cribmac.com

iTV? Apple TV in a TV? Living Room iMac? Child, please…

The Digital Pimp — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:00:47 +0000

Apple’s Not Making An iTV, They Are Just Bringing The iMac To The Living Room [Analyst] | Cult of Mac.

You know, I just shake my head everytime I hear some unnamed source quoting some unnamed supply chain expert claiming that once again, Apple is FER SURE shipping a TV.

People…let’s try this again.

What kind of markets does Apple enter with new products? Profitable ones.

What kind of market is the consumer TV business? A craptastic one.

I think this rumor got more wind beneath its wings because of Jobs’ quote in his biography that he had cracked the TV problem.

I love Father Steve as much as the next guy, but we have NO idea what he was getting at with that quote. Not everything he said was gold, so factor that in too.

Nothing changes the fact that the TV business sucks. And this new rumor doesn’t change a thing. So what if they embed a TV tuner into their iMac. Lemme ask you something: when is the last time you actually used the TV tuner in your set vs. a cable or satellite box?

So, let me see. They make a big iMac that connects to a set top box. Really? Ok, so even if you were stupid enough to buy said iMac, the computer part would be totally useless. How would you use a computer from across the room?

It’s all just too dumb for words, and sounds extremely un-Apple. If they ship the product described in this link, it’s the beginning of the end for their product marketing.

What do I think? I think it’s more likely they do an upgraded Apple TV. Seems I’m not the only one. Short of that, I they might put TV capabilities into their existing iMac as mentioned, but nothing in a size that replaces your family room TV. Think about offices, kitchens, kids rooms where you might be tempted to buy a TV and an iMac. Buy one, and go ahead and hook it up if you like, but don’t expect terrific new features.

I need a drink.

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How to Setup your Harmony Remote Control – Part 5

The Digital Pimp — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 17:00:11 +0000

Thanks for joining The ‘Pimp for the final installment in the series on pimping out your Harmony Remote. Sure, it took a long time, but you know how life can get all up in ya. Busier than a beaver in spring, so cut me some slack, mkay?

In the previous parts of the series, we covered everything you need to set up your remote from scratch. For this final installment, we cover custom buttons and how to take advantage of one of the most excellent features of Harmony remotes.

When we set up the remote in previous posts, you’ll remember that Logitech maintains an expansive database of devices and their respective remote command codes. The codes are automatically mapped to the hard buttons on the remote, and for the most part, this is about all you need for most activities.

Take a look at the three screens below, and you will see that my “Watch Apple TV” activity already has the standard hardware buttons mapped to support my Apple TV. These get setup automatically during initial setup of an activity.

[Show as slideshow]

Now, the excellent feature I mentioned is the “additional buttons.” Yeah, sucky name, but a killer feature. These slots map to the six buttons on the touchscreen for the Harmony One, and physical buttons on models. Either way, you can set up these buttons with any function from any device in your activity. Multiple pages of buttons can be created, with prev/next buttons to navigate between each set.

[Show as slideshow]

For each CribMac activity, I have a core set of buttons to control global functions for the projector, receiver, and lighting control. To add any function to these buttons is so simple:

Type in the button name in the Label field.
Choose the Device from the popup.
Choose the Command from the next popup.

You can decide which button to assign by looking at the numbered guide on the right panel. To move a button to another location, simply use the yellow arrows to shift a button to a new numbered slot. When complete, the touchscreen buttons will be all set to go.

[Show as slideshow]

Impressed? No? Well, this ain’t the Homeboy Shopping Network. This is all you get for now. There are some other über features to dig into, like setting up custom sequences of commands or adding custom functions to the end of an activity. But that will have to wait for another time.

Hope you enjoyed the series, and if you have any questions, you know how to holla at The ‘Pimp.

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Rest in Peace, Father Steve.

The Digital Pimp — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 10:57:28 +0000

“The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.”

– Dr. Eldon Tyrell, in Blade Runner

Steve Jobs, Exit, Stage Left

Pioneer Launches Two New AirPlay-Equipped Home Systems | Cult of Mac

The Digital Pimp — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 12:00:28 +0000

Pioneer Launches Two New AirPlay-Equipped Home Systems

With all the hype about Airplay, you’d think there would be more devices by now. But the reality has been a little less than the glowing predictions would have led us to believe. Yes, even The ‘Pimp fell prey to the irrational exuberance emanating from the Reality Distortion Field.

While I like the idea of a system that can stream using AirPlay and DLNA (we’re bilingual here), this seems a bit pricey. You could buy a complete HTIB with that kinda money, although it’s a nice trick to have these features built-in.

Still, I think it would be more useful to AirPlay in a TV, so you could get that video love. But TV makers are already having trouble keeping costs in line building in GoogleTV, Boxee, and their own SmartTV guts into new TVs. Anything that eats into the already slim profit margins on TVs is a tough sell, and I don’t think Apple can escape this reality either. Add to that, consumers are lukewarm on the extra wizz-bang.

I’m sure the chipsets for AirPlay support are pretty cheap, but why would TV makers provide another way to bypass their own struggling SmartTV efforts? They are trying to get into the “app store” game too. Why give that over to Apple?

Wish all we want, but I doubt it’s going to happen anytime soon. Who knows, maybe they make their own TVs?

Maybe not.

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Google, Motorola, and Fandroid Dreams of TV Glory

The Digital Pimp — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 12:00:10 +0000

This week’s Pimp Bag of Hurt comes to the doorstep of Google, in the form of a merger that has all the Fandroids drooling. Now, don’t get me wrong, as an official iFanBoy, I don’t hate Android at all. The marketplace ain’t some episode of The Highlander, so there can be room for many. It’s a democracy. Choose for yourself.

Now, the proposed purchase of Motorola brings more than handset manufacturing and patents, it also means Google would own the largest maker of traditional digital cable set top boxes. Well, that little bit of news made all the Android lovers dream of the possibilities. GoogleTV in set top boxes! Android Marketplace on TV! Holographic 4D interfaces with Google+ brainwave control!

Ok, so maybe not that last one, but you get the idea. Dreams often run ahead of reality, so let The ‘Pimp lay it down proper.

Set Top Box = WinTel PC Circa 1998

While it’s nice to dream of something other than the usually crappy TV user experience we all loathe, it’s important to understand a fundamental issue with traditional set top boxes. It’s the CPU, stupid.

The boxes are designed to do very little computing other than decoding video, and they all have dedicated hardware for that, MPEG2 and/or MPEG4 h.264. Since the video decodes within a chip, you don’t really need a super phat central processor. So the processing power of a set top box is about the same as a decade-old PC.

Ever try to run Flash on one of those puppies? Now you see the point.

Modern computers have an abundance of power, so software decoding video is a piece of case (unless you use Flash on a Mac. That’s the true meaning of pain, fool.)

So, if you want an STB to decode computer video formats like Flash, they better be supported in hardware first, cuz the CPU will be sucking wind trying to handle it.

The only solution is to increase the bill-of-materials cost by including better chips, either the CPU or the video processor. Good luck trying to pass that cost off to the cable operators.

Which leads me to…

Google TV vs. Big Cable vs. TV Makers

We’ve already seen Round One of Google trying to own the living room, and it was a total failure. The Google TV platform either required a new expensive box on top of your existing cable box, or purchasing one of the few TVs with it built in. And you have to convince the TV makers to build it in, raising the cost on what are already low-margin products.

Either way, you can’t escape the fact that adding these capabilities requires some decent gear, and/or some assembly for the consumer. Anybody with any history in this space could tell you that if your product requires an infrared blaster, you’re going it wrong.

Another sign? Just look at this picture of the Sony Google TV remote control.

Ok kids, can you spell “nuclear fail?” Nice try. Who would want to use this, other than a serious nerd (aka, not a normal person.)

The Biggest Immoveable Object

If those two gems weren’t enough, this last one will get ya. I’m not sure how Google will get Big Cable to cede control over their customer experiences and just hand it over. Good luck with that! Just listen to what Father Steve said about it.

Cable is dumping money into better user interfaces, especially for HD set tops, which usually have a bit more umph. To think that they will dump those investments is ludicrous, no matter how much money Google may throw at them.

Bottom line: I think the Google fans might want to slow their roll a bit. Just because Android is great on phones doesn’t mean it translates to any device. Business models are different. Profit margins vary wildly. And Google is no dummy. They will try it, just like Apple is, but go slower after they got so much egg on their face with their first attempt. Who knows, maybe they might get into the real TV business themselves.

Frankly, I’d like to see a few more options out there for stand-alone set top boxes. I think that’s the back-door way to get into the living room as the market dynamics change over the next fire years. We’ll see what happens.

What do you think?

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TUAW | Google nixes direct H.264 support in Chrome

How to Setup your Harmony Remote Control – Part 4

The Digital Pimp — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 12:00:00 +0000

(Click to enlarge)

The Digital Pimp’s back in the flow, here to bring you mo’. About time, huh? How long has this installment been delayed? Well, the true essence of Pimpin’ is making money, and I do have a demanding career to attend to. But ya know, I’d rather be doing this.

So let’s get to it, shall we?

This is the fourth part in the series on setting up a Logitech Harmony Remote to control the mega set of devices in CribMac. Now we get down to the nitty gritty of walking thru a typical activity setup. From an earlier post, you’ll recall that “activities” are sets of commands grouped together to do a couple of things:

Perform initial setup of devices: power, inputs, etc.
Map device remote control functions to hardware and touchscreen buttons

Before you can even start building an activity, it’s a good idea to do some planning. Take a peek at the chart above. This is the cheat sheet I did to make sure I had things straight. Bears a bit of explanation, however. Don’t worry…it ain’t rocket science.

Onkyo HT-SP08 / TX-SR605 Receiver

First off, my Onkyo receiver has HDMI input/output with analog up-conversion, which enables analog sources to be converted to digital and sent to my projector over a single HDMI cable. However, it’s a 3-year old model now, so the numbers of digital inputs are limited compared to more recent models. This required some compromises as I’ve expanded to five major activities and I only have 2 HDMI inputs. The activities are listed in the leftmost column.

Luckily, I ran redundant cables to my projector: twin HDMI cables, an RCA cable, and a VGA cable. This helped me get around the limited digital inputs on the receiver.

Finally, my receiver has a custom setup function that allows me to assign input video and audio ports to each receiver mode. As a simple example, my “Watch TV” activity uses the “CBL/SAT” mode and sends all audio and video from the HDM1 input on the receiver over to the HDMI1 input on the projector.

At the other end of the complexity scale, my Wii’s analog connections are mapped to “GAME/TV” mode, but uses COMPENT 2 for video input, and the GAME/TV analog RCAs for audio input. The analog signals are upconverted to HDMI and sent to the projector’s HDMI1 input.

Ok, so maybe it does sound like rocket science. That’s why it pays to plan.

So, when I switched from my Mac Mini to an AppleTV 2 for my media playback, I was out of HDMI inputs on my receiver. So, I decided to use the second HDMI cable to send the video to the projector, and the CD mode mapped to the receiver’s OPTICAL 2 input to send digital audio. Phew.

“Ummmm…Mr. The ‘Pimp?…Is this going somewhere?”

Hold your shorts, Tex! You gotta know where you’re going before you just start driving. Oy.

Anyway, now to set up the new activity for the Apple TV. This setup was done using the older Logitech Harmony computer client. Newer remotes sometimes use a web-based setup, but I’m old skool with a Harmony One.

From the main Activities screen, I chose “Add Activity.” On the next screen, I chose “No-Manually add and Activity to my setup” since this activity is a bit unconventional and can’t be set up using the wizard.

On the first screen, I used the “Utility” option to bypass the automated wizard.

Here I picked the devices to be used in this activity.

Next pick the input for the projector, in this case, I’m using my second HDMI input.

Then the input/mode of the receiver. Remember, with my custom setup, I’m using the receiver’s CD input, mapped to one of my digital optical ports.

This screen is a waste. The AppleTV has no input to set. Move along.

So now the basic activity setup is complete. This screen also shows my Lutron IR Dimmer listed, which I didn’t touch on since it’s so simple.

But that does lead me to the final installment of this series: programming custom buttons. I use the soft buttons on my Harmony to handle all sorts of often-used functions, such as lighting controls. We’ll cover that next.

Sure was a long time coming, but I hope you dig this installment. One more to go, then I’m gonna need some new ideas to write about! So have at it and leave a suggestion below.

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Steve Jobs, Exit, Stage Left

The Digital Pimp — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:00:00 +0000

Well, the ‘Pimp has been away for a long time, so you know it would take something monumental to end his uncharacteristically long silence. Steve Jobs’ resignation is just that.

Monumental, but not at all surprising. Anyone who saw his last keynote could tell you that this day was coming soon. He looked frail. His voice was weak. And those of us who pay attention worried about this day coming. Would the stock tank? Would there be a power struggle? Will the company lose its edge?

There’s been more than enough punditry on these points, but that won’t stop The ‘Pimp from adding his voice to the sound of the crowd.

Unlike a lot of young pups, me and Father Steve go back a long, long ways. When I saw the original Macintosh in 1984, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on one (even though I smartly waited for the 512k in 1985.) After working in the early 80′s on $100,000 IBM CADAM workstations, a $2500 personal computer with then-revolutionary graphics potential seemed like the future unfolding in front of my eyes.

My love deepened for when I developed a very successful career in digital prepress, then later in multimedia development, all because of the Mac. And don’t tell me I coulda done it on a PeeCee. Windows 2.0. Nuff sed.

Through good times and bad, the company still seemed to be pushing the boundaries of computing, failing miserably, but sometimes succeeding brilliantly. But when Father Steve returned, things seemed to gel in ways too uncanny to believe. The design got crisp, the focus got tighter, the operations got streamlined.

And here we are today.

I think the biggest fallacy most pundits have made is thinking that Steve did it by himself. The New Steve learned to do what the Old Steve failed to grasp: surround himself with genius, and let them do their jobs. Things might change, but seriously, will they change that much?

Will Tim Cook forget to run a tight ship, with a product pipeline that is the envy of the entire manufacturing world? Will Jonathan Ive forget how to design products that make people drool? Will Phil Schiller forget how to market products in a way that drives so much desire?

Child please.

Sure, the thought leader is gone, and that didn’t work out too well for Uncle Fester, but Apple seems to have more on the ball these days than the rest of the tech industry combined. Besides, I know for a fact that Apple develops roadmaps that look way out into the future, so who knows what is in their pipeline. I could be years before they run out of new ideas. Hell, they already own the post-PC world, and it’s just the beginning.

So, we can mourn the loss of Father Steve at the helm, but I for one am still unconvinced that there will be a great sea-change in the company in the coming years. I think there are a lot of new ideas and profits to be had.

Godspeed, Father Steve. You deserve the rest. Please get better soon.

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AirPlay-Enabled Devices Sprouting All Over

How to Setup your Harmony Remote Control – Part 3

The Digital Pimp — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 12:00:50 +0000

Thanks for sticking with The ‘Pimp as we explore the many options for setting up the Harmony Remote. If you’ve been reading along, then you know the basics, but now it’s time to get a little deeper. In this part of the tutorial, we’ll explore the complete configuration that controls all the gear in CribMac 2.0. And trust me, that’s a lotta gear.

This will seem kinda backwards, but stick with The ‘Pimp. We’re going to look at the end results before we dive into the setup steps. It’s a good thing.

First thing, you have to device a strategy for how you want each of your activities to be structured. When an activity is setup via the wizard, the physical buttons are automatically configured match the device functions.

Functions that don’t have a physical button are not automatically setup on the touchscreen. This is where you have to tweak things, and having a plan helps before you setup each activity. For example, the Harmony One doesn’t have a DVR button (why, only Xenu knows…). This is where the touchscreen comes in.

Every activity is launched from the touch screen, and once devices are setup, the custom buttons used for the activity are displayed on the touchscreen. There are some global functions I wanted to have on all my activities, so I chose to keep those functions in the same spot on each activity.

The way I approached this was to be sure that the global functions were always on the same button position on all activities. After an activity starts, there are six custom touchscreen buttons displayed on each “page.” You can map several pages, but it’s important not to clutter things too much.

So, once you have figured out the global and custom functions to map to the touchscreen, this will make the setup go much faster. For CribMac’s setup, here are some of the global functions across all activities:

Projector Input – Flips through all the projector inputs. A just in case button.
Aspect Ratio – Force the projector to switch aspect ratios. Usually not needed.
Lights On/Off/Bright/Dim – Duh! Of course you’d want to have this handy.
Input HDMI 1 – A redundant button, but more direct route to setting the right projector input.
Projector Power – Useful if the projector doesn’t turn on due to pilot error (aka, my daughter not keeping the remote still while an activity starts)
Audio Power – second verse, same as the first

Now that we know where we are going, next post will cover setting it all up. See ya next time.

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Hacking NetFlix : Star Trek Streaming Starting in July?

The Digital Pimp — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 04:00:45 +0000

Hacking NetFlix : Star Trek Streaming Starting in July?.

Star Trek: Deep Space 9 Desktop via kollewin.com

So, it’s not much of a surprise that The ‘Pimp would be a huge sci-fi fan, particularly fond of Star Trek. But that’s a loaded choice. Which one?

Now, if you ask my brother, there are none higher than Kirk. Granted, he’s an old codger. Can’t begrudge him not getting with the new shizz. But for me, DS9 was the top (and why not? BSG creator Ron Moore worked a lot on DS9). Despite that fact, The Next Generation was excellent as well after a mostly derivative start. Yet one of my buddies seems to like Enterprise the best, which I can’t just see.

Well, arguments may rage on, but Netflix seems to be serving all the competing geek camps by streaming every single series. This is quite cool, since I can consume a hell of a lot of DS9 in a short time, so waiting for DVDs won’t cut it. No matter your fave, Netflix has you covered by summer.

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Hacking NetFlix : Netflix Now Streaming 14 James Bond Movies

The Digital Pimp — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 03:30:57 +0000

Hacking NetFlix : Netflix Now Streaming 14 James Bond Movies.

I have two words for you.

Ursula Andress.

Yowza.

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