Engadget HD Podcast 122 - 02.11.2009
By Trent Wolbe 
posted February 10th 2009 11:30PM
posted February 10th 2009 11:30PM
Plenty of things happened this past week in HD, but one thing that won't be happening is a February DTV transition; we gripe about the fourth month delay and wonder what our politicians were thinking. The bad news kept coming as rumors of Pioneer's exit from the TV market swirled this week. It'll be sad if Kuros fade to black, but we'll keep hope alive that some manufacturers will still cater to crazies who pursue ultimate image quality. That might fit in well with the predicted "Golden Era" that analysts are calling for Blu-ray in 2014-2017. We talk a little Blu-ray and Netflix streaming before diving into Media Center news. As usual, the Media Center talk gets pretty technical, but we wouldn't have it any other way. We manage to wrap up on a more universal note -- discrete IR codes -- you'll know (and curse) if you don't have them, so everyone should be informed on this cornerstone to robust automation.Get the podcast
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Hosts: Ben Drawbaugh and Steve Kim
Producer: Trent Wolbe
00:55 - Comments from Engadget HD Podcast 121 - 02.04.2009
12:09 - The DTV transition delay could end up costing over $500 million
14:23 - Stations can still yank analog plug this month, though many won't
18:45 - Latest Nielsen figures put DTV unreadiness at 5.1%
20:54 - Pioneer reportedly ending TV production, spinning off DVD business
26:49 - The State of Home Video study predicts a Blu-ray Golden Era of 2014-17
30:27 - Panasonic drops the axe on DMP-BD35 Blu-ray player
33:33 - NPD Group says discs don't have to fear downloads... yet
35:47 - Xbox Live tallies 1 million Netflix Watch Instantly activations, 1.5 billion minutes served
39:57 - VUDU permanently cuts retail price of movie set-top-box in half
47:20 - Windows 7 gets Hauppauge HD-PVR support via 3rd party
51:22 - Automatic commercial skipping is a go for Media Center in Windows 7
56:52 - HD 101: Discrete IR codes
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Beta versions of comskip and sa both support h.264 scanning, so the problem with wtv is strictly a container issue.
MS hasn't (and may intentionally never) document the wtv container, so it will need to be reverse engineered before native support will work. There is one other option (I was pushing for this one) that I'm aware of. It should be possible to implement a custom directshow sink filter that would receive the a/v streams from the wtv container directly (essentially what you're doing when converting to dvr-ms, but in memory) which would then pass the data to the analyzer. The downside to this approach is that dshow isn't really suited to this kind of usage so speed and accuracy will suffer.
There are over 16 million 360s sold in the US.
The only problem with Panasonic/Samsung plasmas is the lack of 72 Hz.
I appreciate you guys bringing it up. I currently use the
LaCie Ethernet Disk mini - Home
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10994
To store my media and it's built in DLNA server.
So my files get backuped on a scheduled nightly to the NAS and it's available on the PS3 to be viewed or to be copied to the drive.
I don't think anyone is asking you to like the system or it's functions but listening to the amount of money you spend to try out devices, and your feedback is valued so include all of the products on the market. This way if there are products out there that you demo that work well with the system we'll hear it about it from the podcast\source we go to for tech advice. I like listening to all of the items you're talking about, and I would appreciate hearing how you would use the features on the PS3. It's currently the center of both of my media centers. I used to use windows media center but now that I'm buying blu-ray the PS3 was an easy choice. After using it and seeing the features it offers, it's hard to believe that tech guys like you don't even experiment with it. Especially since it covers all the topics you mention Blu-ray, Downloads, Pictures, Video, DLNA wireless and wired networking etc..
Podcasts usually are the opinions of the hosts and they talk about what they want, but you guys have gotten to the point where you have to dip into those items that your audience it interested so we can get the feedback from the podcast we trust.
Simply saying you don't want to is somewhat lame, especially since you have a vocal audience asking you to look into it.
If you're still set on not trying it I'll leave it be after this.
you guys were talking about pioneer going out the tv business well here is the official article link from pioneers Japanese site: http://tinyurl.com/bpomp9
if the link does not work here is what it said : Pioneer will terminate any further in-house display product development after its products currently available on the market, and withdraw from the display business by March 2010. Recent market conditions have changed far more than initially anticipated, and Pioneer has decided to withdraw from the display business after
concluding that there are no prospects for improving profitability under current
conditions. However, the Company will continue to provide after-sales services even
after the withdrawal.
On the Vudu maintenance issue, there really isn't one. Try an experiment: disconnect your Vudu box from the internet and play a previously purchased title. It will work. There is no dependency on the Vudu network once you've downloaded something.
Painful segment on Netflix on Xbox Live. Video games is not your strong suite guys. Steve was right 1 million in roughly two months is impressive. The 1.5 billion minutes does show that people are using the service and continuing to use it.
And the comparison to Dark Knight is bad. You should judge it against how long it took the first Blu-Ra to reach 1 million.
Discrete IR codes are good and all but I personally think that IR is a thing of the past. I just can't understand why more manufacturers implement rs-232 support and/or control over IP. Even some standardized HDMI CEC functionality would be great.
I think we will see a lot more devices with two way communication support via IP soon, well I hope at least..
Well, just as you are pointing out how "wrong" Ryan was in saying that plasma was on its way out (however slowly) and that LCD would eventually take over the market, he said exactly the same thing on this week's gdgt weekly podcast. His point is not that LCD is better, it is not, but that companies will go where the market is, and that is LCD, at least until another format arises down the road.
And, even since he made the statement back in early January, things do seem to be heading that direction. LCD is dominating market share and plasma seems to be slipping away (just an impression, no numbers in front of me). Peter Rojas seemed to think that plasma would stick around as a minor, niche market.
Ben & Steve,
I enjoyed the podcast as always and thought I'd put in my two cents on the commercial skipping & Hauppauge HD-PVR talk.
As Andy VT pointed out above, comskip and Show Analyzer BOTH work with h.264 - that is not the problem (I use comskip and have tested SA for HD-PVR h.264 files). The problem is that microsoft still won't open up developers like Andy to access the WTV container (similar to DVR-MS) to allow commercial skipping to work without that reverse engineering. So I'm pretty sure MS is still the problem there. And unless MS allows more access to WTV, commercial skipping will always suffer a bit for Windows 7 Media Center - thank goodness Andy is a genius at this stuff.
Regarding the HD-PVR and Windows 7: Hauppauge may need to do some work with the HD-PVR driver to help with support for Windows 7, but they will need significant help from Microsoft for the HD-PVR to work. Its really more on MS to get it working then it is Hauppauge imo. Look at Mac support. Hauppauge did update the driver to help with Mac support, but it involved a lot of work by SageTV devs and later Elgato devs before it worked on the Mac with those software programs & the Mac.
I guess all I'm saying is just because Hauppauge has the driver ready for Windows 7 now, it doesn't mean that Windows 7 will work with it out of the box without MS doing their part - and who knows if Microsoft cares enough to make that happen...
And by the way, I do agree the hack using DVBSBridge does not look easy.
The PBDA driver model in Win7 (introduced with Fiji) is designed to remove much of the need to add specific device support. Because the WTV container supports H.264 and AC-3 (it's also currently possible to stream A/V from ts files created with the HD PVR into a WTV), I expect that Hauppauge could make the HD PVR work with 7MC without MS needing to do anything once they have a PBDA driver.
C'mon, Ben, do some research before you bag on the professionalism of other podcasters. The SatelliteGuys.us podcast has been almost weekly since October of 2007. No, Scott and Bob don't have the polish that you guys do, but they're geeks (the good kind), not copywriters or broadcasters. We love the content that Scott and Bob provide, and forgive them for their lack of training.
I gave them a free plug, and was honest about how I felt about the show. As for research, you mean to tell me that they've only done 6 episodes in over a year and a half? (The 2/10/09 is marked episode 6)
Volume THREE, show six. ;) Thanks for plugging them; I always appreciate your honesty.
Just to follow up on the "future of plasma" controversy that Ryan raised, I just listened to the most recent HDTV and Home Theater podcast (excellent, btw), and they agreed that plasma would be dead within a few years. They say that this is not a good thing, since plasma is better, but the writing is on the wall.
After all the flack that Ryan took for saying that same thing over a month ago, it is looking more and more like he was right and all of those taking him to task were wrong. I think he did get one fact wrong about a news item, but the bigger point he was making seems to have been right on.
Hey Ben and Steve,
I was not sure if you had ever upgraded your mics for the show. A friend of mine just picked up a Zoom H2 Handy Recorder (http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/H2/) and uses it for recording meetings at work. I thought if you both got one of these you could use them and get great sound and allow you to do remote recordings at CES and other events all on one device. Just a thought
C
PS It would be cool if you talked about what software and mics you do use just for us sound geeks, I mean engineers.
Ben,
I thought you might be a good person to try to pull me to VMC. I am a current MythTV user. I am conformable with linux and have my MythBox 100% stable (excluding the HDD failure last week).
Like you said about the Sage vs VMC, Sage just looks boring. I feel the same way about Myth vs VMC.
Right now im downloading VMC off MSDN to give it a spin.
So, here is what i think i want from VMC that I dont get with Myth:
Smooth, Cool looking interface.
Extenders, you can by a DMA2100 for $105 of Amazon! Myth I need about $250 and it needs to be a full PC, Atom 330 + PCI VDPAU video card.
It seems there is not a perfect solution though. Right now I am OTA only. I might wanna get cable some day so but I refuse to spend $1200 on new hardware for a CC OEM. So, that leaves me with HD-PVR. But VMC doesnt support it! Looks like it might be able to work with Win 7 but its still a toss up with the extenders which is a BIG reason i want to switch.
here is the plugins that I use in Myth, does VMC have these? (must have on extenders)
Auto comm skip
Web scheduling
Sources Air2PC and HDHR both OTA.
Export recordings to DVD
Also, is there a way i can import my MPEG2 recordings from Myth into Recorded TV? I hate to loose all that TV!
Thanks,
Mitchell
If I could get OTA HD I would cancel my cable subscription in a heartbeat.
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