World Sojourner : 3760

I love the commercials – Apple’s Mac and PC guy – and new new Windows 7 ones that feature the little girl.  The competition between the two companies is making the products from both companies (and oddly those from Google) better.  I doubt Windows 7 would be nearly as good without Apple to steal from.

However, like all wars there are casualties.  Namely, us consumers.

Mrs M and I both have iPods so we need to have music files that play, you know, on the iPod.  However, last spring I bought a pretty powerful PC to use for Media.  Apple doesn’t really provide a serious option here thanks to it largely avoiding the HD format so I went with Windows Vista.  And, after figuring out what a dog Vista was I quickly went to Windows 7 RC as soon as it was available.

Windows 7 has its issues, which largely come from large lazy companies like HP and Logitech (yeah, I’m looking at you and your sorry ass developers who haven’t rolled out a decent beta for keyboards, cameras and your damn printers) but on average it’s pretty good. 

So back to the music wars.  99.99% of all my music is in MP3 thanks to the an old relationship with Napster and no real desire to go the extra effort with lossless formats like WAV, FLAC or the other proprietary formats for Microsoft or Apple.  At least this was the case until Mrs. M got me the new re-mastered Beatles box set for my birthday.

Since the entire point of the box set was that the sound was supposed to be superior I did some research on formats and found lossless was the way to go.  My first test run was ripping a disk to Apple’s loss format.  The size was much larger than MP3 but the sound would be pure.  This wasn’t a problem since I only list to about 5% of my iPod music.  I’d just kick some random music off the island and move on.

Once the M4A file was created, I decided to test it in Media Player since that’s what would be playing at our house.  No luck.  Me thinks this isn’t a real problem since codecs are available.  But, oh no, apparently since Apple’s lossless is proprietary they haven’t licensed the rights to Microsoft, yet have purchased the license for WAV and Microsoft’s lossless format.

Last weekend and the first part of this morning was spent search for a decent plug-in, which turned up nothing.  I give up.  I’m ripping the disks to WAV and then having iTunes convert the WAV files to Apple lossless, if of course, iTunes can stay stable enough to perform the function.

They want me to go one way or another – Apple or Microsoft but if this stuff doesn’t find a way to get resolved pretty quickly I may look to a third option – Linux anyone?

boxee blog » the Hulu situation

our goal has always been to drive users to legal sources of content that are publicly available on the Internet. we have many content partners who are generating revenue from boxee users and we will work with Hulu and their partners to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.

I’m convinced the major TV networks and movie studies in the United States want us to pirate their content.  Judging them by their decisions, their long term strategy is to make themselves irrelevant somewhere in 2010.  Are they bucking for a large bailout from Obama’s second administration?

I haven’t written about the challenges of getting high-definition television content into my new PC.  Getting HD out (or something that looks good on the big screen) has worked perfectly; HD in – now that’s another story.  Between the HP sales rep lying to me when I asked – can this PC receive HD channels through the video card, something called ‘Digital Cable Ready’, the incompatibility of Vista 64 bit with the rest of the world, and the content providers doing everything within their power to keep their content off of relevant screens (small 3 x 5 inch displays in a web browser don’t count) the process has been long and so far, unsuccessful.

Without detailing all the options (that’s another post), I have three possibilities on the table to get live television in HD into my box (and then out to the TV).  First is a HD-PVR that converts cable box channels to the PC.  This option doesn’t work well with MS Media Center, but there may be a hack.  The second option is to install something like Slingbox or HAVA.  Slingbox produces HD but doesn’t play well with Media Center.  HAVA plays well with Media Center but doesn’t produce HD.  The HAVA people say something should be coming out in a couple months. Good times.

So, having no viable options for live TV.  I started researching getting television via the websites.  Boxee, the leader right now, only plays well with Mac and Linux but I’m on the list to test their alpha product.  Secondrun.TV is on the box and works pretty well for Hulu but thanks to Hulu’s desire for a 1950s environment it may or may not have a future.

But why would they do this?  Why does Boxee have to remove Hulu content, when the sole source of Hulu’s revenue is the ads they run during the damn show?  Why not work with Boxee or secondrun.tv to produce their ads there?

I just read a review on Hulu in Fast Company discussing how they are so visionary, yet they – when pushed – bend over and grab their ankles for an entire television complex that is collapsing.  Oh, and the irony is that Hulu will deep link into CBS and ABC when searched.  So, while Boxee can’t do it – Hulu can.

The content providers, when they pull this BS, leave users with few options.  I don’t like torrents, nor downloading illegal content. No, it’s not because it’s ‘illegal’, but rather it’s a wonderful chance to download viruses and spyware.  Personally, they aren’t losing a dime on me because we DVR every single show and then skip the sad sorry ads.  The irony is that the only ads Mrs M and I have watched over the last three months are the ones played on Hulu and CBS online.  Of course, even then we put it on mute after the same ad is played five times.

Hulu and the other networks – please get in the game and understand that you are media providers and embrace the ecosystems that so desperately want to form around your offerings.  Local TV stations are going away and that users (ahem, people like me) don’t mind a couple ads as long as we can get the content where and when we want it.

Don’t like Boxee?  Fine.  Put together your own Mac-Linxu-Vista Media Center plugins that allows users to get to the shows (and those ads) easily.  Or, we’re going to set our Pirates Bay Torrents to download and move on.

Basic Problem

I would attempt to play a movie in Windows Media Player (WMP) and only the audio was present.  The system needed a new codec (compression, decompression) to play these off-shored backups

Solution

The full Microsoft Write-Up is here: Playing Video in WMP

It gives the skinny on the entire process.  Here’s the synopsis:

1) Download GSpot codec information appliance, this software analyzes the file and gives reasons its not playing (codec, file corrupted, etc)

2) Assuming it’s the codec, FOURCC.com has a pretty robust list of codecs.  Find the right codec, download it and install

3) Movies should start playing

Updated shortly after post

The above solution only helps those smart creatures running the 32 bit version of Vista.  If by some chance, you chose Vista 64 bit then there’s one final step to get the movies to play in Windows Media Center (WMC).

You need the 64 bit codecs for WMC, which can be gotten from here.  Install the codec package and all should be fine.

Why does part of Vista run 64 bit and the rest of Vista run 32 by default?  Because, and I’m guessing here, the entire OS isn’t well thought out. 

I’m starting to consider it a beta for Windows 7.

Thanks to President’s Day, I have a little more time to play around on the Home Theatre PC (HTPC).  I’d love to just play on it for hours and hours, but I have a few other projects happening so I have to limit my quality time.

Today’s project – getting the movies in AVI format that I backed up for the nice people in Australia to play on Windows Media Player (WMP).  As of now, I can hear the audio, but can’t see the video.  The World Wide Internet suggests this is a ‘codec’ problem. 

Worst case I just use VLC Player, which works perfectly but I like Windows Media Center and using the remote. 

To Be Continued …