The Richter Scale^®

Before I launch into my latest Tech Annoyance, let me say some of this is probably my own fault for not researching as thoroughly as I should have had I been more cognizant of the potential pitfalls. The annoyance is two-fold, stemming from a combination of Dell’s design-your-own system options, and a lack of easily locatable documentation.

Part one of this is that I ordered a Dell system with 4GB of RAM, but because the system also has the NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 Quad-SLI hardware (which requires 2GB of memory mapped address space) I only get to use 2GB of RAM, and have the other 2GB just sitting there collecting dust. Dell’s on-line system creation system should have warned me of this, as should have the sales person I spoke with. Interestingly, the order system did warn me that I had no more PCIe slots left when I wanted to add the AGEIA physics accelerator to the system, so it works properly for some combinations of things.

A Dell technical support representative indicated that as my Dell XPS 710’s quad core Intel CPU also had 64-bit support, should I get a 64-bit version of, say, Vista, then I would have full access to all 4GB of RAM I purchased. Nice to know that, but not very helpful as 64-bit OSes were not offered by Dell during the system configuration on-line. I am using Windows XP Media Center Edition at present.

The other technology annoyance was that this great QuadSLI NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 dual-board set will not allow for dual display monitors when the SLI-acceleration is enabled. So I have to choose between running really fast graphics for games on one screen, and my more regular day-to-day work on two screens as I am used to. If I could dynamically switch between the two modes, it might not be so bad, but going from non-SLI to SLI mode requires a reboot of the system, and that is truly annoying.

So in the meantime, my second 24” Dell LCD panel is being used as the display for my office Xbox 360. Not ideal, but at least I don’t feel like I have completely wasted my money on the second display. Now I only need time to actually play games on the Dell XPS 710 and the Xbox 360.

At last month’s CES show, I had an opportunity to obtain samples of two products to help us mere mortals keep our notebook computer, smart phone, and PDA displays clean and crisp, without all those finger print smudges. Those products were Bart 1 Products’ “Peel & Clean” and Monster Cable’s Travel-Size ScreenClean.

The products serve a similar function in keep LCD screens clean, but Peel & Clean provides an additional function, namely cleaning the keyboard of the respective device. Peel & Clean works via a foam pad with adhesive on both sides. You peel a non-stick liner off one side, apply it to the keyboard of the notebook computer, peel the liner off the other side, and then close the notebook. And while not in the written instructions, Bart 1’s owner, Paulette Bartone (hence the name of the company), showed me that you could turn your notebook upside down, tap on the bottom to loosen any food, dirt, crumbs, hair, etc. that was in the keyboard so that it too would get stuck to the adhesive and be removed. The adhesive coating is supposed to remove all debris from the keys of the keyboard and the display. Once you open up the notebook, you remove it, and if your adhesive pad is not too dirty, you can reapply the liners and use it again at a later date (or on another notebook).

I followed the instructions, and while it removed all the dirt I could see, the results were not nearly as spectular as during the demo at CES (which featured a really grubby keyboard). But then again, I tend not to eat above my notebook keyboard. It should be noted that at least in the cases I have observed, the predominant cause of messy notebook screens is when human body oils left by fingers on the keyboard are transferred to the display when the lid is closed. The idea behind Peel & Clean is to reduce or even remove those oil/dirt deposits, but they go a step further and also provide this great “non-adhesive daily liner”, which provides both cushioning of the display, and a barrier separating the keyboard and display when the screen is down. For me, that’s probably the best feature of the Peel & Clean product.

Also provided is a “Smudgy” cloth intended to allow you to clean and buff your LCD display, but I found in my case it actually smeared the smudges on my screen more than it cleaned them.

Enter Monster’s ScreenClean product. It includes a LCD/display safe spray (doesn’t contain any alcohol either) which stays where you spray it, and you then use the included non-abrasive MicroFiber cloth to clean the display onto which one previously sprayed the ScreenClean fluid. And I must say it works great - better than any other screen cleaner I have ever tried on my LCD. No streaking, no staining, very fast to use and clean with. And it is also available in a big size for use on large screen TVs.

I liked the idea behind the Peel & Clean product, but perhaps because I am reasonably fastidious, my notebook doesn’t seem to get dirty enough to benefit from the cleaning power of the adhesive sheets. But the protective liner alone is probably worth the price of the product. As such I give Bart 1’s Peel & Clean a 6.5 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale. Peel & Clean for Laptops is $15.99 and for PDAs and smart phones it’s $8.99, ordered directly from Bart 1 Products.

Monster Cable has a reputation for solid, but expensive products, but Monster ScreenClean in the travel size is $17.33 from Amazon.com, and even less from a few other outline outlets I looked at. That’s the cheapest Monster product I am aware of. However that may be, it does an excellent job on my number one notebook dirt problem, which is a dirty screen (and my Sony VAIOs use highly reflective XBrite displays, so fingerprints can be very noticeable). I give Monster Cable’s Travel Size ScreenClean a very rare 10.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale. What pushed it to the top is that the Travel Size is 1.52 fl. oz., and non-flammable and can therefore even be taken in one’s airplane carry-on (even as part of the TSA’s 3-1-1 requirements for liquids), so you really can travel with it.

I have just posted a handful of my articles and commentaries from Jon Peddie’s TechWatch, an industry newsletter I write for regularly over on my Richter Scale Articles site.

Those articles/commentaries are as follows:

From the December 11, 2006 issue of TechWatch:

- What Was Significant in 2006
- Forecasts for 2007

From the January 8, 2007 issue of TechWatch:
- Bill Gates’ Digital Lifestyle Vision - Putting the Pieces Together
- LG’s New BH100 Super Multi Blue Player for HD-DVD and Blu-ray
- One size fits all, says Warner Bros. - New THD disc is both HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc
- To HD, Or Not To HD, That Is The Question

Hope you enjoy them even if they are a little dated (I only repost articles after the issue the articles are in has been superceded by a newer issue).

Sunday was a pretty miserable day for me. The Terabyte RAID disk array in my Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4-based file server I use here at home suffered a major drive problem that was not resolvable using the RAID system. In plain English, I had a system crash and data loss. I discovered this around noon, and had to cancel my plans to attend a Superbowl party hosted by a Colts fans here on Bonaire, as well as another social engagement later that evening. Instead I spent the day downloading new Red Hat install CDs, backing up my backup (I only lost about a day’s worth of data), setting up a temporary replacement file server, and building the RAID-based server from scratch. I ultimately had to rebuild it yet a second time, as the drive that was causing the crash was not the one I originally thought. By the time I was mildly operational it was 5am on Monday.

At which point I realized I had completely missed the Superbowl and, more importantly to me, the Superbowl commercials, one of my annual guilty pleasures.

Well, I spent yesterday in additional recovery mode, and am now catching up on my e-mail and work, again, but thanks to iFilm, I have been able to watch all the 2007 Superbowl commercials without the long gaps of football in between. My favorite is the Blockbuster Mouse Ad. The Snickers Kiss and Bud Light Auctioneer ones are pretty good too.

So here’s another one of my current TechAnnoyances. And this one is probably all Microsoft’s fault too. Late last year I bought a Hewlett-Packard z565 Digital Entertainment Computer (DEC). That’s a fully loaded Windows XP Media Center Edition PC designed to reside in one’s living room among all the other A/V toys one has (never mind that it’s very deep and wouldn’t fit on the shelf under my TV).

The Microsoft weltanschau (world view) is that all media should pass through a media PC, incidentally, which doesn’t work very well with a family that just wants to be able to turn on the TV and watch it without having to also boot or wake-up a PC and Media Center software to do that. But that’s a separate annoyance.

My particular gripe is that the remote control for the HP DEC’s media center functionality happens to emit a number of the same coded commands as the remote for the Xbox 360. And in my living room, both of these devices are situated close to each other (not that moving one a few feet would make much difference).

The one remote control button which really causes me grief is the On/Off button, as when I power off the HP DEC (which puts it into standby mode), on comes my Xbox 360. Conversely, if I use the remote to power on my Xbox 360, the power state on the HP DEC changes too. I’ve taken to burning the extra calories it takes - all two of them, to go and manually switch on or off the HP DEC and Xbox 360 just to avoid this Tech Annoyance. But sometimes I forget (or my kids do), and on comes the Xbox 360 when you don’t need it…

This morning a friend called to say that humpback whales had been spotted in the water off Bonaire’s Pink Beach area, which is only about a 10 minute drive from my house. Humpbacks are exceedingly rare here, so I grabbed Linda, a tripod, and a camera with a big lens, and headed out.

We saw two whales breach right as we arrived, but did not get a chance to take pictures - they went back under too quickly.

So while waiting for them to resurface (they didn’t do that where we could see them, and we had to leave after about 25 minutes), I spotted the above pictured special denizens of Bonaire, Caribbean Flamingos - more exactly a flight of them - coming back from feeding in nearby Venezuela to nest here on Bonaire.

The wide shot is what I shot with my Nikon D2x with a Nikon 80-400mm VR lens at 400mm. The close-up is a crop of that same image. Note the nice Bonaire scene in the cropped shot - blue and turquoise waters, sunny skies, a dive boat in the background, and of course, flamingos.

Living in the modern age we do, we become dependent on our technological tools working properly. And when they don’t work like we expect them to, we get annoyed. Case in point - Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 and capturing HDV (high definition digital video) content with scene detections.

As part of my raft of technology investments last year, I bought a Sony HDR-HC3 Handycam - a very nice and compact HD camcorder. I also upgraded my years old copy of Adobe Premiere (a top of the line video editing tool) so that I could attempt to edit my high definition video content.

One key requirement of being able to edit video on a computer is getting it into the computer in the first place. And Premiere Pro 2.0 has a very nice Capture utility that allows one to connect a FireWire (IEEE 1384) cable to one’s camcorder, and digitally capture the video off the tape. Another nice feature Premiere Pro 2.0 has is something called “Scene Detect”, which looks at the time codes your camcorder records onto the tape and when it detects a time shift, it ends one clip and starts a new one. This is a lot easier that the old way, which was to manually figure out where each clip’s in and out (start and end) points are and manually feed them into the software. Scene detection is nothing very new, but it is very useful.

However, here’s where the annoyance part comes it - Premiere Pro 2.0’s scene detection doesn’t work with HDV input. After scouring the Web, I found two solutions:

1) Use an external program to do the capture, like the free HDVSplit (I tried that and it worked for about 10 minutes before crashing, but it did work, and I’m sure I could have tweaked some settings to make it not crash); or

2) Switch the camcorder into DV (non-HD) output mode, use Premier Pro in DV capture mode where scene detect works to capture all the scenes on the tape, export a batch list of all the start and stop times of the DV captures, switch the camera into HDV output mode and then import the batch list of clips to use for recapturing all the HDV content in HDV resolution and format (see here for details). This approach, which is really more than twice the work (and time) than being able to do the HDV scene detect capture normally, does work. However, I found that you need to leave a dummy clip at the front of your tape, and a dummy clip at the end (otherwise you have to manually capture the first and last clips, based at least on the two tapes I captured this way).

Now, I ask you… Does this make sense? That a multi-hundred dollar piece of software which offers this scene detect capability in one older (DV) mode of operation can’t do it in the current mode (HDV), but a free piece of software can? Damn, I’m annoyed.

I’ll be back soon with more recent Tech Annoyances.

Last night I tried an experiment to see if I could get relatively inexpensive (sub-$300) HD-DVD playback going on my PC. The components of this experiment, other than the PC, involved an Xbox 360 HD-DVD Player and Cyberlink’s PowerDVD Ultra software.

I’m pleased to say the experiment worked. The $199.99 Xbox 360 HD-DVD Player (which I raved about here) is a USB 2.0 device. I merely plugged in the HD-DVD drive, waited for Windows XP to recognize it (I allowed Windows to go to the Windows web site to look for drivers too), and after around a minute or two, the drive was fully installed and usable as a DVD drive.

The next step was to install the $99.95 Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra software. The current version of the software (pictured above) installs for either HD-DVD or Blu-ray Disc support - you have to choose, although company officials tell me that as soon as next month, a free upgrade will be made available to all purchasers of the current version which will support both versions for folks fortunate enough to have both HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc drives in their PC.

The PowerDVD Ultra software comes with a tool called HD Advisor, which scans your system for compatible drives and to ensure your system is powerful enough to do a real-time decode of the high definition formats. The minimum requirements are actually not insubstantial, as processing high definition content requires a lot of CPU and graphics horsepower. However, if you do have a suitable system, it works very well. The only minor annoyance I found was the inability to turn off subtitles, but I suspect that is user error (or at least a lack of reading relevant documentation).

The other nice thing about this combo is that you get a free copy of the remake of King Kong in HD-DVD (at least as of last week), and a spare Xbox 360 remote control (not much use on your PC, but maybe you can sell it on eBay or use it with your Xbox 360 if you have one).

So, for $299.94 (not including any possible shipping costs or sales tax), you can watch HD-DVD movies on your PC. Not a bad deal at all (assuming your PC is powerful enough, of course).

I know over the years I have subjected many of my readers to the “woes” of living on Bonaire, a small Caribbean island with, among other things, lousy TV service, and obviously no U.S. ZIP code. You might ask why TV is even important when living in paradise, and would answer that mindless entertainment is needed even here.

The reason the ZIP code (or more specifically, not having one) is important is because it means we cannot get Electronic Program Guides - EPGs - see my post on “TV Time Shifting in Paradise” from over a year ago about this.

I have managed to cobble together a partial EPG on my new HP z565 Digital Home Entertainment Center (a Windows XP Media Center Edition PC that’s designed to sit in your living room) by using a Miami-area ZIP code, and then renumbering and deleting channels as best I can. It at least works for three major U.S. networks, Cartoon Channel, HBO, Showtime, and Disney, and has already been useful. As an added bonus, I can stream recorded shows to the Xbox 360 in my bedroom should I choose to.

However, an acquaintance recently reminded me that I am paying for an expensive business connection for DirecTV in my office in Marshall, Texas, where I only spent a few weeks last year, with the TV there being unwatched the rest of the time (and I only watch it for background noise in the evenings when I am there). The Samsung DirecTV decoder also has an 80GB driver and TiVo service. But, still it’s rather expensive per-hour viewing cost.

Around the same time as I was reminded of this, a couple of other friends mentioned that they had installed Slingbox devices so they could watch their home TV signals remotely while traveling. Ding ding ding - bells went off in my addled brain.

So, during my most recent visit to Marshall a few weeks ago, I installed a Slingbox Pro box (ordered from Amazon.com - about $218), and I couldn’t be much happier. The Slingbox Pro device takes video signal input in the form of either a cable TV signal, composite video or S-Video plus audio, or HDMI (with an optional cable) digital input for HD signals. I plugged in my DirecTV TiVo box, hooked up the infrared transmitters that come with the Slingbox Pro so they could control the DirecTV box, and I was off.

The Slingbox software, which maker Slingmedia calls “SlingPlayer”, was easy to set up - both to control the Slingbox itself, as well as provide the necessary controls on my notebook to view my TV signal. I also had Linda try it back on Bonaire after I set it up, and she was able to get it going there too. The really neat thing about SlingPlayer is that it knows all about the particular DirecTV decoder I have, and even has a virtual remote control (looks identical to the physical remote) that I can manipulate with my mouse. That in turns means I can access all the TiVo functionality of the box remotely too. And it all works over an Internet connection. The more upstream capability you have to send out a signal, the better. In my case the DSL connection at my office in Texas offers 768Kbps upstream, sufficient for a pretty reasonable 640x480 video stream from the Slingbox.

After I got back from Texas and CES I went and set up Slingplayer software on the HP z565 in my living room, and can now watch live TV from Texas in my living room. Full screen on my 61” TV is too grainy and jumpy, but I can get a decent image at about 24” diagonal, which is just fine to catch up on missed shows and programming I would otherwise not get. It also means I can stop paying $1.99 for missed episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, and Lost. And, I can also watch it from any PC with the SlingPlayer software. And for certain handheld devices, there’s even Slingplayer Mobile version for mobile phones and PDAs running the Windows Mobile operating system.

I’m also considering installing another Slingbox at my in-laws in New Hampshire so I can watch their TV signal here on Bonaire, kind of as a back-up of sorts (no TiVo there yet, though, but I can fix that too).

My biggest regret with the Slingbox is that I didn’t think of getting one sooner.

My next issue to solve is how to get a video signal from the output of my big screen TV in my living room to the small TV in my kitchen without running cables (my wife hates cables across the floor or ceiling). We have concrete walls, so there’s no good way to run them inside the walls. The concrete walls also effectively destroy my use of a wireless AV transmitter - those really need to be line of sight, or at least through a wood/drywall panel, not eight inches of concrete in order to have an interference free image.

However, if I wait long enough, Sling Media will be selling the SlingCatcher - a box which will let me use my network connection (wired or wireless) to receive TV input from a Slingbox either in the same building or anywhere else there’s a Slingbox I have access to.

I give the Sling Media Slingbox Pro a 9.5 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

Well, in addition to now being closely associated with discussions on the future of HD-DVD and Blu-ray standards, in particular with respect to the adult entertainment industry, a recent interview of mine has made it to the web (not YouTube yet, though).

Take a look at this clip, shot during a media luncheon at Pat Meier-Johnson’s Lunch@Piero’s event. It’s a five minute interview dealing with commentary on multimedia convergence and the future of tangible media (e.g. CDs, DVDs).