Amazon Kindle Fire TV OS update 1.5 mini review

The Amazon Fire TV is a great little media player. Kodi (formerly XBMC) runs well on it once you have gone through the process of installing it. One of the limitations (in the past) was that Amazon did not support any form of USB storage on the device. Well, Amazon recently released an update to the FireTV which has fixed this little oversight. Now when you plug in a USB key it gets mounted and Kodi sees it perfectly. The pop up from the Fire TV announces it works best with USB 3.0 flash drives less than 128G and does not support USB hard drives (actually says USB hard drives may be unstable). I played back a video file off a slower USB flash drive and it played back perfectly. So this is a welcome add and gives another possible use for this great inexpensive media player!

Update: I found another feature Amazon quietly rolled out in this release. They added the ability for the Fire to act as a Miracast adapter! Way cool. You turn it on by going into settings, display, enable mirror (or press and hold the home button and then select mirror). Once enabled the Fire sits and waits for a connection. The Fire can not do anything else once it has entered this mode and the feature does not run in the background. I tried it with both my Windows 8.1 Asus T100 tablet as well as with my Samsung Note 3 Android 5 phone and both worked perfectly. They connected well and were quite smooth with next to no lag. I was even able to use Kodi to stream a movie (although I only did it briefly). There were some very small hiccups in the playback but to date this is the best miracast I’ve seen. Interestingly it even worked better than the Microsoft Wireless display adapter I previously reviewed. And much less laggy than a miracast adapter (no name el cheapo) I bought off ebay. Wow. Nice!

XBMC mini review

Quite a while back my friend Aaron put me onto XBMC but at the time I was underwhelmed. I just couldn’t get it to do what I wanted. I’ve used Windows media center for a long time and with the addition of Media browser provides a rich content environment for seeing what movies are. But this has become increasingly unstable, complex and troublesome so I thought I would explore XBMC again. One of the nice things about XBMC is that it is now available on Android as well as other platforms. So I could use one common interface amongst many desperate devices, a PC, a laptop, a phone, a tablet etc. This has the potential to simplify life. So with this in mind I chose to give XBMC a try again.

Setup
Setup of XBMC takes some patience. For me a number of the things that XBMC has as defaults are at best not what I would choose. So you need to take some time to figure out what you want. On the positive side the interface is the same across platforms so once you figure it out you can do the same on all your devices.

The first thing you need to do is add content (videos, music, pictures etc), don’t forget to add both local content as well as network content. It doesn’t add local by default. In my home my content is behind Windows file shares, and then divided into directories. XBMC actually handles this arrangement well. You go into system file manager and add each of the separate file shares you have. The android version includes support for Windows file shares (SMB). Once you’ve added sources you then go into videos (pictures and music), files and add the specific directories that contain movies, and TV shows (as well as music). It’s best to have the TV shows and movies in separate directories so you can define the scraper for each area. Once you’ve added a video directory you next need to tell it the content type (movies, TV etc) and then choose a scraper. A scraper will go out and based on directory names attempt to find descriptions of the content. What’s the name of the movie, who’s in it, what’s the genre etc. This takes a bit of time, especially if your library is big. So be patient. The directories should be named according to the IMDB title or if there are special characters you can use the index number you see in the URL bar TTxxxx for example. The menu on the left side of the screen once you go into your movies (or TV shows) allows you to choose what you want to be displayed. The default is list but change it to what you want to get the look you want with the info you want displayed. Once you get this setup it is a rich environment with everything you need to know what is there and what you want to watch. TV shows should be divided into folders for seasons below the show. Season 1 etc. XBMC even supports DLNA client and server functionality once you’ve enabled it in system, settings, services, uPNP.

XBMC by default does not allow you to delete content once watched but this can easily be changed in system settings, appearance, file lists, allow renaming and deletion. From there you bring up the context menu and select remove from library and it will prompt you if you want to delete the files. For me this is a must for cleanliness. You can also allow XBMC to keep track of what’s watched.

Now if all this isn’t enough to make you go wow, they have a repository they have created called fusion. Fusion is not there by default but is easily added on all platforms. There’s lots of instructions out there for how to add fusion so I’m not going to replicate them here. Fusion allows you to stream content. Everything from movies, to TV etc. Fusion takes some patience. I found Icefilms one of the better ones inside fusion. It’s not perfect but when it works it can totally replace the need to download stuff. There’s one thing I wish for is the media content info to go with the content. So rather than look at a list of movies tell me what the movie is. Same thing it does for local content. If it did this it would be a total multi media piece of heaven. Even without this it really is great. Adding Fusion is challenging (the interface in this area is aweful with this small keyboard that is impossible without a mouse especially on small touch screens).

Controlling XBMC is a bit challenging. My windows media center remote works to some extent but you can’t enter names by T9 like interface the way you can in Windows media center. So a keyboard and mouse (especially wireless) comes in handy. If nothing else at setup time. There is an Android ap to remotely control XBMC but you need to go into system, settings, services webserver as well as remote control.

Add to all this goodness that there are now inexpensive Android on a stick devices that you can add to any HDMI TV and you have a cheap media content rich environment over WIFI.

So this time around I have been much more impressed with XBMC.

Update: I’ve been playing around with some more customizations of XBMC including changing the default video player for one that supports hardware acceleration. Doing this is not the easiest thing on the planet but can be done. I followed this article to add MPC-HC (which can play MKVs) as well as added lines to the config file to use the built in Windows media player. So for Windows 8 here’s my player config file that needs to be manually placed in %appdata%\XBMC\userdata\.

Managing your multimedia content

One of the things I love about Android is the many choices you have for managing your content (audio, movies, pictures) on your devices. On an iOS device the primary method of content management is iTunes. Now I have to say I hate iTunes. It is clearly a piece of code ported from a Mac to a PC, runs slow, is horrible for adding tags to music and is primarily tied to a PC/Mac. On Android there are many many ways to manage your content. I use AndFTP to link to my server back in the house for content. It can connect as either SFTP or FTP. Now one of the limitations I discovered a while back is that the ARM processors totally suck at doing SSL encryption. So SFTP is slow because of that. Now if I am remote to the house the limitation is the upload speed of my net connection. Otherwise the slow encryption becomes the gate. By comparison, on WIFI in my house I get 1-2 MB/s on SFTP Vs 3-4 MB/s on FTP. So when in the house I use FTP. Adding cores has not helped this a whole lot. In addition to AndFTP I also use Botsync to sync directories.

Another great feature is to be able to use TorrentFU to link back to uTorrent back in my house. So many times I’ve been out and someone says have you seen the movie blah blah blah or did you hear yadda yadda has a new album out? Well with TorrentFU (or others) you can remotely queue up that content so it’s there waiting for you when you get home. Or connect with that SFTP client and download it right away.

When I have a lot of content to put on the device, several G of video for example, I take my class 10 uSD card out of the phone, pop it in a reader and do the copy. Fast and efficient. No iTunes required.

Once the content is on the device another challenge is multiple devices. I have both a phone and tablet, as well as a TV side multimedia Windows 7 PC. So the challenge is not having to have content in multiple places. DLNA can play it’s part in this challenge. Now DLNA is not without it’s challenge. Samsung’s Allshare has more bugs than features. It has drop outs, does not like when source media comes and goes (maybe you wander away from the WIFI and get disconnected), is stubborn and generally can be quite frustrating. When it works it allows you to have content in many places and play them where you want. I look forward to this becoming more trouble free. For now it beats the alternative, having content replicated everywhere or constantly removing uSD cards. Most Android vendors seem to be adding DLNA natively on there phones. There are lots of apps for DLNA in the market place as well.

Now try any of that with an iOS device 🙂

DLNA

Some time ago a new standard for sharing and playing content (movies, pictures and music) across many different platforms was created called DLNA. I have to admit I have been slow to look into this. Microsoft went on about it in their Windows 7 advertising. The idea is that content should be able to come from anywhere on your network and be played back to any device. While this lofty goal would be awesome in a perfect world, we don’t live in a perfect world. Interoperability especially across disparate technologies (like Windows, Android, Mac, Linux etc) has always been sketchy at best. The first thing to get me to look into playing with DLNA was when I discovered a DLNA client on my Motorola Droid Pro. Looking further I discovered Samsung included it into the Samsung Galaxy Tab and called it AllShare. HTC included it but put it behind the scenes. Looking into Windows 7 I discovered it is there by default just waiting to be enabled. There’s lots of articles out there for how to do it on Windows. WDLXTV (the replacement ROM for the Western Digital Live player) also includes it as well. Windows Server 2008R2 does not have DLNA support but there is a free ap to add it back called TVersity. So with a little bit of playing and configuring, and it really didn’t take much I was able to get it working. Now you can use it to share content from your Windows devices to your Android devices but for me the interesting part is to be able to stream music from my phone to my Windows PC that is connected to my home stereo. This works quite well. Android often turns the WIFI off after a period of time so you will need to disable this or your music playback will not be smooth.

I’m shocked at how different the DLNA interface is across platforms, but I’m equally shocked that this actually works!

So as an example of what this can do I was watching a show on my Galaxy Tab on the way home. Once I got home I took the output over DLNA and outputted to my media center PC so I could finish watching it on the big screen. Now all was not simple. First I needed to start media player on the media center PC and maximize it. Then I started AllShare (Samsung’s DLNA client) and restarted the video I was watching. Fast forwarded to where I left off and levoila. It worked. Very cool, ok in a geeky kind of way!

More reading on DLNA.

Subtitles in MKV and AVI files

This is a quick article about subtitles in MVK and AVI files. The subtitles if they are not encoded into the video stream are found in the same directory as the movie file with the file type of SRT. An easy way to get rid of the subtitles if your player does not support turning them on and off (media center’s, which is medi player, does not seem to) then simply rename the file. Now if your missing subtitles then there is a website that can allow you to download them directly without having to go back to the torrent. movieSubtitles.org

Dynex 37” 1080p LCD HDTV (DX-37L150A11) review

I last reviewed a 42″ plasma. Plasma’s are great and seem to me to be a great choice when movies or sports are the primary use. Even on low res sources they look great. The biggest problem with Plasma’s is they all for some reason have a gloss finish on them leaving them very susceptible to glare from ambient light. I have no idea why they use gloss. So if you can’t control ambient light such as upstairs where you have windows an LCD or LED are a better choice with their matte finish.

LCD and LED screens at the core are identical. The difference lay in the back lighting. LCDs used fluorescent while LEDs use LEDs. The LED screens I have seen are definitely brighter and more vivid. LED screens do consume less power. This LCD up close gives of a noticeable heat. LEDs are the newer technology and still command a premium.

Upon comparing features and size I chose this one. The inputs and outputs the TV have are key to keeping your options for how and what you are going to connect open. For me I wanted HDMI, and VGA, inputs as a minimum. A computer is primary source. From an audio point of view an optical out is a must to ensure maximum flexibility. HDMI includes audio and if you don’t have an optical out then you are not able to connect you TV to a receiver. The TV also includes component and S-Video inputs so this is a VERY flexible well designed TV.

My article on multi media covered a lot of the 1080p and connections. This TV is 1080p which is the highest that a blue ray can currently play.

When I first connected my computer to the screen I used a VGA cable but could not get 1080p working. A quick change to HMDI and le voila. It was there in all it’s glory! HDMI cables vary wildly in price. Be careful to not waste money on expensive cables.

I’ve not played at all with digital TV before so this was a chance to do that too. I picked up an indoor antenna, let me save you the time, don’t bother. They are virtually useless from what I have heard from others as well. Now there seem to be lots of variations on digital TV. Some are HD, some seem to be 1080p, some have surround sound and some are just digital. Digital TV includes a broadcast of the TV name and schedule of what is coming on. Don’t be fooled when you see digital channel noted as 9.1 for example, this is a “virtual channel” number and has nothing to do with where it really is broadcast. Digital channels are broadcast on the same frequencies as analog channels with the bands being controlled by region by the CRTC. More commonly the DTV are broadcast on the upper channels. Technically speaking there is no reason they could not be broadcast on the lower ones. Don’t fall for the hoax, there is nothing different between an HDTV antenna and a good old TV antenna. You just need one that does UHF where most digital channels are, or one that does UHF/VHF.

Wikipedia article on digital TV
Wikipedia article on Canadian TV channels/frequencies
Wikipedia article on what ATSC tuners are
An excellent article on over the air broadcasting

One point to mention, the stand that it comes with does not swivel.

Picture quality on the unit is very good. It is bright vivid and responsive. Overall I am very happy with this TV.

Sounds quality is about as expected, not great. One of the things I was surprised about is I can not see how to turn off the internal speakers. I could be missing it, but if not this is an oversight especially when you pass HMDI audio to the TV and then optical out of the TV to a receiver.

Warranty on the TV is on par with comparable “name brands”.

The remote is a non universal one so it’s yet another remote on your couch. So lets see here’s the stack of remotes: 1) TV 2) receiver 3) Windows Media center. Ok I need a universal remote. The remote does include a button for each possible input type making it fast and efficient to change sources.

So far I have only one problem remaining with the setup, there is a line on the very right side of the screen. It appears to be an alignment problem between the computer and the TV. I have not yet found a fix. It’s not there on TV so I know it”s not the screen.

Given the price of the TV, this is a bargain.

Dynex Link
Futureshop link

Multimedia computer, the center of your digital world

Microsoft have been pitching the idea that at the center of you entertainment center will be a computer for a very long time. I bought in early using the ATI tool set to watch and record tv. I migrated to Windows Media Center quite some time ago and have really enjoyed it but the biggest challenge was somehow having a description of the movie you had on your device. This has been sadly lacking for years. Vista Media Center did little to help. A colleague at work Aaron told me about Media browser a plug in for Vista or Windows 7 Media Center. I skeptically looked at it and quickly discovered that it indeed did do exactly what I wanted. Based on the movie name (you need to be specific in how you name your movies/folders) it goes out to the net and grabs fan art, descriptions, actors the whole nine yards. It is really amazing.

Windows 7 Media Center is a nice improvement on the product. The music interface works well and is well suited to handling even large music collections, even over a network. The music interface even wisely keeps images moving on the screen to avoid plasma burn in! Nicely done Microsoft!

If you haven’t checked Windows Media Center 7 or Media Browser do … They really are the missing link!

Now onto connecting the computer to the rest of your audio equipment. For years there has been a confusing, even dizzying array of options for connecting your computer in with the rest of your audio devices. Now if your starting from scratch it is now VERY easy. Just buy everything with a HDMI jack (watch the version number 1.4 is needed if your doing 3D TV). HDMI combines high def video along with surround sound 5.1 and 7.1 audio. Now if your not then it gets confusing fast.

From a standards point of view you will see terms like 1080p. What this refers to is the number of lines of vertical resolution. 1080p is the ultimate goal. It is the highest res that is being output by a device like a blue ray player. If everything is at 1080p then you won’t loose any resolution and nothing has to be down scaled in the TV. So from a computer resolution point of view it will look like 1920×1080. Checkout the native resolution and if you can get everything to match you have the best situation. 1080i is interlaced and is not as good. 720p is the next step down.

Here’s what DVD is basically at best 720×480 for 29.97 fps.

Blue ray is defined here at best you are looking at 1920×1080.

First off video connections. You have a number of choices. The oldest being composite/S-Video. There are converters to go between these two. I discovered after some reading that there is no difference in these two from a resolution point of view. The difference is in noise tolerance. Next up you could use DVI. DVI can be converted to HDMI easily but does not include audio (HDMI includes both). Some TVs even have SVGA ports to allow direct computer connection. Check to see the native resolution on the TV. If it isn’t something your computer can not directly drive your looking at having to have the TV upscale (or downscale) to handle which never looks the best.

The audio front is even more confusing. 5.1 audio (left, right, center, rear left, rear right and subwoofer) has been the norm for years but there are newer standards for 7.1. Computers output 5.1 in a variety of different ways. Finding the best way to connect this up to your receiver/tv is at best a challenge. The most basic is with 3 stereo cables representing the 6 channels. This is tedious and expensive. Next up would be SPDIF. Problem is there are many format SPDIF can take. On my one system if you plug a mono audio cable into it you can then say this is an SPDIF cable and then convert to RCA to go into your receiver. I found this required proper driver support. I found this problematic on older hardware because I could not find Windows 7 drivers. Without these Windows 7 drivers I found it either impossible to tell it that it was an SPDIF cable or I would loose functionality. This included loosing volume control as well as loosing the ability for the receiver to properly handle the switches between stereo (music for example) and surround sound. SPDIF can also take the form of an RCA coax or lastly a optical cable. Optical cables are the easiest and by far the most common. Some TVs that have HDMI inputs allow optical out to ensure you can go from your TV to your audio receiver.

I did have trouble getting 1080p working using an SVGA cable and had to use an HDMI cable. The challenge then becomes if your receiver isn’t HDMI (as mine isn’t) then you need to insure your TV has optical out (and some do not). Fortunately on my computer it had the ability in drivers to turn the audio off on HDMI and on to an optical data. When I used HDMI out of the computer with audio and then optical out of the TV to the receiver this lead to a few complications. First off the TV had to be on all the time. While not terrible it’s nice to have the option of turning it off when you are just listening to music. Second off the computer only saw the stereo speakers of the TV rather than surround sound that was downstream of the TV. Lastly you add yet another volume control into the mix. So in the end what I chose was HDMI video only to the TV, then optical out of the computer over to the reciever.

Now this had a number of compromises. First off if I add a DVD or blue ray player then I would have to wire the video to the TV and the audio (via optical cable) to the receiver. Fortunately my receiver has two optical inputs so that works. Of course the easier solution is to add a DVD (or blue ray player) to the computer.

The other negative is the HD TV audio output would also be nice to output to the receiver which could be done using optical cables as well but then my receiver only has two optical inputs so I am looking at having to choose.

The net result is you need to think about what existing devices you need to hook up to what, how they output (and input) and how it will all interconnect. Otherwise you will end up with devices that have no hope of EVER getting hooked up. This includes your TV, receiver, DVD player, CD player (if you still have one :)) as well as computers etc.

The new world will become a much nicer place. One cable, HDMI can solve everything. It handles high def video, as well as high def audio. PCs are coming out quickly in the inexpensive range that include HDMI making it simple to solve this cabling dilemma. If your buying new TVs/receivers/computers/laptops do check on their HDMI compatibility.

LG 42″ 720p 600Hz Plasma HDTV (42PJ550) review

I haven’t bought a new TV in a really long time. So I had to do some research, the TV market place has become complicated. The first question is the technology you want. The three dominant players are Plasma, LCD and LED with Plasma being the oldest and LED being the newest. I did a quick Google search and found this comparison between the three.. On top of this one of my friends, Lance, pointed out that Plasma often has a gloss finish to the screen while LCD/LED have a matte finish. This means you need to be aware of light sources in your room if you choose plasma. I didn’t pay any attention to the cable TV tuner, I don’t use cable. Checkout this article if you want to know why. TVs are defined today by their inputs. What are you going to drive your TV with. For me I wanted first and foremost to be able to drive it with my laptop and any PC for use in watching movies/DVDs. So for me an SVGA input was a must. My DVD player is older and does not have HDMI/DVI port so it also had to have an SVideo or Composite video input. Next up you need to pay attention to the resolution of the screen. This one is 720p which refers to the maximum vertical (native) resolution the screen can display. Anything larger and it has to down scale it within the TV which can take away from clarity. A Blue Ray movie is more commonly 1080p but this wasn’t an issue for me. I don’t have a blue ray player, don’t see one on the horizon for me, and this DV can down scale if it has to. At this price point this is largely a disposable TV anyway. I bought it for $499 (list price, no haggling). I also paid no attention to the sound of the TV I have an external surround system anyway.

The monitor is really good looking. No where near as good as an LED screen that’s for sure. But then it didn’t cost the kind of $$s an LED cost either.

The TV can also display pictures and play music from an onboard USB port via a USB flash drive. The interface is VERY basic but it does work and you can create slide shows. I tried a DIVX and an MP4 both were ignored.

My friend Jason passed along these tips about Plasma:
(1) Some obvious advice: Do not leave static images on your plasma TV screen for more than an hour. Turn off your unit when you are not watching it. Do not pause DVDs for more than 20 minutes at a time.

(2) Know that plasma screens are more prone to burn-in during their first 200 hours of use. When phosphors are fresh, they burn more intensely as they are ignited. This means that relatively new plasma display TVs are prone to “ghosting”, which occurs when on-screen images appear to stay on the screen belatedly. This is a function of the high intensity with which new phosphors “pop,” and this phenomenon usually “washes out” on its own, as the screen displays subsequent images. Displaying a bright, or moving snow image (as with a DVD or VCR with no input) will “wash” a ghost image from the screen in most cases. Many plasma manufacturers have installed anti-burn settings, which are monotone gray or snow screen settings which recalibrate pixel intensity levels uniformly – thus eliminating any image retention (ghosting). It is a good idea to run this type of program after the first 100 hours or so.

(3) Adjust the CONTRAST setting at or below 50% on your new plasma TV. These days most plasma TVs are preset to either peak or very high contrast (also called picture setting on many TVs). This forces phosphors to glow more intensely, which decreases the length of time necessary for burn-in to occur. Our advice is to reduce the contrast setting to 50% or less for the first 200 hours of use. And, be sure to avail yourself of your plasma’s anti-burn-in features.

(4) Some plasma televisions burn-in more easily than others. In my experience, AliS type panels — the ones utilized by Hitachi and Fujistu — seem more readily given over to problems with burn-in. As well, be more wary of the 2nd and 3rd tier brands as their technology is usually not as up to date as some of the better 1st tier brands.

All in all I am thoroughly impressed what $499 gets you today. To think over 20 years ago when I bought my last TV I paid $500 and here I am now paying the same and getting so much more. Incredible. Do I think this is the most amazing TV on the planet? Nope but it didn’t cost an arm and a leg either 🙂

LGs page for this TV
Futureshop link