Marcus Hass' [MS] Blog : Home/Audio

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.

Are you in the TIVO Generation?

mhass — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 22:03:00 GMT

You may be asking yourself, what is the TIVO generation? Details below.

(In your best Jeff Foxworthy voice) You might be in the TIVO generation if:

· You sit in meetings wanting to fast forward the presenter

· You look for the rewind button on your car stereo because you just missed something interesting or a particularly humorous commercial

· You don’t listen as attentively as you used to during real conversations because you assume that you can rewind and skip the unimportant stuff later

· Your coworkers are discussing the latest PC vs MAC commercial, and you have no idea what PC vs MAC means (BTW, the latest two PC vs MAC commercials, the one with the Christmas gifts and the other with the “New” signs, clearly make me like the PC guy better)

· You have the gift of rhythmically deleting unwanted shows in your recorded shows folder

· All you want for Christmas is a way of recording all your shows in one place instead of hunting through 3 different recorders for the show you want to watch

· Clicking on something twice, no matter what it is, should always record the series

· Everything should be HD, including the commercials you skip over

** Disclaimer: I have never owned a real Tivo branded device. Since "Tivo" and "Tivo'd" have become synonymous with recording TV, I use the terms loosely. I still believe that UltimateTV is the best PVR out there (made in 2001), Media Center is cool too. **

Got other things that make you TIVO generation? Post a comment.

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.

I can finally build my Media Center PC, well almost

mhass — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 02:16:00 GMT

Looks like I will be able to finally build a Media Center PC next year and have cable and HD content pipped directly to it. Microsoft and Cable Labs finally got it together to allow MCE to support cable cards. This was the final hurdle for me to adpot MCE as the hub for my house, I didn't want a bunch of receivers connected via IR blasters changing channels plus an HD receiver for over the air reception.

This will be very cool, and I bet we will see some really cool MCE PC's from OEM's as well as cable companies over the next year to support this announcement.

Microsoft Music Phone, and what I really want for Christmas

mhass — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 02:27:00 GMT

It looks like Microsoft will be trying to keep up with Apple’s iPod phone by announcing a phone with Orange that allow you to play WMA files. My Siemens SX66 from Cingular already does with via an SD card, but I am sure that 3-4 GB of storage is what they are shooting for. I have no inside information if the rumor on the link above is true, but we are getting closer to what I really want.

Ya, I am a geek, and the majority of the public out there couldn’t give a frack (Battlestar Galactica reference) about phones that play music or check email or get appointments. Actually, my wife loves having her appointments and contact seamlessly sync from my Exchange server at home, so I can’t say that people don’t care.

But, back to my point, I have been looking at new cars and one of my requirements is BlueTooth. I want to be able to sit down and have my phone and music from the device on my hip, not a separate system from the car. I don’t want to mess with wires or buy expensive stereo in the car that can show me what I am playing from my iPod. Sit down, start up, drive, and listen (to phone or music). We are probably a couple years away from having music streaming from our devices (iPod or PPC) but I would like to formally make the request now.

BTW, other than the Solstice I haven’t found ANY American cars that have Bluetooth. Many of the Euro and Japanese manufacturers have added it to their 2006 models which should be applauded. Who would want OnStar with a different phone number and a separate charge?

Earth vs. the Satellite, where to get TV?

mhass — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 18:44:00 GMT

I sit here listening to a presentation about Microsoft’s IPTV offerings, that are being implemented by some of the bigger DSL providers. Ya ya, who has 1.5 Mb DSL when you can get 3-5 Mb cable modems?

Well if you like DVR’s, HDTV and video on demand (VOD) all in one device, you want to switch to a DSL provider like SBC that is bringing fiber close to your house to accommodate IPTV. How much bandwidth? Think 25-40 Mb to allow 4 streams of video coming down to your house. Your set top box becomes a “dumb” device again and signals the real “tuners” back in providers datacenter. This allows the provider to allow as many tuners as they want for each customer. These tuners then point to a bunch of media servers that either contain live broadcasts or VOD content. BTW, because there is no digital signal streaming to a local set-top box, channel surfing is instantaneous, no lag.

VOD on IPTV is not the couple hundred shows that companies like Comcast offer, think endless content. If you want to see the 151^st episode Cheers, it could be there if it is popular enough.

I have been a long holdout with my UltimateTV set-tops and DirecTV. I honestly don’t think that satellite providers aren't going to be able to compete because of the bandwidth necessary for these types of services. No to menition the round trip to the satelite and back. But, it is nice to see that IPTV’s interface is based off the learning of UltimateTV and Media Center.

Cable providers are not going to be able to compete in this market with their current infrastructure either. They need to go IP over their wire rather than analog and decoders, oh and crank up the bandwidth, a lot.

Now, can someone talk to Qwest about getting on the IPTV bus so that I can get it here in Denver?