Only in Boulder, they’ve redone the Safeway on the corner of Iris and 28th. It’s now a high-end grocery store, complete with a flower/garden section, sushi bar and kitchen demo area. It’s really quite nice.
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Month: March 2006
My JVC HD-ILA‘s lamp shattered on Tuesday. It’s had about 400 hours (max, estimated) on it. Fortunately, replacement is covered because the lamp is SUPPOSED to be good for 7000 hours. Also fortunate, if I did have to pay for it, it would be $199 + S&H. No TV except Azureus this weekend unless I figure out how to hack the scrambling on my TiVo or give in and connect the itty-bitty 14" TV.
Well, I finally got my act together after six months at a hard drive company and hacked my HR10-250 (actually, I have two, here’s the manual). Here’s what I have now:
- Changed from built-in (noisy) 250GB Western Digital Hard Drive to extremely quiet 500GB DB35 Seagate drive (this is optimized for PVRs).
- I installed a NetGear FA120 USB 2.0 Ethernet adapter ($22)
- I installed a fresh HR10-250 drive image using Instant Cake ($20)
- I installed a PTVnet upgrade ($20)
- I installed a "newer" version of HackMan (for TiVoWebPlus)
Then I futzed around with it all day, now I have internet access to my TiVo from anywhere in the world. I’m considering adding a TiVo status in WordPress, but this is a little two Reality TV for me. I’m still running a little short on the features I want, mainly because I haven’t figured out how to disable encryption on this box:
- Pull programs off the TiVo, convert to MPEG2 (it appears I did not disabled scrambling properly)
- Stream content off the TiVo (again, it’s the scrambling, I think)
- Pull content off the old TiVo HDD onto the computer or onto the new TiVo (will be difficult, scrambled using a different key, I think).
I should be able to close these items in a few weeks, but for now, the web access to show lists is simply awesome. For those also interested in doing the same, here’s the correct order (usual rules apply, if you think you might screw up your TiVo and you’re going to void your warranty, you’re right!). Don’t do any of this, ever.
- Disconnect all PC hard drives, set CD-ROM on Primary Master IDE to boot. Connect PATA (IDE) TiVo drive (blank) on Secondary Master with jumper set to Master.
- Boot the computer using PTVnet (counterintuitive), it’ll ask where everything is (hda = CD-ROM, hdc = TiVo HDD), and then ask if you have an Instant Cake CD.
- Go ahead, throw in the Instant Cake CD when asked, it’ll do as told, and about 1.5 hours later, voila.
- Switch the disk jumper back to CS (Cable Select).
- Insert disk in TiVo (need two Torx to open case = T10, T15), replacing current drive.
- Boot TiVo with TV attached. Go through guided setup. When through, go to reset/restart system
- Delete and erase everything. This will take 3 hours on a 500GB. Screen should be red "PVRupgrade" TiVo screen during this time.
- Go through guided setup again. Go to info page on TiVo, should show correct number of hours (462 SD, 62 HD).
- Connect network adapter (it must be 1 of the 3 recommended by PTVupgrade).
- Find TiVo’s network address (comes up as PTVupgrade as a name on your DHCP server)
- Upgrade Hackman to newest version (ftp, telnet).
Simple, eh? Discerning readers may ask why I have two HR10-250’s. It’s a short story. One died under warranty. They shipped me a new one. I asked if they wanted the old one back. They said no, it was mine. Hence, two.
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HDTV Colorado
I’ve been watching the HDTV situation for some time in Colorado, and I must say, I don’t agree with any of the issues that are brought up to stop the supertower for HDTV on Lookout Mountain in Denver. These folks are all ignorant of the science, pushing their ill-founded fears on the rest of us, when if they bother to do some research, they’d actually understand the benefits of the supertower. It’s bothersome to me mostly because these not-in-my-backyard naysayers understand little or distrust the science that’s gone into EMI (no, it doesn’t cause cancer!). As a frequent reader of comp.risks, the source of these fears is well-known (risks you don’t understand = EMI vs. risks you do = driving a car). Maybe if one person in C.A.R.E. (the supertower detracters) would read this blog, I could convert them:
- EMI has never, ever been shown to cause any health risk. This includes brain cancer (remember those bogus cellphone = brain cancer stories?) Early statistical studies were flawed, but popular thinking has never been “corrected” of this. Raised EMI in certain regions is caused by the superior coverage of the taller antenna. Since raised EMI doesn’t cause health risks (I would live under a power line), this only means better coverage.
- Moving to digital television will save lives. Emergency services personnel are hampered by poor communications over an analog system with limited bandwidth. The FCC mandate to move to digital is designed to free up this analog bandwidth for the firefighters, EMTs, ambulance and other emergency personnel who will save your life (I had a heart attack, but died because the communications weren’t working). Everyone within the coverage area benefits from this, especially those near the tower where analog broadcasts are causing all the problems.
- Lookout Mountain will look better. Really. It’s an eyesore from any distance right now. Here’s a picture I took:
Coming from the Bay Area, where I could get close to 20 OTA High Definition stations, I’m very dissappointed that at similar range, I can only get 3 in Denver (PBS, NBC, ABC) of any value.
I happened to catch the trail end of an ad from hdtvcolorado on ABC showing an animation of how the extremely ugly Lookout mountain would look after a good part of the tower farm is replaced by a supertower (6 to 1!). It’s impressively cleaned up, and would actually turn Lookout Mountain into more of a destination rather than an eyesore. Here’s the picture version I found.
To pretend to balance this entry, here’s the website by the people blocking the supertower. For those with a scientific background, pay special attention to the gross misuse of statistics in the bullseye or sharpshooter fallacy (explained here) on this page (misused here). To summarize, you can’t draw the bullseye after you’ve randomly shot up the wall vis-a-vis cancer cases (see great Frontline episode “Currents of Fear” here, nice write-up here).
A friend of mine lent me the DSM-320 (it’s coming back soon, Patrick) and I evaluated it to decide to buy the ($229) DSM-520. Both boxes are UPnP AV streaming devices that let you stream audio, video, etc. from a PC.
Here’s the differences (all in favor of the DSM-520):
- Supports WPA encryption on wireless
- Supports high definition component and HDMI outputs
- Has plug-in on front for USB drive
First impressions:
- The box is quick and easy to setup, and found Windows Media Connect, NeroHome and D-Link Media Server without problems.
- Firmware on both is clunky, and has even crashed a few times on the DSM-520 requiring a reboot
- D-Link Media Server software is poorly implemented, alternatives including the live video transcoding capable NeroHome (my favourite)
- Few video formats can be read “out-of-the-box”
- The current firmware strangely can only be set to FF/Rewind OR jump to location. This is most annoying.
After a few months:
Overall, I still really like the DSM-520, and would recommend it to anyone looking for a high-definition streaming video player for a big-screen TV. It’s relatively inexpensive, and works quite well.
- You can rip a DVD (I use DVDdecrypter) and play it back later. This is great, but several DVDs change audio language abruptly in mid-movie, requiring the rest of the movie be watched on a computer.
- NeroHome is my preferred media server, supporting many more video formats for live transcoding than the D-Link Media Server
- Only D-Link Media Server and NeroHome support fast-forward and rewind (Windows Media Connect 2.0 chokes)
- I intend to buy an Infrant ReadyNAS NV, which will allow me to stream directly off that, without ever having to keep or turn on a computer in the house (supports UPnP AV).
- I really wish they’d improve FF/Rev, including both jump, and some kind of “jump forward or backwards a few seconds”
- I would love to see some kind of webbrowser built-in.
- Pictures are still broken (either stretched to the wrong aspect ratio, or too small). This needs a bug fix desperately from D-Link
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Lefthand Canyon Fire
It’s gonna be a tough fire season (“frequent fire miles”, anyone). We had a 6 acre fire right across the canyon from our house. Our cats and my backup disk evacuated for several hours
This was backbreaking work, digging scratch line uphill on a steep slope and then cup trenches downhill on the other side, once we’d built line. It’s a good thing I didn’t go for a run first.
The fire broke out in the afternoon in the shooting range on BLM land, reportedly caused by tracer ammunition (yes, we were cutting line around hundreds of thousands of rounds, no doubt some of which was not spent).
Here’s some of the news reports (apparently I made KUSA NBC 9 news, if so, I’m going to owe some icecream, our traditional punishment if we’re caught on camera or in print):
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Sunshine Canyon Fire
At about a quarter to one in the afternoon on March 1, I got a rather disturbing page on my BMFPD pagers. The page started out (I paraphrase) “wildfire fire in sunshine canyon” and rapidly escalated to “wildfire jumped the road” and “wildfire out of control, wind from all directions”. Pretty scary stuff. I rushed off (trunk open) from Longmont to Boulder Mountain Station 2, and Tom Akins and I took 4344 (a tender) to Sunshine Command (run by by old roommate, Steve Stratton). Our job was to draught the cistern, filling all trucks as they ran out of water. It doesn’t sound so exciting, but Sunshine has no hydrants, so water operations are critical to fighting a fire.
Every news organization and their brother showed up (satellite uplinks at Poorman staging), and our truck was about 100ft west of the fire’s point of ignition. Our truck is probably in some of the aerial shots from at least two hovering news choppers. This was also the first time on a fire scene I’ve seen the new “wildfire aware” reporters, who are required to wear wildland nomex. The City of Boulder reported that “Boulder Wildland” was one of the responding agencies, I think this was actually us, Boulder Mountain.
Fortunately, I even made it back home to attend a conference call, if a bit late.
Here’s some news story links (blue hats are Boulder Mountain Fire):