program stream — the digitally encoded video information itself — decode it, add a watermark to it, and re-encode it. Such a process is difficult and time-consuming, and decoding and re-encoding lossy MPEG-2 video compression sacrifices quality.

If the burrowing-watermarking approach is a non-starter, then perhaps the right way to approach the MRV problem would be to add something to the very outer level of the MPEG stream.

Keep in mind that a TiVo already encases each MPEG-2 program stream that it records in a "wrapper" which in effect encrypts the stream. Unless the playback software or hardware knows the Media Access Key (MAK) of the recording TiVo and knows precisely how that MAK can be used to decrypt the stream, thereby removing the wrapper, playback is impossible.

Still, for better or for worse, that particular TiVo encryption/decryption algorithm has been hacked. Software known as tivodecode is available which can decrypt a .TiVo file that TiVoToGo has transferred to a computer from a TiVo DVR. This software is independent of the official software used with TiVoToGo, such that an average computer user can learn to decode any .TiVo file he has by providing the recording MAK as a parameter to tivodecode. Once the .TiVo file is decrypted, it can be used in any number of ways — including reformatting it to MPEG-4/h.264 for an iPod, with no watermarking whatever!

That means that authorized MRV copying of copy-protected programs needs an extra, better, layer of protection.

I envision it working something like this: when TiVo B wants to receive an MRV copy of a copy-protected program that has been recorded on TiVo A, B uses a secure network connection to send A an encryption key. This key is one which B has made up at random; it is not the MAK which is shared by the two TiVos.

The ad hoc encryption key would be generated by B, the requesting TiVo, at the time the MRV request is initiated. In fact, it could be (based on) a number representing the precise time and date, down to the millisecond or nanosecond, that the MRV request occurs.

The ad hoc encryption key would be transmitted by the receiving TiVo B to the sending TiVo A using something like a "secure socket layer," a type of safeguard against digital eavesdropping that is familiar to all those sending credit card numbers across the Internet.

Once it received the ad hoc encryption key from TiVo B, TiVo A would use it to add a second "wrapper" around the requested program stream, in addition to the wrapper already being used that depends on the MAK. This second wrapper would represent an additional layer of encryption. Only TiVo B, the receiving TiVo which has requested the MRV copy and which has provided the ad hoc key, could remove the second wrapper and play the copy in the customary way.

This strategy of using a second wrapper would apply only to Multi-Room Viewing, not to TiVoToGo. TTG would still not be able to transfer copy-protected programs. Only MRV would be able to do that.

The general idea here would be that the only real threat to digital rights management posed by TiVo MRV has to do with eavesdropping. If two TiVos, using nothing but approved methods, send copies of copy-protected programs between themselves on a home network in a way that is completely secure from eavesdropping, there is presumably no possibility of illicit activity.

An assumption here is accordingly that the elaborate new authentication protocol that, I am suggesting, ought to be used for MRV would make the process unhackable — that is, the MRV "handshake" between two authorized TiVos (including, but not limited to, the secure transmission of the ad hoc key) could never be faked by a computer hacker programming his computer to pretend to be "TiVo B," the requesting TiVo. Hence, the only way the hacker could get access to the copy-protected MPEG stream being transmitted on the network would be by "listening in" to its MRV transmission, while it is in progress. But that would only get him an encrypted program stream that he lacks the ad hoc key to decrypt.

TiVo Multi-Room Viewing (Yet Again)

2008-11-17T14:35:00.016-05:00

Recently, in TiVo Multi-Room Viewing (Again), I indicated my disappointment that my new (second) TiVo DVR can't share recordings with my first TiVo if the recordings are copy-protected.

I have a home wireless network. Both of my TiVos are nodes on it (in addition to my two Mac computers, a cable modem, and assorted Apple TV and AirPort networking devices). After a TiVo makes a recording, in theory that recording can be copied via the network to the other TiVo, in what the folks at TiVo Inc. call "multi-room viewing" or MRV. The only problem is, an awful lot of the programs are copy-protected: their digital bitstreams contain a flag bit that says, "This program can be copied once, i.e., only for a single generation. The copy cannot then itself be copied."

Owing to how TiVo Inc. has chosen to comply with an agreement it has entered into with CableLabs, a consortium representing the cable TV industry and, indirectly, the providers of copyright-protected programming to cable channels, that flag bit is in fact honored by not letting a copy-protected program participate in MRV.

Note that no programs on channels that are broadcast locally over the air and then carried on cable are copy-protected in this way, only many (but not all) programs on cable-only channels.

If a copy-protected program on the first TiVo could be viewed on a second TiVo, then the way that would happen is this: it would be copied to the second TiVo. Thenceforth, it could be watched on the second TiVo ... or the original could still be watched on the first TiVo.

But, no. TiVo Inc. chooses instead to not allow MRV copying of "copy once" originals. As far as I can tell, the main reason is the fear on the part of the cable industry and program copyright holders that the original bitstream could be intercepted and have its copy protection stripped while a legitimate copy is being made across the home computer network.

In theory, at least, TiVo Inc. could go to CableLabs and ask for special approval of a (presently unspecified) scrambling or encryption method that, if used by TiVo DVRs for MRV, would nullify the piracy threat. However, the granting of said approval is not something that has happened ... yet.

The present way of doing MRV ties the original version of a copy-protected program to a specific device: the actual TiVo DVR that made the recording. A non-copy protected recording is, on the other hand, tied to a specific home network, not a specific device on that network. I believe any "fix" for the present inability to share copy-protected programs among multiple TiVos on a single home network would need to make such programs network-specific rather than device-specific.

I believe it was the original intent of TiVo Inc. to do exactly this, but the CableLabs agreement got in the way.

TiVo Inc. apparently intended to base MRV authorization on the TiVo's Media Access Key (MAK). The MAK is a unique 10-digit number that identifies every TiVo. It can be brought up on a TiVo's associated TV screen by means of the Messages and Settings menu hierarchy of the TiVo. Once you know what your TiVo's MAK is, you can (for instance) enter it into TiVo Desktop/TiVo Transfer software on your computer to enable TiVoToGo.

TiVoToGo is the ability to copy (again, non-copy protected) recordings from a TiVo to a computer. Once the copies are on the computer, they can be viewed and/or decrypted, then converted to other video formats such as for use on an iPod.

The decryption of a computer file with a .TiVo extension, once it has been copied from a TiVo DVR to the computer via TiVoToGo, requires that you enter the MAK of the originating TiVo into the computer software doing the decrypting. (That is, the MAK needs to be specified both to copy the recording and to decrypt it. The latter may be done by the same software as the former. If it is not, the MAK has to be specified to both.)

Details of the TiVo encryption-decryption system are hard to come by. Apparently, the TiVo DVR takes the "MPEG-2 program stream" which contains the TV show's video and audio information, as recorded in digital form, and it puts some kind of digital "wrapper" around it. For the original video and audio to be played, the wrapper must first be removed. This is something that cannot be done properly unless the software knows the MAK used by the originating TiVo DVR at the time the wrapper was created — at the time the show was recorded by that DVR, that is.

When a recording is copied from its original TiVo to a computer or to a second TiVo, the wrapper comes along with it. The resulting copy of the original recording cannot be played unless it can be unwrapped first — which can't happen unless the computer or second TiVo knows the MAK.

As I found out when I added a second TiVo to my home network, all TiVos on the same home network share the same MAK! (A TiVo on a different home network, though, has a different MAK.) Clearly, if the MAK is the basis for unobstructed MRV'ing of material on a local home network, all TiVos on the same home net should be able to participate in unobstructed MRV sharing of copy-protected material, in particular. TiVos not on the same network, since they do not share the same MAK, couldn't share the recordings. Neither could computer software applications that have not been supplied with the original MAK.

I suggest as a possible solution to the current MRV impasse that the MAK might be used as a digital "watermark" which the recording TiVo (or any other compliant DVR) visibly embeds in the video of a recording that is being shared via MRV.

Below is a sample of a watermarked image:

In the simplest implementation, "watermarking" would indelibly stamp the copied video recording with the identity (MAK) of its source DVR, which, as I have said, is actually the MAK of the home network. Any DVR with the same MAK (because it is on the same network) could compensate for the watermark and effectively "erase" it from the video as it is being legitimately played back. Watermark "erasure" would be done for legitimate playback only. The watermark would remain a part of the original recording and all copies made of it. Moreover, if a third-generation copy were made from a legitimate second-generation copy, it too would bear the watermark. No matter how many generations of copies were made, every generation's copies would duly inherit the watermark.

In a more elaborate implementation of the watermark strategy, instead of using the actual MAK as the watermark, the watermark could be an encrypted version of the MAK that could be matched for purposes of "erasure" during playback only by using that same encryption key (or a closely related one) to manipulate the supposedly identical MAK which is known to the playback device or application. More on that possibility later.

Or, instead of using the (encrypted or not) MAK as the watermark, the recording TiVo could use the user name on the account to which the TiVo belongs. Because every TiVo on the home network has access, via the network, to the TiVo Inc. database, it could (based on the MAK) fetch the same user name when doing MRV playback of a copy-protected recording. The retrieved user name, instead of the MAK itself, could be used as the basis of "erasing" the watermark for playback.

In any implementation of MRV watermarking, the MAK would be crucial in three ways. First, the MAK would need to be specified by the receiving TiVo to the recording TiVo in order for the latter to gain access to the recording TiVo's Now Playing list. Second, the MAK would be required for the receiving TiVo to be able to "unwrap" the copied recording. Third, the MAK would be required for the receiving TiVo to know how to "erase" the video watermark at playback time.

Similarly, if the destination device were a computer and not another TiVo, the same three mandatory uses of the MAK would apply. All legitimate uses of a watermarked TiVo recording would be MAK-dependent in three interlocking ways.

If a watermarked video recording were intercepted and diverted in an act of piracy, all protocol-compliant computer software, or any protocol-compliant home-entertainment hardware such as a TiVo or another DVR, could simply refuse to play it if that software or hardware were not privy to the same MAK. Alternatively, protocol-compliant software or hardware could go ahead and play it in the assurance that the watermark would show up on screen and effectively ruin the playback.

Non-compliant software/hardware might also play it ... but the watermark would be constructed such that only protocol-compliant software/hardware, on the same network with the recording DVR and therefore privy to the same MAK, could successfully "erase" it during playback. Non-compliant software or hardware accordingly would be able to play the video only in a "ruined," visibly degraded way, owing to the presence of the uncompensated visible watermark.

In the scheme I propose, the watermark, which would show up on a TV or computer screen that was trying to play an unauthorized copy of an original recording, would be in some way based on the MAK of the recording DVR. The MAK uniquely identifies the TiVo account of the owner of the recording TiVo, whose responsibility it is to see that his personal recordings don't show up in someone else's hands. As a legitimate TiVo user wanting to avoid the consequences of having "my" recordings show up in "your" (illicit) hands — I might face de-authorization of my TiVo account, or worse — it would accordingly behoove me to make sure my home network was secure against piracy.

In a worst-case scenario, a video pirate might supply a customer with (a) a watermarked video recording derived from someone's TiVo, along with (b) playback software or hardware that is capable of "erasing" the watermark during playback, but only if given (c) the MAK used to watermark the recording.

That scenario could be averted by encrypting the watermark, as suggested earlier. That is, instead of having the watermark be the MAK itself, it could be an encrypted version of the MAK that would be matched for purposes of "erasure" during playback only by using that same secret key (or a closely related one) to manipulate the original MAK and "erase" the watermark. Our pirate (or his customer) would thus have to know the actual MAK of the recording TiVo, not just the encrypted version thereof which shows up as the watermark. He would also have to know the key used to encrypt the MAK for purposes of creating and "erasing" the watermark.

Such an encrypting key might at some point be discovered by the piracy community and compromised. Because TiVos are regularly updated from TiVo Central by means of an Internet connection or phone line, the encrypting key in question could be changed any time it was compromised. If that happened, MRV copies made with the old key would no longer work.

That is, unfortunately, unavoidable. Occasionally, blameless users would be irked to find a legitimate copy they made only yesterday no longer works today. But that's far better than the current situation, in which legitimate users can never make MRV copies of copy-protected TiVo recordings.

Note also that if the MAK-based watermark were encrypted, casual users who stumble across a pirated video online would be unable to learn the MAK of the source TiVo — which is a good thing. Yet TiVo Inc. or any other authorized watchdog, being privy to the original encryption key, would be easily able to identify exactly whose TiVo the pirated copy originated from.

I realize that the ideas I'm broaching herein are sketchy and provisional. They need to be vetted to make sure they are reasonably watertight. The various interlocking concerns who are involved in this issue do have a right to protect their programming against piracy. No one who says otherwise is going to win that argument.

Still, the key word in that preceding paragraph is "reasonably." It is generally recognized that dedicated pirates will find a way around any copy-protection system, given enough time. The aim is to make it very, very hard for them to do so, since making it absolutely impossible is impossible.

That said, any sketchy proposal such as this one needs fleshing out and thorough vetting by all concerned who would be betting their "family jewels" on the success of the methodology. Such fleshing out and vetting ought to be done in the context of developing a full industry-standard protocol for MRV and "to go" usage of copy-protected recordings made by home DVRs and potentially used by other DVRs/hardware devices/computer applications.

It is the present absence of such a multi-industry protocol and accord which is really to blame for my not being able to MRV my copy-protected recordings of TNT's "The Closer."

TiVo Multi-Room Viewing (Again)

2008-11-11T13:34:00.012-05:00

Recently I got a TiVo HD digital video recorder:

It joins the TiVo Series 3 I bought two years ago:

You can read about my experiences with the TiVo Series 3 in earlier installments in my TiVo series of posts. In particular, this post gives more details about my main topic herein: TiVo multi-room viewing.

My new TiVo HD hooks to my new living room TV — see My New Samsung LN52A650 TV. The old one hooks to my two-year-old Sony KDL-40XBR2 upstairs in the bedroom. The new TiVo, like the old one, digitally records cable TV programs, including digital channels, analog channels, high-def channels, and premium channels.

One of the nice things I can do with either TiVo is take advantage of TiVoToGo capabilities (see my TiVoToGo series). Programs that have been recorded on a TiVo (if they are not copy protected) can then be transferred via a wired or wireless home network to a computer, where they can be stored or converted into videos playable in iTunes or on an iPod.

Another nice thing I can do, now that I have two TiVos, is "multi-room viewing." MRV (click here for an official description; click here for a FAQ) lets you transfer shows between two or more TiVo DVRs.

Say you have recorded an episode of "House" on your bedroom TiVo but want to watch it on the TiVo in your living room. You go to the Now Playing list on the living-room TiVo — that's the list of programs that have been recorded locally on that TiVo — and scroll down until you reach an entry for, say, "Bedroom TiVo." Selecting the entry brings up the Now Playing list of the remote TiVo in the bedroom!

From that list you select whichever program you want to watch in the living room and then select "Transfer this recording," and the show begins streaming from the bedroom TiVo to the one in the living room. (This assumes, by the way, that you have both TiVos on the same wired or wireless home network.) After you initiate the transfer, you can optionally begin watching the transferred copy as it is being made.

After the transfer has been completed, you will have two copies of the program, one on the bedroom TiVo and one on the living room TiVo. The new copy is for all practical purposes identical to the original, and you can watch it as often as you like, set it up either never to be deleted or to be eligible for deletion after so many days, and do whatever else you are accustomed to doing with "live" TiVo recordings. The only obvious difference is that the new copy does not show the channel, time, etc. of the original recording — though the program information you can pull up by pressing the Info button on the remote is the same.

That being said, there are (as always) some gotchas.

(1) One gotcha is that watching a show in "real time," as it is being transferred, TiVo to TiVo, can be an iffy proposition. If your home network can't keep up speed-wise, then the real-time viewing process can bog down. I have a wireless 802.11g network that I find can keep up nicely with a transfer of a standard-def TV program, but with high-def material it bogs down. HD material uses more bits per second and requires higher bandwidth than my network can manage in real time. As a result, when I am watching an HD transfer in real time, the receiving TiVo frequently goes into pause mode and requires me to hit the play button on the remote to continue. The transfer, meanwhile, continues normally, and after a while, even if I never restart the viewing process, it finishes — at which time all the viewing glitches go away.

(2) Another gotcha is that you may not want to create a permanent second copy. There are two variants. One, you may want just to watch the program stream from the bedroom TiVo on the living room TV, without having the recording copied permanently (until it's deleted, that is) on the LR TiVo. Or two, you may want the permanent copy to stay on the LR TiVo, while that on the bedroom TiVo goes away, automatically and immediately, once the transfer is done.

TiVo multi-room viewing supports neither option.

TiVo MRV does not have a "stream without copying, for viewing only" mode. Possibly this is because many home networks are too slow to make this a viable option.

Nor does TiVo MRV have a "move" mode that allows automatic and immediate deletion of the original recording, once the transfer has been done. And this leads into the next gotcha ...

(3) Copy-protected shows that have been recorded on, say, a bedroom TiVo cannot be transferred in any way to another TiVo. They can't be copied, they can't be streamed, and they can't be moved.

Cable companies use a set of flag bits in a byte called the Copy Control Information, or CCI, to invoke copy protection. This byte is present in all digital broadcasts and cablecasts. Depending on how it is set, it can limit the amount of copying that can be done. You can visit this thread in the TiVo Community Forum to find out more about how CCI, copy protection, and "digital rights management" (DRM) affect TiVo usage. The official TiVo Inc. policy regarding copy protection can be read here.

Basically, if the CCI code represented as hexadecimal 0x02 is set by the cable company, it means "copy once" (or "copy one generation") is technically permissible — as opposed to CCI 0x03, "copy never." "Copy once" should accordingly permit MRV transfers. However, the agreement TiVo Inc. has signed with the cable industry won't let digital recorders transfer CCI 0x02 programs between themselves unless CableLabs, a consortium which represents the cable industry, approves the way the recordings are encrypted while they are being transferred. In the absence of such approval, a company like TiVo Inc. is expected to fall back on not letting such transfers take place at all.

And that's exactly what TiVo Inc. does.

Technically, this restriction applies only to TiVos that have CableCARDs — credit-card sized objects that when inserted in a TiVo Series 3 or TiVo HD allow the TiVo to receive scrambled digital channels. Consequently, shows that are received on analog channels or "clear" (unencrypted) digital channels can always be transferred from one TiVo to another.

CableLabs' "DFAST Technology License Agreement for Unidirectional Digital Cable Products," which sets forth in legalese the copy-protection constraints applying to CableCARD-enabled TiVos, can be accessed by clicking the hotlink above.

So, what programs are copy protected, and what programs are not? First of all, I have found that anything that I receive on premium channels like HBO is protected. Likewise, episodes of many series, such as "The Closer" on TNT (or TNT-HD), that are shown on cable-only digital channels are protected.

On the other hand, anything that is aired on a local digital or high-def TV channel and is retransmitted over cable is, by law, required not to be copy protected. So, for instance, "House" on Fox is always copyable (even in HD!).

Unfortunately, the number of programs that are legally copy protected on cable may be growing. I have found that some series on some cable networks that used to be copyable are no longer copyable. (Of course, the episodes recorded before copy protection went into place are still copyable.)

The use of copy protection may vary from one cable provider (mine is Comcast) to another. It is generally believed by those concerned with the issue — but I can't confirm this — that cable companies have been signing agreements with program providers that require the cable companies to use copy protection on certain shows or certain channels.

Now for some editorializing on my part: I believe TiVo multi-room viewing should be allowed for "copy once" programs.

Specifically, I don't think copying, streaming, or moving copy-protected material from one DVR to another constitutes a basic violation of copyright law. Rather, it qualifies as "fair use" of copyright-protected digital material.

However, a cable-TV program provider (such as a Hollywood studio) who holds a copyright has a legitimate worry: that a show such as "The Closer" could be pirated en route from a "source TiVo," during an MRV transfer, to a receiving device. The digitally transmitted stream could be forced to make a "detour" into someone's personal computer. For example, the PC could conceivably masquerade as a TiVo and receive the digitally transmitted stream from the source TiVo. The received program stream's CCI byte could then be set to 0x00. Then the resulting copy could be distributed over the Internet.

There are at least two ways to guard against such a scenario. One is to insist that a robust scrambling/encryption method be used during a TiVo-to-TiVo transfer. The other is to make sure that the "handshake" between any two TiVos prior to initiating a transfer is sacrosanct and can't be mimicked by another device.

In the present state of affairs, apparently CableLabs is emphasizing the robustness of the encryption method and paying less attention to the sanctity of the handshake. Because TiVo Inc. has not obtained approval of the encryption method used for all files on its TiVo boxes as satisfying the CableLabs requirement that would allow at least a "move" operation for copy-protected shows, MRV is currently being crippled with respect to the fair-use rights of TiVo owners.

If the cable industry would allow "copy once" programs to be moved (or copied, or at least streamed) from one DVR to another solely on the basis that the sacrosanct handshake between the two DVRs is valid, and would waive the requirement that in such a scenario the encryption method used for the transfer must be specifically CableLabs-approved, some progress could be made.

In short, there is room for compromise.

Such a compromise could, and probably should, include establishing an MRV encryption/scrambling method that would be acceptable to the cable industry and to DVR makers. Presumably, such a method would have to be more robust than the simple encryption TiVo uses today for recordings on a TiVo box. Yet it would not necessarily have to be as robust as HDCP, the elaborate method used to encrypt video for transmission over an HDMI cable. The reason: if HDCP were an acceptable option from the point of view of DVR makers, then, since it is already included as part of the CableLabs agreement, TiVos and other DVRs could use it for MRV right now! That they aren't doing so implies that HDCP is too elaborate (and probably too dependent on costly hardware add-ons such as computer chips) to be used in this way.

If DVR makers could formally agree on handshake and encryption requirements, multi-room viewing of "copy once" material could become a reality. What's more, the agreement might enable TiVos to "talk to" other DVRs such as those built into some cable boxes, and to exchange programs with them.

So I say to the respective industries: c'mon guys ... put your heads together and come up with a mutually satisfactory way to let me watch "The Closer," as recorded on my bedroom TiVo, on my living room TV.

LCD Flat Panels: Uneven Backlighting

2008-11-10T15:23:00.007-05:00

I have two 1080p flat-panel LCD HDTVs, a new Samsung LN52A650 (52") and a two-year-old Sony Sony KDL-40XBR2 (40"). They both exhibit a problem with uneven backlighting, the Samsung to a very minor degree, the Sony to a more noticeable (but still hard to spot) extent. Research on the web indicates that this and related problems — "cloudy" backlighting, a "flashlight" effect, "leaky" backlighting, "mura" (a Japanese word) — are not uncommon on large 1080p LCD flat-panel HDTVs.

Click here to see an official thread about the clouding/flashlighting problem with the Samsung LNxxA650 model HDTVs. Click here for a similar thread about Sony LCDs.

Here are some pictures showing what the problem can look like when an artificially solid black/dark image (or a "regular" image with a very dark background) is on the screen:

To test your TV: some TVs will give you a solid black screen if tuned to an unused input; or, you can use an appropriate image from a DVD, such as the end credits from many movies.

The number of individual TVs about which forum posters have complained concerning this type of problem is so large, it has to be said that the uneven backlighting problem is not confined to just a few unfortunate set owners. This sort of problem is showing up on a great many high-priced LCD flat panels from Sony and Samsung, and perhaps from other manufacturers as well. For Sony and Samsung, there seem to be similar problems with successive generations of LCD flat-panel HDTVs; for instance, the current Sony KDL-nnXBR4 and XBR5 models seem to be affected, and not just the older XBR2 and XBR3 models. Multiple Samsung models over the last few years are also known to be prone to the problem.

Many buyers have replaced their original LCD sets by exchanging them at the store where they bought them or by taking advantage of the manufacturer's warranty, and found the replacement TVs too often have the same problem, if to a greater or lesser extent.

There is little reliable information on what causes the problem, or what solves the problem.

There is some unscientific, anecdotal evidence that the problem stems from mechanical or heat-induced stresses on the LCD panel itself. (This is the theory I personally subscribe to.) An LCD panel works by using electrical signals to tell molecules in individual pixel-sized locations in the panel to block light from a large fluorescent backlight from passing through the panel and reaching your eyes. Ignoring details concerning how this is done separately for the red, green, and blue components of the color TV picture, the basic idea is that as certain light-blocking molecules (the "liquid crystals") twist and untwist, light from the backlight passes through the panel unobstructed or is blocked to one degree or another. The three-dimensional geometric alignment of all the pixel-sized cells containing the twisty light-blocking molecules has to be absolutely uniform. Otherwise, you get "uneven backlighting" and see "clouds."

If there are uneven mechanical or thermal stresses on the LCD panel, perhaps coming from physical distortions transmitted from the frame of the TV assembly, the panel can warp, dimple, twist, crumple, etc., to a very minute degree. Now the twisty light-blocking molecules aren't squarely in front of the spots of light which they are intended to control. The effect is similar to what happens when you view an LCD flat panel from off-axis and see increased overall brightness and reduced overall contrast. The difference here is that only certain spots on the screen are, in effect, being viewed off-axis, owing to the warping, dimpling, and distorting coming from uneven mechanical or thermal stresses that have been applied to the physical LCD panel.

At least, that is the theory. Giving it some support is the fact that some people have reported being able to reduce the severity of the problem by slightly loosening some or all of the screws holding the TV assembly together, after carefully laying the TV face down on a soft cloth covering a perfectly flat and level floor. (This is a procedure that can cause major problems if botched, and it may void your warranty, so don't try it lightly.) Many who have done this have suggested leaving the TV in this face-down position, powered on so that it stays at normal operating temperature, for hours or days before re-tightening the screws to a lesser degree than they were originally tightened.

Other people have reported that their uneven backlighting problems have gone away or diminished on their own after several weeks or months of TV use, presumably because the cumulative effect of cycles of heating/cooling the TV over and over again has eliminated or minimized the mechanical stresses the TV assembly as a whole puts on the LCD panel it houses. Yet other people report that the problem either appears or disappears (depending on the individual TV) each time the set warms up, after not having been used for a while.

All of these reports tend to confirm that mechanical/thermal stresses on the LCD panel are the prime culprit.

There have been, in addition, reports that the cloudiness/unevenness problems tend to vanish if you simply turn down the LCD backlight — not contrast or brightness, but "backlight" per se — as you can do from the onscreen menu systems of these TVs. Sony, moreover, has apparently issued a firmware upgrade for some of its XBR models that will apparently do this automatically when the scene on the screen is dark. (I have ordered the upgrade but have not tried it yet.)

It stands to reason that reducing the backlight intensity would camouflage the problem, which is basically that too much light is leaking through in certain spots, in dark scenes. Lower the amount of light that the backlight produces, and there is consequently less light to leak through.

As a sheer guess, it may be that keeping the backlight low also generates less heat, reducing thermal stresses on the LCD panel.

So far, there appears to be little hard evidence that these problems derive from poorly manufactured LCD panels per se. I had the panel inside my Sony replaced under warranty, and the new one turned out to be exactly like the original, insofar as this problem was concerned. It looks as if the installation of the new panel inside the TV assembly created the problem all over again. This is more evidence that the problem has to do with mechanical/thermal stresses coming from the TV assembly as a whole.

Some posters to the threads mentioned above have tried to assign blame for the problem to certain ranges of the manufacturers' series of serial numbers, or to certain specific months of manufacture, or to what country the TV was assembled in. I have seen little hard evidence that any of these factors is important.

Nor does there seem to be any correlation between this problem and that of "dead" or "stuck" individual LCD pixels — which are defects in the manufacture of the LCD panels themselves.

It also needs to be noted that this problem is typically hard to spot. Unless you are looking at just the right kind of image on the LCD screen and the "cloudiness" just happens to catch your eye — or possibly you have made a point of trying to find it — you may in fact have the problem and never become aware of it. Some people, once they have discovered it, pretty much dismiss it from their minds as relatively unimportant. Others become semi-obsessed with it. I have personally found that it is better to be in the former group than the latter ...

My New Samsung LN52A650 TV

2008-10-31T12:20:00.008-04:00

The LN52A650 is one of Samsung's 2008-model TVs — this one is a 1080p 52" LCD flat panel — that have been improved in several ways over last year's models. I just broke down and got an LN52A650 for my living room, to go where I used to have a rear-projection Samsung 61" DLP HDTV.

I also have a five-year-old 32" non-1080p Hitachi plasma HDTV in my basement and a two-year-old 40" 1080p Sony LCD flat panel in my bedroom. See the posts in my Sony KDL-40XBR2 series for more on the latter. The Sony is an excellent TV — though it has some minor problems with imperfect brightness uniformity across the screen, seemingly due to uneven backlighting — but the new Samsung is even better overall and has no such uniformity issues.

The main reason it beats the Sony: the Samsung has black levels I'd truly describe as "inky." The Sony just can't match them.

The Samsung advertises a dynamic contrast ratio of 50,000:1. (The Sony's is a comparatively paltry 7,000: 1.) That means the brightest white the Samsung can produce is 50,000 times brighter than the inkiest black. Actual video pictures don't need that much contrast, needless to say, but the figure is still meaningful — provided, that is, that the stunningly high contrast ratio is achieved (at least in part) by lowering the level at which black is displayed, not by just upping the level of white. And that's exactly what Samsung has done with the LN52A650.

The 50,000:1 ratio, by the way, isn't the best Samsung has to offer. The best would be the 1,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio (!) possessed by a handful of its other models (none of which comes in the 52" size I wanted). That superior ratio is a direct result of backlighting the LCD screen using an array of tiny, individually controllable LEDs, not the uniform fluorescent backlight of the LN52A650. LED backlighting provides a yet further step up in contrast ratio/black level, but at a super-premium price.

You can watch the LN52A650 in a well-lit room and still get a dazzling picture with all those inky blacks, I have found. And not only are the blacks convincing, the portions of the picture that are near-black have excellent definition (fine "shadow detail"). Some HDTVs like my Hitachi tend to "swallow" shadow detail to fool the eye into thinking blacks are being displayed darker than they really are.

Color renditions are superb on the LN52A650, as are the smoothness and naturalness of the brightness gradations between black and white. And I have seen no color banding due to suboptimal internal handling of digital signals — my Hitachi exhibits a lot of banding, my Sony only a little bit.

In fact, the LN52A650 is the first HDTV I've had that gives me a marvelous picture right out of the box, without a lot of fussing and tweaking. I find the "Standard" preset looks just fine to my eyes, though I do turn off "Dynamic Contrast" as providing too much contrast for my taste. There is also, separately, a "Dynamic" preset — too jazzed up to suit me — and a "Movie" preset that I find a little too restrained for daily use.

(Edit: After a couple of days of using the "Standard" preset, I switched to "Movie." The latter gives a less dazzling picture, but one that ultimately seems more realistic. I have found that I like to up the "Gamma" setting from 0 to +3 in "Movie" mode, which brings out yet more shadow detail. Other than that, I have left the "Movie" preset as it comes out of the box.)

Each preset, including "Movie," can have a raft of video (and audio) parameters individually adjusted, if need be, independently for each video input. Or, if you decide you have made things worse and not better, it's easy to reset any preset to its original settings.

There are also separate, non-adjustable "entertainment mode" presets that I haven't tried yet. (Edit: I've tried them now, if briefly, and found them nothing special.)

You can read CNet's full review of the LN52A650 here. All in all, CNet rates the LN52A650 "excellent," giving it four stars out of five.

CNet marks this generally excellent set down for the reddish tint of its bezel, which I find so hard to see as to be a non-factor. They correctly note that (as is the glossy bezel) the front of the screen is shiny, not matte-finished, allowing reflections of brightly lit objects in the room to bounce off the screen or bezel and into the viewer's eye. In my room, that doesn't happen to be much of a problem. (The shiny face of the screen is part of Samsung's strategy to give you deeper blacks and steeper contrast ratios.)

CNet also dislikes the "awkward click wheel remote"; I agree. The wheel spins under your finger and accomplishes what up-down-right-left clicks of the same wheel also accomplish: navigating on-screen menus, lowering or raising volume, etc. But it's unnecessary, clumsy, hard to get used to ... and can't be turned off.

Finally, CNet says there are "some [visible] artifacts when de-judder modes are engaged"; I haven't noticed those.

Another nice thing about the LN52A650 is its combination of a 120-Hz refresh rate with a 4-millisecond response time. Each pixel is refreshed twice as often as with the more customary 60-Hz rate for LCD TVs, and it takes a swift 4 ms for the refreshed pixel to stabilize. My Sony's response time is double that: 8 ms.

The difference in response time and refresh rate can be detected by the eye. Imagine a motionless closeup of a face in repose. Since nothing is in motion, you can see every last nuance of facial detail. Now, say the face starts to move as the camera pans. On my Sony, the details of the facial rendition soften due to "motion blur." Then when the camera stops panning, the details turn crisp again.

This can lead to eye fatigue, since the softening of detail tricks the eye into thinking it has to refocus. Then, when the detail turns crisp again, the eye says, "Whoops! Let's go back to that earlier focus." On the Samsung, the fast response time and the rapid refresh rate eliminate motion blur and eye fatigue.

Also, the colors on the Samsung just seem right — as they do on the Sony, but not on the Hitachi plasma. On the Hitachi, the reds seem orange, and a black-and-white picture can take on a green tinge. (On a color TV, B&W is really the sum of red, green, and blue signals. If the TV messes up the computation, a "colorless" picture can wind up with a tint.)

To be fair, plasmas and LCD flat panels have come a long way since the Hitachi was made, and it would be a mistake to downrate plasmas based on what is now a Stone Age model.

The Samsung produces sound through its internal speakers that my not-so-wonderful ears can make good sense of, in terms of comprehending dialogue. Neither the Sony nor the Hitachi render dialogue as well. Music on the Samsung sounds great as well.

The December 2008 issue of Consumer Reports gives the Samsung LN52A650 the highest rating of all the LCD and plasma HDTVs of various sizes that it tested (though no LED-backlit LCDs were among them).

The Samsung LN52A650 is priced in the mid-to-upper tier of 52" LCDs. You can pay a lot less for an LCD with the same screen size (or you can pay more if you want more bells and whistles).

There are, I'd say, three tiers of HDTV buyers. The top tier will spare no expense to get the absolute best, and will undoubtedly prefer an LED-backlit LCD, when one becomes available in their preferred screen size, or one of the top plasmas, which sometimes produce even inkier blacks than the LN52A650. Better still, for some buyers, are the front-projection TVs that fill huge screens in home theaters with to-die-for images.

The bottom tier of HDTV buyers want the lowest price, or close to it, on any given screen size. They are willing to sacrifice performance for economy — and who can blame them, since even the cheapest flat panel today gives a picture far superior to anything that was available just a few years ago?

Then there's the middle tier, in which I proudly place myself. I and those like me will pay extra for noticeably better performance and features ... but we don't absolutely have to have the state of the art in a TV set.

In which tier would you place yourself? If you, too, are in the middle tier, and if you want a 52" flat panel HDTV, you would do well to look into the Samsung LN52A650.

HD TV Shows at iTunes Store

2008-09-17T17:20:00.005-04:00

With the recent release of iTunes 8.0, Steve Jobs and company at Apple has also made available, for customers at Apple's iTunes Store, TV shows in high-definition for the first time.

HD episodes of Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives, The Office, 30 Rock, Monk, Lost, and many other hit series can be purchased for $2.99, $1.00 more than the standard-def versions.

When you click on a "Buy Episode" button in iTunes, if the episode is HD, what you are supposed to be buying and downloading is actually two versions of the show, one HD and the other SD.

I find that there is a bug in Apple's implementation, however. If you use a Shopping Cart at the iTunes Store, rather than 1-Click Shopping, you can't get the HD shows. In my tests, you only get the SD version placed in your cart, not the HD. Then when you click on "Buy Now," the SD version only is downloaded.

Other people have reported online that they don't even get the SD version, just an indication that the show is mysteriously "unavailable."

The solution is to go into iTunes Preferences, under "Store," and click "Buy and download using 1-Click." That deselects "Buy using a Shopping Cart." (Make sure you have emptied your cart before doing this.) Now when you click a "Buy Episode" button, you will get an iTunes dialog asking you to confirm your purchase (unless you have previously told iTunes to disable this message). Once you authorize the purchase, the download will begin immediately of the two versions of the show.

iTunes 8.0 will then have both versions in its library. You can play either one, either in iTunes 8.0 or in QuickTime Player 7.5.5 (which, if you don't already have it, you need to get).

The HD version of the first episode of Monk, Season 7, "Mr. Monk Buys a House," is currently a freebie. It plays with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels with a total bit rate of 4541 kbps. (QT Player shows the data rate as being a bit lower: 4107.45 kbits/s.) This is true 720p resolution.

QT Player's numbers for the SD version are 853 x 480 non-square pixels in a 720 x 480 frame, at 1624.86 kbits/s. The SD file for this close-to-one-hour show takes up 509.8 MB, while the HD version uses 1.37 GB — nearly three times the storage.

The HD version plays just fine on my Apple TV, either when synced or streamed, with full resolution that is visibly better than that of the SD version.

Despite what I seem to have read online, it does not appear that iTunes 8.0 is smart enough, if you inadvertently try to sync an HD show to your iPod Touch, to substitute the SD equivalent. Instead, you have to manually arrange to sync the SD version. (I sync TV Shows using a selected playlist; syncing TV Shows by show rather that playlist, however, does not get around this problem.)

This shortfall, though minor, points up the inherent problem with the way Apple is implementing HD. It looks to me as if the only reason to bundle an SD version with an HD show is for the benefit of the iPod. (Maybe some older Macs than my MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.5.4 will, like an iPod, refuse to play HD, but I don't know this for a fact.)

If the iPod Touch (or iPhone) could just be updated so that it would play HD versions, downrezzing them as necessary for the coarser screen, Apple could omit the SD version entirely — saving about 20 percent on download time and storage requirements, plus obviating the iTunes Store bug that causes problems when using the Shopping Cart.

Coming alongside the iTunes and QuickTime upgrades was an upgrade (version 2.1) to my iPod Touch software. As part of the upgrade, there was a concurrent upgrade to the iPod's firmware. I wasn't aware that iPods have upgradeable firmware, but since they do, I have to wonder whether they could be made compatible with HD video.

HD video as implemented at the iTunes Store has higher bitrates than the iPod can nominally keep up with, and probably uses B-frames ("bidirectional video frames") to slim down storage requirements. But if the iPod's bitrate limit and allergy to B-frames could be overcome, voila: (albeit downrezzed) HD video!

I can pretty much guarantee that future iPods/iPhones will have it. Is there any hope for current 'Pods?

iPod Touch: How to Set Up a Random Album Playlist

2008-08-30T18:09:00.006-04:00

This isn't about video or HDTV, but it is about my new iPod Touch, which I've been talking about in several recent posts.

Because it only has 8 GB of flash memory, most of which is devoted to videos, I'd like to find a way to set up a smart playlist in iTunes that will allow me to select, say, a random 2 gigabytes worth of music to sync to it as a playlist. Here's the catch. I want not randomly selected songs, but randomly selected whole albums.

A post by "Myra" about halfway down in this forum thread shows how.

The key thing is to checkmark Shuffle By Albums (rather then By Songs or By Groupings) in the iTunes Controls menu. (In pre-8.0 iTunes, go to iTunes Preferences and, under Playback, select Albums rather than Songs or Groupings at the bottom of the pane, and click OK.)

Then set up a smart playlist (I call mine "iPod Random Album") and set it up this way:

I enter "Limit to 2 GB selected by random" and checkmark it
I checkmark "Live updating"

When I click OK, the playlist fills in with 2 GB worth of randomly selected whole albums!

If I delete an entire album from the playlist, a new album, randomly selected, magically replaces it.

If I delete everything in the playlist, it magically fills in with an entirely new random selection of albums.

If I want, I can add various selection-limiting rules. For instance, right now I'm limiting the albums on the iPod to those in a certain other playlist of mine called "Elaine." To do that, I just use the rule "Playlist is Elaine."

The rule "Last played is before {enter a date two days ago}" will keep the list fresh.

If you object to shuffling albums rather than songs, you can revert to Shuffle: Songs in iTunes Preferences: Playback after making the playlist. Just remember to return to Shuffle: Albums each time you want to refresh the playlist.