New guides

I have published some new guides on my website.

Leopard Guides 

How do I find my Mac (OS X) shortname for 10.5 Leopard?

How do I find a Leopard 10.5 Mac’s IP address?

Windows Vista Business Edition 

Creating a new user account on Windows Vista Business Edition

How do I find a Vista Business Edition PC’s IP address?

Installing Bonjour for Windows on a Vista Business Edition PC.

Disabling Password Protected Sharing in Windows Vista 

Windows Vista Home Edition

Creating a new user account on Windows Vista Home Edition 

How do I find a Vista Home Edition PC’s IP address? 

Slow, very slow

I have mentioned before the ability of the EyeTV application to export TV recordings in a format which then allows it to be viewed via an iPod touch or an iPhone. It exports in a Quicktime H.264 format, the quality is excellent, and file sizes small, so it is quick to stream/download over an 802.11g  wireless network.

One thing which does let the whole process down is the speed of conversion. On my Intel iMac it is slow, a one hour show takes under an hour. However  on my 1.5GHz G4 Mac mini, it takes  forever.

A two hour recording I made last night which finished at 10.30pm was still been exported this morning at 9.30am! Eleven hours into the conversion process and it was about half way done!

As you might expect I have now turned of the wifi access function of EyeTV on the Mac mini.

Elgato do make a device that in theory makes things faster, the elgato turbo.264, an external USB device which according to the blurb…

Turbo.264 rapidly converts and drops videos into iTunes, ready to synch with your iPod, iPhone, Apple TV or Sony PSP. And even better, Turbo.264 does all the heavy lifting. While the hard work of video encoding is in progress, you can continue to work or play on your Mac.

Turbo.264 also accelerates the H.264 (MPEG-4) export command of popular Macintosh video applications, including EyeTV’s Wi-Fi Access feature. 

I have read mixed reviews, but it certainly does look interesting.

Interference Issues

I have started using a Mac mini under my TV in (another) experiment in using it as a media centre.

Apart from the fact it seems rather noisy (for a Mac, but a lot less noisy then the Windows Media Centers I have tried) the main problem I my having with my Mac mini is with the USB Freeview EyeTV device attached to it, and it isn’t a problem with the EyeTV software nor is it an issue with the USB device, the problem appears to be an interference issue with  the aerial which causes interference on some of the digital TV (Freeview) multiplexes.

I have moved the aerial cable which can resolve the issue, but I think I may need to replace the cable with a shielded cable. I have changed cables and not been able to see a difference which makes me think that the EyeTV USB device I have is suspectible to interference, whilst my TV or the EyeTV 410 Firewire device are not affected to the same degree. It’s not too bad if I am recording or watching a programme from the BBC multiplex, but the ITV multiplex is particularly bad.

Hopefully will get it sorted soon with a shielded cable. Next will be some kind of remote, at the moment I am using VNC and Apple Remote Desktop, which works, but is not very portable.

Well that didn’t work did it…

Okay removing and reinstalling the wireless adapter on the Q1 Ultra didn’t work, once more Windows Vista disabled the wireless adapter once more for no apparent reason or with any justification.

There doesn’t seem to be any solution to this problem on the web, others are having problems with the wireless card and video playback, but at least their wireless adapters work.

Trying a different driver to see if that helps.

Certainly couldn’t recommend the Q1 Ultra if this is “normal” behaviour, it should work out of the box without issue. Yes if you install software and hardware, sometimes this can cause issues, but out of the box a device should just work in my opinion.

Vista, stop disabling my wireless…

Windows Vista did it again…

Annoying to say the least. Windows Vista on my Q1 Ultra discovered a (so-called) problem with the wireless adapter on the Q1 and decided (without telling me) to disable the wireless and not allow me to renable it at all (well not easily).

In the end I decided against doing a system restore (like what I did last time) as obviously some kind of Windows update was causing the problem. This time I removed the adapter from Device Manager and rebooted the Q1 and let Windows reinstall the drivers, which it did without finding anything wrong!

I wouldn’t mind so much, but this is a new Q1 and I haven’t done anything except install updates…

It’s annoying.

Visually Appealing

I have mentioned VisualHub before, it is an excellent tool for converting video.

Now that I have an iPod touch, I want to put video onto it, so what do I use to convert my recordings, VisualHub of course.

Simply drag the files over, select iTunes, select iPod touch and that’s it.

VisualHub iTunes iPod

Note how the presets for all of Apple’s video devices are available from the iPod touch to the Apple TV.

Couldn’t be simpler, VisualHub is well worth the £12.32 it costs for a license.

Upgraded the Mac mini

I have just upgraded my G4 Mac mini to Leopard. I am intending to use it as a media centre under my television.

The upgrade went fine, and EyeTV 2.5.1 seems to work just fine under Leopard.

I am running it (currently) without a keyboard or a mouse and of course being a G4 Mac mini it does not have an Apple remote.

I do have an EyeTV remote, so when watching TV, I can use that.

In the meantime, I am using VNC and screensharing to control the Mac mini and will be using either my PowerBook or an UMPC to do the controlling.

It’s connected to my Airport Extreme (802.11n) by ethernet, so the fact that it has only 802.11g won’t be too much of an issue.

I have an (old) CRT Sony television, so I am using s-video to connect the Mac mini to it, so screen resolution is quite poor, but for video and images it seems to work fine.

Mac mini

If this works out, I will probably replace it with a newer and faster Intel Mac mini. This one only had 512MB of RAM, and I would prefer at least 1GB or more.

I will write more, as we see how it works out.

I just want to do stuff…

So there I was looking at my new Samsung Q1 Ultra and seeing how the graphics were working, working on a document and looking at a few things online, when I got called away.  Knew I was only going to be a few minutes to just placed the Q1 on the desk and left.

I came back to find that Windows Vista had decided (in my absence) to update Windows, restart, lose my wireless connection and then admit that it had lost the document I was working on and would I like to create a new one!

I do find this very frustrating, if I wanted the Q1  to run itself I would leave it switched on and never use it, however I want to use the Q1 to do stuff, create stuff, read stuff, reflect on stuff. I don’t want the Q1 to try and be nice and update itself in the middle of me doing stuff. I want to retain my wireless connection so I don’t lose my blog entry, or lose the thread of the online discussion I am involved in.

I don’t want software to continually nag me that I haven’t either set it up or registered it, or run it for a while, and I don’t want the software to do it in the middle of me doing stuff.

I don’t want the Q1 to download huge updates whilst I am trying to do stuff online, downloading will slow my internet connection, download updates while I am doing other non-online stuff such as making a cup of tea.

Please just let me do my stuff, don’t do your stuff and pretend mine isn’t important!

Final Episode

Next week will see the final episode of BBC’s Robin Hood, in which our hero goes to meet King Richard to warn him of the plot against him by the dastardly sheriff and Prince John.

I have enjoyed this series and I do like the way that the series has been written and the way it does not take itself too seriously.

Hopefully it will be renewed for a third series. 

EyeTV Wireless Access

One of the features of EyeTV during a recent update (version 2.5) was the ability to stream recordings wirelessly to an iPhone or an iPod touch.

As at the time I had neither I didn’t either turn it on or check it out.

Now having an iPod touch I gave it a go and was well impressed. It’s simple to turn on, just go to the relevant section in the EyeTV preferences.

EyeTV Wireless Access Preferences

Now what I didn’t realise was that basically what EyeTV does is convert the videos into a format which plays on the iPod touch, but hosts it on the Mac with the EyeTV with a webpage as a front end.

Now that webpage can be viewed on your iPod touch (or iPhone), but also can be viewed on a Mac which is using Safari 3 (the page does not work on Safari 2).

EyeTV Wireless Access on Safari 3

You can also use  Firefox (2.0.0.7) or Camino (1.5.1), clicking on the links plays (streams) the file in Quicktime.

The file plays fine over an 802.11g network.

However it also works on a Windows PC as well, it worked fine on my Windows XP Tablet using Firefox, however it didn’t work on Internet Explorer 6 or on a Vista PC with Internet Explorer 7. Obviously you also need to have Quicktime installed on the PC. Quite a useful way of streaming video across a home network.