I am pretty excited about this. The sky seems to be the limit when it comes to Thunderbolt. Imagine your Macbook Air transforming into a powerful gaming machine just by plugging it into an external graphics card and playing the most graphics demanding games on the market. Count me in.
This isn’t surprising, but 3D TV keeps getting pushed and nobody wants to hear it. Why would you spend hundreds on glasses, when there is almost nothing to watch in 3D? And is the content in 3D any good anyway?
When I started doing my podcast a few weeks ago, I decided that I didn’t want to do it the usual way of adding a new domain to my current hosting plan, I wanted to try something different. I decided to create a Tumblr site for the web pages, and eventually added our own custom domain to it. In order to host and deliver the large podcast files, I am using Amazon’s S3 service. It’s an a la carte service where you only pay for the storage and bandwidth that you use. Since I figured I wouldn’t have many listeners at first, and I was right, it only cost me about 11 cents for my first month.
After a few days I realized there was one major downside to this approach. There were no statistics for my traffic either via Tumblr or Amazon. A quick google search brought me to S3stat. What a great find for me. At a very affordable $5 per month, the service will automatically generate log files for you, and run Webalizer on it to create graphs and charts of all of your monthly, daily, hourly traffic.
At first I thought the lack of statistics was only a minor inconvenience, but over time I realized just how important it is for a podcast. Since Tumblr doesn’t provide web stats on the main web site, I don’t know how many people are coming to the site. Also, many listeners will subscribe to the podcast via iTunes. That would go around the Tumblr stats even if they existed, but S3stat catches all of that traffic. Most posts that I can find about podcasting statistics suggest using Feedburner for your “best guess” at how many subscribers you have, but I have found it to be incredibly inconsistent which is a fairly common complaint with Feedburner.
For all these issues, S3stat comes through and fills in the shortcomings of all of the other systems.
One last item, the S3Stat team of customer service is awesome. When I signed up I changed a few things of my original logging settings, and I had to email them to fix it. They had it taken care of in a few hours. Really great service.
Normally I would wait until the end of the year to award the best app. But I have no doubt that HBO GO will not be beat. So without further ado:
HBO GO is an iPhone and iPad app that provides streaming video of HBO content. Not only only can you watch the current movies that are running on HBO, but you also get every episode of every season of every HBO original series. This is an amazing step for HBO to embrace mobile in such a strong way. EVERY EPISODE. Do you want to watch Junior shoot Tony? Do you want to see Wild Bill get shot? Do you want to see Omar stick up a Barksdale joint? Do you want to see prisoner penis? Kenny Powers? The sky is the limit. No ceilings.
The process of setting things up is really easy as well. Just put in your login with your cable provider or satellite dish company. The app does a nice job of organizing all of the shows and content into categories.
There really isn’y much else to say at this point, because what makes this app so amazing is the enormous volume of content available. It would have been easy for HBO to only release the current season of their current shows, but instead they opened up the vault. This is a huge statement by HBO that it takes mobile consumption of their content very seriously.
The one feature that would be absolutely killer, and is hopefully coming in the near future, is AirPlay support. While it’s great to watch a movie or show on an iPad, or an iPhone when on the go, it would also be great to send the content to my TV via the AppleTV and watch things on the larger screen. When the iPad first launched, ABC player was the app to beat for it’s large selection of content. HBO GO makes that looks infinitesimal in comparison. Now let’s just hope we get some AirPlay support.
This is a guest post from my friend Wayne. It originally appeared on his Tumblr. Used here with his permission.
Music in Every Room
I had been waiting to share my home entertainment workflow until I had everything perfect, but as anyone who’s dabbled in this area before knows, it is a revolving door of improvements and upgrades. Eva and I recently moved upstairs, to a bigger apartment with a 2nd bedroom. Our old apartment was small enough that I didn’t need a total wireless solution: I could leave a Mac mini hooked up to the TV directly, with a set of wireless speakers in the bedroom, and all was well. The move upstairs gave me an extra bedroom that had to be wired for sound, and the purchase of a new couch meant the Mac mini could no longer live in the living room next to the home entertainment unit due to space constraints.
After a few purchases and some relatively easy hacks, I was able to get the house wired (or unwired, if you will) for audio and video. See the flowchart below for the basic set up of my entertainment system.
http://i54.tinypic.com/2qi4qcx.jpg
The Mac mini with an attached Drobo hosts all the media files (emps and videos). iOS devices are used as remotes to stream audio to the remote speakers, or video to the AppleTV via Plex. The iOS devices can also stream video from the Mac Mini via the Plex iOS app. For traditional DVD playback, the Xbox 360 serves up 5.1 Dolby surround through the AV receiver. The AppleTV or 360 can both handle Netflix duties (I prefer the AppleTV, as the interface is more user friendly.)
To cover the details, we’ll start upstairs with the brains of the system, the Mac mini.
The Mac mini is hooked up to a Drobo, a storage unit that houses all media files (avi, mp4, mp3, etc). iTunes serves as a hub for mp3 files, while Plex serves as a hub for video files. I’ve been meaning to implement a version automated TV and movie downloads through a combination of Usenet, SABnzbd+ and Sick Beard. Once I get to that, I can post a rundown. But until then, it’s Netflix DVD ripping, etc.
In order to take advantage of wireless music throughout the house, iTunes is the center for all the emps. iTunes remains open all the time, and emps are accessed using the Remote app on any iOS device or through screen sharing via laptops. One can then use the Remote app to stream music to individual or multiple speakers wired with Airport Expresses or AppleTVs. Unfortunately, this implementation relies heavily on iOS devices and airport expresses strewn throughout the apartment (ie. not a solution for teamDroid). Also, it’s worth noting that while home sharing in iTunes allows videos to be shared across a network, accessing them in iTunes with large libraries brings the whole operation to a standstill. It becomes laggy to the point of unusable. Plex is a much more graceful solution.
For those that don’t know, Plex Media Center is a media player that organizes and plays any media file from your computer to your TV. Connect a computer with Plex to your home entertainment system and navigate the Plex UI to play whatever media is on your machine. Use your Harmony remote, apple remote, or iOS decive as a remote and it will automatically scan your files, add artwork, ratings, theme music, summaries, and a suite of other details and present them to you in the above format. The UI is highly customizable so one can fool around with it until it’s to your liking. For wireless playback of videos, Plex Media Server (running as a background process) will stream your content to any device with a Plex client (iOS currently, Android soon) or use your Plex client device as a remote. In my setup, I have 2 iPhones, a jailbroken AppleTV, and an iPad that act as my Plex clients. The Plex client has a great UI and works with little to no lag. You can even configure Plex to serve up media over 3G or remote WiFi with little to no loss in quality if the bandwidth is available.
To avoid having the computer run 24/7 or the annoyance of it going to sleep all the time, I’m running an Airport Extreme base station with Wake on Wireless enabled on the Mac Mini. This allows me to wake the computer from sleep via the Remote app and/or the Plex iOS app, so I don’t have to go upstairs and move the mouse every time I want to stream content. It’s these little things that make the implementation of the system shine.
The Living Room
Home Theater specs
Spectre 42” 1080i HDTV (badly needs upgrading)
Sony AV Receiver STR DG810
Xbox 360 Arcade 4GB
AppleTV 2G
Polk Monitor40 Bookshelf Loudspeakers (R and L)
Polk CS1 Center Channel Speaker
Satellite Surround Speakers
Budget Subwoofer
I jailbroke my Apple TV in order to install the Plex client. This allows me to keep the Mac Mini upstairs, away from the TV, while streaming content to the TV via the Plex Media Server. Plex shows up as its own dropdown menu on the AppleTV, and comprises nearly 90% of my AppleTV usage. The only compromise to the Apple TV jailbreak is no plugins, which are scheduled to come to the Plex Apple TV client soon.
The Airplay features on the ATV allow music to be streamed over the home theater system through the AV unit, to the Polk speakers.
Upgrades:
Besides the obvious TV upgrade needed, I plan on upgrading the subwoofer to HSU Research’s STF-2 or VTF-1, which can anchor the entire system. But being on the 2nd floor of a building with no form of sound isolation means this upgrade will have to wait until we have our own house with no neighbors to disturb. Also, the front left and right speakers will be replaced with tower speakers, Polk Monitor 60s, moving the Monitor 40 bookshelf speakers to the surround position.
The Dining Room
Two Audioengine A5 speakers rest above the cupboards, attached in the rear to an Airport Express. These speakers are the best solution for powered speakers with adequate bass response. They are versatile in that they are portable, and can fill a medium-sized room with great sound. Paired with a subwoofer, they sound even better. This is also a good solution for parties when people want to congregate where there is no music. Music in every room, suckers.
The Bedroom
Two Audioengine A2 speakers rest on the dresser. They are the smaller sibling to the A5 and still pack great sound, and adequate bass for their size. They are also hooked up to an Airport Express and enable Airplay connectivity. These are small enough to blend in with the bedroom décor and not mess up the feng shui of the room (no electronics in the bedroom, boys).
Conclusion
Overall, this setup is close to perfect, given today’s technology. I can think of improvements that will likely come (ie. Airplay-enabled devices that eliminate the need for multiple Airport Expresses, a third-party Plex app on the ATV, support for 5.1 surround sound through Plex, etc)
I will expand upon certain aspects of the setup in future posts: I’d like to dedicate a section to jailbreaking the AppleTV and adding Plex, which is an easy way to avoid the high costs of building a HTPC. AppleTV and Plex are all one really needs, and are extremely affordable, even entry level. I’d also like to talk more about the living room and the benefits of a high-quality AV receiver and 5.1 surround sound. It truly changes the experience of watching movies at home. For anyone rocking a large flat panel HD display without a decent AV receiver paired with it — you are doing yourself a disservice.
Viva FPT.
Back in July of 2009, I wrote about how I only wanted to listen to Howard Stern out of all of the programming on Sirius XM radio. Howard’s previous contract expired at the end of 2010, and when he re-signed, one of the benefits of the new contract was that Howard’s two channels are now available on the SiriusXM iPhone app.
Not much else to say, other than I now listen to Howard at least a few more hours a day, and have one more reason to keep my subscription.
