iPhone Tethering Finally August 1st, 2010
AT&T finally made iPhone tethering available for subscribers to it’s wireless service, once Apple’s iPhone operating system iOS4 was released.
What’s tethering? That’s hooking your iPhone (or other wireless device) to your notebook computer so you can use the iPhone’s data service as a wireless modem for your computer.
One “problem” – previous iPhone users had unlimited data service for $29.95 per month. Apple has discontinued that for new subscribers. Also, if you want to change to their new 2GB/month data service ($25/month) or their 200MB/month data service ($15/month), you can never change back to the unlimited service.
Tethering is a special version of the 2GB/month data service – 2GB/month+tethering is $45 per month.
I finally signed up for it and am waiting for it to activate.
Get:
iPhone Tethering — Waiting on AT&T November 15th, 2009
I sure could have used “tethering” on my iPhone last Wednesday eveninng. I rushed home from the office so I could watch LSU play Texas in the College World Series final game.
As soon as I parked, my neigbor popped out of her house to warn me that the power was off. We’ve had no rain for about 2 months, but a storm with lightning rolled through late in the afternoon, and it knocked out the electricity service to my neighborhood.
If AT&T offered tethering for the new iPhone GS, I would have been one of the million customers who bought an iPhone GS during its first weekend. Then, I could have watched the game — or at least kept up with it — from my notebook computer.
Continue reading iPhone Tethering — Waiting on AT&T
Digital Video Recorder or Home Theater PC? July 5th, 2007
Subscriber Bill DePierri wrote recently to ask about using a PC to record television. I’m already doing that with my home theater pc, which Bill has seen:
Terry:We recently got a Cox DVR. It is pretty clunky with little flexibility. This got me to thinking about your comments about your PC-based DVR’s, especially since I have an old Dell machine that is about to go out to pasture.
This machine is a Dell Pentium 4 with a 2 GHz Intel processor. The computer has 8K of primary cache and 512 K of secondary cache. It has a 100 MHz bus, 1GB of RAM and two 80GB Disc Drives (EIDE).
If I made the conversion to a TV recorder, I would purchase at least one large (500GB?) drive and install it in the computer.
Questions:
1. Does this machine have enough power to handle one channel of video recording?
…
Continue reading Digital Video Recorder or Home Theater PC?
HTPC Software May 7th, 2007
Rather than focus on the standard features of SageTV, which have been covered in many reviews and on the SageTV site, I’ll show some of the modifications I like.
One features I really like about SageTV is the ability to use different menu layouts and even additional functions. Don’t get me wrong, the SageTV program is a fantastic program. The original menu layout is very intuitive and not cluttered. But, we all have a few things we’d like to see…. Some of these changes are implemented in the the recent version 2.1 of SageTV.
Frey Technologies has a program called SageTV Studio, which is currently still in limited beta status. Several of the folks who are using Studio have released some fantastic additions to the great base product. One of the more prominent ones today is that of Nielm, a SageTV enthusiast in Belgium.
The modified main menu screens that are part of Cayars’ “STV” package are good examples. In addition to his own improvements in his STV layout, Cayars has included many of the modifications of other gurus. (If you’re still running version 2.0, Nielm has a similar STV, on which Cayars’ is based). Cayars’ and Nielm’s setups actually have additional menus that are not part of the base SageTV product. This is how they get enough visible selections to allow the new features. Even better, the menu files that control these menus and functions is editable by the user — so we can change the labels, delete items, add more, or change them.
As you can see from these screens, some of the functions are moved from the original positions or screens. More importantly, there are new features. The “Information” link takes you to a page where you can see the local weather and weather forecast. “Stop Playback” is a function that lets you close a file that is playing — this is important because SageTV can show the current program in a window on the SageTV screen or as a background behind the window, in addition to showing it in the normal viewing window.
At the bottom of the screen, this screen shows the program currently being recorded. That display also scrolls to show those programs scheduled to be recorded in the near future. At the bottom right corner is a view of available hard disk space, showing available space and space to be taken in the next 48 hours schedule. Cayars’ STV allows this disk space display to be at the very top of the screen, allowing additional space and information.
Home Theater PC – the hardware March 10th, 2007
Simply, it’s standard PC, including an AMD Athlon XP 2500+, an Abit AN-7 motherboard, a cheap video card with S-Video Out, hard drives, DVD drive and three Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250 TV encoding cards and one PVR-150..
My HTPC case case is a standard Antec tower case. This is not designed for the HTPC service.
For extra air flow (I have 4 TV tuner cards plus a heat-sinked video card), I added an Antec Cyclone slot fan, but that’s a pretty noisy solution — not motor or bearing noise, but the noise of moving the air. Also, the Antec Cyclone fan only lasted about 4 months before the bearing went out. Not satisfactory. I replaced it with a brand-X similar slot fan which has performed quietly and well. Imagine that…
The motherboard decision was made in concert with the processor decision. I’m a fan of the AMD Athlon XP processor because of its price compared to comparable Intel processors. The processor decision alone saved me a couple hundred dollars. I’ve used Abit motherboards for both AMD and Intel processors. Abit has a history of releasing new BIOS flashes for their motherboards, so I would be able to do some upgrading later.
Read more in Home Theater PC, part 2
Home Theater PC March 5th, 2007
After running multiple video cassette recorders for years, drooling over the TiVo® advertisements, and hearing the praise heaped on TiVo by relatives, I decided to build my own version — a Home Theater PC (HTPC). Why, you might ask?
Well, it goes like this: The Fun of building an HTPC. The Challenge. Flexibility. Storage space. No monthly service fee. Video streaming across my network. Higher (and lower) video quality options. My hard drives. System maintenance. Easy software upgrades. Let’s just say, I build my own PCs and it fit my needs.
So, I started reading. First, the biggest question was “what type of HTPC software do I need?” After that, came the issues of the HTPC case and the other HTPC hardware, such as the TV-encoding cards. The TV card comes third because, while there are few manufacturers of TV cards suitable for Home Theater PC’s and personal video recorders, the selection of software may (and does) narrow the choices dramatically.
The two big alternatives were Sage Technologies’ SageTV® and Snapstream’s BeyondTV®. Snapstream’s product was the older of the two and had gone through several generations (they recently released version 3.5). SageTV was a relative newcomer with some significant unique capabilities. Both had large followings, but I liked the SageTV forums and the support and camaraderie exhibited there. Both products had free, time-limited trial versions available.
For my Home Theater PC, I chose SageTV for my HTPC softare because SageTV would support multiple video capture cards. That was the deciding factor for me. (Beyond TV v3.5 added this ability for cards with hardware-encoders). Although I would start with only one card, I expected to expand my system. My HTPC now has three!
Casino Royale Review November 25th, 2006
Sean Connery personified James Bond, until he stretched Bond into late middle age. Timothy Dalton, well, the less said, the better. Roger Moore was a shot back to the old Bond, but just seemed to rely too much on contrivance, gadgets and visual jokes. Pierce Brosnan was a marvel in the classic Bond style, until he, too, out-aged the persona. Of course, somewhere in there was David Niven as Bond in the often ignored (and rightly so) previous spy movie spoof called “Casino Royale.”
Daniel Craig, the new James Bond, in his first picture has brought new life to this franchise. Not the pretty-boy of recent bonds, Craig brings a cragged and, dare I say it, ugly visage to the role of James Bond. And…it works perfectly!
Dame Judith Dench, while perfect in her M role in earlier films, set a new standard for the role in this one. Dame Judith has dropped the “Dame Judith” from her screen name, and now goes by the simple Judi Dench, presumably the benefit of the huge U.S. following of the Bond films.
Set in the early days of James Bond’s MI6 career, we see him become the James Bond of legend. Tough, no-nonsense, violence when appropriate (and it’s appropriate quite a few times in this film), Bond gets things done.
While we see Bond with a 1964 Aston Martin, it’s a world of cellphones, text messages, laptop computers and tiny tracking devices. In other words, the 1960′s Bond of Sean Connery updated to today’s technologies. No cute devices from Q. Just Bond against the bad guys…
I didn’t read any reviews of the movie before going. I did check the Rotten Tomatoes site to find out when it was showing at my neighborhood theater, so I saw that it had a 95% rating from the reviewers (reviewers rate “fresh” or “Rotten”). I think that’s the best rating that I’ve seen at RT.
After seeing it, I know why. I’ll say “Fresh” too.
If you haven’t seen it, plan to see it tonight, tomorrow or next weekend. This is NOT one for which waiting for the DVD is a good choice. The big screen is a necessary part of the adventure.
Certainly I’ll buy the DVD. The question is whether or not I’ll go back to see it before it leaves the 1st-run theaters.
The Hummingbird, part 3 November 7th, 2006
And, a few more pictures of the hummingbird we fed after Hurricane Katrina…
The Hummingbird, part 2 November 6th, 2006
More pictures of the hummingbird we fed after Hurricane Katrina…
The Hummingbird October 30th, 2006
After Hurricane Katrina, we had a huge number of hummingbirds visit our house. Perhaps this was because we still had a feeder available.
We had one problem, though. We had been remodelling and our sun porch, which previously had clear plexiglass as “windows” did not have any windows at the time.
Unfortunately, the hummingbirds saw the relatively shady area with plants and decided to visit. When they wanted to leave, however, they tried to get out the skylight — and, of course, they couldn’t. We lost several before I was able to get some fiberglass screening and close in the sun porch temporarily.
This hummingbird almost made it…