This project is complete for now. I’m waiting a couple of years to see how OLED or SED pans out before replacing the display, but the major additions are done.

TV: Samsung LN-T4665F 46″ LCD
Receiver: Onkyo TX-SR605 7.1 receiver
Speakers: Paradigm CC-70 Center, 4x Paradigm Atom
DVR: Scientific Atlanta 8300HD (running Passport)
Console/Blu-ray: Playstation 3 (60GB)
Console: Xbox 360 Elite (Falcon)
PC: Home-built Asus P5E-VM HDMI E6400 @ 3.2Ghz, eVGA 7950 GT KO
Music: Apple Airport Express
Router: Linksys WRT54G running DD-WRT
Power: Panamax M4300-PM Line conditioner
Remote: Logitech Harmony 550 Advanced Universal Remote
Keyboard: Apple Wireless Keyboard (aluminum)
Mouse: Logitech G7 gaming mouse

An AppleTV may be in the future, but $230 for the privilege of renting movies is not worth it, especially since I have a PC directly plugged into the setup. I don’t see any of the digital download/streaming services working for layfolk without a standard set top box solution in the picture. Apple TV is a possible contender to be that device. Using Unbox, Netflix, Joost, etc. made no sense until I had the PC jacked right into my HT setup. I don’t see any layperson going that route though.

I know I was a big proponent of streaming, but all the hassle of TVsersity, Windows Media Center, etc. seems like such a pain-in-the-ass compared to playing content directly from the PC in Zoom Player. I realize this is not a viable option for everyone.

This has turned out to be a fun (albeit expensive) hobby. I can wait to get a house so I can go big time with it.

With the introduction of firmware 1.80, the Playstation 3 has become a full-fledged media center device, thanks mainly to DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) support. There has however been a lot of confusion on how to get the PS3 working with the various DLNA and UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) servers. There are quite a few servers available, including TVersity, TwonkyMedia, Nero MediaHome, and Windows Media Player 11. This guide will focus on TVersity, as it is currently the most popular and full-featured solution available.

The main benefit of TVersity is its ability to transcode media into a format the client device can process. Currently, the PS3 can only render MPEG and AVS (H.264) formats. This is a problem because the majority of content available on the Internet is in alternative and open formats such as Xvid, Divx, and x264. This guide will explain how to optimize TVersity to stream these formats at the best quality possible.

What you will find here is the result of scouring countless forums, trial and error, and good old fashion common sense. The goal here is not to take credit for discovering the optimal settings for streaming media with TVersity, but to get everything down one place, written in a clean, concise fashion.

Step 1: Clean Out Your Codecs

The number one reason people have problems with TVersity is that the codecs installed on their system are not in order. The majority of “Unsupported Format” and “Corrupt Data” errors are the result of missing or invalid codecs.

The first thing to do is to get rid of all the disparate codecs installed on your system. This includes stand-alone Xvid, etc. codecs as well as installs you may not suspect such as Nero Premium and tools like AVI Splitter.

A good test to see if your system is clean is to try and play a Xvid or x264 file from Media Player Classic or VLC and it not playing. If the video renders there’s a codec still installed on your PC and you need to track it down and uninstall it.

Step 2: Install CCCP (Combined Community Codec Pack)

CCCP is an organized collection which contains all the codecs and tools you will ever need to decode the various media formats out there. It is recommended that you first run the CCCP Insurgent tool to verify there are no lingering codec packs on your system. After you ensure your system is clean, install CCCP and reboot. Do not skip the reboot step! It’s a pain but it’s important.

If for some reason you do not want to use CCCP, there’s the K-Lite Codec Pack. I found it does not play nearly as many files as CCCP, but it’s a good alternative. Do not install both! Another alternative is to install ffdshow by itself. You may not be able to play as many formats, but your system will not have a gazillion codecs installed (which some consider bloat).

Step 3: Install TVersity

The current version of TVersity is 0.9.11.4 (December 30, 2007). TVersity is very much a work in progress. It can crash or stop working at times but for that most part it’s the best tool out there for streaming media to the PS3.

TVersity consists of two components: The media server itself (which is invisible to the user) and the Flash front-end. The front-end does not need to be running for Tversity to operate. The media server runs as a system service. Unfortunately, due to a bug involving permissions in 0.9.10.7 the media server Windows service needs to be tweaked to ensure proper operation.

Go to the Windows Services applet (from the Run… menu type “services.msc”) and in the list find the “TVersityMediaServer” service. Double-click on it and go to the “Log On” tab and change the process to run under your Windows account as shown below:

If the service is not already started, start it. Also insure the Startup Type is set to “Automatic”.

At this point TVersity should be operational. I am not going to go into how to add your media to the server as that’s beyond the scope of this guide and it should be fairly straight forward.

Step 4: Optimize the Transcoder

The goal here is to optimize the transcoder to output the best possible video quality possible. Keep in mind that this involves a great deal of horsepower and network bandwidth. I am transcoding on a 3.2Ghz Core 2 Duo processor over a 802.11g wireless network (with an excellent connection) and have yet to hit my head on the ceiling with these settings. Your mileage may vary and if it does you will need to scale back where appropriate, especially if dealing with HD content.

Start up the TVersity front-end and navigate to the Settings->Transcoder tab.

When To Transcode?

This should default to “Only when needed” so keep it there. This will allow TVersity to pass-through MPEG and AVS formats without transcoding overhead and image degradation.

Maximum Video and Image Resolution

This determines how the transcoder will scale (down) your media in order to conserve network bandwidth. We want the best image possible so set both of these fields to the maximum resolution of your television. I have a 1080p native set so I set it to 1920×1080. If you’re at 720p set it to 1280×720. The “Image resolution” boxes pertain to photos, it does not hurt to crank them all the way up as well.

Windows Media Encoder

TVersity uses DirectShow under the hood to do the actual media transcoding. CCCP installs a DirectShow encoding/decoding filter called ffdshow which does all the magic behind the scene. Further versions of this guide will go into optimizing ffdshow for better video quality, but let’s get everything working first.

Make sure the “Use DirectShow…” checkbox is checked and that the Windows Media Video version is set to “9″. You can choose an older version of Windows Media for faster decoding but 9 produces the best image quality (at least on paper).

Optimization

This is a no-brainer. Tag it for quality.

Connection Speed and Quality

Here’s where things can get sticky. I’m on a 802.11g connection in a small apartment and have no problem settings the connection type to “Wired” and the signal strength to “Excellent”. If you notice network stuttering or dropouts definitely scale these settings back.

In my experience the PS3 does a thorough job in buffering content. As long as your PC can encode at a pretty decent rate (2x or greater) the connection settings don’t mean much as the PS3 will buffer way ahead of what is being played, assuming your network can keep up.

Compression

By transcoding we’re essentially re-compressing and already compressed file. This equates to a degradation of image quality. Set compression to “Minimum”. This is going to result in a larger file being sent over the network, but it results in better image quality at playback.

Decoding Speed

Finally, ensure the “Decode the media as fast as possible…” box is checked. The PS3 times out pretty quickly if the media does not load fast enough and this setting helps with that.

Step 5: Optional Tweak

Output to MPEG2

In the TVersity install folder (C:\Program Files\TVersity\Media Server) find and edit the file “profiles.xml”. Ensure you are in the “Sony Playstation 3″ profile block, there should be a block of code that looks like:

<!-- When transcoding is needed to which format should we transcode -->
<transcodeTarget
audio="audio/x-wav"
video="video/mpeg16"
photo="image/jpeg"
onlineAudio="audio/mpeg"
onlineVideo="video/mpeg16"
onlinePhoto="image/jpeg"
adjustReadStartPos="false"
audioFailFutureSeek="false"
videoFailFutureSeek="true" />

Change it to read:

<!-- When transcoding is needed to which format should we transcode -->
<transcodeTarget
audio="audio/x-wav"
video="video/mpeg2”
photo=”image/jpeg”
onlineAudio=”audio/mpeg”
onlineVideo=”video/mpeg2”
onlinePhoto=”image/jpeg”
adjustReadStartPos=”false”
audioFailFutureSeek=”false”
videoFailFutureSeek=”true” />

This will ensure the transcoder produces MPEG2 video as opposed to MPEG1, which results in overall better looking video. You will need to restart the media sharing service from the TVersity front-end after making this particular change.

Conclusion

You should now be able to playback nearly any video file you throw at your PS3 in high-quality. Granted, I’ve come across one or two files that refused to play (mainly video podcasts or Flash video) but for the most part I’ve been enjoying high-quality steaming media using TVersity and the PS3.

If you encounter any problems be sure to check the TVersity Support Forums, the PS3 Forum in particular.

Part II of this guide will go into further quality optimizations including tweaking of ffdshow and profile.xml hacking.

Enjoy!

I’ve made up my mind to never install Vista at home. As soon as my current desktop becomes obsolete I’m buying the phattest MacBook Pro available and going full-time OS X.

With every Microsoft OS for the past 15-years I’ve followed the same pattern:

1) I don’t want to install it.
2) I do it anyway.
3) I hate it.
4) I grow used to it.
5) New version, go to #1.

Time to break the cycle. Vista is such a clusterfuck there’s no way I can let myself become acclimated with mediocrity once again. I am not saying OS X is godsend or anything, it’s just a great alternative to Vista. Windows just not where I want to be anymore.

With the iPhone launch and all, I find this to be appropriate:

The BrownFury writes

“At an invitation only event Apple has released their new MP3 player called the iPod. iPod is the size of a deck of cards. 2.4″ wide by 4″ tall by .78″ thick 6.5 ounces. 5 GB HDD, 10 hr battery life, charged via FireWire. Works as a firewire drive as well. Works in conjunctions with iTunes 2. Here are Live updates”.

No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

Link

Scary man. With Google Maps Street View I can zoom right into my fucking bedroom window.

Google: They have my search history, email history, track me around the web via a cookie that does not expire until 2038, and now a picture of me in my morning best. Don’t be evil?!?

Time Warner Cable provides a Scientific Atlanta 8300HD box with their hi-def package. It’s annoyed me for weeks that standard-def channels have neutral grey bars on the sides of the display with no way to change them to another color, like, say, black.

I came across a rather inelegant solution, but it works and it beats looking at the annoying grey bars.

1) Tell the cable box to stretch the 4:3 image to 16:9 (press the # key to select “Stretch picture” setting).

2) Tell your TV to display the image in 4:3 (thus de-stretching the image). This will squish the image back to 4:3 but this time with black bars. Some sets do this differently than others so check your manual if you have to. Lucky for me this setting sticks for 4:3 stretched, but does not attempt to squish legit 16:9 content so I don’t have to switch back and forth as I change between SD and HD.

I doesn’t seem visibly effect the picture, but at 46″, SD looks horrible pretty much no matter what.

I understand why Time Warner gimped the box by disabling the ability to set the color of the bars (other cable providers allow this functionality on the same box). The phosphors in plasma displays could retain the black side bars thus discoloring the display. The color neutral grey consists of equal bars of red, green, and blue at 50% brightness thus all phosphors get equal work out. At least that’s my theory, and it sounds better than, Time Warner are simply idiots. Sucks for those of us with LCDs who need not worry about burn in and image retention.

I almost cried recently when someone told they paid $120.00 for a HDMI cable at a local electronics super store. The poor bastard didn’t even know what HDMI was, the salesman scammed him into thinking it was required for his new TV to operate in 1080p. Of course the cables were Monster, the biggest scam in the industry.

Ever wonder why stores like Best Buy only carry ultra-high end HDMI, DVI, and USB cables? Because there is practically zero difference between a $120 cable and a $7 one.

A signal carried over a digital path such as HDMI does not degrade in the way it would over an analog path like component. Over a digital path the zeros and ones either make it to the destination or they don’t. If there is any degradation in the signal and the zeros and ones do not make it to their destination the underlying protocol will either correct the error or fail completely. The picture quality will not degrade as it does over an analog path. If the cable is under 15ft the chances of signal loss are practically nill, even over the flimsiest of cables. In other words, the picture carried over a $120 cable will be identical to the same one carried over a $7 cable.

So with that said, there is zero reason to purchase Monster digital cables. You are just tossing your money way. Monoprice.com has a huge selection of cables at dirt cheap prices. Next time the manbaby at Best Buy tries to pitch you a $120 cable you can tell him to sod off knowing you can get high-quality cables online at 1/17th the price.

EMI is reportedly announcing plans today for dropping DRM on a large percentage of their online catalog.

From the WSJ:

In a major break with the music industry’s longstanding antipiracy strategy, EMI Group PLC is set to announce today that it plans to sell significant amounts of its catalog without anticopying software, according to people familiar with the matter.

My gut reaction was that this is an April Fools joke, but it’s a day too late for that. I can’t wait to see how it pans out.

UPDATE: The official press release is out. The end of DRM (at least for music) is neigh. GG Steve J.

I have no luck with these things.

This is the fourth iPod I’ve lost:

1. Second Gen iPod, 10GB. Battery died, replaced it and a week later the HDD crashed.
2. Third Gen iPod, 10GB. HDD crashed.
3. Second Gen iPod Mini: Battery died, replaced it and a month later the HDD crashed.
4. First Gen iPod Shuffle (above). Dropped numerous times. Ultimately just cracked into pieces.

I’ve had seven iPods total. Wasn’t I just talking about the quality of consumer electronics these days?

Someone talk me out of getting a 8GB Black Nano. Please.

Microsoft has officially announced the worst-kept secret in the gaming space, the Xbox 360 Elite. The “Elite” is the same unit that’s been on sale since November 2005 with a HDMI port welded on, bigger hard drive thrown in, and a MacBook inspired matte black finish. Retail price: $480.

What really bothers me is the quality of the hardware. The defect rate of the current Xbox hardware is higher than that of any consumer electronics device I can recall. How does Microsoft address the issue? By rolling out a new unit with the same guts at a higher price point.

Microsoft planned to introduce a redesign of the 360’s innards early this year utilizing a 65nm CPU which would reduce the amount of heat produced, theoretically increasing the reliability of the console. A lot of people thought Elite would house the new CPU, now it seems that plan is in limbo.

It’s not just the CPU that’s problematic. The 360 comes with an enormous power brick, nearly 1/3 the size of the console itself, which has been reported to overheat on its own. This has prompted people to devise less than elegant solutions to combat heat-related crashes. Considering that both the Playstation 3 and AppleTV have internal power supplies and no wide-spread reports of heat related crashes makes me wonder if Microsoft’s hardware engineers have a single clue as to how to design consumer electronics.

Here’s a few questions. Would you buy a TV with a lifespan of less than two years? Would you buy a TV that if left on too long overheats and shuts down? Would you buy a TV with internal components louder than the actual content you are viewing?

My first TV cost me $200 and has lasted almost 20 years. Paying nearly $500 for something 1/10th as reliable is not what gets me, as much as the fear that people are just going to ultimately accept that consumer electronics should no be built to last does. With nearly ten million Xbox 360 owners out there, I’d say my fear is justified.