Technology

(This press release was just issued by the City.)

The Austin Community Technology and Telecommunications Commission and the City of Austin's Office of Telecommunications and Regulatory Affairs will present a free community forum on "The Transition to Digital Television" Thursday, Sept. 18 from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Dottie Jordan Recreation Center, 2803 Loyola Lane (map).

Members of the community forum and those affected by the technological advancement are invited to learn more about the digital TV transition. This transition affects viewers with televisions that operate with rooftop antennas or "rabbit ears."

Speakers will discuss the basics of DTV and what residents without cable or satellite television will need to do to continue to receive free over-the-air television programming.

Effective Feb. 17, 2009, U.S. Congress has mandated all full-power television stations to broadcast in digital only.  The switch from analog to digital broadcast television is referred to as the digital TV (DTV) transition.

Dell has announced availability of the Inspiron Mini 9 sub-notebook computer, and I have to admit it's caught my eye. Dell didn't invent the sub-notebook form factor, but they did produce the first one that's grabbed my interest.

There are two things I like about the Mini. First, like many other sub-notebooks, it offers a Linux option. Second, unlike all the other sub-notebooks, it looks like a machine I could do business on.

Out of all the places where a sub-notebook has to make sacrifices, the one that concerns me most is the keyboard. The Mini seems like it may be the one to most closely approach the experience of a full-sized keyboard.

One thing they did to achieve this was to eliminate the row of dedicated function keys along the top. That's ok with me.

I support the move to digital television (DTV). I think it's being justified with cynical reasons, and I think the transition plan is flawed. But that doesn't mean I don't think we should do it.

Here is what's happening: TV broadcasting currently uses the most prime space of the radio spectrum, and, due to the old analog broadcast standard (NTSC), does so very inefficiently. Moving to a new digital broadcast standard (ATSC) frees up a lot of spectrum. That makes the government happy because they get massive proceeds from selling rights to the released spectrum. That makes industry happy because they can create new wireless services to sell in that spectrum.

You may have heard the reasons why digital television is a benefit for you, Joe and Jolene hapless television consumer. Those benefits are all true—but entirely beside the point The consumer benefits simply make the pill easier to swallow.

A couple months back, I posted a wiring diagram for our audio/visual setup.

I mentioned that I was going to have to rewrire to add a Netflix Player by Roku. That's a device that connects to the Internet and plays content from the Netflix "Watch Instantly" service on your TV.

The rewiring went fine. Now, I'm finally getting around to posting an updated wiring diagram.

As I noted in the previous article, we depend on a Logitech Harmony 880 remote control to make sense of all this. With the added complication of these wiring changes, that's even more true than before.

Buy the Neo FreeRunner if you want a hobby, not if you want a phone.

The Neo phones are the world's first "open source" phone. If you want to build your own you can. The schematics and design drawings are available. It runs Openmoko, a free and open source mobile phone stack based on Linux. The FreeRunner is their second generation design and the first intended for general use.

First availability of the Neo FreeRunner phones happened this month. A group of Austin folks got together and did a group buy from the first shipment. The phone is normally $400. We got $50 off and a grab bag of extra goodies (neoprene case and earbuds).

When you turn the device on, it's a sight to behold. A standard Linux boot runs on the 1.7" x 2.27" screen, each character barely larger than a grain of salt. It's not readable, but it will be instantly familiar to anybody who has seen a text mode Linux boot.

One of my projects for the weekend was to sit down and do a wiring diagram for the A/V setup. The system has grown in complexity, and it's reached the point where I can no longer figure out connections in my head.

The final straw was last week, when my wife ordered a Netflix Player by Roku, a device that connects to the Internet and streams video provided by Netflix. I was pretty sure we had the connections for it. But when she asked whether she should order the high-def cable package, the best I could do is say, "Uhhh, maybe?"

So, this weekend I mapped out all the connections and did the wiring diagram I needed to figure this out. You may view the PDF of my current A/V wiring setup.

Just got home from Bar Camp Austin III. I had a phenomenally good time.

You usually hear at gatherings like this that the interesting stuff happens in the hallways, and the sessions just fill the time between. Well, not here. The sessions were excellent. I didn't have to suffer a single product demo. Every session was well facilitated, the participants engaged, and nobody boorishly hogged the discussion.

One of my favorite sessions was titled something "Weblog Vanity Sites and Thought Leaders". No, I don't know what that means either. The organizer never showed up. So a bunch of us just talked about blogging, circling the topic back to how to make a difference (and be noticed) with our blogging. The group conclusion seemed to be that being "A List" (or noticed by the "A List") is becoming less important to getting ideas recognized. What's most important is becoming a respected authority in a niche area--which may involve an offline presence in addition to your blogging.

Congratulations to whurley and all the organizers on a job well done.

Thanks to GSD&M for hosting the event. One of the things that made the day so great was the large number (five) of session rooms, and plenty of room to mill about between.

I am so sick to death of the content cartel telling me what I can and cannot do with my legally purchased media. No wonder illegal downloading is displacing legitimate content. Sometimes it's the only way to get movies and music without all the bloody stupid restrictions that Hollywood and Nashville force down our throats.

It seems to get worse every year. When our trusty old Panasonic DVD player croaked, we replaced it with a new Toshiba HD-DVD player. What a piece of engineering suck that unit is.

It has a number of hateful misfeatures common in current DVD players. We can't watch foreign discs due to region encoding. We can't upconvert conventional DVDs because my TV doesn't have HDCP (a function that does me no good). On top of it all, the Toshiba unit is slow to boot up and clunky to operate. It felt like the Windows Vista of video players.

I finally said to hell with it and ordered a Helios H4000 DVD player. When I read the specs I was amazed that somebody is actually producing video equipment to serve the customer and not Hollywood. It plays any disc, regardless of region code. It upconverts to whatever resolution you want on any video connection it has. It's got features like bookmarks and "skip the crap at the front of the disk" that any DVD user would obviously want.

The unit is bit more expensive than a low end 1080p upconverting player ($140 versus $80). I think it's worth it for a unit that's well designed—and prioritizes the needs of its owner above those of the content cartel.

A year from now, your television is going to break.

Over-the-air broadcast television is changing from the current NTSC analog broadcast standard to a new digital transmission mechanism. There are several significant reasons why this is a good idea. Broadcast television will become HD quality, with improved video and audio. Television stations will be able to transmit additional information, even multiple channels, in their allotted space. Also, this will release a large piece of valuable radio frequency spectrum, which will be used to raise money for the Federal government and open up the airwaves to exciting new services.

I hate to do gadget porn, but I've got a new addition to the A/V equipment stack that's been making me very happy. (Plus, it's Holidailies time and I need to write about something every day.)

The new device is a Logitech Harmony 880 Universal remote control. Although my Denon A/V receiver has a multi-device remote control, it wasn't doing the job. Some tasks, like TV watching, required juggling multiple remotes. The one task we could completely do with that single remote was play DVDs—at least we could until the new HD-DVD player arrived. The Denon remote didn't understand the new player.