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I have been using in my Desktop PC, Pinnacle PCTV Hybrid Tuner (330e) to watch TV with Tata Sky DTH. It is quite useful to catch up on News & happenings during the day and for a break few episodes of 30 Rock/How I met your mother in late evenings. After working for few years without any issues Pinnacle PCTV conked off this week. So I went around shopping for a replacement and settled with AverTV Volar GO A833 USB drive. It has drivers for Windows 7 x64 and works fine.
The device is advertised to have support for Windows Media Center (to be used as the Player), but it turns out that works only for TV Cable as input video source. In my case with Tata Sky DTH the input video source was Composite and Windows Media Center requires you have a IR Blaster for it to work. AverTV Volar Go doesn’t ship with one, so I tried to use the IR Blaster from Pinnacle but it didn’t work. So I had to uninstall Windows Media Center and stick with the AVerTV 6 Player Application. The device comes with a small remote control that you can use to adjust volume control, ON/OFF the player and it works fine. The Player supports TimeShift & MP4 recording as well. Since there is no IR blaster I am not able to control the set top-box from TV Player application itself.
%20300_3.jpg "AVerTV Volar GO (A833) 300")
Early this week I got Apple TV device through one of my friend who came from USA. Before getting a Kinect I was using XBOX 360 in my Bedroom to access Digital Media. But once Kinect came I had to move XBOX, Kinect & LED TV to my Study room. So I got Apple TV to fill this need.
The first impression you get after you open the package with the $99 device is how small & cute it is. The device on the sides came with a Black Tape stuck all around, so for few minutes I was wondering why there are no ports or even power socket. The remote is even more smaller & unbelievably thinner. Hat’s off to Apple on the minimalist design.
 
Apple TV allows you to access YouTube Videos (Favourites & Most Popular), Movies & TV shows from iTunes & Digital Media (Photos, Music & Videos) that you have stored in your Home PC (or Mac) in iTunes libraries. The device has no hard-disk or any other drive, so no noise or heating. The device runs iOS (as in iPhone & iPad), so Indic Language (like Tamil) files names appear legibly. You also get an iPhone app “Remote” that allows you to manage any iTunes Library including Apple TV from your iPhone – quite convenient and thoughtful. The app (unlike Logitech Harmony app) is minimalist and easy to configure & use.
While accessing Music & Videos the experience is great thanks to iTunes. But when it comes to Pictures the experience nose-dives due to same iTunes & its poor Pictures management support. I have like 15,000 pictures in my PC, neatly organized into folders like Personal, Events, Travel, Family, Friends and so on, with each of them having sub-folders for each year in which the photos were taken. It took a long time before Apple TV could showed the first photo, then it displayed all the 15,000 photos in one go – how can you scroll through thousands of photos?. There was no way for me to sort/group/search for a particular album or year or keyword. After some time I gave up the fruitless exercise and took my son to my PC where I showed the photos he wanted to see. I am at loss at why even after 10 Versions iTunes doesn’t have proper features to add/delete/edit pictures, categorize them into folders/sub-folders and so on. If there is one thing I hate in iPhone & iTunes it is Pictures management.
Read about my experience with Google TV here.
When I first saw Project Natal video (the code name of XBOX Kinect) nearly two years back, I was sure that this was yet another concept video from Microsoft and had little chance of coming out the way it was depicted. It was too futuristic. Even if they did release it, I was expecting it to be clumsy, too complicated to configure, will only work for a single person – basically unviable for everyday use.
Then first week of last month I got an email from Microsoft India with some special offer towards Kinect launch in India. I was somehow caught by it and ended up ordering Kinect Sensor for Rs.9500 and two games to go with it (Kinect Joy Ride and Kinectimals – each for Rs.1999) from Microsoft India store on 4th Nov. It got delivered few weeks after on 17th Nov. The sensor came with a free game of Kinect Adventures.
I tried to fix it in my bedroom where I had my XBOX – there was not much free space there. Though it worked there, Kinect requires 6 to 8 feet distance and width for moving around comfortably & effective playing. I moved the TV, XBOX and Kinect to my study room, where I have plenty of space. Setting up Kinect is very easy, just plug it into the USB port, let XBOX upgrade itself and you are ready to go. The sensor needs to be placed in a table at 2 to 6 feet height, near the edge of the table and you need to ensure you are clearly visible to the sensor. The best place will be to fix it on top of your TV – but for that you require an adaptor which unfortunately Microsoft doesn’t ship or is available anywhere I searched. Once setup Kinect senses multiple people in the area easily, you can go in and out any time. The on screen display at bottom left shows how Kinect sees you and if you step away from view it gives you instructions in the top left of the screen even within the game itself.
The Kinect Adventure comes with some 3 to 4 adventures, my favourite was the Raft ride and Fixing the water leaks. You control the Raft with your whole body, jump on obstacles and so on. Myself and my son was hooked to it for the next few hours. Ever since we have been playing it on weekends. One of the cool features in Kinect games are the Photo Shoot and Share. Since Kinect has a camera (essentially that’s how it sees you) it takes snapshots of you playing at key moments – just like Theme park photos of you screaming. The best part unlike ThemePark photos which we love to have but cost a bomb, Kinect PhotoShoot are free!. It is fun to watch those photos and you can even share them on FaceBook (you have to login to a website explicitly to do this). See a sample picture of me playing below:
This week my son started playing Kinectimals and it looks lovely – it is a complete island with Tiger pubs to train and play with. Looks very realistic and fun, kids are sure to love it. It gives them some exposure of getting to know animals a little better (at least virtually) and caring for them.
I have been using iPhone3G from Dec ‘08 (exactly two years) and I got so used to it. By far it is the best device to do email, browsing, twitter, facebook and above all to make/receive calls & messages. It is very hard to imagine a mobile before iPhone, that’s the impact it has had on me. The upgrade to iOS 4.0 turned out to be a double-edged sword. On one hand, the device started to support display of Tamil language natively in all applications – messaging, contacts, email, browsing, twitter & more. On the other hand, the device became very sluggish. Clicking on contacts or messages app will take solid 10-20 seconds to load up. I talked to my friend Muthu Nedumaran (the man behind the Tamil fonts that got shipped in iOS 4.0 and Mac OS) who advised me to upgrade to iPhone 4.
I guess due to poor sales of iPhone in general in India, iPhone 4 is not released yet here. After some research the best place to buy an iPhone4 turned out to be Singapore, as by law there TELCOs can’t network lock a device. The device bought in Singapore should work with Vodafone India and anyway since I have a iPhone3G plan with them, data also should work. After further research on the web, I learned that you can’t buy iPhone4 from any Apple stores in Singapore or from TELCOs like Singtel, who sell only with singapore mobile contracts. Apple Singapore recommends you buy from its online store and have it shipped to any address in Singapore. That’s what I did, I gave the house address of my Uncle in Singapore. After few phone calls he made to confirm my India credit card to them, the device got delivered in few days, in time for me to pick up during my trip last week there. The device (iPhone4 32GB), Black Bumper and AppleCare 2 year protection plan together costed me SG$1195 (nearly Rs.41825).
After coming back to Chennai, I had to cross one last hurdle which was to get a MicroSIM. It was not available from Vodafone Chennai, but a trip to a corner mobile store and Rs.100 got my regular SIM cut into a MicroSIM. Finally, I got my iPhone4 working and I love it. Much better speed than 3G due to the 1Ghz Processor, the retina display is gorgeous, noise cancellation feature even on noisy airports is awesome – worth every cent of upgrade. After upgrading to iPhone4, apart from loading my regular apps I use ( Twitter, FaceBook, LIFCO Tamil Dictionary, Dictionary.com, Wikipedia, Kindle) I was able to load VLC Media Player (Free) which only runs on iPhone4 or iPad. This meant I can select any of my WMV (Windows Media) videos into iTunes, have them synced to my iPhone4 and play them with VLC Player.
I have been an early user of Windows Mobile (as it was called earlier) with BenQ P50 (disaster when it came to Battery life), HTC S710 (a versatile phone I liked and used for a long time), but over the years I have moved to Nokia 9300 and finally settling with iPhone for last few years. Though Windows Mobile had lot of technical capabilities, they lacked on user experience and ease of use – it had lot of Desktop Windows legacy carried forward unnecessarily.
From the time of early previews of Windows Phone, I was impressed with the new User Interface of Tiles and Microsoft focus on standardizing and simplifying things. I was not ready to switch yet from my iPhone, but still wanted to check out WP7. At my firm, Vishwak Solutions we are developing a WP7 News App that presents data from any Media Portal powered by VPF. Though the emulator is very capable, we needed a WP7 physical device to check the touch and flow experience. I wanted a basic WP7 device, so I ruled out Samsung Omnia 7 and HTC HD7 – both of which I rate as high-end/costly devices. This narrowed the list to HTC Mozart 7 and LG Optimus7. WP7 is not yet launched in India, so I was planning to buy either one of them when I visited Singapore last week. But before the trip I saw in one of the tweets that you now get HTC Mozart in National Market, Bangalore. I checked out for the same in EBAY India and ordered it from a seller from Indore for Rs.29,190 (incl. of shipping). I had my fingers crossed expecting more of a brick delivered to me, but was feeling a little safe with PaisaPay guarantee the site offered.
Within two days I got the phone delivered. It was a brand new HTC Mozart 7 device from T-Mobile Germany – it was obvious the box was opened, but was new nevertheless. I didn’t want to risk having any rootkits, so immediately I factory-reset the device. It came back to live in German language, I selected few screens clicking on the word that didn’t start with N aiming to get “YES” correctly selected. Then English UI appeared, everything worked fine. I assume the importer had opened the box to do precisely this. The device feels quite sturdy and well build. Microsoft has a good chance with WP7 if they are able to quickly release more features, get momentum on Apps development and gain overall market traction.
When I checked for the same device during my trip in Singapore last week, I was hearing prices of SG$800-850, which makes it Rs.30,000 plus taxes. I think I have got a good deal once in my life!
I have been using XBOX 360 as a Media Centre for allowing my son to see his cartoons & for me to access my music & movie collections from my PC into my living room. For my Dad it was an overkill, so I wanted something simpler that also allowed some basic web browsing apart from allowing access to the videos I have in my PC.
After seeing the launch video of Google TV, I got excited and purchased it online from Amazon. for $299 Got it shipped to one of my friends in USA who was coming to India, I got the device two weeks back and had it configured recently. My quick take below after using Logitech Revue for few days:
Pro:
1) Logitech has bundled their Media Player App that allows accessing any UPnP libraries in the house including Windows 7 or Zune media sharing. The app is in beta and doesn’t seem to play all of popular video formats
2) The device is compact, silent and has in-built power-pack, no separate power bricks. It has USB ports for connecting memory sticks to play video/audio/pictures from it
3) There is a cool iPhone App for Logitech Revue that can be used as a remote anywhere in the house (local WI-FI region)
4) The keyboard is light and keys are quite big, trackpad is responsive
5) Browsing is at decent speed – no significant lack that you can notice on simple tasks
Con:
1) Logitech Revue came with a big keyboard which is good for email and password typing, but inconvenient for most about everything – especially for plain content browsing
2) The Trackpad/mouse pointer and arrow keys/enter combination behave independently and takes quite a while to get used to. The trackpad is in the right-top corner, mouse click button is on left-top corner
3) There is very little integration between the various Google services. For example there is no native App (which I suppose was easy to do with Android) for YouTube or Picasa – two of the most compelling apps in my opinion for Google TV. They simply load up in Google Chrome browser and you need to type your Google username / password in them – doesn’t take it from the system-wide configuration you have done
4) There is Input options for a DVR and Setup-top box (Cable), but no input source for a plain DVD Player. The DVR can’t be used for this as Google TV insists on recognizing and able to control the DVR. It even insists on me typing my LCD TV (Samsung) Model number before it allowed me to do anything
5) So far, I am not able to find Android Store to get new apps; may be I am missing something.
In short the whole product is clearly a v1.0. In my opinion Google needs to improve the software dramatically in next upgrade, otherwise it is doomed to die even faster than Google Wave. My recommendation will be to wait for next version before you decide to buy this.
I love my iPhone and the ease with which it syncs music, videos, Podcasts & Contacts/Mails/Tasks (from Exchange Server through Microsoft ActiveSync). The only pain has been iTunes software which is cumbersome especially since I use it in Windows. Getting photos organized in iTunes is the most limited. In Windows I can only sync one folder (why on earth I can’t select multiple folders?) or use Adobe PhotoShop Elements.
I tried a Quick ‘n’ Dirty method to circumvent this, by using a less known capability in Windows (and in UNIX flavours) called Symbolic Links (Hard Links) which makes a folder along with its contents appear in multiple places. This is something like Shortcuts on steroids. You can create these Symbolic Links only from Command Line and there is no option for it from Windows Explorer, as it can lead to unintended behaviour for average users – I learned it the hard way later. I used this free program called “SymLinker” to create the Symbolic Links. The idea was to create one folder called say “iPhone Albums” under Pictures folder in Windows 7, map it in iTunes (Device->Photos tab) as the folder to sync photos from. Then create symbolic links for each of the many folders where you have the photos you want to be synced.
I mapped about 6 to 7 folders that had hundreds of photos each, everything worked just fine and I got all the albums synced fine. The next day (after I rebooted my machine), I couldn’t get iTunes to launch at all. I tried install/uninstall, deleting and recreating my Windows user profile and so on. Finally I had to restore from my Windows Backup *System Restore* to an earlier day and get iTunes working again. I am not sure whether the problem in iTunes was caused by using Symbolic links, but I guess it is safer not to try it. Having burned my fingers, I have bought Adobe PhotoShop Elements 9.0 for my desktop PC where I have all my photos – I will post that experience in a later post.
In my house I have a Sony 26” LCD TV in the bedroom (connected to Sun Direct DTH) and an old CRT 29” Sony TV (connected to Tata Sky DTH) in the guest room. Sun DTH is giving lot of trouble in the last few weeks, first due satellite issue for two days it didn’t work, then few channels showed up, then their engineer came and re-aligned the Dish on rooftop, after which the signal was breaking many a times. Sun DTH customer service is pathetic, their voice agents are wanting lot of training, they allow a complaint for only one set-top box (I have three in my house, the other two in ground floor) in one call, they promised to fix the issue in 48 hours but it didn’t get fixed for over two weeks now. So I switched two of my TVs in Ground Floor back to local Cable connection (at Rs.110 per month per TV). So for my Bedroom TV I decided not to renew the cartoon package with Sun DTH, instead I enabled it in the Tata Sky connection in Guest Room. Now my son is glued to the 29” CRT TV, I sold that TV off and replaced it with the 26” LCD TV from my bedroom. That left me needing to buy a new TV for my bedroom.
I looked in Internet and selected on few Samsung LCD models, I didn’t want any Internet & PC Sharing features as we have two desktop PCs, two XBOX 360s and one laptop in the house. I went to Samsung showroom in G.N.Chetty Road, T.Nagar to buy one of them, to my surprise found the showroom vacated; went to Radhakrishnan Salai showroom, that too was vacated. Finally went to Viveks’ Mylapore, the helpful salesmen showed & explained various models from Samsung, LG & Sony. I was looking only for 26 or 32 inches. Finally I selected the Sony 32” LED TV EX600 Series (compares to Samsung series 5 I think) model: KLV-32EX600, it was available at a special price Rs.49,900 (inclusive of 12.5% Tamil Nadu VAT, a discount of Rs.3000 or so from MRP).
In the late evening today got the TV delivered. To my surprise I found in the carton that it was named as SONY 32” LCD Television. After some web searching, I realized that Sony calls all their TVs LCD, this one was called as LCD with EDGE LED, they are technically right 100%. I installed it myself in next 20 minutes, everything worked fine. Only disappointment was that it didn’t have dedicated Audio out (L-R) to connect to my Home theatre system (EDIFIER DA5000), so I had to manage with the Headphone output for this. The TV has only 2 Video/Audio (RCA jack), 1 Composite, about 4 HDMI, 1 USB ports, 1 RF (Antenna) ports. Now I need to figure out HD content to enjoy this TV to the fullest, may not go for a Blue-Ray (as their is no Tamil content in Blue-Ray yet, Hollywood discs are too expensive in India) but may opt for Airtel HD Recorder service.
All this reminds me of the Camel in the Tent Arabian Night story 
After being indecisive for few months now, I decided to buy my first e-book reader last month. I went with Amazon KindleDX – the model prior to the newly released Kindle Wi-Fi (which got released few weeks after I bought KindleDX). I didn’t go with Apple iPad – it doesn’t have e-ink and so not easy on the eye, heavier than KindleDX (iPad is 700 grams and KindleDX is 535 Grams) and is a first generation device compared to KindleDX. I didn’t go with the competition like Nook or the Sony Reader because of my loyalty to Amazon – I am always impressed by their excellent customer service, world class self-service website and above all I believe they will surely survive and continue to grow in the expected churn in this industry. Above all an e-book reader is all about the choice of titles and ease of purchase. And I am not a fan of reading long chapters in any LCD/LED displays.
I ordered the device from Amazon website with my India Credit Card and had it shipped to my Chennai address. I got the device on July 13th (3rd business day from 8th July when I ordered)) – unbelievable. I was charged in total $530.70 (Device was $379, Shipping $13.49, Import Fees Deposit $138.21) for the device & shipping.
My observations of using the device for last few weeks:
- Out of the box, the device came preconfigured with my Profile (username and password) stored. So nice of Amazon team. I am sure no other OEM does this, even though they know everything about us when we order it on their site. The device came in a minimalist eco-friendly, easy to open packaging
- Amazon has published clear and easy to understand instructions for customers from outside USA, including India. Every other American e-commerce firm I know of, is focussed only with USA and for them customers from outside USA will be treated as “Aliens”
- The Text to Speech feature where by it reads out a book – though I was sceptical of it, I found it to be very usable
- The in-built dictionary (Oxford English) is a great feature. Many a times, I am lazy to pick up a dictionary (Even though my firm LIFCO publishes one for last 50 years) and refer for the word I didn’t understand. With Kindle, I just need to move my cursor to any word and the full meaning is shown at the bottom of the screen.
- The device, the feel of it and ease of reading is better than I imagined. I wish the device had touch, the buttons were Car Friendly (especially Text to Speech Pause/Play, Volume), a little bit lighter. I didn’t miss Colour display as the sharpness of the e-ink was as good as printed paper
- The auto-sync feature with the other devices for my account. I got the Kindle App for PC and iPhone installed and I was thrilled by the feature where in the pages I have read to are automatically synchronized between the devices
- The other day I was in a local book store and I liked a book, I could easily browse the same on my iPhone Kindle App (we won’t be carrying our Kindle device everywhere). Then I bought it from iPhone and had it shipped with 1-click to my Kindle device at home. Before I reached home, using Whispernet I found the book already downloaded and ready in the Kindle Device
- NewsPapers and Magazine are priced too high for an Indian customer. Selection of Indian Authors and titles are currently very limited
- Ability to back load (copy) any PDF file from your PC to Kindle using USB. I loaded all my unread issues of IEEE Spectrum and actually read few of them over the weeks
- No native support (Especially in Web browser) for Indian Languages. Indic Unicode displays fine in files saved as PDF (Adobe Acrobat)
- Nil charges for Whispernet Data Transfer for browsing the catalogue, buying and downloading of books in 100 countries including India
- KindleDX doesn’t have a Wi-Fi connection, having it would have made downloading of books and casual browsing faster when I am in a Wi-Fi zone like my office or home (The newly announced model has Wi-Fi feature, but a smaller display)
- The device charges through its MicroUSB Port using any standard USB charger
Update (9/Sep/2010) : I was pleasantly surprised today to receive a refund of $41.38 out of the $138.21 paid as Import Fees Deposit. With this cost for Customs Duty to import my KindleDX to India is about Rs.4551. Amazon, you are impressing me continuously!
Several years back I had the very first Creative 5+1 speakers, when central amplifier and all that. Though it sounded great, over the weeks you find your table to be cluttered a lot.So once that broke down, I gave up having these hi-tech speakers like 5.1 Channel systems that require 5+ speakers to be connected to your Home PC. Last few years I was using the humble Creative SBS240 speakers in my Home PC. Last week, my son asked for a better set of speakers than the USB powered one he had connected to his PC. So I gave him the SBS240 and I shopped around for a new one for my PC. Finally, I settled on Altec Lansing’s BXR1221. The choice was not very much on music quality (which anyway Altec Lansing is known for) or features. It was because the speakers were small [sub-woofer was less than half a feet in height/width/depth and two speakers were just 12cm (D) ; 7cm (W) ; 9cm (H) ], doesn’t occupy much space and costs only Rs.1500.
The system connects to all standard audio output socket and is powered by a small power adapter. Overall I am happy with the performance and the choice, recommend it for anyone looking for a decent audio system for their PC.
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