I am currently enjoying the final episode of the BBC’s Robin Hood, which I recorded yesterday on my Mac using an EyeTV device. I am viewing it on my TV via an EyeHome media streamer.
Digital Photography Reviews
Digital Photography Review has recently reviewed quite a few digital cameras these are well detailed and thorough reviews and well worth reading if you are interested in getting a new digital camera.
The Sony looks like the one I would buy if I was buying a new digital camera, but then I am very fond of my Sony Cybershot and would be interested to see how their SLRs perform compared to my Canon.
Bluetooth Printing
I have tried to print via Bluetooth from my iMac to my new A618 compact photo printer and have failed, in the main as the driver wasn’t on my iMac.
It can be relatively simple as I found with the PhotoSmart 375 I had previously. This is one of the reasons I create the guides on my website so that when I need to install a new or an existing printer for a second time, I can remember how to do it, likewise by putting them online I can access the guides from anywhere and if required on a separate device (which is useful if you need to reboot or shut other applications down).
Checking my guide it is of course a driver issue, time to find the driver…
In the end I moved the photographs I wanted to print from the iMac to a USB stick and used the printer remotely instead.
Hmm, would the EyeTV 410 make a difference?
On my G4 Mac mini which I am using as a media centre under my television I have an EyeTV USB Freeview device for watching, pausing, rewinding and of course recording live television. I have been having a few issues with the quality of the recordings and viewing live television in terms of interference, but also when watching if a live TV window is open. I suspect that part of the problem is the speed of the G4 which is rather slow for a Mac and it only has 512MB of RAM.
I am wondering if I use the EyeTV 410 which is connected to my iMac whether that would make a difference? Whereas the EyeTV USB device is dependent a lot on the Mac for processing the video, the Firewire 410 device has a hardware encoder which in theory takes a lot of the load of video processing off the Mac.
I might give it a go and see how it works out, but will leave it till later as the iMac is going to record the final episode of Robin Hood tonight on BBC One.
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
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.
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.