08.25.10
Posted in Apple, Media
at 7 pm
Daring Fireball linked to The Russians Used a Pencil‘s post speculating on the evolution of remotes. I wanted to note two items:
1) Battery life: I love the scroll wheel idea to replace the directional arrow buttons, but touch-based sensors have a serious disadvantage in the fact that they must have power running through them in order to detect the action of the user. That current is a constant drain and constant power drains are deadly for batteries. At best you could have a physical motion sensor (rolling beads?) that could wake up the remote when it’s moved, but touch sensors suck up the juice. No little lithium ion coin-sized battery would suffice.
The alternative is the original iPod’s physical scroll wheel which I adored in the very first iPods. That would be cool, but also an expensive proposition in manufacturing a remote control.
2) Bluetooth connectivity: Unless Apple comes out with a smart, free standard that can be used industry-wide to support multi-device control, Bluetooth in remotes is a myopic view of the real world. Sony has already caused a lot of headaches with having a Bluetooth remote for the PS3. There’s a lot to learn from that.
The reason for having an IR-based remote is all about having multiple devices be able to be controlled as a single entity. The simplest example is controlling the power and volume on the television that the AppleTV is connected to. If the Apple remote doesn’t support IR, you’re stuck with two remotes. Got an amplifier in the mix for surround sound? A DVD or Blu-Ray player? Now you’re talking input switching as well.
Apple’s going to have to come out with something truly interesting and unique and forward leading to stand out. I think they can do it, but I’m certain that these two technologies will not be in the mix unless radically re-thought.
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09.26.09
Posted in Media, Meta, Web
at 6 pm
I’ve been working on getting my WordPress/Twitter/FaceBook spaces working together and I think I’ve hit on a pretty good system.
It comes down to two sides: how do I publish things and how do other people read and stay up with that stream (as underwhelming as it is.)
For the first side of the coin, I like to publish three different types of content: Super short stuff and pithy comments which obviously fit into Twitter’s paradigm quite well. For timely commentary on things and longer thoughts, WordPress is a good choice and is the latest in a long series of journaling and blogging software tools that I’ve either used or built myself. Finally, longer form pieces essays or research or archival stuff seems to make more sense as web pages on my personal site.
For the audience side of things, I’m seeing 4 or 5 different methods that people use to keep up with individuals. Web site reading from bookmarks would be one (Hi Mom and Dad!). People who do a lot of web reading might use an RSS feed reader (Hi Micah!). Others may rely on Twitter to keep up with me and some others may want to keep an eye on things only through FaceBook. There are other channels like MySpace, but the ones I’m listing here seem to be the right ones for my audience.
So what have I connected? 1) I’ve connected FaceBook to Twitter using Twitter’s application. Next I added TwitterTools to my WordPress install and that takes care of cross posting between Twitter and WordPress entries. So now I can post tweets and they show up in my FaceBook status and they show up in WordPress on a once daily basis. (This might be annoying to some, so I’ll have to keep an eye on this and perhaps reduce the re-post rate to once a week or so.)
As for research and essays, I’ll post them to my site and then make an annotation here (as I’ve usually done over the past few years.) So if we follow the chain, 1) a page added to my site leads to 2) an announcement on my WordPress blog, which 3) triggers a Twitter tweet, and then finally 4) updates my FaceBook status.
Hmmm.
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09.13.09
Posted in Media
at 3 pm
So you know all about the Broadcast Digital TV conversion that has happened. The original 2004 deadline was delayed ultimately till June 2009 for mandatory shut off of the analog signals. I had a couple posts about the Set Top “Coupon Eligible Converter Boxes” (aka “CECBs”). These are mandated boxes that allow viewers to convert the over-the-air broadcast signal to a standard-definition analog signal so that it can be fed into analog-based TVs, like every one manufactured since 1928.
(The highest-end versions have two features: analog play thru (APT) and S-Video connections. If you’ve got those, you’ve got the most advanced DTV Converter Box that’s available under the government program.)
However, there’s another transition that is parallel and yet has a completely different set of rules. This is the Cable companies’ transition to Digital Cable. Keep this in mind: Both Broadcast TV and Cable TV are going from All Analog Signals to All Digital Signals, but for totally different reasons. We’re middle of the time where both the analog signals and the digital signals are available. I had wondered when the cable conversion was going to happen since it was basically inevitable. Most digital channels take roughly one-tenth the bandwidth of a single analog channel. That means the cable company can send 10 times more content to the customers.
In Portland, Comcast shut off most of their analog signals in June (except for the most basic channels, 2-31). That means if you want to watch Comedy Central or BET or the History Channel on most TVs you MUST have a converter box. The good news is that the bottom-of-the-line Digital Cable converter box (what Comcast calls the Digital Transport Adapter) is FREE.
In the ’80s and ’90s, the term ‘cable ready’ when applied to TVs meant that the owner no longer had to have a converter box for their analog cable signal. That is now changing again. With the digital conversion, there are no longer any ‘cable-ready’ televisions. At some point I hope this changes, though it may not with a smaller set of cable monopolies with deeper pockets to keep it from happening.
(This post was originally drafted earlier this year. Sorry for any random changes in tense!)
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09.09.09
Posted in Media, Tech
at 11 am
You’ve seen adapters that allow SD cards to fit into CompactFlash slots or even into PC Card/PCMCIA slots. I remember seeing adapters that would play regular cassette tapes in track players and an mp3 player that was shaped like a cassette tape that would play music off of SD cards. Well I want:
An adapter shaped like a vinyl LP that would let you play CDs on a turntable. That would be pretty awesome, me thinks.
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08.22.09
Posted in Life, Media
at 9 am
The simple addition of the directive “Cite your sources!” to a political discussion (whether in person, in a townhall, or in any other medium) would have a profound impact on the quality of the discussion.
That is all.
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03.23.09
Posted in Media, Tech, Web
at 8 pm
It seems that by adding a little extra code to my .htaccess file was all I needed to finally get the WordPress app running on my iPhone. The answer was in a thread on the WordPress support site. This applies to v2.7.1 at least in my case. This thread titled xmlrpc.php 403 Forbidden error noted a (now closed) MSN Groups thread with the answer. Fortunately ‘mkenney’ the OP included the actual code:
[Files xmlrpc.php]
SecFilterInheritance Off
[/Files]
(Just change the square brackets to angle brackets and slip this into your .htaccess file)
My efforts were complicated by my web host who turned off access to the file but made it look like a “404 File not found” error rather than the real error: “403 Forbidden” which sounds far more ominous.
The way to discover this for was to open the URL to the xmlrpc file directly in Safari and then bring up the Activities window which showed the text “forbidden” that was otherwise hidden from view. What tangled webs, indeed.
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03.08.09
Posted in Media, Tech
at 3 am
[Originally posted to the TiVo help forums.]
If you are in Portland Oregon and are missing channels 32-99 of your extended Basic (analog) cable through your TiVo, continue reading below.
On Friday March 6th, your TiVo’s guide was told that Comcast’s Analog Channels had been reduced to channels 2-31. You may have gotten a TiVo message saying that ‘Channel 32 (Versus) has been dropped’.
This schedule change has happened about 4 months too early. Comcast is planning on removing the 32-99 channels from analog and broadcasting them ONLY in digital. (Note: this is a different transition from the one that is going on with BROADCAST channels.) Most all of the cable companies are going to digital transmission on their own networks. Comcast in Portland is planning on doing this during the summer of 2009. Comcast is offering two free DTAs (Digital Transport Adapters) to every subscriber. I picked up one at the office on NE Sandy.
Because the guide information’s publisher jumped the gun, you are now stuck with a TiVo that thinks it only has channels 2 – 31. In order to get this fixed, you will need to do one of the following:
A) Wait until the guide is fixed. (TiVo and Tribune Media have been notified, though adding your voice may speed up the process.) I was told the updates to the guide data only happen after 4 to 5 business days. Considering the issue was reported on Friday, I’m guessing that the earliest we would see this fixed in Thursday, March 12th or as late as Monday, March 16.
B) Get the DTA converter box. This box is meant to provide the digital equivalent of extended basic service to your television. You don’t get the On Demand stuff or the music channels, but you do get your full channels 2 – 99 back. You can re-run the Guided Setup to get this box configured. (Takes about 40 minutes if you do everything right the first time. A lot of that is waiting for the guide data to come down.)
If you get the DTA from Comcast and try to set it up, be sure to select “Comcast Digital Converter” as the name of the box. NOTE: In other threads you may see this referred to as manufactured by Pace. While this is correct, you cannot use Pace as the Set-Top Box manufacturer in the guided setup. Read the TiVo’s screen very closely: “What is the name of the company on the front of the Set Top Box?” That name is Comcast, not Pace. I thought I was being smart by using Pace, but that’s exactly wrong. You must use the “Comcast Digital Converter” as the name/manufacturer of the converter box. I spent the better portion of 6 hours trying to get the (****) thing to work before realizing my error.
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02.21.09
Posted in Media
at 1 pm
In January, we ordered and installed Digital Cable, in order to get Fox Soccer Channel. The installer guy just used whatever cable box was in his van. Turns out it was one of the oldest models of converter boxes out there (General Instruments DCT-2244). It never worked well with our TiVo.
Today I walked into a service center to talk to Comcast about the flakey channel changing that I was experiencing with my TiVo trying to control this ancient digital box. (They misunderstood my original complaint and thought I was saying that the DCT2244 was not getting the right channel from Comcast, when in fact it was that the TiVo wasn’t able to exactly replicate the Remote Control signals the DCT2244 was expecting.) I thought they were going to say “Well tough luck. We have a TiVo-like box that you should use pay for instead.” But actually the customer service person was actively trying to figure out what Comcast could do to fix things. Actual customer service… can you believe it?
Right then and there she offered me a much newer digital cable box (Motorola DCT-2524) which is an updated box in the same series. I took it home and plugged it in, reconnecting each of the wires and connectors from the old box to the very similar new box, and voila, the TiVo is once again changing channels like a champ. Yay.
(They said to bring back the old one when I get the chance. “In the next week would be great”. Wow, that’s… laid back. That’s also not normally the phrase I would use with monopolies.)
Bottom line: our Series 2 TiVo was not working well with the old DCT2244 box, mostly because the Tivo was using “IR Blasters” to pretend it was a remote control but was failing. However, with the new DCT2524 there is a direct serial port connection which works perfectly. Comcast had the serial port enabled (it seems that the cable company can turn it off or on at will and some cable companies refuse to turn it on) and didn’t charge me for exchanging the box, or even ask for a deposit while I’m in possession of both boxes. Again, yay.
So Portland Comcast gets points for 1) being laid back, 2) being helpful, and 3) giving me a full-featured, upgraded box with no hassle.
However, on the way out of the service center I saw a flyer about Comcast’s own Digital TV Cutover. Oh boy, that’s a whole ‘nother entry.
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11.02.08
Posted in Life, Media
at 12 am
All I’m asking is that if you’re going to vote, don’t vote based on the amount of melanin a candidate has. That’s not a very good method of predicting leadership ability.
Please Vote. Please Vote based on issues.
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08.24.08
Posted in Media, Tech
at 12 pm
A brief rambling of thoughts regarding television and video transmission as they will evolve in the coming decades:
1) The end goal? The Star Trek Holodeck: a 3-D representation of a scene that can be viewed from any angle. Putting aside the hokiness, this is what TV is heading towards: a reproduction of an environment in all physical dimensions.
2) In order for this to be feasible, flat 2-D capturing is useless. Video today is taking a series of bitmap images. The next gen of video will be just be stereo 2-D: 2 images of the same scene at the same time. Great, so we’ve replicated the depth of a scene, but we’re still stuck with the single perspective of the original pair of cameras.
3) If stereo images for ‘faux-3D’ isn’t enough, then what we need are more cameras, right? Well, then where does that end? Do you build a giant sphere of cameras, all pointed towards the center of the action? This might work okay for a movie like Cube but for, let’s say filming a climb of Mount Everest, this isn’t the way to go.
4) There are two basic ways of representing images in digital formats: Bitmaps or Vectors. Bitmaps are grids of pixels: perfect for paintings, documents and flat video. Bitmaps are great for when you have an image that you might want to make smaller, but they are useless for making bigger. If you take a 100 pixel by 100 pixel image and make it 1 mile by 1 mile, you’re going to get individual pixels that are 50 feet by 50 feet. However the same image made up of vectors could be made of very small 1 nanometer pixels and still be an accurate representation of the image.
5) If we want the ability to view a scene in all of it’s physical dimensions, we will need to capture the points in space (x,y,z coordinates/vectors) of as many elements as we need in order to re-create the scene. Take track events portrayed in a movie like Chariots of Fire. In order to truly capture the event, we’ll need to track the spacial locations of every significant element. I would guess these to be the track, the starting line, the finish line and the runners.
6) This should be subdivided down further however. Not just the runners, but the various body parts of the runners: legs, arms, heads. Maybe fingers? How about the starter’s gun? the trigger on the starter gun? the finish line tape?
7) We need to decide what’s truly important to capture: The runners, yes. The starting line and the finish line, yes. The crowd? Mmmm, maybe. Certainly films for decades have been using ‘standard crowd noise’ in place of recording actual crowds on the set of the film. Movies have been adding crowds to stadiums using mannequins, inflatables, or digital post-production. Maybe the specifics of the crowd are unnecessary for the scene.
We need to capture as much as possible, but we could extrapolate from a small set of points a number of the other points. Perhaps we know where the starter gun is, but instead of keeping track of the official that is pulling the trigger, we simple estimate the height of a person that would be holding a gun at a certain angle and height and make an approximation of the official. We know how the ribbon at the finish line would move and float given the motions of the players and the wind and the tautness of the tape. Do we need to know the exact location of a runner’s knee if we already know where their hips and toes are at? Maybe, but we probably don’t have to know where the ankle is at if we know where the heel and the knee are at.
9) Once we have those points in space, we can recreate the locations, but short of capturing the location of every thread of the clothing being worn or each lace of each shoe, we’re probably going to want to capture a ‘skin’ or a ‘texture map’ that would be used to wrap around the skeletons (vectors) of the runners. The skin could be captured ahead of time, or could be extrapolated from a video feed. We’ve already seen projects that take varied photographs and collects them into a multi-faceted view of a single object. In much the same way, a set of stills taken over time could create a texture map.
10) That same capture of the texture maps could be used to extrapolate the x/y/z of the original skeletons. Today’s motion capture techniques have relied on ping-pong balls taped to actors in green body suits and similar set ups. Those configurations are simply work-arounds that allow us to capture the models easily with today’s technology and are ultimately, unnecessary. Once we have the visual processing tools that are necessary, we can forgo the artificial set ups and special configurations and rely on the original video captures.
11) This sort of capturing and transmission becomes possible once we move from thinking of capturing a flat plane of pixels to capturing the coordinates and texture maps of a scene. The information that is captured can be still captured by a single video camera, given enough processing power. But when we add a second camera, we can collect better textures and more accurate coordinates. Add a third and the quality of the capture increases again. Add a dozen and you’re capturing every detail needed to analyze an event in everyday scenarios.
12) What does this all offer? Imagine watching Chariots of Fire from the actual point of view of one of the runners. Or from the officials. Or the finish line tape, or a shoe of the runners. Or directly overhead. The amount and number of perspectives is immense. Imagine changing the scene by adding a 100 mph wind to it. Or altering the track so it goes in a loop-de-loop.
13) And talk about scalability: If you want to transmit this scene to someone, you have the option of A) sending a fully-rendered image like you would to a current television, B) a pair of images to a stereoscopic video display (Yes, that’s by my employer), C) or a small set of the captured data to a cell phone/Personal media device for display of a low-res, animation style rendering, D) or a full feed of all the details to a computer-enabled display that could use a mouse or 3-d mouse that could be used to navigate around a scene.
14) Today we are capturing the equivalent of a single, low quality texture map. Soon we will be capturing higher quality single texture maps, but this is just a baby step forward. We need to build tools that will take those bitmaps and break them down into component parts: Vectors of skeletons, plus texture maps. We blend in approximations of the missing texture, enhance the scene with up-close photos, and extrapolate to fill in the additional x,y,z coordinate points we’re missing. None of these techniques are outside of our reach.
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