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A new article in Broadcasting & Cable highlights the American Cable Association’s attempt to sway the FCC via a December 11th letter by the ACA President Matt Polka (in addition to the regular lobbying of cable-related issues through their PAC) to eliminate “Must Carry” rules so that they can “offer Internet speeds as fast as 100 Mbps with minimal upgrades to their existing plants through a process called channel bonding.“

This is nothing short of a “land grab” for Big Cable to kick the broadcasting industry while it’s viewership and revenue is down and use the promise of amazing Internet access speeds (for the extreme minority of subscribers that could afford and/or would like to have it) to free themselves of having to pay local broadcasters for carriage of their content.

Using the CED Magazine Freq Chart as a guide (excerpt below) one can see that current cable modems, which provide the highest Internet access speeds for the average public short of FiOS service from Verizon, only occupy the space between 6MHz and 40MHz (34MHz total) out of the typical 1GHz available to modern CATV deployments.  In other words, about 3.4% of their total capacity.  Adding the space of another 4 TV channels (24MHz) increases the total cable modem bandwidth usage 58MHz (5.8% of total capacity).

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I’ve been a business user of BlackBerry phones for a few years now and, although I won’t get into a rant about which phone is the best phone to buy, I will say that in having these devices foisted upon me by my oh-so-wise-and-indefatigable employers I have found them capable e-mail devices and decent phones, but not much else.  However, finding a theme that is mildly interesting to look at while being easy to read on a Blackberry’s small screen has been mostly fruitless.  So, to paraphrase an old saying; “if you can’t buy one, make one.”

Recently I was issued my latest BB, a Curve, and although I like the phone well enough as a work phone, I cannot stand the lousy theme that it ships with.  They don’t even provide a basic, no-frills, monochrome theme and background.  This is just crap:

There are quite a few free theme’s out there for BlackBerries, but I also wasn’t too successful in finding a theme that provided the contrast I wanted, the readability of icons and font size I was comfortable with and a nice red hue.  So, here is what I came up with: Read more »

I’m sure I mentioned before that I really like gadgets and a few months back I bought an eeePC 1000HA for under $400. This is one of the very first Netbooks to have the Atom processor and a 160GB hard drive instead of the paltry 4GB flash drives in the early models.

I really wasn’t impressed with the device out of the box since it comes shipped with a stripped down version of Windows XP for the operating system. My initial experience with it was pretty lousy since the OS crashed hard when I tried to rearrange items on the desktop the first time I powered it up. A few more times of use were met with similar frustrations and overall sluggish response from the interface that even the addition of another 1GB of memory couldn’t help.

So, what’s a geek to do? Strip off Windows and install Linux of course! Read more »

Recently our congress has passed legislation to delay the DTV transition/analog shut-off yet again – this time to June 12th of 2009.  For those that aren’t already aware this makes the 2nd time the date has been put off.  The original date (created in 1997) for this to happen was December 31st, 2006, but in February of 2006 legislation was created to change the date to February 17th, 2009.

One interesting element with this administration is the online posting of the bill (as of this posting it hasn’t been signed into law) on the White House website and the ability to add public comment.  Just because I could, I added my own two cents which is likely to be promptly ignored:

I believe the delay, while appearing to be in the public’s best interest, actually will cost local TV stations more money to keep obsolete , power-hungry transmitter facilities running that will in turn, drain station budgets when they were un-prepared to absorb the expense.  This is exacerbated by the fact that it is a non-political ad year AND the amazingly bad economy.  The net result is that projects will go unfunded and station workers laid-off to mitigate the added operational expense.

They wisely limited me to 500 characters.  Meanwhile, I’ve found that my views are not just echoed by fellow broadcast engineers, but by an FCC commissioner as well. Read more »

About a month ago I was selected to download MediaMall’s PlayOn Media Server and try their beta version of software that bridges content from several Internet video provider sites to a TV.  In reality it requires a few more components along with the software to make it work, such as a PC to run the PlayOn “bridging” application that runs as a service in the system tray and a PS3 (in my case), an XBOX 360 or an HP MediaSmart TV to stream the content to.  I have a primary desktop that runs 24/7 and my home network includes a CAT-5 connection to an Ethernet switch on the first floor in the living room where my PS3 lives, so this was an easy set up for me.

With PlayOn, we leverage the existing browser and UPnP functions of game consoles and networked televisions, and use the PC in the middle to bring in the content from the Web, passing it over your home network to the device.

The software is a quick and simple installation with minimal configuration needed and uses the DLNA/UPnP protocol to instantly appear on the PS3 as several media channels in the Video menu.

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Regardless of what some liberal arts students or free-love hippies may tell you, you don’t get something for nothing.  Or, better yet, as the redoubtable Robert Heinlein coined, “TANSTAAFL” (There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch).  This simple truth frames the cold, hard realities about to face broadcasters after the current mobile DTV trials wrap up.  It will weigh even heavier when the mobile standard is finalized and equipment is available for purchase in Q2 (tentatively) of 2009.

When cable companies take a broadcaster’s primary digital signal, either from an over-the-air broadcast or a direct fiber feed, they tend to re-sample it (unless they under an agreement expressly forbidding it), put it on one of their available 38.8Mb capacity QAM channels and share that QAM channel with another digital channel (or two or more!) shaving the channel’s data rate in the process.  Some cable companies are more aggressive than others in their re-compressing.

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I thought I had a good thing going for the past few years by having my websites hosted by 1AND1. Unfortunately, over the past month 1AND1 has been having serious reliability issues and my sites have been inaccessible for days(!) at a time. Calls to the tech help line were anything but helpful. They only confirmed that there was a problem and could not give an estimate for when they would be back on line.

Now, I can understand an occasional glitch, especially when computers and software touch hands, but for a hosting service to have entire servers on the fritz and no information to provide the customer (me) as to what the problem is or, more importantly, when it will be rectified is unacceptable. Read more »

Not too long ago I had some time to review the capabilities of an Insignia CECB (coupon eligible converter box) and found that it was quite capable for its intended purpose. However, it lacked a few features and I discovered a matrix that showed one converter box with the most features of any CECB and it was for sale at a local Best Buy.

The Apex DT250 sold for $60 like the other CECBs and is a similar size and form factor. If you have $40 coupon this box would only cost $20 plus tax. The difference it has from many of the other converter boxes is that it provides for analog pass-through and the ability to control a smart antenna. Since I do not have a smart antenna on hand (right now no one does) I focused on its ease of use and performance in picking up OTA digital signals.

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As broadcasters continue to face eroding audiences, lousy programming, declining ratings, a lackluster fall line-up and pending changes in FCC rules regarding ‘localism‘; here comes another punch in the gut.

Joss Whedon of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Firefly and the Serenity movie fame created a three part mini-musical (!) video netcast called “Dr. Horrible” that only lasted a few days and was born from the catalyst of the recent writer’s strike.

Once upon a time, all the writers in the forest got very mad with the Forest Kings and declared a work-stoppage.

Only one day after the three acts were pulled from the site (as per Joss’ schedule) the mini-netcast series wound up taking the top three slots in the TV Shows Download section on iTunes. Read more »

Not yet.  And after the latest debacle with the June 18th firmware, maybe not ever.  My old, original xbox softmodded to run XBMC is still more polished and faster than this little guy, despite the glowing reviews I read which led me to purchase the Popcorn Hour NMT in the first place.

As everyone knows, there is a disconnect between the PC world and the television world – especially when it comes to getting digital video and audio content into the room where the couch and the big TV are.  Many products such as the AppleTV, Xbox 360 and my own shiny PS3 as well as various media extenders try and bridge that chasm promising to play all (or most) of your media library and bring it to your living room HDTV.  Unfortunately, the two big players that are capable of making effective products, Apple and Microsoft, are hobbled by legal roadblocks and business partnerships, both internal and external, that would sour if the box they made performed too well (read: properly) and truly freed your media.

I had high hopes when I read the impressive feature list and got on the waiting list for this little box. The Popcorn Hour A-100 NMT (Networked Media Tank) is quite a capable media player especially considering its diminutive size. The fact that it doesn’t have integrated WiFi doesn’t bother me since I have Cat-5e runs from my living room and my core home network.  When I took delivery of it I did a quick un-boxing to see what I got for my $200 and took the screws off to peek inside…

Not bad. I needed to supply a hard drive for many of the included features such as the BitTorrent, Samba media shares and uPnP and FTP services to work (for obvious reasons).  I am more interested in its file playback and streaming capabilities, but what the heck…

So, I tossed in an inexpensive 320GB PATA drive that was on sale at Fry’s and fired it up. Read more »