- Published:
- January 12, 2012 – 11:18 pm
- Author:
- By Dave
After I ditched cable TV, I used both Snapstream’s BeyondTV and SageTV to sate my and my family’s television needs. After almost 2 years we ended up turning cable back on. Win one for the cable company!
But that did not end my search for the perfect home television system. Our cable box, well, works; but the hard drive is limited and you have to pay 15.99/mo for it.
For the full video demo… continue to the full post!
Categories: Gaming,Other Technology,Software,Television
Tagged: demo, htpc, Windows Media Center, Windows Media Center Extender, xbox, xbox 360
- Published:
- September 24, 2011 – 8:20 am
- Author:
- By Dave
First, a bit of history. Cable TV started in the 1970s when TV consumers just outside the range of commercial Over The Air (OTA) broadcasts banded together to create community “Cable” TV systems. An antenna was posted at a high spot on a mountain and pulled in signals that were out of range for households, then retransmitted those signals to subscribers. At the time, there was a fight by the commercial television stations to protect their content, but eventually the cable systems won out, and eventually evolved to be the mega-cable companies you see today. In fact, today cable companies and content companies are one-in-the-same. Fast forward to today. Wouldn’t it be great if there was an internet television station that would take OTA broadcast signals and retransmit them over the internet to households that couldn’t receive that signal? Well, there is and its name is ivi.tv. The user experience….
Categories: Other Technology,Television
Tagged: ivi.tv, live streaming television, live tv, streaming video
- Published:
- September 20, 2011 – 10:48 am
- Author:
- By Dave
Recently picked up a “Phillytablet” from the local newspaper publishing group, Philly Media Network (PMN), publishers of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News, and a few other smaller news publications.
Read on to view my review of the actual hardware (The Arnova/Archos 10 G2 Tablet) and of the Philly Media Network applications that you are subscribed to.
Categories: Hardware,Reviews,Social Media
- Published:
- August 23, 2011 – 10:03 am
- Author:
- By Dave
Fellow tech friends, I have a find for you. If you have a job, or hobby, or whatever where you find yourself meddling with a bunch of .iso files, whether to boot off of them or just to access the data on them, then I have the device for you. It all started after I backed the Kickstarter project for the isostick. Having never heard of a device before that would accept .iso images on a filesystem and then present them to the computer as a disc drive, I thought this was (and is) a pretty cool idea. When browsing through the comments, I saw folks mentioning that this is just like the Zalman ZM-VE200 external hard drive enclosure. So of course I decided to do some research on this newly discovered gadget. Overview The Zalman ZM-VE200 at its core is an external sata hard drive enclosure. These have been….
Categories: Hardware,Reviews,System Administration
Tagged: external-drives, hardware, sysadmin
- Published:
- October 19, 2010 – 4:45 pm
- Author:
- By Dave
On a website I was working on recently I added the Google Analytics tracking code to the footer of a Smarty template, like this: footer.tpl: 1234567891011121314151617<script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-XX']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement(‘script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true; ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); </script> </body> </html> However, since the javascript used by Google Analytics includes { and } tags, also used by the Smarty template engine, it tries to interpret this code and depending on your settings will either fail silently or or with an error such as this: Smarty error: [in footer.tpl line 148]: syntax error: unrecognized tag ‘var’ The fix is simple. Enclose your Google Analytics code, or other javascript code, with {literal} and….
Categories: Code Samples,JavaScript,Webdesign
Tagged: google analytics, JavaScript, smarty
- Published:
- May 20, 2010 – 1:59 pm
- Author:
- By Dave
Just watched the Google IO stream regarding the release of Google TV. My thoughts: Good: The platform is open. This is the way to go, and will allow developers to go hog wild and develop things that even the Google engineers couldn’t envision. TV/Web Integration. The Google TV platform appears to have great web and video integration, including live TV. The overlays look beautiful and web/TV switches effortlessly. But that basically makes it WebTV. Working with hardware partners. This gives the platform a much better chance of seeing the light of day. It appears they are working with Sony, Dish, Logitech and other hardware companies. The Android market. Integration with this means you already have tons of apps at your disposal on your system. Search integration. Will make it easy to find both local and online content. Bad: Needing an existing cablebox to bring in live TV. This is an….
Categories: Other Technology,Television
Tagged: google tv, googletv, htpc, iptv, Television
- Published:
- February 19, 2010 – 10:55 pm
- Author:
- By Dave
HBO GO has been in the works for a while now, and is an indication of what some networks are trying to do to add value to their subscription rate. Offering video for streaming online is definitely a benefit to a premium channel like HBO. And it is a glimpse as to what the future of online video will hold. I recently got rid of my cable box and implemented a do-it-yourself solution. Since HBO is a premium channel and encrypted, they force you to either buy a cable box via subscription or also a cable-card (which they also charge for). This actually gives me a unique perspective on the service: would I pay for HBO to receive the HBO GO online only offering?
Categories: Reviews,Software,Television
Tagged: newmedia, review, Television
