Smart TVs - more like stupid TVs

Ok, today's post is more of a rant than anything. If you've even considered buying a TV in the past year than you know that most new TVs are what they call "Smart TVs." Basically the TV is Internet-enabled so you can watch content from the web as well as standard TV programs. At home I own two of these Smart TVs. But in my opinion they should be called "Stupid TVs." The "Internet" feature to these TVs is all but worthless.

When you think of the Internet, there is a ton of great free content to watch. And I'm not just talking about YouTube. Some of the great free sources of content are Hulu, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and PBS. There are a lot more, but with just those 6 there is more free content then you could ever hope to watch. So, how many of these 6 Internet sites do you think you can watch using a Smart TV? The answer is ZERO! It's very frustrating too because you can use a computer and visit all these sites and watch free content all day long. But you cannot use a TV to view free content from these sites.

I don't blame TV manufactures either. The problem is the content providers (the above 6). They have decided in their infinite stupidity that we should not be able to watch this content from our TV (again, despite the fact that we can watch it from a computer, even a computer connected to a TV).

As far as I can tell the only uses for a Smart TV right now are the following:

1. If you have a Hulu Plus, Vudu, Amazon Prime, and/or Netflix accounts (all of which cost money), you can watch that on your TV.
   
2. I have found a single source of free content on my Smart TV, Revision3. Revision3 offers tons of great free programming, all of it is technology/computer related. If you're into that you'll enjoy their content, otherwise this channel won't be for you. My personal favorites are Tekzilla, Hak5, and the Ben Heck Show.
   

Well I'm just hoping these sites will finally realize how arbitrary and stupid their decisions are and allow us to starting watching this content. If not, I may build a HTPC to get around this problem.

DNS servers

I remember back in the day it was common to remember the IP address of at least one DNS server. This was probably back when I used a modem to connect to the Internet, and you would typically enter the IP address of a DNS server manually. Without at least one valid DNS server you might as well not be connected to the Internet because it's nearly impossible to access any sites. But remembering DNS server's IP address is never easy, they always have what appear to be random addresses.

Well good news. Google offers two public DNS server with very easy to remember IP addresses. They are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Hopefully you'll remember this little tidbit of info the next time you need to enter an IP address.

Is the PC dead?

I've seen a lot of news stories and opinion articles lately that say the PC industry is dying. I think because I program on PCs these types of articles rub me the wrong way. Every article like this I've seen, when you read the article in detail it paints a different picture. In every case the PC industry is GROWING year over year. So how do they claim the PC industry is dying? Well their claims are based on the fact that the PC industry isn't growing as fast as it once was, so they are drawing the conclusion that if this continues the PC industry will start to decline. Well no one can predict the future. Certainly the global economy is weak right now, so that could easily explain the slower PC industry growth.

These articles always go on to say that most users are buying tablets and smartphones, and that these devices will eventually replace the PC. I personally find that hard to believe. I would say a desktop/laptop computer has two main uses - leisure and work. Leisure would be activities like playing games, watching videos, surfing the web, etc. I will agree that tablets and smartphones can do these leisure activities just as well as a desktop/laptop computer if not better. And they are portable so you can do it anywhere.

But what about "work." This would be tasks like writing documents, editing files, programming, accounting, etc. This is where tablets and smartphones I think will always fall short. Do you really want to write a 20 page paper on a 7" screen using the keyboard on the screen? Think about it another way. Businesses throughout the world buy millions of desktop/laptop computers for their employees to use. They are far and away the largest consumer of computers, far more than home users. I think that tasks people do on a work computer would not translate well to a tablet/smartphone. So as long as businesses need computers, the industry will continue to grow.

If I had to make a prediction here it would be this. Tablets and smartphones will continue to gain in popularity, especially with home users, and most home users will still buy a computer for home user although these numbers will decline slightly. Finally, I predict that businesses will continue to need mass quantities of computers.

Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) files

In my last post I talked about PNG, the newer lossless image format which I personally think is superior to JPG. Today I wanted to talk about FLAC which is a lossless audio format.

As a general rule, lossless formats do not compress as well as lossy formats. So whereas FLAC will be smaller than the raw WAV file, it will not be as small as an MP3 or OGG. From what I've seen a good rule of thumb is a FLAC file will be about 50% the size of the original WAV. Compare that to MP3 and OGG which will be about 10% the original size. Or another way of looking at it is FLAC will be about 5 times larger than an MP3 / OGG.

If you read my last post, you know I liked the PNG format because you could see the lost image quality even in JPGs saved at 100%. So for me to recommend FLAC over MP3 / OGG there has to be a noticeable difference in audio quality. Unfortunately I cannot "show" you the difference as I can with images, you'll just have to download audio samples and have a listen. That said, I personally couldn't really tell a difference between FLAC and MP3 / OGG. I suspect that it really comes down to A) what the source material is and B) how good your speakers are. The same would be true of images. Most images you cannot see the "noise" in the JPG when saved at 100%. But certain images, such as my sample image with text, the issues with quality were apparent. So I'm guessing the same is true of audio files. Some audio samples you'll have to try very hard to hear a difference, whereas other audio samples the difference will be apparent. Given this, and the fact that MP3 / OGG are noticeably smaller than FLAC, my preference is to stick with MP3 / OGG for most applications.

Even through FLAC didn't win for me, it's still a nice format to have around. There are instances where I will use it, and since it's a totally free codec you don't have to worry about legal issues. One final note I'll mention for all you people out there who listen to your music on Apple devices. Apple has their own proprietary audio format called Apple Lossless. Both formats are lossless, but FLAC is definitely better. FLAC encodes and decodes the music in less than half the time, and the end file is a few percentage points smaller than Apple.

Portable Network Graphics (PNG) files

In the world of computers there are dozens if not hundreds of image formats. So many that I'm not even going to try and list them. But in terms of the Internet, relatively few formats are commonly supported. In fact it seems as if there are 3 main image formats; GIF, JPG, and PNG. I wanted to look more closely at these formats and try and learn more and the PNG format.

GIF
One of the first, if not the first, image format on the Internet is GIF. In the early days of the Internet, most people connected to the Internet via a slow 2400 or 9600 baud modem. So keeping file sizes small was very important. The GIF format uses a palette of 256 colors, so file sizes are pretty small. GIF does support transparencies (a single alpha channel) as well as animations.

JPG
The JPG format has undoubtedly become the king of image formats, both on and off the Internet. The JPG format uses lossly compression to achieve some pretty good compression ratios. I don't think JPG supports transparencies, nor does it support animations.

PNG
The newest format to come along is PNG. Like JPG, this format supports full color, but unlike JPG it uses a lossless compression so image quality is not compromised. Also, PNG has full alpha channel support, not just a single channel as with GIF. So really, you can think of PNG as the best of the two formats.


But how do the three formats compare? I created a sample image using GIMP. It's a gradient from blue to red on top, pure white on the bottom, and some sample text in the middle. Let's have a look at the image in the different formats.

GIF:

If you look closely at the GIF file you can see it dithered the image down to 256 colors. This is especially evident in the red part of the gradient. This would be even more evident if the original image had more colors. The GIF file is fairly small at 16KB.

JPG (80%):

The JPG saved at 80% quality looks really bad around the text. It's easy to see the compression has lost image data in order to get the file size down. This file is 6KB in size.

JPG (90%):

Whereas the JPG saved at 90% looks better, you can still see the loss in image quality. This file is 8KB in size.

JPG (100%):

The JPG saved at 100% looks pretty good. Unless you look really close you cannot see the loss of image quality. This file is 21KB in size.

PNG:

The PNG file is absolutely perfect. You cannot see any quality issues in the image because there are none to be seen. This is pixel for pixel identical to the original image. The PNG file is the largest at 31KB.


Let's have a closer look at these images:

I've enlarged the images 300%. You can clearly see the loss of image quality in the JPG 80% and 90%. The JPG at 100% looks good, until you compare it to the PNG below it. The PNG image is crisp and clear whereas the JPG is blurry.


Conslusions:
When the PNG format started gaining in popularity, I'll admit that I avoided it. Anytime I downloaded an image that was in the PNG format I converted it to JPG. After all, JPG is the king of image formats. But having seem the loss of image quality, even in a JPG saved at 100%, I now see the benefit to the PNG format. Add to that the full support for alpha channel and the decision is clear to me. The PNG format is a better format than the venerable JPG format. For only a slight increase in size you gain lossless compression and full alpha channel support.

Router firmware: Tomato

In my last post I mentioned 3rd-party firmwares for your wireless router. I wanted to talk a little more in depth about Tomato which is the router firmware I'm currently using. In the research I've done, DD-WRT is the most popular 3rd-party firmware, and it may even have the most features. However, most people who've tried both say they prefer Tomato. I personally haven't tried DD-WRT, so take what I say here with a grain of salt.

I wanted to show you some of the cooler features of Tomato. One of my favorite features is the router will display other nearby routers and the channel they are using. This will allow you to select a channel that has the least traffic and thereby eliminate or reduce conflicts. In the following screenshot, at the bottom you can see the list of other wireless routers. There are 3 APs (access points, a.k.a. wireless routers) on channel 1, six on channel 6, and one on channel 11. This makes it easy to pick the best channel for my area.


This next screenshot shows the bandwidth graphs. You can view graphs for real-time as well as 24 hour traffic, and totals for daily, weekly, and monthly. Useful if you need to track your usage, and just cool to look at.


On the advanced wireless page you can set things like "Afterburning" which is a burst protocol to increase wireless throughput, and increase the transmission power. The default was 42 mW, I increased mine slightly to 50mW. I guess anything up to 70 or so is fine, but beyond that it's self defeating as the broadcast strength causes reflections and a loss of signal.


And on this final page you can view graphs showing you the break down of your traffic according to your QoS rules. For me, I don't have any QoS rules right now, so the graph merely shows 100% of my traffic is unclassified.


Hopefully this has whet your appetite to try a 3rd-party firmware on your router. I've only been running Tomato for about 1 month now, but it's been working flawlessly. I've heard reports that DD-WRT has a tendency to randomly lockup, but I haven't had a single issue.

Wireless router firmware

A lot of people have a wireless router in their house similar to the picture above. But did you know with a change in the firmware you can turn that $60 router into a $600 piece of hardware?

Firmware, if you're not familiar with the term, is the software installed on the router. Just as software controls your computer and make it work, so does the software on the router. Whatever brand router you have, you can go to that manufactures web page and download updated firmware. These updates typically fix bugs and may even add new features.

But I wanted to mention something even cooler. Many routers out there support 3rd-party router firmware. This is firmware written by someone other than the manufacture. Why would you want to do this you ask? Simple, the hardware is capable of more than the manufacture wants you to do, so if you use a 3rd-party firmware you can enable tons of new features. Below is a small list of the types of things you can do with a 3rd-party firmware:

1. Increase the broadcast strength. If you get poor signal in parts of your house increasing the broadcast power will likely help.
   
2. Enable "afterburner" which is a burst protocol that enables faster wireless transfers.
   
3. Add advanced networking capabilities to your router such as VLANs.
   
4. Function as a VPN server and/or client allowing you to connect multiple remote networks together.
   
5. Turn the router into a "bridge" to extend the range the initial router.
   
6. Add graphs and charts to track and view network traffic up and down. See how much traffic you're using each day, week, month, etc. Some ISPs throttle you can depending on how much traffic you use each month, now you have a way to track it yourself.
   
7. Enable powerful and effective quality of service (QoS) control. If you play XBox on the Internet and every time someone else in the house downloads some files your connection gets laggy, you need QoS. With QoS you ensure the XBox gets all the bandwidth it needs, and the file download gets whatever is left over. Yes, your default firmware probably supports QoS, but trust me, it doesn't really work the way it should.
   
8. Turn your router into a web server. Yes, you can host a small web site from a wireless router. With the use of dynamic DNS you can even have it public so everyone can access it.
   

This is just a small list of the types of things you can do. All you need to do is download and install the new firmware. It's absolutely free! But this won't work on all routers, so if you're considering this route be sure and do more research.

If you're looking for 3rd-party firmware might I suggest Tomato, TomatoUSB, DD-WRT, or OpenWRT. I've heard great things about all of them. At home I'm running Tomato. I haven't tried the others, although I am curious to.

What is handbrake?

At home I've been considering building a Home Theater PC (HTPC). During my research I've seen a lot of talk about a program called Handbrake and other related programs such as DVD rippers, DVD encoding, DVD burning, DVD playback, etc. I had a hard time understanding all this initially, but I think I've finally got my head around all this. I wanted to share it with others in the hopes that it helps.

I want to start at the opposite end from Handbrake, with the DVD player software. Two of my favorite media players are Media Player Classic Home Cinema and VLC. There are tons of other players out there, but these programs are two of the best. They are small, fast, and (most importantly to me) they have a clean simple interface. They are also powerful and they play every format I've thrown at them.

Ok, if you insert a DVD into your computer, start MPC or VLC, and select "play disc" it will begin playing the DVD. You can also use MPC / VLC and browse to the DVD drive where you'll see tons of VOB files. If you select one of these VOB files it will begin playing that video. DVDs store the video as a series of VOB files on the disc. So far everything is as expected.

Now let's say you want to watch the DVD without the disc. Why would you want to do that you ask? One good example is my laptop at home does not have an optical drive of any type. So I cannot watch a DVD on my laptop. So let's use Windows Explorer and copy all the files on the DVD onto a hard drive. If we use MPC / VLC to open the folder it will begin playing the movie, but the movie is all scrambled and unwatchable. If you open a single VOB file from the hard drive, again the video plays but it is scrambled. What happened? It plays from the disc but not from the identical copy made on the hard drive. The answer is copy protection. The disc is encoded in such a way that it only works if you play from the original source.

It turns out there is a way around this problem. You need to run software that enables you to copy the disc. I've found tons of programs that do this; DVD43, DVDShrink, DVDDecrypter, and DVDFab are four free programs I've found. If you use one of these programs to copy the disc to your hard drive, you can now open the files using MPC / VLC and it will play correctly.

Some of these programs appear to do more than just enable file copying. For example, DVDShrink allows you to remove menus, title screens, subtitles, foreign language audio tracks, etc. to reduce the size of the files.

I realize I haven't mentioned anything about Handbrake, which is the thing that started this thread. Why are so many people talking about Handbrake, especially since I just showed you how to copy DVDs and handbrake wasn't involved? It turns out Handbrake is a converter. Basically it converts the VOB files into an MP4 file. The main reason someone would want to do this is because not all devices have a VOB player. Apply iPod, iPhone, iPad, Microsoft XBox 360, etc. are all devices that don't play VOB files but they do play MP4 files. So Handbrake converts the video so that you can watch it on your iPad, XBox 360, etc. I should point out, converting the video will result in a loss of quality, so if you're planning on watching on your PC don't use Handbrake unless you need to compress the video to reduce its size.

The case of the crashing server

In my office at work I have a server computer that has been crashing more and more lately. I very quickly ruled out the possibility of a software problem, if Windows were crashing I would get a blue screen of death (BSOD) or a mini-dump file. Instead the machine would just hard reboot at random intervals. The BIOS log contained nothing, so I was left to figure this out the hard way.

First I tried replacing the power supply, thinking maybe the output power would occasionally "dip" causing the crash. But it continued to crash. I noticed the crashes seemed to occur most often during heavy disk activity. So I suspected either the RAM or the disk controller. Since the disk controller was onboard the motherboard, I checked the RAM next. Reseating the RAM didn't help, so I ordered new replacement RAM (DDR3 is cheap right now). The new RAM appeared to fix the problem, it hasn't crashed since then.

But while testing the new RAM I noticed something else disturbing. Using HWMonitor I noticed the CPU (Core i5) was running hot! The idle temp was 50 degree Celsius and under load it got as hot as 104 degree Celsius. That's not good, you shouldn't be able to boil water on your CPU. When I built this computer I used the stock Intel cooler, but I've always hated the stock Intel cooler. Not because of performance or noise, but because they seem to be difficult to install. And the instructions don't help, they only contain pictures and no text.

I turned the machine off and removed the stock cooler. I discovered two faults when I installed the original cooler, so no wonder it was running hot. I cleaned off the CPU and cooler, applied some Arctic Silver 5 (consistently rated as the best thermal compound), and reinstalled the cooler. Now the CPU is idling at 30 degree Celsius and under load it goes no higher than 50 degree Celsius. Much better than before!

I'm sure between the bad RAM and the overheating CPU that I've solved this machines instability problem.

Streets of Rage Remake

I'm very excited about today's post. Easily one of the best series of games on the Sega Genesis was Streets of Rage 1 - 3. As you might have noticed from my previous posts, I like fan remixes of great games. And I'm pleased to announce there is a fan remix of SOR called "Streets of Rage Remake v5." This game took the author 8 years to create. Earlier this year he released the final version (hence the "version 5" in the name).

Let me just start off by saying this game is AWESOME! Below is a very short list of what's cool about this game:

1. Includes faithful recreations of the first 3 SOR games.
   
2. Adds tons of new original levels.
   
3. Select different routes to take as you play.
   
4. Play as any of the 6 characters from the first 3 SOR games.
   
5. Includes 6 unlockable characters to play as.
   
6. Tons of new character moves.
   
7. Adds new weapons such as guns (and even a cheat to use lightsabers).
   
8. New music that is still faithful to the original.
   
9. New and enhanced graphics (including cool features such as transparencies and reflections).
   
10. Online play with a friend.
    

That is just a short list of features. Trust me, this game is worth downloading. Oh, did I mention it's FREE!!! Unfortunately, Sega kind of considers this game a violation of their copyright, so you cannot download it from the authors website. But if you search the Internet you might still be able to find a copy.

Extra power cords

Most small to medium electronics use power supplies with a box on the end. I've heard them called "wall warts" or even "bricks." Whatever you call it, it's a power supply and they seem to becoming more common. Everything from cell phones to fax machines use these types of power supplies. What happens when the electronic item powered by these breaks or is lost? I think most peoples reaction is to just throw away the power cord, after all what use is it without the item it's designed to power? Well as it turns out they can be very useful and I would encourage you to save it just in case. Just as you may lose the electronic item and retain the power cord, you may also lose the cord but still have the item. And some of these power cords are interchangeable. The purpose of this post is to tell you how to know if you can reuse an old power cord.

As an example I'll use a real life example that happened to me yesterday. I bought a used wireless router of craigslist for dirt-cheap because it didn't have a power cord. So I went digging through my box of cords to find a suitable replacement cord.

Now let me be clear, do NOT just use the power cord if the connector fits, you're very likely to break the eletronic device! You need to follow these steps to determine if the power cord will work for you.

First, locate the power specs on both the power cord and the electronic device you're hoping to power. The specs should be on a sticker or stamped into the plastic and look something like this.


Step 1: Type
First step is to identify the type of output power, either AC or DC. Most power cords ouput DC, but a small number output AC. If the power cord matches the electronic item then proceed to the next step. If they differ then this power supply will not work. Note, sometimes they don't say "AC" or "DC." A solid and a dashed line means DC and a wavy line (sine curve) means AC.


Step 2: Voltage
Next you need to check the output voltage. The voltage needs to be an exact match. Technically you can go slightly higher on the power cord (10V power cord for a device requiring 9V), but be aware that higher voltage places the device under additional "stress" and may cause it to fail sooner. In this case the power supply is 12 volts which is what I'm looking for.


Step 3: Amps
Next locate the output amps. The amps on the power cord needs to be the same or higher than the device. It's important to note that the amps rating on the power cord is the maximum amp output, it does not mean the power cord forces that many amps on the output. So as long as the amps is the same or higher than your device you can use it. In this case my router needs 1amp and this power cord outputs upto 1.25 amps so it's good.


Step 4: Polarity
Most power cords like this use what's called a barrel-connector. Polarity of the connector is very important, getting it wrong would be like putting the batteries in backwards. For my power cord the inside is positive and the outside is negative. If the polarity does not match your device, all is not lost. You can cut the cord, strip the wires back, rotate one end, and reattach the cord. Bare minimum you need to twist the wires together and then cover with electrical tape, but ideally you solder the wires together and cover with heat-shrink tubing.


Step 5: Physical connector
The last step is determining if the physical connector will work. This information is not printed on the power cord or the device. So just check it, does the power connector fit snugly into the device? If not, you can fix this for cheap. Places like Radio Shack and digikey.com sell replacement barrel connectors. You cut off the old connector and solder on the new one. Just make sure to get the polarity correct. If you need to check polarity use a multimeter (or a LED).

There you go, the steps necessary to reusing old power cords and saving tons of money. Using this technique I found a power cord for my new wireless router and saved at least $20 over other used routers. You will notice we didn't look at the "input" section of the power cord at all. Assuming you don't have any foreign power cords, this should be a safe assumption. If however you have power cords designed to work in foreign countries these steps may not work.

Sonic remixes

Without a doubt Sonic the Hedgehog was one of the best and most influential games from the 1990s. They were a lot of fun, had great graphics and sound for the day, and plenty to explore. So it's no surprise that these games had a big impact on a generation of video gamers. Some of these gamers have gone on to program their own Sonic games for the PC. Commonly referred to as "fan remixes" here are 3 fan remixes of Sonic to keep an eye on. None of these three are done yet, but they all have promise.

Retro Sonic Nexus

Retro Sonic Nexus is quite a mouthful. Me personally I prefer its previous name Sonic XG. This game has some impressive game play and cool level design. There is a playable demo you can download.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 HD

If you ask me, the best Sonic game was Sonic 2. Well here's a project that is taking Sonic 2 and completely redoing the game but in high definition. They are not creating a new game, nor are they making the game in 3D. Just enhancing the same game but with HD graphics. Check out the video on their webpage, it looks impressive! There is also a playable demo you can download.

Sonic Fan Remix

This very ambitious project is recreating the first Sonic game but rendered as a 3D game. It's still a side-scrolling 2D game, but rendered in a 3D engine. Very impressive. Check out the video on their webpage.


There you have it, 3 Sonic remix games to keep an eye on.