Categories
Apple Creative hardware iPhone Mac

Use Cases

There have been more than a few good and thoughtful articles about the iPad over the weekend (along with a lot of stupid garbage). I wasn’t planning on adding anything else until I actually got my hands on one, but something interesting happened: everyone asked me if they should get one. I remain the sole tech person for two extended families, so that question wasn’t as straightforward as one might think. This is why there are so many reactions to the iPad and why so many “alpha geeks” hate it and swear they’ll never buy one, and why there are so many who like it. The question lies entirely in how the individual uses their computer. For the sake of brevity, I’m just going to present the use cases of a few people and then my own.


My Fiance

Current Gear: My old 2002-era 12″ Powerbook, iPhone 3G, 80GB iPod Classic

That Powerbook is a hell of a workhorse. It got me through the end of college and two years into my first professional job until I got the first-gen Macbook Pro that I’m using now. Since I gave it to my fiance, she used it through grad school and wrote her 900+ page master’s thesis on it. Its still going, but its time to move on. I told to wait until the Core i5 Macbooks come out before upgrading.

Despite not being a power user in the traditional sense, when she’s working, she is most definitely a power user. She really has no use for an iPad that I can think of. When she’s working, she spreads out all of her reference materials around her, so a single e-reader really isn’t going to cut it. The rest of the time, she’s happy to either use her iPhone or just grab my laptop instead of digging hers out of its bag (since mine’s always out anyway).

Verdict: She doesn’t need (or want) an iPad.

My Mom

Current Gear: Last-gen 15″Powerbook G4, Original iPhone

I would tell my mom to get an iPad in a cold second if not for two things. First and foremost, she’s a writer. She writes every day and has two published novels, and is working on numbers three and four, as well as a screenplay. She also wants to start podcasting her novels and blogging. The iPad simply doesn’t have enough content creation chops yet to pull that off.

The other reason is that she’s learning the more geeky parts of computer use. While the whole point of the iPad is that its for people who don’t care to tinker, the fact that both my dad and myself are such tinkerers always made her feel a little left out. Since he died, she’s had to learn to figure things out, and every time she learns something new or fixes some problem, she feels great about it. She spent her entire adult life thinking that she was too dumb to use computers, but now she knows what we all do: We’re not dumb, computers are, and we need to beat them into shape. She’s really enjoying herself, and I’m not about to take that away from her.

Verdict: She needs a new computer right now, that Powerbook is ancient. She wants a new laptop, but I think a 21″ iMac would be a better fit. Maybe an iPad for Christmas…

The In-Laws

Current Gear: Original Macbook, Blackberry Curve, Moto dumbphone

Not only did I suggest that they get an iPad, I suggested that they each get one and just use the Macbook to sync them. They need to use email and the web, but simply aren’t that interested in using the computer. There really isn’t all that much to sync, either. They don’t have any videos, audiobooks, apps, or anything beyond a few hundred music files. A single 16GB WiFi-only iPad is almost overkill, let alone two. In fact, the only reason why I suggested two is so I can set up each one with their own email accounts and avoid that bit of confusion. Depending on how powerful the maps app is, they might even be able to use it to plan directions. Or just use the web app’s printable directions. Assuming that the iPad really is able to send print jobs, they would almost never need to use the Macbook at all beyond firmware updates.

Verdict: Hell yeah, get two!

There are others, like my brother who should get one or my fiance’s brother, who doesn’t need one. It really all depends on the usage. So, what about mine? Like I said, I like my workstation setup the same basic way wherever I am.

Like this:
IM002672.JPG

And this:
IM002744

And this:
My desk RM313

And so on.

Basically, I like using the Macbook Pro as my main screen and use the secondary display for supporting tasks, like Mail, Omnifocus, iTunes and Preview. The main display gets Safari, Excel, Pixelmator, Scrivener, Lightwave, Xcode and the like. While I might move stuff around in the process of working, that’s the basic setup. Even the shot with the microscope is like that. In that case, the main work was counting hundreds of vials, so the laptop became the secondary display.

I was at a coffee shop on Saturday, trying to get some work done. While I was waiting for our latte, Claudia moved our stuff from our first table to a better one by the window. She mentioned that by bag was pretty heavy, and you know what? She was right. My bag is pretty heavy. I have the MBP, a Wacom graphics tablet and a book. I really don’t need to carry the tablet around, but I realized that I could really use an iPad as my secondary display there. I actually have a lot of ebooks and pdf’s already, but moving my active windows out of the way is a real good way to destroy my workflow. I can use iBooks, Stanza, Papers as reference when I’m writing or coding, and I can use the Photos app for visual reference when I’m using Lightwave. Additionally, I can use the browser, email and whatever else on the iPad instead of the laptop. The question there is do I want the 3G version, or can I stick with WiFi only? I suppose that depends on whether or not I can get on AT&T’s WiFi network without buying a 3G plan. There are an assload of Starbucks in San Francisco, and it would keep some strain off the cell network, but I seriously doubt that it’ll work that way.

Anyway, there is no way that an iPad could be a laptop replacement for me. But as a portable second screen that will replace a bunch of heavy stuff in my bag? And all I need to carry is something like this?That’s tempting, very tempting. And that’s just for doing work on the run. Like I mentioned earlier, my laptop is pretty much always on and out. Sometimes that’s because I’m working, but a lot of times, its also just because I’m browsing the web. I don’t need my laptop for that. An iPad would be perfect for the times when I just want to sit back and read. Or when Claudia takes my laptop out of my hands again.

I don’t really understand all of the anger about the iPad. Once you think about it, there really is a niche for it. Its just that its a different niche for different people. For some people, there’s no need for it, for others, it really is a laptop replacement for other people, its a nifty supplement. For me, its both of those. I’m keeping my iPhone, I’m keeping my laptop (at least until I can get a Core i5!!!) and I’ll be using an iPad as my second monitor when I’m out and about.

Categories
Apple hardware iPhone

The Tablet

So, tomorrow brings us The Tablet. The mythical gadget that people have been hyping for years, and more recently, losing their fucking minds over, is real. I don’t care. Really, I just don’t see the need for a 10″ tablet in my life. I’m only willing to accept the limitations of my iPhone (or any modern smartphone) because it lives in my pocket. Once I have to toss something in my bag, its competing with my 15″ Macbook Pro. I’m assuming that those laptops are going to be upgraded with Core i5 chips soon, so that’s some serious competition for my money.

But I’m not here to sit back and chuckle smugly at the Appletards who’re going to be lining up to buy this thing. Quite the contrary. I’ll be following the liveblogs and am fully prepared to be blown away. I just don’t see the need right now. The thing that I’m excited about is the software. Tablets have been around forever. There’s not going to be anything surprising about Apple’s hardware. It’ll look slick as hell, probably have an iPod dock connector and probably have the first PA Semi silicon. Its not going to run Mac OS X. Microsoft has done that for years and it sucks. Its not going to run the iPhone OS, because its not a one-handed device. So logic dictates that it will be something in between. The fact that the top Apple execs are openly talking about how great it is leads me to believe that its going to be damn good.

Like other people, I’m pretty sure that the Tablet OS is going to be more iPhone than Mac. What has me more excited is the fact that Apple doesn’t like to duplicate effort, which means that a lot the Tablet OS is going to make its way into the iPhone OS. I’ve been complaining about the philosophy of the iPhone OS since at least 2.0. I have 117 apps sitting in iTunes (but many of those aren’t installed on my phone). If an app is beyond the second homescreen, I just search for it. Likewise, if a contact isn’t in my favorites list, I search. Its just not worth expending the mental effort to recall where all this crap is. Having an app-centric homescreen is no longer tenable. The homescreen needs to be favorite-centric with the apps moved to their own area. Android gets this very, very right. I don’t use more than 10 or so apps on a daily basis. Likewise, I don’t call more than 3 numbers daily (and only have nine favorites). I want these to live in my homescreen, everything else can live in a searchable database elsewhere.

The same is true for notifications. Modal notifications suck. You can only see one at a time, and only the most recent one. They interrupt what I’m doing and force me to ignore them or leave my current app to take care of them. There’s no way around it, and Apple must know it. Android has a much better way of dealing with notifications with its shelf. WebOS has an even better implementation than Android’s. Both the iPhone and Tablet OS’s need multitasking. The Tablet is not going to get away with running one full screen app at a time, especially with the hardware that I suspect its going to be sporting. Honestly, the same is true of the iPhone. Apple’s rationale of battery life and memory doesn’t really hold water with the 3GS. I’ve been running Backgrounder and Pro Switcher on my 3GS for months now and I have to say that having Tweetie, Instapaper, GV Mobile and whatever doesn’t harm the battery. In fact, the thing that was impacting my battery the most was push Gmail. When I went back to regular IMAP, I was shocked at how much that positively impacted my daily battery life. As much as that says about Google’s inability to run a mobile push server, it says that much more for the 3GS to have backgrounding turned on.

Make no mistake: the 3GS has the hardware chops to run full, native backgrounding.

With that being said, both the iPhone and Tablet need a graceful and intuitive way to kill apps. While I’m at it, neither OS should allow third party apps to run in the background in the first place without being explicitly told to do so by the user. Not everything needs to run in the background all the time, or even at all. Palm has a really good thing going in WebOS with the card metaphor. Pro Switcher stole the idea and it works really well.

So, yeah, that’s really all I want out of tomorrow: a useful homescreen, backgrounding added to the SDK and a non-shitty notification system. I won’t mind if Steve blows my fucking mind with the MOST IMPORTANT THING HE’S EVER DONE, but that would just be gravy.

On the other hand, if Apple releases a Core i5 Macbook Pro with Lightpeak wrapped with hookers and blow as one more thing…

Categories
hardware Mac personal

WWDC 09

Right now everone’s publishing thier WWDC predictions. I’m not going to do that this time because a) I again have absolutely zero real information and b) it’s gotten boring. Instead I’m going to go totally pie in the sky and publish my wish list. There are no predictions here, and I seriously doubt that this stuff will happen; this is all fun and games.

Now, I am assuming that the iPhone late 2009 version will be announced tomorrow, and Snow Leopard will get talked up. That’s as safe a prediction as saying that I need to see an optomotrist tomorrow. Which I do. So here we go!

Background processes

I think that iPhone v.3 will be powerful and robust enough to allow full background processes. The current 3.0 OS hasn’t seen an update for over a month and is stable on my original iPhone. For all intents and purposes, it seems to be done (minus miscellaneous bug fixes for the final release). So what has Apple been doing all month?

Background support! Yay! Assuming wishes come true, this will only work on the new hardware with it’s increased CPU, RAM and battery life. Teardowns on the Pre indicate that modern chipsets allow for significant reductions in logic board footprints. Smaller, more efficient circuits could allow Apple to both increase battery life and physical battery size. Serious optimization combined with a 1300, 1500 or (O-face here) 1800mAH battery would make background apps a real possibility here.

Also, Apple is clearly not afraid of adding features which will not work on older hardware. MMS, terhering and full A2DP Bluetooth are not available for the original iPhone. This would be a great point of differentiation for the iPhone v.3. If Apple could pull this off AND have a battery life increase would rocket the iPhone ahead of the competition.

Apple TV

I have no idea what the hell Apple is trying to do with the Apple TV. Right now it’s just a dongle to stream iTunes content to an HDTV. I have lots of iTunes content and an HDTV, but I just don’t have any desire to buy one.

Why? Well, quite simply, because my old Rev A Macbook Pro from 2005 is so much better. With the addition of less than $20 of cables and adaptors from monoprice.com and my Harmony 880 remote, the laptop makes a far better solution. I can play DVD, but mote importantly, I can play EVERYTHING ELSE. I can get Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Skype, Internet, everything. I can fire up the NES emulator and play MegaMan 2. I can do all sorts of things with a Mac that I can’t with an Apple TV.

Well, updated hardware and an awesome sdk could fix that. People have suggested and rejected such an sdk recently, but it was always about Apple turning the thing into a game console. I agree that the console route is the height of stupid, but there is so much more. An sdk would allow Netflix and Boxee to be first-class citizens. I would imagine that games would happen, with an iPhone / iPod touch as the favored controller.

As for hardware, Apple needs to replace that Pentium M. Maybe they could scoop up a few of those mobile Core 2 Duos that Intel is so desparate to dump on someone. Also that awful integrated graphics chipset might be good enough to drive a set-top box, or Nvidia might give Apple a deal on 9400M chips.

I have no idea how feasable any of this is, or how hard it would be to release an Apple TV sdk, but it sure would be nice. On the other hand, I’m not going freak out and call lame if none of if comes true. Unlike some people, I can tell the difference between things that are likely to appear and the shit I just made up.

Categories
hardware Mac personal

My Macworld 09 Predicition

I don’t have any special access to Apple (which is to say that I have none and read the rumors like everyone else), but I do have logic, history and wishful thinking, so here’s my take on what’s going to come out of Macworld.

Snow Leopard: We’ll get a demo and release date. Some people are saying that Apple will release OS X 10.6 during Macworld, but I have to call bullshit on that. Based on what I’ve heard coming out of NDAland says that 10.6 is not done yet. Close, but no way in hell are disks getting pressed yet. Probably a late spring or June (WWDC-ish) release.

Display Port: Everyone’s getting it. Monoprice says that its mini DP adaptors are coming on 1/16/09. That’s a whole four days after the Phillnote. I think they know what’s up. Additionally, the iMac and Mac Mini will be getting new graphics (the Mini will probably get the 9400M, but I’ll keep my fingers crossed for the 9600).

Mac Pro: Clearly, the Pro’s going to be the first Mac to go Core i7, but the question is when. My gut says not at Macworld, but in the next month or so, via press release and an hour long store.apple.com outage that makes some MacMacs wet themselves. I’d like a new case for the i7 Mac Pros, simply because I never liked the cheese grater G5 case and because the iMac and laptop Intel transition cases are all gone.

iMac: Same case, Display Port, new graphics, minor updates (bigger default HDD, RAM, etc). I don’t think that the iMac will be getting any HTPC features like a TV tuner or HDMI port. What’s the point of hooking up a 24″ iMac to an HDTV, right?

Mac Mini: I think the 2009 Mini will be a totally different beast compared to what’s currently shipping. I’m going to combine logic with some wishful thinking here and say that the new Mini’s going to be Apple’s real push into the living room. The rumors say that it’ll have two video outs, a mini Disply Port and a mini DVI. I’m going to call bullshit and remind everyone that DVI is now dead to Apple. I say mini Display Port and HDMI. Since DP supports ACDP just like HDMI, the DRM’s not an issue, which leads to a Blu-ray build to order option. Combine that with an updated Front Row and HD rentals all in a new good-looking case, and that’s a winner.

iWork/iLife: 09 updates are a pretty safe bet. New templates, new features, probably no new apps. Takes Phill less than 10 minutes to get through.

iPods: Phill brags about how great the holiday season was, record sales, massive iPod Touch market share, etc. No new hardware. Duh.

iPhone: Same deal: Record sales, kicked WinMo’s ass, RIM better sleep with one eye open, etc. No new hardware, including the Nano. iPhone apps are not resolution-independent, and a smaller screen would break a lot of apps and make everything look like crap.

Maybe an iPod-based dumbphone for the cheapskates, but I highly doubt that.

One More Thing: the fabled xMac. Kinda. I think Apple realizes the value of the home server. The problem is that a good home server is an expandable box that I can put a bunch of ever-larger hard drives into, like HP’s MediaSmart WHS box. I can kind of see Apple making a box two or three times as tall as the new Mini, with a removable back plate that you can slide SATA drives into, a la the Mac Pro.

Such a machine will either run vanilla OS X with some specialized server software or, more likely, an embedded OS X with all the admin functions based on an app on the client machines.

Categories
hardware home theater Mac personal Windows

Home Theater Part 2: HTPC

I think I should start off with a note. I’m not writing this for any other reason than to geek out over stuff in writing. I’m not bragging or showing off or anything like that. I like to obsess over details, configurations and componants before I actually buy anything. Writing what I want to do helps me plan things out and make better decisions later on. It also keeps me from driving everyone around me crazy from taking about it nonstop until I finally take the plunge. Also, the choice of componants should clearly indicate that this is a budget system.

The interesting thing is that I wrote an HTPC post maybe eight months ago, but deleted it because it ended up being a hardware wish list and me bitching that the thing still wouldn’t do everything that I wanted, after spending close to a thousand (pretend) dollars. It was too hypothetical. Now, on the other hand, its a serious consideration. The landscape is different enough now that I get to completely revisit the subject. First thing is to decide what exactly this thing is supposed to do. Second is to look at my hardware and software options, including and out of box solutions versus building my own system.

TV

Most of the HTPC setup that I’ve seen are heavily geared towards watching and time-shifting television shows. I’ve thought about this for some time and came to an interesting conclusion. I just don’t watch that much TV. Which is to say that I don’t watch that many TV shows that I would care to record or time shift. Even when I miss a show that I wanted to catch, I either have an iTunes subscription or can easily find a hi-def torrent somewhere. However, that’s not to say that things won’t ever change, so I’d like to keep this option open. TV tuners are available both as PCI cards and as USB dongles, so adding one later shouldn’t be an issue. I just have to make sure that it’ll play nice with the Harmony and with Comcast, preferably before I buy!

Movies

For me, this is the biggie. I like movies. A lot. I’m a huge Netflix fan, getting as much as I can out of my disk plan, and recently out of the Instant View as I can. I’m also a Boxee fan, and eagerly await fixes to some of the bugs that’s holding it down. I’m also in the process of rebuilding my old Quicksilver into a multi-terabyte media serving monster. The plan is to rip my DVD collection with handbrake stick them into my central iTunes library so I can access them over the LAN without having to hunt disks down. Since these are my own rips, anything that plays nice with iTunes shouldn’t have any issues playing them back.

The other consideration is Blu-ray. If I so choose, I can add a Blu-ray drive to a Windows-based HTPC. There are some ramifications to this. A Blu-ray drive currently requires Windows, as neither Linux nor OS X support the AACS DRM needed to decode the disks. Which sucks. However, the alternative is to rip the disk and perform some voodoo in Ubuntu, or run Boot Camp from a Mac. Neither solution is as elegant or smooth as just having WMC just running. I hate DRM, since it limits the things I can do and my options. That’s why I’m still keeping the PS3 in mind, since I can keep the DRM stupidity limited to the black box that way. In any case, I’ll want an HDMI port for the best picture and to complete the ACDP-compliant chain for BR playback.

Since I mentioned the PS3 and DRM, I’ll just point out that I have no intention of buying or renting any movies from the Playstation Network. Ever. Their DRM is positively draconian. I don’t care at all for Fairplay, but at least I’m allowed to back stuff up and restore for if (when) a hard disk fails. I should also point out that I don’t buy movies from iTunes, either, and I usually only rent the $0.99 rentals.

Music

Since this machine will be connected to my central iTunes library, it’ll also have full access to all my music. This is fortuitous, since it will also be connected to my stereo! There’s not much else to say about my music, since its fairly mature. I’ll probably want to re-rip some of my earlier rips at a higher bitrate, since they were originally done at 128kbps and I now favor 320kbps. Having my music streaming from the HTPC means that it’ll be piped through the stereo, which is always a plus.

The other issue is movie and TV sound. If I don’t connect the HTPC to the reciever, I’ll want to pipe the sound there. I’ll want an optical port to connect to the receiver.

Other Stuff

There are lots of other nifty things than an HTPC can do conected to an HDTV. There’s MAME, huge web browsing, Netflix, Hulu, etc. I’ve been playing with Boxee, but its still in alpha, and it shows. On the other hand, its getting better and more stable with every release, so I imagine I’ll find it becomes a part of my permanent entertainment system in no time.

Hardware

The Apple Setup

I’m primarily a Mac user and default to Apple products first. My temporary HTPC is my first-gen Macbook Pro, which has given me a lot of experience about what I really want and can accomplish with a dedicated HTPC. The problem is that Apple doesn’t make a dedicated HTPC (yet). The two obvious choices are an TV or a Mac Mini. I considered the TV first, simply because its cheaper and is supposed to be a dedicated set-top box. It has an HDMI port and is highly hackable, most notably via Boxee. However, its nowhere near as versatile as a full computer. Boxee can run Netflix instant viewing quite comfortably on a Mini, but not at all on the TV, because the smaller device doesn’t have the raw horsepower to decode the stream. The TV can decode HD iTunes downloads because of h.264 hardware accelerators for which no public APIs exist.

What I’m hoping for is an updated Mini that combines the HTPC features of the TV with the full computer-ness of the Mini (but with modern components like the nVidia 9400M graphics card).

The Dell Solution

I like the Dell Studio Hybrid. Its in the same price range as the Mac Mini, but has a few advantages. It was clearly meant to be used as an HTPC with an HDMI port and an optional Blu-ray player (which adds over $200, but you can’t get a slim Blu-ray player for any cheaper. If at all). It also comes with Vista, which is only useful because WMC is damned good. Plus, just about every peripheral I could get will work with it. On the downside, it still ships with the Intel graphics. Plus, it runs Windows, which, WMC aside, sucks and will eventually fuck up and piss me off. Boxee doesn’t yet work on Windows, but should this month.

The DIY Solution

The benefits of building your own HTPC are, of course, the same as building any PC. You can select exactly the components you want, and not have to deal with crap you don’t. This usually comes at the cost of integration and size. Those are dealt with by thorough research and artful cable management and by careful choice of case. I’m not going to go too in-depth about my reasoning behind the following list of parts, since it should be fairly obvious. The case isn’t the most powerful or extendable, but its quiet, smallish and it looks like a piece of home theater equipment, rather than a PC. The same goes for the processor. AMD gets its ass kicked by Intel on the high end, but I’m not looking for a octo-core gaming monster. I want a processor that won’t immediately kick the fans in, but can still handle HD content without trouble. In that, AMD excels. The X2 BE-2300 is a 64 bit, 1.9GHz dual-core processor that consumes 45 watts! That’s damn impressive. Low power means lower energy costs, but more importantly, less heat, which means less fan noise. The Antec case has some good air flow management and three 120mm fans, which spin slowly, generating less noise.

Proc: AMD Althon X2 BE-2300 $34.99

Mobo: As
us M2N68-VM
with HDMI $66.99

RAM: Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) $69

HDD: WD Caviar 1TB with 5-year warranty $119.99

Optical: Lite-On 4x Blu-ray $89.99

Case: Antec Fusion HTPC Case $174.99

Video: On-board

Sound: On-board

Of course, there are other miscellaneous parts, but these are the biggies. This configuration leaves both PCI slots on the motherboard open, so I can add something like a tuner card or eSATA later. The case also has room for a second hard drive. 1.5TB drives are coming down in price, so I might splurge for one of those. It might also be interesting to boot Windows from a flash drive, and leave the hard disks open for more media.

Clearly, a DIY HTPC is the most fun and quickly becomes the most powerful. If I was to build this machine today, I’d probably test install it with the Windows 7 beta, and see how well that works. Depending on how stable the configuration is, I’d probably just leave 7 on there until I can get a retail copy. Otherwise, I’d just load Vista and wait until I can upgrade to Win7 final.

The interesting thing is that this configuration costs 573.91, which is ~$20 cheaper than the Mini and ~$130 more than the base Hybrid, but is significantly more capable than each (adding a Blu-ray drive to the Hybrid adds $200). That ignores shipping and tax, but prices change often enough that doing exact comparisons is a waste of time.

The reason why I’m only considering Macs or Windows is because Linux won’t easily work with iTunes or Blu-ray. There are a couple of really cool Linux media centers, but they all require more work than I’m really willing to put into this. Windows will work with a minimum of effort on my part. This machine needs to be rock-solid and need as little post-setup configuration as possible, almost appliance-like. I don’t think I can pull that off with Linux right now.

So, I’ll have a much better idea of where I stand after the Philnote on Tuesday. In any case, I have a really good idea of what I’m going to be spending my tax return on!

Categories
hardware home theater personal

The Future of my Home Theater

So after my last post, here’s where things stand now. The Olevia is still standing tall and proud. The cheapo upscale DVD player is holding up admirably, and the PS3’s gone. That’s OK, it was always going away, and that just makes it easier to hook up my Macbook Pro without having to juggle too many cables (and that DVi-HDMI adaptor). Plus, my Logitech Harmony 880 rules over the whole system like Sauron and his One Ring. While this setup is great for watching TV and Netflix, both DVD and streaming, there is a noticeable lack of HD content. Right now, my most reliable sources of HD content are the local OTA stations which broadcast in HD, and the latest season of Supernatural, which I’ve been downloading in HD .mkv format from the Pirate Bay. (I buy the DVD set and don’t feel the need to buy episodes from iTunes and pay again for the DVDs.) Oh, and various HD video podcasts from Revision 3, the Hubblecast HD and the Hidden Universe HD. Those last two are really great and if you’re at all into space science and astronomy are must-sees. Clearly, there’s lots of HD content that I’m not getting, so there’s more work to be done. So here’s my post-Christmas, but pre-Macworld plans of where I want to go with my setup.

What I’m NOT going to do

I’m not going to get Comcast HD. They charge way too much and their HD looks like shit. When you compare Comcast with OTA HD, OTA is by far superior. I’d rather not pay much more and lose what I already have, or have to do some cable-splitting hack where the Comcast box goes to the composite, while the unencrypted cable or antenna go right into the TV’s tuner. That’s too much work, too much hassle, and too much money. Fuck Comcast. If there was some way to get Discovery, Animal Planet, History, etc without poking my eyes out, that would be awesome, but they look good enough right now, and if I really want them in HD, there’s the DVD, Netflix or TPB.

Audio

The speakers on the Olevia aren’t bad. In fact, they’re much better than the speakers in the old TV. But, the fact remains that a 5.1 system is just that much better. I’m not an audiophile, and so just like the fact that I can’t tell the difference between 720 and 1080 on a screen that’s smaller than 50″, I can’t hear the difference between systems that are “good enough.” To that end, I’m looking at three low-ish to mid-range 5.1 audio systems. The power output on all three systems is similar and the only real differences between them, at least from my perspective, is the array of ports. I suppose I could always go the route of buying my audio componants seperately, but I have my doubts that I could build a comperable system for less money that sounds that much better than a system in a box.

The Sony HTDDWG700 is the least expensive and has the fewest ports of the bunch. It has no HDMI, and only a single optical and single coaxial audio in, as well as an AM/FM tuner and dedicated iPod dock port (proprietary, not USB) and RCA audio. It sounds good, but I’m clearly limited in what I can attach to it and there’s no room for expansion. Again, not bad, but I don’t want to spend $199 on something that I’ll likely want to replace if I add a few more content sources. I could route everything into the Olevia, and use its optical out to connect to the reciever, but that still limits my options.

I’ll probably buy it if it drops to $150 or less.

The Pioneer HTP-2920 is better than the Sony, with more audio inputs, but no HDMI. It is more powerful, but slightly. Its slightly more expensive than the Sony, but not too much at $220.

The Yamaha YHT-390BL is clearly the best of the bunch, even though its almost twice as much as the Sony. It has two HDMI in, two optical and coaxial audio in and a bunch of composite and RCA in. I can also buy the reciever itself for $199. This is the one I want, bar none. It retails for $349 at Amazon and $369 at Best Buy. There’s probably a price point that’ll make me jump, but I can’t say for sure what that might be. In the end, this will probably be the system I buy, simply because its that much more capable and more future-proof than the other systems. It makes more sense to me to wait and buy the better system that I’ll be more happy with for a longer period of time.

We’ll see though.

HD Video

Here’s the meat of the issue. Quality surround sound really brings the experience home, but that doesn’t count for too much without the video. There are three methods of getting HD content onto the TV that I’m looking into: OTA, Blu-ray, and the Internet. The local stations here in San Francisco all broadcast in SD and HD. For example, Fox SD is channel 2 and Fox HD is channel 2-1. Not every station is that simple, like the CW, which is channel 12 on cable, but is TV 44, so the HD channel (even on cable) is 44-1. Not the most intuative setup, but easy enough to figure out. Plus, the remote allows me to program channels, so its just a single button away now.

The other two HD sources, Blu-ray and Internet are more complicated mainly because of the componants involved. Since there’s not really an all in one solution, the setup that will give the features and flexibility that I want basically require some sort of home theater PC.

The Blu-ray issue is easier to deal with on its own. A stand-alone player is out of the question for two reasons. First, they’re too expensive. There’s no good reason why disc players should start at $299 and go up from there. Ignoring audio/videophile equipment, which is always overpriced, I just can’t justify that price to myself, let alone Nicky. I think if I do go the stand-alone route, the obvious and only answer is a PS3.

The other solution, an HTPC, is so complex itself that I’m just going to stop here and finish tomorrow, since this is already long enough.

Categories
hardware personal

Lappie Upgrade

I just upgraded my Rev. A MacBook Pro’s stock 120GB hard drive to a Western Digital 320GB drive. It was a long time coming, but it was two issues that did it for me in the end. The first was that I was bouncing up against for about two weeks and was getting bored of having to swap things on and off a portable drive. The other was that the drive I wanted dropped to $109. I had been watching that drive for a few months, and that seemed like a good price to almost triple my drive space.

I just wish that Apple had designed the MBP so that they didn’t need surgery just to replace a hard drive. The good part is that it actually wasn’t that hard to do. Just take out the screws around the sides and battery bay, ease the keyboard out, unplug some cables, pop the drive out, and boom, its done.

Right now I’m wondering how long its going to take me to fill the drive, although I’ll probably be in the market for a whole new machine by then. Now, for a new backup system…

HDD Upgrade