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Time Warner Cable – Digital Cablecard Install Part 3

Jason — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:43:15 +0000

I have been delinquent in posting parts one and two of my quest for digital cablecards with Time Warner Cable here in Austin, TX…but, they weren’t very exciting anyway. Then again, part three really wasn’t very exciting, but things are looking better.

Cablecard Install Part I

Part One was actually an eye opener for me. I arrived in town on a Tuesday (I think, it is all a blur right now). I called TWC on Wednesday and ordered the triple-play (or whatever they call it here) bundle. The dude on the phone said they could have someone out some time the following week. I asked him if there was a way to do it sooner and he said he could have someone out tomorrow probably if I paid the first month with a credit card over the phone…DISCO.

Cablecard Install Part II

Part Two was the next day when a very nice, name undisclosed, installer showed up at the house. He is a super nice guy, but I am not sure he is playing with a full deck…and that is not to say that he was crazy, just that he might only be working with 4 of 8 cylinders. He only had multi-stream cards with him and my Hitachi plasma needs a single stream card and the ATI DCT (Digital Cable Tuner) that I have needs a single stream card as well.

It was cool because the reality is, the only piece of equipment I had was the plasma…the rest was scheduled to arrive the next day. I followed up with “the installer dude” the following week and that is when it got kind of crazy. I don’t want to disclose exactly what happened over a series of 4 phone calls, but suffice it to say that I was seriously considering calling up the main shop and telling them about what had transpired with “the installer dude.” Fortunately for us, he is on vacation now and I was re-scheduled for the following Tuesday (today) because as it turns out, they were out of single stream cablecards.

Cablecard Install Part III

Part Three kicks off with my phone call into TWC this morning to find out what my window was for the installer. It turns out they don’t use windows, they just give you a one hour “heads up” before the installer is going to be at your house. Well, I get a call from “the 2nd installer dude” today around 11:30am and he tells me that he is going to have to reschedule the install appointment until tomorrow because the only tuning adapters they have in the warehouse are refurbished and according to him, “they never seem to work right.” So, yeah, I don’t want those. We’ll see in Part 4 (aka: tomorrow) if they are going to have all of the equipment needed to make this install happen after 3 weeks.

Time Warner Cable Tuning Adapter – Austin, TX

Jason — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:06:01 +0000

In anticipation of Project “A” (you’ll never guess), I have been looking into who provides cable service in Austin….drumroll…..Time Warner Cable. That is good news for me as I have been dealing with Comcast ever since I moved up to the Bay Area from San Diego…I never had any issues with TWC in San Diego…knock on wood. Now, I am ready to jump back onto the MCE train after a number of years cooling off. For those of you who have been messing with MCE since the beginning, you know my frustration. Anyway, since it looks like things are all good (kinda) I found the order form page where you can supposedly request a tuning adapter for your ATI cablecard tuner MCE box (at the bottom of the page, right below where it says the ATI digital cable tuner is SUPPORTED). Enjoy.

Time Warner Cable – Digital Cablecard Install Part 3

Windows 7 Family Pack Upgrade

Jason — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:57:02 +0000

Looking to get something for that geek in your life? How about the Windows 7 Family Pack Upgrade from the Microsoft Store? This little bad boy will allow your dork to upgrade 3 Windows XP or Vista machines to Windows 7 Home Premium (it has the television stuff). Free shipping right now makes the $149 price tag a no brainer. Get on it.

Wordpress Upgrade

Remote Speaker Switcher

Jason — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:32:57 +0000

File this under serious geekery. Check out the serious home automation geekery at HACS.

Tivo Series 2 – Lifetime Subscription

Jason — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:30:00 +0000

It is a sad day here in the Golod household. I put my faithful Tivo Series 2 DVR with lifetime subscription up for sale on eBay. I have not used the Tivo in many moons, mostly because I became a big backer of Microsoft’s Media Center Edition platform and more recently of the Comcast HD DVR. I think the interface on the Comcast DVR is poop and I still don’t understand why more DVR manufacturers don’t simply mimic the functionality that Tivo DVRs provide….it is not like they are new to the market. Anyway, my Tivo Series 2 box has worked flawlessly over the years and Tivo does not sell lifetime subscriptions anymore, making these things worth quite a bit of money. But, if you are a big fan of Tivo, then it is really the only way to go. If I were sticking with the Tivo deal (I really don’t watch much television anymore), then I would be buying boxes with lifetime subscriptions rather than a new box and paying $12+/mo for each.

[tags]Tivo, Series 2, Lifetime Subscription[/tags]

Going Thin Client with Ubuntu

Jason — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 23:23:01 +0000

Well, I have been having computer chaos over here lately. My main workstation also acts as a Media Center PC or HTPC (Home Theater PC to some) has been acting up lately. I think the recent upgrade to Norton Internet Security along with dumb ass AOL 9.0 Security Edition (for proxy purposes) install are working to kill the machine. I recently put together a small Shuttle XPC Pentium 4 system together to run Windows Media Center Edition 2005 and serve as a Tivo (DVR/PVR) type device for the living room television. However, the Shuttle XPC box, while small and super quiet, is simply not up to the task of capturing and streaming video content. Sooo, I spent a couple of hours yesterday figuring out what the heck I need to do around here to get things working well and to figure out what I need to get all of the machines I will be needing up and running.

I am setting up shop with a good friend and will need a thin-client machine to connect to a to-be-built Windows Small Business Server 2003 machine (which I also have to build on something). I have decided that I am going to try out a little barebones box that comes with a Via CPU from ASUS. The little fellow looks pretty slick and I am going to try and run Ubuntu Linux on it and use RDesktop to remotely log into the SBS2003 machine. The Asus box is only $75 at Newegg and should be here this week. I ordered two and I am planning on running the other one as my dev Linux box. I am going to just swap the Debian Linux drive from my existing Shuttle XPC P4 linux box and hope that it works right out of the gates. If not, I may just run Ubuntu on that little fella as well.

This frees up a P4 box to serve as the Windows Small Business Server 2003 box and I have a 160GB drive coming to install that on. I don’t forsee any problems with the Shuttle box running SBS2003 and serving a few clients simultaneously. It has 1GB of RAMskies in there and hopefully that will be enough.

When all of this is said and done and the dust has settled, I will order up some parts to build a new, AMD 64bit proc based, Media Center box that will probably run the RC1 release of Windows Vista to give it a whirl. This thing will be built in a Chenming 901AD case that can easily handle the 10TB of SATA drive space I am going to put in there. I still have to do some reading on the 64bit AMD processors, but I figure I will give them a whirl on the new box. Once that is built, I will make the old living room MCE 2005 box into my workstation. I am not sure if I am going to go with Ubuntu on that or not. We’ll see how the first one goes. This will then free up the original MCE 2005 box, that serves the bedroom Hitachi Ultravision plasma television, to be rebuilt and have MCE2005 reinstalled.

So, stay tuned for some good old fashioned geekery in the weeks ahead.

[tags]MCE, Media Center PC, Media Center Edition, Ubuntu, Linux, Microsoft, HTPC[/tags]

Logitech Harmony 880 Remote Control

Jason — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 17:10:39 +0000

How cool is the Harmony 880 universal remote control by Logitech? For the money, I don’t think you can touch it with a stick. Let’s face it, all of us geeks have too much A/V equipment in our homes and the wife wants to crack us over the head with all of the remotes that we require to run it. The answer has always been there, a slick universal remote that has fully programmable macros so that we can hit one button and a sequence of 5 or 6 button pushes are simulated changing inputs, sources and lowering the lights. Unfortunately, in the past these remotes have been very expensive and trying to see if they will work for you was a dicey proposition.

Well, I was running through my RSS feeds this morning and noticed that Dell has a deal on the Harmony 880. So, I looked around to try and find a review. First of all, can someone tell CNet to stop clogging up all of the search engine results pages with BS reviews. I just went to their site, because it came up #2 on Google and watched a video of some editor at a trade show talking about the remote. That is cool, but there is no real info on what the remote can do. I did find a great review of the Harmony 880 at Digitaltrends however. So, if you are wondering what to get a geek for his or her birthday this year on July 29th, you might want to head over to SlickDeals and follow the instructions to get it for $99 at Dell.

Microsoft Streets and Trips 2006

Jason — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 17:44:35 +0000

Ok, so yesterday my new little USB GPS receiver shows up and of course I go into full geek mode. I pulled out the IBM X20 (the best thin-client laptop platform ever made IMHO) and plugged it in. I fired up MS AutoRoute 2006 and once I configured the GPS receiver with the software I saw a red bullseye on San Francisco. Cool! So, I click the zoom in button and no love. WTF? Well, apparently AutoRoute 2006 can tell you that you are in San Francisco, but it is not going to tell you any more than that. So, I jumped on line and found that for $30, after $10 rebate, I can pick up MS Streets and Trips 2006 at Best Buy. So, I gathered up all of my stuff (laptop, GPS receiver, etc) and hopped into the Tahoe for the trip down to Best Buy. Yes, I did say that AutoRoute 2006 did not show me much street-level detail, but that wasn’t going to stop me from seeing what it would show me!
Here is a picture (from my Nokia 6620) of what the AutoRoute 2006 screen looked inside my Tahoe when stopped at Bush and Van Ness. Not the best picture, but if you look close enough, you can see that it only is showing a big bullseye on San Francisco. Of course, I had to fire up the Bluetooth connection to the Nokia 6620 and see what my blog looked like while on the road. So the second picture is of this place. Yes, I am a dork.

So, I make it to Best Buy, and get in line to purchase MS Streets and Trips 2006. Best Buy is pretty messed up for one simple reason. Of the four people checking people out, two only take debit or credit cards. Now, I was going to pay cash, but after letting 4 people go by (actually, three and one donkey who didn’t actually listen to why he was passing me standing at the front of the line) I just ended up paying with a debit card. What the hell is that all about? Stores don’t accept dollars anymore? So, anyway, I hop into the Tahoe and load the new Streets and Trips 2006 software via the docking station that I brought along. After about 5 minutes, the software was loaded up, the little security guard in the parking lot had walked by 3 times and I had a big smile on my face. I fired it up, config’d the GPS receiver and boom there I was on the screen. Of course, I did not get a pic of this screen because I was too ADD, but I will get some good pics with the Rebel to put up here.

There were a couple of issues right off the bat. First, I am running Windows 2000 Pro on the X20 and apparently there is no Text-to-Speech component that gets installed by default like in Windows XP. That was not a big deal as I found one when I got home for free on the Microsoft Reader website. But, that did mean that Streets and Trips 2006 would not be able to bark driving commands at me while en route. Second, I could not figure out how to get the system to go back to my current location. I punched in my home address and then I could not get back. I ended up figuring out that if you turn on the GPS tracking, it automatically takes you back. But, there should be a button to do that in one step so that I can make routes more easily. There must be an easier way to do this that I have not figured out yet. Aside from that, things worked right out of the box.

Some Features I Like

Some of the things I like in MS Streets and Trips 2006 are the “Find Nearby Places” function and the Driving Guidance feature (voice). The Find Nearby Places function allows you to select the types of places you would like to see displayed with a colored icon on your routes and maps. Restaurants are broken down by cuisine type, although there is no way to differentiate fast-food type places other that selecting “other” as a restaurant type. I need to figure out how to find and plot all of the In ‘n Out Burger locations and set them up as a restaurant type. Everything from hospitals to wineries come stock in MS Streets and Trips 2006…very cool. The other feature I really like is the Driving Guidance feature. Visual as well as voice prompts are available to you, as long as you have a Text to Speech engine that is speech API (SAPI) 5.1 compliant. I downloaded the free Microsoft Reader TTS engine and it worked right out of the gates. I did try to add some more voices (there are much better ones that you can buy for around $30 a piece) that I found in some MS SAPI 5.1 SDK, but it made the Voice Guidance say “blah” for every word…pretty funny. For now, I am using the “Michelle” voice and she sounds pretty good if you speed her up a bit.

Things I Don’t Like About Streets and Trips 2006

Well, I have not used it much, but there are a couple of things I have noticed about S&T 2006 that I am not fond of. First, there should be a button to add my current location (if GPS enabled) to any route planning I do. That seems like common sense to me. Second, if you don’t use the route S&T plots for you, it does not seem to want to re-route itself to get you to your location. I know most in-car GPS (if not all) does this, not sure why MS Streets and Trips does not do that also. I may have to read more on this, but it doesn’t seem to re-route on its own or prompt me.

System Requirements for Streets and Trips 2006

Here are the basic system requirements for a full install (which means you don’t have to use the CD ROM discs for anything):

1.1GB of free disc space
At least 256MB of RAM – (my x20 currently has 192MB of RAM in it and Task Manager showed the system was using 208MB during normal use at home). In a simulated route from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe, the system took some time to display “points of interest” along the way due to the lack of RAM. I have some more on order, so I will see how that goes.
Min 1024×768 resolution display (or you won’t get a lot of the buttons to display)

Not required, but I think the bigger the screen the better for this program. There are a few panes that can be displayed at any given time. But, if you want it to be like a normal in-car GPS system, then you are going to want to have 3 running at once (at least two). I have a 14.1″ screen running at 1024×768 resolution and it is pretty good. I would not want to go any smaller.

Conclusion

At this point, I don’t think you can beat this setup for the money. The USB GPS receiver cost $70 delivered and MS Streets and Trips is $30 after rebate. I don’t know how you can beat that deal for a hundo. What this has made me realize that the CarPC deal is really where it is at. Just not sure how you get a large screen up in the front of the car without having to do some serious modification to the dash.

Additional Resources

Microsoft Reader Text to Speech Engine – Free. Get voice for people not running XP. Note: You have to use IE to activate it (FireFox won’t work…shocker)

Microsoft SAPI 5.1 API – May help you add more voices and does have some cool text-to-speech functionality as well as voice recognition.

Microsoft Streets and Trips 2006 Website

Streets and Trips 2006 Tips and Tricks – Great tips and tricks and setup options

Tuscany GPS Waypoints

Jason — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 23:27:59 +0000

Life is grand when you are a geek. So, in planning out some of our travels for the honeymoon in Tuscany, I have been fortunate enough to receive advice from many different sources on places to eat and drink at. Everything from wineries to hit in Montalcino and Montepulciano to restaurants in the surrounding areas. But, using the Michelin map of Italy to find the hotels we are staying at, navigating out of Rome and figuring out where the hell we are going, doesn’t seem like a good idea. So, of course I figured I could use Google Earth and some kind of GPS receiver to map things out and help us to navigate our way around Italy’s finest winemaking region.

So, I picked up a copy of Microsoft AutoRoute 2006, which is like Microsoft Street Altas, but for the entire world. I have a small, USB GPS receiver coming today and my Thinkpad X20 laptop (3.3lbs baby) that are going to serve as my homegrown in-car GPS system. At first I thought I was too much of a dork to do this, but then I figured we would probably never be too lost. Plus, this is something that other geeks who are really into wine will likely enjoy having when traveling to Tuscany in the future.

So far I have run in to a few snags. For one, the Italians format their addresses funny. That was easy enough to figure out, but some of the roads that these wineries and estates are on, are probably not known to anyone that lives outside of the small towns they reside in. So, the AutoRoute2006 software is really not a perfect deal. But, it does know about 50% of them. I have been using the Michelin map, AutoRoute 2006 and Google Earth to figure out where a lot of these places are (kinda). Of course, I just opened our latest Wine Enthusiast magazine and they just happen to be covering the latest Brunellos. So, it looks like I have my work cut out for me.

The whole point of this post was to see if anyone has some GPS waypoints for Tuscany that I can take a look at. If you have some or know of a good resource online, let me know. I have been looking for a few days now and figured I would appeal to the geek squad to see what I can come up with. Also, any ideas on navigation in Italy is welcomed as well.

Google Moves into Pay Per View

Jason — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 19:14:33 +0000

Just read over at the Google blog that the Google Video team is making their move into Pay Per View video. You missed cry baby Kobe score 81 points the other night? No worries, you can watch the Lakers vs. Raptors game on demand…you just have to pony up $3.95. Who said content wasn’t king?

Jason Golod Blogs » Home Media

Time Warner Cable – Digital Cablecard Install Part 3

Cablecard Install Part I

Cablecard Install Part II

Cablecard Install Part III

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