The Richter Scale^®

InfoWorld started a petition a few months ago to help convince Microsoft to postpone its plan to discontinue shipping Windows XP on June 30, 2008.

Of the more than a dozen PCs in regular use in our home and office, only three run Microsoft Vista, and they create daily administrative agony for our IT manager (that would be me). Software doesn’t run properly unless you’re set up as Administrator, and even then there are problems. Running files off our file server is problematic without further changes, network file copies are horrifically slow, the user interface requires re-learning, and the list of Vista woes goes on.

In short, Microsoft Vista is the bane of our networked computer existence here at Richter Scale central. So much so that when I was shopping around for a new ultra-portable notebook last month, I ended up foregoing the Sony TZ series I really wanted and instead chose the Fujitsu Lifebook P-8010, primarily because I could get it shipped to me with Windows XP instead of Vista. And I couldn’t be happier with that decision. Windows XP just works - it’s fast, efficient, stable, and not prone to ever constant security pop-ups.

While I can understand that Microsoft wants to sell more copies of Vista, efforts to force Vista down the throats of folks who don’t want to use Vista are not going to win Microsoft many friends. In fact, if my discussions with others who have problems with Vista are any indication, it means that there will be a lot of folks not upgrading their Windows XP-based PCs for a long time to come, if but only to avoid having to downgrade their Windows experience to Vista.

If you believe, as I do, that Windows XP needs to stick around as a supported and sold operating system, it could not hurt to make your voice heard by signing the Save Windows XP Petition.

When Amazon first announced they were going to be offering music without digital rights management (DRM) last year, I cheered, but didn’t do much else about it. However, while on an eight-week stint in a hotel in San Diego (which ended about two weeks ago) I decided to expand my music library, and checked out the Amazon MP3 download service. And I think it’s excellent. And Amazon’s DRMed Unbox video service isn’t too bad either.

The library of music content at Amazon is very extensive, with even brand new content available upon release by the record labels. And the prices aren’t too bad either - generally cheaper than the same music at iTunes, especially when you buy music by the album. I found album prices running from $7.99 to $9.99 typically.

To download a purchased album in MP3 format you need to install a small program from Amazon which actually performs the download, and, as I understand it, tags the MP3 files as being sold to you as the purchaser (presumably so that if you share them they can tag you for it). The Amazon MP3 downloader also lets you specify where to store the downloaded music, and you can also tell it to automatically add the newly download music to your iTunes or Windows Media Player libraries (but not both).

All the MP3s are encoded at 256Kbps, and sound great. Definitely a painless way to download music with no restrictions on your personal use of the files, unlike original iTunes songs. And, you can run the MP3s on any music player, whereas even the DRM-free iTunes downloads need to be converted into MP3 from Apple’s proprietary AAC format first.

As for video downloads, Amazon offers their Amazon Unbox service. This, sadly is DRMed, which makes it a pain to use, as you cannot convert the downloaded video into an MP4 file that you can play on an iPod, among other restrictions. Also, Unbox content is limited to either the machine you download the video on (for rentals) or you can designate two machines for “purchased” (not rented) content. Unbox works only on Windows-based PCs or on TiVo devices with current firmware.

Prices are the Amazon Unbox service are on par with iTunes - TV shows for $1.99 typically, and movies for around $9.99-14.99 (purchase) and less if rented. And, of course, some content not available at iTunes is available for legal downloadable viewing via Amazon Unbox and vice-versa. For example, we found Battlestar Galactica Season 4 on Amazon Unbox after not finding it on iTunes.

As with the MP3 downloads, the Amazon Unbox service requires the installation of a program on your PC. That program acts both as the video player and downloader, and does a pretty decent job. Visual artifacts in BSG4’s first episode were negligible on our 61” DLP display, and sound quality was excellent (and appeared to offer surround sound queues to our receiver unlike our experience with iTunes content on the Apple TV). Also, with at least the BSG4 shows we downloaded, we were able to start watching before the entire show had downloaded, so less planning required. We haven’t tested it with movies yet, and there doesn’t appear to be a separate category for HD content either.

The Amazon Unbox service, in addition to having less content (at least for what we’re interested in at this point), also has very strict requirements with respect to country of download. While iTunes lets a user with a U.S. billing address download content no matter where they happen to be in the world at the time of download, Amazon Unbox is very specific about the fact that downloads are only possible while physically in the U.S. This is similar to the restrictions imposed by the various TV networks on viewing past TV shows.

As I’ve stated before, I’m not thrilled with DRM because it makes you dependent on the vagaries and policies of the DRM provider, and you could well find yourself cut off from your content one day because of that. However, where it relates to content I am likely to only use once, like TV shows and movie rentals, I have less of an issue with it. I listen to my music library daily, so that needs to be DRM-free, but video does not - and if I want to watch a particular movie in the future, I can either buy it on physical media or rent it again.

I give the Amazon MP3 download service a 9.0 out 10.0 and the Amazon Unbox service a 7.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale. The only way I can see to improve the Amazon MP3 service is to have a more complete library of all music and audio content available (some of the music I was looking for was not available in MP3 form, but they do have an excellent collection). The Amazon Unbox service needs more content, including HD content, and less restrictive use of content - I’d like to be able to play it on my iPod and not have to have a “Plays For Sure” compatible device (which Unbox does support for purchased content).

I recently purchased the new Apple TV with the 160GB internal storage drive as a way to get movies and other iTunes video content into my bedroom. My living room has an HP Digital Entertainment System PC, on which I can play iTunes videos, as well as video from other on-line sources, incidentally, which is why I didn’t need the Apple TV there.

The Apple TV was a breeze to install, as I opted for the direct-wired Ethernet connection instead of connecting to my slower WiFi network. The iTunes software installation on my notebook immediately recognized the Apple TV and started moving content over to it as well.

One glitch I ran into was that the iTunes synchronization did not copy my entire music library over to the Apple TV unit - only the last week’s worth of new music (courtesy of Amazon’s MP3 download service, which I like better than that of iTunes). Turns out the only way to force the copy of all my music over to the Apple TV was to highlight my entire library and “mark” each item (via the right-mouse-button context menu). Once I did that and resynchronized, everything moved over properly.

Video playback on the Apple TV is pretty good for regular TV shows - I have it connected to a 32” LCD panel via HDMI, and the visual compression artifacts were negligible on episodes of New Amsterdam, Reaper, and Supernatural. We also took advantage last night of the ability to rent and watch high definition (HD) movies, selecting Jodie Foster’s The Brave One as our test subject.

The movie took about 5 hours to download over our 2MBps connection. We had purchased it on Saturday evening in order to view it Sunday night, so the download time wasn’t a problem. It should be noted that some TV programming can be watched a minute or two into the download, instead of having to wait for the entire show to download, by the way.

The HD quality of the rented movie was very good - I could not discern any artifacts. The only disappointment other than the weak ending of the movie itself was that there was no embedded surround sound in the film. I don’t know if this is a normal situation or limited to just the movie we selected.

All the ordering and downloading can be done directly via the Apple TV, or also on the associated PC running iTunes. And you do need to have a Mac or PC to get the Apple TV running, incidentally. To order via the Apple TV, just enter your iTunes account information and password via the cool little remote control.

The cost for the HD rental was $4.99 ($3.99 for the non-HD version), which allows the movie to stay on your Apple TV (the only platform it will play on) for up to 30 days, and once you start watching the movie, you have 24 hours to finish it. Not unreasonable considering you don’t have to drive to the rental store to get the movie, but more expensive than a service like NetFlix if you’re an avid movie watcher.

From our perspective, it’s a lot cheaper than buying the movie on Blu-ray Disc, especially considering it wasn’t that great a movie (although Jodie Foster’s performance was pretty good).

The Apple TV, in addition to being a music and video jukebox, also offers photo storage and a related slideshow mode, and also has a YouTube viewing option where you can look at the most recent, most viewed, most popular, and searched for YouTube videos. Nice distraction, although it also serves as a reminder of how inane 99% of YouTube content can really be.

The current price of the Apple TV 160GB model is $329, and you must have a usable Internet connection, a local area network, and iTunes-capable personal computer to make it work.

My only technical annoyance with the Apple TV hardware is that is on all the time, and it runs hot. You can shut down (i.e. put in stand-by) the video output section (which is a major heat generator) of the Apple TV by pointing the remote control at the Apple TV, and then holding down the “play” button for six seconds, but this was not documented anywhere obvious. I stumbled across this tip during a Google search about the subject.

In terms of content, iTunes has a great selection of movies and TV shows, but frustratingly iTunes does not have everything I want to watch - shows like Battlestar Galactica Season 4, Private Practice, Torchwood, Pushing Daisies, Dexter Season 2, and Dr. Who were all not available, for example, requiring me to resort to Amazon Unbox or BitTorrent feeds.

I give the Apple TV a 7.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale. It would rate higher if it were more eco-friendly in its power consumption and if it had greater content selection.

While on our travels in Fiji recently, a small creative streak overtook us, and we (the Bonaire-based Richters) decided to assemble an image for Christmas time and our annual greeting to friends, family, and associates alike. See below.

The above image is composed using the bark of a coconut tree, flower blossoms (including that of a Plumeria/Frangipani on top), and shells of small cowries found while wandering the beach, as well as a cork we found). The result is our Tropical Christmas Tree.

With that, we’d like to wish you all (early) a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Jake, Linda, Krystyana, and Bas Richter

If you’ve looked at the post below, you might know that I am traveling around the Pacific with my family at present. We spent the week of November 17-24, 2007 at Castaway Island Resort in Fiji, and during that time I got to do a lot of diving - more than I have on Bonaire in some time.

One of the many different (from Bonaire) and new (to me) creatures I found underwater were lionfish. I saw two different species here, one of which was the Fijian Spotfin Lionfish. The colors and textures of the fish were so impressive that I felt inspired to create a new piece of art in honor of that lionfish (see above for what I came up with).

My Fijian Spotfin Lionfish art will be made available later this month as a limited edition print both in our soon-to-be-completed gallery on Bonaire as well as on-line via http://www.RichterArt.com, in a series of only 25 numbered pieces.

Print number one of those 25 was auctioned off at a fundraiser at the Castaway Resort for FJ$425, with all proceeds going to the Mamanuca Environment Society - an environmental non-profit looking to protect Fiji’s reefs and nature. The Jones family of Singapore, bless their generous hearts, got the top bid.

Life as a home schooling parent has been rather busy of late, hence the lack of posts here in this blog. However, as part of our homeschooling efforts, we are also traveling quite a bit more now. To document those travels, we have now set up a new blog and web site to share our experiences with our friends and family, and anyone else interested.

That site is located at http://www.TheTravelingRichters.com. Please check it out.

All travel related posts and reviews that would have otherwise gone here in this blog will now appear there. I will continue posting technology comments and reviews here, however.

So, the only reason I am here just before midnight, Texas
time, at Dallas’ North Park mall is because I leave for home on a flight
in just over 8 hours, and there’s no Halo 3 to be found on Bonaire.

There are about 80 other people in line with me and my daughter, and I
am pretty sure I am the oldest human here (at 43). It’s all a pretty
sedate crowd too.

No one is wearing Master Chief uniforms or looks (much) like an alien.

About half the folks are using some sort of electronic gadget to keep
themselves occupied with the tedium of waiting in a non-moving line,
myself included since I am typing this post on my phone.

Ah, and now excitement mounts, kind of - we just got the 10 minute
warning.

I must say that the last Harry Potter book launch I went to was more
fun. At least we had wizards, witches, and Harry Potter clones present.
And there was much more squealing too.

I hope playing Halo 3 will be more fun than waiting to buy it. Wouldn’t
be hard. At least I know a little of what to expect, as I got a private
demo of Halo 3 from Bungie back at E3 in July, and played the
multiplayer Beta…

Update - 2007-09-25 @ 1:10AM: The line processed quickly and we were out the door with a couple of copies of the regular Halo 3 at ten past midnight. Glad we didn’t manage to pre-order the Legendary Edition - it would not have fit in our carry-on luggage.

I was in line to check in at the American Airlines Admiral’s Club in San Juan’s airport this morning, when I happened to overhear something about a “new program” being discussed with the passenger in front of me. Being naturally curious, I asked for details, and learned that as of this morning, anyone with a valid same-day ticket on American Airlines, and in possession of either an American Express Platinum or Centurion ("the Black Card") can gain free admission to the Admiral’s Club. 

This parallels similar club access already offered to higher level AMEX card holders for Continental, Delta, and Northwest airport clubs.

Kudos to AMEX and AA for working this one out (although I already have my lifetime Admiral’s Club membership, so it doesn’t do me much good). Unfortunately, the new relationship between AA and AMEX does not extend to transferring Membership Reward points into the AAdvantage frequent flyer program.

In any event, as an AMEX card holder, I was surprised to learn about this by accident, so I called AMEX customer service and was told they themselves were only notified of the new benefit last night, and that AMEX is planning on sending a letter to Platinum and Centurion card members later this month, and then doing a major public roll-out in October. Talk about a soft opening. Kind of like doing previews on Broadway, I guess.

More information on this new AMEX card member benefit is located here (courtesy of the Dallas Morning News).

I’m a big fan of using my media wherever I happen to be. I carry my entire music library on the road in the form of my iPod, I watch TV and TiVo via a Slingbox, and I have three wireless and two wired ways to connect my notebook to the Internet when I travel, so that I will rarely be off the grid. I also have set up a bunch of WebCams on Bonaire so I can see what’s happening when I’m away. I then came across Honest Technology IPTV & CAM Anywhere Deluxe, a $130 product combining place-shifting TV viewing and an integrated WebCam server (with a WebCam).

I’ve used the IPTV & CAM Anywhere Deluxe on and off for the last few months and find it an interesting product. I have also seen a number of features added and fixed via the built-in automatic update system (very convenient).

Because the IPTV & CAM Anywhere Deluxe includes the “MY-IPBOX TV&CAM - USB 2.0 TV/Video Capture Device & PC Camera” - a piece of hardware with a TV tuner and built-in WebCam - let me start with this box. First, in order to use both the WebCam and TV tuner functionality, you need two free USB 2.0 ports on your PC, as all of the functionality is exposed through server software running on the attached PC. The box also features a port for allowing composite or s-video input (and sound input), as well as cable TV input. For my testing I used the cable TV connection, as well as both USB cables. That, incidentally, required an inexpensive cable TV splitter. The actual device is pretty small, and when the attached PC is powered on, thus providing power to the device, a bright blue LED is visible in front.

Software installation was relatively painless, although I found a system reboot was required. I did have some issues with configuration at first because the software was using the TV tuner already installed in my PC, but after I changed that in the software configuration, all was good with the TV server. The TV server software and WebCam server software are separate applications but can be run concurrently. Both require the use of a login if you want to be able to access the TV playback and WebCam views from the outside world, and part of the IPTV & CAM Anywhere Deluxe package includes a code key to allow you to register for this login ID and on-line service via the web site at http://www.my-iptv.com. This integration with the web site also allows for configuration settings (like channel names) to be accessed remotely.

The initial version of the TV tuner server software did not properly allow me to auto-scan my available channels, but a later software update appears to have resolved this issue handily.

Viewing the TV output on a remote system requires installation of an 11MB “player” application. That too was simple and easy, and once I identified my server using the login ID and password, I was connected. Included is a very cool “TV surfing” feature, which goes through each channel, grabs a screen shot, and then creates an array of these images for a visual channel menu. It took about half a minute to create for the 30 or so channels my cable system here on Bonaire has. And TV viewing (with sound) worked just fine. There is presently no DVR (digital video recorder) functionality built-in - i.e. no ability to rewind live TV, but there is a recording capability available, and if you reside the U.S. and have a ZIP code and standard cable TV provider, you can use the My IPTV web site to select programs to record on a single program basis. I did not find any sort of “Season Pass” capability to allow me to record all programs of a particular title like TiVo or Window Media Center offer. And unlike Windows Media Center, you cannot edit the channel listings or assignments - probably not important to the average user, but those of us in places without ZIP codes need that feature.

You can also apparently burn recorded TV programs onto DVD, but I did not test this feature.

The only real issue I had with the IPTV & CAM Anywhere Deluxe was that on the Windows XP system I installed the server software on - and note that the PC and server software must be running to allow remote viewing - the sound of the TV program was always audible. Other than muting the system sound entirely, there was no way to turn off sound output for the IPTV server software so that I could use the PC to listen to other audio without sound “collisions” (interference caused by multiple sound sources being blended). I am told by Honest Technology that under Window Vista this is not an issue - only under prior versions of Windows, such as XP. What this means is that you should not run the server software on an XP equipped PC that will be in use by others in your household while traveling and enjoying remote TV viewing. I do see the reliance on a running PC as being an added imposition, mostly because of the additional power consumption and the unreliability of Windows over long periods of time, but I also understand the necessity, as otherwise this would be a much more expensive product (like the Slingbox).

The WebCam feature is pretty simply to use. The WebCam server supports the integrated WebCam in the “box”, as well as up to two other WebCams, all connected to the same PC via USB connections. That limits the distance the WebCams can be located away from the PC, and in practice, I suspect most people would not use more than one or maybe two WebCams. For my test of the WebCam server I placed the IPTV/CAM box in my living room (attached to my HP Digital Entertainment Center PC), pointed the box at the couch, and then used the integrated WebCam both to keep an eye on my kids in the living room while I was in the office, as well as letting their mom and grandparents in New Hampshire observe them. All they needed to do was login to the My IPTV web site and select the MY-IP Cam option, and voila, they could watch the kids be couch potatoes too. The only thing I needed to do was open up a port on my router to allow the outside world to connect to the PC where the WebCam server was running. This same router configuration also appears to have allowed the remote TV viewing to work.

The tiny little camera in the box provided reasonable enough clarity, and worked surprisingly well in low-light conditions (when the kids were highlighted only by the light from our big screen TV). It took the kids a while to figure out that I could see them from my office, after which they took to covering the box with a hand towel to avoid parental monitoring.

The IPTV & CAM Anywhere Deluxe package is pretty good deal for someone who wants to have both remote TV viewing and WebCam monitoring of the area near their PC back home (or in the office), especially consider the price of $130. You’d pay that or more than that annually just for TiVo or other integrated EPG service. Having the system require an operating PC is the biggest drawback I see, and mostly from a reliability perspective, because if there’s a power outage back home (or a Windows crash or hang) while you’re traveling, you might need physical involvement to restart the PC. Then again, we’ve had the Slingbox hang as well, requiring a power cycle to be done manually.

I give the IPTV & CAM Anywhere Deluxe a 7.5 out of a possible 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

Having caught the start of the Planet Earth series on Discovery Channel a couple of months ago thanks to the recommendation of a British friend, I was amazed at the incredible footage, even in crappy cable TV delivered standard definition mode. So I place a pre-order on Amazon.com for one of the HD versions of the series. I flipped a coin and picked the Blu-ray version (instead of the HD-DVD version).

I finally got the package in recently and the family and I settled down for a viewing, and found, yes, that the footage was incredible, but equally incredible was the horrific amount of shimmer and static noise that appeared in many scenes. I was appalled that what was being called the HD experience to beat all HD experiences could look so absolutely horrible on screen.

I was playing the disc on my Sony PS3, connected to a 61” Samsung DLP 1080p display, on which most everything else has looked pretty darn good.

And the noise was not limited to just the first episode, but each of the episodes I watched. The noise really ruined the viewing experience for me. I did some digging on-line, and found lots of discussion of the subject on various web sites - I was not alone in my static noise! But I then stumbled across a suggestion that it could be the display system used, and not the discs. I was skeptical, as I saw reports from many folks who had all sorts of different 1080p HD displays - not just Samsung, but it encouraged me to try an experiment.

Samsung offers something called DNIe (Digital Natural Image engine) on many of their displays, including the high end DLP displays I have been using from them for several years. DNIe pumps up color saturation and detail, and typically works very well to produce an even nicer picture. But, as it turns out, DNIe was definitely my noise culprit. Take a look at the images below:

Using the DNIe Demo Mode for Comparison

Close Up View of DNIe Comparison

As you can see from the above images, DNIe (on the left side of each image) darkens the shadows of these mountains in Venezuela (episode 3 - “Fresh Water") and then sharpens the noise to create an amazing amount of speckling. Any user of Photoshop will also recognize the effect here - it’s like using the Sharpen filter too many times on an image. The right side of each of the above images shows DNIe turned off. This DNIe comparison mode is a feature of the Samsung TV to try and convince people to use DNIe for viewing their programming.

Well, in the case of Planet Earth HD, DNIe is not recommended. It ruins the picture. I now wonder if some of the speckling I have seen in other HD programming is caused by DNIe or as part of the native imagery from the source HD-DVD or Blu-ray Disc. I know that film grain is certainly more apparent in HD, thanks to a demonstration Sony gave me back in January of Black Hawk Down on Blu-ray Disc - they showed me the original production tape and the BD version side by side, and the grain was identical. But DNIe could exacerbate the grain noise. And now I know to try watching with DNIe turned off to see if it makes a difference.

I suspect that other brands of HD televisions also have a feature similar to DNIe, and I would advise those having visual noise problems with Planet Earth or other HD content to try turning off that feature and see if it helps.

With my newfound knowledge in hand, I can finally watch my Planet Earth Blu-Ray Disc edition with pleasure and enjoyment. But also a little sadness as the HD versions of Planet Earth do not include the bonus features from the standard definition DVD release, including extensive footage of how some of the scenes were shot - something I particularly wanted to see in the case of the Great White Sharks jumping out of the water when feasting on seals off South Africa.

I give Planet Earth on Blu-Ray Disc an 8.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale (it could have been higher had the extra footage not been omitted).

UPDATE - June 11, 2007: I discovered that DNIe kept being reenabled on my TV, 30 minutes after I would turn it off. Turns out my Samsung TV was in “Shop Mode” - a mode for when a TV is on display at a shop, where it resets various settings, like aspect ratio, DNIe, etc. to defaults to overcome the effects of a consumer having twiddled with the settings and leaving them in an indeterminate (and maybe ugly) state. To turn off “Shop Mode”, power on your Samsung TV, and then hold the Menu button for about 5 seconds until the screen flashes. Note also for the Samsung TVs on which DNIe cannot be turned off, you might be able to get the same result by changing the video picture mode to “Movie” from “Dynamic”.