Yesterday, the Cable Guy™ came by and “installed” the cableCARDs for my new TiVo Series 3 box. I say “installed” because the cards are just PCMCIA style cards that slide into slots on the back of the TiVo unit. He didn’t even push them in far enough and I had to finish the “installation” by clicking them into place.

Well, at least the cards are free and installation was only $15. Some folks, as reported over on PVRblog, are having a helluva time dealing with Comcast over the cards. Some are being asked to pay a fee for the cards, some are having to rent them. Others are being told they will have to pay up to $75 for installation. Others still are getting them from the cable offices and installing the cards themselves. Some folk can’t even get ‘em.

All in all, my Comcast/Tivo Series3/cableCARD experience was very good, by comparisson. It only could have been better if they could have given me the cards at the office.

Anyways, it doesn’t matter now though, because good bye Motorola piece of crap DVR and welcome back TiVo. My living room has missed you.

Very happy with the Series 3 so far. TiVo + HD = awesomeness. It’s a proven mathematical fact.

First, I’d like say that I’m happy that the OnMac.net competition was won before Apple announced Boot Camp. I’m glad we didn’t steal the wind from the community’s sails. That would have sucked.

Second, it could be coincidental, but AAPL jumped up significantly and it looks like it was due to the Boot Camp announcement. This makes me happier than the first thing. That was really more of a warm fuzzy, anyways.

Third, let me clear up the “we” in the first paragraph. I didn’t work on Boot Camp, and didn’t know it was coming. (Yes, we keep shit secret from each other at work. Yes, it’s that tight. Yes, it makes it harder to do things.) So, for me, it was a pleasant surprise.

Enough with the meta-commentary, now, on with the actual thoughts on the matter… Read more »

CEO Tom Rogers sat down for a video interview with Reuters today. The big news is the TiVo-powered Comcast boxes are on target for late this year… and it sounds like our existing boxes will be upgraded over the network via a software “burst.”

Ok, so that Digg headline is really rather misleading, but this is still really good news for those of us who have Comcast DVRs right now. The short version is that eventually, through a deal between Comcast and TiVo, they plan to flash the Comcast DVRs with the TiVo software.

I’m a TiVo fan and user In the past, I had two TiVos running at once. One of them is still in use. The only reason I replaced my living room TiVo with the Motorola 6412 DVR that Comcast uses is because it’s HD-capable.

Not that that was my only gripe with TiVo… I’m pretty irritated by A) the fact that they completely lag behind with TivoToGo and TiVo Home Media development for the Macintosh platform, 2) the fact that it’s not a dual-tuner box (in fact, it requires a separate cable box), iii) the complete security oversight that it only supports WEP wireless encryption, D) the
lame fact that it’s network connection is over USB 1.1 (which really sort of negates using 802.11g to transfer big ole video files) and of course FIVE) no HD support.

TiVo series 3 is supposed come out next year, I think, and will address most of those issues. Great. Sounds lovely. But I have HD service and an HD TV now (more on that in a future blog post)… so I had to go with the only option open to me: the Moto box.

The Motorola 6412 DVR has some really good features. It’s HD, of course. It’s a dual tuner cable box. Ok, well, those are the two really good features. The one kinda neat UI thing is that you get a little window still playing your current channel/recording while looking at the menus.

Hrm, UI… what does that lead to? Oh yeah, the list of shitty stuff with the 6412. First up, the UI is horrible. I’ve seen better UI come out of Microsoft. I suppose TiVo spoiled me with their grid set up for entering show titles, but the Moto sollution is just horrible. Hell, stand up arcade games from the eighties had better text input methods than the 6412.

Also, it has some really bad logic. Say you’re on a channel that you are recording and you want to change the channel to watch something else. Shouldn’t be a problem since you have dual tuners, right? WRONG. It will ask if you want to cancel the recording. (wtf?) If you were already ON a different channel, then no problem.

Oh, and there’s the fact that it needs to be reset like, once every four to six days. Ok, I haven’t counted… but it feels like slightly more than weekly… but not twice a week. Originally, it was a massive pain to reset it because I had to call the cable company and ask them to do it… till I was on hold too long and found out I could do the same thing by yanking out the power cord on the back. I guess my tolerance for freezes and crashes has dropped since I stopped running windows and operate a solely Macintosh powered home now. heh.

Anyways… as always, the future can’t get here soon enough.

read more | digg story

Today, I got a chance to go and listen to the iPod Hi-Fi, the other produce we announced on the 28th. It sounds fantastic. It actually looks pretty cool, in person, as well. (I know a lot of people have differing opinions on the aesthetics of it, but that’s a taste thing… and yours doesn’t count here.) It’s also ridiculously easy to set-up, of course. The price-tag… well, let’s just say this thing has a limited target market, eh?

The cool thing, though, was that I got to go listen to them the same way that they were presented to the press on Tuesday. There were four rooms built inside two of our very large conference rooms (Garage I&II, for those in the know). These four rooms were completely furnished and set up to display how the products (the mini was also on display) could be set up in a bedroom, kitchen, living room and homeoffice. Serving suggestions, if you will.

The folks that put it together did a good job. There wasn’t a single hint of the old room(s) there. There was fresh carpeting, molding, yadda yadda yadda. The living room, complete with 36″ flat panel tv, couches, etc was much nicer than my real one. The kitchen? The kitchen was not only nicer than my kitchen, it was nicer than your kitchen.

Technorati Tags:
apple, hardware, technology, ipod

Based on Intel, single-processor and dual-processor chip versions.

—

So, this post serves two purposes. First, it’s a test of posting to my blog directly from a digg story. If you’re reading it, it worked. I’ll pop the champagne later.

Second, I just wanted to say I am SO happy we finally got the Intel Mac Mini out. I’ve been biting my tongue for weeks. This is the perfect machine to integrate into your home theater. Especially with FrontRow that supports bonjour sharing. It means the mini can be the “media center” Mac, without having to have all the data on it.

Of course, I think it will prove easier to subscribe to certain video podcasts (Diggnation, CommandN, MacBreak, French Maids, TikiBar, heh) ON the Mini itself, so they are always there and ready to go.

I’ll be getting one of these soon.

read more | digg story

Technorati Tags:
apple, macintosh, hardware, technology

It’s what I call a good day.

We got up to the city and parked at the Metreon (which will be my place to park for MacWorld from now on, or at least as long as it’s at Moscone) and decided to have lunch at Sanraku (that’s a yelp review link, join the site, be one of us, gabba gabba hey, we accept you, one of us) before heading over to the show. That meant sushi, nigiri and some excellent Suishin sake served in masu boxes.

A note on masu: If you like-a da sake, then this is the best way to have it, I think. The server comes out with saucers and places them on the table, then she places these boxes (called masu, in case you haven’t grokked that yet) on the saucers. Then the fun part begins when she begins to fill the box; and then overfill the box so that it flows into the saucer. (Apparently there’s a way to do this with sake glasses and smaller boxes as well. Shown here.)

Then we headed over to the MacWorld Expo and met up with Annette’s friend Chris and chatted briefly before hitting the exhibit hall floor. The most impressive things this year came from Apple, in my not so humble opinion, but there was other cool stuff to see too. Of note, the number of cars (photocred:ericriceofericricedotcom) at this years show doubled from last year. It also seemed like there were considerable more bags and iPod accessories.

We were checking out the iSkins booth. Their eVo iPod cover is really pretty cool. Annette ordered one of their cases a while ago, but it hadn’t arrived yet. While she was lamenting this fact, Eric came up and took a picture of the back of her head and offered props on the thoroughness of her dye-job. Heh. So, we wandered around with Eric for a while until we decided we needed a beer before we went to stand in line for TWiT. (I wasn’t impressed with a lot of stuff, but I also realize that I managed to somehow miss the Games section as well as the EFF booth. :( )

We were on the waiting list for the live taping of the This Week In Tech podcast. It’s one of my favorite podcasts and if you’re into tech at all and haven’t heard it, you should check it out. Fortunately we got in, because they filled up the Zeum theatre to max capacity. I’m happy we went. The taping was a lot of fun. Leo Laporte, Amber Mac, John C. Dovorak and Patrick Norton were all in rare form. The panel was about twice that, but those were the key players for me.

Then it was dinner at some place I can’t remember and a drive home. I crashed on my couch at around 23:15 I think. MacWorld is draining. I have to spend the day in a crowd of people and bite my tongue a lot. heh.

Howard Stern says there’s no content for the iPod. Specifically, he says, “I believe that people will pay for radio– it’s everything iPod can’t be. IPod [sic] can’t give you content and we can.” Eric, Kevin, Leo, Swoopy, Keith… time to pack it up. There’s nothing to see here. Move along. Oh, and take Soccergirl with you.

Hmm. I don’t think Eric Rice believes him. My nearly full 60g video iPod doesn’t believe him either.

Oh, Howard. I’m a fan, but I have to say that sometimes your grasp on technology and trends is a couple years behind. How long did it take you to actually embrace the web? When did HowardStern.com launch? Anyways, don’t take aim at podcasting (because you’re not going to be able to hit a million targets) you should be more worried about terrestrial radio like Free FM. Cuz they’re aiming at YOU.

Pedantic Gripe: The iPod can’t give you content… it’s a device, not a medium. YOU give the iPod content and it serves it up all nice and pretty for you.

Via Boing Boing:

Canada bans copying CDs to iPods: Cory Doctorow:
Michael Geist sez, “The Canadian Supreme Court today declined to hear a case involving the private copying levy and its application to the Apple iPod. While some are celebrating, the decision effectively renders copying CDs onto an iPod unlawful in Canada. I’ve posted an additional perspective that challenges the recording industry’s decision to welcome the decision. I argue that it signifies an escalation of its war against its own artists.”

[snip]

Link

Way to go, Canada. Good one.

I’ve (only) recently discovered Digg. It’s a user contributed and modded news gateway site. (If that sounds like Slashdot, well, it’s because it’s LIKE Slashdot, but better.) Users submit the news stories and all of the readers decide to either digg it, or not. If more people digg a story, it floats to the top.

Additionally, you can see what stories other users have dugg, and if you have an account you can add your friends as, well, friends and compile all your friends stories into one feed. That’s right, feed.. as in RSS feed. In fact, you can get any user’s list of dugg stories as a feed. Pretty cool.

I’m xt0ph3r over there (r3v was too short) and if you wanted my feed, you’d hit this. If you sign up over there, and I don’t hate you for some reason, add me as a friend.

Additionally, there’s a DiggNation podcast (iTunes URL!). Really, that’s how I found out about the site. I heard Kevin Rose (of Systm, and formerly of Attack of the Show and Screensavers) on the TWiT podcast talking about it.

Go forth and digg it.

V-TV DAY: WE WON THE BROADCAST FLAG FIGHT!: Cory Doctorow: This morning, the DC Circuit of the US Court of Appeals struck down the loathsome Broadcast Flag, ruling that the FCC does not have the jurisdiction to regulate what people do with TV shows after they’ve received them.

[Via Boing Boing.]

That’s excellent news. Check out the article at BoingBoing for more info. Go DC Circuit Court of Appeals! Go EFF! Of course, this isn’t the war… just one battle. The bad guys will take this to Congress next and the good guys are gearing up to fight again.