Summer is here!

Nomad will not be making many posts for the next few weeks, there are a number of trips he is planning and a few other projects that may take up time.

The detailed review of the legal situation has been deliberately delayed, this subject will get revisited in September. Also in the pipeline is the history of my relationship with the BBC. It could be titled "a love gone wrong"; although perhaps I will think of something better.

Under consideration is whether to launch a website using the material from this blog. It was originally planned that this blog would be a first port of call for people thinking about video on demand. Experience now shows that the blog format is not ideal for this as you really need to start with the first post in order to build up the picture.

Obviously the situation is developing and the next few months are crucial. Although takeup of video on demand is increasing, it is not yet widely seen as a way of avoiding the TV Licence. The technology is largely in place and will mature. The issue will be whether the public are resolved to stand up to 'the corporation' or not.

Ethernet over mains

Nomad suspected that the wireless connection between his media player and PC was not always adequate, particularly for very high definition video. In order to fix this an ethernet cable would need to be run somewhere. The route of this cable was the subject of much head scratching. For safety reasons it could not run alongside power cables. For aesthetic reasons it could not trail across the floor. In any case there was always the possibility that a future redesign of the lounge would require the cable to be re-routed. In any case Nomad is extremely lazy and the idea of drilling holes and suchlike caused constant postponement of the project

There is, however, a technology called ethernet over mains which solves these problems by using the power cables in your house to transmit data.

Nomad tried to order Belkin units from DABS but this delivery went from 3-4 days to 2-3 weeks to 6-7 weeks to order cancelled. He then ordered a Maxvalue (never heard of them either) 200Mbps Home Plug double unit pack from Amazon for £56.

The units come with utility sotware that lets you control privacy and also tell how fast your link is running. According to the software the link runs at 168MB. Obviously the Ethernet router only runs at 100MB so 168MB is an entirely theoretical number.

Once the link units were installed, the wireless link on the media player was turned off. Tests using very high definition video (around 50MB/minute) show that these files now play perfectly. I have found a couple of files which still have a problem with sound, however the picture seems to be perfect. I suspect this is a file format issue rather than a network problem.

Expensive BBC

Nomad is delighted to see that The Telegraph has been targeting 'the corporation' over its expense claims. This is entirely appropriate, they are funded by a tax on watching television and the taxpayers are entitled to know how the money is spent.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/5649513/Mark-Thompson-defends-high-BBC-salaries-and-lavish-expense-accounts.html

Thompsons arguments are essentially spurious, 'the corporation' is not competing with anybody. His organisation could make no programmes at all if it wanted and his expenses claims would still be met.

As a line of attack, the confidentiality of the stars packages is an obvious place to start. If these people choose to work for a public organisation funded by the taxpayer why should they be entitled to secrecy. FOI request anybody?

Given that the salaries of the talent are supposed to be confidential, you may well be wondering how it is that we know all the details of what our Johnathan gets paid. I think the answer is that the vile Ross rather likes boasting about his "big package".

Digital Britain? Quango Britain!

Nomad has been somewhat behind the plot recently. Astute readers will no doubt already be aware of the Digital Britain white paper. In the latest developments certain parties are outraged that the licence fee could be "top sliced".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/5624879/Mark-Thompson-accuses-clique-of-undermining-BBC-by-top-slicing--licence-fee.html

So given that 'the corporation' is upset; it is worth asking whether the white paper is good news. In Nomad's opinion it is not. This is a petty bureaucratic struggle. Why take money from one quaisi goverment body and hand it over to another? For make no mistake that there will be a quango in charge of administering ITV's handout.

Surely what the taxpayer wants is freedom to decide where to spend thier money. Surely what the viewer wants is freedom to decide what to watch. Ultimately of course these are the same thing.

TVersity

In short TVersity has been a success. Nomad gives it a 4 out of 5 recommendation. There are some niggling issues but hopefully future software updates will cure these.

TVersity has a different processor load profile from the other media servers I have tried. It runs at 100% for a period and then drops right off. However the good news is that the videos play without stop/starting and without loss of sound. It looks like TVersity works by building up a buffer and then stopping for a while until the buffer needs to be refilled. Obviously someone has optimised the performance such that keeping the media player supplied with data has priority. I am still having some problems with very high definition files (say 50MB per minute) which sometimes lose audio. I think this is very likely due to the limitations of the wireless system and may well be cured by going to a hardwired connection.

TVersity does transcoding well. It has solved the problem of the M4V suffixed files that would not play. I have been able to turn off the batch file I created to rename these files. I am also using TVersity regularily to replay MOV files. TVersity does not handle FLV format files, but then none of the other servers I tried managed to cope with them either.

TVersity provides a 'date added' folder and by selecting todays date you can find all the current videos. This saves hunting round all the feeds to find whether there are any new videos. Using the 'date added' folder in TVersity is now the standard way that I watch video.

Tversity seems to work fine with my photos. However, for some reason Tversity seems to be having trouble finding the audio files on my PC (in aac format). Possibly it does not support aac. It will play mp3 audio files without a problem. To find the albums I have ripped I still need to keep Kiss PC-Link running.

So far I am only using the free version of TVersity. The Pro version (29.95 dollars) of TVersity also provides capability to download content, including that from BBC iPlayer and Hulu (US only at present). I have not yet tried this side of things out. In fact TVersity can handle RSS video feeds as well which means that Miro could be redundant. I am not ready for anything that radical yet, but it is a possibility.

http://tversity.com/

Sorry Jezza

It seems that Nomad's one man boycott of 'the corporation' is already having an effect. Jeremy Clarkson is among the stars said to be facing a pay cut.

Obviously there is an element of media management here. Still if 'the corporation' thinks that it needs to be seen economising then it must be trying to head off more pressure on the licence fee.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/5508356/A-horror-show-for-BBC-stars.html

Transparency?

Want to know where your licence fee money goes. Some people would rather you did not.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rod_liddle/article6445961.ece

Election Blues

Nomad writes this as he waits for more results from the Euro Elections. Nomad has to admit that recent events have strained his abstention from live television to the limit.. Having waited for 12 years for the Labour party's reign of incompetence to end it is rather frustrating not to see it happening live on TV. This is particularily true for an election night. It has to be said that if there is one thing TV does well then it is election night. At the moment I am following a number of live blogs (Con Home, UKIP, Telegraph). For a soundtrack I am reduced to listening to Radio Four.

Still this is not a moment for ones resolve to waver. Difficult cases make bad law and one evening should not determine what I watch all year round. Courage!

Canvas blanked - for now

Nomad had planned a big post on Project Canvas which supposedly was due to enter another public consultation phase staring next week. It looks like that has been postponed. On the whole this is good news as the more delays there are, the more irrelevant the project will become.

In simple terms Canvas is a plan to provide a set top box which combines video download on demand with reception of Freeview. Why not just use seperate boxes? Well, then people might decide to unplug one of the boxes and supposing they unplugged the Freeview box they might then decide not to buy a licence. Project Canvas will lock people in to the licence. A cunning plan - no?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/5446288/BBCs-Project-Canvas-internet-on-TV-plans-attacked.html

and there is more here

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/5445295/Channel-4-and-Five-look-to-join-Project-Canvas.html

Incidentally Nomad had planned to make a submission himself along the lines of: Why is 'the corporation' defining a new technical standard when there are suitable existing technical standards. This will have to wait till the subject is open for public comment.

A public service?

See this link to a post by Guido. The actual subject matter may already be overtaken by events; but it exactly captures the disdain of the BBC for the plebs who pay the licence fee.

http://order-order.com/2009/06/04/public-service-broadcasting/

Nero fiddles while Twonky burns?

When Nomad bought the Linksys Kiss 1600 it came with a disc containing Nero MediaHome CE. Evidently MediaHome CE is a cut down version of MediaHome. For some reason Nomad had never got round to finding out what this did.

In terms of performance MediaHome CE proved to be an improvement over Twonky. Typical performance with a high definition file started with approximately 65% processor loading but then dropped to approximately 25%, presumably after the buffer had filled.

MediaHome CE successfully played MOV files as well as the standard MP4 files. It did not like FLV or M4V files.

The problem with MediaHome CE was that the names displayed on the Media Player appear to come from tag information. Most of the files seem to lack this data and therefore the user is presented with a long list of files which are all described as “video” or something similar. This made it impossible to select the desired file. Not good.

Clearly MediaHome CE was not working out and it was time to see what MediaHome 4 (the full version) would do. The trial version of MediaHome 4 can be downloaded from the web for free. MediaHome 4 worked fine displaying the filenames where the tag information was missing. Unfortunately it also ran at close to 100% processor load with all the files Nomad tried and the display was the same old stop/start with no sound, as seen with Twonky.

Clearly neither of the versions of MediaHome fit the bill but the search for suitable media server software will continue in a future edition of this exciting saga.

Its like this .............

So how did the Twonky trial installation go; well there is good news and there is bad news.

Twonky installed and ran without problem. There were no compatability issues with the Kiss 1600. It is worth mentioning that the Kiss 1600 is not DLNA compliant but Twonky obviously recognises the device and makes the neccessary changes. The Twonky user interface was intuitive and some of the features are good. The "play to" function works without any problem. Nomad thinks that "play to" is a great technological solution to a problem he does not have. Somewhere in the world there is an application just crying out for "play to"; answers on a postcard please. The ability to create playlists and the "recently downloaded" list are very useful. However the real 'must have' function is transcoding. Transcoding is the process where the server (Twonky in this case) recodes the file into a format which the media player can understand. Twonky was thus able to play MOV files to the Kiss 1600. The FLV format did play but only provided sound.

Now we come to the bad news. While serving a file Twonky Media Server typically resulted in a processor loading of 70%. Serving the same file using Kiss PC link resulted in a processor loading of about 2%. Twonky might be forgiven for a high processor load on files that required transcoding but the results were just as bad for files that the Kiss 1600 could already play. Turning on Twonky Media Manager at the same time produced even worse results and with one high definition video the load went to 100% with a resulting stop start video display and loss of sound. Nomad emailed Twonky support about this problem but has yet to get an answer. This problem alone would be bad enough but Twonky also had problems with the file structure used for the videos. The final straw is that Twonky Media Manager decides to put itself in the startup box every time that it runs. It would be acceptable for an application to put itself in the startup box during initial installation but the repeated failure to accept Captain Nomads authority means that this application will shortly be walking the plank.

Some other problems arose during the trial that may not be down to Twonky. Firstly there appeared to be some interaction between iTunes and Twonky that resulted in even greater processor load numbers. Nomad solved this by uninstalling iTunes which will not be greatly missed. Also using Twonky the wifi network acted as a constraint that caused stop, start video output. This was despite the same files playing well using Kiss PC Link over WiFi. A possible theory is that Twonky produces more "bursty" data which exceeds the buffer size in the Media Player. In order to workaround the problem for the trial Nomad linked up the boxes with a piece of ethernet cable.

So Twonky is not the answer but Nomad does want Media Server Software. Given that DLNA supports a very small set of file formats; it is clear that transcoding is a vital function. Playlists and a recently uploaded lists are also very useful and will save Nomad searching through all his feeds for new files.

Media Server Comparison

Nomad is still working on Twonky and might get to writing a report by tomorrow.

In the meantime see the link below for a useful comparison of media server software.

http://www.rbgrn.net/content/21-how-to-choose-dlna-media-server-windows-mac-os-x-or-linux