The Richter Scale^®

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’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”. 

One of my many projects includes playing with WebCams in interesting places. In the last few weeks, with help from friends, I have managed to install a new underwater WebCam and move another one as well as install another top side WebCam here on the island of Bonaire.

View from the new Bonaire Pier ReefCam

View from the updated Bonaire Wreck ReefCam

The new Yellow Sub PierCam

The above are images from these various cameras. The Pier ReefCam is an interesting design. I used a waterproof NTSC bullet camera (so named because of its shape), encased it in resin, protected the cable with an off-the-shelf garden hose, and then mounted it on a 2x4. It’s not pretty, as seen below, but it gets the job done.

The new Bonaire Pier ReefCam

Live images from these cameras can be found at http://www.BonaireWebCams.com.

Back at CES earlier this year I was loaned a novel portable scanner by Planon - the DocuPen RC800 Color, which I will refer to as the “DocuPen” in the rest of this post.

I have since returned the DocuPen, but with a bit of remorse. Not because I was putting it to ample use (I only used it for testing, and nothing more), but more because I keep thinking I might need it at some point and miss having it available for some special occasion.

The $299 DocuPen RC800 looks like a pen on steroids, although perhaps the term “wand” might be more appropriate. The DocuPen needs to be bigger than a pen though, so it can scan an 8.5” wide piece of paper in one pass. The DocuPen is lightweight, has an integrated battery, takes microSD cards for memory storage, and pretty easy to use.

To use it, you press one of the buttons on the device, use another button to cycle through your scanning options (black & white or color; resolution; etc.) and then slowly drag it across the surface you want to scan. It doesn’t have to be a paper - it could be a painting, a poster on a wall, or any subject that is flat and smooth, in any orientation (horizontal on a table or the ground or vertical on a wall, for example).

The maximum speed of dragging is determined by the amount of data being scanned - color, high resolution scans necessarily take longer than low resolution blank & white scans. The number of pages of scans is also determined by the content, as well as the size of the memory card installed in the device.

You can transfer the data from the DocuPen to a PC using either the included super-mini USB cable (smaller than mini-USB) or by removing the memory card and using the supplied external USB reader to read it. I had problems doing the latter on a system without the proper DocuPen software installed even though, theoretically, the memory card should show up as a memory device, but it was also easier to just plug in the cable instead of remove the memory card).

Scans were of good quality, and the software supplied by Planon simple to use. A copy of PaperPort was also included in the distribution I received.

Another cool idea was including something along the lines of a universal charger in the box (which is a nice metal box, incidentally). You use a wall outlet to charge a small battery pack and then use the battery pack to charge the DocuPen. It sounds a bit odd, but once I had this explained to me by Planon’s staff at CES, I was up and running. The box also includes a few additional charger tips for other popular portable electronics devices.

Overall the DocuPen RC800 is a nice, well-featured product.

But, being in my office most of the time, I found my Fujitsu SnapScan to be so much more convenient to use that I never used the DocuPen outside my testing, which reminded me that each thing has its place in the world, and for me, the DocuPen was not an office scanning tool.

What the DocuPen RC800 color is, is an on-the-go scanning tool, and hence my remorse. I’m going on several multi-week trips with my family in the coming 12-18 months, in some cases to rather remote locations (no so remote there’s not a real bathroom present, but remote enough that technology to scan may not be readily available. And in those cases, the DocuPen may well come in handy. Although, even that said, I have found it relatively easy to take digital photos of documents, plaques, etc., for later use. The resolution of a digital camera is not nearly as good as that of the DocuPen, but convenience is an issue.

Even so, the DocuPen RC800 could still have a place - albeit a small one - in my carry-on, just in case.

While Microsoft’s apparent goal with their gaming hardware - first the Xbox and then the Xbox 360 - is to have it be ubiquitous, and in conjunction with that, sell lots of Xbox Live memberships, their implementation and support of multiple Xbox households sucks, to put it bluntly. At one point I had several Xbox in my house, and yet another in my office in Texas. Because of the lack of portability of Xbox Live accounts, I had set up three Xbox Live accounts on those various systems.

When the Xbox 360 came out, I got two separate Xbox Live Gold accounts for similar reasons (and thanks to Xploder’s Xbox 360 Cheat Saves I can actually use the same Xbox Live Gold Gamertag on two different Xbox 360s, so my third Xbox 360 shares with one of my other ones).  After a few months of parallel uses, I bundled up the original Xbox systems in my house and put them away, seeing as many of the Xbox games I liked to play worked on the Xbox 360 (or at least there was indication they would be supported sooner or later).

So now, a year later, I start getting these “Automatic Renewal Notification for Yearly subscription to Xbox Live” e-mails from Microsoft telling me I will be automatically billed for a renewal of my old Xbox Live accounts. The e-mail says:

Dear Jake Richter,

Your subscription to Yearly subscription to Xbox Live is scheduled to be automatically renewed on Monday, April 16, 2007. Here is a description of the service:

We’re glad that you’ve chosen to challenge your friends in the ultimate high-speed gaming arena, with access to downloads, tournaments, and exclusive features like your unique gamertag and friends list across every game. Your subscription to Xbox LiveTM covers 12 months of Xbox LiveTM service. For this subscription you will be charged $49.99 per year, plus applicable taxes. Unless you cancel your subscription before it ends, you will automatically renew to the currently selected renewal subscription type at the then current price, which is viewable in the Account Management section of the Xbox Dashboard. For information about cancelling your subscription and the refund policy for your subscription, please see http://www.xbox.com/live/accounts.

Please confirm that your account and payment information is up to date.

To update your credit card information, go to the Xbox Dashboard, select Xbox Live, and then select Account Management and update your billing information. If you have any questions, please go to http://www.xbox.com/support or call Xbox Customer Support at 1 (800) 4MY-XBOX.

Thank you for using Microsoft Online Services.

The Xbox Live team.

Note: Please do not respond to this message.
To receive notifications at a different e-mail address, go to the Xbox Dashboard, select Xbox Live, and then select Account Management and update your billing information.

It was very nice of them to notify me about this pending renewal, so I figured I would go and cancel the account since I no longer needed it. But I could not do so.

Notice something missing in Microsoft’s message? First, there’s no account ID information in the e-mail. So, I have no idea what account this refers to, and being an aging 42 years old, I no longer remember my exact account names.

Second, the only way to access my account is through the Xbox Live interface on the Xbox consoles. But the three consoles, which each have separate Xbox Live accounts (and I have no idea which one this renewal notice refers to), are either somewhere in my vast storage unit, or in my office in Texas a couple thousand miles away from here on Bonaire, and I’m not about to buy a plane ticket just to cancel the account. Note that I did try the support link shown in Microsoft’s e-mail, but that was useless, as there’s no account management option for Xbox Live accounts on the web site - you have to use the Xbox to get in. And even if there were, I have no idea what the Gamertags to use would be because Microsoft chose to not include them in the renewal notice to me.

So, I do the next thing Microsoft suggests. Twice. I call Xbox Customer Support at 1-800-4MY-XBOX. You may remember the outsourcing outcry during the last presidential elections. Well, people should not have been complaining about jobs being lost to Indian telecomm workers but instead to the absolutely horrific level of support those Indian telecomm people provide.

Both my lengthy calls went something like this - and I should note that there was huge amounts of background noise, so I could not hear the support guy very well (and that was on top of interpreting his accented English):

Me: Hi, I just got a renewal notice for one of my Xbox Live accounts, but I need to cancel it.

Jeem Bahb the Indian Support Dude (not his real name): What is your gamer tag?

Me: I don’t know. I have five of them, but don’t know exactly what three of them are. This is one of those three.

Jeem Bahb: Five? (he sounds puzzled)

Me: Yes. I have lots of different systems and accounts.

Jeem Bahb: Why?

Me: Because I do. Some of my systems are in different locations too.

Jeem Bahb: But I need your gamer tag to help you.

Me: I don’t know the one the notice refers to. Would be nice if your notice mentioned the gamer tag so I could tell you. Can you find it some other way?

Jeem Bahb: No. Well, maybe. Let me put you on hold. (Goes away for several minutes)

Jeem Bahb: Ok. What’s your address?

Me: Well, I’m on the Caribbean island of Bonaire, but how does that help you?

Jeem Bahb: I need an address.

Me: What kind of address?

(This exchange goes on for a bit and I finally get him to explain he needs my billing address for the account so he can attempt to use that to look things up.)

Me: I don’t know which credit card I used on the account in question, and the credit card would determine the billing address. How about I give you one of my billing addresses and you see what you can find?

Jeem Bahb: Ok.

Me: (I give the address over about a three minute span, because Jeem Bahb either can’t spell, is dyslexic, or something - I keep having to repeat myself)

Jeem Bahb: Be right back (goes away for five minutes)

Jeem Bahb: I’m sorry, but I can’t find it.

Me: Well, could you look it up by my e-mail address?

Jeem Bahb: Maybe. What is the e-mail address?

Me: (same agonizing effort to get him to copy my e-mail address down properly)

Jeem Bahb: Be right back (goes away for several more minutes)

Jeem Bahb: Oh, and I need your gamer tag too.

Me: Can I speak with your supervisor?

Jeem Bahb: I don’t know. Let me see. (goes away for several more minutes, comes back to ask me to hold some more, and then goes away again. I hang up during this last wait)

The second attempt at resolving this by phone did not go much better (actually I think it was worse, as I had guesses on the gamertags in question, but still could not get them to assist - they suggested I get on my Xbox to manage my account). All this left me with a rather sour taste in my mouth when it comes to both Microsoft Xbox support as well as the outsourcing of support to India.

But I did not feel entirely defeated. I figured I had one last option - I tried using e-mail support as suggested on an obscure page of the Xbox web site.

Here’s what I sent them:

Service:
Xbox Live

What type of problem do you have?
xbox live - other

Full Name:
Jake Richter

What e-mail address would you like a response sent to?
jake@xxxxx.yyy

Be specific when describing your problem. The details that you include enable us to promptly send you the most likely solution to your issue.
According to an e-mail from Microsoft I was billed yesterday for an Xbox Live Renewal. However neither of my two Xbox Live Xbox 360 accounts were due for renewal, so the e-mail must refer to one of my old and abandoned *or so I had hoped* regular Xbox Xbox Live accounts. I no longer have access to any of those 3 Xbox systems, and as your e-mail made no reference to the gamer tag it was renewing, I have no idea what’s up. The renewal e-mail was sent to jake@xxxxx.yyy, and had a date of 03/21 - hopefully that will help you locate it. Please reverse the charge and cancel the related Xbox Live account’s automatic renewal - it’s probably one of these gamer tags: [redacted1], [redacted2], or [redacted3].

Oh, and please, in future renewal e-mails, list the Gamer Tag and provide a Web-based method of being able to access the account. Requiring someone who might have multiple accounts to guess/remember what the e-mail refers to is stupid. And requiring people to have to use their console to manage the billing on the account is equally inane, especially in a world moving to the next gen consoles from the previous generation, where even more confusion arises.

Which operating system are you using?Windows XP: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070309 Firefox/2.0.0.3

Which browser are you using: Firefox2.0.0.3

Location: en-us - English (United States)

Type of Support: E-mail Support

The eminently useful reply I got back was one I should have figured on, but nonetheless it was still a rude shock:

Hello Jake!

Thank you for writing Xbox Customer Support!

We deeply apologize for the inconvenience. I understand that you have problem with regards to billing and cancellation of your Xbox Live account.

But all cancellations, billing questions, inquiries, and account or subscription problems are being address through our phone support line. We at email support lines do not have the capabilities to process your request. Proper troubleshooting and immediate action will be given to your inquiries or request. It is best that you call the Xbox Customer Support number for better assistance; United States and Canada: 1-800-4MY-XBOX (1-800-469-9269) International direct dial to US: 1- 425-635-7180.

For further assistance, please don’t hesitate to write back or call Xbox Phone Support at your earliest convenience, and we will be happy to help you.

Xbox Customer Support Hotline: 1-800-4MY-XBOX (1-800-469-9269)

International (direct dial to U.S.): 425-635-7180

Sincerely,

Jay

Xbox Customer Care Team

So, basically, they suggested I go back to phone hell. I tried to point this out to them:

I have attempted to do this with your phone support group and they are, sad to say, completely useless. First, the Indian gentleman I spoke with was very difficult to hear because of an incredible amount of background noise in his call center. Second, he could not fathom why someone might have five different Xbox Live accounts. Third, he was unable to look up which gamer tage/Live ID it was that the e-mail from Microsoft referenced.

Please escalate this to a supervisor.

Jake Richter

The response was a bit more helpful, assuming I was willing to subject myself to Indian support phone torture, which I was not after having wasted an hour on this matter already:

Hello Jake,

Thank you for writing Xbox Customer Support!

Thank you for writing to Xbox Live. I am sorry to hear that you had problems trying to cancel your Xbox Live Account when you called the Xbox Customer Support. It seems that there was a problem trying to pull up information for the gamertag that you wish to cancel.

We are more than eager to assist you with your concern, however, this support line is only limited to technical troubleshooting and Xbox setup only. Cancellation of Xbox Live accounts could not be done via email support line due to the inaccessibility of your secured customer account via this support option.

We are requesting for your patience to call the Xbox Customer Support again for the cancellation of your Xbox Live account be given immediate and proper action. Access to a customer’s account information requires high level of verification and or personal information could not be divulged over email. This is for the confidentiality and security of your account.

Again, we apologize for any inconvenience. Thank you for visiting Xbox.com.  If you need to reply to this e-mail, please reply ‘with history’ (include any previous e-mail) so we can expedite our service to you. If you should have future questions on Xbox products or services, please be sure to revisit our Web site as we are continually adding information to enhance our service.

Please call the Xbox Customer Support in the United States or Canada at 1-800-4MYXBOX (1-800-469-9269), at your earliest convenience, and we will be happy to help you. We are open everyday from 9am to 1am EST/ 6am to 10pm PST.

To expedite service, please provide Service Request Number 1032019023 when you call.

For more information about Xbox Live, please visit our website at http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live.

Sincerely,

Taynz
Xbox Customer Care Team

My reply was succinct:

So where do I go when e-mail support tells me to contact Phone support, and phone support has no clue what they are doing and tells me that in not so many words?

Jake

Microsoft Xbox Support’s reply was non-existant.

This saga ends with Microsoft somehow managing to charge me for a one year subscription on a credit card that had been cancelled months earlier, and my disputing the charge with American Express, who indicated they would be happy to work this all out with Microsoft on my behalf. Bless them.

But now I have a new saga to embark on - my inability to pay for a second installation of the Blastacular map pack for Halo 2 on the same gamertag. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I cannot download a second installation that I wish to pay for. I may have actually already been charged, but the system won’t let me download. The background is that I succeeded in installing the map pack last night on two of my Xbox 360s (each having a unique gamer tag), but this morning after I acknowledged my desire to purchase the map pack again, it failed to install on my third Xbox 360, which uses the same gamer tag for Xbox Live as one of the other systems. And the error message says I need to contact Xbox Support.

I don’t think I have enough alcohol in the house to dull the pain another call to Xbox Support would cause.

Update - May 25, 2007: I just found that American Express was not successful (in this pass) in having the charge reversed for the membership I could not get Microsoft to acknowledge nor cancel. Microsoft told AMEX that I apparently renewed the subscription. Not sure how that’s possible as they can’t even tell me what membership it is, and the Xbox it is attached to has not been used in many many months (and I’m not sure which Xbox it even is). I will note, however, that in the interim, the two other old Xbox Live accounts were not renewed and Microsoft was nice enough to send me e-mails to indicate my credit card for those accounts was invalid, which is as it should be, since I had cancelled it back in January. I have resubmitted my charge dispute to AMEX, with a link to this blog entry for further support. Let’s see what happens next.

My daughter is only a couple months shy of her 12th birthday, but already exhibits the sleeping habits of many teenagers. She ignores her normal alarm clock, cannot wake up easily, and sleeps through most anything, including her parents’ cajoling. Until now.

The folks at Hammacher Schlemmer are selling something they call the Flying Alarm Clock (pictured above). This $39.95 clock offers a rather unique feature - a rotor which is launched into the air when the alarm goes off, and which needs to be retrieved and reinserted into the clock to shut off the police siren-like klaxon sound emitted by the alarm clock.

And boy does it work. Our resident sleepyhead pops right out of bed when this baby is set off, alert and awake (and you’d know why if you heard the alarm - it’s loud and nasty, but oh so effective). She’s not happy at being awake or alert, but her adrenaline levels are high enough from hunting for the missing rotor while the alarm is blaring to prevent her from going back to sleep easily. Mission accomplished.

The only problem we have encountered so far is that a necessary part of the rotor separated from the rotor this morning (we had not snapped it in tight enough during assembly, apparently), and was temporarily lost, preventing us from shutting off the klaxon sound. We managed to use a pen to shut off the alarm in the interim (the only other option being unscrewing the bottom to remove the batteries). The missing piece was later discovered in a nearby laundry hamper.

In any case, I give the Hammacher Schlemmer Flying Alarm Clock a 9.0 out of a possible 10.0 on The Richter Scale. It is a perfect present to torture the sleepyhead in your family.

Time to dust off this blog. My wife’s knee replacement surgery went well a couple of weeks ago, and I’m back on Bonaire with the kids. While I was in New Hampshire during Linda’s surgery, I decided to buy a new Hewlett-Packard IQ-770 PC to put in my kitchen back home. The IQ-770, which features a touch screen and family-friendly organization software is also designed specifically for Windows Vista, and seemed like a good fit for family use in a central location.

Using Vista itself was a bit different, obviously, than using Windows XP, which we have all gotten comfortable with. Vista is flashier and prettier - that’s for sure. But on the whole, I still much prefer Windows XP. Here’s why:

- Vista’s prompts asking if I’m sure I want to run some software or do something it deems insecure drive me nuts. I thought the recent bought of Apple commercials with the Windows “guy” dressed in a suit and the Mac “guy” in casual duds to be overblowing the whole “are you sure” prompt thing, but jeez, it’s real. And annoying. I’m sure there’s a way to turn this off (have to go read my friend Ed Bott’s Vista book for this), but out of the box it’s a real turn-off.

- For all these protections, Vista still seems less stable. I had at least three blue screens of death during my set-up of the system when installing both new software as well as Microsoft-supplied updates. And the mouse stopped working after the system came back from being in sleep mode (a reboot fixed that and the touch screen got me to where I could reboot). Things seem to finally be working now, but getting to a working system with the software I wanted running was a hassle. For those wondering, I installed the Student edition of Office 2007, Adobe Premiere Elements 3, Adobe Photoshop Elements 5, Dragon Naturally Speaking (for Vista), and NaturalReader. Oh, and gobs of Windows and driver updates from Microsoft.

- The IQ770 has a 1.6GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core (not a slow CPU by any means) and 2GB of fast memory. So why the heck does it take nearly four (4) !!!! minutes to go from power-on to being fully operational? I haven’t seen horrific boot times like that since Windows 98 on an underpowered machine with zillions of drivers and start-up utilities. Perhaps regular folks can get away with not having to regularly reboot their PCs, but with all the blue screens and problems I found coming out of sleep mode, reboots seemed to be essential. At four minutes, I could probably hunt down a chicken, pry an egg or two out of it and have an omelet ready before the bloody system was done booting. Ridiculous and unnecessary. Note that this boot time didn’t seem to vary much between a clean system and one with software installed.

The one thing I have found in Vista that I like are the widgets you can put on the side of the screen, but that’s pretty minor. The IQ770 is presently in transit from the U.S., and when it gets here I will upgrade to Vista Ultimate when I have a chance to see if it adds any must-have features (from my perspective). One thing I would love Vista to have would be the ability to stream content FROM another Media Center PC, but for some reason Microsoft has determined that all PCs must be servers, and that only Xbox 360s can be Media Center clients. I already have three Xbox 360s and don’t need (or have space) for another one.

And speaking of the HP IQ770 - it’s a very interesting design, and the HP SmartTouch software seems pretty handy, although my use of it was limited in the few days I had with the system before packing it up. One thing that just floors me though is that the machine does not have an input jack for microphone. One of the things I want to use the IQ770 for is voice recognition. While the system does have a built in array microphone, that does not provide enough noise cancellation for my needs, and the handy headset that Nuance provides with Dragon Naturally Speaking is useless without a microphone or line-in jack on the PC. I’m hoping that a USB adapter for a headset I have here will work to overcome that issue.

In any event, so far Windows Vista has left me completely underwhelmed. I don’t know if that’s because I had higher expectations based on all the media fluff Microsoft has been spewing in my direction, or because I am an experienced PC user and have higher standards than an average newbie PC user. Either way, I’m disappointed. Vista is not the WOW that Microsoft advertises. It’s more like WOE - Waste Of Energy.

Over the prior few years I have spent more than half of my time on the road - at trade shows, business meetings, and vacation travel. And being the gadget geek that I am, I always carry around lots of tech toys, including a cell phone or two, a Nintendo DS Lite, a notebook computer, a camera or two, my Sony Reader, and my iPod.

As anyone who travels with lots of gadgets know, you generally need a separate charger for each device, which makes for a lot of extra bulk in one’s carry-on luggage (I don’t know about you, but I would never check vital chargers in my checked luggage).

About four years ago in a Brookstone’s at the Philadelphia airport I came across something called the iGo Juice70 - a universal power supply which came with a variety of laptop charger “tips” and the ability to also charge a second smaller piece of electronics at the same time as powering the notebook computer. I bought it and was immensely pleased with my purchase. I later found that they offered a three-way splitter for powering the smaller gadgets and got that too, allowing me to charge my notebook, cell phone, iPod, and DS Lite all at the same time. Wow. Plus I can use my Juice on airplanes where there’s seat outlet power in the form of a 12VDC car charger plug.

My first Juice adapter burned out about 18 months ago, which was a disappointment, but I bought a new one immediately at the Radio Shack near my Texas office and it has worked great, all over the world.

My only frustration would be (and still is) that I frequently get newer gadgets than they have power tips for, and thus have to wait a few months for them to have compatible tips for my gadgets. And I still have to carry separate chargers for the diverse camera batteries I use as I can’t usually schedule myself to use the in-camera charge for this. But that is not a problem iGo can easily solve themselves.

The biggest overall drawback I have found so far has been the price of the tips ($9.99 for each new one) and the power adapters (the Juice70 is $129.99), and I wish I could get a short 3-inch cord to connect the gadgets to the power adapter plug instead of the bulky “cord savers” iGo presently sells, as with all my gadgets, having three sets of cord savers takes up a lot of space. A tip organizer would be nice too.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, I met with iGo’s marketing folks who showed me a smaller, sleeker version of the Juice power adapter (can’t wait for that to be readily available), and something called the iGo powerXtender (see photo above) - a dual AA battery powered charger which uses all the same iGo power tips I already use for my gadgets.

iGo sent me an evaluation unit of the powerXtender, and I have managed to put it to use a number of times when I had forgotten to recharge certain devices overnight. Most recently it was my Blackberry on Bonaire, as well as my kids Nintendo DS Lites during a long trip from New Mexico to San Juan (while the whole family was playing Uno wirelessly on four DS Lites). The powerXtender lasted for about a half-dozen charges. It doesn’t fully charge the device it’s working with (at least not in my tests), but does provide emergency power, which is what iGo promotes the powerXtender for.

For $15.99 the iGo powerXtender is a great deal for existing iGo product users, because you will likely already have all the power tips you need. For people new to the iGo product line you need to be aware that new tips are $9.99 each, so if you have several gadgets this can get costly quickly, which might be an argument to just jump in with both feet and also get the Juice70 or similar portable power adapter too.

I give the iGo Juice70 a 7.5 and the iGo powerXtender an 8.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale based on my prolonged use of these devices and the drawbacks mentioned above.

The Blu-ray Disc camp has been crowing in recent weeks about how it has already won the next generation movie disc format battle, touting the fact that in early January, there were twice as many Blu-ray movies sold as HD-DVD. The Blu-ray folks are right, based on numbers I’ve seen, that they are outselling HD-DVD movies, but the differences are slim, and the numbers are very low.

Sony, in particular, has been posturing about the “large” numbers of PS3 systems sold since that platform was released in mid-November 2006. Every PS3 system incorporates a Blu-ray player. By my estimates, according to data from Sony and NPD Group, as of the end of January, there were 1.25 million PS3 sold (one million through end of 2006 per Sony, 244,000 sold in January per NPD). Combine that with the standalone players sold, and you add maybe another few hundred thousand.

That compares with just a few hundred thousand HD-DVD players in the same time frame - about 262,000 in 2006 (170,000 standalone units per the HD-DVD group, and 92,000 HD-DVD add-on Xbox 360 drives), and some relatively equally smaller number in January 2007. For argument’s sake, let’s say that by the end of January 2007, there were 1.5 million Blu-ray capable players vs. 300,000 HD-DVD capable players in consumer’s hands. The actual exact numbers don’t really matter, but what is striking is that this means there are roughly five (that’ 5!) times as many Blu-ray players out there as HD-DVD players.

But most of those Blu-ray players are PS3 game consoles. Sony’s posturing about Blu-ray player sales in the form of PS3 game consoles is just that - posturing. That’s because only a fraction of the PS3 users out there are buying Blu-ray movies. Look at these numbers from an article in Next Generation less than a month ago, where Sony Computer Entertainment America is quoted as quoting NPD Group as saying that cumulative Blu-ray movie sales at the time stood at 439,000 units vs. a cumulative 438,000 HD-DVD movies. In my book, that’s a dead even race. But more importantly, it shows clearly that people are not buying Sony PS3s to watch Blu-ray movies. If they were, the Blu-ray movie numbers would be three times what NPD Group says (according to Sony).

Those numbers imply a tie ratio - the ratio at which movies are tied to players - as approximately 0.33 for Blu-ray players, and about 1.4 for HD-DVD players. However, in the short run (i.e., the present), all these numbers don’t really matter because they are still pretty small in the grand scheme of things - high-definition movie playback is for all practical purposes still a niche market, and anyone claiming to be king of that market is making a mountain out of a mole hill. It’s not until the installed base of players numbers in the several tens of millions that this market will be a real mass-market.

So what’s Sony to do get people to start using their PS3s to watch movies instead of just playing games on them? I have a short list of suggestions:

1) Include a real DVD remote with each PS3. You can now buy a $25 Sony-branded Bluetooth Blu-ray DVD remote control for the PS3, but it really should be included free with every PS3 if Sony is serious about the PS3 being a real Blu-ray player.

2) Add an infrared (IR) port to the PS3 so that folks can use their universal home theater remote controls to control DVD and Blu-ray DVD playback on a PS3. For older units this can be a USB add-on, and for newer units it should be built it. Blu-ray is supposedly a home theater delight, so why shouldn’t consumers be able to use their home theater remotes to control it? Bluetooth is “cool”, but IR is the standard for remotes.

3) Provide decent DVD upscaling so that older DVDs still look decent when played back on the PS3 on that nice new HD-TV. This would provide people with greater purchase justification for the PS3, as they could then sell their old upscaling DVD player on eBay (not that it would bring in much money, but it’s still a great rationalization point).

4) Offer a breadth of family-friendly games so that moms and non-game playing spouses would feel better about having it in the family (or communal) living room. Nintendo has done this so very right with the Wii, but meanwhile among the sparse assortment of PS3 games, you pretty much have only Mature and Teen ESRB rated titles.

5) Include a way to write to PS2 game cartridges as well as the current optional dongle to read them, so that the living room PS2 can truly be replaced by a PS3, as opposed to only kind of, somewhat, almost replacing the PS2 (and that’s in the U.S. - European PS3 will have far greater PS2 compatibility issues when they ship).

6) Rebrand the PS3 as a Blu-ray disc player which also plays games, instead of a game console which also plays Blu-ray discs.

Without better addressing PS3 owner apathy in using the PS3 for playing Blu-ray movies, the tie ratio for Blu-ray titles to Blu-ray players will continue to embarrass the Blu-ray camp as it becomes more and more obvious that the majority of PS3 owners aren’t watching movies.