But that did not end my search for the perfect home television system. Our cable box, well, works; but the hard drive is limited, you have to pay $15.99/mo for it, and the recordings are only on one device.

Luckily I found the DCR-2650 (currently $122 at amazon) which allows you to rent a CableCARD from the cable company (I’m paying $3.99/mo from Verizon) and get all of the premium cable channels on your PC – the drawback is that you must use Windows Media Center due to the DRM (there is a hack for SageTV – more on that later).

We recently got an Xbox 360 for Christmas, and I’ve been wanting to try the Media Center Extender functionality on it. I’m happy to report it works really well! Here is a video with a quick walkthrough of the Media Center Extender experience on the Xbox 360.

Some notes on the setup:

• My Media Center PC & Xbox are both connected via gigabit wired network
• Live TV, Guide and DVR functionality work perfectly
• Have had issues with Movie playback. This is because the Xbox is limited in what codecs it can decode. Apparently the Windows Media Center Extender app does not use the same codecs as the Xbox media player app.
• You could use as many Xboxes as you want, so essentially you have a free number of DVRs in your home
• The DCR-2650 uses a single cable card but has 2 tuners. This means you are limited to 2 channels at a time of live TV or recording shows. You could easily continue to add tuners if you would like more.
• The Windows Media Center app is available directly on the main Xbox menu that pops up when you hit the Xbox button on your controller/remote

The quality of the video coming from the Media Center Extender is significantly better compared to the “LiveTV” streamed over the internet – also from Verizon.

If Microsoft and Verizon is serious about making their streaming live TV app commonplace in consumer’s homes, they will need to both up the quality of the video and also add DVR functionality to the system.

Between how well it works and the fact that you can get a remote for the Xbox, it really makes an ideal replacement for your cable box.

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 ivi.tv interface. Includes channel guide, DVR, and more.

The user experience was great. The stations came in at high quality and live, something that today’s streaming world is sorely missing. It was only about $10 per month, and you received the major broadcast stations. There was only one problem – the current content owners and cable systems (rightly) see this as a threat to their existing cable based systems, as the same exact TV content can be transmitted through their own internet lines and therefore cannibalism their TV revenue stream. ivi.tv was sued by over 40 major broadcasts and stations, and was forced to take their live streams of CBS, ABC, NBC offline. The very life of ivi.tv and other internet live TV streaming companies is threatened. They want to squash innovation in live streaming TV.

ivi’s CEO Todd Weaver has said this:

“Broadcasters fought against cable companies, then joined them. Broadcasters then fought against satellite companies, then joined them. Now it is our turn. History has a habit of repeating itself — and it is unfortunate they cannot learn from that and realize we strongly support broadcasters and their program suppliers helping them monetize, increase their eyeballs, and ultimately get paid.” (Source)

He’s right. This is the future of live television, and the existing hegemony of cable systems and content creators is fighting it tooth and nail. They have enough money to throw into lawsuits to delay it forever.

So what can you do about this?

The case against ivi.tv is currently working its way through the court system. Whatever is the decision on this court case is going to be used as prior ruling on future cases. I can’t even begin to describe how important it is that ivi wins their case. The odds are stacked up against them. With limited funds, there is no way they can fight the courts forever. Donate money to their cause here, and tell your friends about this innovative service that is being crushed by the big cable companies.

Everyone complains about the high price of cable television. You want alternatives? Support, share and talk about this court case and the future of online television.

Additional Reading:

• Interview with Todd Weaver, CEO of ivi.tv
• PCWorld Article on Lawsuit
• Ivi TV Loses Major Court Decision—But Shouldn’t Have

The pricing is structured with two options. The first is to buy the tablet for $99 and pay $9.99 a month for the e-editions of the newspapers for 2-years. The second is to pay $129 for the tablet and agree to a 1-year subscription at $12.99/mo.

If you decided to buy this tablet without the deal, it is currently retailing for about $221, but it is not quite available yet from general retailers. A lot of misinformation has been going around saying that it is available for $170, however this is for an older model and isn’t accurate if you are making that comparison.

The newspaper wants you to believe you are receiving a savings over a regular newspaper subscription. If you work it out over the term of the contract and discard the value of the newspaper, it costs $338.76 for the 2 year and $284 for the 1 year deal. Obviously if you aren’t going to use the newspaper portion, it isn’t worth it to agree to this deal.

I am going to review the PMN portion of the device separately from the hardware, because they are really two separate things. Also of note, this is my first Android device. I’ve used Windows Mobile in the past and I’ve been an iOS fan for the past few years but have been wanting to dip my feet into the Android world for a while now and thought this would be a good chance to do so.

Click here to skip to the Philly Media Network apps review.

The Arnova 10 G2 Tablet

The Arnova 10 G2 Tablet

The tablet itself has a solid feel to it. It is mainly plastic but is sturdy enough to not seem flimsy. There is a camera on the front and none on the back – and the front-camera is of low enough quality that it isn’t going to be good for much more than video-chatting.

It came with Android 2.3 installed on it, as well as a few apps and shortcuts. Specific to the Phillytablet are a few apps I will describe in further detail below.

The 10″ screen itself is bright and of decent quality. It has a more rectangular shape than the iPad, which does lend itself to reading a newspaper or a lot of text.

Battery life, from what I can tell so far, is also good on this tablet.

I did notice that it does not charge via the included USB plug, you need to use the proprietary power adapter to do any charging, so I was a bit put off by that. USB is so prevalent, all devices/gadgets should charge via this method.

The lack of a dual-core processor was definitely visible at times. Angry Birds took a few seconds to get running smoothly, but after that it seemed to run OK. Any website that included Flash was visibly slow and movement was jerky. Reading a book via the Amazon Kindle app was OK, there was a little delay while paging but it was tolerable. If I had to guess I would say that this device suffers a bit both from not enough CPU power and also latency while reading/writing to memory.

All said, it is a decent device for the money. I would not describe this as a “top tier” tablet as some PMN executive will tell you, but it isn’t bad for the price.

The App Store

Since I’m new to the Android world, I’m also new to this market fragmentation I’ve heard so much about. And it is ugly. So for non-Android people, I will give you the short and quick version as I know it, please feel free to correct me if I am wrong. Apparently Google only allows access to Android Market on some devices, and this tablet is not one of them. To try to correct this, Archos (the parent of the Arnova brand) created an App store called AppsLib. They also included the Amazon App Store on the tablet. Each store does have tons of applications, however I found some major gaps. You want Netflix? Nope. Skype? Nope. BeeJive? Just the Facebook version (?) for some reason.

It appears that some application developers choose to only release to certain stores, and access to those stores is restricted. I’ve heard that you can root your device and add some custom ROMs which then give you access to other stores, but haven’t gotten that far yet.

Yet for some reason, AppsLib offered Angry Birds for free (add supported). I can’t really figure it out, but I can tell you the separation of apps stores is definitely a cause of confusion for consumers.

Notably missing was Google Apps and other cool toys you often see on other Android phones and tablets. It does include a browser and some apps are available via the Amazon store, including Seesmic, Kik and more.

The Philly Media Network Apps

The E-Edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer

So now that we’ve determined that you should only buy this device if you want to receive the subscription to Philly Media Network, what do you get with your subscription?

When you receive your device there are several pre-installed apps from PMN. One is a link to the online tablet version of The Inquirer. The second are two ‘e-readers’ for the digital versions of the print layout of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Daily News. The rest just seem to be bloatware to me – advertisements (links to websites, basically) to Main Line Health, PMN, Dealy-o and Philly.com. So the real thing you are paying for are the subscription to the 2 e-reader apps for the Inq and Daily News.

What I like About The Inquirer and Daily News Apps

There are a few things that I do like about the apps. It’s nice that it will automatically download the papers while you are at home, and you don’t need the network to read them as you travel on your way to work. I take the train and the reception from AT&T is, let’s just say, unreliable. Using the paper app you can read through the paper just like the print version.

When I was a print newspaper subscriber, I liked reading the paper, but disliked all of the trash it generated. This is also a great way to reduce paper consumption and reduce distribution costs for the paper.

And Of Course, the Drawbacks

Specific to this device, there is a delay while reading the paper and moving around. With the processing power of a tablet, I assume you are going to see some of this latency. I’m curious how this e-version of the paper would look on something like the EeePad Transformer (@subewl, care to help me out with that?)

Non-specific to the device, the UI of the app seemed to be a bit confusing to me. You supposedly have the ability to click on headlines and be taken to a text-version of the article formatted to read on your screen. It only worked about half the time for me, I think it has to do with where the main text section was located. Hopefully this is just a bug they can iron out.

Why I Like Reading The Whole Paper

Sorry of this gets a bit philosophical for you, but I think there is a place for old-school journalism. It’s not about local news, if I want tidbits of local information I’ll check Twitter or Facebook. I like old-school journalism because it gets me in-depth coverage of local-ish news items.

Blogs have their place too, but I attribute their success to a different area of the brain. It’s the same area that OK or People scratches – breaking news, gossip, and ‘eye catching’ headlines. Having written for some major blogs – Lifehacker and MakeUseOf, it is amazing to see how much of the success of a blogger is attributed to the eye-catching quality of the title of the post. It takes one read through comments and you can tell that many do not even read the actual content, they read the headlines and form an opinion.

Newspapers are good, on the other hand, at really getting into the issues. They interview local people and analyze the issue much more than any blog that I’ve known.

The problem with newspapers is that they are trying to emulate the success of blogs. Instead, they need to focus on what they are good at – in depth coverage of local/national news, and bringing that to its audience in as user-friendly of a way as possible.

An e-Newspaper does not do this. I think The Daily is probably the best example I’ve seen of a newspaper making this transition the right way. Focus on the app. Creating version of the newspaper that is exactly like the paper version is not going to win you any subscribers.

Want to reach us in the digital age? We might have a shorter attention span but we still value good content.

Will the Phillytablet be a success?

This is certainly a tough call to make. I want it to work. Journalism as a whole has been under fire and the whole reason I gave this deal a shot – besides having the tablet itch for a while now – is that I want it to succeed. I’m probably the ideal customer for this tablet – my train commute giving me ample reading time – and I’m a news junkie to boot.

I just don’t see this being a long-term viable winning strategy for them. I think they are concerned that not enough people have access to tablets in order to get the e-edition of the paper. As we’ve seen tablet prices drop, I think if someone wants a tablet, they are going to buy one and this isn’t going to be a barrier to adoption of an e-newspaper. The barrier to adoption is that reading a full-version newspaper on a tiny device is never going to be as a fulfilling experience as holding out crisp newsprint.

To illustrate my point, I paged sadly by the crossword and sudoku puzzles. We used to get the physical paper just so that my wife could do those every week. With the e-edition, you can’t play them at all.

What can the Philly Media Network do to turn things around?

First of all, I think they need to drop the Phillytablet initiative and focus on content and delivery across all platforms – iOS, Android and Web. If they want to offer a tablet, give it as a gift if someone subscribes to the paper for a year or 2. They should be giving online access to everyone with an interest in the content, not just subscribers to a physical or electronic paper.

Also, they need to get with the times on the ordering process. You had to call a phone number to order the Philly tablet. You couldn’t order it online or pick it up in their store. This goes the same with their newspaper subscription, and in this day and age is a major drawback to adoption.

Let me know your thoughts

So, I’ve certainly been wrong before but I am curious about your thoughts. Do you think the Phillytablet has a shot? What is the future of print newspapers?

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

Size Comparison: ZM-VE200 on Lower Left, Normal External Drive on Top, External Disc Drive on Lower Right.

The Zalman ZM-VE200 at its core is an external sata hard drive enclosure. These have been around for a long time, allowing you to put your hard drive in an external enclosure and accessing the file system via a USB port. They are great for when you need to transfer a large amount of data and have an internet connection which isn’t up the the task in any reasonable amount of time.

This external enclosure can work just like that, an external USB drive. However, Zalman has added an extra layer of functionality on the enclosure by adding additional components which add features which I frankly haven’t seen anywhere else.

Zalman’s Additional Hardware Magic

The additional circuitry allows you to select an ISO which is present on the drive, and load it just as if it were a DVD or CDROM on the system. This means that instead of carrying around discs to install operating systems on, you simply put the ISOs on the drive and then select the correct ISO when you boot.

The Zalman ZM-VE200 Screen

When you boot/plug in the drive you actually have 3 modes available to you. Disc, Hard Drive or Dual. With Disc, files you place in the _ISO folder on the drive will be selectable via the wheel on the side of the device. As it was shipped the drive needs to be formatted as NTFS in order to show the ISO files, however with updated firmware you can actually use with FAT or NTFS.

Operation

Plugging in the hard drive

First thing you need to do is to install a SATA drive into the enclosure. This is pretty much a no-brainer, it only plugs in one direction. Slide the drive and circuitry back into the case and use the attached screws to secure the case to the drive/circuitboard. The screws are hidden by little rubber seals on the edge of the case.

The Menu Navigation Wheel

When plugging it into the system, you interact with the drive in a few ways. The initial scroll wheel position, when powered up, determines the mode:

• Hold Up to enter ODD or “Disc” mode
• Hold Center to enter Dual mode (both HDD and ODD modes)
• Hold Down to enter HDD only mode

eSATA Port on the ZM-VE200

An eSATA port and cable are also supplied. I did not use this mode in my testing. It requires that you still plug in the USB cable for power requirements, and I would assume you would see faster transfer rates while in eSATA mode.

Finally there is a small switch that enables write-protect mode. This makes it so that you won’t be able to accidentally change the data on the drive.

The only problem I had with the drive was when I first plugged it into my system via a USB extension cable. The drive did not even turn on, it actually just clicked a little bit. I changed USB ports and then it seemed to work fine. Also I’ve run into a situation where I plugged in the drive to a system that was off and then booted it, and the screen lit up but stayed blank. I believe this is because this drive requires more power than some USB ports can deliver, so if you have problems with it, try another USB port first to see if that fixes your problem.

I also had some problems occasionally mounting the ISO file, usually booting into ODD mode (hold the scroll wheel “up”) seemed to fix this problem.

Final Thoughts

When installing operating systems from this drive, the process is notably faster. Meaning, the transfer speed you see off of the “disc” on the drive is much faster than a normal CD or DVD drive. While there were some technical hiccups and gotchas, the drive works very well.

This “gadget” is a must-have tool for system technicians who find themselves constantly burning ISOs to discs. My co-worker who initially made fun of my fondness for new gadgets has since said I’ll have to pry this drive from his cold, dead hands. It is so useful that I am now recommending it to all of my sysadmin friends. At $50 it is a steal and you will even make your money back because you won’t be burning so many discs.

Official Zalman ZM-VE200 Product Site

Buy From Amazon

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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 {/literal}. The literal tag allows you to place code to be displayed, well, literally.

The final code will look something like this:

Your website should now run properly with the Google Analytics code in place.

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 uncessessary step – you should be able to bring in Live TV streams using a CableCard. Could support for this be forthcoming?
• Uses existing TV infrastructure. The future is in IP TV.

Questions:

• How expensive will the box be and will it be available from cable/satellite providers? If available from television providers (at least Dish) then it will be available for a monthly ‘rental’ fee. If Google tries to sell this as a stand-alone product, ala Tivo, it will be a bigger up-front cost that many consumers are not used to paying. However, Google may be able to make this cheaper than we think, because they subsidize services from ad revenue. Advertisers are willing to pay for information such as what viewers are watching. Google will be sitting on a goldmine of data.
• How will this impact other “Television” set tops such as Tivo, BeyondTV, Boxee, MythTV? It greatly depends on adoption rates, cost and utility.

Regarding the issue with the existing TV infrastructure, this product could be revolutionary. I’m not sure if this is because they are trying to avoid stepping on the big cable providers toes but with a device like this the existing cable network is unnecessary. Google owns a lot of fiber, and therefore a lot of bandwidth. They could offer their own live IPTV offering, and it could be available directly on the Google TV platform. This is probably where they are aiming to go in 2 or more years. Its prohibitive to many companies at a reasonable rate because the cost to stream high definition television to many homes is great.

YouTube essentially already has the infrastructure in place for IPTV. They already have the ability to stream any live video stream in fairly decent quality. I imagine what is holding them back if the agreements with the content providers (channels) like Discovery, MTV, NBC Universal, etc. If the old don’t get on board soon, they will be in 5-10 years where the newspaper industry is now.

I am looking forward to what the Google TV platform is going to offer. A bonus would be if you could run it on additional hardware other than hardware offered by Sony or other companies. Since it is open source, this is a distinct possibility and we could see a lot come from this, even if the hardware itself proves unsuccessful. There is one thing Google has a lot of — vision — and it would be great to see that on your television.

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?

Starting with the online interface, I was actually very impressed with it. It is done entirely in flash and is simple to use. To receive access to HBO GO at this point, you must be a Verizon FiOS TV subscriber and also be signed up to receive HBO. HBO will eventually be offering this to other cable providers in the future as part of the TV Anywhere initiative. Once you log in you are presented with an image-rich user interface. You filter by TV show, movies and categories and everything was very intuitive. Information is available on shows and movies, including any extra available content. There is a ‘watchlist’ where you can add your content into a queue which will play through automatically.

By default, video will play in “SD” or Standard Definition. The quality is what you would expect, some graininess and compression is visible. However, there is a small switch named “Watch in HD”. The video looks simply spectacular in HD. If I had to guess I would say that it is in 720p resolution, which isn’t too bad for streaming video which has a very small buffer time.

The main drawback I saw was that the selection isn’t great, but it does give you a sample of the premium content available on HBO. It does offer HBO-only shows such as True Blood, The Sopranos, The Wire and a few more. Each category holds a dozen or so shows, and not the entire HBO library. However next to Netflix the movie selection is extremely sparse. As the service stands, I would not see it being valuable as a movie-streaming service. HBO really needs to up the ante and offer the majority of their content on their website if subscribers are paying for it. Curb Your Enthusiasm is a notable missing series.

Another technical detail I wish to touch on is how they chose to use Adobe Flash for the technology for streaming video. I have a somewhat older CPU and Machine (Athlon X2 4200 CPU) and on Adobe 10.0 I did see some significant frame dropping, especially in HD mode. Having learned about Flash 10.1 beta coming out of Adobe Labs, and knowing that it is optimized to use your GPU to play flash video, I tried upgrading and it significantly improved the video performance. Windowed performance was a little shaky but Full-Screen framerate was great. If you are running an older system, consider upgrading to the latest Flash versions for the best video performance.

There has been some talk about HBO possibly offering the HBO GO site to non-cable subscribers for a monthly fee. If they are going to be successful at offering an online-only offering, they will need to offer ALL, or at least a majority, of their shows and a larger movie library which equals their cable offerings. Without that, they are offering a restricted service which is basically just placating the growing demand for on-demand video from content providers and not setting the proper tone as a premium content provider.

The images below are screenshots from the service, to give you an idea as to how beautiful the interface is:

In summary, the HBO GO online on-demand video streaming service from HBO is a delight to use and the quality and performance is spectacular. However, the lack of content is obvious and if they wish to really attract subscribers they are going to have to offer much more. Otherwise it is just one of those extra services that might gain a few followers but isn’t going to drive users to the service in droves. I applaud HBO for dipping their toes into the online video streaming world – now they need to embrace it and lead us into the future of premium video content online.

FourSquare is a growing service that allows you to “Check in” to restaurants, grocery stores, museums and just about any place you can imagine. However, I have seen several of my friends checking in to locations which, I must say as a security research student, set off warning bells. Although I am calling out FourSquare specifically, these also apply to just about any other location based software where you broadcast your location to other folks, whether they are your friends or the general public. GoWalla and BrightKite are in the same boat.

As with any list, there are exceptions to the rule. So although I would say that you should generally avoid checking in at these locations and you can use it as a rough guide, things might be different for you personally.

Without further ado… here is my list of top FourSquare Check-in Locations To Avoid:

1. Checking In At Home

This one would seem to be obvious a few years ago. Remember the “old rules” when you got on the internet – don’t give anyone your real name, address, phone number or other personally identifiable information? It seems like this one went out the door when social media came into the picture. I’ve seen many folks posting the exact coordinates of their home, as well as when they are home. Between that and the fact that many users have their real names associated with their user ids, this becomes a huge security problem. Stalkers would love to get their hands on this information.

2. Checking In At Your Significant Other’s Home

Similarly to checking in at home, does someone need to know the location of your boyfriend’s, girlfriend’s or fiance’s residence? This information should be public knowledge.

Photo by epicharmus

3. Checking In At Your Bank

One thing you should never, ever let scammers, con artists, and identity thieves know is where you do your banking. Checking in even once at this location gives them not only an idea of the company where you bank at, but which branch you go to and the time of day you typically visit. This should definitely be a no-no. It’s like wearing an “I’m carrying cash” sign on your back.

4. Checking In While On Vacation

“I’m in Florida for the next 7 days with my whole family” is just begging for a burglar to come ransack your house. Maybe you have someone house sitting for you, or have some sort of security system in place, but I suspect many do not.

This is a tough one to follow. When you are on vacation in some interesting place, you want to tell your friends about it. What I tend to do is to check in, but not mention that my family is with me. This obfuscates some of the information and would hopefully give enough doubt to any would-be intruders to actually trying to break into your home.

5. Checking In At Your Doctor’s Office

In addition to calls of “TMI” this is another one that you should keep to yourself for privacy purposes. Someone could in theory call or visit your doctor’s office and get your personal medical information.

Photo courtesy of tidewatermuse

6. Checking In At Work, Depending on Your Job

This one depends highly on your job. If you are a security guard, you probably don’t want anyone knowing when you are on or off the job. However if you are a desk worker, you won’t mind if your friends, or anyone knows that you are indeed at work as this can be assumed.  If you are in the military and are deployed on a secret assignment in a foreign city, don’t think it is proper to check in anywhere in that city. (In fact, you might want to check in at a false location for misdirection, but that topic is for another day.)

Alternatively, if you are supposed to be at work but have called in sick, don’t check in at your favorite bar that night. It will reveal your ruse in an instant to anyone who is in-the-know enough to follow you on 4square.

7. Checking in at Your Child’s School

This is an addition from a friend, he mentioned that he makes sure that he never checks in at his children’s school. You don’t want to give someone a direct map and time table for when your kid is at school. This is another check in place that should be strictly off limits.

In conclusion, when checking into a location, be aware of what someone would do with that information if they had a malicious purposes. Maybe it is a bit paranoid, but I try to think of the above reasons before I check in at locations which could divulge sensitive information to unknown parties.

Sure you can restrict who you friend on these networks, but increasingly it has become obvious that criminals are using fake accounts to friend folks and “grow” their network. Be careful with who you friend and send all of your location information to. In addition to the above specific locations which can reveal sensitive information about you, any 4square user checking in at restaurants or other places divulge a pattern of travel that could be used against them.

Do do this, you download the appropriate driver (either the Windows 7 64 or 32 drivers) which is contained in an executable file. Use a program such as 7zip to uncompress this file into another folder. Within this folder, there are no drivers but further cabinet files. Use 7zip to decompress the _winzip_ file, which actually contains the driver you need to install.

In your device manager, locate the scanner and select the option to update the driver. You will need to select the driver manually, then specify the device type and driver, then click the “Have Disk” option. Locate the folder where the driver is located and select the .inf, and it will successfully (hopefully) install the LiDE50 as a LiDE60 scanner.

After having the device installed properly, download the latest CanoScan Toolbox, of the date of this writing it is version 4.9.3.2. This will give you access to all of the options you should have to set the buttons on your scanner, for example.

No need to buy a new scanner just because Canon didn’t develop a driver for the LiDE 50, apparently the chipset for the 60 is almost exactly the same.

However what I recently found out is that many LCD and Plasma televisions do not broadcast the correct 16:9 resolution via EDID, and therefore the computer doesn’t know what resolution to display and you have a stretched image.

I have an LG DU-37LZ30 which according to its specs at least has a 1366×768 native resolution (It is a 720p/1080i set). However its EDID system broadcasts a resolution of 1024×768, resulting in the signal looking stretched. Some programs, like Boxee for example, can correct this by forcing an aspect ratio while outputting the video and the result looks fine. However in many situations this doesn’t work.

On Windows XP, this was a pain but buying a program like PowerStrip by EnTech was able to correct the problem as you can force a resolution even if it is a “non-supported” one. However on Windows 7, and with nVidia graphics cards/drivers at least, it apparently ‘enforces’ the resolution which is broadcast via the EDID. Which means you are stuck with your weird resolution.

There are some hacks for overriding EDID info, but none of them seem to work on Windows 7. For example:

Thread over at AVS Forum on overrided EDID
Modifying your VGA cable to disable EDID broadcast (this nuked my VGA cable! Do not recommend!)
Forcing 1366×768 on Windows 7 forums

None of these solutions worked for me. Windows 7 even allows you to add a “custom” resolution but it still reads from the EDID to see if it is compatible and it has rejected my attempts at this.

Although I appreciate the “ease” that reading the EDID provides for general users, I wish there was an “advanced” section so that us users can force a resolution on a monitor. Maybe this is disabled because people were breaking their monitors, but it puts others like us in a lurch.  Has anyone seen this issue and/or have a resolution? Or do I just have a great reason to get a new TV?