Category: home entertainment

Beware Philips Hue lights from the states

I bought into the Philips Hue system a while ago by buying the part I needed and then the lights afterwards. There are a tons of people selling the wired zeegbee bridge for as low as 25 pounds (I paid 26 for mine) then you can get a bulbs afterwards for much cheaper than the starter kit at 170 pounds.

So this is what I did…

Philips Hue Bridge

However I hit a problem, the first Philips Hue Lux light came and I could see it on the app via the bridge but couldn’t control it. I tried a lot of things including upgrading the system and rebooting the bridge. But it just didn’t response to anything I did. I thought well maybe its a dodgy bulb from ebay. However the next bulb came and I couldn’t even see it via the bridge.

I also ordered some via Amazon and they worked straight away, as expected!  I looked into the differences and found some bad news…

Philips will void warranty if 110V bulbs are used with 220V power and vice versa. Closer look at the packaging shows there maybe a problem.

Philips Hue Lux lights American packaging
The American Hue Lux – E26 bulb

Philips Hue Lux lights Europe packaging
The Europe Hue Lux – E27 bulb

So it looks like I have 2 American bulbs which I’ll have to put back on ebay at a lost (if it works at all?)

The good news is I have replaced my Philips Light/Wakeup clock with a Hue light which slowly turns on when Sleep as Android thinks its time to wake up. Apartment therapy you are wrong, using your phone as an alarm makes perfect sense, when used in the right way.

Which smart light technology works for me

I have been watching the Home automation market for a long while now and with all the security problems, have decided its time to get involved. Lights seem to be alright when it comes to security risk.

Checking out Amazon reviews, theres quite a bit of criticism about the Belkin Wemo compared to the Philips Hue.  Sam suggests LiFX as another option but I never heard of them.

So what am I after?

  • A range of LED bulbs and lights (bayonet and edison screw)
  • Support for Android at the minimum, IFTTT, Web and Linux would be great.
  • The ability to join my network either via Zigbee or something else.
  • Colour

After my brief twitter chat with Sam and Tony, I now know Philips Hue Lux is out, Wemo also maybe out due to the colour.  LiFX looks interesting but the lack of a wireless bridge worries me with bigger install plans. Plus I think there is a benefit to a bridge to connect other zigbee devices which are coming on to the market. Originally I was thinking about getting a almond plus router but then picked up the TPlink Archer D7 over the holidays at a good price.

It looks like the Philips Hue Lux is the best option to get started. With those I can hook it up to my Sleep as Android app, recreating my very old Philips wake up light.

I can then add a light to my living room for use while chilling out and watching films on xbmc/kodi.

Perceptive Radio on BBC Radio 4

Official Perceptive Radio photo

It finally happened… Perceptive Media  and more specifically Perceptive Radio got a mention on BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours today. Now to be fair this isn’t the first time its been mentioned on the BBC but to have futurebroadcasts.com mentioned live on air, should increase the sample size for feedback which is critical for our research into Perceptive Media.

In usual style I made an archived version on archive.org. Although to be fair the You and Yours stays on iPlayer for about a year at a time.

Islington Wharf, a 1gig fibre internet wonderland

Fibre optique

Yes you heard me right…

You may have a nice view, a large balcony, heck a swimming pool on top of the building. But have you got 1gig bit fiber to your flat?

No? Thats a real shame for you. Maybe you should give a hyperoptic a call now…

I just got conformation that Islington Wharf will be getting hyperoptic’s 1gig fibre connection to each and every flat. Yes thats 1GIG per flat!

This is perfect timing as I’m just about to order myself the Almond plus router. I’m just hoping I can move with UKFSN or Andrews and Arnold’s too.

What will I do with this much bandwidth? Well self hosting is a consideration along with being able to access all my media anywhere and everywhere with Plex. I’m also wondering if a more distributed model is viable, cutting out the 5 stacks?

What a waste of all that power…

Xbox

Adrian retweeted a post from the Guardian about Microsoft commissioning original content and popular stuff like Game of Thrones.

Microsoft’s move into original programming pitches it deep into Netflix and Amazon territory in the battle to control the living room. The company has so far publicly revealed a slate of just six shows that will air on its Xbox games console – including a Steven Spielberg-produced TV series based on its hit game franchise Halo, a documentary on former console giant Atari, and a remake of Swedish scifi drama Humans in conjunction with Channel 4. However, the intention is to build a TV powerhouse.

My instant thought was… what a waste of all that power. Not only processing power but sensors and data. In my opinion, if Microsoft were smart they would commission content which is perceptive. Make it exclusively for xbox users and narrow the gap between TV and Games. For goodness sake they already have the ability to layer graphics over the top of programming using the HDMI pass through!

Its almost a crying shame that they have all this in place but seem doomed to follow the rest of the industry. Specially with all those patents they have in this area!

Disruptive this is not… yes another step towards another stack growing but not a leap forward

Your own personal cloud

The personal or private cloud is growing in popularity and I’m starting to see it spring up in the popular tech press more and more. Interestingly I keep starting a blog post then not finishing it because theres not quite enough to talk about. Then I heard Bruce Sterling’s 2012 South by south west talk (recommended to me by Imran)

The bit which really got me was the 5 stacks part.

“[There’s] a new phenomena that I like to call the Stacks [vertically integrated social media]. And we’ve got five of them — Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft. The future of the stacks is basically to take over the internet and render it irrelevant. They’re not hostile to the internet — they’re just [looking after] their own situation. And they all think they’ll be the one Stack… and render the others irrelevant. And they’ll all be rendered irrelevant. That’s the future of the Stacks.

People like the Stacks, [because] the internet is scary now — so what’s the problem there? None of them offer any prosperity or security to their human participants, except for their shareholders. The internet has users. Stack people are livestock — ignorant of what’s going on, and moving from on stack to another. The Stacks really, really want to know you’re a dog.

They’re annihilating other media… The Lords of the Stacks. And they’re not bad guys — I’d be happy to buy them a beer. But really, a free people would not be so dependent on a Napoleonic mobile people. What if Mark Zuckerberg trips over a skateboard?

This structure won’t last very long… But you’re really core people for them and their interests. You are them. I’m them.

Bruce is right on the money. The 5 stacks have been trying to outdo each other for many years and see the whole thing as a zero-sum game, death to the end. This is not the way the internet or human society has to work or has to be. On the face of it, they are friendly but like a vicious dog (remember I’m not really a fan of them) they need a certain amount of caution.

Even myself are weary of how much data I hand over to Google. It may seem like I don’ t care but you would be very wrong. If I didn’t care I would sign up for Google Drive storage (I like the idea of being able to search across all my files, something which is tricky with Dropbox), would have moved from Evernote to Google Keep, etc, etc… I tend to keep my data across different stacks and deal with the migration and syncing myself. Its a bit of a pain and boy would it be easier to just dump it in Google’s cloud/stack. But I don’t want that.

I have been experimenting with my own cloud but not found anything yet which works the way I really want it to. The thing about clouds is they should merge and split or in other terms they should seamlessly blend. A personal cloud should consume and work with the other clouds. Now I understand the 5 stacks don’t really want to work with anyone else and will make there clouds/stacks difficult to inter-operate with but it can be done.

Some of you may say “Ian your dreaming…” but I point you at Trovebox which use to be Openphoto. The original idea was that you could store the photos in your own cloud and simply using an a bit of http linking and authentication, build your own decentralised flickr without handing over your actual photos. Another example is the absolute power of ifttt.com.

The lure of having a cloud which is as powerful and ubiquitous as other the other 5 clouds would be amazing. The advantages are all there but unlike the 5 clouds, you wouldn’t have to worry about it snooping on you and selling data to others. Increasingly more and more of us post Edward Snowdon.would like to something which we could exist and support our own ambitions not the shareholders.

Revelations that many governments of the world are able to collect personal data on-demand has called into question our desire and need to keep everything online. While we want to access and share our content, we want privacy and security as well. Whether it is photos on a social network or work documents in an online storage account, we want to know that we have absolute control of our data because it is ours, regardless of what services we use and regardless of how they choose to manage their Terms of Service.

Ok so were all down with Personal clouds? What are the projects I have been keeping an eye on? Cozy.io, Sparkleshare, Owncloud, Tonido and Amahi. Weirdly the last one isn’t really a Cloud but I’ve looked into turning it into a personal cloud platform.

The problem with the personal clouds is they are a long way off that ready state. They require a lot of hand cranking and can be a massive time and money hog. Which means only those knowledgeable and with enough money can afford the privacy…?

Its a shame but whats new?

Well nothing much but its fascinating what else you can do with your own cloud. I have seen a lot of activity around the idea. For example you have things like tent.io and you got to admire what Bit Torrent inc are doing in the labs, if only it was open source. Would love to use Bittorrent sync across the board but I just don’t trust it more than dropbox. In which case I might as well keep using dropbox? At least they have 2 factor authentication now and full support for Linux. Plus the amount of other cloud services which support dropbox is very high.

Ultimately if the personal cloud is going to really make a dent. It needs to be super flexible, work with others and support features which the others wouldn’t dare (bit torrent is one such feature)

The future of TV is coming into focus, and looks diverse

I read Ralph Rivera’s tweet about the future of TV and thought, hummmm…

Not quite sure I totally agree, its very American but I’ll go with it for the mass market.

My instant thought is that TV is going to diverge more than ever before. People are going to be doing a number of things differently, things which work for them. Aka the mass will get smaller and the diverse will expand into the mass.

Yes this means fragmentation people! Get use to it!

The main points seem to be,

It will be cheaper
I agree on this point except maybe sports. Most people will start to use alternative ways to get their TV, aka on demand and that push to have things live will die off in the heat of budget cuts and advertisers revenue decline. Unless advertiser can advertise in realtime against live content? (seen some sights this will be possible)

Limited channel lineup

I think this is a bit of weird one because it depends what you mean by a channel? In the traditional sense yes… You only have to look at the BBC’s decision to move BBC Three to online only soon. Saving a some serious money for other channels. However online there will be a more diverse line up that ever before, and they will be accessible to your TV and Radio with limited messing around.

Organized by subject

Channels have their place and I’m not saying its going away but it will change. My dad loves watching ITV Three because there is little chance there will be anything modern and new on it. I dare say it worries me a little, but maybe thats what I’ll be like in 2050?

But the point i’m making is the channels are already starting to align themselves by genre, subject (history, scifi, drama, bravo channels).

Personal subscriptions

Subscription is outdated but for those who do have a subscription on cable and sky. Yes the fear of those companies has always been the ability to break the packages into personal choices. Well the time has come to offer it or the consumer will go else where (there is plenty of other services offering individual channels, some illegally).

The big part of this is the fact media is just media and can be moved around at will. Don’t blame us hackers for this, blame the likes of Apple with airplay, Google with chromecast/dial, etc… I can pick and choose and once pandora’s box is opened, its too late to try and close the lid.

There is a research question how personal subscriptions work with families and groups of people…

Viewable on any screen

As mentioned previously, the media is movable and more manageable than ever before. In a rush and can’t watch it on your TV at home, why not watch it on your 4G powered smartphone on the train into work? Yes and its easily done now. Heck even if you miss it, theres a whole raft of ways to access it after the fact.

A better remote

This goes without saying, right?

No more switching inputs

I agree somewhat. I tend to have my TV set to my XBMC box and generally only switch when watching Live TV (aka very little) and watching through the Chromecast. I thought about putting a  USB TV tuner on the XBMC box but haven’t actually set it up yet (no time). I imagine when the chromecast comes out in the UK (I suspect May/June) it will support all the channels I have on my freeview smart HDTV. Leading to less switching.

I imagine most people will just plugin something like a Chromecast or AppleTV and be done with the settop box.

Netflix is just another channel

Goes without saying again…

HBO gets more accessible

I could say the same as above, but seriously the pressure is building. HBO has got to go fully ondemand soon. Shareholders will want blood if not.

On-demand that’s not awful

Who said it ever was? I mean besides some very bad examples and the current crop of terrible smart TV apps. The likes of XBMC, Plex, AppleTV, Chromecast, etc have shown great experiences which are a joy to use. On demand has always been a joy to be use for those of us who live in the future, and now the future is going to be more evenly distributed. Come experience what we all have been experiencing for many years.

New channels emerging all the time

Weird, didn’t it say limited channel line up earlier? Well anyway, yes welcome to the world when any developer can write a wrapper for another bunch of media. This means any podcaster can appear on your TV or Radio (lets not forget Radio in this). Any user on Youtube, Vimeo, Blip, etc can be a broadcaster. To be honest we all knew this really, thats why Leo Lapoure was able to setup the Twit network or two guys on a sofa drinking beers (Diggnation) went from no sponsors to the likes of the US Army and Ford sponsoring…

(I can feel Andrew Keen and Tony Churnside screaming against the poorly scripted badly filmed content avalanche of these pro-amatuers (how dare they infect our TV?). This is why we have personal subscriptions! Same reason why you don’t follow everyone on twitter!

Not as reliable

I do agree, its not going to be perfect. The internet and net neutrality is under constant attack. When your TV and Radio is over the internet, your going to feel the pinch. All those, all you can eat data allowances will be tested to the maximum. Is your 3/4g contract really unlimited and whats the quality of service like? Are you going to celebrating 30seconds behind everyone else on the train because your internet service provider is prioritising against the channel your watching? Would it be better to pay more for a decent internet service? Roll on the next point…

Not so cheap

This isn’t going to be cheap, the cost saving you got from dumping cable and sky has been moved on to better internet providers.

I spend just over £30 a month on true unlimited business class internet which gives me low ping times and the ability to do what i choose to do with it. My 4g bill is less but isn’t truly unlimited. I checked the small print and there are fair usage policies, even though I was told in store it was truly unlimited.

We monitor the data usage of every customer who has data access and fair usage specified in the terms of their plan. If a customer consumes data above the monthly fair use limit, and in a way that we consider extreme, we may reduce their connection speeds for a limited time. This will only affect a small number of people, and we will always warn them by text before the speed is reduced. This only applies to non-Business tariffs.

Want to switch to the business account, well thats going to cost you!

No one said this was going to be cheap…

Chromecasts are all go…

Thanks to Jas who tweeted me about the Google Chromecast SDK becoming available via GigaOm.

Google released its Chromecast streaming stick nine months ago, but initially limited support to just a handful of apps, including Netflix, YouTube and the company’s own Chrome web browser.

In the following months, a small number of hand-selected apps was allowed on the platform, including Pandora, HBO Go and Hulu Plus.

Developers of other services were able to access a preview SDK and experiment with Chromecast support, but Google didn’t make it possible for them to actually publish their apps to end users. Google executives said at the time that the SDK necessary to add cast support to third-party apps simply wasn’t ready yet, and Chandra told me this week that Google used the time to improve the reliability of the SDK, as well as respond to developers who were looking for easier ways to send media to Chromecast.

This is great news for developers and users like myself who bought a Chromecast. Be interesting to see what new hacks also come around for it.

Wall mounted Calendar/Picture Frame

The Hudl arrives! There goes the afternoon...

I like Google Calendar a lot, specially because all my calendars are now inside of Google Calendar. Even my work calendar is inside of Google Calendar because I can’t stand to have multiple calendars again. So it would be great to have access to Google Calendar when I’m wondering around the flat without having to switching on a device and load up the calendar app.

The closes I’ve gotten to this to date is my Archos 70 tablet which sits on my coffee table as a XBMC remote. I’ve loaded a couple more things on to it including a Transmission remote, Yaste, Audio monitor, Plex, XBMC remote and Calender. Because its running Android 2.2 (Froyo) theres no Google now or Daydream support which is a shame because this is where I would use it.

So a wall mounted Google Calendar certainly rings bells, however with the price of Tablets now a day, I just don’t see the point. They all pretty much come with a Wide-SVGA or higher resolution and Wifi/Bluetooth. It would be easy to turn one of these into a wall mounted calendar with the right software (Any Cal?).

The massive price drop of tablets has also prompted me to reconsider the wireless picture frame. A tablet running the right software and a well setup daydream mode would make a great self updating picture frame. Specially if the Plex UPnP thing works as it should. Heck because your using a tablet, you could use RSS feeds with enclosures to get pictures on to the device. Or some other type solution.

What ever, now is a great time buy those cheap tablets… I’m certainly keeping eye out for the sub £50 ones in the New Years sales.

Have you hacked a console?

Play

LifeHacker asks the question, Have You Ever Hacked a Game Console?

There are all kinds of good reasons to hack a game console that don’t involve cheating at games, such as adding functionality, creating a media center, or just breathing new life into a beloved old gadget.

For me yes, I certainly have.

  • Playstation 1 (I still have that console under my TV)
  • Xbox 1 (hacked this multiple times and I think its still in my wardrobe, and the reason I found Xbox Media Player (XBMC as came to be known)
  • Nintendo Wii (added the homebrew channel but no longer owned)

The Playstation was a nightmare to hack and in the end I made a few mistakes and had to pay someone to do a proper job. The Xbox was done all by myself once I ordered the Modchip, xecuter v3. Bunny’s book I own and enjoy. I didn’t know that it was made freely available in ebook form after the death of Aaron Schwartz.

No Starch Press and I have decided to release this free ebook version of Hacking the Xbox in honor of Aaron Swartz. As you read this book, I hope that you’ll be reminded of how important freedom is to the hacking community and that you’ll be inclined to support the causes that Aaron believed in.

I agreed to release this book for free in part because Aaron’s treatment by MIT is not unfamiliar to me. In this book, you will find the story of when I was an MIT graduate student, extracting security keys from the original Microsoft Xbox. You’ll also read about the crushing disappointment of receiving a letter from MIT legal repudiating any association with my work, effectively leaving me on my own to face Microsoft.

The difference was that the faculty of my lab, the AI laboratory, were outraged by this treatment. They openly defied MIT legal and vowed to publish my work as an official “AI Lab Memo,” thereby granting me greater negotiating leverage with Microsoft. Microsoft, mindful of the potential backlash from the court of public opinion over suing a legitimate academic researcher, came to a civil understanding with me over the issue.

If you haven’t hacked or modified a games console, you owe it to yourself and others to give it a try.

Ouya with XBMC sitting in a tree…

Ouya at home

Simon kindly lent me his brand new Ouya a while ago but I’ve only just gotten around to playing with it as I want to replace my ageing Lenovo Thinkcentre with a new XBMC box.

I wanted originally was interested in the Boxee box but frankly that gone down a path I certainly don’t want to be dragged. Now XBMC works nicely on Android, I’ve been looking at android boxes which seems to be made for XBMC. Most of the boxes are tiny and have all the right ports including HDMI, digital optical out, etc.

So how does it work on the Ouya? Well after a little setting manual up (I would install a SSH server but its not mine to mess with) its good, very fast specially compared to the Raspberry Pi. The User interface is nippy and playing back 1080p seems effortless.

The biggest problem I’m having is getting Dolby Digital or DTS out of the console. I did some research and its a problem quite a few people are having issues with. Audio passthrough can be enabled so the AC3 signal should be able to get to the Onkyo 7.1 surround amp but no matter what I do. And as with everything else, others are struggling too.

If I could solve the problem of Digital passthrough output, I would certainly consider getting a Ouya to replace my home cinema setup. I would love to attempt to get the Wii remote hooked up to the Ouya as the controller is a little too big for a home cinema controller. Although to be fair I’m using the Android Yatse controller app on 3 out of 4 of my Android devices including my mothers old HTC android phone, which is now my permanent desktop XBMC remote.

I’ll persist with the audio output and check it can play back all the old formats like Divx 3.2 and Mpeg1 and 2 stuff. Also need to check how the suspend works…

Channel4’s Dates, go watch it…

Dates s1ep1

Angie was the first person to tell me about Channel4’s Dates…

From the creator of Skins, a witty, sexy and emotional drama series about the complicated and hilarious ways that strangers interact on dates in their quest to find love

I am happy to say I have watched the first one on my tablet half in my lunch time and the other half on the tram home.

I liked it, somethings I’ve experienced and somethings I would avoid. Interesting conclusion to the episode too. I won’t spoil it… Go watch it on 4OD now.

Perceptive Radio

perceptivemedia radio

Photo credit: Greg Povey, @topfife CC-BY-SA (official photo)

Today at the Thinking digital conference in Gateshead, we (BBC R&D) launched the latest prototype for Perceptive Media.

Perceptive Radio, is a project collaboration between BBC R&D, Mudlark and MCQN ltd.

Perceptive Radio credits

It can playback Perceptive Media content and has sensors of its own (proximity, light and microphone) to modify the media elements/objects in real-time. I quickly did an audioboo interview with Christian while finishing publicly showing the radio for the first time.

It will be compared to the Olinda radio which Berg made years ago, and they both share the prototype label…

…aims to provoke discussion on the future and design of radios for the home

Exciting times and there will be loads more information coming soon including details of the open sourcing of this…

IMAG2957