Marcus Hass' [MS] Blog : Gadgets

My iPhone 3G Review

mhass — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:57:00 GMT

Call me a traitor. Call me weak minded to the Apple Jedi mind trick. Yes I have a 3g iPhone, the cheapest one of course.

My Treo 750, which I really liked, was starting to have some battery fade. In addition, I was using the IE browser on my Treo more frequently, with more and more contempt for IE on the phone. I had loaded an experimental browser on it a while back called Deepfish, and it was great (very similar to the abilities of Safari on the iPhone). But, Deepfish was canceled as a standalone project and will probably be incorporated in a future version of Windows Mobile.

So, I was stuck using the "diet" version of IE on my phone, which made me want to pitch it for distance at times.

I was indoctrinated to the iPhone during a charity event for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society where I took many pictures using people's iPhones as proof they made it to a checkpoint along a race. I had to fumble into menus on the iPhone, and was instantly hooked by its interface and most of all its Safari browser, even though it was the Edge version at the time.

The stars aligned and I ordered one. Below are a few observations (please note that I don't care about iPod functionality because my Zune is way, way better).

Pros:

Now with Exchange Active Sync (EAS), see cons section for some quirks with EAS
EAS means security policy pushed from Exchange server, ability to remote wipe if lost
Safari browser rocks!
Overall Interface is excellent
GPS and Google maps integration
Camera is pretty good, interface for pictures is excellent
Good Facebook application add-in
Haven't had issues with it unlocking keys randomly in my pocket like I did with a "key locked" Treo
Better interface to read emails than on the Treo, especially expanding the reply list.

Cons:

Battery life, can't make it an entire day even with Wifi turned off
I miss Voice Command!!! I got used to not taking my phone out of my pocket/holster and using voice to call someone and it telling me who was calling. This might be coming in the near future from the application store.
Can't sync individual folders with EAS, it is "last 200 of items". I have a folder with all my travel plans and it usually isn't in the "last 200 items"
Calendar sync is screwy. Even though I accept an appointment in Outlook, the phone insists on me accepting it again.
Can't query other's calendars
Attachments aren't automatically downloaded, only when you click on them
Some applications from the application store are deemed "too big" so you have to use iTunes to download them. I have an all-you-can-eat data plan, why can't I use my 3g connection?
Smudges, grease spots, makeup (not mine of course). All inherent with a touch screen, reminds me of the old TMo XDA
One handed navigation was a Treo trademark, and still is. Apple can't match its one-handidness
Can't flip things like email on its side for reading. Only browser and camera seem to flip on their side.
GPS isn't real GPS. I believe it must use cell towers or something because it isn't nearly as accurate as my Garmin. Probably a fix in the future...

Verdict:

The browser alone is worth it, I can live with all the quirks
Apple needs to actually pick up a Windows Mobile phone and use it like millions of WinMo customers have been for years. Take some notes, and refine the experience more on the iPhone.
Where can I get an extended battery? Oh wait....

Note: If you have solutions to any of the issue or quirks, please post a comment.

Update: Added Con about querying calendars and con about attachments.

Sony is brilliant, PS3 may surpass Xbox 360 in the future

mhass — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 20:44:00 GMT

The reason has nothing to do with games. Pretty much, all games are available on all platforms.

The reason is Blue-ray. Is Blue-ray the best technology? No. Is it the cheapest? No. Is the PS3 a cheaper and better Blue-ray player than stand alone players? Yes. Not only is it the cheaper or the same price as stand alone players, but it is easily upgradeable as new Blue-ray standards come about.

The reason that Sony is brilliant is that they concentrated on incentives to the film distributors rather than low price. By securing content via incentives, they crushed HD-DVD, and no price cuts on Toshiba players are going to salvage HD-DVD. Game over, nice try.

This also means that over the next year or two, people will be buying a PS3 as their HD content player. There is a perfect storm brewing as analog TV signals are phased out, people are upgrading to HD TV's, and at the same time picking up a Blue-ray player.

Oh yea, that Blue-ray player also plays some games....

[Update] Fixed an auto spell correct error.

ATT Internet problems, too many iPhones?

mhass — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 00:08:35 GMT

My customer just contacted ATT because their on-call phone hasn't been picking up email today via it's data connection. ATT said they are having nationwide Internet problems, but didn't specify the cause.

Anyone care to take a stab at the problem? My guess is that the surge of iPhone inter-tubbers that have never had a real browsers or Internet access has clogged everything up.

My Treo 750 hasn't been able to sync except maybe once today. I can't imagine what havoc this is causing for business folks that are relying on their data connection today.

Apple seems to have executed beautifully on deployment, but someone forgot to let ATT know that they might have a bunch of new users and data traffic.....

iPhone and ActiveSync, a security concern

mhass — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 17:44:00 GMT

A couple days ago, Mary Jo speculated that Apple has licensed Microsoft's Active Sync technology which allows iPhone to securely sync with Exchange servers (over its smoke signal speed, EDGE data connection). Will ActiveSync be out of the box today or an upgrade in the future? Will it be the reported implementation on the iPhone to connect with Exchange via IMAP? (IMAP isn't really a concern for most Enterprises since the IMAP service is usually disabled)

I have no details about this deal, and probably couldn't talk about them anyway if I had inside knowledge, but I am concerned about security.

Here are a few things to consider if Apple has licensed EAS.

Most enterprises that use Exchange leave the attributes in AD "on" for Exchange Active Sync (EAS) and Outlook Web Access (OWA) for all users. That means that if you have an ActiveSync enabled phone, you can usually point it at your Exchange server without any special help from IT. Typically, this is the same server name as the OWA URL.
Exchange and ActiveSync have the ability to push security settings down to the phone, as well as remotely wiping the phone in case of theft or loss. The first time you sync from the phone, you have to agree to allow the Exchange server to implement security policies. Most common security settings are to require a PIN or complex password to unlock the phone after 5-15 minutes of inactivity. In case you misplace your phone, after 15 minute it locks, and 5 wrong passwords wipe the device.
The implementation of ActiveSync is up to the licensee, in this case Apple. So, the question is: Will Apple implement security policy settings that allow administrators to lock down the phone and wipe them if they are compromised (also deleting potential music)? If they don't, we may all be writing ADSI scripts to turn off EAS attributes soon....

Guess we will have to wait and see.

3 months with the Treo 750

mhass — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 19:52:00 GMT

I know I come across as a whiner sometimes about gadgets, especially phones. It's just that I want one device that can do everything from making a phone call to opening my garage door to sending tri-corder data back to my starship in orbit.

The Treo 750 hasn't disappointed me, at all. I honestly can't think of the first thing to say about this phone, good or bad. It is so good, that I don't dwell on any bad things about it, yet there isn't a killer feature either. This is good! I don't always have this warning light in the back of my mind that I may have missed a critical phone call or important email. It just works really, really well. Here is a brief review.

Low-lights:

There is no way to turn it off, you have to pull the battery. You can turn off the radio stack by holding down the red button, but no way to save the battery completely.
There is an issue with the audio gateway when using a Bluetooth headset and initiating Voice Command (VC). It routes the audio for VC confirmations to the handset rather than the headset. If you use a button on the handset to initiate VC, all works as expected.
No easy way to start the dial pad. On most phones, if you are on the home screen, you can start dialing and it goes right to a dial pad. You have to navigate to the dial pad by hitting the green dial button, then using the navigation buttons to select "dial pad"
**BIGGEST GRIPE** - You can't charge the battery with the USB cable! I found this out the hard way by going on a trip with only the USB cable, and no charger! Can't all these device manufacturers just use a mini-usb cable to charge (and sync)?
No camera
I wish the keyboard was more like the Blackjack where the numeric keys don't require an "alt" key press.
Windows Mobile 5 notifications - even after I read an email, it still sometimes has a left over notification that is simply cleared using the left soft key. Microsoft needs to figure out how to remove these as I read email/check voicemail.
No AT&T UMTS in Denver!
Tether is an additional cost

Highlights:

3 reboots in 3 months (1 while in foreign country). I have only had to pull the battery 3 times. Usually, this is because the buttons do strange things, not because it looses the ability to communicate.
One handed navigation. Palm has done a great job of adding it's own flavor to Windows Mobile 5 and made this device totally accessible with one hand. I think I have taken the stylus out twice.
Battery life-I can go 2 days without a recharge even with medium email traffic
Stun button. The slider on the top allows me to go into silent mode without having to traverse the profiles chasm every time. Great feature in a meeting.
The "search" function is right on the home screen, nice touch from Treo.
You can turn the volume of the speaker to "11"
No Camera - allows me to take it into datacenters
Treo has announced that an upgrade to Windows Mobile 6 will be available in the near future.

Motorola Q ends my phone nirvana!

mhass — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 19:13:00 GMT

I came very close to calling this post "The Motorola Q Turd", but I thought that was a little brash. After all, I have had it for about 8 months and at times it was a good phone and I even talked about it being close to Nirvana at one point.

My troubles began last fall after Moto provided a firmware update that allowed push mail from Exchange. Some good things in that firmware update where that the phone was more responsive and push mail is HUGE. But, my phone started turning itself off, and I wasn't able to reliably make/receive phone calls or sync data.

So, I submitted bugs to the Windows Mobile team. They came back and said that both were known issues and were due to Moto/Verizon's implementation of Windows Mobile on the hardware.

The issue of it powering off is most likely due to Moto deciding that even in Device Lock mode, holding the power button shuts off the device. There are two types of locks on the Q: keylock and device lock. The security policies pushed down from our Exchange servers force device lock, which mean that you have to enter a password to use the phone. The theory is that the power button (aka the end call button) gets bumped in the holster, backpack, or purse (not mine of course) and powers off the phone. Keylock works correctly in that it won't let you power off the phone. The Cingular blackjack is much better in this regard because it has a discrete power button on the top of the unit where it is less likely to get bumped.
The issue of it not being able to receive or make calls or data is blamed on the radio stack. Radio stacks are created by the provider and optimized for their network. In the case of the Q, the radio stack goes buh-bye and screws up a bunch of stuff including voice calls, data, and even its ability to detect the battery being charged. Often times when it was in this state, I would plug it in to the charger (not USB) and noticed that it wouldn't change the charging display icon, and if I left it plugged in overnight the battery would not be charged in the morning. Pulling the battery was the only fix.

In late November, the phone refused to boot up. Verizon quickly replaced it with another Q, which I thought would be a good because it would eliminate any hardware problems that might have caused the phone to have these issues.

The problems persisted, and while I was skiing with my son in December, an avalanche closed the highway near the resort we were at. My panicked wife tried all morning to call me because we had only passed through that area 30 minutes before the avalanche occurred. At lunch I finally tried to call her and the radio stack was frozen. I pulled the battery, and when the phone came back up I had service and 3 frantic voicemails with my wife in tears, not good. I caught a lot of crap that day all because of the stupid phone.

I contacted Verizon in January to determine what my options were because this phone was not meeting my needs. I was told that I was locked into a 2 year contract and that I would have to pay retail to upgrade to another phone (no business discount). I escalated with customer service, they wouldn't budge. I contacted the Microsoft account manager and he engaged a local engineer. We determined that I didn't have the latest firmware on the phone from Moto, so we upgraded. Again, I thought my issues were over. Not even close, all the same problems except now my Bluetooth would not reliably see my headset and wouldn't always detect that it had a gateway (allowing me to use Voice Command via a button on the headset). I gave 2 months of due diligence to troubleshooting, and I am no better off. In fact yesterday, my wife needed me to come help make a huge financial decision and couldn't get a hold of me because the turd was off again!

Verizon has offered to allow me to buy another phone now at our discounted price, but in no way is offering any money back because their implementation stinks. At this point, I am going to pay the $175 to terminate my relationship with them and am switching to the Treo 750 from Cingular.

I hate being in a position where I have to discourage people from buying something that runs Microsoft software. But IMHO, there are some big flaws in the Mobile Device ecosystem because Microsoft makes the OS, a hardware vendor makes the phone and drivers, the provider makes the radio stack, and all of them can change little parts of the OS. Is there too much freedom or too many chefs in the kitchen? I think so. I have heard that Treo is doing a much better job in owning the entire platform, so I will give them a try.

I wish Verizon would have worked with me a bit more, especially after determining these were issues that they own. Wouldn't it be great if they had customer service like Bose?

A High Tech visit to the dentist

mhass — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 03:33:00 GMT

This week I had the chance to catch up on some much needed personal maintenance, including a visit to the dentist. Like most people, I have usually gone to the dentist that my wife or parents have gone too, without much research into the doctor, office, or technology. In fact, out of all medical related things, the dentist has always been a secretive-put-all-your-trust-in-the-guy-digging-around-in-your-mouth-thing. I hate it when I don’t know if the guy with the drill is looking out for my best interest, or trying to fund their new condo in Aspen or a 5 star trip to Brazil. After a few years at my wife’s old school dentist, it was time for a change into the 21^st century.

I had seen that some dentists do everything from digital x-rays, movies on the ceiling, and even massages. In order to assure that they are most likely current with technology, I came up with a list of criteria:

· The dentist has to have a web site

· They at least have to have an email address, and reply back if I email them promptly

· (optional) Be able to book appointments online

· They have to be able to book me an appointment with the next two weeks. My old dentist would literally take 3 months for the next available appointment.

· I want to see a picture of their lobby on their web site

· I want to see a picture of their treatment rooms/chairs

· They better have an LCD hanging above the chair

· Take my insurance or at least make it simple by filing my insurance reimbursement for me

· Be near my work so that I don’t have to take much time off

Geeky? Yes. High expectations? Yes. Did I find what I was looking for? Yes.

Let me introduce you to my new dentist, Angela Osborn, DDS. BTW, I didn’t get any type of discount, nor did she know I would blog about this. But, I had such a cool experience (even though I had to have a lot of work done), that I had to tell all my geeky friends about it.

So, I “Live Searched” (you thought I was going to say Googled, huh) a dentist on Lone Tree, Colorado and found her web site. Let me first address a couple things that I didn’t like about the web site, remember this is a geek talking that uses the Internet heavily, opinions may be different for” normal” users.

1) It has an intro. Intro’s scream to me late 90’s when you wanted to attract a lot of attentions by saying “look I forked out the big bucks to have someone flashize my web site”.

2) It has sound whether you are on the Intro or main info page. Ya, you can turn it off, but if you are in an office, the prairie dogs start popping up in cubicle town when you get surprised with sound from a web site.

3) The main site is completely flash driven, with navigation on the right and frames, kinda. It took me about 30 seconds to figure out how to navigate and in Internet time, this is an eternity. The site could easily be converted to HTML/ASP/JAVA and still retain most of the ambience but make navigation normal and support small devices better.

Getting past the web site, the experience was nothing short of fantastic, yes I said fantastic about a dentist visit. I was able to grab all forms I needed from the web site, so signing in was easy. Brenda at the front desk was able to schedule me for about a week out, and called back the next day and offered me an immediate opening. Brenda was also great because she asked for my insurance information and called the insurance immediately to find out what they covered.

When I arrived, it was like sitting in the waiting room at the spa with nice tile floor, furniture, and faux painted walls. They got to me pretty quick, and Tracy starting doing a full X-ray of my mouth. I was able to watch the X-rays pop up on the LCD in front of me. Then came something I hadn’t anticipated, speech recognition. Tracy spent the next 10 minutes probing each of my teeth and dictating the state of the surrounding gum tissue to the computer. It was a bit long, but worth it as she dictating things like “no, 3, no” which means I didn’t have plaque, the gum tissue was at level 3 (level 1-3 is good), and that when she probed it didn’t bleed. All this is also feed onto the screen and kept as a permanent record for comparison in the future.

After the standard cleaning, Dr. Osborn came in to check for cavities and look at my x-rays. I didn’t expect any because I have had really good luck with my teeth. Then came the bad news, I had a few potential bad places, but the real story was that where I had some fillings in the past showed signs of damages and decay around them. How did I know she wasn’t pimping me for some money? She stuck a camera in my mouth, snapped some pictures like the one shown here and showed me on the monitor the nasty spots. Proof! That is what I wanted; it got rid of shroud of mystery of the dentist.

Dr. Osborn’s practice hit 8 out of 9 of my criteria, and has already started directing some of my friends and family there. I went back the following week to have my teeth fixed, and Dr. Osborn did an excellent job.

NikePlus, Zune better be a platform!

mhass — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 04:47:00 GMT

There are two reasons why you will have to pry my iPod Nano out of my warm clutching hands (I am not that big of a geek to be buried with an Apple product). The first, is that it is so easy to control while I am running. The second is the new NikePlus device that plugs into the bottom of my Nano and keeps track of how far I run. Training for a ½ marathon, you have to know the distances and pace times you run so that you can improve your endurance, and I was resigned to running on a few paths that have mile markers. With the Nike device, I can run anywhere and Nike whispers in my ear how far I have gone and how fast. Hey, even John Mayer thinks it is cool, and John try velcroing it to a wristband on your arm, I bet you burn a hell of a lot more calories playing guitar than tapping your foot.

Not to say that the union of Nike and iPod is perfect, in fact I have quite a few gripes, here are a few:

· It only works on the Nano

· Nike’s smart marketing team didn’t allow a way to attach to shoes other than Nike (a little industrial strength Velcro works well). The problem with this is that Nike shoes won’t work for most runners I know because they are built for “neutral” stride. Most runners like me pronate, or have strides that won’t work with Nike shoes.

· The Nike software makes the music function of the Nano almost useless. The Nano’s first and core function is a music player, but the Nike software limits you to playlists, shuffle and power songs. Once you start the Nike software, you can no longer choose songs, albums, artists or genres. Isn’t this like having a cell phone, that does other stuff like email, instant messenger, plays games but then fails to make a call (err, never mind I don’t know any mobile phones that have this problem).

· Because of the limitation above, I have to stop the Nike program and select music or audiobooks that I want to listen too. This cuts up my run and posts poorly on NikePlus.com as you can’t group runs together, even though it records times. It would be great if NikePlus saw that your times were near each other and asked if you would like to combine the runs together. As you can see by the picture, I have had at least 3 runs recently that would be great to combine together.

· At least twice, my Nano has freaked out and the Nike voice plays loud but all the music volume is so low it can’t be heard. I took it to the Genius’ at the Apple store and their solution is to reformat it. I thought only PC’s did that.

Apple has a big head start (too big?) in recruiting partners to add value to the iPod such as Nike, FM Transmitters, remote controls, stereo system, and biggest of all: car stereos. I hope that J Allard and team have taken our “software is key” approach so that our partners can quickly add cool new hardware options to Zune.

Seriously scary Blackberry

mhass — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 17:20:00 GMT

For years, competitors to Blackberry have been pointing out the inherent security flaws with RIM’s services such as, um, all your corporate data flows through their network (along with all your competitor’s data). Microsoft's play around this is the fact that Exchange Active Sync doesn’t flow over someone else’s network, it simply uses HTTPS over your carrier’s network to sync with your Windows Mobile device. And BES can add significant load to your Exchange Back End because of the way it monitors messages.

What is more disturbing lately is an article presented at Defcon 14 this year about using a RIM device and their proxy to expose a customer’s internal network. The BES services work a lot differently than Exchange Front End Server or a direct connection to the Exchange Back End, so I can’t see how Exchange could be used in the same fashion using Exchange Active Sync. But, I am sure that our security folks have run through this and are double checking it to ensure that we have a “leg up” on RIM.

iPod vs the alleged Argo

mhass — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 17:24:00 GMT

First off, I have no inside knowledge of the alleged Argo device. But from what people are saying, it might be a lot of things like and iPod with wireless, a small game console, a small browser device, maybe even a mobile phone. I haven’t go a clue.

Whatever it is, I imagine J. Allard and company will do an awesome job. J you might know from a recent appearance on the Apprentice for the Xbox 360 launch the contestants had to piece together at Walmarts. J is one of the creators of the Xbox and Xbox Live, and I consider to be a hero within Microsoft (I worked with Xbox Live for 8 months when we first launched the service).

You can bet though, that Apple is not sitting on its laurels, and hasn’t been for years. In fact, check out the patent filling they did back in 2004 in regards to music players which includes wireless. Down at the bottom, it has images which are a bit difficult to see for us non-Apple folk so I have included the picture below. I would place money that Apple introduces a new player or add-on that makes the iPod a close equivalent to the Argo.

(thanks to Mark Veaudry for proving the Apple info)

So close to Mobile Phone Nirvana

mhass — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 18:42:00 GMT

Last week I finally switched to Verizon wireless. I had been meaning to do this for a long time but I had bought a Siemens SX66 from Cingular almost 2 years ago, and needed to fullfil my contract or pay some big bucks. My commitment was over, and I really liked the idea of the Motorola Q and the EVDO vs Edge data access.

Here are some of my few complaints

1) Everything appears to be a tiny bit sluggish, but still works. You get used to it after a day or so. Hopefully a future ROM version will add MSFP and fix the sluggishness.

2) Although the Q is missing the critical MSFP, there is basic security. The problem is that when you set a password under Settings->Security->Enable Phone lock, you must hit the “shift” key before each key you use for a password. Likewise, you have to hit shift before each key to unlock the phone.

3) There is apparently no way to have the Today screen reflect All Day appointments without 3^rd party add-on (Windows PPCPE and older OS’s had this option)

4) There is no way to completely lock out keys on the phone. If you use either the “Key Lock” or “Device Lock” it is still prone to being bumped and will turn on the display. If this phone is put in a purse or your holster is prone to touching the keys, it will waste the battery each time it is bumped. You should be able to lock the screen so that only a single button will wake it up (preferably a softkey as they are less prone to being bumped).

5) Bluetooth headsets are easy to setup, but there should be some indication up in the status bar (near the battery indicator) if it can see the headset. There is a nice headset indicator on the Verizon Today screen, but this doesn’t work with the Microsoft Today screen or others. My Siemens SX66 had a great headset icon once it was connected.

6) Please, please make the voice signal software removable. And allow third party vendors to be able to assign the Voice software of their choice to the voice key. I am currently Beta testing a smartphone version of Voice Command that is light years ahead of Voice Signal, but it took some hacking to get it to work.

7) I have lost data connections occasionally, I have to turn off the phone and back on to get it back. I can’t surf or ActiveSync to my Exchange server until I do this.

8) Flimsy belt clip case, I am using my case from Tuff-as-nuts, the best mobile phone cases in the business.

9) Battery life with BlueTooth sucks. Less than a day, I have to turn BT off unless I am using it, which defeats the whole purpose of having a great BT headset that just turns on and connects.

Here are a couple highlights so far:

1) The Q and the Motorola HT820 Stereo Bluetooth headset is an incredible combination! They are pretty good music headphones, but they also contain a microphone without a boom that works great in your car (even with the windows down).

2) The Motorola HT820 Stereo Bluetooth supports the Bluetooth Audio Gateway. Which means that if you use voice recognition software like Voice Command, the microphone in the headset is used to listen for commands rather than the microphone on the phone.

3) Great data speed rates (EVDO here in Denver).

4) Very small, very light.

5) Comes with all the features a gadget freak needs.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like this phone even though there are more nitpicks than there are highlights. This is still close to being the perfect phone, and I hope that at some point they have a flash upgrade that solves a lot of these issues.

Outgoing Caller ID not supported on Vonage!!

mhass — Tue, 02 May 2006 06:29:00 GMT

So, I finally got rid of Qwest at my house, not even the line is hooked up to anything. I switched to Vonage for my primary home phone because it will save me about $10 a month, and my wife can use it to call long distance for free instead of having to grab my office phone (ATT Callvantage phone).

The thing I didn’t know is that Vonage doesn’t completely support Caller ID. Yeah, yeah, incoming CID works great but outgoing will not display your name, only your number. HUH?

Caller ID has been around for 22 years. 22 years!! I can’t believe that Vonage can’t get this together. My two lines on ATT Callvantage do it, and they are VOIP. Every Comcastic customer I know works fine. Even some mobile phones do it. But, the might powerful and much ballyhooed Vongage can’t seem to deliver a two decade old technology. This doesn't seem like a big deal, but some people won’t pick up their phone unless they see a name in that caller ID field.

Oh, and BTW, don't bother calling their support. You will be routed to a call center in India, and they will ask you to go to the configuration page and be surprised when there isn't a Caller ID applet. I called them a total of 3 times, and each time it took an incredible amount of explination to tell them that outgoing Caller ID doesn't display my name.

Now where did I put that customer service number for ATT Callvantage?

Comcast Improves, and I finish my home theatre

mhass — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 08:44:00 GMT

So, I decided to get a powered CATV amplifier for my house to see if my loosing picture with Comcast was maybe just the box saying “weak signal”. Well, this has solved the issue of it loosing picture! But, we are still having to power down the settops every couple weeks because it freaks out and I can’t rewind a recorded show, or we get this repetitious pixilization while watching a show. Giving the box a 5 minute time-out seems to solve the problem, but man is it inconvenient when you are recording a show.

I got my basement finished about a year ago, with the intentions of putting together a mid range home theatre. We didn’t want to have a dedicated room as a theatre, rather we wanted a living room that had a great screen and sound. This allows us to keep an eye on the kids as they play in the basement in their playroom. After a year of buying good speakers and components at cheap prices off eBay it is done. The crowning jewels were a Mitsubishi 4000U projector and a Vutec Silverstar screen (these were by far the most expensive parts).

I had Scott from Soundhounds get the projector and screen since they are supposed to only be available through authorized dealers, although I saw the projector on buy.com. Scott got my projector and screen all dialed in, and tuned up my sound system (sound pressure meter, etc). I highly recommend that if you are going to procure your stuff alone like me, that at some point you have someone like Scott come in and get it all tuned up properly. If you live in Denver and need some help, tell him I sent you as he has a great referral program. If you need a kick butt screen, also give him a call and get the Vutec screen.

Here is a picture of the completed room with components all fired up:

Microsoft announces multiyear deal with DirecTV for media devices

mhass — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 21:59:00 GMT

I just saw this tasty morsel from the press release at CES about Billg’ keynote:

“Gates also announced a multiyear partnership with satellite TV provider DirecTV Group Inc. to get the company's satellite video directly onto Media Center-based devices.”

So, there is hope to get off Comcast and go back to DirecTV! I am just wondering how they can accomplish this without the existence of a “cable card” type device for satellite providers. Guess we will find out soon, eh?

UltimateTV vs Comcast’s HD/DVR

mhass — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 22:19:00 GMT

**Updated**

I have gotten a lot of comments and questions internally at Microsoft because I offered to sell my UltimateTV boxes after switching to Comcast’s HD DVR (Motorola DCT6412 III) about a month ago. I switched to Comcast because I have had a rear projection HD TV for a few years and never did anything other than occasionally play Xbox Dragon’s Lair 3d (one of the few Xbox HD games) in HD. DirecTV’s option was to get their HDTivo box, which you can get around $450 per box, and I didn’t want to buy two of them. Comcast’s boxes are “free” and I get local HD signals without an OTA antenna.

I have blogged about it before, but what I really want is Windows Media Center Edition (MCE) in a closet somewhere and stream the content to Xbox/Xbox 360/ Extenders at each of my TV’s. The problem is that until recently, you had to work with external tuners connected to MCE via IR blasters, what a mess. There is a “firewire hack” that is available now from some creative folks at www.thegreenbutton.com, but from reading the description, you still can’t do Live HD programs. While this isn’t a huge problem for me since I rarely watch Live TV, it might be an issue for my family. So, I still wait for all the integration to happen.

In the meantime, I wish I still had UTV and it supported HD. UltimateTV turns 5 years old next year, and it is still the best DVR interface. Here is a chart of my observations.

Feature	Advantage	Comments
HD Signal	Comcast	This isn’t as straight forward as you may think, especially with the limited content in HD. HBOHD is still not 1080, it is probably closer to 480. Local HD looks great.
Dual Tuner	UltimateTV	Comcast makes you push the “swap” button before you can watch another channel, why?
Integrated Guide	UltimateTV	UTV allows me to hide channels that I don’t receive or want. Comcast seems to group channels based on popularity rather than type. I want all the kids channels together, all the movie channels, etc
Recording a Series	UltimateTV	UTV = Hit record twice and it is done. Comcast makes you walk through several unnecessary steps
FFWD/RWD	Tie	UTV has much better and faster (up to 300x) FFWD and 30 sec skip ahead, but there is a bug that makes UTV stick occasionally. Comcast doesn’t go as fast, but it doesn’t stick as much (still sticks)!
Repeat vs New Algorithm	Comcast	Comcast’s guide information seems to be better and will only record new shows if you tell it to. UTV seemed to record a lot of repeats.
Reliability	UltimateTV	**Update: We have UNPLUG both our HD/DVR’s at least twice a week because there is no picture or sound. The guide still works, but won’t tune channels. Also, after an unplug, it downloads the guide data which seems to have a stutter effect on HD signals until it finishes (1-2 hours). I have already had to have both of my Comcast boxes replaced, which when you have all your shows setup to record is a massive pain. The one downstairs is now saying some kind of error and to call support. We routinely loose sound an/or picture causing us to put the Comcast boxes in “time out” for a while until they start to behave.
Annoying things	Comcast (not a category you want to win)	Comcast has this “mute feature” that when you turn off the box and it is recording it assumes you want to still record and “mutes” the sound. There is no way to unmute it other than powering the box off. Comcast support says that you should be able to go play the thing that you recorded to unmute, but this is dumb logic especially if you record other things in the night. At Comcast’s suggestion, I reprogrammed my remotes to not turn off the Comcast box, and it routinely looses sound or picture after a few days causing us to have to turn them off for a while.
**Update: Sound	UltimateTV	While we sometimes get Dolby Digital on Comcast, it drives my receiver nuts. You can hear the receiver trying to auto-adjust to the signal because it is either too weak or confused. Click, Click, Click… I would guess that the Comcast broadcast pipe is just maxed out, and between picture and sound compression it just can’t stay consistent. What is the theoretical limit of combined band width of coax anyway?

In short, I will live with Comcast knowing all these limitation because I enjoy the local channels in HD and the simplicity of the integrated guide. I don’t have to shell out $900 for a HDTivo that won’t be compatible with DirecTV’s local HD channels next year anyway. I can’t wait until MCE supports cable cards.