chanson

A new version of the Apple TV software is available! And what's more, after updating to Apple TV 2.0.1, I found that I can actually use my YouTube favorites and subscriptions on my Apple TV!

This is great, because I mark videos that I'll want to watch again as favorites, and I have a number of subscriptions set up to interesting videos — like those from the Computer History Museum and Zendulo — that aren't yet available as video podcasts.

YouTube favorites and subscriptions hadn't worked for me in the past because I have a YouTube account that's linked to my Google account — that is, a YouTube account that ends in @gmail.com. After updating to Apple TV 2.0.1, I just had to log out from my YouTube account and log in again, and everything came up just fine.

Dr. Kiki Sanford teaches us on her latest Food Science podcast about chocolate how to definitively pronounce Theobroma Cacao.

I've loved the TEDTalks podcasts for quite a while and I've been catching up on the videos on my Apple TV and iPhone.

It turns out that Pop!Tech has Pop!Casts which are very similar in scope and presentation. And in quality! If you like the one, you will enjoy the other.

Subscribe to the audio or the video — especially if you have an Apple TV, it's a great way to get some interesting and enlightening video content that will look decent (though not necessarily great due to bandwidth limitations) on your big flat screen — content that comes to you almost entirely outside the Big Media distribution system, no less! Check it out.

The next thing I can't wait to see is the Singularity Summit 2007 that was recently held by the Singularity Institute in San Francisco. I waited too long to sign up for it so I didn't get to reserve a space to attend, but I'm sure some interesting material will come out of it and they've said they'll be producing podcasts.

Over the weekend I gave in and ordered an Apple TV. It arrived today, and I set it up tonight.

Henceforth, mini-review centered around the vulgarity uttered while setting up first my Comcast HD DVR many months ago, and my Apple TV tonight.

Comcast HD DVR: Fuck. Shit. Fuck! No, god damn it! Stop! No, wait! Fuck! Shit! Shit! Shit! At this point, I had to take my obviously-quite-used box back and exchange it, as the analog front-end to its tuners was bad and even plain old analog cable looked horrific. Fuck, not again. No, no, no, I'm in fucking Cupertino not Santa Clara! Shit. AAAARGH! Eventually, things settled for a few months into a stream of mediocrity. Then I tried to watch DOOM on HBO HD. What the fuck?! I can't pause?! Because I'm watching fucking HBO HD?! You're joking!

Apple TV: Wow. Wow. Wow. Holy shit! Wow.

It's no wonder now that some people are ditching their cable boxes.

Now that I have this great HDTV, and an HD DVR from Comcast, and a great audio system, a whole bunch of great stuff has been coming out that makes me want to upgrade.

In particular, my receiver only has two component inputs and one component output. No HDMI at all. In the meantime, all of the new stuff I want to get except the Wii — such as an Xbox 360 Elite, a PlayStation 3, and of course an AppleTV — has HDMI output. Even worse, there doesn't seem to be a high-end receiver on the market that has more than three HDMI inputs! I've also run out of optical and coax digital audio inputs on my receiver, though in theory audio can also be sent over HDMI.

There may be a workaround though, at least for video. Octava has some relatively inexpensive multi-port HDMI switches that even support infrared remote control. I may be able to use one of those with all of the HDMI gear to route the video signals straight to my TV, and come up with some other solution for surround audio...

Firefly is wonderful in HD with Dolby 5.1 audio. Thanks, Universal HD!

I'm starting to think I should get an HD-DVD player.

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity…

Is there some meaning to "11:11" that I don't know, perhaps because I'm too old or don't hang out with the right (or wrong) crowd?

I ask because last night I purchased a second album titled 11:11 from the iTunes Store.

The first is by 11:11 by Maria Taylor, after seeing the video for Song Beneath the Song in the QuickTime HD Gallery. (By the way, it looks very nice in full 1080p on a big, flat screen.)

The second is 11:11 by Regina Spektor, whose video for Fidelity I caught last night on HBO Zone. It's also rather good — on a whim, I actually picked up all three of Spektor's albums to listen to in order, because I could stand to listen to something besides trance mixes while I work...

But searching the iTunes Store for "11:11" leads to other interesting things. For example, there are whole bunch of songs titled either 11:11 or Eleven Eleven. Then there are the artists Eleven Eleven and Nicole 11:11 — the latter who has a cover of Ministry's Stigmata (which is only one of the greatest songs ever). And there are even some podcasts with the term in the title!

So, what cultural reference am I missing? I doubt it's anything to do with The Individual Eleven…

My new big, flat screen worked very well last night as a computer monitor. If I sit back on the couch it's just a little tough to use iChat and Xcode, though I suspect an updated prescription for my glasses could fix that. However, sitting forward makes everything just fine for browsing, coding, chatting, whatever. Not only that, but with picture-in-picture, I can have Adult Swim on in the corner of the screen while I hack!

In addition, the screen is so bright I had to turn it down to 75% brightness! I suppose it is 550cd/m^2, and the displays I'm used to are only about 300cd/m^2, so I shouldn't be too surprised. Still, it was impressive next to my MacBook Pro's otherwise-very-bright display.

The next addition is going to have to be a Mac Pro with a nice video card. The combination of a great display and a very fast computer will make it the ultimate gaming and development rig.

I just took delivery on my new big, flat screen today. It's a Westinghouse LVM-42w2 42-inch 1080p monitor. No tuner — Who need one for HD, anyway? — and a 1920 by 1080 LCD panel with performance rivaling those of the Apple Cinema Displays. And lots of useful inputs.

I took delivery and set it up this afternoon to make sure it's all working and, um, wow. It's gorgeous. DVDs look great, and I bet high-definition content looks incredible. Plus, since it has a matte rather than glossy finish on the screen, it's a lot easier to view in my living room with the blinds open (or even closed) while the sun's up.

Tonight, I'll venture up to Fry's and pick up a DVI cable so I can see how usable Xcode is from my couch.

By the way, Appleseed makes for great demo material.

I saw a link somewhere to Peter Seibel's Google TechTalk on Practical Common Lisp on Google Video. If you go to that page and click the "more from this provider" link in the right column, you'll see all of the Google TechTalks that Google has made available online.

It would be nice if Google supported tagging or categorization of videos; that way, it would be easy to find other interesting talks without having to know about one already. Though I suppose it's possible to see them all (plus hopefully only a little unrelated crap) by searching Google Video for Google TechTalks.

There's a reason that QuickTime — and any of the multimedia container formats modeled on it — let a track specify both a sample duration and time scale. It's because over the course of thousands or millions of frames of audio and video, if you aren't sufficiently precise in describing the duration covered by each frame, they will drift and the audio and video will no longer synchronize with each other and become disconcerting to say the least.

In case anyone was wondering: You don't need to letterbox digitally video.

We have these wonderful devices called computers that are really good at this thing called math that can be used to scale and frame video appropriately for whatever playback device you happen to be using, while preserving its aspect ratio.

The newly-introduced iMac brings up memories of a Mac long passed. I never had one, nor even much wanted one, but in 1993 Apple released a machine cleverly designated the Macintosh TV. (Believe it or not, this was a significant improvement over some of its succesors' names.)

The MacTV was a black 68030-based Mac with a built-in 14-inch monitor, an NTSC TV tuner, and an IR remote. Many of the Performa-series Macs that succeeded the MacTV built on its feature set. For example, in 1997 I had a Performa 6220CD on my desk at work. (What was I saying about names?) That Performa had a cable-ready NTSC TV tuner plus composite and S-video input, the ability to watch TV in a window while using other applications, a remote control, and support for optional video output.

The user experience was nowhere near as nice as FrontRow, and there was nothing even remotely like the iTunes Music Store or the iPod.

I had a realization, prompted by an online conversation between some friends: I don't actually need surround sound to enjoy a new receiver.

So I picked up that Sony STR-DE698/B receiver I had decided upon earlier, and got a nice pair of Sony SS-MF550H speakers to go with it. (Thanks to my neighbors Chuck & Judy I was able to get the speakers up to my apartment. There was no way I could have done it myself, it was just too awkward a box...)

It has reasonable room to grow, though it only has two analog HD inputs and no HDMI or DVI. I'm planning on getting some sort of flat-panel or projection HDTV at some point, but not today, and it will probably be my only full digital HD equipment for a while anyway.

I'm also planning on getting the AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express so I can stream straight from iTunes, but in the meantime I've plugged my iPod dock into the analog MD input. That's sufficient for listening to music and podcasts for the moment.

The next addition is likely to be a new TV stand and AV cabinet. My current stand is completely out of room, and I want to get both a TiVo and a center-channel speaker in the near future.

After the stand and center-channel speaker, I've decided that if I can build up my strength to the point where I can carry the box upstairs myself, I'm going to get another pair of Sony 550s and set up 5.0 surround sound. (I really don't need a subwoofer, the bass from the speakers is just fine — especially given that I have neighbors below me.)

It won't be that hard to run the speaker cable, and three-foot-tall floor-standing speakers mean I don't have to worry about speaker stands. Enough of what I watch has 5.1 audio that it'll probably be worthwhile, and I'm already using coax digital audio between my DVD player and my receiver...

So I've been thinking about getting a new receiver and some speakers to go with it. Wait, back up. Really, I've been thinking about getting a receiver.

In my AV setup right now, I just have this little Aiwa LCX-01 bookshelf system that my parents got me as a high school graduation present lo those many years ago. It kicks ass for what it is — particularly its non-suckful tape deck — but its set of inputs is pretty minimal. And lately I've been wanting to listen to more music from my iTunes collection, maybe via an AirPort Express, and I only have one line-in port that's currently connected to my TV.

So I've looked around and I've picked out the Sony STR-DE698/B. It does everything I want and more, has plenty of inputs, does surround sound decoding for all the various standards, and has 7.1 channel output. Of course, that's just a receiver. I also need some speakers.

So I've looked around and I've picked out the Sony SA-VE367T. They sound decent and they're a full 7.1 system, which would be kind of nice. Of course, those are just speakers. I need to mount them.

So I've looked around and I found some speaker stands, since I don't actually want to screw anything into my apartment walls. They come in pairs, which means I'd need three pairs, plus someplace to put the center channel speaker. Of course, my current AV cabinet is kind of cramped as it is, and has a glass front so I can't put the center channel speaker in there. So I need a new AV cabinet.

So I've looked around and I found a couple new AV stands that are reasonable for my current setup and whatever I might have next. And I've realized that this is fast turning from a purchase decision and into a project. A project that I, uh, don't have space for.

Fortunately, my PowerBook has decent speakers and the iPod headphones (which I seem to be accumulating pairs of) are rather nice. And that's a whole lot cheaper than dropping a ton of cash on stereo equipment and then trying to figure out how to make it fit...