How to save your aging home theatre

I've been facing this problem for a while, but have been too lazy (as usual) to do anything about it. The problem was brought front and center during a conversation with a friend of mine. Let me explain.

My current home setup has a Cambridge Audio Azur 540 as the receiver, KEF Q-series speakers (two floor stander mains, two bookshelf surrounds and a center), a Wharfdale bottom firing subwoofer, an LG 42" Plasma TV, a Sony DVD player, a Sony PS3, An Apple TV and my Tata Sky+ Cable set top box.

The problem is: My TV (which is 7 years old) has only one HDMI input and my Cambridge Audio (again 7 years old) has no HDMI processing and has only one optical TOSLink input. Do you see where the problem is?

If I want to get surround sound, I need the device (either my DVD player or my PS3 or my Apple TV) to feed it to the Amp over an optical link. Up until a couple of years ago, this was not a problem as the only source capable of playing surround sound was my DVD player. But now I had 3 sources and only one connection into the Amp. The source had become the PS3 (mainly because I have been watching more BluRay content these days), but this solution was not going to be, what's the techie jargon I'm looking for, scalable.

So when my friend bought a new Yamaha amp so that he could have HDMI switching and Airplay and all the nice things that come with it, a thought wormed itself into my mind. I needed a way to make this work without making too much of investment. And that'w where the research started.

Now the solution is so crazily simple, it will make you all laugh.

I got a small device called the ViewHD Matrix HDMI Switch which is this super cool little device. 

It allows four HDMI sources (it supports HDMI 1.3b which means it supports 3D as well) to be connected as sources which can then be displayed on two HDMI displays (one will be your TV and the other can be your HD Projection system...something that's on my shopping list and which should come in a few months). But here's what makes the device special...It has an optical out! So the device filters out the sound from the source's HDMI signal and sends it thro the TOSlink to the Amp! Hurray! My problem solved! I tested it...all my sources can now spit out surround output to my Amp which beautifully reproduces the sound (did I say I love my Amp?)! My setup now plays whatever encoding the source is playing (DTS, THX, Dolby Digital ES or Stereo) natively without making any physical changes! But wait, there's more. 

The cute little device has an audio headphone output port which I can use to hook up my wireless headphones. Hurray!!! Now no matter what I'm watching late night, I can still enjoy the full benefits of sound without waking the house (which i will anyways do when ManU scores a goal)

Simply outstanding! Here's the amazing part...I paid only USD79 for it! That's nothing considering that this little piece of equipment made in China just made my current setup future proof. I can do Airplay (something that I have been doing for a while now, but only in stereo as the output was feeding only the TV), play BluRay rips from my PS3 (with HD Audio) and my DVD player still plays DTS DVDs to my heart's content!

Do I have more? You can bet your a$$ I do.

Now you may have noticed that I have a fair few devices that need to be controlled (and a new one for the ViewHD), so you will not be surprised to hear that I have a Logitech Harmony 700 Universal Remote to make sure that I have only one remote control to use. Unfortunately, the Harmony can't control the PS3 natively as the PS3 works over Bluetooth and not InfraRed. So I got a Logitech adapter for the PS3 which pairs as a controller over BT with the PS3 and then takes IR instructions from the Harmony! Sweet?

There's more!

But that's for another post :)

Keep waiting for that...hehehehehehe

Bits in the air

I felt like the total geek I am when I was setting up the spanking new D-Link Dual Band Wireless N router, the Apple TV and the HDMI hub. The satisfaction after setting it up was immense. Made all the effort to consolidate and digitize my media these last few months worth it.

First up, the wireless router. Now being the super anal person I am, I had to set up the wireless network EXACTLY as I want it. No default settings would do. But to do that, I had to login to the router for administration. The Quick Start leaflet that came with the router mentioned that the username for the administrator is "Admin". Nope, the router refused to log me in. Then I tried "admin" and voila! it worked. Set up both the bands and now it was time to setup the Apple TV.

The setup is unsurprisingly simple...typical Apple. A couple of clicks using the included remote and I was at the network configuration screen. Here is where I thought Apple could have done better with the keyboard. It's a pain to type in my WiFi password using that keyboard, especially considering that the password I have is 26 characters long! I had the same problem when enabling "Home Sharing", a pre-requisite to start streaming from my iMac. Putting in the Apple ID and then the password was a painful affair. All said, the whole thing took me 15 mins to get thro and I was ready to start.

iMac at the ready, Apple TV waiting to receive...Start the Movie! And it works, Ladies and Gentlemen!

Next up, pairing the iPhone "Remote" application to the Apple TV. Piece of cake. Easy Peasy. Done. Now am browsing my library and controlling everything using my iPhone. Cool!

Now the HDMI port switcher. Connected the DVD player, the Apple TV and my Kodak zx3 HDMI cables to the 3 input ports and the output to the TV. And just like that, I have a tiny device - with a IR remote along with it - that I can not operate sitting back on my bed, being the lazy person I am.

It was a great experience to watch HD quality being streamed thro the air and into my TV. The kicker was the 5.1 channel surround sound after I hooked the Apple TV - via optical cable - to my Cambridge Audio amplifier.

And finally, just tried Airplay from my iPhone to view an episode of "The Big Bang Theory" on my HD TV. Also realized that a video ripped to support the iPhone screen format is of good enough quality to watch on a 42" screen. Not necessary to get the videos in large formats and so a good idea to save space. Will try it with a couple of DVDs and if that works, will start ripping all of them to the iPhone format so that I can cram more media on the same hard disk space.

All in all, a very satisfying evening! 30 minutes of work and 6 hours of pleasure!

Another addition to the media room

Finally got my hands on the AppleTV!

POP! The Champagne cork is off. The wait is over. All my redigitizing effort to consolidate my media and make it Apple TV friendly is going to finally pay off tonight. And to make the experience better, I am also now in possession of a spanking new D-Link Dual Band Wireless N router. Ok, so I didn't buy the router because of AppleTV...my old router would have done just fine. But that was exactly the problem. My old router was...you know...OLD. The bugger would randomly hang and I would have to physically yank out the power cable and wait 10 seconds before pushing it back in to get it going. It would happen at some of the most inconvenient times of the day (think having to tiptoe around the house at 1:30am just cause your Daily Show episode has frozen midway). So the solution was to get a nice and powerful Wireless N capable router which my Macbook and iMac could freak out on. Now I can enjoy my 8mbps broadband connection a little more :)

And so save myself a little more trouble, I bought a HDMI switcher. Yep, my Plasma is 5 years old and came with only one HDMI port which is currently being used by my DVD player. So now my DVD player and my Apple TV will have to jostle for the same port. Not to worry. 3-port HDMI switcher (with IR remote) to the rescue. Woo Hoo!

Thanx Sanjeev for carrying the stuff back for me. Muchas Gracias!

Bandeau Aid

My buddy and I are planning a trip to a certain nordic country somewhere in the first few months of the coming year. Knowing the frigid temperatures in that part of the world, not withstanding the current snowed out conditions in most of northern Europe, I know that I have a tough time there, especially for someone who is not very fond of cold weather.

For most of my adult life (and a part of my childhood as well), I have had the tendency of my hands and feet getting cold with the slightest hint of cold weather. I'm not even talking snow conditions...even if the temperatures go slightly below 20˚ C, my hands and feet go colder than the ambient. Given this tendency, I prefer to be in places which are predominantly warm.

You would realize now that Nordic weather will be quite a challenge for someone of my body characteristics.

One of the big "To Do" items on the list is to buy warm clothing. This includes mostly inner wear, jackets, shoes and the like. I recently added another item to the list...and just got possession of it.

The place where I got it lists it as a "Bandeau Multifonctions" or Multipurpose Headband. It is also sometimes referred to as a "Buff" or a "Snood" (Samir Nasri of Arsenal wears one for every cold weather game, so if you see him play, you know what I mean).

This Bandeau / Buff / Snood is a tubular garment which is supposed to be worn around the neck or head to protect against the cold. The key character of this garment is that it stretches only sideways and not towards the edges. This allows me to wear it as a tubular neck scarf, a skull cap or a bandana. The most important way of using this would be where the back of the neck scarf is pulled over my head and the front is pulled over my lips, thereby shielding me from the super cold temperatures I will encounter once we get there.

My trip just became a little more comfortable...in my head. Hope it goes that way too :)

i-dont-Pad

Yesterday, I watched Steve Jobs create the now familiar Reality Distortion Field when he took the stage to announce the "iPad". And as expected from Steve, words like Amazing, Fantastic, Revolutionary came thick and fast as the new sleek iPad was unveiled.

It's a really nice looking gadget. 9+ inches of screen real estate, up to 64GB of flash space, Wifi/3G, etc. And to start at $500.

And all thro the presentation, I was thinking to myself…all of this I can do on my 2G iphone! Everything except the iWorks part (which I really don't want to do on my phone). And it became a YAWN device for the moment. For the following reasons:

1. $500 for something that I absolutely don't need and that really does not add any real value.

2. I'm getting started with eBooks, having bought a couple of them from the Amazon store (Kindle edition), but I read them on my iPhone with the free Kindle app. So all I end up paying for is the book…which is 30% of the printed book cost. So that works for me.

3. One more device to carry around. I'm always going to carry my iPhone (I sometimes forget my wallet, but never my iPhone) and I'm going to need my laptop to do stuff the iPad will probably never. Case in point: Aperture! My photograph manipulation software that I need to sync my Nikon to when I'm going crazy with the shutter. So the iPad will be just another device that I will end up carrying with me and will only make my already heavy bag heavier by a kilo (it's only a kilo, so what?), not to mention the accessories that will eventually come with this device.

4. The number of books available for the Kindle is far greater than the ones for the iPad. Of course, you can say that's because there is no iPad today! But in 3 months time, when it is available, I believe the Kindle will still have a decent lead on the books available as compared to the iPad. And since I can buy the Kindle edition books and read them on my iPhone, I don't need to spend $500 for this.

5. I keep coming back to this $500 part, cause it's easy to misrepresent. For 500 bucks, you get the Wifi only 16GB version of the iPad. If you want the 64GB 3G enabled one, it's going to cost me $829! Now that's a lot of money to spend on something that I'm not sure I will use to the fullest today.

6. I wish Apple had put a tiny iSight camera on top of the iPad. Now that would have been a really cool thing to do. Then you could have used the iPad to do video conferencing on so many different platforms. Now you can chat with your friends on Google or Yahoo, but if you need to switch from chat to video, it's not a click away…it's a full device away.

I'm a huge Apple fan and usually love all the things they do. I like the iPad a lot as well, just don' t think it does much for me just yet. What I do believe is that it will probably bomb away the Kindle market and a large part of the Netbook market. It also might be a nice thing to give to kids, rather than a whole computer, but I did not hear too many things from Steve about Parental Controls on this device and so am not sure they thought about this market slice.

I'm hoping that as it happened with the iPhone (cost reduction by $100 within a few weeks of launch), Apple will lower the price for the 3G 64GB variant. Cause that's when I will seriously consider buying this thing. Until then, it's nice to look at, but that's all it is!