Category: Uncategorized

If it wasnt the 30th March on the press release, I would say it was a April Fools trick. But it seems Opera have been working on a Programming guide for mobile phones. I think it only works on symbian devices, which is a shame. Please please Opera I beg you, develop your lovely browser for the windows mobile 2003… And a mobileIPG would be cool too.

I'm going to sort out my Linux box with MythTV sometime this weekend. Spent too much time looking at other posts yesterday night. I looked at my blog where it all started yesterday which passed me on to PVRBlog. Where I see theres a Knoppix cd with MythTV. So i can test out my hardware and make sure it works with MythTV before messing with my debian setup. Other links useful for my experiment into mythTV, mysettop box, Install guides for Linux PVRs and PVR Hardware database. MythTV on the Xbox?

Ok been trying to install MythTV with the Knoppix CD for the last 4-5hours now. Already had my first Kernal Panic simular to Mac OSX. And I'm reinstalling once again for the 4th time. I think my Hard drives are screwed, but I dont fancy swapping hard drives at this time in the morning.

I love the BBC, I use to hate the idea we pay a TV licence fee. But we get so much good for such a nice price. Also dont get me started on Community vs… Anyway, I'm a little ignoyed that I missed the last AIGA meeting. But I've only just heard about the BBC iMP through these blogs. And I'm kind of shocked there using Microsoft Windows media with DRM! Oh my… This isnt what Greg dyke was talking about surely? By the way you get some odd results looking for posts in this area. However I do hope at the same time someone works on a 14day EPG for Freeview.

I was reading pvrblog.com, for the review of snapstream 3. As the review on slashdot wasnt all that I feel. Been thinking of turning my linux box into a dual boot with snapstream, then again I've been thinking of mythTV too but nothing about it yet. However I'm also interested in the new replayTV stream option which I spotted in Xbox media centre, by the way I got the March release which is even smoother. Anyway was reading about that too while looking for my old entry about live streaming to the xbox all that time ago.

When I spotted me hack, youhack we all hack. Which linked to mehack. I started scanning, and I thought to myself this guy knows what he's talking about, this blog is going on my feeds. I mean come on first post – xbox media center is the best there is, i'm already hearing that… then I see the second and third posts, overclocking megadrives and turning your archos into a rockbox, and I'm left thinking, there bring linux to the ipod? Anyhow I was well impressed and started thinking, I need to do more hardware hacking… Maybe follow the lead of some of my students who bought the Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks. I need to check out the ton of links which I have passed over to write this entry.

Oh man, forget the new media2go, gonna find a cheap Archos and load up this nice open firmware. Hello! what the heck – DVArchive, Virtual ReplayTV for your PC. I so need to get my hands on a cheap ReplayTV box if they work over here in the UK. Going to wait out on getting a Freeview PVR box now.

Seems channels such as E4, UKTV and Discovery will be coming back to Freeview sooner than expected in the form of TopUpTV. I would say eight pounds a month isnt too bad for 10 extra channels. However I would prefer to pay something like one pound per channel. Basicly the channel line up is E4, UKTV Gold, Discovery, Cartoon network, Discover H&L, TCM, UKTV food, Bloomberg, Boomerang and UKTV style. So a real mix bag of channels. I'm only interested in E4 and the Discoverys. Anyway there doing a trial run soon, so I may consider it, would be better if I had the twinview PVR box really.

Kevins been chipping his xbox today, some guy at the local computer fair which is really nice to know as I now know where to send people. Costs 60 pounds chip and install, includes rom i believe but cant see why the guy would bother taking the risk. Anyway, kev dropped me a ftp site with the latest xbmc. And I started doing more research into xbmc.

There seems to be a new looking skin not based on windows media centre as its got copyright issues. However the alternative looks pretty good too, its based on the dell media centre.

The xbmc team have finally put a load of screenshots online too. Which brings up lots of questions for me. Where can I download that project mayhem skin? I didnt know xbmc can copy and manage files?
Good to see the imdb and it looks like cddb feature works well. Theres an on screen keyboard for the xbmc? Does a usb keyboard also work, as that would be really cool. Thank goodness shoutcast streaming is still supported, any chance of icecast streaming? Super large icons for all sections, very nice… Not sure what this is, too short for a movie and too long for trailers
. I'm wondering if xbmc allows for natrual categories like years, timing, etc? Could be right? There must be somekind of plugin arctecture, my weather? I'm hoping this will mean a return of xmltv listings and some new cutting edge features like streaming from xbox to xbox using xbconnect. Its also good to see new visual effects, as groom was kind of boring, plus theres a competition for more visualization. Screensavers? and this is stupid nuts.

On a whole its all too much to take in… I cant wait to see what happens next…
By the way theres a poll for what should be the default skin.

Ok I've installed xbmc and it does pretty much eveything seen in the preview and more…
First thing, the web front end is now working, its really shabby but it works. You can browse through the shares and click on the piece of media you want and the xbmc will play it a couple of seconds later. You can also pause and stop. I dont see anyway to setup a playlist but there is a skip forward and back button. Ideal skipping adverts while watching Hollyoaks from the sofa with my tabletpc on my lap.
So anyway that works well, even though I have yet to try it on my ipaq or smartphone. Imagine with port forwarding I could control xbmc from any where I can get the Internet. Home automation is almost there.

Screensaver works well, also has the option to auto shutdown after a set period. Visuals not too good, same as xbmp. Weather works but not too amazing, can wait to see what other webservice clients they build, or if its easy enough for me to build one. Can just imagine RSS readers, etc. Anyway the other thing which is also very interesting is the intergration of imdb, cddb, etc. You can look up films, tv shows, tunes and games. Then use them for thumbnails on folders as well as files. Theres also a auto scan option which will scan and create thumbnails and info for all folders and files under the current folder. Trust me it takes a while to do. The keyboard feature is also very cool, it allows you to rename files, search through files, etc. I tried out the usb keyboard and it didnt work, which was a shame.

The thing which i find really amazing is the natrual categories. Basicly when you add metadata to your files and folders via the scan option you can then look at all media through a selection of categories. Genres, Actors, Year, Title in the movie section and Albums, Artist, Genres, Top100, Songs in the Tune section. And flicking between the filesystems and categories is so easy, i cant help but do it. Makes me want to put all my movies on a couple of Huge RAID arrays rather than CD. With the right kind of money… Anyway that aside, I'm going to start using xbmc more now because its more stable than it use to be and the features are so rich and useful. Thumbs up from me…

Had a quick look around my xbox bookmarks and found out that the Dreamix project is now dead. I was quite shocked at this because it had so much going for it a while back. Oh well we shall see if Xbox media centre moves into the area of PVR's.

I am however very interested in Xlink messager which creates a tunnel between two or more? xboxes so they can play games together or share media?

Also found Xbox tribe and xbins today which is useful for finding compiled versions of xbmp and xbmc. And I've been following a thread about HD Windows media on the Xbox. I tried to get the Matrix revolutions high defination version working on my xbox along time ago and I also had huge syncing and fps problems. But as some one said what do you expect for a 733mhz machine. Not even my 1.33mhz laptop can play it correctly, saying that the xbox has a much beefer graphics card. Also reminds me to look for a Matroska dll for xbmplayer.

Ah ha, great stuff – just what I need to setup MythTV. A happy MythTV user shows the way where he walks people through his trials and tribulations in getting MythTV up and running in his entertainment setup.

One of my friends gave a *.MKV file, and I had no idea what on earth it was till now. It really does look quite interesting as its a direct rivial to Mov, Rm, Ogg and Avi, so it can contain xvid, divx and what ever codec you like. It was also built out of the really nice EBML open standard The filter is available here or better still here and its GNU. Nice…