Amazon Fire TV stick

I've always struggled to find a decent media playing solution while on the move. I think I've cracked the problem, with an Amazon Fire TV stick.

By default, its locked to Amazon's Prime ecosystem of video and pictures. And this ecosystem is fairly decent and I consider it to be good value. But, because it runs Android underneath, and has access to Amazon's App store, you can quite easily and relatively simply dramatically increase its usefulness.

My suggestions on what to install and how to do this ?

1. Plex (from the Amazon App store) - access your home media library
2. AirPin (from the Amazon App store) - turn your device into a cheap AirPlay-compatible device
3. Sideload a bunch of apps - this is the frankly illegal stuff, so you can read up how to do it yourself
• Terrarium
• Put.io
• Popcorn Hour
• MX Player
• Kodi
• 1Channel
• Alluc
• Exodus
• Filmon.TV
• Gobble
• Navi-X
• Phoenix
• Stream all the sources

Once complete, Internet media streaming happiness ensues :-)

Beyerdynamic T-51i

I like the industrial look of Beyerdynamic’s products. And the T-51’s solved a particular problem I had. 

 

I bought a pair. And wow, they are impressive in build quality, presentation, audio performance and package contents. Its unusual to not find something wrong with a product, but this is one of those rare products;

• it does what its supposed to do
• its a fair price
• it comes with everything you need
• it looks beautiful
• its comfortable to wear
• it sounds bloody awesome

 

Get a pair!

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (version 2)

The Kindle Paperwhite is an amazing device; I’ve blogged about it before, and have had a chance to use the new generation one for the last month now. Summary : no need to change if you have the previous one, but if you don’t, this is absolutely the e-reader to get (and yes, you need a separate tablet and e-reader).

 

To be honest, this really is an incremental update. No notable changes, except maybe the light source illuminating the page is now so well integrated that you can’t actually tell where the LED lights are.

 

The previous generation was perfect; this one, to be honest, makes a truly brilliant product simply sublime.

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite

Best. Tech. Device. Ever. Amazon Kindle Paperwhite does what the 2011 Kindle I had, but with two significant upgrades; there is a touch interface (meh, not that interesting), and a built-in light! Yes, killer feature spotted!

Through some fancy technology, Amazon has managed to integrate a light into a device that does what it promises, consistently. So they were a bit behind the curve, but I think their implementation is very slick.

The device is still light (although feels heavier than the 2011 version), but the grain on the new leather cover is awesome, the magnetic click on/off is cool (although its annoying that you can't switch it off), but its the light that is the killer feature.

 

I bought the 3G version, which was probably a bit silly. Should have saved some money and bought the 3G version with ads / specials. You only see those on the "sleep" screen, which on this device you never see because it auto sleeps and wakes when you open and close the lid anyway. Not sure if it would be different if you had the ad-supported version.

 

But overall, a real winner. Does what it says it does, and does it well! 

Unotelly (or how to watch Netflix and Hulu Plus in South Africa)

So cool devices like the Apple TV and many other embedded / TV devices support services like Netflix, Hulu Plus and BBC's iPlayer, but getting them to work without lots of hackery with VPN clients (services like Hidemyass) is near impossible.

Until now.

I signed up for a trial with Unotelly, a DNS-resolver / cache-based solution. They claim its VPN free, but the only way I can see it working is that they redirect the supported list of channels through to their own application proxies, which then mask you from the content provider.

Who cares; it works well, its relatively cheap, easy to install and I had it up and running on my home network in minutes. And best of all, works equally well on laptop, tablet, smartphone, etc. Neat!

Apple TV 2

Apple describe the Apple TV as a hobby project, which begs the question of why they are bothering with it. And the reason they're bothering is because to not have a toe in your lounge means giving up a large segment of your media spend; video. Apple relatively recently refreshed the 1st gen device with a newer, sleeker, smaller version. I had the old one, and am now busy playing with a 2nd generation version.

 

The 1st generation device had a hard drive in it, and you could either stream your content to it from any computer running iTunes (the devices all have built-in WiFi), store the content on the device and have no computer running or purchase content from the online store (or, as was usually the case, all three).

 

The new generation device is smaller, black and not white and is functionally more useless than the first one. It has lost the hard drive and now has flash storage. Great if you're in an environment with very fast, always-on connectivity. That is not true of SA. Its also lost its USB port, and has the same miserable compatibility in terms of media playback (i.e if its not in iTunes, it won't play it).

 

So why buy it ? Because, if you've gone to the effort of sorting out your media so that it plays and looks great on your iDevice, you want it available in your lounge in the same way too. And yes, you could dock your device, but thats dorky. This at least can be controlled by remote, makes that big TV useful by displaying album art and can drive 5.1 sound through its TOSlink output (the HDMI audio out seems to be of inferior quality).

 

Oh yes, this new gen device also supports Airplay; that is quite cool. Imagine you have a pic or video on your phone; you can get it onto your TV simply by selecting the Apple TV as your output screen - neat! That is a cool trick. And shifting the price point too was smart - $100 is reasonable and fair for a hobby, the old one at $300+ wasn't.

Popcorn Hour A-200

A while back, I bought a Popcorn Hour C-200, which is a very fancy (and big) media player.

Fast forward to a new house, another TV (32" Sony BX300), and a requirement for another media player. My desired device was the Popcorn Hour A-200, and first contact with the local agents was that the device would be R4500! That was a bit steep, so I decided to go buy a Mede8er, which is actually a cool device; its better than the Popcorn Hour in that the interface is cleaner / easier to use, the preview features are awesome (compared to the lack thereof on the PCH), and the device is nice and small.

Unfortunately, it irritated my wife to no end that the user interface was different, and there was a different mechanism to view the same content as the C-200. It also didn't help that it suffered to playback some really good quality large MKV's across a gigabit network. I phoned the local agents again, and discover they had made a mistake with the price of the device, and it would only be R2100, which is what was paid for the Mede8er; I promptly sold the old device and bought the new one.

There isn't much to say, other than it does the same job as its bigger brother, in a much smaller form factor. And the wife is happy too :-)

 

PS

 

My home network is a gigabit Ethernet network, with Apple Airport Extreme base stations for local access, and wired access to a MacBook Pro which has a Drobo connected to it via Firewire 800 for storage. A desktop PC running pfsense protects the environment. It works quite well.

 

PPS

 

The new TV (46" Sony EX700) is being installed tomorrow. Watch this space for a review!

Popcorn Hour C200

I used to use a Popcorn Hour A110 as a media playback device at home. It worked well, but when the upgraded C200 was announced, I had to have it; there was no rational reason or justification.

Well, I got it, and its even more awesome than the old one; its just a lot bigger. Think old-school video machine! Pity I'm watching it on my old rubbish TV; time to get an LED/LCD.

PS. While I was looking at this, I also investigated a Mede8er. It looks pretty cool, but I'm more confident in the development and codec roadmap of the Popcorn Hour team.

Component switcher

I have several devices that use the one component input on my old-school CRT TV. Thanks to my Logitech Harmony One universal remote (which IMO is the world's best universal remote), my AV receiver, TV and associated device power on and configure themselves correctly. What is a PITA is that I then have to get up, and change the input using a manual AV switcher to the relevant component device. This sucks.

So, from those thieves, I've ordered a Impact Acoustics 3-play switcher, which I can then program using my remote to change inputs. Now that should be cool!

PS. I tried the Zakspeed S-video / analog-audio / composite switcher, but it seems to interfere with a component signal. Kudos to them for accepting it back though.

PPS. Changing my TV might be a better option that all these hacks, but I'm not quite ready yet to drop R30k on an LED TV; besides, right now there are not that many options. I'll wait.

Traditional broadcast media can't compete with BitTorrent

I don't have DsTV. I don't have a video store contract. What I do have however is an uncapped ADSL account, a server hosted in the US and some clever systems that, combined, mean that a TV episode is downloaded to my house within hours of it airing in the US.

And I'm not unique or alone in this. Friends of mine who are not in IT do the same thing (except they have DsTV for Formula 1). My mother understands the concept (she is a Brothers & Sisters addict), and in the medium term, this community will expand.

And thanks to BitTorrent, users are relatively anonymous and are forced to contribute back to the network, thus ensuring content is almost always available in a highly resilient manner.

Knowing that you can watch what you want, when you want it, without ads, in higher quality than currently comercially (and legally) available, is cool. Personal collections are limited only to your storage capacity; an average movie is 800MB, and TV episode is 350MB.

And if you take the confluence of three trends (ceteris paribus), namely

1. Bandwidth will get cheaper
   
2. Access speeds will get faster
   
3. People will find ways to break copy-protection and DRM
   

I wonder what the future is of the traditional broadcaster and advertising sector ?

Tools like the Multichoice PVR and Slingbox, while technically excellent, still don't adjust the fundamentals;

• you can only record (and conversely playback) something that has happened
  
• its delayed by at least 3-6 months from its initial US airing
  
• the quality of the video is poor and there is not enough HD content airing
  
• I can't keep an extensive back catalogue
  

This logic applies equally to music and full-length feature movies. If I was Primedia or Multichoice, I'd be working frenetically on an online distribution model with a capable ISP rather than clinging onto a fundamentally dead business model.

For the geeks

While not endorsing downloading content and robbing starving artists, I would imagine that a good media download environment would look like

• 1 x server hosted in US
  
• 1 x uncapped local ADSL account
  
• 1 x Popcorn Hour media player (think smarter and cheaper MVix)
  
• Torrentflux / TVRSS.netshowRSS / clutch mash-up
  

For the real geeks

Don't bother with the Apple TV. Its cumbersome, doesn't work properly in SA, difficult to use, hasn't got enough horsepower to playback proper HD content and requires you to crack it to get it to be halfway useful (e.g. playback of AVI files).