Jousting Digital Windmills
Many thanks to Spockers at the Dragon Global forms for posting his ShowAnalyzer global.conf file. Commercial skipping is now much improved and no longer being confused by the odd opening scenes in Damages and Fringe. Seems the tuning effort is a continuous process and if I get anymore info, I’ll post it here.
So I finally carved some time out after the 11PM feeding to do some more Media Center upgrades. Following a tip from this 7MC config page, I installed the Adobe Flash 10.1 Beta to address a flash performance problem I was noticing. This, plus the ATI Catalyst 10.1 drivers did the trick. I now suspect it was a driver problem all along, since the release notes call out a problem dropping frames in Flash. Now Hulu playback is pretty much flawless.
I also took the opportunity to upgrade to DVRMS Toolbox 1.2.2.0, along with the latest DTBAdd-in for Windows 7 and ShowAnalyzer. The latest DBTAdd-in has a fix for the null MediaExperience bug which I was forcing me to restart Media Center in order to get commercial skip working. I’m hoping the upgrade to ShowAnalyzer will improve the over-aggressive commercial removal when watching Fringe. But it’s been almost perfect on all the other shows.
I’ve also recently begun to play with Handbrake for converting videos for streaming from Amazon S3. Converted a whole set of Girls basketball games from a tournament in Wisconsin. These were raw captures from a Canon GL2 which even though it’s only an SD video camera, still runs around $2K. I ended up encoding them 3 different times: 1600kbps@30fps, 800kbps@15fps, 400kbps@15fps, all mpeg4/H.264. It turns out the average Internet connection in Wisconsin isn’t quite the same as Comcast in San Francisco. I was very impressed at how good the 400kbps videos looked. The page is a mix of all three, so you can see the difference yourself. Also, I need to plug Flowplayer which made the integration with S3 a painless cut & paste operation.
Funny thing is that DVRMSToolkit can do all the things Handbrake does, but the UI’s are designed for vastly different purposes.
Finally, the home theater consulting and installation work is beginning to pick up. On the list of things to do is tossing up a gallery of my installations.
One of the upsides of having a Home Theater PC connected to your big screen is the ability to watch streaming media from the comfort of your couch. With that in mind, I’ve been playing with various online streaming sites to watch out-of-market NFL games as well as been investigating streaming technology for my own business use. There are basically three categories of service out there: Legitimate offers with NFL licensing, pirate P2P sites and a couple offshore fraud sites after a quick credit card charge. Let’s call them: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Or the legitimate sites. First of all, the NFL is streaming every Thursday night game on the NFL Live site. The coverage of the game is a little different than the standard TV coverage, but I actually like it better. In this format, they’ve decided to not be so concerned with realtime tracking of the game. Instead, they will often cut away from the game to highlight the last touchdown drive or other interesting set of downs. This includes detailed slow-motion/rewind/whiteboard analysis which football strategy fans such as myself are sure to appreciate. It reminds me of post game film review back with the coaches in High School, just with better technology. They then cut back to the game with the luxury of jumping back in time if something interesting happened, or simply catching you up on the current action. Currently, there are far fewer commercials in the stream than you would see on TV (the stream is pretty heavily front-loaded before the action starts).
On the downside, the player does NOT allow you to expand the video to full screen. It is also resolution aware, so decreasing your resolution will not make the image any larger. The one trick that does work is using the Windows magnifier app, but you have to make sure not to bump your mouse. Also, hit F11 to hide your browser bar and tabs.
NFL Live
As you can see, the quality is nothing special, but much better than you’ll get off the P2P sites listed below. Also, definitely not a simple 10ft interface for the naive Media Center user, but easy enough if you have a wireless keyboard.
ESPN 360 has a streaming player download which will expand to full screen mode. The quality is definitely a step up from above. It appears the player can handle HD video, but it appears most the content is in SD format. On the big screen, you still get a number of lighting and compression artifacts coming through.
ESPN 360 Video quality
While they have plenty of MLB and NBA games, along with College and CFL football, I have yet to see any NFL games here. They are also partnering with Comcast, who is exploring more streaming options for paying customers via comcast.net. There may be some potential here, but given the traditional tight-fisted greediness of the NFL, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Finally, the NFL also offers Game Rewind. This is actually an impressive service. For $24.99 (mid-season price) you get access to the entire archive of 2008 and 2009 seasons. So in order to write a complete review, I just had to order and try it…
The video quality is by far the best out of all the options. It happens to use the same player as ESPN360, which means ESPN could be streaming this same quality if they wanted to.
Best Video quality by far
Once again, the full 1920×1200 image. The snapshot doesn’t really do the picture justice. There may be some loss in the PNG compression as well. So I’m pretty happy with the quality, but I suspect I won’t use this all that much. There is a mode which will let you watch 4 games at a time, switching 3 small screens into the main one. It seems like a great idea, but the fact none of this is available until after the game is over, it’s difficult to even justify the $25. I probably should of done the $7.99 for one week just to check it out. Not a bad option if there’s one game you missed and you just have to see it.
On my wish list for both of these is a Media Center plug-in and the ability to control the app with the remote. I may hack something together to do this in my copious spare time.
So the truth is, you want to watch your game when its actually happening, and not after you’ve seen the score go by on the ESPN Ticker. Well it turns out you can do this, but now we’re probably crossing some DMCA lines, especially as far as the NFL is concerned. On the otherhand, these games are being broadcast over the air in other markets. If I have a very powerful TV antenna which gets a signal from another market, who’s to say I’m violating any copyrights? Well, if you want, you can think of the following as antenna extenders:
There are basically three or four sites out there that act as a central clearing house for users who happen to be streaming a particular NFL game. Unfortunately, the quality is extremely variable, if you can get the stream at all. Here are some I’ve had some luck with:
MyP2P – Will usually show you a number of streams to choose from for each game. All the streams require some sort of StreamTorrent player. Quality is actually improved if there are more people near you watching the stream. Most of the sites appear to be in the EU or Australia, which tells me the NFL cracks down on these when it can. They also show various TV shows including some premium channels, but I really can’t imagine trying to watch those at this quality level given so many other choices.
Justin.tv – Justin.TV seems to have higher quality streams using a built in flash player. Of course since they are a legitimate company based in the US, they need to be a little better behaved. I don’t know if they proactively filter for the NFL games or not, but after the first quarter or so,the game is often replaced with a DMCA take-down notice. Here’s a snapshot from this weekend’s Minnesota game. Although the quality is low, the feed appears to be the Fox satelitte feed in that there are no commercials. Probably coming from overseas:
Justin.TV Fox Football Feed
ATDHE.NET These folks appear to be based out of France. It’s also a clearing house, so you may get an mms stream which Windows Media Player can handle or sometimes it seems to redirect you back to Justin TV.
UStream.tv – UStream is another legitimate company which will probably take down an NFL game fairly quickly. They are partnering with many content producers, so they will have other high quality broadcasts.
There are other similar sites as well, often they will point back to one of the three above. The problem with most of these is that they take advertising from some very questionable players…
So even a google search for NFL streaming will bring a couple of these shysters up in the ad blocks. They basically try to sell you either a PC Satellite TV or a tag line like “Watch NFL & College Football Online Access All Games Live in HD Quality”. In fact, I bet my AdSense plugin pulls a couple of them up right now:
What these slimballs do is charge you somewhere between $29-99 and then redirect you to the sites listed above. I’ve listed a couple of them here, with the names edited so they don’t get any free SEO out of my posting.
I’ll try to keep this slimeball list up-to-date as I find more. You’ll also find a number of BS blog sites recommending these services. First red flag on these websites is you can’t find any “About Us” link on the page, and the Terms of Service mention a Bahamas or other off-shore country. All their credit card processing and support is done through legit companies, so if you do get suckered by one of these, your credit card company will have no problem reversing the charges.
In summary, the options out there are getting better, especially as 10Mbit+ home connections become the norm. It would be really nice if the NFL offered a pay-per-view for a specific game, but I believe they are still locked into an exclusive deal with DirectTV. It would be interesting to know when that expires and whether they plan to keep it exclusive…
Join EFF in San Francisco Monday for Discussion on Hollywood vs. Consumers’ Rights
Please join the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for a panel discussion on “The Future of DVD” at the Varnish Gallery in San Francisco on Monday, November 9, at 5:30pm.
Panelists include Kaleidescape CEO Michael Malcolm, RealNetworks Vice President and General Counsel Bill Way, and EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. “The Future of DVD” will examine the legal battles over DVD rentals, ripping, backups, home media servers, and portable media players. These questions surrounding RealDVD, Kaleidescape, and Redbox underscore the continuing struggle between Hollywood, consumers, and innovators over the future of the DVD.
“The Future of DVD” panel is free and open to the public, and includes a hosted bar sponsored by RealNetworks. For more information or to RSVP please email events@eff.org.
WHAT:
“The Future of DVD” Panel and Happy Hour
WHEN:
Monday, November 9
5:30pm to …
WHERE:
Varnish Gallery
77 Natoma St.
San Francisco, CA
I’m now keeping a running page of the HTPC configuration. This is mostly for my own reference so I can remember what I’ve done and I’ll be keeping it up to date as things change.
OK, my first hiccup while installing the SSD drive was not having an extra SATA cable! Solved for $10 (probably $9 more than I needed to spend) with a quick trip to Radio Shack on my wife’s scooter. Decided to time the installation since I got to figure the SSD will make a significant difference.
Total installation time for Windows 7 Ultimate: 17 miinutes, 30 seconds. Subtract at least a minute for my typing and pauses.
Unfortunately, it took me twice that time to put the machine back together and get all the cables reconnected. Digital Cable connectors can be quite problematic at times.
Step #2. Download latest ATI Catalyst software for the video card. Windows Update automatically found something, but it didn’t install the full ATI Catalyst system.
That’s as far as I got yesterday. Family responsibilities cut into my fun and I needed to switch back to Vista to record shows during prime-time. Copying over the channel and recording settings is going to be the most time consuming part of the project.
So for no good reason at all, Microsoft sent me a complimentary copy of Windows Ultimate along with a box of party swag (streamers, toys, coupons, bags, etc..). I was actually going to hold off on the upgrade of my HTPC (which is pretty happily running Vista), but with Microsoft’s encouragement, I broke down and used my Amazon coupons to buy a 128G SSD drive. Went with the CORSAIR P128 after reading this review. I’ve decided to do a fresh install rather than an upgrade, this way I can simply switch back to booting Vista off the old 1TB drive. Eventually, I plan to hang that drive off of Buffalo NAS and silencing the HTPC completely, but that will be another project. In anycase, given that the rebuild of the media center is non-trivial, I’m taking the week off to do the reinstall before the party bond with my new son.
Finally, I’m going to track the whole process here for my own reference, since it’s helpful to know exactly what drivers and software I installed when, and why. Makes a great reference for my HTPC consulting work.
BTW: Yahoo has upgraded Wordpress for me which at first brush looks pretty nice. I still need to figure out how to leverage FB or Yahoo identity management, so people don’t have to create their own accounts to comment on my site. If you know how to do this, please drop me a pointer.
So it seems Comcast has finally turned off the analog signals for the extended basic channels in San Francisco as I alluded to here. Since it took over 3 months from the actual announcement, it gave me plenty of time to crawl all the forums and websites to understand exactly what happens from here. Futhermore, a couple new news items popped up in the meantime which clarified what Comcast and other cable operators are doing.
So I’m currently running Microsoft Media Center on Vista, and I actually don’t experience all the horrid Vista stories you slash.dot readers may be accustomed to. That said, there still are a number of quirks, but keeping an eye on thegreenbutton W7 posts, I haven’t been convinced that Windows 7 Media Center is going to be much better.
So as Comcast started turning off the analog channels, I started seeing complaints from Media Center as it could no longer record shows on those channels. Running a channel scan didn’t pick up any of the new channels, which I thought was odd since I knew the digital broadcasts of the extended basic channels are not encrypted (yet). It turns out that Comcast sets a privacy flag on those channels which VMC respects and thus doesn’t automatically tune the channel. (Thanks John) Instead, you have to go through a fairly cumbersome process of adding the channel by hand, editing the listing of the channel to merge it with the old analog channel in the guide, and then edit the sources of the channel and disable the analog signal (which is just static at this point).
For those of you who simply bought a TV with a digital tuner, connected your cable to it and found all the channels you paid for the same way your old analog set worked, that should still work, assuming your TV ignores the privacy flag. If not, I’m told the digital TV tuners provide a similar mechanism to enter the digital channel number. Unfortunately, Comcast and the other cable providers have received an FCC waiver to encrypt these channels as well. So eventually everyone will need to either have a full set-top-box, a DTA converter, or a CableCARD compatible tuner.
So it’s unclear when Comcast will start encrypting those channels. In order to do so, they will need to either replace or upload new firmware to the DTA’s currently distributed to customers. Supposedly, these devices are designed to be updated in the field, but I suspect that’s easier said than done, so we may have the unencrypted channels for some time. That said, the current situation does allow Basic Cable subscribers to get Extended Basic without paying for it, but to do this you need to be pretty savvy (or read this blog, and who does that?).
So how do you find the digital channel numbers for the clear QAM extended basic channels that VMC or your TV won’t scan by default? Well first there’s the hard way. It turns the new DTA’s deployed by Comcast have a simple diagnostic mode which will tell you the actual frequency and program number the current channel is broadcasting on. Once you have the frequency, you can either do some math, or look it up on Wikipedia to find the channel number.
Or, you can simply go to SiliconDust, enter your zip code and find a complete listing there. Make sure you choose the right line up. After tuning a couple channel using the first method, going to SiliconDust is simply cheating. SiliconDust is the maker of the HDHomeRun which is a combined DVR/media server solution. Unfortunately, the value of this product will be greatly reduced when Comcast starts encrypting the extended basic channels. It will still be able to record all the local broadcast channels, but that’s going to be a much more limited set than what they have today. I suppose they can always offer a CableCARD version of the product, but their current customer base is probably going to be very unhappy.
So not only would all these headaches go away if I just picked up a couple CableCARDs from Comcast, but I’d also be able to record a slew of new HD channels my VMC box currently doesn’t see. The problem here is that the current CableCARD firmware incorrectly adds DRM to all recordings, even when not specified by the broadcaster. This means everything recorded on the HTPC must stay there. This means my daughter can’t watch Sesame Street on the laptop while I watch football, which is unacceptable. The DRM also disables the commercial skip capabilities provided by programs such as ShowAnalyzer. Futhermore, who has time to actually watch the shows when you’re spending so much time hacking the system? In any case, the CableLabs OCUR (OpenCable Unidirectional Receiver) spec has finally been updated to remove this requirement. But in order for this to work, a firmware update from ATI is required for the DCT. I’m hopeful, but I’ve heard this story before.
Awfully handy to be able to do administrative work while the wife is watching Law and Order. Not the most kosher thing WRT Microsoft licensing, but they aren’t sending out C&D letters, and you can find this info on TheGreenButton as well.
I installed the piratebay bittorrent which fixed terminal services after I manually hosed termserv, but this TCP-Z version really did the trick.
So prior to switching to VMC, I was using a Replay 5000 to record TV shows, along with a very cool Java program called DVArchive which would download the TV’s to my PC. I’d then copy them to a portable drive and watch them on my train ride home using VLC. I was assuming I could do the same with recordings from VMC, but unfortunately I found that life was not that simple.
Now when I started this project, I knew I wanted digital capture cards rather than analog (which the Replay 4000 is using) primary to get better quality. The high-end digital capture cards are now all CableCARD ready, which I thought I would need to capture a digital signal. It turns out there are a couple things you should know about CableCARDs:
So currently, I don’t have any CableCARDs installed, I receive 80 analog channels and 15 digital HD channels. The broadcast format for those channels is called Clear QAM since they are not encrypted. I believe they match what’s freely broadcast in the area. Unfortunately, there’s more DRM hiding in the mix.
It turns out that both analog and digital broadcasts can include a “copy protection bit” which also prevents the recording from being watched on another PC. Here’s where things get interesting. This copy protection bit was ignored by VMC until TV Pack 2008 was released. With this update, files are now recorded in WTV format rather than the DVR-MS format which was previously used (this is the default for Windows 7 MC as well). So not only are many of the recordings copy protected, but all the slick plugin utilities such as ShowAnalyzer and Comskip only understand the DVR-MS format. Even though Windows 7 includes a wtv2dvrms converter, and one is available with the DVRMSToolbox, neither will work on copy protected or CableCARD encrypted files.
So far the shows I’ve found to have the copy protection bit have been somewhat random. House, Southland and Breaking Bad (all from different networks) have been consistently protected, while other HD shows have not.
So luckily, I didn’t sell my Replay TV yet, so I can still get all the offline shows I want there. If Comcast does turn off all analog signals, which they are threating to do, then I’ll need to set up their free DTA with an IR blaster. I could replicate this same setup on my VMC, but then why have the digital capture cards in the first place? The interesting question is whether Comcast will encrypt all digital channels when they finally turn off analog or will channels 35-80 be broadcast in Clear QAM? Check out number 31 on this FAQ which implies they will. You can see more of my rant on thegreenbutton along with some comments from Fred Von Loman of the EFF.
The bottom line is, no one at Comcast can give a straight answer, so we just won’t know until it happens. I’m sure I’ll be back ranting at that time.
mp
