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Cutting the Cable, Part 2

A few weeks ago I blogged about buying the hardware to set up a MythTV PC to record off air high def TV and integrate it with Boxee.

The hardware arrived and I’ve been working on on the setup off and on over the last few weeks. Some random thoughts:

  • The HD Homerun tuner is pretty cool. Fedora has the HD Homerun configuration tool in their repos. Installing that through PackageKit and yum made it easy to test out that it was working and had a good signal.
  • I had to install MyTV 3 times before I could get it to work. On a vanilla Fedora 12 install and then adding MythTV from the repos, only one tuner of the HD Homerun would work. Trying Mythdora, my MythTV front ends on my desktop PC and my laptop wouldn’t connect. Also there was a nasty bug in Mythdora’s kernel that wouldn’t let me mount a NFS share. Using Mythbuntu everything just worked.
  • Schedules Direct is a pretty cool service. I remember hearing about the story a couple years ago when it all went down, but when Zap2It started charging users for the scheduling data, a group of MythTV users started Schedules Direct and licensed the data. $20 / year is more than reasonable to pay to get all the scheduling data.

  • I love the fact that I can browse to the IP address of the MythTV PC from any computer and see the scheduling data and record a show. It took a few minutes to find the setting to only record new episodes, but it’s there! Obligatory screenshot:

    mythtv-schedule

    • The first recordings I made were the second night of the 24 season premiere and an episode of How I Met Your Mother. A one hour recording is about 6 GB.
    • I only have a 100GB hard drive in the MythTV backend, so I mounted my NAS via NFS . I would then in Boxee use the File Browser and surf to my tv recording directory. One downside to this method is that MythTV records the file, such as last week’s 24 as 1091_2010011819000mpg. The File Browser also displays a PNG file so it’s easy to tell what show is what, but it’s not intuitive at all.
    • There are plugins for XBMC, such as MythSExx and MythicalLibrarian that will rename your TV recordings into a S01E01 format and create a symlink for you to make it easier to browse your recordings. I couldn’t get the former script to run, but I didn’t spend a lot of time troubleshooting either.

And then yesterday while idling in #boxee on Freenode IRC, user SpaceBass mentioned that MythTV support was working for him in the Boxee Beta. There are a number of threads in the Boxee forums that the “mythtv://” protocol doesn’t work – but it appears to be working now.

In the Boxee settings, add a manual souce, and make it: myth://IPADDRESS where IPADDRESS is the IP address of your Myth backend and give the source a name – I used “DVR”.

Now use the File Browser in Boxee and when you first choose it you’ll have a list of your sources:

IMG_4870.JPG

Select DVR and you’ll be presented with “All Recordings”, “Guide”, “Live Channels”, “Movies” and “TV Shows”:

IMG_4871.JPG

Note: Guide doesn’t work for me.

If you choose “All Recordings” you’ll see everything that MythTV has recorded:

IMG_4872.JPG

(TV Shows and Movies will just show the MythTV recordings based on those filters). I haven’t looked into using MythTV’s built-in commercial skip as Boxee has a 30 second skip that just works too. I also like that Boxee remembers to resume where I left off watching if I stop playback.

To watch Live TV streaming from your Myth backend to Boxee, choose Live TV from the menu I mentioned above. You’ll be presented with a list of TV channels by station ID, not number:

IMG_4873.JPG

And here’s a screenshot of the NHL game on NBC in HD earlier this afternoon:

IMG_4874.JPG

There are two bugs I’m experiencing that I need to spend some time with:

  • When playing back a recording or starting a live TV stream, it will sometimes start as if it’s being fast-forwarded, including the audio. Hitting pause and then unpausing fixes it.
  • I think this may be related to signal strength as I’m seeing it on NBC and CBS, but not Fox, but I’m seeing jagged edges around an object, such as a person, when it’s moving quickly. If it’s a fairly static image, there are no jagged edges. But even someone quickly sitting down will have the distortion. But I don’t see this problem when accessing the recording from a Myth frontend on another computer, so it needs more investigating.
  • My other theory is it could have something to do with saving the content on the NAS and not on a hard drive in the Myth backend, so I bought a larger hard drive to throw in there too. I’d also rather have it on a hard drive than the NAS just to save wear and tear.

I’m almost done – if I had to guess, I’m about a week away from telling DirecTV to pound sand. I’ll poke at the distortion issue some more and install that hard drive when it arrives but this has been a pretty cool project to work on so far.

GNOME Odds & Ends

Pantai Hill Park - Odds & Ends 02

A few different things going on:

  • Tomboy documentation is almost done in Mallard. I’ve really enjoyed using the Mallard syntax – so much less complex than Docbook. Every time I have to look up an element reference, I shake my head and think, “Duh! That makes so much more sense I should have figured that out!“. Nice work Shaun.
  • I triaged some docs bugs in GNOME Bugzilla. Want to get involved with the GNOME Documentation team but don’t know where to start? This wiki page has a list of projects looking for help with their documentation.
  • We had a Marketing team meeting earlier this month and we’re having another next month.
  • We’ll be having Sysadmin Team meeting soon too. (Surprise Sysadmin team members!)
  • We’re having a Snowy meeting tomorrow. I know it’s short notice, but I love the potential of Tomboy Online – if you can’t attend I’ve volunteered to post the log and meeting minutes. We need web designers, web developers, CouchDB folks (whoops!) – you name it there’s probably a role for you. Come get in on a project at the ground level! GNOME needs a web service likes this.
  • Rumor is we’ll have the beginnings of Banshee documentation showing up next week, stay tuned. (Though I have no idea where these rumors start, really!)
  • We’re in the final throes of pushing out a new GNOME Journal. Soon, I promise you, soon!
  • in GNOME
  • 1 min read

GNOME Accounts

Martin Pitt mentions in his latest blog post that it took only 4 hours to get a GNOME git account after requesting it.

And that’s all do to the work of one person: Andrea Veri.

I’ve done some poking around on the status of the Accounts Team and whether it’s active or not, but after Jeff Schroeder on the Sysadmin team sponsored Andrea last month, Andrea joined to help out specifically with GNOME Accounts and has done an awesome job. He’s cleaned up Request Tracker, stayed on top of new requests, and helped with some outstanding and older requests. (And a big thanks to Olav and Jeff and everyone who has helped mentor Andrea).

I can’t thank Andrea enough for all of his help and chances are if you’ve requested git access, mango password resets or anything else Accounts related in the last month, it was Andrea helping you.

  • in GNOME
  • 1 min read

A follow-up on GNOME 3 myths

Friday I wrote a blog post kicking off a wiki page on debunking GNOME 3 myths. The dozen or so comments left on that blog post highlight perfectly why we need a wiki page that debunks myths – and it’s a good place to start to add to the wiki page. (And refine it, I think some of the comments are valid).

If you’re a GNOME developer, please give the GNOME 3 Myths page a look over and add any questions that you have been asked.

Thanks!

Debunking GNOME 3.0 Myths

Change is hard. People go through six predictable stages as they adjust to change, which I learned at a former company. From Changecycle.com:

People react, respond and adjust to change in a sequence of six predictable stages. The Change Cycle model identifies the thoughts, feelings and behaviors associated with each stage of change.

  1. Loss
  2. Doubt
  3. Discomfort
  4. Discovery
  5. Understanding
  6. Integration

With GNOME 3.0 coming out later this year, there is certain to be fear, uncertainty and doubt associated with the changes in GNOME’s user interface and applications.

Diego had an awesome idea that we should start a PR campaign and / or meme to start debunking this myths. It’s best to get out ahead of these things, and with that I give you: Debunking GNOME 3.0 Myths.

Please consider this page just a stub at the moment, but if you have heard of any misconceptions around GNOME 3.0 or you’re a developer on a project and have an idea or myth to debunk, please add it! It will take all of us through the year to keep this page up to date and help our users and journalists informed of what the changes in the GNOME experience entail.

Thanks in advance!

Cutting the cable

I’m an entertainment junkie. I own hundreds of music CD’s, books, movies and am an early adopter of Blu-Ray. My usual routine once my two youngest children are in bed at 8 pm is to plop down on my couch, put my notebook on my lap and use that while watching my pretty 60″ TV.

I’ve received my TV content from DirecTV for the last ten years since we built this house – primarily because I’m a huge (American) football fan, and my team, the Green Bay Packers, are out of market where I live and DirecTV has a monopoly on the NFL package to be able to watch my team.

I’ve been happy with the television service (even though it’s the most compressed of all high-def signals) but their customer service is atrocious. About once a year I have a run-in with them that gets my blood boiling, but the other 364 days of the year I don’t have to think about them – it just works.

Almost a year ago I got a great deal on a Mac Mini and bought it to try out Boxee. I’ve ripped my music and movie collection to my NAS and Boxee gave me the ability to stream that straight to my TV plus their collection of Internet content I could stream as well, such as The Daily Show, Hulu and more. My best friend uses Plex, and both Plex & Boxee are based on the XBMC upstream code which does an awesome job of playing back any file you throw at it.

I’ve loved Boxee – the user experience has only gotten better from the Alpha to the Beta that launched today (the screenshots don’t do it justice). I’ve thought about, but never very seriously, getting rid of DirecTV and going Internet only. With Netflix streaming (both in Boxee and on my Xbox 360), Hulu and other apps available in Boxee, there’s a lot of content I can get if I’m willing to be patient for DVD releases of my favorite shows that I can’t watch in real time.

And then in early November, my DirecTV high-def DVR started to die. And it was a painful experience having to call in to their tech support once a week, rebooting my box every few days until they finally agreed to swap it out a month later (I pay $5 / month to lease the box from them – I don’t even own it!) I was pretty frustrated with the entire process, and this is a long enough story as it is, so I won’t go in to all the details, but when I received my bill in early December and found out they charged me $20 to replace the box, I was livid. They never bothered to inform me of the charge or asked for permission in charging me, and you may think “It’s only $20!” – but when I called to ask them to refund it, they refused – so I asked them to refund my $100 monthly charge for November as my box didn’t work and I didn’t feel that I received the service I paid for and they still refused, I started to think about all these options.

After a long conversation with my wife on the advantages and disadvantages of not having cable or satellite (she doesn’t watch TV anyway) I’ve decided to cut the cord. I’m lucky enough to have a nice HDTV antenna on my roof right next to the satellite dish and all the coax terminates at one spot in the basement, so re-wiring won’t be tough.

We spend just under a $100 month on DirecTV (cheapest package, 3 boxes for 3 TVs, DVR service and HD service). I figure with a small investment in buying some new hardware it will pay itself back in 3 months (considering I had already bought the Mac Mini a year ago):

  • HD Homerun: Dual tuner off-air HD tuner with a network jack that any PC in the house can connect to for watching or recording live TV: $150
  • HD amplifier & terminators: $35
  • Digital converter boxes for the other 2 TVs in the house to get off-air: $20 each off Ebay
  • Elgato EyeTV PVR software for Mac: $80 (maybe, see below)

The one kink in my plan is I realized that if I buy the EyeTV to record TV on to the Mac Mini it can only record one show at a time, even though I have a dual-tuner HD Homerun. There are a few shows like NBC Thursday night comedies and Fringe on Fox that I like that air at the same time, so that’s a challenge. One of the major reasons I bought the HD Homerun is the fact that’s dual tuner but also that it has a network jack and works on Linux. One option is to install MythTV on an older computer and use that. MythTV has native support for the HD Homerun and I can mount my NAS via NFS and just point Boxee at it, though there are some questions whether Boxee and XBMC can read the .nuv files that MythTV records in.

It’s a pretty cool time seeing these convergence devices come to life. The Internet is evolving to add video content, whether it’s TV shows like Hulu or movies & DVD on Netflix. CES is happening this week and seeing the Boxee Box, Popbox and Iomega set top boxes only support this point. There are still some challenges – I’m going to have to give up watching my favorite football team, live sports on ESPN, and waiting to watch some of my TV shows until they release on DVD, but I think it’s worth trying.

The content companies are going to have to evolve. They’re going to need better customer service and better ways to allow consumers access to content. (And I’m willing to put up with the movie studios stupid rental window on Netflix if it means more streaming content). My hardware arrived today and now I’m off to start installing all this stuff….

eBook Readers & the Publishing Industry

I’ve been wanting an eReader for a while. When the Kindle first launched, I was in awe. I quickly sat down and calculated the number of books I buy in a year and compared that against the cost of a Kindle and the savings of buying an e-book for $10 vs. the hardcover price. Let’s just say there wasn’t much of a savings. I finally got to touch a Kindle at GUADEC this summer, and my mind was made up that I had to have an eReader in the near future.

I love tech gadgets and am an early adopter. I also love content and media, and own hundreds (if not over a thousand now) music CDs, hundreds of movies (including Blu-Ray that I bought over 2 years ago), and tons of books. My bookshelves are full to bursting in my office, and I have boxes of books stored in my closet without room to display them.

I’ve waited patiently debating an eReader. I travel once or twice a month for work, and having an eReader would definitely save space. This week, my flight was delayed hours on Tuesday, and then canceled later that night. I had finished the book I had brought an hour after getting to the airport, and then bought another one swearing in my head the whole how I wished I had a an eReader.

The good news is that when Barnes & Noble announced the nook last month that I pre-ordered one. As much as I love Amazon (I buy almost everything there now – movies, music, books and electronics) I found the nook more aesthetically pleasing as well as it was running Android, and the formats they’re using seem a bit more open than the Kindle. (My nook is supposed to ship tomorrow, still crossing my fingers with all the delays they’ve had for the last week or two!)

But now comes word that the publishing industry doesn’t get it and is fears change and the changing financial models. It’s rumored that Amazon loses $2 per eBook bought, and now we are hearing the publishers want to delay new releases 4 months after the hardcover comes out but before the paperback comes out. When will content companies figure out that not giving consumers what they want is bad for business?

There are authors (Iain Banks, Chuck Palahniuk, Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaiman) that I will always buy the physical copy. I want to continue to build on my collections and there is a tactile difference in having a physical book. But I will buy many more books once I have my nook. I’ve already been adding to wishlist on bn.com for the moment my nook arrives. I have dozens of posts tagged “books” in my RSS reader that I want to buy. The fact that they’re slightly cheaper as an eBook and no shipping is nice, but having immediate wireless delivery right to my eReader is even better.

So the publishers are worried that Amazon (and to a lesser degree Barnes & Noble) have set a pricing ceiling of $9.99 per book. We’ve been through this argument before – the record industries felt Apple had set a similar ceiling that songs were only worth $0.99 and now we’ve seen new releases and popular tracks increase to $1.29 this year. And that’s ok. I worked in the retail industry for 15 years and have been through anti-trust training a couple of times. The publishers can set their price and the retailer can sell it for whatever they want.

If the publishers are so worried, why are they not raising the cost of the books? If Amazon is losing $2 per book, that means the cost to Amazon is $12. If the publishers raise it to $15, it will make the retailers re-consider whether losing more money is acceptable. While the publisher can’t dictate the actual retail price sold, they do have options. And lowering the cost after it’s been released a while happens all the time across all retail categories. There is no reason that months after the release the cost comes down and the retailer can re-price, at say, $9.99. This is seen all the time in the movie space, though rarely in music. Now that we are starting to have competition in the eReader space there are all kinds of tricks the publishers can do to partner with the retailer to save the retailer money on the back end as well, including marketing development funds, sell through credits and more.

But for the publishers to flatly state “We won’t release an eBook for 4 months” won’t make consumers happy. Nor, in my opinion, will it make consumers buy a hardcover once they’ve invested $200-$400 in an eReader. I’ve learned this lesson – I rarely buy a movie on new release day for $20-$30 when I subscribe to Netflix and know if I wait 3-6 months I can probably get it for $10-$15 on sale (I just got Watchmen on Blu-Ray for $10 last week!).

At this point, it’s difficult to read the future. These statements from the publishers could just be posturing as they dig in for negotiation with the retailers. But I’m not hopeful. There are plenty of lessons for content providers to learn from in the music battles of the last 10 years. And if there is one lesson they should employ, it’s to extend and embrace the new models rather than try to prop up a dying business model. Change is hard – and if consumers want to buy more books because they have an eReader, it’s in the publisher’s best interest to figure out how to do that, rather than making it harder for consumers to buy from them.

Banshee Documentation

I’ve been working on Banshee documentation on and off for the last few months (ok, more off than on) but as I get more comfortable writing in Mallard and the recent discussion in getting Banshee on the GNOME release cycle I am motivated to get this to done.

The most important part of writing documentation (or writing in general) is the planning phase. A few of us on the Docs team did a first pass at planning the topics that should be in the user help of Banshee in Google Wave, and I’ve copied that over to the GNOME wiki.

If you use Banshee, please give it a look – are there any topics missing that you think a user would want help with? Writing user help in Mallard gives us the ability to organize topics into groups – for a good example, check out the Empathy help. What’s missing? What would you organize differently?

Do you want to help? Have you written about Banshee features before? Let me know – either add content to the wiki page or post a link as a comment on my blog. If you have written a howto for Banshee, we’d love to include it – the new GNOME help is CC 3.0 licensed, so it’s easy to add from other sources, as long as it’s licensed as CC-SA 3.0. Please don’t feel you have to know how to write documentation or use Mallard – you can create a sub-page on the wiki for the topic and I will be more than happy to help edit it, convert it to Mallard and commit to git. Right now the important thing is to make sure we have the topics right and get some first drafts of the actual help created. I appreciate all help and would rather not do it all myself if at all possible!

There is a Banshee Docs branch on Gitorious – if you do know Mallard and want to help let me know and I’ll get you added to the team. If you don’t know Mallard, let’s start writing some howto’s in the wiki!