Complaints pour in after digital TV test – 09/23/08
A major problem during a test run in Wilmington, N.C., was the inability of over-the-air viewers to receive new digital signals, according to figures collected after the test. via MSNBC

An alternative to cable chatter: live streams of local stations – 09/22/08
In the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, the national media’s attention was quickly diverted by the financial crisis and the presidential election last week. But the four local stations in Houston used the Internet to extend their reach, streaming their exhaustive coverage online and drawing viewers around the world by providing an alternative to the chatter on cable news. via NY Times

Study: DVRs in 27% of TV Homes – 09/15/08
Leichtman Research Group (LRG) said today that 27 percent of TV households in the U.S. have at least one DVR, and 30 percent of those homes have more than one. Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for LRG, is quoted as saying that the number of DVR households in the U.S. basically doubled in the past two years and will double again in the next four years. via NewTeeVee

The SnapStream office is about 40 miles from Galveston, where Ike made landfall, so we didn’t get hit as badly as many, but we did lose power and the office took on some water. So the office was without power for a couple of days, but we were able to restore power to most of the building by Tuesday afternoon. Our Internet wasn’t affected, but to give you an idea of infrastructure damage, take a look this electricity pole down the street from our office. It carries our Internet and electricity:

Holy hovering light pole, Batman!

I’m happy to say, though, that between yesterday and this morning, our hovering electrical pole is no longer hovering. So I’m breathing easier about our office’s power and Internet.

All of our customer-facing services were down for most of Sunday and part of Monday, but they are all back up and running now. The only thing we’re behind on now is technical support (the bulk of our support team was pretty significantly affected by the Hurricane) but we’re going to be working through the weekend to play catch-up.

Thank to everyone for their good wishes.

Word clouds of the Daily Show and the O’Reilly Report

and

TV coverage of the conventions

Our TV Search Appliance, which is basically a cross between a DVR and a search engine, is now shipping with upgraded and new features including:

- 24×7 recordings
- archived closed-captioning
- email clips, faster scheduler
- “did you mean..” message when searching within recordings

Check out the Enterprise blog post for more information.

Survey: DVRs more important than dishwashers, iPods – 09/03/08
When ranked along with other technological gadgets—like a mobile phone, radio, landline, home theater system, game console, and iPod—users put mobile phone first and DVR second. via ArsTechnica

Video Card:

nVidia GeForce 2 and above

ATI Graphics Radeon 7500 and above

Others with 16 MB RAM, 3D Acceleration, DirectX 9.0 compatibility

And for HDTV, we specifically recommend:

ATI Radeon 9550 or NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 or Higher

Because new graphics cards are released at such a dizzying pace (if you don’t believe me, take a quick browse through all the Engadget articles about new products from ATI and nVidia), it’s difficult to recommend a particular card. So here are some tips that might help with evaluating a graphics card for your Beyond TV HTPC:

1. Avoid integrated graphics: As long as integrated graphics have to share memory with the mainboard, problems are more likely show up. These will be the most visible when you’re trying to playback newer content like h.264 HD or ATSC HD recordings that are interlaced. An AGP or PCI-e 16x card will always be superior.

2. Know your TV: This could be a hard one if you’ve never tried to put PC video on to your specific television, but it’s critical to choosing the right input.

First, know the age of your TV: the older the TV, the less adaptive the circuitry will be to the types of signals a pc can output.

Second, find out the types and different limitations of the inputs available. For instance, your TV may have component, VGA and HDMI.

Finally, know the native resolution of your TV and if it will actually accept a video input at that resolution (and, if so, over which input(s)).

In a perfect world, you’d use - in order:

1. HDMI
2. DVI
3. VGA
4. Component
5. S-video
6. Composite

(Some limitations and footnotes:

HDMI/DVI

• Some TVs may only expect HDMI to be “consumer electronics” format. This means they may overscan the image or display colors wrong (I know this from personal experiance). ATI and nVidia’s driver software can usually be tweaked to overcome these effects.
• Some TVs won’t accept their “native” resolution
• Some TVs need to support “HDCP” in order to playback some DRM’d media (like blu-ray or hd-dvd)
• If your TV expects audio over HDMI, the video card will need a way for your to connect the digital audio from your pc into the card.

Component

• As with HDMI, some TVs may only expect component to be “consumer electronics” format.
• Can technically have signal loss, as it’s an analog signal
• ATI Cards may not allow DVD playback above 480p. (This really sucks)

S-video/Composite

• For “regular”, non-hdtv sets, this may be your only option. Use s-video unless you just can’t.

How do you know which one will work? Sadly, you may not until you play with your card, computer and TV. Generally, if you have an HDTV, get a card with HDMI that says it supports HDCP (you can choose if you want audio passthrough or not) and that also has the component breakout cable included. This will give you the most options.

Then scientifically play.

Get test video files.

Write a matrix to take notes (driver version, driver settings, decoder settings, results).

Try things. Change things like driver versions, decoders and settings, resolution, overscan compensation.

Compare your notes and then watch some “real” tv with it.

You may be surprised that your first guess is wrong. An example: I’ve discovered that my “EDTV” plasma looks better at 1280×720 than at native 848X480. This is due to the image scaler that it uses.

3. What will you be watching?
Options from easiest to hardest: Youtube, Windows Media, AVI (generally speaking), Standard MPEG2 (dvd), HD-MPEG2, Standard h.264, HD-h.264, Blu-ray/HD-dvd

Video cards will support “assisted decoding” where they will take the workload off of the main cpu. You’ll have to read up on your specific card to find if it will decode the format you want to watch. Be wary with marketing though. Just because the box says it will play Blu-Ray, it may mean “on a quad core processor”. You must do your homework to know the differences.

Generally newness in chipset, not price, changes how much better one card will be from the next. This is due to the fact that each new revision gets more decoding power.

4. Will you be gaming?

If you really, really, play games, you should look elsewhere to find the “right” card for your needs. Otherwise, most “middle of the road” cards will play the Sims2 just fine. Remember that your tv (if 1080p) may need to run at a lower-res to actually look descent.

5. Cooling.
Look for fanless solutions. Fans make noise and die. For an HTPC, the only way to go is fanless.

6. Addons
Steer clear of addons like video encoders/ tv tuners. Buy those things as separate cards. If you’ve read this far, you need to just trust this.

7. Shop in the middle of the road.
As with most things in life, you get what you pay for. A cheap card won’t be as reliable or well made as a more expensive one. A cheap card also won’t have the most recent features in the video decoding section.
Look to spend between $100-$150

Home theater PC video podcast by system - 08/27/08
If you’re interested in Home Theater PCs, check out Monday’s System Video Podcast by Revision3. Patrick Norton hosts PCMag.com’s Robert Heron and reviews basic HTPC requirements, hardware, discusses tuner cards, Hauppauge HD-PVR, Vista Media Center and even a mention of SageTV, BeyondTV and MediaPortal. via GeekTonic

Wi-Fi is a Go! Well, Sort of… - 08/21/08
On August 19th, the city of Houston announced that they’d created a large cluster of free wi-fi locations throughout the dowtown area, both in an effort to provide the free wireless access that has been long-promised by Mayor White’s administration and to promote the continuing revitalization of downtown as a destination to work, live and play. They’ve even created a website for the wi-fi campaign, called Houston WiFi via Houstonist

Ask Engadget: What’s the best PVR software? – 08/13/08
A pretty open-ended request, you see, but a valid one nonetheless. What’s your favorite PVR software? Does Beyond TV have your heart? MythTV / SageTV the one(s) for you? Feel free to list the pros and cons of applications you’ve tried — wouldn’t want anyone to miss anything! Read the comments. via Engadgethd