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Saturday, June 25, 2005

Show #155

 toc | toc 

Today’s news items

Why are big companies using spyware to invade your computer? According to USA Today companies like Capital One Financial, Sprint, and JC Penny’s are using questionable marketing techniques to flog their products.

The next big thing in laptops? Solid-state hard drives. Samsung has been talking up its 16GB flash drive and says it has plans to expand to 100GB “in a couple of years.” With relatively high speed, low power consumption and operating temps, and crazy reliability these drives are perfect for portables.

Microsoft says Internet Explorer will support RSS pages. When Longhorn ships. Sometime in 2006 or 2007. Something Mozilla, Firefox, Netscape, and Safari do right now. Wow.

The city of Sunnyvale, in the heart of Silicon Valley, is looking for a high-tech prankster who keeps changing the traffic lights.

And a company called Bad Fruit is sneaking podcasts into iTunes ahead of Apple’s planned podcast interface. The program is called Bad Apple - no wonder the authors are trying to stay anonymous. I love the disclaimer:

Before installing this iTunes plugin it would be wise to read this writeup by Robert Poole about some of the problems it can cause with your iTunes (particularly affecting your use of the iTunes Music Store).

11a-Noon

Fred from Torrance - Windows XP Pro or Home

Fred and his wife disagree - their new office computer came with XP Home. He wants to upgrade to XP Pro, she says stick with Home. You can look at Microsoft’s Pro vs. Home comparison chart. Unless you have multiple processors, need to use Windows Remote Access (the host must be Pro), need the encrypted file system, or remote files and folder access I’d stick with Home. Except for a few business features it’s exactly the same OS.

Lane in Signal Hill - duelling time zones

He sets his computer to local time, his cell phone to UTC, but the appointment times get screwed up when he synchs. You can tell Outlook to add a second time zone by clicking Tools→Options… pressing the Preferences tab, and the Calendar button. Press the Time Zone button to add a second zone.

Jeff in Santa Ana adds: This was a topic on Slashdot the other week: Where is the Killer Calendar App?. Outlook 2003 was acknowledged to be the best, but it was also pointed out that its time-zone handling stinks. gessel said “There is only one program I’ve found that handles time zones correctly: TrueSync Desktop and it is abandonware”.

David in San Pedro - converting tapes to DVD

He’s got 190 VHS tapes to convert. I recommend buying a standalone VHS to DVD burner like the HP DVD Movie Writer or the Panasonic DVD/VCR combo. Get the former if you want to have a computer DVD burner; get the latter if you’re interested in using the DVD recorder as a VCR after the project is over.

Hal in Sherman Oaks writes:
Leo’s comment “DVD is better QUALITY than VHS” is FALSE, what Leo most likely intended is that DVD is digital and has no loss, is more convenient and smaller than VHS. But DVD is COMPRESSED into MP2 and/or MP4 and has VERY Big Compromises compared to Uncompressed analog VHS stream. Uncompressed is ALWAYS better quality than Compressed MP2 video, MP3 audio or MP4 video. Uncompressed Digital Video IS far better Quality than VHS, but Uncompressed Digital Video is not DVD. DVCam, Mini-DV, Digital Beta, and the older BetaCam are all better than VHS.

Leo responds: Interesting assertion, Hal. Have you compared DVD to VHS lately? VHS may not be digitally compressed but it uses anlog compression that results in a truly awful picture. Putting it on DVD will not degrade it appreciably.

Hal in Sherman Oaks responds:
Leo, I am assuming that you are talking about the commercially produced Movies by the “Studios”, and you meant to say “VHS tape speed” and not “Analog Compression”. If the Studios are producing VHS tapes at the slowest tape speed i.e “EP” (Extended Play) Yes, the quality is very degraded, right next to ghastly. On the other hand, VHS recorded on well maintained pro quality decks with high tape speed, “SP”, and played back on a good quality well maintained VCR look great and are better quality than DVD.

VHS does NOT have the digital color banding, no digital artifacts in random motion, (waves, waterfalls, merry-go-rounds, etc.) and does not have the stop-jerk in motion when automatically switching from layer one to layer two. VHS has better Color Depth and is closer to what the Director wanted when it was first released on film. What I am trying to say is there is a definite trade-off going from high quality Analog to Compressed Digital.

Yes the Studios spend many thousands of dollars compressing each of “their Movie Titles” to be the best possible Digitally Compressed Compromise for Mass Stamping for the general Public, read “Cheaper to produce and distribute” than a High Quality VHS. Remember when the Studios charged $80 to $90 a copy for a movie in VHS!

For converting 190 VHS tapes, The digital compression algorithms to convert to MP2, MP3 and MP4 available to the general consumer are a far cry from what the studios have. Not even close to the bandwidth of a VHS data stream in SP. For better Quality for the consumer, why not use a DVHS deck to transfer the VHS tapes, then you can also record HDTV.

Leo responds: OK, since you don’t believe me Hal let me quote the Home Cinema Guide

Hal I’ve been working in television for over 10 years. I’ve never heard a TV engineer assert that VHS is even close to adequate quality. No TV network I know would consider putting a VHS on air, yet the MPEG-2 compression used on DVDs is used by both DBS satellite providers and nearly all digital cable channels. In a word VHS sucks. That’s why Super VHS was created. But it only sucks a little less. Most professional shooters use Beta SP. The rest use DVC Pro or other DV formats. None use VHS. They would laugh at you if you proposed it.

Admittedly if you try to put four or six hours of video on the DVD recorder you’re going to get poor quality - but if you use the best recording quality it should be more than adequate to dub your VHS tapes without any loss of quality.

Jim From Palmdale
I am a broadcast engineer and I fully agree with Leo’s reference to resolution. VHS simply comes up short. Most DVD’s will have 400+ Lines. Full broadcast TV will have 525. Only broadcast quality tape decks will faithfully reproduce all 525 lines (Beta SP, SX, Digibeta, D2 etc…) You have to graduate to DVHS to make the VHS world come close.
The primary downfall of bad DVD’s are in the compression and authoring of the disc. If an insufficient codec (Compressor/Decompressor) is used in the wrong context, video noise will result. How you compress an action movie is quite different than a newscast. Any DVD editor worth his/her salt will make the correct choices and author a fine disc. For the home user, just like when you record on VHS, you should select the fast speed, When you author a DVD, preview and adjust your compression to match your scene. Hours spend transcoding the video can make or break the project.

Noon-1p

Kevin in Malibu - Windows Me can’t set restore point

Check this Microsoft tech note for a myriad of possible reasons and fixes.

Ian in Nashville - how can I listen to KFI on Linux

The folks in the chat room will help you get it going. I would open mplayer and put in the following URL: http://ccri.eonstreams.com/ccri_ca_losangeles_kfi_am.asf

He also likes Sunbird - the calendaring program from the Mozilla foundation.

Jerry in La Canada - Using Windows programs on Mac

His wife is in real estate and some of the specialized programs are Windows only. You could run them using Microsoft’s Virtual PC for Macintosh, but it’s pretty slow. And yes, you would be vulnerable to viruses and spyware. PCs are so cheap it might make sense to buy one just for those programs. Unfortunately, there’s no free demo as there is for Virtual PC for PCs - I guess that’s because they’d have to give you a copy of Windows, too.

Kit says: Uses for Virtual PC on Windows.
1. Installing another OS (95,98,2000)
2. Creating a test network environment on 1 pc by running several instances of Virtual PC.
3. Running server software on a high end PC. You can back up the image while running and restore your server to any XP pc with Virtual PC within minutes if it goes down.

Bob in Burbank - MP3 player for exercise

Solid state players like the iPod shuffle are, indeed more robust than hard drive based players, but I’ve never had a problem with an iPod while bouncing around.

John in Northridge - using a laptop to watch TV

I’d look at the Hauppauge USB TV devices.

An anonymous listener writes: Pinnacle Systems makes some nice external TV devices that can be used with laptops. I got one called the PCTV USB2 on ebay for just $15.00. It’s quite small, has an F connector for a TV antenna and composite and S-video inputs but requires USB2 and Windows XP SP2 to work.

I use an AverMedia USB300 TV tuner which I like very much. It comes with PVR software and is very easy to connect through USB 2.0. It does require a separate input for audio to the line-in on you sound card. It runs about $70 if you search around the internet.

Leo responds: I agree, both Avermedia and Pinnacle make excellent tuners and you can’t beat $15!

Oscar in Kenwood adds: Avermedia has a cardbus device that looks interesting: Link to their page.
Interesting, I just looked on ebay and found 10, not 1 in the US though. Perhaps the USB route would be a safer bet!

After further research I found this review on Newegg.com Should settle it for the cardbus.

James in Irvine - Vaio extra partition

Be careful deleting it - I know you’re losing 25GB but Sony keeps the Windows install stuff and other files on it. You can delete it but you won’t be able to go back.

Sparkieinparadise adds: My Sony PCG-TR3A came with instructions on how to burn the recovery files to CD - it took 9 CD’s. Then I deleted the hidden partition. Check your manual.

MattSmith adds: You can purchase a recovery DVD from Sony for your particular computer. They cost about $15 plus shipping.

John in Riverside - Xbox can’t play some games

It’s probably just a dirty or misaligned drive. I’d take it in and have someone look at it.

UnnDunn in the chat room writes: the caller should check to see what model DVD drive he has in his Xbox. If he has two small holes in the disc tray (on either side of the disc-read hole) then he has a new one. if not, he has an old one and should look into getting his DVD drive (or entire Xbox) replaced.

If you Google “Xbox DVD repair” you can find some sites telling how to fix DVD player problems.
One that I found is: http://www.llamma.com/xbox/Repairs/xbox_dvd_repair.htm

1–2p

Aaron in Aliso Viejo - Hotmail POP Access

Microsoft no longer offers POP access, even for Plus subscribers. Try Yahoo or Gmail instead.

BlueBoi says: try Hotmail Popper http://www.boolean.ca/hotpop/

Another listener writes: Actually to tell you the truth, there is a way to do pop with Hotmail. Use the POP3 address services.msn.com/svcs/hotmail/httpmail.asp then just use your sign in information. I know this address because I use outlook express which allows you to access Hotmail. I tried it with other programs and it worked and still works for me. Good Luck!

Leo adds: I doubt this will work. Outlook Express is specially designed to interface with Hotmail, but not through the standard POP protocol. But it wouldn’t hurt to try.

stapler adds: Microsoft stopped actual POP3 access to Hotmail accounts, after they bought the company. On or about January 1, 2005, Hotmail also stopped remote access to all new FREE accounts due unknown persons using same for spamming. (PAID accounts were not effected as Hotmail already has your identity.) If you have an old FREE or PAID Hotmail account, remote access is permitted using either Outlook or Outlook Express. Another recent change in Hotmail is, you CANNOT have more than 100 addressee’s or CC’s in any email message. This again, is to prevent spamming.

NOTE: If you have a PAID Hotmail account, but decide to cancel it and revert back to a FREE account with same user name, you may find you are unable to remotely access the account anymore, using Outlook or Outlook Express. Should you encounter this problem, contact Hotmail, explain the situation, and in most cases your remote access to the FREE account will be reinstated.

If you can figure it out, FreePOP’s claims to offer pop for Hotmail as well as other web-based email services.
http://www.freepops.org/en/
http://www.freepops.org/en/tutorial/index.shtml

Dave adds: It may not work with a third party app, but rather than worrying about POP access to Hotmail, configure Outlook Express to access Hotmail through IMAP instead? It works great, pus it syncs with hotmail rather than just downloading all the email.

Virigina in South Gate - Burning the show to CD

It’s easiest to do this with the MP3 versions in my Audio Archives. If you want to burn the stream, you’ll have to use something like Total Recorder, SDP, or Replay Radio to record the audio, convert it to MP3, then burn it.

She wants Yahoo mail to pop up when she click on mailto links in web pages. You need the Yahoo default email program.

Brock from Newbury Park - using his ISPs free web site

He has Adelphia and would like to use the included web page. You’ll have to turn it on through your Adelphia account page. They’ll no doubt have easy to use tem plate driven software but you might want to try a program like Macromedia’s Contribute for more flexible design. Or use the free Blogger or Typepad to create a site on their servers with easy to use content management tools.

Joel in Lousiana - Webroot SpySweeper keeps getting corrupted

Every few days he has to reinstall it. I’m not sure why. Check with Webroot!

Chat Logs and Show Audio