Posted by drgadget on February 3, 2010 · Comments
One of my greatest pleasures is watching movies on my home theatre system which had a ten year upgrade during 2009.
Previously we had a 130cm rear projection TV and one of the earliest DVD players available in Australia. Now we have a beautiful 46 inch Full-HD Samsung LCD TV and the accompanying Samsung Blu-Ray player.
I do, however, also have a large collection of movies as digital files that have been “acquired” over the years from various sources and I have been looking for a way to safely centrally store these and view them on TV’s around the house.
The first part – safe storage – was achieved using an excellent device called a
Drobo. This is similar to the 4-bay RAID array drives that are reasonably easy to come by these days – the difference being that you can use any combination of drives where most require drives to be matched. This means that you can start with whatever you might have lying around and upgrade drives as you can afford to. Drives are “hot swappable” so as you run out of room you can yank out the smallest drive and pop in a bigger one without shutting down the device. The RAID technology means that any one of the drives can fail and you will not lose your data. On its own the Drobo works as an external hard-disk but it can also be connected to a DroboShare accessory which makes it available over the network.
So the second part of the equation is how to play the movie files stashed away safely on the Drobo. I have tried various solutions for this and found the best by far to be a media player from Asus with the rather bizarre name O!Play.
The O!Play can work either with a hard disk plugged straight into it – via USB or eSATA – or it can be connected to the network via ethernet. A wireless version is not currently an option. The great plus of the O!Play is format support. It has played everything I have thrown at it from standard AVI files through DivX and even High Definition MP4 files – all across the network and without missing a beat. It will play the more obscure formats too like MKV and even Blu-Ray ISO files – although I doubt the latter would play across a network.
One small downside to the O!Play – although easily fixed in a firmware update – is the inability to set a default network location for files. This means that you have to drill down through several levels of file management to get to your movies. Its not a deal breaker – but it is a minor annoyance.
The O!Play can also play your picture and music files and can be purchased online for about $200 with shipping.
Posted by drgadget on December 3, 2009 · Comments
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.
Posted by drgadget on September 17, 2009 · Comments
Hanging An HDTV: It’s All About The Studs. Telecine, Prints And Ugly Blu-Ray Transfers, Top 5 Movies from Comics, Blu-Ray releases for the week of September 15th, 2009.
Posted by drgadget on August 1, 2009 · Comments
The latest Samsung LCD and LED TV’s offer stunning Full HD picture quality – some also come with a bonus in the form of built in wired and network media centre supporting a wide range of file types.
Plug into one of the available USB ports a hard disk loaded with movie files and you are ready to go.
Alternatively connect via Ethernet or an optional Wireless-N adaptor and you can stream content from a DLNA compliant media server. For this, I recommend the Netgear ReadyNAS range – the Duo being the most affordable. Pop in a pair of matched drives of any size and your data is not only available across the network, it is safe as the second drive is used as a mirror in case of drive failure.
These devices also competently stream media to a range of end points such as the TV mentioned above – but also devices such as the XBox360 and the Playstation 3. A very easy way to make your music, photos and videos available around the home.
