Podcasts

I’m using Twonky Media’s media server to serve up mp3 podcasts, music and photos to my PS3. This works great, and Twonky version 5 is a great media server for a reasonable price. I used this a while ago and I got some errors on my PS3, but the latest version is great: Fewer errors and an easier install and setup.

However, Fast Forward in an MP3 is pretty messed up. As you can see from the following video, when you hold down fast foward, it skips and jumps and it keep stuttering and stopping so you can’t forward very fast. So, if for example, you play the first 40 minutes of of a 1:45 [one hour and 45 minute] podcast, then trying to get back to the place you were is a real pain. This feature probably works fine for a 4 minute song, but it’s not useful for a very long podcast.

Not sure if this is a problem with the PS3, or with the Twonky or the DLNA protocol.

I’ll try to contact the PS3 and Twonky support folks.

Video On Demand from Netflix

I’ve just discovered Play On which allows you to play videos from Netflix, YouTube and other places on your TV by using a PS3 or other DLNA Media Client. I’ve set up Play On on the same system where I installed Twonky and connected it to my NetFlix account. So now I can watch Instant movies from Netflix directly on my large screen TV and using my hi-fi system. My Media Server is a Win XP system running on a Compaq SR2020NX Athlon 64 3500+, 2.2GHz with 2GB memory. This is a $500 system that’s about 3 years old.

PlayOn is very easy to set up, although I had a glitch with the Media Player V11 that PlayOn required. The WMP11 installer kept reporting an error, but it turned out that it did install correctly. Once you install PlayOn, you configure it with your Netflix account, and then use a web browser to load up your Instant Queue in Netflix. To start with I loaded up a few movies, and TV series including Sanctuary, Ghost in the Shell, and a couple of other things. When you check the videos in the PS3 menu, you find the PlayOn server and the list of videos that are in the Netflix Instant list.

I’ve watched a couple of movies and the quality is very good with no noticeable sound or video artifacts. The video quality is not as good as a DVD, but it is at least as good as a SD quality Dishnet satellite broadcast. The PS3 display function reports about 4 mbps. The PlayOn software requires about 180MB of memory in two processes and takes about 50% of the CPU when the video is on pause. I’m guessing that the video is being downloaded and re-coded for the PS3.

BTW, the fast forward situation is much better with video than with music. Using PlayOn and the PS3 with Netflix, fast forward gives 10, 30, 120x fast forward and it works just fine to go back to a point deep into a movie. The PlayOn server did get stuck about 45 minutes into a movie, but turning off the PS3 and then reopening the movie fixed it up. The PS3 was reporting network errors. Not sure why. The server was working fine and the network was not having any problems that I could detect.

I’m catching up on Sanctuary and watched “In the Electric Mist” with Tommy Lee Jones this evening. When I added Sancuary, it added a folder with all the episodes.

I’m not clear on why the PS3 doesn’t support Netflix and other video sources directly, but since it doesn’t at least an inexpensive software addon, which runs on any modern computer, will allow a true video on-demand experience. PlayOn costs about $40. Since Netflix doesn’t charge for “Watching Instantly” beyond my normal subscription, I’ve got a fixed cost subscription to video on demand.

- Windy

Am I the only one that sees that 12cm disks should be dead?

I know that we have just, finally after much gnashing of teeth and political finagling, decided on a new standard for the next generation, but there are too many disadvantages to these 12cm optically read disks or discs if you prefer.

Let me enumerate some of the problems:

1. They are slow to write.
2. They are too big.
3. They are round.
4. They are slow to access.
5. They can be easily scratched.
6. They will not scale to larger sizes easily without yet another change in optical frequency.
7. They are costly to create.
8. They are problematic to re-write or make eraseable. My experience is that CD-RWs eventually fail to write after a few hundred or less write operations.

There is a better media. Flash or ROM. Serially accessed mass storage if you like.

There is a better format: The smart credit card format.

The advantages for the Media are at least:

1. You can decide whether you want read-only or read-write at the time of manufacture.
2. The media size and speed will scale with Moore’s Law rather than at the speed of standards committees.
3. The cost of the media over time will scale with Moore’s law, so that the cost to produce the media will go down quickly over time. The cost of 12cm disks goes up over time as it is more complex to build the more complex media types, and only goes down slowly after that because it is based on a physical manufacturing process rather than an electronic one.
4. We are free to use all the old formats as well as new ones to encode media for the format. A Blu-Ray disk image is just as easily processed while reading it from a ROM or FLASH as it is from an optical disk; in fact, several complex stages of encoding are skipped in the case of reading the data from memory media. File systems – FAT32 or ISO – with MP3, WMV, MPG or any other media.

The advantages for the Credit Card size format are at least:

1. It is a standard size.
2. There is a standard pin out. The use of the pins is likely to be different, but I’m sure we can come up with a serial protocol for the pins to read and write memory without too much trouble, if there is not one already.
3. It is already designed to be robust over 1000’s of insertion, removal cycles.
4. It is already used for static as well as dynamic uses: Security cards for Satellite Receivers, as well as credit cards.
5. It is large enough to hold a picture of the content and small enough to reduce waste in landfills.
6. It is designed to be robust against bending, scratching and other abuse. After all, a credit card in and out of your wallet 1000’s of times is bound to encounter bending and scratching.
7. It is rectangular rather than round. So it racks and stacks with ease.

What this does to Players

And players shrink too. The player becomes a slot in the side of your new AV receiver, rather than a box by itself. AV receivers need to be large enough for the many connections, and for the front panel displays. But adding the video function with a credit card slot reader adds neither to the connections on the back or the front panel space required. The receiver will soon display it’s interface on the TV anyway, so it’s size will soon be limited only by the connections to other components. And this video format removes one of the media components, and reduces the receiver connections rather than maintaining them.

The Epiphany

I had this idea when I purchased a new USB thumb drive with 4GB capacity. And of course this is not the largest one available. The size of a standard single layer DVD, and no bigger – inside at least – than a postage stamp. And with a USB storage interface, this chip is more complex than it need be I’m sure.

Right now, the cost of writable Blu-Ray media is high enough that it makes little sense to purchase a Blu-Ray writer. If DVD dual-layer experience is a guide, by the time the media falls to US$2, which is about the level at which I will be willing to invest in a Blu-Ray burner and purchase media in 50’s, I would guess the cost of 32GB flash memory could be US$2 as well if shipped in the same quantity. And ROM – or write once memory for media purchase – will be even cheaper. While 32GB is not exactly the size of the maximum size of a Blu-Ray disk, but it is pretty close.

Blu-Ray players already read all previous 12cm optical formats. During the transition it makes sense that they contain a slot and an optical drive. And over time, slot-only interfaces will appear for computers and for home theater systems.

There are no compelling advantages for the 12cm format in the long term. In five years it could be the “Compatibility” format for ages past, ordered as an optional addition to your new computer system. Won’t laptops be a lot nicer without the space and complexity of the optical drive?

- windy