Is that a Coaster with an Apple Logo? (Apple TV Review)

The family was at the mall over the weekend and decided to buy an Apple TV so that we'd be one step closer to having a complete set of internet TV devices.

The current Apple TV device is a small black box about the size of a stack of a few fancy drink coasters. You know the kind with cork on the bottom. It comes with an aluminum Apple remote and a power cord. The packaging is amazingly spare and elegant.

You need to supply the HDMI cable. Apple conveniently sells a matching black HDMI cable in the store. I was disappointed that the cable wasn't included in the box because you'll absolutely need one to connect to your TV. You might say cable length matters but honestly the Apple TV is so small that you won't have any trouble placing it near your TV or even velcro'd to the back.

Getting the device out of the box and physically connected to the TV took no more than five minutes. I powered the Apple TV on using the remote. There is no physical power button. Then I went through a short setup wizard which connected to WiFi and collected my iTunes account information. The software setup process took less than five minutes. That was about one hour shorter than the Google TV setup!

I watched a few YouTube videos.

Then I went on to trying content on my home network. This was a bit more work. I had to startup iTunes on my desktop machine and turn on home sharing. Once enabled Apple TV could browse and play content in my desktop iTunes. As far as I can tell, Apple TV doesn't support DLNA. This leaves out a lot of content on my home network because I don't put everything into iTunes -- also frankly, I don't like the video playing experience in iTunes so I don't have a lot of incentive to add video there beyond what I want to sync with devices. I'll wait and see if Apple TV makes moving content to iTunes worthwhile. For someone with a completely Apple home network this won't be an issue because they'll most likely have all their content in iTunes already.

The Netflix interface was up next. I had to enter my Netflix username and password. Sometime while I was doing that I realized that I didn't even need to look at the Apple remote to know how to use it. It was also clear to me that Apple TV was easy. I hadn't opened the manual once. I actually hadn't even pulled the manual out of the bottom of the small Apple TV package. Netflix was up and running with a nice snappy interface.

Apple TV Manual Still in Box

Finally, I loaded the Apple Remote application on my iPhone. After installing the application it controlled the Apple TV with no additional setup. The interface that allows you to browse and play your iTunes libraries is pretty amazing. You get album artwork, playlists, etc. all on your phone. It also worked nicely for Netflix while essentially emulating the aluminum remote with a pop-up keyword available when needed. However, even with all that goodness I can't see myself using it because the aluminum remote is good enough.

At this point, I can already give the Apple TV a big thumbs up for easy setup and doing the core things (Netflix, home network, YouTube) well.

Kids Only Los Altos

A friend of mine just built a web store for her favorite kids clothes store.

She tells me that little girls love Banana Cabana Bathing Suits.

Check out Kids Only Los Altos if you have time.

Google TV Review Update

Google TV got an update. The most important thing for me was the improved Netflix interface. It's now essentially the same as Netflix on Wii, Xbox, and PS3. I haven't noticed any other GTV changes that are significant to me. That said, the new Netflix interface is a great improvement.

Sony Google TV Remote. It's got a wooz button!

For the last few weeks I've been watching more Google TV. Since we're a Tivo/Comcast household we have all our broadcast shows stored on the Tivo. I tried to play some HD video pulled from my Tivo. I downloaded the video using a web browser, ran tivodecode, and copied it to a server. The video plays with VLC and Windows Media Player. It did not play on Google TV's media player. In fact, sadly, playing the Tivo video actually locked up the Google TV so that it wouldn't respond to the remote control or power button on the TV itself. Wow. Eventually the Google TV asked if I wanted to force quit the media player.

This got me thinking about three things. First, that seamless Tivo integration with Google TV would be great. I'd love to be able to stream Tivo videos on Google TV. If GTV could do that it would be worth the money. Next, what codecs does the Google TV support? Finally, I'm no longer surprised by flaky GTV behavior.

I found the codec answer on the Google TV forums. I didn't see an official list from Google. Anyway, as someone on the thread suggests the lack of MPEG2 support (needed for my Tivo test) is a big miss.

I should add that it's not impossible to get your non-protected Tivo video playing on Google TV. You can use a program such as Handbrake to convert the Tivo shows to an H.264 format that Google TV can play.

Sony Vegas Pro 10 Stabilization

I've been making the switch from Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 to Sony Vegas Pro 10. Up until buying an AVCHD camcorder two years ago I had been using Premiere exclusively. However, the lack of AVCHD in CS3 and the initial buggy AVCHD support in CS4 prompted me to look for alternatives.

I tried out the trial version of Vegas Pro and found that it was rock solid editing AVCHD, had great export options, and seemed more modern than CS3 or CS4 because of its 64bit architecture support. More recently Vegas has improved their GPU acceleration and the UI has become more polished.

Anyway, since I don't have all night to write this. I wanted to focus on the cool image stabilization feature that isn't included in CS4.

I had some old very shaky handheld footage I shot at a friends wedding using a Hi-8 camcorder.

I searched the internet to see if there was anything I could do to fix it.

Turns out that Vegas Pro has an amazing video stabilization feature. Basically, you just select a clip and tell the software what kind of shakiness you want to remove (horizontal, vertical, etc.).

I've included the shot I stabilized. It literally took just a few seconds to correct.

Even if you don't have old shaky video footage I still highly recommend you try out Sony Vegas Pro Trial.

Vaistech VML (MultiMediaLinQ) Update

Just wanted to give an update on my last post about the Vais VML MultiMediaLinQ.

Over the last several months I've had a lot of different devices connected to it. I'm happy with the VML but I wasn't been able to find a storage device that works perfectly. All the mechanical USB drives I connected would occasionally go offline requiring me to unplug the USB cable to reset everything. Turns out those mechanical drives don't like speed bumps or cold weather. Who knew? Even thumb drives sometimes needed a reset (probably not due to speed bumps).

The most stable device has been the iPod which never needs a reset but the sound quality is degraded for some music. I'm not clear on technical reasons why that would happen but I suspect there is some issue in the conversion from digital to analog. I should mention that this is only true for my older 60GB iPod. Music from my iPhone sounds perfect. I would use my iPhone but I don't want to use up all the space on the device for music. I need to reserve space for taking photographs or videos of the kids. Also, I like to just start up the car and go so having to connect the iPhone is not ideal.

I've been waiting for a USB SSD solution to become available. I figured it was only a matter of time. I ended up getting the ADATA Nobility N002 USB 3.0/SSD 128 GB last week. Not really reasonably priced but it had all the features I wanted. If it didn't work well in the Lexus I wanted to be able to use it as a notebook or desktop drive. It has both a USB 3.0 and SATA II interface. It's packaged to work both internally and externally. It's got a USB port on the side so you can connect it to your laptop or desktop externally. It's also a normal 2.5 inch SSD so it would fit inside a notebook or desktop. Finally, it's a speedy SSD (meaning it's a really fast drive).

I loaded the ADATA up with 80GB of music and connected it to the VML. Tried to lower my expectations before I connected it to the VML USB port and waited for it to start up. In just a few seconds the music started.

After hours of driving (with some speed bumps) no resets have been required. I'm happy to report that the ADATA works perfectly with the VML.The VML also boots up quicker than it did with the mechanical USB drives, I think it may actually switch songs faster too.

(Update 12/13/2010: After more than 40 hours of driving the new ADATA drive is working perfectly. No resets required or any other problems to report.)

Google Gives TV Bugs (Google TV Review)

Television used to be a bug free zone. Now it's a computer science problem complete with bugs.

I was reading David Pogue's review of Google TV. Having recently purchased one I can say that he is spot on with many of his points. In general, the usability of the device needs a lot of work. It's not just surface stuff either, it's deep and pervasive from the controller to the GUI.

The pain starts with the initial setup. Why? Because it is exactly like doing a Windows OS install. Several updates and reboots with a full set of wizards to run through. The updates took an hour on my relatively fast Comcast cable connection. I understand the need for updates but why can't the device start up and play while doing the updates in the background? This is a TV right?

By adding new unneeded buttons and interface conventions somehow Google managed to make the controller (which is essentially a full keyword and mouse) more complicated than a keyboard and mouse. It's got buttons everywhere like it will eventually be some kind of joystick type device but it gives no joy now. After having it for a couple of weeks I still don't understand the difference between a left and right controller button click. I think this confusion stems from the fact that they "could" add more buttons to Android so they did. The designers shouldn't have let that freedom get the better of them. Android will be a much more compelling platform if it works the same everywhere.

Also, as Pogue points out the claim that you can browse the web while watching TV is a farce. The video goes in and out as you navigate through various modes. The video also blocks content on web pages and Google TV's menus. Why the video couldn't be transparent or movable I don't know. It's like Google couldn't figure out what people were really going to do with the device so they didn't know what should have priority. Is it a TV? Is it a web browser? Ideally, it would be a blend of both. Right now it's one or the other with the TV or the web browser just tacked on like some bad fashion accessory.

Another big negative for me and other Xfinity users is that you can not get Xfinity on demand videos from the web. Not sure if this is just a programing glitch or oversight. I can make up reasons for Hulu and the TV networks not liking Google TV (crazy conspiracy type theories) but I don't understand why Xfinity wouldn't work since I'm already paying for that.

Surprisingly, even with all usability issues, there is a lot for a nerd to like about Google TV. What I'm enjoying most is that it can play most of the content on my Windows Home Server, Netflix streaming (not the new slick interface on the PS3 so finding video takes longer), and the couch potato mode on Vimeo. I also love that Google TV has Picasa web albums access so you can turn your TV into a giant picture frame. It also connects to Pandora so your slide shows have nice background music.

I would buy it again because I like the video streaming options, picasa, pandora, and I was really curious about Andriod on TV. Would I recommend it? No. Well, maybe, if you already have a lot of content on your home network and you use Netflix streaming and you don't already have a PS3 connected to your TV and you're an engineer. However, there are a lot of other non-Google enhanced TVs that do the streaming video thing... so, no don't buy it. Really, it's hard to justify the cost tradeoff versus say something like 3D and 240Hz refresh rate.

Car Wash

What my 11 year old son thinks of washing the car