Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Not the DVD firmware hack or even the HD/Memory card reading, I'm talling about the (proper) run unsigned code type of hack. I said it would be done within a year. Well theres about 2 months left now. The amount of HD content on my network is growing and I got nothing except my workstation to play it all back on. Plus the Xbox Media Centre has pushed the Pentium 3 733mhz chip to its absolute limit now and the Xbox 360 simply isn't up to scratch for media playback sorry.
Well, they were able to get off a credible start to Rocketboom 2.0, with Joanne Colan as the Anchor 2.0. She's doing a good job, but its not the same show for me.
Note that she refers to herself as the interim anchor, after ducking all the tomatoes.
Although seeing the bit with Baron seemingly driven mad was pretty funny.
Rocketboom was one of the few video shows that I actually turned to frequently, and it had grown on me. Just like I don't think the Daily Show would be the same without Jon Stewart, I feel the same about Amanda and Rocketboom 1.0.
I would also add one more thing. What the heck was this weeks casual Friday videocast about? I also didn't catch the whole Amber Mac meme being the next Rocketboom host. That would have been weird but you know what could have actually worked. Amber certainly has her style and its very different from Amanda.
I've not really mentioned the rocketboom split, I only found out when I noticed nothing was not being downloaded since the start of July. So I checked out the site and read the announcement
Amanda Congdon has decided to move to L.A. to pursue opportunities that have arisen for her in Hollywood.
We wanted to meet her demands to move production out to L.A., however, we are a small company and have not been able to figure out a way to make it work, financially and in many other ways at this time. While we continue to remain with open arms, Amanda has in fact quit and left Rocketboom. So sadly, we bid Amanda adieu and wish her all the best.
Rocketboom goes on.
Andrew Baron, the founder and creator of Rocketboom, will stay with the company in New York and will continue to produce and direct the show. We are in the daunting process of recruiting a replacement for Amanda.
While Amanda will be sorely missed, we have big plans for Rocketboom and are determined to make the show better than ever.
After Field Week and a week on hiatus, we know that you are hungry for the news! Rocketboom will be back with a news episode and an interim host this MONDAY, JULY 10.
But of course I followed a selection of links from the blogosphere and hit across a selection of, well lets say views and insights. Bear in mind that at the time Technorati's number one search was Rocketboom and sixth Amanda Congdon. First up this great thought from Tom
Amanda Congdon teams up with Cory Doctorow and friends and produces BoingBoingBoom? Quick, someone with a fashionable blog, write about it and tell Nick Douglas – it's a meme-in-waiting!
According to the huffingtonpost Joanna Colan is going to replace Amanda.
And of course before long, a link to Amanda's unboomed site and the now famous upside down map videocan also be found here). Its also worth reading in full Amanda's for the record post and the 180+ comments.
Recently the Xbox media centre team have been working on a stable 2.0 version. This means there is a code freeze while they iron out any outstanding bugs. But this hasn't stopped the innovation around xbmc.
So first up, xbox media centre took both game and multimedia 2006 sourceforge awards. On the side, Azureus won overall winner which like Jon is a permanent fixture in my video viewing. Good to see xbmc winning awards like this. I really believe its one of the best open source projects out there at the moment.
Some innovation which I haven't quite worked out the possiblities of yet. In the recent update to xbox media centre (march betas), is the ability for xbox media centre to connect to FTP servers. This is pretty crazy, because the only limitation is now the pipe, as you will also see in the next innovation. I've connected to my personal cubicgarden FTP server and a couple of annoymous FTP servers. It works really well and you can browse around for any media which is on there. It would be good to connect to Webdav servers but I'm sure thats coming soon. Reminds me to suggest that in the forums.
The next thing is the send media URL to Xbox media centre. Its been in xbmc for quite sometime but the application to get it working has been a windows only application. And there was no way I was going to run some odd application just to quickly post a media url to the xbox. But now someone has wrote a Firefox application which does this. Its really cool too, because all you need to do is set the ip address of the xbox and then right click on the link you want to send. And within seconds the xbox will start streaming the media link. Oh and for you mac fans theres is also a Dashboard widget, i'm sure it won't take long for it to be a Yahoo/Konfabulator widget too. Obviously the pipe/bandwidth is still a issue. But damm its quick and easy. This fits perfectly with Keep Vid.com however you can't get stuff from You Tube because its in FLV format and the xbox won't play back flash video files. Ideally the xbox would play back flash formats or Keep Vid would transcode it to something more playable like avi or mov. Then people could also take it away and play the media on there psp or ipod.
It was odd, I usually find my views are usually much closer aligned with Doc Searls than Steve Gillmor. But during a short time period while this weeks Gillmor Gang, Dan Farber, Doc Searls, Mike Arrington and Dana Gardner start chatting about the Apple Minimac announcment earlier in the week. Well Doc and others were saying it was no good as a home entertainment box because it had no Tuner input, while Steve was saying screw that its got a network port what more do you need?
And you know what Steve is right on this one. IP delivery is where its at. Yes it nice to have a digital TV tuner card but that whole PVR time shifting thing is over rated in my view. (Saying that, if Bit torrent was to go away tomorrow I would run out and buy a Twin Tuner Freeview PVR straight away). I keep hearing about the huge leap from scheduled programming to time shifted, and it is. But its also equally a huge jump from time shifted to on demand. This is not new ground, many people are exploring the world of on demand already. For example I was out at Wiki Wednesday today and missed the UK Apprentice, but it does not matter because by the time I wake up tomorrow, it will be downloading without using any of my attention. And even if i wait a week or even a month I could still get that same episode somehow without too much searching. Thats on demand. No actually that's the 3rd era of so called broadcasting.
Anyhow back to the Mac, Front row's new features are no match for Xbox media centre but I'm sure they will get better over time. If not there always other options like the Xbox 360 (if you can get your hands one), Playstation 3 (if it comes out before 2007) or even a nice shuttle PC.
Lets have deeper look at what makes the Macmini a nice machine for my living room. Well first its now got a Intel Core Duo which means it should handle 1080i HDTV with AC3 surround sound without too much problem. Like I said although Front row is no Xbox Media Centre and a long way off Windows Media Centre. Its looks pretty good for that living room remote control domain. I really need to go into a Apple store and try it out sometime soon as its kind of hard to tell just from pictures. Optical out should mean 5.1 surround sound isn't that far off. Its got a DVI output and does not seem to contain that DRM standard HCDP which means we won't get that scary Windows Vista thing where it will switch off the video unless you have the licence. I don't believe the Xbox 360 has this, but its hard to tell till its been hacked.
However there are lots of disadvantages to using a Mac. The DVD drives tend to be region locked which will make my old DVD's from America a pain to play on this machine. The remote is simple but thats the problem, its too simplic. I'm use to doing things like queuing up a selection of podcasts and videos then let it run through-out the day, it doesn't seem like you can do that from that remote? On the sound front, the Mac does not have a dolby digital chip like the xboxes, so I'll have to say goodbye to the upscaling of Dolby Surround to Dolby Digital.
I don't believe I've put my foot down on either side of the Next generation DVD war. You got the whole HDDVD vs BluRay thing and then you got every large company coming down on one side or the other. Some of them like Samsung have pledged to support both in the same drive or at least the same unit. But in this world of Networks do we really need another disc format? Well I personally don't think so. I remember the day when I got the Toshiba Tablet PC i'm typing this on now. It has no Opitical drive and I always thought this is kind of scary because it assumes your always in a networked environment or dependant on memory cards. But its worked out for the best because all my media is on a network drive and its been simple to copy stuff from CD via another machine. Anyway I found this really interesting thread in Slashdot today by WhiteWolf666.
The 3rd technology has already emerged.
H.264 on standard DVD, with the upgrade path being ANY sort of higher capacity device.
H.264 means you can do 1080p (not 1080i, but 1080 progressive) with 5.1 audio in 1 MB/sec. That's about 3.5 GB per hour. That gives you 2.5 hours of 1080p on a standard DVD disk. You can squeeze the main title in 2, and then use the remainder for all the other stuff in SD. Or, make it a two disk set. Both of these will cost FAR, FAR less than blu-ray or HD-DVD.
H.264 enables SD TV over standard broadband, NOW. Take a look at this: http://www.apple.com/macosx/cnbc/ [apple.com] . Thats technically 480p content. Its playing at 675 kbit/sec, or 84.73 KB/sec. 720p content is similarly small; you'll have no problems whatsoever fitting everything you'd want on a single title blu-ray disk onto a standard dvd if your encoding with H.264 on 720p.
I suspect with a really smart encoder, using intelligent VBR type stuff, you can get 1080p down to an average of 800-900 KB/sec. Perhaps even less. If someone can get the standard DVD above the 3 hour of footage barrier, blu-ray/HD-DVD immediately become a niche market, at least until HDTV 2.0 comes out. Oh; and new displays, as well. But even with _today's_ setup, you can fire up Final Cut Studio, and produce a 2.5 hour feature length movie, slap in on a standard DVD in 1080p, and then put all your extras on the second disk.
H.264 enables 1080i HDTV on a standard dual layer DVD. You need a beefy processor to play it back, but various manufacturers have already produced embedded decoders. H.264 is the future of IPTV, of satellite transmission, even cable transmission. Most likely, the “upgrade” path is H.264 on standard disks, and then the elimination of disks altogether.
Why would I _EVER_ carry a pile of blu-ray disks around when I could simply walk with an iPod, or a mobile phone, or a flash disk, or some other portable media library, and wirelessly (bluetooth 4.5, or 802.11n, or whatever) “rent” a video from the blockbuster kiosk? Heck; strip out the middleman; just buy the movie from iMovie store, or Amazon's movies, or Walmart Video Online. Whatever; it doesn't matter.
Someone asks afterwards where the popular content is. Which reminds me of this great quote from Doc Searls article on Linux Journal titled The Home produced movie revolution
The next era the one in which the bulk of producers will emerge from a mass market formerly filled only with consumers will begin when video customers begin to realize they can produce higher-definition video than what they can get over their cable and satellite connections. That will happen quickest for customers who buy 1920 x 1080 screens to take full advantage of their new 1920 x 1080 camcorders. While spending under $2000 for both.
This may seem like a dream, but I'm not so sure were that far off now. For example I met the woman behind the amazing and very brave Modfilms site. The creative thinking behind modfilms is staggering and not only that, she's fully commited to it being a success. And lets be honest, how many times have you wanted to remove parts of a film?
So the IT Crowd is now available online for people wanting to check it out. The official site is or you can download directly from Channel4 using this link. Slashdot has a overview of comments.
So my own view is that its not bad, its got some funny scenarios but I don't see how there going to keep it up for more than 6 episodes which would be fine. There's quite a lot of taking the piss out of geeks, nerds and IT staff generally but to be fair this also applies to the non IT Staff trying to use computers (like the boss who thinks his computer is now voice controlled). Its certainly more mainstream than I expected which in this show is actually a good thing because its very accessable, even if it reforces the very obvious stereotypes. The IT Crowd feels really British, I can see why it got a bad review generally. The laughter track seems like a typical shown to a audience affair rather than American canned. For those interested in watching it on TV, its on Friday on Channel4. Expect it to be bit torrented everywhere really soon. By the way, I'm currently downloading Beauty and the geeks which Sheila recommended.
The high-rise towers of Renham Industries are full of go-getters, success stories, and winners… apart from in the basement. While their beautiful colleagues work upstairs in fantastic surroundings, the I.T. department – Jen, Roy and Moss – lurk below ground, scorned by their co-workers as geeky losers.
Channel4's attempt to bring geeky humour to the mainstream? Maybe. Who can tell but I douht it will be as good as what the amatuers can do. Kevin Rose and friends are doing there own titled Outsourced. And is expected to be a true taste of geekyness. At the moment the only geeky non news type shows I can think of are, The Scene and that old BBC show Attachments (which I can not find via the BBC site. But you can buy the VHS here). So generally anything would be a improvement on whats currently there. But I am worrying that the IT Crowd will simply recycle the same geek stereotypes and make the whole sitcom about laughing at geek culture. Don't get me wrong nothing wrong with laughing at ourselves but there are limits. I guess its like the whole arguement about Little Britian and many other sitcoms. But to be fair if you look at the Office (the orginal british version) its got stereotypes but it doesnt take the piss out of a group of people. Little Britian does not take the piss out of people who are gay, just that one guy who thinks he's the only gay in the village. Anyhow I'll reserve judgement till I actually see the sitcom which you can sign up and watch online before the broadcast at the end of this month.
So i'm on the phone with a friend of mine whos sitting at the BBC White City Press launch. I'm able to live blog what I hear. If my blog gets traffic swamped go check out Engadget. Halfway through his phoned died, but I was able to switch to another firend using Skype.
Steve jobs is on about the Apple store and how many people are going in to the stores
Now the ipod sells. 14million ipods sold last year. 42million ipods sold in total. 850million songs sold in total.
TV shows. 8million sold since launch.
New ipod accessory, FM Tuner with remote control for 49dollars
Yuk! Dodge Jeep integration of the ipod
New ipod adverts, something to do with Jazz?
On to the mac, some info about Aperture
Demo of Aperture
Oh Widgets and Dashboard now – 1500 widgets to date
New Apple widgets (like yahoo i guess) for mac OS X 10.4.4.
Google widget, calendars, etc
iLife 2006 now
Music, movies, blogs, podcasts, photos all part of ilife now
Things are much tighter now, so you can make birthday cards, calendars, podcasts and share it all with the net (.mac account)
People can now subscribe to your password protected .mac feed which contains images, podcasts, blog entries
Demo of iPhoto, lots of photoshop recipes type one clicks
Apple invents photocasting? Sounds like a Flickr photostream but using the .mac account (just a RSS feed with photos attached)
iMovieHD demo
New things Themes, real time effects and more audio editing tools
iDVD now takes advantage of Widescreen now
It also supports 3rd party DVD burners which gets a cheer
Garageband. Complete podcasting studio built in now
You can use iChatAV for remote interviews like how podcasts use Skype right now
Demo of Garageband with podcast studio
Steve cracking some jokes while recording his own podcast
Demo finish and Steve plays the funny podcast
Steve jobs changes his tone a little, so he can launch iweb which is a way to share photos, music, movies, blogs and media in one place easily.
Some kind of media browser which allows you to share all the above and view all the above? All done with RSS. (I wonder if were going to get the messy itunes type extensions problem again)
Demo of iWeb, which any browser can view
Lots of Ajax magic
Back to ilife 2006 now, cost the same 79 dollars but now with more apps
Moving on to the .mac account, 1million subscribers
New product iWork, which is like the office suite
Ah at long last, he's talking about Mac computers
Asks how were doing with the new Intel chips, someone walks on (from Intel I guess)
Jobs says Apple are ready. Intel say there ready
Huge cheer
… Yep its here, iMac with iSight and Front row software all running on a Intel chip
Same price too, comes in 17inch and 20inch versions
The chip is a Dual core Intel Pentium
All ilife 2006 and iWork packages running natively on the Intel chips and were demoed on the same machine
Final cut pro, etc will be launched in intel native this march, theres some talk about trading it in too
Quark Express has a native beta available to download
Jobs talks to someone at Microsoft about Office running on Rosetta and how they will develop native versions for the mac
All updates will be available online in March, there is also a commitment to the office mac for at least 5 years
Demo of Office on Rosetta now
Now Photoshop on Rosetta
Talking about Safari now
Other products will change through out the year
Showing a new intel chip advert
Intel pentium in a Powerbook! called a Macbook pro?
Uses the same dual core chips, meant to be 4-5x faster than current powerbooks.
Comes with 15.4inch LCD, iSight and quite thin size
Demo of the Macbook pro
Comes with a IR remote, some magnetic power supply (sounds like a gimick)
Ok price is 1999 dollars for a 1.67gz dual core with iSight and Front row.
Theres a 1.8gz at 2499 dollars too
Intel advert again
Tons of cheers and clapping
Some thanking, Intel, Woz, Jobs and people behind the webcast
All the details are now on the Apple website
I'm following the coverage from Engadget, Gizmodo and believe it or not Stuffmag
The new iPod, as speculated, features video capabilities and the wider display, but it�s still a music-first device.
The device will feature a 2.5-inch display, QVGA resolution (320 x 240), and will MPEG-4 h.264 (natch), and presumably Quicktime.
The new iPod will be 30% thinner than the current 20GB iPod (making it 0.44-inches thick�say wha?), and will feature a 60GB version and editions of both in black. The 20GB should go for $299, and the 60GB for $399. They�ll be shipping next week.
I'm not sure this is the actual video ipod, more a inbetween ipod.
New news just coming in…
You'll be able to buy TV shows from the iTunes Music Store – Desperate Housewives, Lost and more shows from ABC and Disney. Five shows will be available to watch on iPod or computer: Lost, Desperate Housewives, Nightstalker, The Suite Life and some other Disney thang. $1.99 an episode.
So its over, the apple index page has been updated and world now has a Video ipod to play with, we already knew about iTunes 6 before.
Here's the complete list
esperate Housewives, Lost)Ok wheres the HD laptops and Video enabled airport express? (airport express video anyone?). Engadget has the first lot of real screen shots of the new vido ipod including the black version. Also wheres the UK video store? I'm sure the BBC could have a role to play in that, its fits with our licencing and its a little more flexable than the imp right now.
Steve Jobs is not going to be happy with us at the BBC. See there's a big date of the 12th October crossed in Apples diary and there were rumours of some Apple run BBC broadcast at TVC (BBC Telelvision centre) on the same day. Then there was other clues.
http://www.apple.com/movies – Forbidden, usually Apple has a nice redirect like this http://www.apple.com/geekdinner. The hidden video buttons in iTunes. Plus you've got the Nano disappointment (yes you heard me correctly) and the PSP's mass takeup and adoption across the world.
The evidance is growing everyday
Google Cache of iTunes + ipod video page
So we were all scratching our heads till BBC 6 accidentally let slip yesterday.
Apple is set to unveil a new video iPod at the BBC Television Centre in London on October the 12th
Ahh ha, so its a dead set now then. The specs may still be up for debate but I'm wondering if the iMP trial will extend to the video ipod and give the worldwide audience the ability to pay for BBC programming? Its all very fitting when you listen to Paula Le Dieu's talk at Emerging Massive media.
I'm sorry but the fact that the Daily Show is downloaded and viewed more times online that there are viewers of the comedy central cable network, has got to have a influence on Channel4 picking up the Daily Show for their new Adult Digital TV channel – 4more. A recent quote from a wired interview with Jon Stewart and Ben Karlin (The Daily Show's executive producer).
The Daily Show really exemplifies that sort of new model. It's on a cable network, not broadcast. It's among the most popular shows traded online. People download and watch the whole thing, every day. Were you guys aware of that?
Ben Karlin: Not only am I not aware of that, I don't want to be aware of that.
Well, don't go shutting it down.Stewart: We're not going to shut it down – we don't even know what it is. I'm having enough trouble just getting porn.
Karlin: If people want to take the show in various forms, I'd say go. But when you're a part of something successful and meaningful, the rule book says don't try to analyze it too much or dissect it. You shouldn't say: “I really want to know what fans think. I really want to understand how people are digesting our show.” Because that is one of those things that you truly have no control over. The one thing that you have control over is the content of the show. But how people are reacting to it, how it's being shared, how it's being discussed, all that other stuff, is absolutely beyond your ability to control.
I'm pretty sure the daily show on 4more will not be the Global edition which I saw on CNN Europe when I was last time in Germany. The global edition is funny too but is not as long removes the interviews and is more a round up of the Daily shows of the week. On the same tip 4more will also have 30 days which was on the subscription only FX channel a while ago. Although, me and Sarah have seen 30 days and download the Daily show automaticly every week. Its going to be great to actually say to our friends “did you see last night's daily show?”
Did Channel4 just copy the winning formula of the Donnie Darko website with there Lost untold website? According to my wife (sarah) the Channel4 untold site has more clues than the official ABC website, and fans are flocking to it because it contains tons of produced content (channel4 even got a news reader to do a piece for it). Copy or no copy, I guess the meme is out there and well established now. Talking of Lost, I'm looking forward to ep2 of the second series. I cant believe the UK is still half a season behind, what did we do before the internet? I'll avoid posting theorys and spoilers on cubicgarden for now.
On another branch, I was looking through my Torrent RSS feeds and saw “Pump up the volume.” Some of you will instantly think about that film with the same name and Christian Slater. But no no, i'm talking about a Pump up the volume: A History of House. Its a documentary on Dance and House music by Channel 4. See i've been meaning to show Sarah it for years as shes American and lived in small Citys during her teenage years. So has little concept of what Dance music is and where it came from.
If Channel4 had made this available via DVD to buy, I would have bought it at some point. But its too late now, because its here on UKnova. One word for Channel4, Longtail. Maybe they could have done something simlar to PBS with there NerdTV? I'm hoping the BBC take the PBS NerdTV example as a good way to serve the longtail.