a Boy and his TV

BYU IPTV

2014-08-18T10:53:00.001-06:00

I recently got married and moved to Wymount Terrace, BYU's on campus housing for married people. I soon found out they not have traditional cable. They have IPTV, meaning TV streaming through an internet line. You can view it through your computer or and IPTV STB(set top box).

First let me get out all my annoying complaints. They don't let you use it over wifi. The only access is through one wall network port on your wall. Everything but IPTV is blocked on that network port, meaning you can't use the internet and watch TV your computer at the same time. I find it annoying.

Since I have a TV I decided to go with the STB. BYU OIT charges about $10 for setup. $10 a month to rent the box, and a steep $200 if you lose any components(even cords I think). That is a waste of money, so I bought an Amino 130 on ebay for $75 new and I am going to sell if for $70 when I move.

All you need to do to get it working is: plug in the box and go to the webpage: http://iptv.byu.edu/stb. If you ever need to edit the box settings it might be helpful to know the default password is either "leaves" or "snake".

Here are some other websites associated if you want them:
http://iptv.byu.edu/player/downloadPlaylist.htm
http://iptv.byu.edu/player/portlet.htm
http://go.byu.edu/iptvlaunch

*Note this should have been posted like a year ago, but I forgot. Also when I moved out I just posted the box on the community Facebook page and sold it in 2 days, totally worth it.*

Misuse

2014-08-18T10:49:00.003-06:00

Today I am misusing this blog to try and win something. Yay!

Courtesy of: SnapKnot - Find Local Wedding Photographers

Sony Internet TV as an internet Hub

2013-03-26T14:11:00.000-06:00

Recently I came across this post. And now believe that my Sony Internet TV NSX-40GT1 or in other words my 40" Sony Google TV is the best TV I could have ever wanted while owning a raspberry pi, or any other kid of media server. The CEC is amazing, but here is something else. If you are connected to WiFi over you TV, you can use the LAN connection in the back to plug something else in, and the TV forwards the internet on. You just makre sure under Internet Status you have Private network Enabled, and wallah you now have internet on the device plugged into your TV without another wireless card or stringing a cable from your router.

This is also awesome if you have an XBOX that needs a network cable!

Rasberry Pi, XBMC, and CEC

2013-02-15T18:05:00.000-07:00

The only thing that Google has given me to work with on here is the new guide from like 2 months ago. That was great. It makes cable watching super easy, but beside that I am still waiting for something good from them. In the mean time I have a Raspberry Pi at home so I got xbmc running on it.

Anyone who doesn't know what xbmc is, it is a media player operating system. This is cool because I can now watch Hulu, and not just Hulu Plus on my TV full screen. That is great news!

Now I want to mention my favorite part that most people would not even think about, CEC or Consumer Electronics Control over HDMI. CEC has been my favorite feature of my Sony Google TV that add is for the set top box, but I have the TV with it built in. I think my TV is beautiful if anyone is wondering. What it does is it sends signals back and forth between the TV and other things using the HDMI. I already had it working on my Blu-ray Player, which means that I only need my TV remote to control my blu-ray, or it even works the the Google TV Remote app or even Chromote.

CEC on xbmc means that I can control my Raspberry Pi without needed a keyboard or mouse connected, it just works over the HDMI cable already plugged into the TV. That is good news. Currently the CEC is very limited, meaning only the arrows and enter work, the mouse doesn't, and the rest of the keyboard just brings up Google searches, but it is a good start that I hope someone finishes!

CEC is my favorite. Thanks xbmc for bing awesome!

Chomemote

2012-07-28T22:26:00.005-06:00

I just wanted to talk about one of the coolest things I have seen for Google TV recently. It is the Chrome browser extension Chromemote. It looks like a port directly from the Android app Google TV Remote. If you are used to the app it is pretty awesome. I would personally want some different skin, but it rocks. I love being able to use my actual keyboard to search for things. I have only used it for a day, but it is very convenient for doing homework and watching something for noise in the background.

Overall I recommend Chromemote to everyone with a laptop and a Google TV. Open up Chrome and get the extension here.

Chrome to TV

2011-11-03T12:49:00.004-06:00

The new Google TV is a bit glitchy, and I wish the clock was on the other side of the home screen, but so far fun. What I want to meantion that most people would probably never find is Chrome to TV.

There is a chrome extention called Chrome to Phone, that pushes a site from your chrome browser to your phone, if you need to leave or something. They incorporated it into Google TV, so now when you have a youtube video on your computer you can push it straight to the TV with only a click of one button. That simple feature might be the nicest of all the updates, and it isn't even advertised.

Gingerbread update!

2011-11-02T13:28:00.002-06:00

My TV just alerted me it is updating. Finally after a whole year of talk it has come. I will give a few review probably in a few days, but I am just celebrating that it is here.

False Update Excitement

2011-09-24T11:15:00.002-06:00

Today I turned on my TV and there was an update. I got really excited, but all for nothing. The update only took like two minutes and I have no idea what changed, but not that much. How lame. When is Ice Cream Sandwich coming.

Zediva Shut Down

2011-08-24T10:55:00.003-06:00

On of the saddest things that has happened in a while is Zediva getting shut down. It happened on August 11th. In the middle of the night I got an email that told me they lost to the government and got shut down. They call it an "Intermission" but it really just means they lost.

I still had like 5 credits I was going to use. I liked Zediva, even if it only worked during the day, because my apartment's internet is too slow at night. I had used it on my Google TV and on my Android phone. It was great. I am sad big companies can just beat them out because they have more money.

Thank you for being great when you lasted. I will miss you Zediva, you made my newly released movie experience so much better.

YouTube Updates

2011-05-15T17:57:00.005-06:00

Youtube Leanback got a new update this week. I like it, for searching, but the old Leanback was so much more relaxing. If you went to the page it would just play, you didn't have to think, just go there and it would find something for you for a while. The new one is just back to youtube where you have to find what you want. It is fine, and the new one looks a little better, but it is back to searching.

Youtube movie is a different experience. I am glad to see they have new movies as well as some free ones. I think for my movie watching I will stay with Zediva for new ones because it is much cheaper, but it is nice to know it is there. Sadly when the internet connection is slow, Netflix is way better than youtube on keeping your movie streaming. Most the free movies are on Netflix so if you are paying for it, youtube movies might be hard to get into.

Android and iOS Remote

2011-05-04T10:58:00.004-06:00

I am happy to say that both the Android and iOS have remote apps in their market/app store. I have used both, and they are pretty much the same. I personally like it on the iPad which gives you a huge remote.

It is nice to not have to get up and get the remote, but I personally prefer the remote it came with, because the apps there are too many screens. I don't like switching between them, There are like 4, the normal view, the keyboard, the mouse and the other options(including power and input.) I like being able to access everything and the app doesn't do it. I still haven't found a way to use combinations of keys, meaning my shortcuts (the search key + a letter) or ctrl + alt + del to reset the system if there are problems.

I still need to prank a roommate and turn off the TV when they are using it, while I am in bed in another room, but someday I will.

Zediva

2011-05-02T11:08:00.005-06:00

Supposedly the movie industry thinks that keeping new movies from online sources for one month gives anyone who is willing to buy a DVD or Blu-ray the chance to do it. After the month they let companies like Redbox, Amazon On Demand, Netflix's Stars Play, iTunes or others the chance to rent or sale digital copies of movie. Zediva has come and saved us from that stupid rule. Best part is it works great on almost anything Google TV, Android, Apple or even Windows. It works in the browsers so that means it works on mobile devices.

Zediva is a new company that has done something completely crazy. The day a movie comes out they go and buy DVDs, put them in their network of DVD players and let people rent and stream the actual DVD. They found a loophole which gives them the quickest access to stream movies. They are Awesome!

The pricing is actually great. They charge $2 per movie unless you buy 10 rentals where they give you it for $1 each. They even throw in bonuses sometimes. Each rental lets you watch the movie as many times as you want for 14 days, and you just click return when you think you are done with it. Therefore this is way better than Redbox. It is cheaper, works great, and you don't even have to leave your house. I don't think I will use Redbox again.

Lets just say Zediva opened an awesome window. I hope it's existence eventually gets rid of the one month rule, and they don't get sued out of existence.

YouTube Leanback

2011-02-16T23:37:00.003-07:00

Today when trying to watch a Youtube video as soon as I clicked search it popped up Leanback. Yay. I have been complaining for a while that it would open the regular page and making me. click the small buttons to get it full sized, but today it magically worked like I thought it should since the beginning.

Complaining

2011-01-26T10:22:00.002-07:00

I have had my Sony Internet TV powered by googleTV around 4 months now. Let me tell you all my current complaints.

Most annoying issue: Remote delay

Semi often the remote will delay when I press the buttons. This includes everything but Crtl + Alt + Del. If you you want to restart it, that will always instantly work, but I cannot search, type letters or change the channel or volume. That is really annoying. It will always do what I want it to, but each click will be 10 to 30 or more seconds delayed making it look like it isn't working. I don't understand why the force restart would work instantly when everything else doesn't.

Tips to improve it:

Pandora: Add a clock, if you have a music player that just sits there, at least let me know what time it is.

Timers: Give me a countdown timer so I can use it when I am baking cookies.

Kill page: The kill page warning doesn't pop up till the page in responding again, I can always click wait and it will work right after, so either pop the warning up faster, or wait that second after you would pop it up to do it.

Tabs: These don't really work, they just disappear with the back button with no hope of coming back. Make them work, or don't include them.

End notes:

I am waiting for the store to come, because I want to see what the tv can actually do, but I am worried because of how often it freezes. I hope that doesn't continue and get worse with new apps.

Update 1.2

2010-12-19T17:36:00.003-07:00

The update for my Sony Internet TV with Google TV came out this week. I was a bit sad because it took 3 days after I saw on twitter that it was released until my TV was able to update. I wanted it, and I knew others had it, it just didn't upgrade so I had to wait it out. I guess that is a bit much complaining, but I like my updates. Here is what I think of the updates:

Netflix: The interface is way better. You can search which is nice (even though they put a weird letter clicking thing, for if I didn't have a keyboard). My only problem is they made the font and pictures for everything a lot smaller, so I need to put my glasses on to search now, a bit annoying, but whatever.

Dual View: The update is nice, bigger is better. I like being able to move it, but I don't really use this feature. I don't have a cable line plugged into my TV, I use it exclusively for online content and my Blu-ray player. When apps like Netflix can be put in Dual View this will become much more useful to me.

Remote: I have an iPhone and the remote app isn't out for it yet. I am waiting. My roommate has a droid so I downloaded it on his phone, the voice search was kind of fun, but I am not going to take his phone whenever I want to use my TV. My biggest problem here is the Logitech keyboard supposedly being supported. My roommate has a Logitech Revue, so we have the keyboard, and he likes it much better than my Sony controller, so I am trying to set it up for him to use, but I don't know how to do it, and there seems to be nothing online to help, when I find out I will update here.

Movie: This feature is cool, but needs some updates. I love how if a movie is on Netflix it can go straight to the movie in the Netflix app. The fail I see here is that not movie services are found here. Crackle the Sony service which they are trying to push on the Google TV doesn't show up in the search. I think it should.

The updates are nice, but not all that impressive. I will probably be more happy when I find out about that Logitech keyboard, I might call Sony tech support tomorrow.

Wired Internet

2010-11-10T20:03:00.003-07:00

I originally set my Sony Internet TV up on wireless internet because I didn't have a cable at the time, and I wanted to play with it as quick as possible, but being the person I am I wanted to try all the features so I tired wired internet. It didn't work.

After setting up with wireless on a Sony Internet TV then trying to go over to wired it will just say "not connected". The trick to get it to work is simply disable the wireless and it works. To bad I couldn't figure that out myself and had to ask tech support.

fancast.com

2010-11-03T22:15:00.008-06:00

Today I wanted to watch Castle on my Google TV, and since both Hulu and ABC.com, the two sites I would usually use are blocked, I decided to just do a search and found Fancast. Looking at it, it looks a lot like Hulu, and seems to be owned by Comcast. Good news Castle works just fine. It looks like Chuck works there too, and I haven't looked around much more, but yay I can watch the shows I want again. Note: Yesterday I learned you can use NBC by changing the User Agent to Generic, but that trick doesn't work for Hulu anymore so I don't think it will last on NBC. Yay for using my Sony Internet TV as it should be used.

I haven't found a way on Fancast to queue like Hulu, but it does have RSS feeds when you go to each of the shows so you can add it to your Google Queue and it will tell you when you have a new show to watch. I couldn't get it to work right just using the favorite button then clicking add to queue, but I went to my computer and added the RSS feed to my Google Queue subscriptions in Google Reader and it works now.

Update: November 5th:

It seems that I was just a little excited and didn't review Fancast very well. In order to watch shows on it you must have the User Agent switched to Generic. If you don't it will just stay and the loading screen and never actually play. There is one down side to using this site. Ocassionally after commercials the sounds will come back, but the video will not. You have to actually refresh the page(Crtl + R), then go back to where you were. It is a bit of a hassel, but still it mostly works, which is better that what I can say for other sites.

Update: November 12th:

I haven't actually checked this, but according to everything on the internet this is now blocked too. The user agent switch will not work because the companies are blocking the version of flash, not the browser. Wow this is getting annoying, I need to get a new laptop with HDMI out, and just watch what I want no problem. I already have the HDMI cord to plug in across the room thanks to Monoprice.com, but my laptop is just two years to old. I have tired this with my roommate's computer it works great.

Keyboard and Mouse

2010-11-02T15:54:00.003-06:00

Although the Sony remote is much more intuitive that I thought it would be, and makes for a good experience, some people (my roommate) would still rather use a regular keyboard and mouse to surf the net. Good news: YOU CAN!

After about half a day of complaining how he couldn't type on a small thumb keypad he tried plugging his wireless mouse and keyboard into the USB ports on the side of the TV and it worked without a hitch. He can now use his mouse instead of the track pad on the remote (which does have a learning curve). Also he gets to use his full sized keyboard which he enjoys. By using the keyboard he lost some functionality (turning the TV on, off works great then he is stuck), but we did find out that the Home button on any internet keyboard will bring up the home screen on the TV, and that something like Ctrl + K brings up the magic search bar. Good job Sony.

Netflix

2010-11-01T13:18:00.004-06:00

I was excited to be able to use Netflix on my Sony Internet TV powered by Google TV, but my excitement was unwarranted. When I initially opened the app, I thought it looked cool, it brings you straight to the instant queue, which is nice. Then I tried to explore. This is where I my review ends. There is nothing more. The Google TV which is supposed to be all about searching can't search on their app. (I know I can just go to the Netflix webpage in chrome then add them there, but the resolution is hard to read, and they don't have an easy way to just search instant queue able items.)

On top of not having any features it takes a really long time to load. I know I may not have the fastest internet but everything else loads in at least half that time that Netfilx does. The biggest problem is before it loads it has to retrieve some kind of license which talks forever. Overall I am not impressed, which is kind of sad. I am waiting for an update that will make it more friendly.

Aristocracy.com

2010-11-01T12:18:00.003-06:00

This is actually pretty funny. For some reason this blog has been having problems showing up in google. Today I looked for it, just going to google and typing in aboyandhistv.blogspot.com, and finally it came up with results and actually linked here. There were the expected result of my other blog and my twitter, but the funny thing was Aristocracy.com. Acristocracy looks like it is some kind of site that shows recent political pages. I guess by using the word inauguration as the title of my last post they found it and put it on their page. I think it is really funny. If you click the read more link it brings you here. They took the links to all the pictures in the post and even one of the videos. I think it is funny. Here is a screen shot from their home page.

Inauguration

2010-10-30T00:16:00.012-06:00

Going to work this morning was one of the hardest days ever to go to work. I knew that my TV was going to get before 10:30am, but I had to get to work before then. I had work then class then work then a test and I didn't get home till 5pm. It was very hard not to just ditch everything and come home, but luckily I had Will Power on my side and we able to endure.

When I got home I got to see this:

My amazing Sony Internet TV just waiting there to be opened. (My roommate took it out of the travel box and made it look nice for me.) I was super excited and even had a friend record me opening it. Here is the video:

Here is a fun picture of me screwing it onto the base to make sure it doesn't fall off and break.

I was so excited that I actually read the setup guide. It was simple and helpful. I still haven't figured out what to do with the IR receiving cables. I know they have something to do with remotes on other players, but I will figure it out later, when I actually plug my Blu-ray player in. (Since I didn't have a TV I lent it to a friend she could watch Netflix.) I found this one page useful to know all the inputs I had looked online before but I didn't find something as easy to fine as this:

After reading the setup guild and looking at the "End User License Agreement" (a huge pamphlet it came with) it was time to turn it on. To make the occasion more fun I had my friend turn it on for the first time ever while I recored it. Here is the video:

It took a little longer than I expected it would to turn on, but it was nice and happy. The instructions were super simple. And within 15 minutes or so I had my TV up and running. I got it connected it to WiFi. The remote is a lot more intuitive than I thought it would be after a few minutes it seemed work well. I was surprised that the shift button worked like a real keyboard and I have to hold shift click a button, unlike a cell phone or something (which I thought it would have been like because it is Android based.) The touchpad mouse thing it the only thing that I don't love. It is a bit tricky to use sometimes, but it works and does get you where you need to, it just takes some time to get used to, unlike the rest of it, which is pretty amazing. It is small and fits my hands like it was always meant to be in them. Here is a picture:

I needed something to watch and since every video show I would watch was blocked I turned to my other blog and watched Dr Horribles Sing Along Blog. It is an amazing video. Here is a picture of the awesome event:

This TV is amazing! It is huge and I am so thankful that I got it. Going from no TV to this is amazing. I am just about to get more popular. Thank you Sony Electronics!

Like Christmas Morning

2010-10-29T12:15:00.004-06:00

Right now it feels like Christmas morning, and I unluckily woke up at 5 am, when no one else wakes up till 10am. My Sony Internet TV is in my apartment just waiting to be opened and played with, but I am at work/school for at least another 5 hours. If I didn't have a test today to end my day I probably would have left already.

As my best friend tells me I just need to ask my friend Will Power for support and things will work out. I hope my mind doesn't wander so much that I fail my test.

Scratch that last one, it is coming tomorrow!

2010-10-28T17:55:00.002-06:00

I just got another email that says it is coming tomorrow before 10:30 am. Overnight shipping is awesome! It is going to be really really really hard not to ditch work\class tomorrow.

It is actually coming

2010-10-28T15:31:00.002-06:00

I just got an email telling me that my TV should show up at my house on MONDAY? The countdown begins: 4...

I really did win...

2010-10-27T23:06:00.004-06:00

Since I have been telling people for a while that I won an awesome 40" Sony Internet TV powered by Google TV, some people have become skeptics because I have not yet received it.

Go to http://blog.discover.sonystyle.com/sonyinternettvwinners I am totally on there. My sn is @mvndaai. (I know under the picture they spelled it wrong, but that is their fault.)

Now that it is official for all the world to know that I won I hope the TV comes soon. (Please, Please, Pretty Please...)