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Save The Australian Net

Posted by drgadget on December 15, 2009 · 0 Comments 

GetUp!
Image via Wikipedia

Regrettably the government have decided today that they will pursue online censorship in Australia via Internet filtering at the ISP level.  Whilst this sounds admirable – after all I don’t really want my kids looking at kiddie porn – in practice it is an issue for two reasons.

The first and most important is that this sort of filtering will be almost technically impossible to achieve accurately.  As one pundit pointed out, while the trial only generated a 3.4% false positive rate – in reality this will bar access to over 7 MILLION websites.  The likelihood is that we will need the increased speed of the NBN to counterbalance the slowdown from this filtering!

My second concern relates to handing any government in this day and age the ability to censor information sources.  With the doubts around the legitimacy of the war in Iraq – not to mention Climategate – I’m not sure I trust the motives of any government in denying access to the Internet.   Finally – any sixteen year old pimply kid who knows how to tune in to Channel BT and surf for porn will likely be able to bypass these filters quite easily.

So have your say.  GetUp have a petition going to give you the chance to have your say.  See below for details.

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Elgato EyeTV for DTT Deluxe

Posted by drgadget on December 3, 2009 · 0 Comments 

Elgato DTT Deluxe
Image by Richard Clement via Flickr
Since my first wife left the marriage taking with her everything that had a plug attached I have always had a TV tuner for my computer.
The first couple were internal cards that went inside the desktop computer.  The picture was a bit iffy and, whilst they did have the capacity to record video, the hard disks at the time were so small it was hardly worthwhile.
Since switching to Mac’s I have used the EyeTV range from Elgato.  The first of these was the size of a paperback book and still used the analogue signal.  The second was down to the size of a pack of 20 cigarettes, the third the size of a USB memory stick – you can see where this is going!
I recently took delivery of their best unit yet, the EyeTV DTT Deluxe, and it is barely larger than the USB plug itself!  It comes with a clip-on telescopic aerial, a separate aerial for area’s with less signal strength and an adaptor for plugging into a normal TV socket.  Also included in the pack is a remote control and software that turns your Mac into a fully-fledged DVR (Digital Video Recorder).  The unit is an HD digital receiver and the picture is sharp and clear.  The software can be set to automatically convert a show for iPhone/iPod and AppleTV.  There is even an iPhone application that allows you to watch TV on the phone – effectively streaming live TV from the computer.
For the first time with Elgato EyeTV devices, Windows users are not left out.  The tuner works well with Windows 7 and Windows Media Centre and also comes with a software suite that claims to be nearly as good as that provided for Mac users.
To be fully effective you will need a subscription to an EPG service (Electronic Program Guide).  The easiest to set up for the EyeTV is called IceTV and it costs $99 per year – but this also includes web and iPhone software that allows you to remotely program the recording software.
The EyeTV for DTT Deluxe is available from MacFixit.com.au for $179.

Since my first wife left the marriage taking with her everything that had a plug attached I have always had a TV tuner for my computer.

The first couple were internal cards that went inside the desktop computer.  The picture was a bit iffy and, whilst they did have the capacity to record video, the hard disks at the time were so small it was hardly worthwhile.

Since switching to Mac’s I have used the EyeTV range from Elgato.  The first of these was the size of a paperback book and still used the analogue signal.  The second was down to the size of a pack of 20 cigarettes, the third the size of a USB memory stick – you can see where this is going!

I recently took delivery of their best unit yet, the EyeTV DTT Deluxe, and it is barely larger than the USB plug itself!  It comes with a clip-on telescopic aerial, a separate aerial for area’s with less signal strength and an adaptor for plugging into a normal TV socket.  Also included in the pack is a remote control and software that turns your Mac into a fully-fledged DVR (Digital Video Recorder).  The unit is an HD digital receiver and the picture is sharp and clear.  The software can be set to automatically convert a show for iPhone/iPod and AppleTV.  There is even an iPhone application that allows you to watch TV on the phone – effectively streaming live TV from the computer.

For the first time with Elgato EyeTV devices, Windows users are not left out.  The tuner works well with Windows 7 and Windows Media Centre and also comes with a software suite that claims to be nearly as good as that provided for Mac users.

To be fully effective you will need a subscription to an EPG service (Electronic Program Guide).  The easiest to set up for the EyeTV is called IceTV and it costs $99 per year – but this also includes web and iPhone software that allows you to remotely program the recording software.

The EyeTV for DTT Deluxe is available from MacFixit.com.au for $179.

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