Dave Olson hangs with Leo

In quite possibly one of my favorite Lab with Leo segments ever, Dave Olson chats with Leo about his multimedia publishing empire that started back in the 80’s and how now with the internet, it’s all coming back around, except this time, you don’t have to pay for copies on his parents ditto machine.

Dave, we have to hang out again soon….it’s been too long!
 

What’s on the Apple TV?

I’ve been looking for a better way to use my HDTV lately. The Xbox360 (and XBox 1 running XBMC) I currently have works fine but the biggest issue I have with it, when watching any kind of media is how loud it is. Specifically the fan(s) inside it and the (now obsolete) HDDVD drive. It’s fine when you’re playing Halo 3 or Team Fortress because the games are usually loud and I have the stereo cranked. But when you’re trying to watch a movie or tv show, the fans are just annoying.

So after hearing from Tod about his experience with the recent ‘Take Two’ software upgrade, I decided to take the plunge and pick one up - the 40gb model since that’s all the store had in stock. I figured I could always return it if it wasn’t quite was I was looking for (and/or upgrade to the 160gb version if I decided I need more storage).

Setup was quick and simple. The package consists of the Apple TV unit itself, a remote (just like you get with most Macs) and a power cable. That’s it. No other cables are included. It has a number of connection options on the back as you can see above. I connected to my TV via a HDMI cable. My TV’s audio is connected to my stereo separately so I was done with the setup. I powered it on and was treated to a cool, but brief, intro movie and then a menu similar (but different) to Front Row on a Mac. I figured I would need to download the software update since it had just come out and that process took about 10 minutes.

Once I was back up and running again (after 3 restarts while the firmware upgraded) I started connecting things up. If you launch iTunes on another local machine on your network, you’ll be given the option to add the Apple TV to your iTunes. The Apple TV will provide a pairing code that you need to enter on your computer in order to allow them to talk to each other. Once that was done, it started syncing my iTunes library from my iMac to the Apple TV (which you can turn off if you just want to stream content).

I was most interested in the Flickr integration and so far, it almost makes the purchase worthwhile for me on it’s own, let alone the other things which I’ll talk about in a minute. There is a Flickr option in the Photos menu. While you can easily access any photos you have on your other computers (PC or Mac), having the ability to pull in Flickr directly is amazing. You add Flickr accounts to the menu screen and by simply putting in your username, it goes and grabs all your public photos (well, links to them at least). You can browse all your sets and photos from here. You can also browse your contacts as well and add them to the accounts list. There is a ‘recent photos’ option at the top of your list so you can view the last 500 (!) photos on the account. I wish there was a ‘your contacts latest’ option like there is on the Flickr homepage. Once you start viewing the photos, you can set the transitions, music, speed, etc of the slideshows. There is a much cooler screensaver option built into the Apple TV that I wish was a transition option which is simply a random bunch of images (from a set you choose or the recents) that just float up the screen in various sizes. Then after a minute or two, the images rotate around in 3D and keep floating up. It’s really pretty cool. I made a quick video of it:

Another compelling thing was that I had seen online was the podcast functions were vastly improved and that there is quite a lot of cool HD content available. To me, this is where the future of online media is going. Despite my HD DVD purchase, I had pretty much given up on physical media as a way to get video content and the Apple TV seems to be one of the better ways to access that online repository. Sure the Xbox has movie rentals but it doesn’t have access to Podcasts or easy access to the rest of my ‘digital life’ like my music or my photos. There is something to be said for seamless integration across my network.

There is also the ability to rent movies directly off the device, with many available in HD. Unfortunately, you need a US iTunes account to access all the really good stuff but Canada is supposed to get more later this year. Fortunately I have a US account although someone managed to spend the last of the store credit so I won’t be able to try out the HD movie rentals until I get a refill card next time I’m across the line. There is a fair bit of free content available and you can preview everything which is great.

I’ll let you know if a few weeks if it was worthwhile but so far I don’t see this thing going back to the store.

The Indoor Kids win!

As if there was any doubt that the Blogger team would win CBC’s Test the Nation.

Check out Rebecca (aka Miss604) on national tv talking about her blog and podcast:

Get the full scoop and pictures on her blog. Way to go Bloggers!

Note to YouTube: I hate your videostill chooser thingy….it is teh suck.
Looks like it’s working now.

TiVo now available in Canada at retail stores

(or it will be very soon)

I’ve had a TiVo (or three) running in Canada for a couple of years now so the news that they will finally be available at retail here is great news. A lot of friends have expressed interest in getting a TiVo but they usually balk at it when they find out they have to drive to the states to get a unit and usually end up with a craptacular Shaw PVR unit.

The dual tuner, 80 hour machines will be available in early December at London Drugs, Future Shop, The Brick and Best Buy. The price ($199CDN) seems a little higher than what folks are paying in the states and there is no word if there is a mail in rebate like previously. The monthly fees are the same as down south ($12.95US/month). No HD units yet either as Canada doesn’t currently support cablecards which are required for the HD TiVo units. Who knows, maybe they will partner with Shaw or Rogers and actually offer the TiVo software on the HD hardware…..yeah, right.

Check out the details at tivo.com/canada and my previous post about using TiVo in Canada.

Oh and if you do sign up for a TiVo - I’d love the TiVo Rewards points! Use retrocactus at gmail dot com when you sign up.

A Trip to the Kwik-E-Mart

After reading Miss 604’s post about a promotion as part of the upcoming Simpsons movie to convert some 7-11’s into Kwik-E-Marts…and the fact that is was actually happening not too far from home (the only one in Canada), I decided I had to check it out.

As I was just about to leave, my friend Dave messaged me to tell me he had heard about the same thing on the radio and thought of me since I’m a big Simpsons fan. But he had heard that it wasn’t opening as a Kwik-E-Mart until tomorrow. Figured it was worth a trip to find out since it was a beautiful day for a drive out to Coquitlam. Plus I hadn’t seen Dave for awhile so he was going to drop by as well since he lived nearby.

When we arrived I noticed that the street sign was still a normal 7-11 sign but there was a cherry picker setup next to it so I was hopeful once we turned the corner we’d see a Springfield maintenance crew ‘Simpson-a-fying’ the store. No such luck but there was a lot inside and it seemed that they were in mid-transformation.
I took a bunch of pictures of just about everything Simpson related in the store until the manager appeared out of nowhere and politely asked me to stop….I complied because there wasn’t anything left to photograph. He then suggested I bring my camera back tomorrow when they are fully done converting the store over to a Kwik-E-Mart.

Unfortunately they had already sold out of the donuts that Homer likes but they had cookies that were similar so Stacie had one as you can see in the picture. There were a lot of people in the store just buying up the Simpsons stuff like Buzz Cola and KrustyO’s….I was disappointed that they didn’t (yet) have any Chutney Squishees.

One thing that struck me (and that others have posted about) is the lengths they went to do it right….it’s easy enough to slap a few posters up for a big movie but to transform an entire store to something as beloved as a Kwik-E-Mart is pure genius. I’m still debating if I’ll make the drive out there tomorrow to see the full conversion….probably since I’m such a big fan. If you want to make the trip to Coquitlam, the details are here.

Here’s the rest of the pictures I took before Chief Wiggum busted me (or larger version here and there is an ever growing Flickr set of the other cities getting the makeover):

Created with Paul’s flickrSLiDR.

Thank you, come again!

UPDATE: Went back to the Kwik-E-Mart today and it was fully transformed… and they did a great job….although I was bummed there wasn’t any ‘El Barto’ graffiti on the wall outside….big lineups to get in…you’d think they were selling iPhones or something. Added a bunch more photos to my flickr stream too.

Bonus Simpsons fun: if you haven’t already been, check out the Simpsons Movie site to create your own Simpsons Avatar!

UPDATE #2: Here’s a video of the CBC covering the event:

Everything I Know About Design I Learned from The Sopranos

Michael over at the Design Observer has a fantastic post about design and the end of the Sopranos.

Check it out now or I’ll send Paulie to visit you.

Tivo in Canada

I had originally planned to post about TiVo and other PVR options but this post is pretty long in just talking about my TiVo experiences so I’ll split the topic into a couple of posts. Stay tuned for future posts about using a PC based PVR solution as well as using an Xbox (the first one) to view these recordings.

A number of years ago, I visited a friend in San Jose that showed me a wonderful device.

We had just gotten back to his place after a day out and were about to have some dinner. At the same time, there was a hockey game on that we both wanted to watch (he is originally from Vancouver and was still a big Canucks fan). With our stomachs rumbling, we needed to make dinner asap but the game was about to begin and we couldn’t do both due to the arrangement of his kitchen/living room.

What he did next blew my mind - he paused live tv so we could make dinner! He did this with his TiVo unit. Just a simple black box with no buttons on it that sat on top of his TV. It had a happy little tv mascot icon with rabbit ears. How cool was that?

Unfortunately, TiVo was only available to US residents at the time and at that time there wasn’t any way to make it work back home in Canada.

Fast forward to another visit to my friend about a year later and he had upgraded to a newer TiVo box (a dual tuner DirecTV model) and was going to get rid of his original TiVo that I had been amazed by previously. After doing some online research, it appeared that I could at least use it to pause live tv back in Canada without subscribing the unit (still unavailable in Canada). So I dragged it onto my flight home as my carryon. I was surprised nobody seemed to care that I was carrying a large black box onto a plane.

So I get the TiVo (a Series One model with a 30 hour recording capacity) home and set it up. It worked! For like a day…it then rebooted and was stuck at the boot screen. Online research seemed to confirm the TiVo’s hard drive had died or was somehow corrupted.

Bummed, I had to unplug the TiVo and it sat on a shelf for months.

Then, as it tends to, the internets yielded the answer to my problem in the form of some instructions on how to replace the hard drive and get things back up and running again. I was also able to track down a disc image of a working TiVo install. I happened to have an extra hard drive laying around and once I put all the necessary ingredients together, ended up with a fully working Series One TiVo with 190 hours of recording time! The site that I got my info from no longer exists otherwise I’d link to it but I’m sure it’s mirrored in a million other google-cached places. If you are trying to do the same thing, be prepared to do a lot of reading and learn as much as you can about the model you have as each one has it’s own set of intricacies.

My ‘new’ TiVo still wasn’t subscribed but it worked great as a tapeless VCR in that you could do manual recordings (ie. record channel X at time Y for 1 hour). My wife uses this to record a couple of shows that air daily (a talk show and a soap opera) so it’s pretty easy for her to see the date/time/channel.

The main reason why TiVo is great is it’s user interface. It has an incredibly clean and simple interface for recording and playing back your favorite shows. One button clicks on the unique remote makes for very simple operation.

This whole experience is even better if you are a subscriber because you get all the guide data on screen and it’s very easy to set up things called “Season Passes” that basically allow you to record every episode of your favorite show with one button click. The service also learns what kinds of shows you like, using a simple set of buttons on the remote to indicate your rating of a particular show. The green thumbs up or the red thumbs down. Again, simple one click feedback on a show that is remembered. Based on this feedback, it can record other shows based on your preferences that it think you might like.

I just wish they had a his and hers option so that TiVo doesn’t think I like something my wife does and vice versa.

So we used this unsubscribed TiVo for awhile and loved it.

Then in 2005, it was announced that the TiVo service would soon be available in Canada. There was even rumors of the local electronics retailers having units for sale. Sadly this turned out to be false. But as luck would have it, I was in Seattle for a conference and there was a sale on the TiVo boxes (a 40 hour Series Two model) so I picked one up for $99 at CompUSA. I took it home and set it up and as before, live tv paused and it couldn’t do much else.

A few months passed and the TiVo service was finally available in Canada (well to Canadians at least). I signed up as soon as it was possible to. Ironically, a few of the people that I met (or crossed paths with) at Northern Voice had also discovered this at the same time and blogged about it. It really can be a small world sometimes.

The process of getting an account for the TiVo service seemed really strange, bizarre even. You had to put in a fake address instead of your real one in order for the account info to work which seems really weird. I didn’t care as I was just happy it was available to me. Rob has a detailed list of the steps which are also now documented on TiVo’s support area.

About a year ago, I added another TiVo to the mix as i stumbled across a local Ebay auction for an unused Series Two TiVo that was priced right. The person selling it didn’t know you could use it in Canada so it had sat unopened in a garage for awhile after they won it in some contest.

The current setup we have is two TiVo’s in the bedroom - the 190 hour Series One (not subbed) and the Ebay purchased Series Two (subbed). The other Series Two is in the living room and is also subbed (you get a discount for having multiple TiVo subscriptions). What’s cool about this is that you can record something on the living room TiVo (which in our case also has access to digital cable channels) and then stream it to the bedroom (non-digital) TiVo or vice versa. This has come in handy many times.

While the TiVo UI is fantastic and has to be used to truly understand why it’s great (there is a nice flash demo on Tivo.com), there are some shortcomings with the TiVo or at least the service in Canada.

The main one for me is the transfer speed between TiVo’s or to your desktop PC or Mac. Despite my TiVo’s being on my LAN via a fullspeed wired connection, it still takes ages to move a file around. The files the TiVo records are quite large depending on the quality setting you used to record it but it should still transfer faster than it does. I’m not sure of the exact reason why it’s slow but it is definately slower than simply transfering a large video file between computers on the same network.

Another issue with the service is the sketchy Canadian content support. In the US there are a number of interesting features and services that seem to stop at the border and aren’t available on my TiVo. Amazon.com has it’s Unbox service where you can download or rent movies and they magically appear on your TiVo. I had a free credit to try it out with my US Amazon account and it all seemed to work on the Amazon site but nothing ever showed up on my TiVo. Also some of the podcasting content doesn’t work on my TiVo unless it was setup prior to subscribing.

These are relatively minor issues though so it’s not a big deal as I have a bunch of other ways to deal with that kind of content (which I’ll get into in a future post)…and certainly not the primary reason for getting a TiVo.