The Digital Media Zone

The Movie Podcast for the Week of July 26th, 2010

Adam Thursby — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:26:15 +0000

Another summer week and while it’s been better than most, I really can’t wait for fall. This is another one of those weeks when I really wish that the releases for the week were better than they were. Unfortunately, hopes don’t always hold out.

You’ll notice a bit of audio difference this week. When one of your co-hosts is in Romania, it tends to affect things like that. James will be back stateside next week though and you can expect us to be back to our usual selves. (I think there was some delay this week which would explain timing issues.)

Click here to download Episode #13.

Movie Releases

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Music for The Movie Podcast provided by Amish Rake Fight

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Does the DMCA Really Prevent You From Backing-Up Your DVDs/Blu-rays?

Adam Thursby — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:26:42 +0000

It seems that this slipped right under the radar. More than likely it’s due to the fact that it’s a non-digital media related story, but the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a ruling in the case of MGE UPS Systems Inc. vs. GE/PMC Inc. which, while related more to hardware, calls out the DMCA and it’s intention in regards to copyright law.

You can argue that backing up a DVD or Blu-ray movie does or does not fall under fair use however most of us who follow this debate at least fall on the same side in that argument. As long as you’re not giving away or selling said movie, in most cases, your lone backup to a hard drive would be considered fair use under copyright law. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) states that it is illegal to break copy protection on our movies. It’s not the backing-up that’s been illegal all this time, simply breaking the encryption on the disk. Meaning that just making a backup makes you a criminal even though you purchased your disk, paid full price, etc.

While I’m not a lawyer by any stretch, there is one line in this unrelated court decision that could change that:

Merely bypassing a technological protection that restricts a user from viewing or using a work is insufficient to trigger the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision. The DMCA prohibits only forms of access that would violate or impinge on the protections that the Copyright Act otherwise affords copyright owners.

What this means to me is that as long as I’m breaking that protection to simply backup my disk, an action which under fair use would not violate copyright law, then I’m no longer made a criminal for doing this and am free and clear to backup every movie in my collection. As long as you’re not violating copyright law by giving away or selling the content you should be covered.

This is a huge decision. Really it changes the way we look at media and companies like Kalidascape may actually be able to bring their products to market. It’s a little early to judge that yet as I’m sure this will move up the chain to the next court in line where this decision could be easily overruled. If it sticks however, it’ll be interesting to see how Hollywood reacts. While copyright law should still protect their content, they’ve wanted to keep it as locked down as possible and this little tidbit may prevent that.

Story found at NewTeeVee.com

HD Sportsman July 26-August 1

Phil Lozen — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:41:55 +0000

Zzzzzzzzzz. There’s some baseball, a bit of MLS soccer and some golf. Have fun. Oh, and crazy people riding skateboards and BMX bikes.

SPOTLIGHT

The local park in your town. Check it out, you’ll enjoy it more.

Here’s the rest of the week, big games in BOLD.

MONDAY, JUNE 28

7 p.m. – MLB Detroit at Tampa Bay (720p)

TUESDAY, JUNE 29

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30

7 p.m. – MLB St. Louis at New York Mets (720p)
8:30 p.m. – MLS Manchester United vs. MLS All-Stars(720p)

THURSDAY, JULY 1

2 p.m. – X Games 16 (720p)
5 p.m. – PGA Tour US Senior Open (720p)
8 p.m. – X Games 16 (720p)

FRIDAY, JULY 2

2 p.m. – X Games 16 (720p)
5 p.m. – PGA Tour US Senior Open (720p)
7 p.m. – X Games 16 (720p)

SATURDAY, JULY 3

2 p.m. – X Games 16 (720p)
3 p.m. – PGA Tour Greenbrier Classic (1080i)
4 p.m. – PGA Tour US Senior Open (1080i)
4 p.m. – MLB LA Dodgers at San Francisco (or other regional action) (720p)
7 p.m. – X Games 16 (720p)

SUNDAY, JULY 4

1:30 p.m. – MLB Baseball NY Yankees at Tampa Bay (1080i)
1 p.m. – X Games 16 (720p)
3 p.m. – PGA Tour Greenbrier Classic (1080i)
4 p.m. – PGA Tour US Senior Open (1080i)
7 p.m. – X Games 16 (720p)
8 p.m. – MLB LA Dodgers at San Francisco (720p)

*If Needed

Technorati Tags: HDTV, PGA Tour, MLB, HD Sportsman

Entertainment 2.0 #86: Catchin’ Up

Adam Thursby — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:48:49 +0000

That’s it folks, I’m back! After a two week hiatus from the show, I return to join Josh for this week’s Entertainment 2.0. It was hard being away but you all get to put up with me again for the rest of the summer.

This week Josh and I walk through some catch up stuff as well as covering the latest news. We’ve both made changes to our setups (some more permanent than others) and we get to give our impressions.

Also, just announced this week, Netflix is headed north. It’ll be a streaming only service but the company has decided that Canadians want to watch instantly too!

Josh also runs us through his InfiniTV4 review which you can read here at The DMZ.

Click Here to download Episode #86!

Show Links:

Core Temp MC via DMZ

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HD Racer – July 23-25

Josh Pollard — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:51:23 +0000

Image from APR Motorsport

In this fourth weekend in July we find yet another incredibly packed schedule of motorsports goodness.

Formula 1 is in action this week, so they get things started Friday morning at 8am with practice for the German Grand Prix from Hockenheim. In the afternoon you can catch NASCAR Trucks qualifying, and then their race that night from O’Reilly Raceway Park.

Saturday starts with Formula 1 qualifying, then at 2:00pm you can catch over 50 sports cars try to make their way around the very crowded 1.5 mile track at Lime Rock. That night you will be able to see the NASCAR Nationwide drivers compete under the lights again, this time at O’Reilly Raceway park. Closing out the night is qualifying for the MotoGP U.S. Grand Prix from Laguna Seca.

Sunday is completely packed! Fox kicks it all off with the Formula 1 German Grand Prix at noon. At 1:00pm you can choose between the NASCAR Sprint Cup Brickyard 400 and the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge from New Jersey. At 3:30 SPEED will be airing the GP2 race from Hockenheim. At 5:00 you have to make another choice as Versus will be showing the IndyCar race from Edmonton, and SPEED will have the MotoGP U.S. Grand Prix.

Friday, July 23

8:00 a.m.		Formula 1* – German Grand Prix Practice
5:00 p.m.		NASCAR Trucks – AAA Insurance 200 Qualifying from O’Reilly Raceway Park
8:00 p.m.		NASCAR Trucks – AAA Insurance 200 from O’Reilly Raceway Park

Saturday, July 24

8:00 a.m.		Formula 1* – German Grand Prix Qualifyingay
2:00 p.m.		American Le Mans Series – Northeast Grand Prix from Lime Rock
8:00 p.m.		NASCAR Nationwide – Kroger 200 from O’Reilly Raceway Park
9:00 p.m.		MotoGP – U.S. Grand Prix Qualifying from Laguna Seca

Sunday, July 25

12:00 p.m.		Formula 1* German Grand Prix from Hockenheim
1:00 p.m.		NASCAR Sprint Cup – Brickyard 400 from Indianapolis
1:00 p.m.		Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge from New Jersey
3:30 p.m.		GP2 Championship* from Hockenheim
5:00 p.m.		IndyCar – Edmonton Indy
5:00 p.m.		MotoGP – U.S. Grand Prix from Laguna Seca

* Unfortunately Formula 1 and GP2 aren’t broadcast in HD.

The Movie Podcast for the Week of July 19th, 2010

Adam Thursby — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:02:53 +0000

It’s the week of mediocrity here on The Movie Podcast. James and I take a look at three films and while none of them were awful, either bad acting or bad writing held them back from being great. I really wanted to enjoy this week’s selection but it was more meh than anything else. It’s unfortunate too because any one of these films could have been great very easily.

Stick with us through the week folks. As summer moves on the selection will get better and as those summer theater releases start hitting the home distribution side of things, you’ll have some good stuff to choose from.

Click here to download Episode 12!

Movie Releases

TV Releases

Music for The Movie Podcast provided by Amish Rake Fight

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Ceton InfiniTV 4 Review

Josh Pollard — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:25:18 +0000

Its not often that a product comes along that really shakes up a niche market like ours. With few exceptions we are accustomed to every product acting like all the others. Price or brand recognition ends up being the determining factor in hardware choices.

What happens however when a product comes along and challenges our notions of the HTPC landscape?

Way back in January of 2009 we learned about an exciting product that really deserves the much-overused title “game changer.” Ceton’s InfiniTV 4, a pci-express card that can record up to four simultaneous high-definition television shows at once via a single CableCARD, gave HTPC builders what they have needed for a long time: more tuners, smaller form factor, and a pci-e interface.

Initial Setup

Specs:

4 Tuner CableCARD device
1x pci-e (will fit into any pci-e slot)
Low-profile or full-height bracket
$399

What you haven’t realized yet is that two of us at the Digital Media Zone are reviewing the Ceton InfiniTV 4. Richard decided to reinstall Windows 7 on his Dell XPS 420 to provide Ceton every opportunity to succeed or fail based on the strength of their hardware and software design. I, Josh, took the route that I think many will, to simply install it into my Media Center PC as it stood.

Prior to doing the driver installation I ran the Digital Cable Advisor Tool located in the Extras Gallery within Windows Media Center. This is a requirement to prepare your computer for a CableCARD. The driver installation went smooth for both of us, and of course the hardware installation is a breeze. Physical installation of the card is simple. Just slide it into any available pci-express slot regardless of the size. Then slide the CableCARD into the slot of the back of the card. Don’t be alarmed when the card is still hanging out of the back about an inch. It’s supposed to do that so that you’ll have a way of removing the card. Once the CableCARD is in, simply attach the coax cable to the dongle. While dongles don’t have a great reputation, the one supplied by Ceton is top-notch. It feels very solid and well-built, while still providing flexibility to accommodate any cabling situation. After the driver and card were installed we ran the guided setup within Media Center. If you’ve ever setup a TV tuner within Media Center then this process will feel very familiar to you. The only real difference is that you will eventually be greeted with a screen full of identification numbers for the CableCARD. This screen will instruct you to call your cable company so that the card can be activated for your account. Most likely a cable technician will be sitting in your living room watching you do all of this. This is the one part of the setup that he will actually take part in. Once the cable company has activated the card you can complete the setup as normal. You may need to wait a few minutes for the computer to receive all of the channel maps. Fortunately Ceton even makes this part easy. Just point Internet Explorer on the PC with the InfiniTV 4 installed to http://192.168.200.1. Alternatively you can also click Start, then Computer, then select Network from the menu on the left. Among the listed devices should be one labeled Ceton InfiniTV Mocur. If you double-click it you will be taken to the website also. You will be taken to the web interface for the card. From here you will be able to access all kinds of diagnostic information about the tuner card and the CableCARD. At this point you will want to go to the tab labeled CableCARD. Scroll all the way to the bottom. You are looking for the items labeled “Number of Channels” and “Channel Maps Received.” If these are both zero then the card hasn’t received the information from the cable company yet. Refresh the page every minute or two. If you haven’t received anything after five or ten minutes you should probably call the cable company again. Once the number of channels looks right for your cable subscription you should be all set!

At this point you should immediately go to your guide, filter it by HD programs, and record the first four things you see, simply because you can!

You may also want to play around with the previously mentioned web interface for the InfiniTV 4. From the site you can view information from each of the four tuners, including the current state of the tuner, whether the stream is copy protected, the signal level, the signal to noise level, and even the temperature of that individual tuner. The card also supports Switched Digital Video, so if your cable company requires a tuning adapter you can also view the status of it from the web interface. Neither of the cable companies used during our testing, Buckeye Cable and Comcast, are currently using SDV though, so we were unable to test this. Buckeye is apparently very close to completing their roll-out, so we may be able to test that in the near future.

Obviously Richard and I aren’t the only people in our homes to use Windows Media Center 7. It is the only way anyone accesses television and the rest of our digital media. With that, it was important to make sure that it would work great for everyone, so Richard asked his wife how she liked it in comparisson to their single ATI CableCard tuner. She stated the obvious at first. “Four is better than one”. But she put a finer point on it. “We like to record a lot of shows. We can do this comfortably and still have live events on around the house.” She was absolutely right! Since switching to the InfiniTV 4 I’ve never once been concerned about missing a recording due to not having enough tuners.

CableCARD and Copy-Protection

I’ve seen a lot of mis-information out there about copy-protection, DRM, and how it relates to CableCARD. Many people seem to think that all content that comes via CableCARD is 100% copy-protected 100% of the time just because its coming over CableCARD. That is completely not true. What people are typically confusing here is copy-protection versus encryption. Typically premium channels (like ESPN, Food Network, etc…) are encrypted by the content provider. That just means that, in the case that you’re using a cable company, you wont be able to view those channels with a ClearQAM tuner. If a channel is encrypted you need some other hardware/software to decrypt it before your TV, or TV tuner card can display it. In the case of CableCARD, it is the CableCARD and device that are providing that decryption. Copy-protection doesn’t factor into encryption at all. Most cable companies are now encrypting most of their content, especially the premium channels. That does not mean that they are always copy-protecting it though. In my case, with Buckeye Cablesystem, all of the premium channels are encrypted, but while using CableCARD almost none of those channels are copy-protected. In the end, it all comes down to your cable company. They choose which channels are copy-protected. Most channels will be encrypted, but not necessarily copy-protected. The main advantage that CableCARD provides is the ability to decrypt the content. If the content provider doesn’t copy-protect it, then the Ceton InfiniTV 4 won’t copy-protect it either. On the other hand, if your cable company does choose to mark the content as protected, then the InfiniTV 4 will honor that copy-protection. That doesn’t mean you can’t watch the content. It just means you can’t share it with other computers on your network. You can however still view that content using Windows Media Center Extenders in addition to viewing it from the computer on which it was recorded.

Conclusion

When it comes to watching cable television via the Ceton InfiniTV 4 everything just works. I’ve used the device for a few weeks and I haven’t had any issues at all. This has also been on drivers that should be considered beta, because the card hasn’t been officially released yet, and I know they are working hard every day to make the device better and better. When it comes to whether or not I would recommend the card, the answer is absolutely: yes! If you can afford the $399 price tag then you absolutely owe it to yourself, and the other people living in your house, to put this card into your home theater PC. It can drastically simplify your setup, which in my case also brought with it increased stability. To put it simply, the Ceton InfiniTV 4 is Media Center paradise! I’ve never once been concerned about running out of tuners, and every channel that my cable company provides to me is viewable, even the premium channels in high definition.

Cutting the Cord or How to Live Without Cable

Adam Thursby — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 12:38:50 +0000

We used to have the full deal. Digital Cable and all the trimmings. HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, you name it. Slowly, over the years we’ve cut back. This was mainly because we realized that we simply didn’t use the services we were paying for. We’re a movie family for sure, but we had already seen everything that was hitting the big movie networks. Kinda pointless to pay for something you’ve already seen and have no interest in seeing again.

When we moved to northern New York, we started out on Dish Network. Being a Media Center household, this posed it’s own issues, including IR blasters, STBs, and problems that can arise from using this equipment. It worked quite well, but once again, we found ourselves not fully utilizing the content we were paying for. This led us to wanting to cut back even more. Never mind that our income situation changed drastically.

The next step was standard cable. 70 channels, about 10 of which we actually watched. After sending that bill in for several months I came to realize that I was spending more money for less content than I had with Dish. Forget that.

For the last year, we’ve had basic cable. This includes 12 channels. Locals plus TBS and one or two others, mainly from Canada. They’ve been utilized and while it chaps me that I have to pay for locals (due to location) I haven’t had much to complain about at $13 a month. Well, make that $23 with our Netflix subscription, but I’ll get into that soon.

While I haven’t had any issues with my current setup, I’ve decided that it’s time to turn us into a fully streaming family. The fact is that while $13 a month isn’t a huge amount of money by any stretch of the imagination, it’s more than I want to spend considering that we currently record ONE show per day, and this ONE show can be found online with the right software and equipment. At this point, cable is no longer needed. What is needed is that right software and equipment. While this new setup won’t be perfect, it’s going to get the job done and we’ll actually be expanding our content availability. There’s some up front cost involved but after that you’re all set. The monthlies will be lower so in the long run, you’re coming out way ahead. About the only way this won’t work for you is if you’re a sports fan. If you insist on watching live sports then you’re stuck with cable or satellite.

First, let’s start at the beginning and for this project, everything starts out on the Media Center HTPC. If you’re running MC in your home then you’re half way there. The other hardware needed is simply extenders attached to each of your televisions. We have three and all three sets are powered by Xbox 360 extenders. Our hardware is already in place so obviously if you’re not an HTPC user, you’ll need to start a ways back. For the purpose of the rest of this article we’ll assume you’re a Media Center user.

The first piece of software you’ll need is PlayOn. PlayOn basically runs on your HTPC (or other PCs in your home) and acts as a DLNA server, pushing content to other DLNA devices in your home. It pulls it’s content from various sources around the web and when properly configured, can get you content from Hulu, Netflix, MLB.tv, and more. Community plug-ins expand the feature set to where you get almost a full cable subscription out of the software. These are the three listed on Playon’s own site:

Keep in mind that Playon isn’t free. It’ll run you $39.99 up front and $19.99 per year after that. This is a new pricing structure and I have to assume that some of this money is going to Hulu and the likes. I can’t think of any other explanation since Hulu has been very strong on shutting down ways for people to get their content on their TV while PlayOn has maintained the ability.

Now that we have a gateway to the content, we need a way to get it into Media Center. This isn’t quite so easy. Trying to get flash and other various types of content to play on a MC extender is like pulling teeth. It’s painful and more likely than not, the results won’t be pretty. Playon’s sole purpose is to get this content to your game console and it does a fairly decent job if you want to use the Xbox 360 dashboard to watch this stuff. The goal in our home is to have it available in Media Center though. So we need some more software.

Lately I’ve been playing around with TubeCore. This application pulls the content from PlayOn and makes it available within Media Center, including extenders. There’s some transcoding involved so believe me, it isn’t perfect. The software works and seems to do the job. I do get annoying popups from time to time within Media Center on my extenders though. These seem to be some weird coding thing as they say “Error-please try again” and “The operation completed successfully” all in the same window. Figure that out. The software still works however as you can hit play again after closing the popup and your video should run fine. Again, the software works, but in my experience so far, it needs some polish for the $8 it’ll run you after the trial.

There are other options out there for you if you’d like to take a look. One is vmcPlayIt, which basically does the same thing as TubeCore but in a different way. The transcoding is still there and what it all comes down to is getting the files to play nicely with Media Center on extenders.

Conclusion

While the system I’m using isn’t perfect, so far, so good. We’ve gone full streaming in our home and we’re not missing any of our favorite shows. Between Hulu, Netflix, CBS and some of the plugins I run, we actually have access to more content at a lower (monthly) cost. With PlayOn only being $19.99 a year (since I had already purchased a license the first year was only $4.99) and Netflix at $9 a month, we’re coming out ahead. That may change if I need to spring for HuluPlus at some point but we’re not there yet. At that point it’ll be time to re-evaluate of course.

Have you completely dumped cable? Can you? It’s hard cutting that cord but once you do it’s rather freeing. Even if our overall cost ends up being the same, I just like knowing that I’m streaming everything. If you’ve told cable and satellite where to go, leave a comment and let others know how you’re doing it!

Entertainment 2.0 #85: The Redcoats are Coming!

Josh Pollard — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 13:16:54 +0000

For the second week in a row Adam is off doing…well…maybe I don’t want to know what Adam is doing! He is however on a much a deserved vacation. We still have a great show this week for you though. Our regular listeners know that when it comes to digital media and how its produced and consumed in Europe, Adam and I aren’t what you would call “experts.” So this week we were able to convince a 100% certified Brit to stay up way past his bed time and come on our show.

Garry Whittaker, of the Digital Life Style joined Josh to fill us in all the differences in television standards and Windows Media Center between Europe and the United States. He also talked about a couple of great tools to help fill the gaps.

Click here to download Episode 85!

Important links:

The Digital Lifestyle

DVB Logic

1geek1tool – DVBLink

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HTPCentric Episode 05 SP1

Adam Thursby — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:50:54 +0000

Just a quick note. Jere and I got a great email about our last show covering Windows Home Server and HTPCs. We just couldn’t bare to wait until August to talk about it. I’ll let you listen for all of the details but suffice to say, there seems to be enough interest that we’re going to have to do another WHS show soon. Hope you enjoy!

Click here to download Ep. 05 SP1

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