Well, after a recent visit to the Apple Store in Birmingham, I made a choice, one which cost me £40! I bought an Elgato EyeTV DTT USB Stick. What is it? Its a TV receiver built into a USB stick, about the size of those wireless adapters. Plug it into your laptop or desktop, hook up an antenna, either roof top aerial or the mini-aerial included in the box, and very soon you’ll be watching TV.

The software, EyeTV, which is compatible with many other PVR devices, is simple to install. You’re asked to sign up for tvtv.com which provides TV listings, and during the setup you do the initial tuning. Clicking the Auto-Tune button does a quick scan and picks up any TV and Radio signals in your area (you can also do an exhaustive scan which takes longer but can pick up missing stations).

To record, either press the Record button on the controller while watching any show, or click a programme in the Guide, and click Add Schedule. When you’ve recorded a show, you can play it back on your Mac, or export to iPhone version, AppleTV version or send it to Toast to burn to a DVD. Another nice feature is the Wifi access – you can set programmes to automatically convert to iPhone versions for Wifi viewing, so if you’ve got your mac on all the time, you can watch those shows, streaming over Wifi from your iPhone or iPod Touch, which is done using the built in web server in Mac OS X.

Recordings come in MPEG-2 files, wrapped in an EyeTV wrapper, which includes thumbnails and info on the recordings. You’ll use about 2.2GB for an hour’s recording. Exporting will obviously reduce that file size, so if you are low on space, it might be good to export to AppleTV for storage. 

A exhaustive scan of channels picked up about 64 channels in total (radio and TV), all coming from the Sutton Coldfield transmitter. Comparing that to my Virgin Freeview box, and there are some missing. Specifically, I could not pick up E4+1, Dave or Virgin 1, despite being able to get them on the freeview box. This is probably just differences between the lowest signal strength each device needs to get a signal. 

Not all channels picked up listings from tvtv.com – those listed in blue have no listing, but you can manually select these channels from a search list, and then will be able to get listings. Those that don’t have them at all can be picked up from the signal transmission, and you select DVB for those channels to get the listings. 

For me, the killer features are the Wifi Access, and the smooth integration into Front Row. If you have the EyeTV software running, and grab your Apple Remote, you can switch between Front Row and EyeTV by holding the Play button. From there you have access to almost all features, scrolling through channels, and setting up recordings, using the Menu. Then you can quickly switch back to Front Row for your Podcasts or Movies.

For 95% of my watching and recording TV, this is perfect. If I had a spare Mac MIni, i would turn it into a media centre, and use the EyeTV as my main Freeview box. Having full control over TV, movies, podcasts, and purchased TV from iTunes through one small remote would be lovely, as would the Live TV functions (EyeTV records what you watch as you watch it, allowing you to pause, rewind and replay live tv. You can limit the buffer used for this in the Prefs).

Overall, the EyeTV was a great purchase, Its functional, small enough to throw in my bag when travelling, and I can see it staying in regular use, at least until we move and get Virgin+ or Sky+

Notes: I purchased the Digital only version, there is a Analog+Digital version at a higher price. There are also dual tuners, allowing you to have picture in picture, or record one channel and watch another. 

I had Ubuntu beta 8.06 installed and installed MythTV, along with the plugins and themes, which I did from the command line. I went through the backend setup and configured for my TV card.

When I finally got to channel scanning I couldn’t pick any up. A quick trip to the Terminal and a dmesg revealed that I needed firmware for my TV card. I followed the excellent guide at www.parker1.co.uk and discovered which version of the firmware I needed. Unfortunately the script for obtaining it didn’t work for me. But I found the actual file from the links here <link needed>. following the instructions I copied this to /lib/firmware and rebooted. Another run of dmesg told me that the firmware loaded and I ran the Backend Setup again. This time, a flood of TV channels were found! YAY!

Once I had that working,  did a quick check and made sure the TV was being received well. And it was.

The next step is the part I’m still working on. In order to have a good working machine, you wanna put down that keyboard and use a remote. I got one with my Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T DVB PCI card so I plugged in the receiver and started to follow the instructions here. I have managed to get the remote to be recognised, however  haven’t got it to work with MythTV yet. Once I have it all working, I’ll post my lircd.conf, hardware.conf and lircrc files for anyone who wants them.

So what do I think so far? Well the biggest issue for me seems to be the speed of the front end and the noise. I’m only running this on a Dell Optiplex GL300 with 384MB RAM which really isn’t enough. I would say you need upwards of 512MB at least. Also I think a faster processor would do a lot of good too. Lucky for me I have access to another machine so I can probably make an improvement with that. The other issue is noise. Now without spending a lot of money on liquid cooling, and soundproof boxes, I’m not going to get the noise from this down to a reasonable level. I hope that switching boxes might help, with quieter fans an newer components. Once I have this up and running I might revisit it.

So what tips can I suggest? Have LOTS of time to spare. I’ve spent about 25hours so far on this. Most of that is waiting for things to update and install, or looking for answers online. If you can find those answers before hand, then setting it up will be a lot easier.

You may also want to look at a standard install of Mythbuntu, or even just installing the Mythbuntu control center. I have installed it and hope to give it a look later this weekend. I would also suggest you stick with the current Ubuntu release. I am running the beta and there are still a few issues. The biggest one for me so far is not being able to install tight VNC server. One of the packages is broken so I can’t get it loaded. Presumably this is fine with 7.10. Without TightVNC its difficult/unpleasent to do remote access. I have SSH access but sometimes you need that screen view. While you can do this fine without TightVNC through Chicken of the VNC on the Mac, it doesn’t do screen scaling, and the features are limited. I would like to use the built in Screen Sharing with OSX. The other suggestion, is to add the /var/lib/mythtv folder as a shared folder. this way you can pull off and push up the recordings MythTV does and watch them away from the system.

So will I use MythTV? In the long run, not at the moment. Its too power hungry and noisy to serve me as a daily tool. But if I have the chance to do a split front/backend sytem, I might consider it. Beyond that, I might be looking at a standard PVR.

I’ve made some progress since my last blog post. I was having issues with installing Ubuntu while hooked up to TV via the TV-out port on my ATI Radeon 7000. So I went over to my gf’s parents house and hooked the machine up to an LCD monitor. I have a bit more sucess this time. I got the installer working.
I was using the alternative install for my install as i didn’t need the LiveCD part. I booted up, and started to go through the install process. I got as far as copying and setting up the system and then it hung at 6% progress. I waited and finally got an error message which was no help at all. I tried once again and got the same thing.
This whole process took about 30 mins each time so I had just wasted an hour on this. My only solution was to go home and look into things.

After a bit of googling I found a possible issue. It might’ve been a bad burn. I checked my MD5 checksums on the ISO and CD after burning and had no issues. They were fine. I decided that I would try the 8.06 beta version as well. So I downloaded the ISO via BitTorrent (one of the many LEGAL uses!) and did a trial install in VMWare on my Macbook Pro. It went fine so I burnt a disc.

Day 5
Back at Katie’s parents house now. Trying the disc I just burnt. After a long wait, still no luck. Failed. So I tried one last thing. It was suggested that sometimes fast CD burns can cause problems, so I quickly burnt a new version of the 8.06 beta onto a CD with Disk Utility, this time selecting a 10X burn speed compared to the normal 24X.
I waited for the burn to finish and booted off the disc. All I can say is the difference was very noticable. The boot was a lot quicker this time. I launched the LiveCD and installed from there. Install didn’t take that long and I was soon happy to be greated by the Ubuntu login screen.

By this time it was late and almost time to go home. I did a quick update and also turned on VNC so I could manage this from remote.

I got home, and hooked the PC up to the TV again. No signal what so ever. So I fired up Chicken of the VNC and tried to log on. Now, I had reason to think it should work. I tried it back at the other house, and had no trouble. But for some reason, back home there was no luck.

So now I’m stuck again. I’ve bought a VGA to S-video and composite cable from eBay and will hopefully be able to get a picture on screen with that, at least long enough to get auto login set up and vnc working. Once thats done, I’ll get MythTV installed and get working.
I also need to get a new hard drive. I’ve got a 40GB drive in there now, and obviously need a bigger one. I’ll probably get a 200GB drive, and maybe clone Ubuntu across to it rather than clean install. That then gives me a a spare IDE connection for another drive.

Again we wait to fix unforseen issues.

Got a keyboard and USB adapter. Plugged in and boot. Blank screen. Lovely.

Need to check boot order. F2 to launch BIOS  - no effect. Pulled out CMOS battery and boot.

We’re in. OK, hard drive detected, cd drive detected. Check boot order.  Floppy, CD, Hard disk. Good. Reboot. Problem with CD drive. Change BIOS to ignore and swap cd to other drive. Works.

Install Ubuntu. Loading screen.
SQUASHFS error: Unable to read page, block 15df9320

Google. Reboot and check disc. (This may take some time) - Errors found in 1 files Tried CD in different drive.

“Cannot operate in Low Graphics Mode” - Now I need to select my monitor.  Well its a TV, so I’ll just try a monitor at 800×600. OK. Blank screen.

Damn, Reboot.  Try again.  Different resolution.  Blank screen.

Damn. This isn’t looking good.So maybe the disk is bad. Heaven forgive me, I’ll install XP.
1 hour later and I’m downloading the first of 88 software patches, but I’m installed.  I guess the disk is fine.

Day 3
I think that my issue is running it through a TV for install.  Maybe the X11 engine can’t load properly.  So I’ll download the alternative CD without the LiveCD and do a text based install. CD is inserted and I boot.

Install in text mode please. And now my screen is flickering like crazy. Its trying to display the image but its not got the right frequency.  So I’m stuck.

I tried frantically hitting Enter in the hopes that an installation would eventually start up. Not so true.
Solution: Friday I’m going to my gf’s parents house to borrow their monitor so I can get Ubuntu installed and get the necessary drivers for my ATI Radeon 7000 card. Hopefully it will work when I come back here.

So far I have the TV tuner card, an Hauppage Win-TV PCI card, a graphic card, Radeon ATI AGP. I just needed the box. Well today I picked up a Dell Optiplex GX300 which will become the nervecenter of the whole operation.

I started by removing the old SCSI drives, and SCSI card from the motherboard. Then stuck in the Ubuntu CD and booted the system up. And what did I see? Keyboard error. So of course I need a keyboard to boot.  So I went round to borrow a keyboard from my gf’s dad. Just my luck, he only had a USB keyboard, and this PC doesn’t seem to play well with USB keyboards. So I need to get a USB to PS/2 adapter from work tomorrow. I might get a keyboard too just in case.

Hopefully tomorrow I can get ubuntu installed and MythTV setup. If not, then I might have to look at another base pc to build from.

Firstly, my current setup. I have ADSL broadband from Virgin (not the cable service, the over the BT service). I have a Netgear DG834G Wireless ADSL Modem Router serving up wifi to my house (protected of course). I can also connect to one of the 4 10/100Mbps ports if needed. My DG834G currently serves up IP’s via DHCP all within one range. I have no other routers, switches, or anything else in the house. Oh but I do have a Airport Express which connects as a client to the DG834G to stream audio to my Hifi.

So here we go. I’ve taken every thing out of the box. I have my Fon AP (access point), power supply, installation guide, and network cable if needed.

According to the install guide I start by connnecting my ethernet cable from the adsl router to the Fon WAP.

Ok, done.

Now plug in the power, Here goes.

Nothing. Oh wait I need to turn the plug on! Right. One solid light. Now the others are flashing.
“Check the internet light is flashing” – It is on. and flickring

Now connect to Fon. Right. Airport menu. I should see FON_AP and MyPlace. Lets see. I have MyPlace. Nothing else.

Lets look in iStumbler. Nope. (Weirdly the default channel on this is 2)

Still no FON_AP. It says to check the config. OK. Will do. Umm..how do I do that?

Right. Connecting to MyPlace. Password: Umm…oh its the serial number by default (need to change that!)
Waiting….Timeout. Try again. Not working.

Damn. Oh connected! Yes!

Right. How do I configure this? Not sure at all. No software, no router login config.

Back to my DG834G network to look stuff up. Lets check the FON has an IP from my router (Attached Devices on the web interface).

Right, router login. Yep it has an IP address via DHCP. Thats good. Lets see if I can do some configuration on the Fon website.

OH! FON_AP is showing. Guess its running ok now.

Back on Fon.com, looking in the Profile settings. It thinks I live near Woolwich. Thats not right. Not by a mile!

Ok. reconnected to MyPlace wifi and trying to login to register. Getting straight to Google. Trying wifi.fon.com

Nothings happening. Timeout again. The CD is useless. Trying MMUG Google Groups.

OK, tried 192.168.1.1 in Safari. SUCCESS! Logged in. Now I can finally register my FON WAP. Entered my address. Need to choose Linus or Bill (Linus for free wifi, Bill for charging – I get a share). How do I choose this? Ok, I went round in circles. Turns out there are radio boxes that were hidden by the Google Map. Thanks Google(!)
Registered! Woo!

Now I can configure my Fon I think. Done. Changes the secure SSID and WPA password. Lovely!

Rebooting (see: pulling the plug). Lets see how we go.

Back online. Names changed. Reconnecting…Secure network seems fine. Trying public. Redirecting to login page for Fon.
Perfect.

——————————————————–
OK. So a few comments to make.

It seemed to take about a solid minute for the open and secure networks to show up to Airport so be patient.

I have DHCP running on my DG834G. That handed off an IP to the Fon router. I presume if you don’t have DHCP, you’d need to assign an IP at the router as there is no configuration to do this on the Fon.

Updates to the Fon made online (wifi name, passwords etc) take 30 mins to replicate down to the Fon, or you can reboot it. From this i gather that it calls home every time it boots to check for new firmware or settings. As such, you may see your old setting still in place while the settings are updated (I saw MyPlace at first after rebooting, then SecureFON came up)

I haven’t tried this stuff with Bonjour but I imagine that any devices connected to the Fon AP would not be able to do any Bonjour stuff with any other computers on the DG834G due to the different network segment being used.

So thats it. I have Fon going. I registered mine to be a pay for one. I may change this in the future though.
And finally, I hope that has proved useful to at least one person. If not, then try somewhere else.

One last point. Apparently Fon users can login to BTOpenZone hotspots and get online for free. Hope to try this tomorrow.

Somehow I had managed to get down to 84Kb of free space. Thats not even enough for an episode of The Onion! So I cleared plenty of space (put heroes on my old 3G iPod) and set to installing it. Simple install it was, normal really. I created a new virtual PC and rebooted as it asked me to. And thats when the trouble started.

I think I must’ve had my powerbook on for a long while before rebooting because it didn’t twig what the problem was. I was having a hell of a time booting up. I was worried, and my hard disk was making horrid horrid horrid noises (like a train passing). I hit the forums on the Macbook and read horror stories of crashing hard drives. I was scared. I tried booting, running disk utilities, Apple Hardware Test, and nothing seemed to do any good.

I had to make some hard choices, so I looked at refurb Macbook Pro’s and was getting more and more tempted. Before I assigned this machine to the grave, I though I’d give things one more go. So I though I would try to do a disk repair from the command line. I rebooted into verbose mode, and watched the messages fly past my eyes. And what did I see? Many messages about Virtual PC. I had a suspect.

I grabbed my Tiger DVD, put it in, went to the terminal, and had a look at the startup items in my Library. Of course there was a Virtual PC folder. So I renamed it, and tried rebooting. And what happened? SUCESS! A perfect boot. So very quickly, I went straight to the Applications folder, and ran the uninstall for VPC, and then cleared out the startup items folder before rebooting. And what do you know, fantastic. No hard drive noises, no problems booting!

So the motto here? Mac OS and Microsoft don’t mix. At least not in my books.

I would like to say sorry to the Mac team at Microsoft. No offence

Technorati tags: virtualpc, powerbook

My opinion hasn’t changed much. I have some extra thoughts now (having heard about the N95) and some features I would like to see.

Personally, I think it will be an excellent product for already Apple fans (Me, and other recently met Apple fans). It will hopefully welcome a new way of looking at mobile phones, and hopefully prompt some clever thinking from other manufacturers.

1. Touch screen – I’m interested to try this out really. Being more of a texter, I am curious how it will feel typing with a few fingers. Often design and shape can make this easy or hard. Also, other so called “touch screens” seem more like buttonless buttons, where there is no physical separation, but still specific areas that work as buttons. They don’t seem dynamic. A true touch screen device will push this technology into other areas.

2. Full HTML browsing. A lot of people asked “what about flash or ajax?” I don’t care so much about this, although flash would be good for Revver, Jumpcut and other video players, not Youtube. I would just like to get away from horrible WAP browsing. Reduced eBay is awful, and most sites don’t render well so scrolling is a nightmare. I would like to read the Evil Genius Chronicles with ease please.

3. Google Maps – Now I can get these already on my Noka 6280 and N70, but the ease of viewing with pinching and dragging seems so much easier, and more how Google Maps works on a normal computer.

4. Visual Voicemail – Great idea. I would love that. If I can access my voicemail in random order, I can avoid all those messages left by phones ringing in pockets, or from someone I want to avoid. If I can see who its from, how long the message is, and playback at will, I’ll take that phone please. One handy thing here is local storage of voicemail. Lets say you’re travelling, and keep going out of cell service, if my phone downloads the voicemail while I have service, I can listen to later, and deal with, without the trouble of losing signal mid call. Woo-hoo!

5. SMS – I’ve seen the chat SMS feature on the Treo, and want a version for my N70. But the iPhone has it built in. I like this idea, would save me coming out of messages to look at what I’m replying to. And its pretty. insert emoticon.

I have concerns though, mainly about the UK model.

Now this will have to be different I think. UK phones are often branded to hell, and locked by SIM card to a network. Now Apple won’t allow branding, thats for sure. If they did, I would really reconsider purchasing one. They also have to choose networks carefully. There are 5 main providers. 3, O2, Orange, T-Mobile, and Vodafone. 3 deal with only 3G networks, which is good because it provides high speed data transfer services. They infact market themselves entirely on this, with MobileTV, and videocalling a big deal.
The other networks are slowly picking up 3G as a good service. Personally I wouldn’t buy a phone now (baring iPhone of course) without 3G included.
I heard rumblings of Vodafone getting the contact over here, as they have good coverage, and are present in Europe as well. Apple, if you’re reading, DON’T! Please don’t. Go with T-Mobile. And here’s why.
The iPhone includes Wi-fi and is the main source of use for web browsing and Google Maps, and the other features that will use it. T-Mobile has a huge Wifi presence in the UK. They’re Hotspots are in almost every Starbucks, many hotels, public places, service stations, all over the place. All you have to do is put out a special package, which includes unlimited Wifi or cell-based wireless data service (like EDGE). I’m there. If I can walk into Starbucks for lunch, get out my iPhone and check my emails, view some web pages, for free, at high speeds, I’m sold. No other network can provide this service.

So what features are missing from the so far annouced iPhone?
1. GPS. You’ve got maps, Google Maps application can chart directions. It would be a great addition (although possible putting TomTom and others up as rivals)
2. Front Camera. Thinking Wifi, thinking Skype, thinking video chat, or even just video calling. It should still be there.
3. Java support – I ned my java apps. Gmail mainly. And some games.. for fun
4. Bluetooth Modem – No Wifi? Use your phones data plan to get online at a slower speed.

Some final things to ponder
1. Removable Battery – Why? If its the same type as the iPod, I don’t need to change it. If I can take it to an Apple Store and replace it when its overused, for a small fee, I will.
2. Sim card – If there is no removable battery, where does a Sim card go? UK phones depend on these.
3. Bluetooth – Can I sync via bluetooth? I may not want to sync my music, but what about my contacts, calendar and mail?
4. Notes – Can I scribble notes with my finger? In stead of typing? Or draw a pretty picture? Perhaps even send that by bluetooth.
5. Output – I can listen to my songs, use the bluetooth headset (will it be an extra) but can I hook up my iPod AV cable and play movies and show photos back on my TV?
6. SMS – I really like the idea of showing threaded SMS messages. Lovely. But can I turn that off? In case I just wanna view them like a normal inbox? I hope so, I’d like the option.
7. Keypad – Can I switch between a QWERTY (why was that so hard to type?) keyboard and a normal phone one? Again, nice for the option.

Well thats all I can think about for now. I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Well it arrived the other day, locked to Orange, and it had this horrible “Homescreen” built into Orange’s branded firmware. It was obviously designed to make it more Smartphone-ish and look like a Windows Mobile device, which its not. It does better than that really. So I went searching around for info on this (how to remove it really). I read loads of posts saying everyone hated the Homescreen, and Orange just wouldn’t do away with it.

While searching, I came across this post at Tech Enclave which solved my problem, and I’m passing it on to you.
At first, I tried using Nokia Software Updater to replace the software, even tried reinstalling the current firmware (v3.0546.2.3). That did nothing. Then this post gave me an idea. I can use the method described, to make my phone think it is a Nokia N70 Music Edition, and then maybe reinstalling the firmware would clear the Orange screen. So I did the following (taken from Tech Enclave)

1. Download and install Nokia Software Updater
2. Download and install Nemesis Service Suite (select Virtual USB device in install process)
3. Connect my phone (wait for Windoze to install drivers), open NSS and click Scan For New Device
4. Click Phone Info, click Scan, in the box next to Product Code, type 0536418, tick the Enable box and click Write.
5. Wait for confirmation on the screen that the changes have happened. Close NSS
6. Open NSU, follow the instructions (please, please, please backup your data. This can be done with Nokia PC Suite. NSU reflashes the firmware and all data on the phone will be lost. Simcard and memory cards are fine but programs need to be reinstalled).
7. You should be informed that there is a firmware update. Install that, and be sure not to let your computer switch off (vitally dangerous as it can brick you phone, not great if you are on an old laptop that has a battery that barely lasts 20 mins)
8. Wait for your phone to restart, and when it gets back to the home screen, unplug.

Congratulations. You have some pretty much generic firmware now. Some new themes, a better Music player, and generally a better phone, thanks to the lack of Orange Home screen.I did it and it worked fine. Be aware that this will void your warranty completely, as well as wipe your phone data.
Well I hope that helps at least one person. It would’ve saved me hours of searching around. Enjoy your new, free N70.

Technorati Tags: Nokia, N70, Orange,

So I tried no WEP or WPA, and got a connection straight away. I checked this on my laptop, by deleting the keychain item for the WLAN, and re-entered it on my laptop, and got nothing. Bugger. No wireless now. Thank god I had a cable plugged in and at hand. So I hooked up and started browsing. I found quite a lot of sites with ideas, like MAC address filtering, but I didn’t want that. I only found one website which mentioned the solution. Luckily, one is enough.

Here’s what you do

1. 1. Set up your 64-bit WEP as normal, and make sure Key 1 is selected.
2. 2. Go to your Mac and enable Airport if its not already done so.
3. 3. From the Airport menu, select the SSID of your network
4. 4. When asked for a password, enter 0x (thats zero-x) followed by your WEP key, i.e. 0xFF12345678
5. 5. Your computer should now connect with no problems at all.

Of course some people would say that you should use more secure methods, like WPA and MAC filtering, but I also have a WM2003 PDA here for sat nav and a few other reasons, none of which I can explain, and that barely supports WEP.

Hope that helps someone at some point.