Posted Dec 21st 2006 2:00PM by JJ Hawkins Filed under: Tips
Christmas movies bore me to tears which is a shame in my household because if there is a Christmas movie on TV, expecially if it's in black and white, my wife is all over it like a gaudy background image on a MySpace page.
For most movies I have a threshold of about 2-3 viewings before the sight of it makes me want to rinse my eyes out with Liquid Plumber, so it amazes me that people are able to watch the exact same movie over and over and over again every year.
Of course, this is coming from a guy who has seen Braveheart at least 30 times, which equates to around 88 man hours of viewing.
It's friggin' Braveheart though and of course an exception to the rule...
Anyhow, instead of listing my favorite Holiday movies or a guide on which to record, I'm going to list the Top Five Holiday sporting events worthy of your PVR.
There's nothing better than crunching a three-hour sporting event into a single hour of commercial and commentary-free viewing.
Well, except for reciting all the lines in Braveheart a second before the on-screen characters say them -- much to the dismay of anyone viewing it with you.
Chicken Run - Sunday 24 December - 6:40pm - 8:00pm - BBC1 I don't know what it is about the Nick Park animated films that makes them feel Christmassy, but they somehow are. Chicken Run is an animated children's film that features a band of chickens that try to outwit their owners and escape from their coop.
A Fish Called Wanda - Sunday 24 December - 11:15pm - 1:15am - Channel 4 A Fish Called Wanda is an Academy Award-winning classic comedy film released in 1988 starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline and Michael Palin. It's a tale of murder, lust, greed, revenge, and seafood, where four very different people team up to commit armed robbery, then try to double-cross each other for the loot.
Top of the Pops 2 Christmas Special - Saturday 23 December - 7:40pm - 9:10pm - BBC2 Get yourself in the Christmas spirit with some classic Christmas tunes from the past few decades. With X Factor's Leona set to be this Christmas Number One, I think we need a break from that soppy pop music and to get down with some classic Christmas tunes with the Top of the Pops 2 Christmas Special.
The Muppet Christmas Carol - Saturday 23 December 2:15pm - 3:50pm – Channel Five If I didn't own the DVD I would be taping this classic Christmas movie. It is guaranteed to entertain the kids for a few days as they watch those Muppets perform the Scrooge tale over and over.
Neighbours – Weekdays - 1:35pm - 2:00pm - BBC1 Yes I know it's on every day of the week and most people hate this Australian soap, but I love it. I watch it every day and will continue to do so over Christmas. Watching this show has added such insults as 'Cake Taker', 'Muffin Bar', and 'Munter' to my vocabulary. Don't expect anything Christmassy, since we're six months behind Australia with Neighbours here in the UK.
I wasn't planning on making this a list of holiday-themed recordings, so much as a list of good movies that are airing over the holiday period. As it turns out, the two go hand in hand. So without further ado, here's my top 5 list of movies running on basic cable over the next week:
Comedy Central is running Bad Santaseveral times on 12/24 and 12/25. If you've ever wondered what life is like for those department store Santas, I really hope this movie doesn't provide a glimpse of the truth.
TBS is running a 24 hour marathon of A Christmas Story starting at 8PM on the 12/24, and running through 8PM on 12/25. Somehow this irreverent tale of a kid in search of a BB gun has become a classic, shown almost as often during the holidays as It's a Wonderful Life.
Love, Actually. USA Network, 6AM EST on 12/25. Love, Actually isn't so much a holiday movie as a film that takes place against a holiday backdrop. I dare you to watch it and not wind up smiling. And with a 6AM time slot, this is the sort of show that PVRs were created to record.
Spirited Away. Cartoon Network, 7PM EST on 12/25. Hayao's Miyazaki's modern fairy tale of a young girl who wanders into a world filled with witches, gods, and monsters. The animation is amazing, and a nice change of pace from anything you or your kids are likely to see from most American cartoons.
Ghostbusters. Comedy Central, 4:30PM EST on 12/22 and 11AM EST on 12/23. It seems like Ghostbusters II is always showing on sable cable television channel or other. But the original film about paranormal investigators over their heads doesn't come on nearly as often. This is a great chance to catch it.
Walmart has this "toy" for $48 on clearance with $.97 shipping, which is a pretty phenomenal price considering it cost $199 at release and can currently be found on Amazon for $126.
512 MB of internal storage (expandable by 2 GB via memory card) is probably the devices biggest shortcoming, but you have to remember this is for the kiddies.
You can cram plenty of episodes of Blues Clues or Dora the Explorer on one of these things - at least enough to keep your pipsqueak satiated for a good while, and that leads us to the units strongest selling point.
There's no downloading of shows off the web and transferring them to the unit to mess with.
The Riproar records programming directly to the unit from any video source giving you an endless supply of free content (let's just assume you steal your Cable TV / Satellite) to entertain your child with on the road.
It also includes some other nice features such as an external speaker, scheduled recordings, 5 hours of battery life for video, MP3 and photo playback, TV out, and an IR remote for controlling the unit while on the included dock. Is it wrong that this feature set sounds better than some of the real adult PMPs on the market?
At such an inexpensive price, this thing is either a seething piece of digital poo or nobody is aware of this decent looking product and as a result they simply aren't selling. At $48.97 I'd be willing to take the gamble on this one and give it a try.
This definitely falls into the "gifts that are ostensibly for my child but really for me" category, but whatever. I do what I want.
My co-writers here at PVR Wire have been giving you some gift ideas for the Festive season, but I thought I'd be a little different and tell you what not to buy.
TiVo Series 3. Before you start shouting 'TiVo is great' -- hold it right there. I know TiVo is great, I know the Series 3 is a damn fine PVR and I know HD is the must-have thing this Christmas, but I just don't think it's the right time to buy a Series 3. Most stores are selling it at $799 although Yahoo Shopping found one at $670. That's pretty expensive for a PVR, no matter how good it is. But I can guarantee the Series 3 will have a substantial price drop shortly after Christmas, and that will be a much better time to buy.
XP Media Center without an Express Vista Upgrade. If you're planning on buying a media center PC running Windows MCE, then make sure it has an Express Vista Upgrade. With the right manufacturer you can get a free upgrade to the Vista operating system when it comes out before March 31, thus saving yourself the hefty cost of upgrading later on down the line. If you decide you don't want to upgrade to Vista, then you don't have to, but at least you have the option.
Microsoft Zune – With so many excellent digital media players out on the market the Microsoft Zune just doesn't cut it. It's full of DRM and you have to hack it to do things that I would expect it to do as standard. I agree with Brad, the Archos 604 is a much more attractive option.
ReplayTV PC Edition – Turning a PC into a PVR is a great idea, but ReplayTV PC Edition is not the software to use. It lacks some much-needed features such as multiple tuner support, HDTV support, ability to stream video to other computers, and a free electronic program guide. It will cost you $99.95 with an additional $19.95 yearly fee. Sage TV and Beyond TV are a better option in my eyes, and you can always get basic PVR functionality for free with GB-PVR.
Downloading google video is nothing new and there are plenty of programs out there that do it. You can download Google video using the Google Video Player or use various tools that extract the non flash format of the video to save to your PC.
In fact Google makes 3 formats of the same video available, the FLV format you see while surfing and two other formats that you can download. On any Google video page you can see this download option on the right.
It offers a download in two formats, GVP that can be used in Google's Video Player (titled Windows/Mac) and an MP4 file that can be used on an iPod or Sony PSP.
So before you even begin you have 3 formats at your disposal, but unfortunately if you wanted to play these using a media extender or PVR then you would probably need an AVI format or WMA format.
Right, so you probably already know that TiVo's encryption has been cracked, allowing you to convert .tivo files to MPEG files on a Mac or Linux machine. But unless you have a deep love of the command line, you might be a little hard pressed to make use of this fact.
Well, luckily our friend Dave Zatz has gone and made things a bit easier with a step by step tutorial for Mac users. For all the details, check out his fine post. But here's the nitty gritty:
Make sure you have Xcode to compile the program (it's either in your install directory or on your installation disc for OS X).
Go to www.tivo.com/manage, sign in and check to make sure transfers are allowed for Series2 TiVo. Then get your Media Access Key.
Now, using a computer on your home LAN, open a web browser and go to https://[your TiVo's IP, as assigned by your home router].
Sign on with the username tivo and the password is your Media Access Key.
Download the videos you want to your computer
And finally, you're ready to decrypt the files, converting them into MPEG-2 files. Right now there's no graphical user interface for TiVo Decode, so you'll wind up with something that looks like this: tivodecode-0.1.2/objects.dir/tivodecode -m ########## -o distraction.mpg distraction.tivo, where ########## is your Media Access Key. Check out Dave's post for instructions on building your own command line. Or wait a few days until someone comes out with a front end for the program.
Here is another great reason to own a MythTV PVR; you can turn it into a Slingbox so you can stream your TV over the internet to any other internet enabled video player such as a laptop, PC, or PMP.
By installing MythStreamTV, a module for the MythWeb interface to MythTV, you will have an extra option in your MythWeb homepage. From that page you can then go on to select what you want to watch.
Unlike the Slingbox, MythStreamTV won't automatically decide what bitrate to use so you will have to set this manually and experiment a little bit. Also the user interface is pretty basic but as a handy free feature I wouldn't be too bothered about that.
One of the most common things that I use my MCE box for is to watch videos, whether they be full DVD's, DivX or XviD. The downside of watching non-DVD movies is that there are no chapter breaks, so if I want to pick up in a certain spot again, I am usually stuck either skipping forward or looking for a specific time frame.
Well BookMarkIt! takes care of a lot of these problems. This handy little plugin allows you to add bookmarks (which are similar to chapters on DVDs) to various video files so you can easily get back to where you left off.
Usage for this plugin is quite simple and straightforward. When you are watching a video and you want to add a bookmark, you can either hit the Info button on your MCE remote or you can right click with the mouse, and choose 'More'. Once you hit the 'More' button you can either save a new bookmark or open an existing one.
Installation of this plugin is quick and easy, and the best part is that it is free. For more information, and a link to download BookMarkIt!, just hit the Read link bellow.
One of the joys of building your own PVR is not only choosing what software to use, but you have to choose what hardware you want. Things aren't always clear cut with all of the various choices out there, so having second opinions on options is always a great thing.
For example, Andy recently posted a list of information and parts that he used to build his latest MCE box, and there is also a lot of sound advice in there. I completely agree with him that although cost is almost always an issue, there are some things you should not skimp on, like cases, the CPU or the amount RAM.
So what would I have done differently if I were building a system similar to Andy's? First off I would have used a different power supply (these things are real quiet – I have two), I would have either gone for a larger hard drive or more than one, and I would go for a dual tuner PCI card.
So what would you have done differently? Do you have any advice to offer to other homebrew PVR builders? Leave a comment below and let us know.
The forthcoming codenamed Apple iTV is a device that will connect your TV to your Mac and also to the internet, hooking you up with the iTunes movie store and all the video stored on your Mac.
However, this device is not something you can put on your Christmas list since it won't be released for some time. But if you really want a device that can hook your TV up to your PC and don't want to wait then here are some devices already available.
Available now:
ADS Media Link ($90) – This media server hooks your TV up to your PC and the internet. It can show videos, images and music from your PCs hard drive on your television. All in all it's not too bad but does not support playback for WMV files and is not great when it comes to playing music on your TV. The internet browser is also a bit slow. It supports both SD and HD. For the $90 price tag it is a good budget model.
D-Link MediaLounge DSM-520 ($200) – Againlike the ADS Media Link, this media server can play MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 video files but not WMV files. IUnfortunately it does not have internet browsing support. However, it does have good support for music files and you can even use AOL's ShoutCast radio service. It has also been reported that it sometimes has trouble with non D-Link routers. Personally I don't think it is worth the $200 price tag.
Actiontec Wireless Digital Media Player ($150) – This device is very similar in functionality to the ADS Media Link, but costing about $60 more. It supports SD and HD video, and has internet browsing capabilities, although they aren't great. It has a variety of digital video and audio connections too.
Newegg has a deal for a free TV tuner after rebate. Just remember, you usually get what you pay for.
The KWorld VS-TV7133 TV tuner has a decent rating in Newegg's user reviews, but the users who were unhappy with the card report a number of problems, ranging from lousy picture quality to inferior bundled software.
I wouldn't recommend this card if you're looking to put together your first PC-based PVR, but for free it might be worth picking up just to see if it works as a second, third, or umpteenth tuner. Of course, that's assuming you ever get the rebate.
The Xbox 360 makes quite a good central media hub connecting you to the internet, allowing you to play games and DVDs, and if you are in the US you can even rent downloadable movies.
However watching video from your PC is a little trickier. The Xbox 360 will only play videos from your PC that are in the WMA format. Well it doesn't take a genius to figure your way around that one, convert any non WMA videos on your PC to the WMA format.
Dale Dietrich came across a handy video converter called VLC that easily allows you to batch convert your video files ready for your Xbox360 so you to play your PC video collection through your Xbox 360 on your living room TV.
Unfortunately things aren't perfect and the Xbox 360 will ignore folder structures and just list your files all in one big list and it also cannot rewind or fast forward videos.
Windows Media Center has never officially supported high definition ATSC TV in Canada, although it has been supported in the USA.
Despite this lack of support this didn't stop many Canadians using a hack to force MCE 2005 to receive high definition ATSC in Canada. However this hack does not work on the new Vista Media Center.
Fortunately Pete Near of thenears.com has written an excellent guide to make this happen in Windows Vista MCE too.
You will need a decent ATSC tuner for your PC and a good quality UHF antenna in order to get this to work. It will take a little while to set up but if you want HDTV on your Vista MCE then it is worthwhile doing.
If you are someone who likes to have the latest gadgets and software you may find yourself with a Microsoft Zune and Windows Vista.
However, don't expect things to be easy. Microsoft has not released a Vista version of the Zune software meaning hooking up your Zune to your Vista PC is not a straightforward task.
Fortunately Paul from MaDaCo has a solution to get the XP version of the Zune software running on Vista using his own patch.
Paul has given very clear instructions here and it shouldn't be too hard to do only taking about 15 minutes or so.
Christmas movies bore me to tears which is a shame in my household because if there is a Christmas movie on TV, expecially if it's in black and white, my wife is all over it like a gaudy background image on a MySpace page.
Chicken Run - Sunday 24 December - 6:40pm - 8:00pm - BBC1
I wasn't planning on making this a list of holiday-themed recordings, so much as a list of good movies that are airing over the holiday period. As it turns out, the two go hand in hand. So without further ado, here's my top 5 list of movies running on basic cable over the next week:
TiVo Series 3. Before you start shouting 'TiVo is great' -- hold it right there. I know TiVo is great, I know the 
Microsoft Zune – With so many excellent digital media players out on the market the Microsoft Zune just doesn't cut it. It's full of DRM and you have to 
Downloading google video is nothing new and there are plenty of programs out there that do it. You can download Google video using the Google Video Player or use various tools that extract the non flash format of the video to save to your PC.
Right, so you probably already know that 
ADS Media Link ($90) – This media server hooks your TV up to your PC and the internet. It can show videos, images and music from your PCs hard drive on your television. All in all it's not too bad but does not support playback for WMV files and is not great when it comes to playing music on your TV. The internet browser is also a bit slow. It supports both SD and HD. For the $90 price tag it is a good budget model.
D-Link MediaLounge DSM-520 ($200) – Againlike the ADS Media Link, this media server can play MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 video files but not WMV files. IUnfortunately it does not have internet browsing support. However, it does have good support for music files and you can even use AOL's ShoutCast radio service. It has also been reported that it sometimes has trouble with non D-Link routers. Personally I don't think it is worth the $200 price tag.
Actiontec Wireless Digital Media Player ($150) – This device is very similar in functionality to the ADS Media Link, but costing about $60 more. It supports SD and HD video, and has internet browsing capabilities, although they aren't great. It has a variety of digital video and audio connections too.
Newegg 
