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.