WholeHome

Latest in a series of exceptional sources for the BOCS system – a media player with Blu-Ray capabilities.

I’ve had an HDX-1000 for a long time, and if you’ve read previous posts/reviews, you will recall my findings that it has an exceptional Codec list and can play perhaps the largest set of media out there. Combined with a decent online experience and both SD and HD capabilities, it has been at the top of its class for a long time.  My gripes, however, have been a lack of BluRay support, a less than navigable UI, and a lack of streaming online service (the latter is perhaps not fair since I’m asking for the box to be more than what it was intended).

Now – comes the HDX-BD1. — Frankly, a huge improvement, with a few issues, but a definite upgrade.

I’ll do a full review and post on AVS next week, but a few notes here so yall can go take a look at it.

The new system has:

• Full BD support – once ripped, a locally stored file plays flawlessly (Solving 50% of the issue with the 1000)
• The same exceptional codec coverage – including some of the best A/V sync in the industry
• Hugely improved UI

See the basic page on AmperorDirect HERE. A good general overview can also be found there.

And best of all, the Amperor folks put together a very detailed “Things to Consider before you buy” page HERE.  I havn’t seen that kind of up-front honesty and detailed analysis of a new product in a long time.

The key seems to be that the HdX company in China is actively working on the new firmware since they took it on themselves for this upgrade instead of licensing a third party. It is not yet fully complete and there are definitely a few issues, but the product is clearly ready for prime-time and their work will only serve to make things better.

David

Got your flatscreen? Updated to Blu-Ray and high refresh rates? Beginning to consider that craving to go 3D at home?

Next to “smell-a-vision”, 3DTV has long been the ultimate goal of the home theater enthusiast. I recall the thrill of the first 3D broadcast premier of “Creature from the Black Lagoon” using the old red/blue glasses and thinking what a technological miracle the slimy arms of the monster represented. Now, the thought of the blue bombshell with the erotic tail (from Avatar) in my own home – in 3D – makes my heart go pitter patter. If only it were that simple.

The best technology on the way uses special glasses that pass light alternately allowing each eye to get its own view – pretty straightforward. Obviously, the TV needs to support the technology and many are beginning to come on the market. The problem is that the vast majority of consumers buying flatscreen 3D TVs will be tragically dissapointed. Why? Turns out size really does matter – let me explain.

A typical home flatscreen setup is a 46″ to 55″ TV mounted on a wall 10-15′ from the viewing location. Very reasonable for “TV” – even 2D Blu-Ray. The bigger the better, obviously, but except for a more grandiose experience, anything over 50″ does not enhance the experience that much. Not so with 3D. The powers that be in the industry have come out with new recommendations, and while these “powers” are usually on the extreme side, this time they got it right. 3D requires a LOT more screen area to give you a good experience – 75% or more of your field of vision needs to be screen for 3D to be really immersive. So, just for fun, lets run those calculations. A typical TV room or home theater has a 12′ distance from screen to viewing location so lets use that for our example.

The recommendation then, is for a MINIMUM 93″ screen. Oops – 100″ flatscreens are not viable in most installations (and budgets) – meaning you are almost required to jump to projection. Is it really that different an experience if you don’t follow the recommendations – absolutely…

A really great experiment is to head down to your local home installer who has a 3D flatscreen set up – try the experience at 12′ away, then step right up – stand within 4′ of the screen and your eyes will pop.

Summary? Want 3D – go for a HUGE projection setup. Don’t bother with 3D on a flatscreen.

I don’t often provide info on new products out there that are not mine – but I believe this particular product will appeal to the readers of this blog. If you have a laptop and want to play the latest games but can’t because the video card in your computer does not support them – AND it cannot be upgraded then this is for you.

The Vidock – Basically, it is an external box that plugs in via express card and can add a top of the line video card to your laptop. So halo and the latest games, you don’t have to buy a whole extra PC to run them.

Check it out at: http://www.amperordirect.com/pc/c-video-cards/audiovideo-ViDock_2_4670.html

So, you’ve got a new PC-DVR but you have also been playing around with Hulu, NBC, CBS and other online sources of video. But, if you havn’t noticed, it is hard to find what you want to watch, espescially from the remote control in front of your TV. Enter Clicker.com… If you havn’t run across it yet, it is the google of the online video world – complete with a very nice text entry interface so it will work well with only a wireless mouse/remote. While it is missing youtube and other clip services, it provides a simple interface to search all legal sources for TV and other copyrighted materials.

As a side note, if you use HIP (a remote control interface program) you can easily set up a special key on your remote control to flip back and forth between a browser running clicker and your favorite DVR program.

The latest Nielson survey says that Americans are now surfing and watching TV Simultaneously.

Almost 60% of folks use the internet and watch TV at the same time – hugely significant for advertisers but the big result deals with how we get our content.

For every minute Americans spend watching “traditional TV” (Tune your TV to good old live channel 9 and sit through the commercials), we spend 5 times as much time on time shifted TV (Yeah – everyone has finally figured out the concept of a DVR – about time).  I’ve seen a huge surge in folks building their own DVR as well – perhaps a cobination of enlightenment, tough economic times, and a desire for self accomplishment.

Interestingly, for that same reference “traditional TV minute” folks spend 10 times as much time on the internet, but what Nielson missed was asking what they are doing on the internet. If the answer is watching shows on hulu or clips from youtube, that is much more significant than just surfing. Advertisers will need to be shifting their spend quickly to keep in front of the average consumer. Obviously the big question is how will TV be suported as advertising dollars begin shifting away.

One more needed study – for any given advertisement, correlating web hit timing to when the commercial airs – sounds like folks are headed out to get more information in real time with laptops right in front of the TV. Also huge for the tie in of ads and websites!

LOTS of recent news relating to the copying of DVDs.

If you havn’t been watching, lets go through a brief history and some of the semantics:

Nearly as quickly as DVDs were released, there were countless software packages that would allow you to make a copy of your DVD for “archival purposes”. I remember seeing the shelves full of at least 30 different packages. The industry (specifically led by the MPAA – more on that in a minute) responded with a specific copy protection involving “CSS encryption” and even mroe importantly, they pioneered through the courts a bill that made breaking that encryption illegal. The laws have actually been a bit vague and subject to interpretation, but while making a personal backup copy is not explicitly illegal, breaking the precious CSS is.

MPAA – the motion picture association of america is an organization set up for the studios to “collaborate” – originally the primary use was for ratings (self regulation and governmental compliance) but over the last 10 years it has become an organization primarily focused with content protection. The major studios all contribute and the big expendature now is on lawyers. They made some HUGE advances in copy protection and more importantly in influencing legislation.

They are, in fact, the source of all the hype about copy protection. Are movies stolen? yes, absolutely they are. From pirated physical DVDs sold usually out of developing countries and New York Street corners to digital downloads via peer-to-peer networking, literally thousands of copies of media change hands regularly. I’ve been in countless Chinese malls with stores specializing in pirated movies, music, and software. But should it be the number one international issue? The last few WTO and international head of state visits particularly between the US and China/India/Indonesia have focused on “digital rights infringement”. It seems it has become the biggest topic, ousting even human rights, poverty, and cooperative medical issues. If there were ever a clearer picture of politicians in the pocket of an industry it woul dbe this one. When the large releases approach $100M of revenue on the opening weekend alone, it is hypocritical to whine about the thousand copies of a film that leaked out  and are causing irreprable harm to the industry – huh?

Should people copy and share movies? No, of course not, but this issue stands directly in the way of what people “really want” in a digital home… That is instant access to their entire movie collection. Without the ability to rip a movie and store it on a content server  for instantaneous access, we are all still stuck with running to another room, sorting through DVD/BluRay boxes, and putting it in a player. Crazy. What happened was that the studios realized (late because their normal position is to be behind a trend trying to slow it down) that people wanted instant access to their collection, they immediately decided they needed to find a way to make money EVERY time you pull up a movie to watch it. Buy a DVD and be willing to physically put it in a tray and you have unlimited access but want instant access? They want you to pay every time you push the play button – a new revenue model.

So companies like Kaleidescape and even RealDVD are being put out of business by a combination of progressive court rulings and payoffs to politicians. Your ability to store your collection inside your home and have instant access is definitely on the wane.

What do the studios really want? An air tight copy protection and digital delivery mechanism where all media is centrally stored and it costs YOU real money every time you pick up your remote control.

People understand DVD copy protection and the motivation but the other one slipping into mainstream driven by the MPAA is HDMI. That great cable that allows a single wire to take HD from your source to your nice new HDTV is most definitely a trojan horse. The lie has been spread over and over that it alone produces the best HD video – why? Because it carries a special brand of digital copy protection – it makes sure that both ends – source and TV – are certified and liensed before it puts out any video. And yes both vendors have to pay exhorbitant fees and buy specific licensed chips for use in their systems – huge moneymaker. Will HDMI carry better video? No – Component video is just as good and for whole home video better by leaps and bounds but pressure by the MPAA has forced most BluRay players to reject putting out 1080p video unless it is via an HDMI connection.

Forget about anything else that irritates you, taxes, healthcare, international relations, this has become the biggest example of outright corruption on the part of the government influenced by a company/industry around. Why is it not reported? Who do you think owns the media – see MPAA member list.

I’ll be posting relevant links to news stories – but the one that got me riled up was the conviction of a guy recently for filming a movie – he got a huge fine and 2 years in prison. It was for a movie that made almost $50M on opening weekend. Clearly be brought that studio to its knees. Yep – he was wrong, he did something bad and illegal, but he just got his entire life ruined – yeah and his family too by the big studio mob using the puppet of their bought off courts.

I hope to publish the first section of PC-DVR overview this week, but I’m including a bit of a “day-by-day” journal as I think some of the things I run into will benefit others.

I started with an “old PC” I had in my garage – an AMD Athlon 2.2GHz with a NMT… Motherboard in a very nice “square” case that looks like it belongs under a TV. Strangely enough, this one had 3 video cards and 3 audio cards in it (long story but it was an initial demo unit for BOCS) running Windows XP.

First issue I ran into upon booting it up was that only one video card seemed to put anything out and it was not the primary so I could see a cool windows background but didnt have a taskbar, start menu, and when I right clicked and chose properties to bring up the video settings box, it seemed to appear on another display – stalemate – can’t see anything…  I rebooted into bios and noticed the onboard video was disabled – I enabled it and rebooted and then could at least see the primary monitor through the onboard VGA.  IF that hadn’t worked, the right answer would have been to remove all but one video card and start there.

OK – so now everything is working – I left 2 video cards (one onboard and one PCI-E) and 2 audio cards (one onboard and one PCI)… and added the Hauppauge tuner (PVR-350). Interestingly, the PC would not POST – It took three consecutive complete power removals for 30 seconds and then it posted fine.

Installed Hauppauge and GBPVR software and was immediately able to play movies (keyboard control)…

Oh, and don’t repeatedly stick your fingers in an 80mm fan – they have lots of momentum an dcan really slice.

DF

Its been quite an adventure so far, and now that we are up to about 100 pages, it is quite a document. I just finished and published the final core chapter on whole-home-video distribution. If you havn’t yet received a copy, feel free to grab one online at www.bocsco.com/prewire. Leterally hundreds of people have read and provided great suggestions and their own personal stories to go along with the text.

I’m going to take a slight diversion for a bit and do another series focused on building your own DVR – there are some great guides on the internet but I’ve not seen anything that covers the absolute basics for the beginner or shows you how to configure multiple outputs from a single PC.  I’ll do a formal writeup but also do a daily blog update on the progress.

Its going to get bust around here.

Howdy all,

Just a quick note to let everyone know we are out in force at the Houston Home and Garden show this weekend (Sept 18-20th) Booth #454.

I’m on the show floor now, and while it is a smaller show, there are some quality vendors here and well worth spending a few hours.

Free tickets are available on the show’s website if you print a coupon in advance!!

Stop by – I’m teaching a seminar on Whole-Home entertainment – I’ll be going through switched component video distribution as well as our system and even HD modulation over coax with honorable mentions to Zeevee and AVAtrix. That will be Saturday the 19th at 2pm at the Relaint Center. Everyone who stays awake through the whole thing and then stops by the booth to buy a system will get an extra free remote.

David

This might be the easiest, and at the same time most difficult topic for a company. How to do everything possible to please every customer and make them feel like part of the family. Everyone knows the old addage about pleasing all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time but never all of the people all of the time. I honestly thought that was wrong (I could please everyone all of the time) until this week.

We have always tried to go overboard, if we miss a shipment date/promise, we would do free shipping, throw in an extra remote, or offer some other high value apology. When we do in-home installs for people, we always try to help with any other A/V issues they have, go very conservative on charging, and go overboard on getting things perfect. Essentially we try to treat every home like it was our own.

The problem is that sometimes customers ask for things that, at least, seem unreasonable.  So let me pose this to the community, a hypothetical:

Assume: Corporate policy of 30 days no questions asked return policy and then a 1 year parts and labor warranty against defects. Also assume that for a standard $99 home install, we spend 4 hours in the home, added another $180 worth of accessories to get it all to work right, and made two other in home visits to get it all tweaked perfectly – all at no extra cost to the customer.  (Rare, but every once and a while you run into a home that takes extra time due to wiring, the kinds of TVs with cable cards installed etc.)

Then, 5 months later the customer says they want a refund because they decide they don’t need it. If we offer to make another visit and tune anything they like but cannot offer a full refund on equipment and installation – is that reasonable?

I know it may seem like I’m exposing a soft underbelly of self inspection here, but definitely want to know if the community is responsive to setting a line “somewhere” and asking to stay on this side of it.

Essentially, I’m trying to set the philosophy as something like: Make the customer feel as if they are wrapped in a warm blanket, but don’t expect any funny-business thereunder.

Who is a customer service expert who can lend advice?