Fox is going to start multicasting this spring with a new channel called Movies!.
I was wondering about the proliferation of subchannels and ran across To Multicast or not to Multicast... is that the (TV News) Question? (Or guess which DMA offers 100 TV Channels OTA?). They go over how improved MPEG2 encoders have freed up more space for the additional subchannels.
Edit: Live Well channel broadcast in both HD and SD.
I decided to work up a spreadsheet on how this DVR project is going financially. First thing I did was tally up the cost to implement:
973 - Mac mini
114 - Tuners
26 - Antenna
65 - Keyboard
122 - Memory
85 - HDMI to Component Video Converter Box
13 - Optic cable
1398 - Total
My monthly DirecTV bill was 146. For January I purchased two series via iTunes for 63, for a savings of 83 for the month. If I save that on average every month, then my DVR project will pay for itself within a y
The 16 GB arrived yesterday and has been installed.
I haven't stress tested it yet, but it does seem a bit snappier.
I was surprised that the video RAM allocation only changed from 512 to 768 MB when I went from 4 to 16 GB. The mini uses Intel's Integrated Graphics, which is allocated a chuck of RAM from the system RAM.
The Aggregate Device glitch, mentioned in these comments, is still occurring. I haven't figured out a reliable way to make it occur, nor a reliable way to fix it
Last night I finished watching the backlog of recorded shows on my DirecTV's DVR.
This morning I called them up and cancelled the service. They made a number of counter offers, but I declined the all. The lady was floored when I told her I could receive 100+ channels via antenna.
Next week I should be receiving a return label to send back the DirecTV box and remote. After they receive it I'll get a refund for the remainder of the current billing period, about $38.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2uX5Z_ybNA
Paired a PS3 controller with my mini.
Installed Stella
Installed Mame OS X. Crazy Climber plays quite well when mapped to the PS3 controller's analog sticks.
Yesterday I mentioned that the streaming video of TV Land was better than what DirecTV offered. Here's some comparison photos.
DirecTV - cropped 4:3 image, low quality
Streaming Video - full 16:9 image, better quality
Detail of O on DirecTV - note the
The EyeTV software is normally used full-screen when watching a show, but I've found that it's easiest to use the OS X GUI to scheduling recordings. This is difficult to do as my TV uses 7" CRT tubes to generate the display, which limits the horizontal resolution to something between (if I recall correctly) 1300 & 1400 pixels which results in hard to read text. The next model up from my HDTV used 9" CRT tubes, and it was able to resolve the full 1920 across the screen, but that was not wit
The mini's working just fine with the HDMI to Component Video adaptor:
Before I plugged everything together I made sure to set up my mini for Screen Sharing. I did this as the HDMI to Component converter supports 1080p, but my TV only supports 1080i, and I expected the Mac to default to the "best resolution" it's been told about - which it did. By remoting in I was able to change Display Preferences:
The Underscan
Stopped in at MicroCenter during lunch today to pick up a few network cables and spotted this Wireless Ultra-mini Touchpad Keyboard for Mac that'll be perfect for the Mac mini. It even has the Command key instead of a Windows key. Only thing I don't like is it uses a USB dongle instead of bluetooth.
I received an Amazon gift card for Christmas and used it towards the purchase of a HDfuryPro. It has 2 HDMI inputs and will convert the video signal to component and VGA while also converting the audio signal to 5.1 CH SPDIF Optical and Stereo via 3.5mm jack.
My DirecTV box currently plugs into my Yamaha surround sound receiver1 via component and SPDIF Optical, so I should be able to just drop the Mac mini in its place. I'll connect the DirecTV box to the 2nd HDMI port for a while as I'm
I use the CarTunes Music Player app on my old iPhone 3GS for in-car music. While running a couple errands today I noticed that the progress bar was Christmas Flavored
If you use your iOS device for in car music, I highly recommend this app. It's much nicer for in-car use than the built in Music app. The text is larger and it uses swipes and taps to control it.
When I put my antenna in the attic, I noticed that the water heater was leaking out the top:
I was a bit surprised as I hadn't replaced it all that long ago. Since this was the 2nd water heater since I had the house built in 99, and I never really liked having a 40 gallon water tank in my attic, I decided to replace it with one of the new tankless water heaters.
It was installed yesterday and seems to work quite well. One difference is that I had my old water heater set to 140 F, s
I've had a few instances were a channel would show black when I'd open up the "Live TV" window. Switching to another channel and back would clear it up.
I checked SiliconDust's site and their downloads page has a Firmware Changelog. The latest update listed this:
I'm fairly sure the channels I had the problem with were sub-channels, so I decided to see if my firmware was out of date. The download page has links for Windows, Mac and Linux. I clicked the Mac link and it downloaded the
I finally finished working my way thru the 101 channels that I'm able to receive here in Houston. I worked up a spreadsheet with information I could find about each channel and have attached below (along with a PDF printout of it for those who don't have OpenOffice installed). I ended up with 20 channels in my guide after filtering out the channels I won't be watching.
I was surprised to find that less than half were in English. 46 were in Spanish, 6 Vietnamese, 2 Chinese, and 2 used mult
new main menu title graphic
shield sound effect changes pitch based on shield time remaining
new ship "blink" feedback
ship will blink while shields are active
ship will blink during respawn temporary immunity
blink rate will increase as shield life/immunity remaining runs out
ROMs
spacerocks20121129_NTSC.bin
spacerocks20121129_PAL.bin
Source
spacerocks20121129.zip
I whipped up a program to test out how the different colors would look on actual hardware.
On the screen you'll see the Flicker Logo at the top, followed by current values for Red, Yellow, Outline Red and finally the Outline Logo.
RESET = set NTSC defaults of RED = $34, YELLOW = $1E, OUTLINE RED = $46
SELECT = set PAL defaults of RED = $64, YELLOW = $3E, OUTLINE_RED = $66
Fire = selects which value will change. The ball will move next to the selected value (it'll also show the co
While talking to my dad via FaceTime, I was showing him the Mac mini TV setup and the new antenna. I mentioned that a couple channels were marginal (such as Retro TV, which would come in during the middle of the night but not at all during the day). He suggested putting the antenna in the attic, so I did:
I mounted it not far from where my network equipment is located, so I put the tuners in with that hardware:
Before I did this, Retro TV would have a signal quality from 30-60. Ty
there was a short in the first antenna I'd picked up. I discovered it when I bumped the table and the mini stopped receiving any channels. Wiggled the cord going into the antenna and it started working again.
While at the grocery store I spotted a flat antenna and picked it up. I attached it to the top of my camera tripod for testing.
It works fairly well and should be quite unobtrusive when I put it in place on top the shelving unit
I figured out that the channel list has
I've set up the Mac mini on the monitor I picked up last year. I've also downloaded and installed EyeTV 3. I haven't done much with it yet, but I did get it to view 4 shows at the same time so I know it's able to concurrently use all 4 tuners. I've also set it to record Fringe tonight, will check the results of that later.
My HD HomeRun Dual tuners arrived today. I'm a mear 4 miles from the cluster of broadcast towers in Houston, so I picked up an indoor antenna and currently have it set up on my dining room table while I figure out how everything's going to work together:
The tuners are a lot smaller than I expected them to be, they're the 2 small black boxes on the left. The box on the right is a network switch (can of soda is for size reference):
My Mac mini hasn't arrived yet, so I initially used
Added a fix for the "Saucer hiding out in the wrap-zone". What it does is as soon as the Saucer moves into the wrap-zone it stops making random direction changes until after it exits the wrap-zone on the other side of the screen.
Updated "label by" in the easter egg
centered the small saucer graphic
Fixed the sprite jump glitch
menu tweaks to Style and Color
The sprite jump glitch was very fleeting, but I hadn't noticed it before adding the vertical screen-wrap of the large as
Used up the 400 bytes and then some.
Fixed a "find the ship" bug in the Magna-Mine targeting logic which would cause the mines to wander around off-screen in the vertical screen-wrap zone.
Revised the vertical wrap zone to use a 16 scan line off-screen zone for all objects. It previously used to be 8, 16 or 32 scan lines depending upon the size of the object.
Fixed top-side-of-screen collision detection. It had the same problem that left-side-of-screen collision detection had; but was
Thomas Jentzsch has been quite busy doing a round of optimizations on Space Rocks. Nathan Strum has also revised the menu, it now takes up less ROM space.
about 400 bytes free for additional ARM code.
vertical shot wrap-around revised to match ship wrap-around
menu font revisions
revised selected menu option highlite
Fixed new bug where ship was immune to saucer shots when shields were selected
Moved CONTROL menu option after PLAYERS
This is not considered a Release
A while back I calculated that if I ditched DirecTV and went over the air for the networked shows plus Blu Ray/streaming/digital-download for cable series I watch that I'd save about $800 a year in expenses. Various things kept the project on the back burner though.
Today I noticed that the HD HomeRun Dual, part of the hardware I planned on getting for this project, is on sale at Tech Woot! so I've finally started the ball rolling. The HD HomeRun Dual is a dual ATSC tuner that sits o
like all other fragments, Magna-Mine debris now continues to travel along the path of the destroyed object
When the double-section Magna-Mines were shot, if it was coming straight at you the back half would always turn clockwise to come after you. It now randomly selects the direction.
shield now takes time to recharge, twice as long as the amount of time you used. If you used the shield for 1 second, it takes 2 seconds to get back to full strength. You can still use shields if they're
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