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.

Let’s face it, you don’t want all of the content that your cable provider offers. Cable providers have fought a-la-carte programming tooth and nail for this very reason. Much of it is specialty programming, and though I admit it is nice to know it was there, my family and I rarely watched any of it. My new setup brings many new sources as well as a CHOICE to what you want to view. I am very happy with the results so far.

My Requirements

There are a few requirements I had made for myself when deciding to go this route:

• Live Broadcast TV in HD must still be possible. Bonus for being able to DVR television shows.
• Ease of Use – must be usable by my family. I don’t expect it to be as ‘simple’ as a vanilla cable box, but I want it to be close
• Access to Local Media – I want to be able to stream my backed-up movies, photos, and music

Backend Systems

I have an existing network infrastructure in my house, which I admit most non-geeks would not have set up. This is necessary for the “Live TV” portion of my setup as it includes the HD Tuner cards which do not fit into my new system as well as the muscle to compress these recordings. My current setup includes:

• 10/100/1000 Gigbit router with Wireless-N
• File server with 1.5TB of RAID storage space to store movies, music and other files
• External “Computer” acting as a server for BeyondTV. This computer includes a tuner card which handles unencrypted QAM streams

The Hardware

The system is actually very simple on the hardware side. Besides the TV, only 2 pieces of hardware are needed.

Acer Aspire Revo Computer (3610)

This is a dual-core Intel Atom computer running at 1.6Ghz. My specific system included 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive. It has built in Wifi-N network connectivity, a card reader, multiple USB ports, optical audio, HDMI port, VGA port and analog audio jacks.

I picked this system not only because of its low cost (~$300) but because of the Nvidia ION chipset running under it’s hood. This chipset is optimized to handle 1080p HDTV video along with high def audio. In includes the Nvidia CUDA accellerations and is optimized to work with Windows 7. This chipset is also capable of handing HD video using Flash 10.1 (currently in open beta). This means that it can handle the HD Flash video since the main Intel Atom CPU is not doing the heavy lifting on the decoding of this content.

Snapstream Firefly Remote

This is a RF Remote which is customizable via XML configuration profiles. There is a profile available for both Boxee and Snapstream BeyondTV.

The Software

I decided to run Windows 7 for the OS. Windows 7 Home Premium runs great on this system and the drivers that are currently published work very well on it. It includes Windows Media for as a possible frontend but I have decided to use Boxee due to the plethora of content available and the active development of the platform.

BeyondTV Link

This software connects via the wireless wired network to the BeyondTV server in my house which actually has the tuner cards. This offsets some tasks handled by the server such as heavy disk I/O required for recording HD video streams and compressing them into smaller video files.

I did have some problem with High Definition video at first. When I used wireless-N, which should have plenty of bandwidth to handle even HD video, I had very stuttery playback. After going through a lot of testing, it seems that even though the bandwidth is plenty, the BeyondTV software suffers from a lack of flexibility when it comes to any sort of network latency. Therefore any sort of wireless connection does not appear to support streaming HD video. 100/1000 seems to be the only way to go if you are going to view live HD video on this machine.

After a show is recorded, is is re-encoded (they call it “ShowSqueeze”) using the H.264 codec. You save about 80% of the space of a normal HD TV show and the quality if very good. The default decoder that BeyondTV uses seemed to do fine, but I also installed CoreAVC codec which is CUDA optimized for handling H.264 video decoding. CoreAVC uses nVidia CUDA optimization which the system supports.

Boxee

Boxee handles everything from internet streamed video content to local content playback. The full capabilities of the Boxee interface is beyond the scope of this post, but it has numerous features:

• Streams Hulu, Fancast, Netflix and Pandora (to mention just the big players)
• Custom “Apps” to handle many other video sources
• Local Media handles streaming from a mapped network drive. Plays many codecs and containers including: MKV, AVI, DivX, Xvid, WMV, MP3, etc.
• Social Media Connectivity
• Refined ’10 foot’ UI

Boxee is slick. Using it with the remote is a joy and you can really stream a LOT of video and audio from MANY different sources. This also might be its downfall. Along with the big name streams there are 100s of other ones available that would not be suitable for someone used to cable TV content. Also it seems to require a lot of clicking. Television is a different beast – you set a channel and can leave it on 24/7. With Boxee you need to select your content – which is both good and bad. It is good in that you get to watch what content you want, but bad in that you are not introduced to new content in a way a television station will.

Boxee Beta works well for most content but I did find issues with online content from several different sources such as ABC and the WB. The software is in active development so if you find this issues make sure to report them to the developers.

Here is a gallery of shots of the Acer Revo 3610, BeyondTV and Boxee Beta

The Initial Results

All being said and done, some not-too-obvious strengths and weaknesses appeared from using this setup. Media companies – please pay attention to these so you can improve your offerings!

Strengths

All Boxee content is on demand. All of your media is now available on your television and in your living room. LiveTV via this method retains the all-important DVR but is a fraction of the cost, which is the real monetary benefit to moving to this system from a proprietary cable system solution.

Running BeyondTV not only gives you the ability to watch TV on any PC throughout the home (with BeyondTV Link), but allows you to stream it online – so for example if you are at work you can watch any recorded shows or live TV.

You no longer live on the timetable of the major television stations but can feel free to view content when you are ready. Content on Boxee usually appears the day after it is on live TV, but I find more and more this is how I prefer to watch TV anyway.

Weaknesses

BeyondTV development seems to have been all but abandonded by the Snapstream team, who are now focused on enterprise markets. Although it is a capable system (still) it has not been in active development for 2 or more years. The age is starting to show, and I hope Snapstream comes around and continues development. As far as alternatives go, MythTV and SageTV are both out there but I was never a fan of either. I am investigating switching to the Windows Media Center platform for television but don’t have any results of that so far.

Boxee is still in Beta status and does have some bugs. Some random crashing and the inability to stream some content it told me was available is frustrating. The wide variety of content available via a ’10-foot’ interface more than makes up for this drawback.

The lack of premium television stations is also notable. The whole Cablecard debacle of the past 8 years shows the resistance from the industry to modernize our television systems. With more premium content available on Amazon Video on Demand and iTunes, this becomes less of an issue. Since this is actually a PC, you can play this content albeit not via the Boxee interface.

The Future

So what will the future bring? The market is prime for a Boxee app which is basically a streaming television provider. Like a traditional cable company (or FiOS), you will install this app and pay a monthly fee for television program which is streamed over the internet. Premium channels are available a-la-cart finally as well as the traditional packages. Although due to licensing restrictions it won’t be free, you will be able to save 20-30% over traditional cable provider’s television programming. It may be offered for about $40-50 a month.

Paid, on-demand video is also lacking. If Boxee got on board with Amazon Video on Demand, it would be a powerful combination. This would allow you to both “rent” and “own” movies and television from Amazon’s streaming service. Boxee recently announced that it is developing Boxee Payments which will allow payments from the content consumers, to the content providers. I am looking forward to what this will bring the platform.

I may have jumped the gun a bit since the Boxee Box is soon to be available but my system does handle a few tasks that would not be possible on a streaming media box, namely live TV with DVR. If you are happy with you current cable situation, you would not likely see a lot of benefit moving to my setup. However if you want control of your media and are tired of the big named cable companies dictating how and when you get your entertainment, then you would definitely enjoy the freedom this setup provides.

I was looking for something that did not involve signing a contract, but Verizon, Sprint and AT&T’s offerings were pretty expensive. They typically have a “small” data plan, around 250 Megs of transfer for a smaller fee, or an “Unlimited” offering for a fairly expensive rate, around $60 a month for most providers. The Cricket plan I signed up for is an “Unlimited” – read 5GB – plan for $40 a month, with no contract.

Cricket Wireless is relatively new in my area (Philadelphia), having only started providing service in March of 2009. They have been in other markets since 1999. Wireless Broadband has been an offering of their since 2007. Cricket is a subsidiary of Leap Wireless.

The way the “Unlimited” plan works, and why I need to use quotes on Unlimited, is that you get a 5GB quota, and then the speed your connection can be severely restricted to limit your bandwidth consumption. This connection, according to the Acceptable Use Policy you sign when signing up, is meant for “web only” or e-mail traffic; meaning that it is not supposed to be used for streaming video or music (up or down).

The Device

The USB Broadband Modem I purchased is the Cricket A600. It was available on sale for $20 after rebate, which I thought was very reasonable considering you are not purchasing a contract with the modem. Usually providers will give you a roughly $200 price break on the modem if you sign up for a 1 or 2 year contract. This makes their offerings seem cheaper, even though you pay it in the long run.

Costs

Like I have alluded to previous, the big draw for the Cricket network is the cost of the unlimited package, $40 a month with no contract. There is a $25 activation fee. I would assume that this fee applies whether you are starting a new line of service, or if you allow your pre-payment plan to expire; necessitating a re-activation.

How does it work?

The way the modem works is when you first plug it in, it is recognized as a flash drive and the drivers are installed via Autorun. It currently only supports Windows and Mac OSX; their site specifically states it does not support Linux, although there are instructions on how to get the A600 working in Ubuntu. I am currently using the Windows 7 beta, it did not install correctly automatically – I had to manually install the device drivers using the setup file, and then the modem was installed and found on the next insert. So, even with a few hiccups, the A600 is ready for use on a number of operating systems. You can see the number of devices that are installed when you plug in the modem (Windows 7 screenshot):

As a bonus, the modem also works as a MicroSD card reader. This does not really help you if you do not have a MicroSD card laying around, I happed to have a 2GB one that plugged in and works as advertised. This might be a good thing to have if you are a travelling technician, you could place your thumbdrive programs on this device and have a ready-to-go connection and troubleshooting device.

The Connection

Connectivity is provided by “dialing in” to the Cricket network using their provided application, as seen below:

The program has a few functions:

• Connect/Dial In to the network
• Keep track of incoming/outgoing text messages
• Bandwidth manager (did not work on Windows 7)

The program seemed to work as advertised and the big connect/disconnect button is easy enough for the most inexperience internet user to understand.

The Network and Speed Tests

The Cricket Broadband network looks like it piggybacks on the Verizon or Sprint EVDO data networks. So chances are if you do not have these networks available, you would not get Cricket to work either. I had connectivity results that I had expected, in areas that are highly populated I had excellent connectivity (4/4 bars) and at other locations “in the sticks” I had only 1 or 0 bars. I was able to get connection in most places, even if the signal was very poor.

The data network always read “EVDO Rev A” which has a maximum “burst” rate of 2.45 Mbit/s to 3.1 Mbit/s. I tested in many locations; my speed with a “full” connection averages about ~ 500kbps download and ~ 200kbps upload. With a 0 or 1 bar connection I was still seeing a 500kbps download but a paltry 70kbps upload. Don’t expect this connection to replace your home broadband or wifi connection, it was pretty much impossible to watch a YouTube video, the same with any sort of multimedia content. You may be able to stream a highly compressed music stream. SSH, FTP, SFTP all seemed to work – one of my concerns being a system administrator was that these ports would be blocked, but I seemed to have an unfettered connection. I did try Logmein, on my “weak” signal it did not seem to want to connect but worked pretty well with a full signal.

Another thing I seemed to encounter with a poor signal was loss of connection. Since you are basically dialing in (my wife exclaimed, “I haven’t dialed in for 10 years!”) if you lose the signal for a few moments you get disconnected. It is not horrible, because you can reconnect, but the Cricket dialup program did not give me a notice or sound an alarm, I just started getting “Page not accessible” errors in my browser. If you are connecting in an area that has a poor signal, expect to be frustrated with your Cricket connection. It is not necessarily their problem, but it is worth mentioning.

Your connection locally is issued a private network in the 10.100.x.x range. Ping times varied from 80ms to 120ms. Do not expect to be able to do online FPS gaming from this connection. For your perusal is a traceroute from the Cricket connection in Ocean City, NJ to www.yahoo.com.

  1    61 ms    59 ms    65 ms  172.30.218.x
  2    60 ms    65 ms    66 ms  172.28.49.x
  3    64 ms    66 ms    57 ms  172.16.8.x
  4    70 ms    73 ms    64 ms  ge-8-16.car1.Philadelphia1.Level3.net [4.78.152.249]
  5   172 ms    68 ms    70 ms  ae-7-7.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.133.162]
  6    73 ms    65 ms    72 ms  ae-62-62.csw1.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.146]
  7    83 ms    70 ms    82 ms  ae-61-61.ebr1.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.129]
  8   102 ms    89 ms    91 ms  ae-2.ebr3.Atlanta2.Level3.net [4.69.132.85]
  9   119 ms   106 ms   107 ms  ae-7.ebr3.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.134.21]
 10   110 ms   138 ms   108 ms  ae-41-90.car1.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.145.195]
 11   104 ms   102 ms    98 ms  YAHOO-INC.car1.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.79.180.2]
 12   102 ms   149 ms   104 ms  ae2-p130.msr2.mud.yahoo.com [216.115.104.93]
 13   102 ms    99 ms   100 ms  te-9-1.bas-c2.mud.yahoo.com [68.142.193.11]
 14   110 ms   103 ms    98 ms  b1.www.vip.mud.yahoo.com [209.191.93.53]

Conclusion

When all is said and done, you have to appreciate that having this little device and signing up for the Cricket Broadband service, for $40 a month and no contract, gets you an internet connection wherever you go, at least wherever you have signal. Although I suspect that a direct Verizon, Sprint or AT&T broadband connection would give you faster access, I do not think it would expand your coverage and you would pay a lot more for it. Cricket gets you a decent connection for a fair price, and I think that is worth it. If you are expecting a wired connection speed then look elsewhere, but as long as your demands are reasonable, you should be happy with Cricket Wireless Broadband.

I would recommend this modem to anyone who is looking for a web connection that is extremely portable and inexpensive. As long as your bandwidth demands are not exceedingly high, you should be happy with this modem.

Update 2009/7/20:

If anyone has clarifications on whether Cricket Wireless owns their own equipment (from tower to net) please let me know. I would just assume they ‘resell’ Verizon, Sprint or other “1st tier” provider wireless towers instead of building their own, which would be very expensive.

Also, I discovered you do not need to use the applet they provide to log into the Cricket wireless network. On Windows 7 at least, you can dial in directly with Windows’ Network Connection Center.

Original paper: Hybrid Stealthy Communication Protocol

(I got a 25/25!)

The Pros: The image looks great. Hands down it is a clean, crisp image, and with the latest firmware updates (click here) supports most audio configurations.

The Cons: This thing is the slowest media player I have ever laid my hands on.

The instructions warn that the initial setup could take 90 seconds to start and after that, start up would be quicker. I suppose they didn’t lie – start up on an everyday basis takes around 40 seconds or more! After that, you can finally eject the tray to insert your movie, or make your way to the menu.

Forty seconds, when you have an impatient toddler wanting to watch Finding Nemo for the 50th time, is similar to taking a short detour through Dante’s 3rd circle of hell.

In addition to that, woe to the consumer who might get a relatively new, $30 Blu-ray movie to play in it. We put in Dan In Real Life (Ok movie, but slow paced) – it proceeds to play the previews, fine. Then it seemingly locks up for a few minutes on a screen with a progress bar that says “loading”. We power down, start the process again. Briefly before the “loading” screen pops up again, it mentions that on older players it could take several minutes to load the menu. Seriously, 3 to 4 minutes later, the menu loads up.

Again, we received 10,000BC (don’t waste your time) in the mail from Blockbuster. Started to play it and we wanted to stop and start it over. I pressed the stop button, and I guess I overloaded the system as it was totally frozen. I had to press the power button for 10 seconds and start the whole process over.

Are you kidding me? This is the worst consumer experience I’ve had in a long time. Maybe I am just an impatient American, but spending 5 minutes waiting for a movie to load up, after having spent that much money on top of the line technology, is a disgrace. Sony should be ashamed that they let this product go to market.

What is it doing during this loading time? Is the Java OS loading all of its unnecessary libraries? Who allowed this to pass by QA?

So my recommendation to anyone looking to buy one of these systems is keep looking! There are more and more choices out there. The PS3 is only $50-$100 more and it loads movies much faster and has many more advanced media features (like streaming audio and video right to the PS3 from other media servers), not to mention all the games you can play on it.

Sony used to be top notch in my opinion when it came to hardware of any kind. However after this incident, I will really have to think twice before getting another Sony product!

Summary:

Ditching your cable company has never been more viable than it is today. The rise of online, streaming TV shows allows you to save on one of the most expensive household bills if you are willing to sacrifice a bit of the convenience of having either a cable box or DVR. The main question you will need to ask yourself is what shows you actually enjoy watching. Several name brand shows are now available online in free, ad supported formats; if your particular shows are not available then you may be stuck with your cable company, at least for now. More and more shows are always coming online, so keep checking back to see if your favorite show is available.

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• 20″ Widescreen HD LCD Monitor
• 2000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio
• 1680 x 1050 native resolution
• 2ms Response time
• Built in 2MP webcam
• 2 side facing USB ports and 2 bottom facing rear ports

For full specs please see the Full Product Page.

For the first time ever I’ve compiled a quick video review of the Dell SP2008WFP – press play to watch the review. Look below for more in depth analysis.

First Impressions

Upon first unboxing and turning on this monitor – my first thought was “WOW”! It looks so much sharper and brighter than my old CRT monitor, and even compared to my other Dell LCD monitors at work it looks very sharp. I even had to turn the brightness levels down a bit.

I put on a movie to test it out – when – CRAP! A stuck pixel! There was a stuck blue pixel right in the middle of the screen. Since this was my first experience with a stuck pixel, I was a bit discouraged. Furthermore, I read on Dell’s site that they will only replace a monitor if there are 6 or more dead/stuck pixels. Note that a ‘dead’ pixel is one that is black, and a ‘stuck’ pixel is one that is red, blue or green. Upon doing some research – I found out that a ‘stuck’ pixel is normally fixable and isn’t as bad as having a dead pixel. After using some methods that I had discovered, it did end up fixing itself after a day or 2, and hasn’t returned since.

Daily use

For daily use the SP2008WFP really excels. The brightness really makes your screen ‘pop’ and everything is extremely sharp. It is best to run at the screen’s native resolution – 1680 x 1050. Depending on your eyesight and how far the monitor is from your seat – you may find fonts to be a bit too small. This can be fixed by modifying the window’s default font size to ‘large’ and setting the default Firefox or IE font size. Personally I had no problems reading the font at this resolution but my wife said it made her eyes twitchy after a while.

The two side USB ports really come in handy for those who use USB Keychains (that includes me!). The bottom ones can be used for a wireless keyboard/mouse dongle or for other USB peripherals.

I added the optional speaker for this monitor. I realize that the audio coming out of it is not spectacular, but since we have a child I wanted to do away with my BASS BOOSTER powered system and this does nicely. The speaker is powered, and has a blue light to let you know it is on. The right side includes a volume control and the left side has inputs for headphones and a microphone. Another nice feature is that the volume control works for the headphone volume, thus eliminating the need to change the volume on the system. My one ‘gripe’ on the speaker is the the volume control does not let you mute the volume without turning it off completely. That meaning that it gets down low and then click off. I wish it would go all the way down to mute and then turn off.

Video

Video looks great on this monitor, even in a bright room. In a darkened room, I did notice some LCD backlight leaking through on the edges on dark scenes in movies. This effect wasn’t overwhelming and I only noticed it when I was looking for it. In a bright room, the blacks look very black and the colors still very crisp.

Webcam

The 2 Megapixel webcam is pretty decent. The drivers indicate that it is actually a Creative webcam built in. The quality is really pretty good, and worked right out of the box for me in programs such as Skype. The built in software allows you to record video, capture images, run motion detection (security) capture, remote monitoring, and ‘time lapse’ video. These functions are neat but not usable for me, so I disable this software to prevent it from adding unneeded system programs. Also, if this software is actually running, it will interfere with other capture programs such as Skype. If you need to run more than one program with your webcam, use Splitcam.

Conclusion

This monitor is a great upgrade from someone moving from a CRT and even from a smaller LCD. The price you can find on Dell’s website is not the cheapest 20″ Widescreen LCD, however it is one of the only non-iMac monitors you can find which includes this webcam ability – which other monitor manufacturers will surely follow. For my own personal uses, it seemed like I could get a 22″ plain LCD or a 20″ with webcam. Time will tell if this was a good purchase, but I think my desk really thanks me in that I have consolidated almost every item on my desk into this one item (excluding my scanner – I don’t think they will be merging monitors and flatbed scanners anytime soon).

At $289 this monitor seems like a good deal and I would recommend the purchase to anyone looking for a new monitor! I figure if I want more desk space in the future, I will move to a dual monitor setup and get a cheap 22″.

It is a pretty screenshot but you need to actually use the software to appreciate how smooth the GUI functions. This reminds of me of Coverflow and Apple – purchase this technology and incorporate it into your product Adobe – or your image library software will be out of date in no time.

Photoshop Elements releases about 1 version per year, and I do not see any reason to upgrade every year. First of all, it is expensive compared to other image cataloging software; secondly the number of features that are added just don’t justify the expense every year. Usually the updates are small little features that I do not use.

On another note; I also came across PicaJet which is another image catalog and management system and it also uses 3D acceleration in it’s interface. If Adobe doesn’t come around soon I may switch my 30,000+ photo catalog over!

I haven’t been an Opera user in the past. However, I’ve used their Mobile (Opera Mobile and Opera Mini) and their Wii browser and have been impressed. I’ve been missing out!

Opera 9.5 is nice – if you haven’t tried Opera lately I would give it a shot. I’ve heard other users rave about previous versions, but I always thought to myself: “It’s just another browser”.

9.5 has a ton of features but here are the highlights in my opinion:

• Fast Page Rendering Engine
• History Search
• Bittorrent Client Integrated
• Synchronize With My Opera
  - Synchronize Bookmarks, Speed Dial, and other Preferences
• Improved Skin – Apple Human Interface Guideline support
• Mail Client Built In

There is a slew of other changes in this release. I’ve found several pages which did not render properly or at all in this version – I know they are working on such things and there is a “report this page” button within the menu which helps you test their alpha stage release.

This Opera Browser definately gives me a “next gen” feeling and anyone who considers themselves an early adopter should give it a try!

One solution to this problem is Crossbar MediaCaster, which was kindly provided to me for review by SnapStream Media.

The basic idea of this hardware is that you are creating a “private access channel” AKA Avcast® entertainment network, which is then provided content from any device which outputs an RCA signal.

In the box:

• 1 x CableCaster – Establishes the Avcast entertainment network
• 1 x MediaCaster – Provides the content for the Avcast network
• 1 x IRcaster – sends IR signal over the Avcast network
• 1 x IRdetector – receives IR signal
• 1 x Notch filter – filters a channel range to allow Avcast network to utilize a channel
• 2 x Coax Cable – to connect MediaCaster/CableCaster to coax network
• 1 x RCA Cable set – to connect HTPC to MediaCaster

The setup of the system is rather complicated and requires that you both have access to, and know the setup of your home coax system which is already built into the majority of homes built in the past 30 years. If you have cable television, then you most likely have this internal network already set up.

Step 1:

Locate where the cable comes into your house. You need to intercept it where it splits off to go into separate ends of the house.

The CableCaster unit plugs in here. Also you will need A/C power. There is a plug for input – the input cable from your cable provider. Also in between the cable provider and the CableCaster goes the Notch Filter. This device blocks a channel range, so that the CableCaster can broadcast on this channel.

Step 2:

The MediaCaster is then plugged into cable network near or at your HTPC. You will need to have access to the coax network in your home if you don’t already have this near to your HTPC. This part will also need A/C power.

Step 3:

Plug your Audio/Video device (in this case, a DVR running SnapStream BeyondTV). This means you will need to output the video and audio in RCA format – so make sure you have the necessary cables/converters to do this.

Step 4 (optional):

At the remote end, connect the IR Caster and IR Receiver to the coax network. This will allow you to use the IR remote at a remote location to the intended receiver, the signal will be broadcast over the Avcast network to the MediaCaster unit.

In my case, I used the BTC Wireless Remote and Firefly remote, which were both able to reach to my upstairs room and control my PC.

Now that everything is set up, you can see my remote TV with my HTPC desktop running!

I must admit, it was very cool to be operating my HTPC from another room while seeing the content broadcast over a CATV channel. This signal is now available from anywhere in my house – allowing me to enjoy my recorded content over any cable-equipped television set.

There are several large drawbacks or flaws to using this system.

- First, the HTPC must output in 1.33:1 ratio format, meaning if you have your HTPC set up to output to an HDTV in widescreen format (16:9). I could only get my setup to output one or the other, meaning I had to make sure my aspect ration stayed in Standard format.
- Secondly, the notch filter also seemed to filter out content which it should not be filtering. Specifically, my Motorola set top box became useless. On Demand stopped working, as well as HDTV signal quality dropped dramatically – causes dropouts in signal.

These drawbacks really limit how you are able to use this system. In my case my wife really relys on the OnDemand service from Comcast – so this is a deal breaker for me. If your cable TV provider is not comcast, then you might not have this same problem. Also the system is fairly complicated to set up, so it is for advanced users only.

Final verdict:

Product provided by: SnapStream Media
Review date: 5/1/2007