MythTV continued
Posted by stephen on Monday, 22nd May, 2006 @ 21:07
Hot on the heels of getting my Mythbox working I decided to get on with my ToDo list of things for it. It's now loaded with 2 DVB-T cards and courtesy of an ?9 dual output booster from Argos is can tune to two channels and record/watch both simultaneously. It's even got picture-in-picture, which is rather cool!
I've abandoned the plans to stick it in the spare room for now. Firstly it'd require lots of drilling and cabling and secondly it'd be rather annoying for any guests I have to stay over. While hunting in the cupboard in the bedroom it occurred to me that perhaps it'd go in there if I leave the aerial on the windowsill. So I've just put it in there and it's nice and quiet, I can only just hear it from outside. I'll certainly be able to sleep without a problem. Just need to make sure it doesn't get too hot!
Just out of curiosity I thought I'd see what kind of signal strength I'd get if I put the portable aerial on top of the PC in the cupboard. Amazingly, it made no difference! So now it's all nicely tucked away so a certain kitty can't knock out the signal with one swipe of her paw!
All that remains is to tidy up the cables going into the cupboard and it'll be complete. At least in this iteration!
I've been playing more with MythTV and I have to say it's absolutely brilliant. It's season passes work better than I'd anticipated. It's able to detect duplicate showings without a problem. My only remaining issue is the quality of the fast forward and rewind, it's not as fluid as with TiVo, it simply jumps forward and back N seconds with every button push.
I'll live with it for a couple of weeks and see how I get on, but things are looking positive for the plan to loose the TiVo and NTL box. All that remains is to decide which of the two competing parties receives the TiVo when I'm done with it.
This Geekend
Posted by stephen on Sunday, 21st May, 2006 @ 17:49
It's been ages since I had a Saturday night where I stay up till the early hours of the morning fiddling with some tech.
So after a week of new toys, the Nokia N80 and the MacBook, I guess I felt positively inspired to do something cool (well, to me anyway). By the way, I'd totally recommend the MacBook to anyone thinking about it, it's incredibly well specified for the price point and they've not cut corners on the build quality, a totally solid and enjoyable machine.
So, on to the geeking.... part inspired by "because I can" and part inspired by saving money every month, this weekend's projects have been VoIP and PVR building.
It occurred to me the other day that my living room would look great with the TV mounted on the wall with the Mac Mini sitting underneath. So I thought about getting a DVB-T USB dongle for the Mini and using my newly found eBay selling abilities to do away with the TiVo and tell NTL I don't want their TV package anymore (saving ?30/month). That way I can record all my free-to-air stuff and download any premium NTL/Sky content (which I do for most shows now anyway).
My new N80 mobile phone has built in wifi networking and is SIP capable. This also got me thinking that if I get a sipgate account I could stop paying NTL ?18 a month for their phone package and simply use the mobile via sipgate as my landline. Early experiments during the week with the mobile haven't been very successful. Using Asterisk@Home I managed to get the sipgate line connected to a virtual PBX, but didn't have anywhere else to send the calls.
And so we come to yesterday and me wondering what I should do with this big, ugly PC that sits under my desk now redundant due to Parallels Desktop and my nice Intel-based Macs. I then remembered that I have a few DVB cards floating around in my cupboard from various times in the past and so I thought to myself I don't need to spend ?99 on a DVB-T PVR solution for my Mac, I could just turn this PC into a Mythbox and shove it in the spare room. As there's a Mythfrontend for Mac, I'd be able to watch my recorded shows from anywhere.
Then I thought, why not put both a DVB-T and DVB-S card in the PC? Then I'll be able to get the Freesat channels too and can record two programmes at once. And so in it went and so began my adventure with MythTV. Following these instructions for getting Myth up and running on Ubuntu, slightly modified by using these more modern packages I was up and running with my little portable aerial in no time.
Add this source of Mythfrontend for the Mac, both in Intel and PPC flavours and I was suddenly able to watch TV from my bedroom (iMac), my living room (Mini) and anywhere in between (MacBook). It's not ideal for live TV I've found. At least not changing channels regularly. There's a good 10 second delay while what seems to be some buffering happens. The MythWeb interface is a nice bonus that offsets this annoyance quite nicely.
So, my ToDo list for my MythTV experience is to drill a hole in the floor of the spare room and run a cable up from downstairs (wireless isn't ideal for video applications), then move the Mythbox into the spare room and setup a more permanent aerial with a stronger signal. My portable aerial provides a weak signal, but as I'm so close to the transmitter the SNR is very good and it doesn't matter so much, but the spare room's on the wrong side of the house.
Next, find and stick another DVB-T card into the box and bung a booster/splitter on the end of the aerial so I can record from multiple TV channels. I've decided to abandon the satellite idea for now as it means I should really mount the satellite properly, there's no good extra channel advantage and I won't get Channel 4 and related services because they're still encrypted. Perhaps I'll point at HotBird again one day and get lots of bizarre foreign channels added to the mix!
I also want to keep an eye on the MythTV lists for progress with the multiple recording options for a single transponder (as 4 - 8 channels are generally transmitted per frequency it's possible to record/watch all of those channels at once with a single tuner card, but Myth doesn't support this yet).
Finally, ring up NTL and TiVo and cancel my subscriptions, then punt the TiVo on eBay or to any interested mates who might like it (it's been heavily upgraded!).
The niceties are rebuilding Mythfrontend from source to add more options for where video comes from, so my downloaded shows and DVDs will all be playable from the Myth interface without needing to drop out to Finder/QuickTime/DVD Player. I guess ideally it'd be great it Myth could integrate into the Movies section of Front Row. Unlikely though I suspect.
While digging around for DVB cards I also rediscovered my Cisco ATA 186 VoIP adapter that lets you plug in a normal telephone to an IP network. It came when I signed up for the awful BT Broadband Voice service a couple of years ago. A quick Spotlight into my email archives found me David's email containing instructions and the generic firmware needed to get this thing working with ordinary SIP services. And with very little effort it was tied into my sipgate service and I can think about cancelling my landline service too eventually.
To take this one step further I'm considering installing Asterisk on the Mythbox and pointing the ATA 186 and my N80 (if I can make it work) to that. Then I'd be able to answer/call on the "land line" with whatever handset is nearest, and it'd just be cool in a totally unnecessary way. Further I could setup an IVR system. Please press 1 to talk to Steve, press 2 to leave a voicemail and other such nonsense.
What I love most of all about this is that, apart from an aerial, I'll be down to purely IP services coming into the house, which is rather in keeping with what I do for a living. Indeed, I'm hoping that playing with all this stuff can also provide some inspiration for products/services for my new company Regenology, whose website (very revision 1) launched this week too.
Oh. My. God.
Posted by stephen on Sunday, 21st May, 2006 @ 14:14
New Toyness
Posted by stephen on Friday, 19th May, 2006 @ 16:01
After this week's exciting new announcement from Apple I immediately flung my 12" PowerBook on to eBay like an unwanted child. Turns out my friend Dave thought it might make a nice new toy. So, the PowerBook was pulled from eBay with the promise of a loving new home, rejoining my old PowerMac G5 that Dave and Neil had also kindly adopted.
I always like to know my Macs are going to nice homes, where they will be loved and cared for. My original 12" PowerBook, Orb, went to Richard who most certainly loved it, and questionably cared for it (the poor little thing is looking a bit the worse for wear these days). Macs should be appreciated, so I know Thor, my newer 12" PB will be in good hands with Dave.
Then Dave dropped the bombshell on me that if possible, he'd like to pick up the laptop before the weekend so he can do some work while he's away up North. The quandary! To be without what had become my mostly unused PowerBook for the week or two it'd take to have Apple deliver me a shiny MacBook. It just didn't seem right. But after consultation from two independent parties, I reluctantly accepted, Dave picked up Thor yesterday and I placed my order on the Apple website.
Apple are currently offering 6 months interest free finance, where you pay the total amount over the 6 month period. Seemed like a good deal, so I went for that. After a 20 minute conversation that seemed to require more personal information than my mortgage application, I was accepted and had to await the paperwork. So, probably Monday before I get that, need to sign it, and send it back. Then they'll give Apple the OK to send me the MacBook. Which will take 3 - 5 days, plus shipping, which might be forever if it is dispatched from the Far East like my previous two PowerBooks.
So I resigned myself to life without portable Appleness. Then it turned out that I couldn't go and do the job we had planned in London today, because high winds, tall buildings and ladders don't really mix. And so a moment struck me in the shower (where all my good ideas arise), that Brent Cross might have some in stock. so I rang them, and sure enough they did, would I like to put my name on one? Yes please!
And so I give you Falcor (fast, white and mobile, seemed appropriate)...
Brain melting
Posted by stephen on Wednesday, 17th May, 2006 @ 01:15
How'd I let 'Fruiy Swansea' slip by in the last post?!?! Clearly it should have been Fruity. Apologies.
How exciting today has been! Got myself a new mobile phone, the lovely Nokia N80, which is a very nice improvement over my old 6680. And I've changed networks, just so I could get my grubby hands on it today. And so I didn't have to wait 5 days, I'm not porting my old number, so if you need to know the new one, let me know!
One of the best things about moving to Vodafone is that Symbian based phones like these don't have the nasty, buggy, memory-hogging, non-removable Orange Active Screen, which I detested about my old phone. The only pain is the Voda signal doesn't seem to be too good in my house!
Also released today was the Apple MacBook, with Core Duo, iSight and Front Row, which is very exciting. And ?100 less than the price I said I'd be willing to pay for the same spec'd laptop. Hmm, think I need to go see one in the flesh though as there's a rather disturbing couple of changes... a flat keyed keyboard and a gloss screen as opposed to matte finish.
Today I've also posted a load of items to eBay for the first time using some lovely Mac software called GarageSale. Added to that list now are my 12" PowerBook (which might come off again very soon) and I'll add my 6680 shortly.
My brain is slightly on overdrive with everything happening today, hopefully tomorrow will be more calm. Even though I'll be driving around with large ladders and dispatching Richard to the tops of roofs on the Isle of Dogs!
Fruiy Swansea
Posted by stephen on Friday, 12th May, 2006 @ 14:58
Thanks to Tom for pointing out this ad for Tango that I've not yet seen on TV that rather parodies the amazing Sony ad I linked to a couple of months ago.
Not only have they done an amazing job recreating the ad with fruit, they've also created the Swansea North Residents Association website for outraged residents who were victims of the falling fruit. They've done a spot on job creating the web site in mid-90s, middle-aged man with Notepad and limited understanding of HTML style.
Has to be in the running for Best. Campaign. Ever.
Most overtly gay thing I've ever posted
Posted by stephen on Thursday, 11th May, 2006 @ 22:05
...but I think it's hilarious, go take a look!
The End
Posted by stephen on Wednesday, 10th May, 2006 @ 10:13
A last minute change of plan and instead of spending Bank Holiday Monday cycling 20 miles or so around Rutland Water with my Dad in what would have been pouring rain I instead ended up heading to my Mum's on Sunday afternoon ready for a busy day on Monday.
My mum moved out of home to live with her partner about a year after I left in 2000, leaving just my older brother Andrew to fend for himself. Last year he met the lovely Kate and a couple of weeks ago he moved in with her, leaving the family home empty. So on Monday we (Andrew, Dad, Kate, Mum and myself) descended upon the house with a truck in tow to empty it of stuff before it's done up and rented out.
It feels strange in a way. I've never considered that I'd move back home again anytime in the future, but knowing that the place is going does feel like one last childhood crutch is being removed. If I screw my life up to the point where I've got nowhere to live now, it feels like my main backup has gone. Of course I can still stay with Dad or Mum, but it'd only be temporary. And that's all it should be of course. As someone said to me the other day instead of thinking about it in those terms I should use it as a reminder of how far I've come. A much healthier way of looking at things!
Anyway, clearing out the house was certainly an interesting experience. It's the first time in many, many years that my whole immediate family has been together, and it was actually really nice. It was strange going through all my old cables, electronics and bits of computer. A definite reminder the geeky kid and teenager I was and all the little experiments I used to perform!
And something strange happened when old photos started to surface. I always thought I was a rather podgy kid, and a podgy teenager. But actually as a young kid I was pretty average. And the teenage me was much thinner than I remember! It definitely proves to me that self-image is 90% in my head. Though now I am a bit podgy and have a body mass index to prove it!
Time Gous By So Lowly
Posted by stephen on Tuesday, 02nd May, 2006 @ 17:48
Madonna's got it all wrong, time is going by faster every day, at least that's what it feels like at the moment. I only posted three entries last month, how rubbish of me. I will try and do better this month.
To summarise that which happened which I did not yet discuss from last month, in no particular order or with any promises of completeness...
- Returned from Budapest and vowed to return again later in the year.
- Replaced dead 3rd gen iPod with nice new video one because I'm not patient enough to wait for apparently delayed full-screen video version.
- Contemplated Boot Camp for 30 seconds but didn't want to sully my gorgeous iMac in such a hideous way.
- Discovered Parallels Workstation and bought immediately because it does such a good job, is improving massively quickly and is very reasonably priced. Windows in a Window. How it should be.
- Recreated our mobile demo unit inside a Parallels virtual machine so Richard can do demos with just his MacBook Pro and a set top box. Mac OS X running Ubuntu running CentOS (still using VMware inside the VM!)
- Ran around the roofs of tower blocks running ethernet cables from lasers to big switches.
- Went Geocaching with Tom and Kat, was great fun, must do it more often. And entering military installations with big padlocked gates makes it kinda exciting!
- Finished working for Newham.net. After a brief dally with the job market decided I still wanted to pursue a business with Richard because going to work for 9am every day is just not on anymore.
- Caught up with Tom & Matt from Planet Three days, nice trip down memory lane and good to catch up on what's been happening with some former colleagues. Also some good potential work for Regenology. Lovely.
- Rejoined a couple of websites, started talking to some lovely new people, and most importantly, increased hits to freakymousemats.com.
