Projects
Life After Comcast
After my second major power outage of the year, I figured it was time to revisit this project. I really enjoyed watching news and entertainment during the outage.
My monthly ‘nut’ has dropped a little. Netflix has gone up to $15/month while Fairpoint has dropped to $40/month (guarenteed for life) while increasing speed in both directions. WMUR has added a second channel (ME), and WLVI has added a second channel (TCN). I replaced my DB8 with a dedicated VHF antenna which has improved my WENH/WMUR reception to rock solid. So, we are pulling in 21 rock solid channels plus three iffy channels in Derry.
Most people thought the switch to digital tv would be the end of over the air (OTA) broadcasts. On the contrary, the increased efficiency has freed up a lot of bandwidth for new channels. In our market, there are six PBS channels (WGBH, WENH, WENH/Exlpore, WGBX, WGBX/World, WGBX/Create, and WGBX/Kids), QUBO, ION, ION/Life, RTV (WMFP), Universal Sports (WZMY-50.2), and This TV in addition to the channels we grew up with (WBZ-5, WCVB-5, WHDH-7, WMUR-9, WFXT-25, WSBK-38, WZMY-50, and WLVI-56). Most of these are broadcast in high definition. When I had both cable and antenna, I compared the same channel on identical sets and OTA looks much better. Others agree. If you can get a solid signal, reception is better OTA.
Receiving sufficient signal is the trick. In Danville, we have UHF and VHF (WMUR and WENH) stations in all directions. If you only have one TV, you can put a directional antenna on a mast with a rotar and get most channels clearly. If you have seven TVs, this doesn’t make sense. Initially, I installed an omnidirectional antenna in my attic. This worked well for the Boston stations, but WMUR, WENH, ION*, and QUBO sometimes faded and WLVI and WZMY rarely pulled in a signal. Now I have a pair of antennas coupled with a CM-7777 preamp (XG-91 for UHF and Y5-7-13 for VHF). I distribute the signal through my house with an EDA 2800. Picture quality and reliability are better than with cable or dish — and I watched the Olympics in HD when we lost power for eight days last winter.
Programming is where Cable/Satellite shines. If you are a FoxNews or CNN junkie, OTA is not for you. There is no ESPN or NESN, so sports fans may want to stick with cable or add an Internet Appliance to the mix. Baseball fans can subscribe to MLB.TV which can be viewed on an Internet Appliance (PS3, ROKU, Boxee Box, AppleTV, Media PC, etc). ROKU also has a free Newscaster application that carries cable news programming for the news junkie. For $60, you can watch HD internet TV on your television via a ROKU set top box. Digital channels are carrying some of the niche programming once reserved for cable. IONLife and the new PBS channels carry similar programming to Discovery, History, Food, and DIY channels. RTV (RetroTV) and This TV are like Nick at Nite was when it was good. If you like commercial free, unedited movies, you will not find them OTA.
We use Netflix (email me for a one month friends and family free trial). Netflix has 12,000 titles available for streaming. These include Starz programming, cable premier channel series, and movies. There’s always something on, but the movies are not as current as cable offers on Pay Per View. Of course, Netflix needs some kind of device to get the stream from the internet to your TV and I highly recommend Insignia Blu-Ray players. Insignia Blu-Ray players play BD discs, upconvert standard DVDs, stream Netflix, Pandora (internet radio), and CinemaNow (buy/rent). Even better, you can play media off a fat32 formatted USB device. I have 300 DVDs that I am too lazy to put in the player and have started putting these on a 1000GD usb disk. It’ll hold about 250 movies which you can queue up in a playlist (007 Days of Christmas?). If you are patient, you can get the wired NS-BRDVD3 (refurbished) off ebay for $60. The wireless NS-WBRDVD can be had for $90. I shop dealtree because they are a Best Buy store and RMAs are free and easy — if you get a broken box, they email you a label so you can return the defective unit for free. Cowboom is another Best Buy store that peddles refurbs. Of course, Best Buy sells new models.
One of the things I loved about Dish and hated about Comcast was the DVR. Dish had an intuitive program guide and DVR which we used to record movies and programs. Comcast had a poor program guide and DVR. Our Dish DVR was always full and, after a year, our Comcast DVR has only two programs recorded on it. I was delighted to learn that Dish made an OTA DVR that is every bit as good as their satellite model. This is as close to TIVO as you can get for free. The Dish model has been discontinued, but ChannelMaster is now selling these as the CM-7000PAL DVR and you can still find the Dish DTVPal DVR on eBay. I have two of these. BTW, these make excellent digital to analog converters as they have composite output.
Comcast is more than TV. Comcast was also my internet service provider and phone company. I switched to Fairpoint for internet. For $47.99/mo (two year commitment), I get 15m down and 2m up. This is more than enough for Netflix, VOIP, and online activities. I was going to forego a ‘landline’ since we all have cell phones, but decided to go with an OOMA Hub/Scout VOIP solution. I paid $205 for the hardware and the service is free for the life of the hardware (or the company). We’ve had this ten months, so my savings vs Comcast VOIP is already $300. I’m very happy with the service.
So, less than a year since my Comcast promotion expired, I am not missing the service at all. It cost me a little more than $1100 to for infrastructure improvements, but I have 21 channels (11 of which are HD), two DVRs, six Netflix clients (eight if you count the PS3 and WII), unlimited high speed internet, and unlimited domestic phone service. For all of this, I am paying $57 per month. That’s $100 less per month that a Comcast Digital Starter Bundle with two DVRs.
I don’t recommend OTA to anyone. I don’t get a commission if you subscribe to Fairpoint or Netflix and I don’t have an axe to grind regarding Dish or Comcast. If, however, you are wondering if OTA would work for you, here is a road map that I sketched as I discovered FreeTV. I hope it saves someone some time and/or money.
e-reading
I picked up one of the new entry level Kindles. I bought it because 1) it is cheap, 2) fits in my pocket, 3) uses e-ink, 4) has excellent battery life, and 5) turns on instantly. For <$80, I can instantly access a library of books, documents, and periodicals, read them outside in bright sun, and never have to worry about a dead battery or wait for the device to boot. The Kindle has exceeded expectations.
The kindle is rediculously inexpensive. The purchase price is $79. For $79, you get an e-reader and a library of thousands of free books, newspapers, blogs, and magazines. Amazon offers thousands of free books through their service. Select a genre, sort by price, and start browsing at the low end. Books can be borrowed from a public library via the Overdrive service. Sign up at the local library, then visit Overdrive.com. Books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, and other documents can be uploaded to a kindle using a free application called Calibre. For the price of a single magazine subscription, one can read forever.
At 6.5″ x 4.5″ x 0.34″ the Kindle is about the size of a small paperback book. It’s small enough to slip into a front or back pocket of my jeans. The screen is durable, scratch resistant Gorilla Glass, so I will actually slip it into my back pocket. The screen itself is about 3.7″ wide – a little bigger than the text area of a small paperback book. This is a good size for reading text and surfing the web. At 6oz, the Kindle is meant to be used with one hand. Navigation controls are on the side of the kindle so you can flip pages with the hand that is holding your book.
I find the e-ink display easy to read in bright or low light. It cannot be read in the dark. I may get a light for my Kindle. e-ink uses little power, so the battery life of the Kindle is, well, forever. I keep the wireless radio off except when accessing the internet or syncing content, and have never had to think about battery life. The Kindle shuts down during inactvity and powers on almost as quickly as opening a book. This is great when you want to peak at an itinerary while racing between terminals in an airport.
The controls work. The page turning buttons on either side of the device are intuitive. There are also dedicated keys for home, settings, keyboard, and back. Screen navigation is accomplished with a switch which can be pressed top, bottom, left, right, and middle. The middle button is the ‘do’ or ‘go’ or ‘enter’ key. The keyboard is simple to use but too slow to use for more than occasional data entry. Open the keyboard, move around the keyboard using the navigation control, then press the ‘go’ button to select a letter. No problem entering a word or url, but not something I want to compose an email on…but you can do that in a pinch because the Kindle’s experimental browser can be used to access most web sites including web mail clients. The best thing about these controls, is that you do not need to touch the screen. After a week of use, there are no prints on my screen!
Calibre is, however, what makes the Kindle a must have device for me and is the reason my Kindle review is stickied on the Projects page. Calibre automates the process for converting documents to an e-book friendly format and uploading the documents to an e-book. There are nearly 400 english sources to choose from ranging from USA Today to Al Jazeera to the Boston Globe to Dilbert to Gizmodo to the Wall Street Journal. Select the source, choose download frequency and time, and provide credentials (if necessary). As long as you keep Calibre running, it will download, format, and push selected content to your kindle.
Logitech Harmony 300: Cheap and Simple Universal Remote
Love is fleeting in the high tech universe. While I continue to use the Phillips SRU5106/27, I found managing them to be more work than expected. I picked up a Harmony 300 at Best Buy for $36 last week, and I highly recommend this remote control for people with complex entertainment systems. Why I chose this particular remote…
- Cheap (see above)
- PC programming interface
- Settings stored in permanent memory and on http://myharmony.com web site. Lots of supported devices
- Learning remote
- IR (will not affect devices in other rooms)
Home Network
Not much of a project, but less than $100 can simplify your home computing architecture. Our home is big and we have computers on three floors. The second floor is wired and the wireless router adds four wired ports in the basement. One of these ports pops up behind the TV in the living room where a switch services the WII, the PS3, and a BD player. The rest of the first floor is serviced by the wireless router in the basement. And there are the laptops and the Zunes and everything else. Most of the newer devices have N+ radios and the basement router is b+g so, hoping to add a little range and speed, I decided to upgrade. For $40 I got a Belkin F5D8235-4 from Amazon.com (gold box). Besides N+ wireless, this router has an integrated four port gigabit switch and a USB port. The N devices now get fast service in every nook and cranny of the house. Surprisingly, the same is true for my G devices. That USB port is for a USB disk. This router is also a NAS server. We can share files without worrying about XP-Linux-Vista-Win7 incompatabilities. The 1t disk was $50 at Staples on BF. I formatted it with extended fat32 to avoid permissions issues. The router also has a ‘hotel’ mode. This gives my [kids'] guests access to the internet without granting access to my home network.
SRU5106/27: Cheap and Simple Universal Remote
If you have a couple devices attached to a couple televisions, you probably have piles of remote controls. We had five remotes just for the living room. Finding a remote that would control all these devices was not difficult. Finding one that I could afford to place next to every set in my house, was a challenge. I chose the Phillips SRU5106/27. Woot.com had these for $10 for a two pack plus a flat shipping rate of $5. I bought six for $35 — less than $6 each. Why I chose this particular remote…
- Cheap (see above)
- Settings stored in permanent memory (no need to reprogram after battery change)
- Lots of supported devices
- Learning remote
- IR (will not affect devices in other rooms)
Another welcome feature is the ability to configure the volume buttons to affect the HTIB volume no matter what mode was selected. You can use the learning feature to assign your own functions to any button in any mode. For instance, my DVR has a DVR button that goes to recordings without using the menu system. There is no corresponding button on the Phillips remote, so we programmed the unused INPUT button for this. The only challenge was configuring this remote to control my Insignia blu-ray players. The trick was to configure a mode button as an audio device then learn all the codes for the Insignia player…
First Step: Program an unused mode button as an audio device. I used the Insignia audio device, but I don’t think it matters which one. I used the DVD mode button, but I believe this with work with any mode except TV (which is special).
- press and hold the SETUP button until it lights solid
- press and release the MODE button
- enter 1 2 0 8 on the keypad
The LED will go out to indicate success.
Second Step: LEARN the commands for the Insignia remote. Place the remotes head to head on a smooth surface about an inch apart. If you are having problems, turn off ambient lighting. Apparently some of the low power lights and even TVs can affect the interpretation of IR signals.
- press and hold the SETUP button until it lights solid
- press and release the MODE button
- press and release the LEARN button
- press and release the button you want to learn on the Phillips remote
- press and release the button you want learned on the Insigina remote
Repeat steps 4 and 5 until all functions are learned then press the SETUP button to exit learning mode.
Magnetic Tape to Optical Disc to Magnetic Disk
VCRs were awesome! When my dad got our first VHS VCR we paid someone to transfer all his home movies to tape. A whole box of movies fit on one tape. When I got my first DVD recorder, I recorded our valuable VHS tapes to optical disc by connecting the two devices with composite cables. Now I’m copying my important DVDs (including those home movies) to magnetic media so that I can watch them any time I want.
This project was inspired by my purchase of an Insignia NS-BRDVD3. I bought this inexpensive blu-ray player so that I could watch Netflix and BD movies in my bedroom (we had a PS3 in the living room). One of the features was the ability to play videos and images on a thumb drive. Turned out it would also play videos and images off a properly formatted (fat32) USB disk. After some experimentation, I discovered a format that looked great, produced a small file, and played on the Insignia appliance. We are converting a library of 200 lawfully acquired DVDs. This activity is sanctioned by the Library of Congress’ statement on Exemptions from Prohibition on Circumvention of Technological Measures that Control Access to Copyrighted Works dated July 26, 2010.
This is a two step process accomplished with three opensource/freeware softwares. I use a utility called Fat32 Formatter to format the target USB disk, DVDSmith to rip the DVD to a file set, and Handbrake to encode the files for playback. The settings and steps below work for the Insignia devices and look great when played on a 720p tv. Settings to suit your hardware may be different, but this should get you started…
Fat32 formatter is pretty straight forward — plug in your usb disk, select your USB disk, and click the Initialize button. DVDSmith is just as easy — run the program, select Full Disc as backup mode and click the Start Backup button. Once you have your decrypted DVD on your hard drive, Handbrake re-encodes it in a format that will play on your set top box.
- Open Handbrake
- Click the Source button and select DVD/VIDEO_TS Folder
- Browse to the folder created with DVDSmith and click OK
- Edit the name of your output file and select MKV as the output container type
- Under the Video tab, select target size, enter 2000 as the target size, and click the 2-pass encoding option
- Click the start button
Copy the movie to your USB disk, plug that into your player, and see if the file works. If not, you may need to adjust the settings. If the quality isn’t acceptible, you can increase the size of the output file. Fat32 files can be up to 4G. Some players have problems with files larger than 2G and 2G files look fine on my 720p sets, so that is my preference.
