Digital Dad®

Dynex to the rescue

I was busy moving furniture this weekend. Big, heavy furniture, like an eight foot shelving unit made of walnut,  from the lower level of my house to the upper level. That means taking it out the lower level door, hand trucking it over the gravel and up the curvy steep driveway, then rolling into the front door, through the kitchen out to the back deck, down the deck, then into the master bedroom through sliding glass doors.

Eesh. That was heavy. We wanted to put the TV in the hutch part of the shelving unit but since it’s an old Sony XBR tube, it was just too deep.

My take was that we needed a new TV, pronto!

The unit was 31” wide with a  28.5” opening. That means i could easily get a 26” LCD TV in there, and potentially squeeze a 32” in there.

i went with my 10 year old son to Costco, with a tape measure, to see what we could find. It turns out that Costco was closed on New Year’s Day, so we headed over to Best Buy. We looked at the 32” TVs and only the Dynex had a bezel width of 30.75” – just under the limit. Everyone else – the Samsung, the LG, the Sony, topped out at more than 31” across.

The Dynex looked good, although it was 720p. It had three HDMI inputs, a couple of component inputs, etc. i figured the difference between 720p and 1080p would be tough to see on a 32”screen from across the bedroom. Plus, the Dynes was on sale for only $329 – a great price.

Too bad the Dynex 32” was out of stock – the old bait and switch. We left the store and I dialed up the Best Buy in Seattle and sure enough they had one Dynex left.

We got there and as we worked our way back to the TVs i saw a table with some open box items. Sure enough, there was a 32” Dynex there, open box – a few of them in fact. They were all labeled $299 – a $30 savings, but one was labeled (mis-labeled?) $269! i asked the clerk about them and re-confirmed the $269 price. Such a deal!

We got home and i hooked it up to my cable box. The picture came up but after a few minutes the screen blanked out. Aargh. i went through a few memory configurations but this was a dud.

This morning i woke up early, packed up the Dynex and headed back to Seattle. i figured I would swap this open box for another  - at least i had my $269 price. i went in the store and made my way through the still short customer service line. Wes P. behind the counter noted that i had the “old” Dynex, not the 2010 model (already?). He checked with the stick to see if they had another old Dynex to swap with. Well, they didn’t, so he gave me a swap with a brand new Dynex, packed new in the box. I ended up with a brand new 32” LCD TV for $269. Score! Thanks, Wes P. My faith in Best Buy has been restored!

I brought it home and my son and i hooked it up. I needed to activate the cable box (more on that later) but soon I had a pristine HDTV picture in the hutch – just barely fit.

Reader Story – Blu-Ray

I thought I would pass on this story from a loyal reader – we’ve all been there!

“Hey,

As a certified fan of your blog, I wanted to share a little home networking story with you.

My wife bought me a very cool Samsung Blu-Ray player for Xmas. This player has a nice feature where it connects directly to Netflix over the internet. The only problem is that the connection is a LAN connection. Samsung does not provide support on how to do the job wirelessly.

After reading a few forum threads I determined that I needed a wireless Ethernet hub, and I also needed to upgrade my wireless router at home which was about 5 years old.

I went to Best Buy and sure enough the Geek Squad there did not even know what a wireless Ethernet Hub was. Total waste of time.

I got home, and ordered one on-line from NewEgg (good site by the way includes good reviews of products).

When it arrived I first set up my new supercharged Wi-Fi and then tackled the Hub. All went relatively smoothly, although there are some issues about having to reboot in a certain order for some reason.

When I went to test the Blu-Ray, I realized I had to update it's firmware (even though it was brand new. Very annoying!) I downloaded the update from Samsung onto a USB memory stick and plugged it in the back of the player. 30 minutes later I was up and running.

It works really well, very clear and has all the normal features of a DVD. (Pause, FFWD, etc.) So far they don't seem to have any Blu-Ray titles on the Netflix Instant queue (you need to set up two queues), but they are promising them.

Overall a neat little set-up that saves a lot of wiring and adds a nice feature to my video selections.

Anyway, that's my story.”

The Moronic Inferno

I’m at McCarran airport here in Vegas about to fly back to Seattle after a day or so at CES. It was a bit lighter this year, good news in that it reduced the hordes to something almost manageable.

I stayed at the Venetian, which was weak, although it looks fancy. I was locked out of my room three times by their lame card key system. No coffee maker in the room. Bouchon is pretty nice for breakfast, though.

I’ll skip the Microsoft stuff except to say I spent time with a Dell notebook loaded up with Windows 7 and it was pretty sweet. Get that beta!

A few things that caught my eye:

• TVs. Who knew there was so much more to do with TVs? LED LCDs, OLED, super thin, 3D, wirelessly connected, connected TVs that include Yahoo widgets – geez.  My 56” Samsung DLP is looking pretty long in the tooth! The LG 3D home theater was quite stunning.
• Acoustic Research had a nice easy set of wireless speaker connectors – connect the box to your stereo speaker outputs and plug the small receiver box into your speakers somewhere else in the house. Looks like a high quality way of avoiding speaker wire, but I didn't get a price. Probably pretty cheap.
• If you still want to run wire the folks at Flatwire (aptly named had some cool, very flat, speaker wire that you can paint. Buy it at www.flatwireready.com.
• Nice electric bikes from ELVMotors
• AR also had some nice wireless outdoor speakers that doubled as porch lights. Might be nice on a deck.

Looking forward to getting back.

I Am Iron Man

I took my son, who just turned nine, out this afternoon to see Iron Man. I've been a big fan of Iron Man since I was . . . about nine myself. I remember anxiously awaiting the next issue to see what Tony Stark would get into next. He always had an interesting, somewhat tortured personality.

First of all, it's great fun being able to take my son to see Iron Man. He's been exploring my old comic collection so we were both pretty excited to see the movie. It's PG-13, but I checked around first and  although there's a five second "romance" scene between Tony and a woman there's no bad language, no bloodshed. There are several battles where people get shot (western style - clutch chest and fall down, no blood), things blow up, etc. but it's kept pretty tame.

There's a ton of tech. Heads up displays, robotics, rockets and even some old fashioned soldering. Cool. Tony uses his brain and his wits to get the bad guys, who are from Afghanistan but speak Russian, Hungarian and a bunch of languages. Some interesting twists there but the bad guys are definitely the bad guys.

Good fun!

High Tech Noon

Speaking of old TV (but with a new twist):

Where's the Brady Bunch?

We were talking about the Brady Bunch recently and how it would be a fun show for our kids to watch. Cornball, sure, but a decent sitcom and way better than "Avatar the Last Airbender."

Where to find it? You can DVR it on TV Land but even better there are clips on the web  on TV Land's web site (or via hulu.com).

Too bad it isn't full episodes like the Dick Van Dyke show below!

Apple TV roundup

Plenty of blather in the blogosphere on Apple TV and some interesting hallway conversations here at Microsoft. Loyal readers know that I have struggled with getting PC content on my TV for a long, long . . . long time.

Some thoughts on Apple TV after reading Gartenberg, Pogue, Toeman, some Newsweek dude, Thomas  Hawk, etc.:

First off, since I have an Xbox360 that connects wirelessly to my PC filled with photos, movies and stuff, I won't be buying one - certainly not for $300.

That being said, I would really like to get a better remote media user experience on the Xbox360 - a little album art at least. I am not a fan of "remoting" my Media Center PC since the navigation and controls are so different than the XBox. Just last night my wife hit the "Media Center" button on the remote and everything changed on her.

Apple TV will be the right solution for some, but my prediction is not many, at least not in the first iteration. As Gartenberg notes, it really depends on the purchase driver. What does it really bring to the (family) table? If I want a great DVR and scoop up kids shows and American Idol on a 250Gb drive then a TiVo or Comcast/DirecTV box is all I need.

If I want a casual gaming console that can also front end my collection of photos and videos, plus have the option to buy/rent content in standard/HD, then Xbox360 is the way to go.

If I am a rabid iTunes user (and there are not many of them in terms of content quantity purchased) and want to extend that content onto my TV then Apple TV is ideal.

In the case of the Media Center, it’s missing a service connection and scant few actually have a TV connection. Therefore, the extenders are not as interesting for me. I still would like to try one upstairs on the guest room TV just for kicks if I can find one for $99.

It’s just a matter of what is driving your purchase.

Apple missed some key areas here – I agree with the concept of set top fatigue, lack of DVD was a miss, 40Gb drive (as was noted, "is this 1997?"), no volume control on the remote, etc. They will get fanboys, iTunes hounds and device fanatics but I would be surprised with this version of the system making major inroads into the American household (like the iPod did into people’s pockets).

We'll see!

Bringing in the Harmony

Now that I've brought the XBox 360 front and center as the DVD player as well as the gateway for our pictures, music and videos, I needed to really get the remote control story in order.

I tried to give the old Harman Kardon Take Control a go but since I had no IR remote for the Xbox I was stuck.

I wanted something that drove the Xbox out of the box but also could learn other remotes, so I bypassed the Microsoft XBox remote as too limited.

The Harmony XBox remote looked it might do the trick (I also bypassed this one, just didn't seem to give me confidence - anthrox.com?).

Looks like Paul Thurott has a good write up on this subject as well, although I disagree with his conclusions.

The Harmony looks and feels good. It's thin for about two-thirds of the remote with a the batteries at the bottom. It has a good backlight as well. One negative are the channel and volume buttons - they don't have enough travel as I'd like. It looks sturdy enough although we have carpeting down here so I don't expect many hazards.

I had problems setting it up. The main issue was that I didn't get the right model number for my Samsung TV. It had a crazy long model number and I goofed on one letter. This caused the remote to misunderstand how to switch from HDMI to Comnponent2 and such and I spent way too much time figuring out what was wrong. You would figure that Samsung would have some standardization on switching inputs on their TVs - oh well.

Other than that, the software itself has too many wizards. You can't just go in and do something - you have answer the same set of inane questions until you get the screen you want.

I understand Logitech's desire to make it way easy for people who are not into technology to set this up but let's face it - how many luddites will buy an XBox compatible learning remote control that is programmed via PC? Not many, nor perhaps even one. I suggest some sort of advanced panel to cut to the chase.

I did finally get it all set up right before our New Year's part and was able to wing through a nice slideshow and DVD navigation on the XBox with aplomb. We had a friend over who was a Nintendo employee and I think even he was impressed.

Net net - if you're using your Xbox for more than games, invest. I bought mine on eBay for about $85.

The Greatest Remote Ever . . . Rendered Useless?

I was finally at the point where I was ready to consolidate some remotes and fire up the ol' Harman Kardon Take Control - perhaps the greatest remote control ever made.

I like it so much I even bought a back up on eBay in case this one fails me.

I needed to control my Samsung TV, my Denon receiver, my Comcast cable DVR and the XBox 360 that I now use as my DVD player. Using a wireless game controller to navigate the DVD menus just didn't make sense.

One problem - the XBox 360 doesn't use IR. Aargh - my remote has been rendered useless!

I need to get a remote that is specifically designed to drive the XBox 360 using RF, not IR. MS makes one but I need one that can also learn commands for other devices.

Oh well.

Update - yes, the XBox does support IR - my goof. However, the XBox controller is RF, so you need to have an IR controller that knows how to "speak XBox" first in order to program your universal remote.  I don't want to buy a new remote so I can program my old remote. In any event I did get this all wrapped up nicely and will post about it shortly.

Heavy Rotation

Here's something neat for those of you that recently unpacked your XBox360. You can finally keep those precious DVDs away from scratches, crayons, and other forms of kid destruction while getting easy access to movies that are in heavy rotation in your house. You know what I mean - how about Peter Pan for 106th time?

The 360, as you may have discovered, will find PCs on your home network that are running Windows Media Connect. This enables you to play music, pictures, and even videos that are in WMV format via your XBox onto your big screen TV.

All you need to do is to get your kids' favorite DVDs into WMV format onto that PC and then you can browse and play back these films without the DVD from the XBox ad infinitum (or is it ad nauseam?).

With all due respect to my colleague David Caulton over at Zunester, who has a very in-depth series of transcoding posts, here goes the simple version:

1. I use PQDVD to rip the DVD into a WMV format. It costs $32 and takes about as much time as the movie takes.
2. Although it says it's for Pocket PCs it will rip in a higher resolution and bitrate. You want to adjust it so that it rips at at least 640x480, 30 fps, 800kpbs and CD quality audio. That will get you a very decent picture on  56" TV. Anything higher than that is gravy.
3. If you have a movie already ripped but not in WMV (where did you get that?), then I suggest RiverPast Video Cleaner, $30. Yes, these things costs money - don't waste your time scouring the web for free stuff. Video Cleaner will convert whatever you have into WMV, even DV files you create in iMovie. Nice way to get your Home Videos through your XBox as well.
4. If the PC you are using to rip/convert is the one that XBox is looking at then you're done. Otherwise, drop your new WMV file (likely close to 1Gb) onto the PC that XBox is looking at.
5. When you bring up the videos blade in XBox and pick "computer" you will see your video. They are sorted by filename so make sure the filename makes sense. Congratulate yourself with a beer and show your spouse how smart you are.

Say, for example, you bought the Snow White DVD years ago but it's been horribly scratched so your kids can't watch it anymore and Disney no longer sells the disc. Say hypothetically you downloaded the movie via BitTorrent in .AVI format and ran it through RiverPast to create a WMV version. Well, then hypothetically you could watch the movie via your XBox in pristine quality over and over again, right?

For the XBox team - I'd like to see some tagging support here as well as album art and parental controls. Otherwise, this is a great way to get some non-gaming use out of your new XBox360.