Published on 29. March, 2006
in Uncategorized.
I know this layout is a bit broken. Still try and check out the collected works on my MacBook Pro on flickr..
If you do not like Macs you should a least try and browse my photos by their tags. Maria just said that the words capture my personality quite well. I wrote them. Google indexed them. Welcome to my database of intentions. Enjoy.
aarhus, afternoon, airportexpress, antennna,
apple, aros, art, banana, barbecue, beer, bluescreenofdeath,
bsod, burgers, cabbage, case, chocolate, cityscape, clouds,
computer, cover, crisps, dog, dogs, drink,
drunkenness, dtt, duck, dvb, dvbt, eerie, erica,
felt, fish, fishtank, flawless, flickrexport, folder, food,
fullmoon, giraffe, gray, green, home, ichat, iphoto,
itunes, kensington, kingston, kvr667d2s5, leaves, lock,
mac, macbook, macbookpro, magnet, meat,
mejlgade, memo, microsaver, miglia, mobilephone,
molly, moma, neon, neoprene, newyork, night,
note, notrouble, party, passion, perfect, pixar, plants,
plugin, powerbook, ram, red, remote, rubber, rubberduck, salt,
sausages, secondskin, server, sleeve, soda, softdrink, softwareupdate,
spand, specs, stars, stilleben, sunset, sunsets,
sunshine, supermarket, sushi, systemerror, test, testing,
thai, toast, townhall, tucano, tvmini, tvtuner,
upgrade, urban, vacation, view, vinegar, wifi,
windows98, winter, wrench, zipper, århus (-:
Published on 29. March, 2006
in Uncategorized.
My friend Jakob asked me today: “What is all this fuss about digital TV?”
If you live in Denmark and have no clue of what I have been talking about for the last three articles you should go check out www.digi-tv.dk or dr.dk/digital.
Highlights: What is in it for me?
- TV looks like DVD playback. All the time.
- Instant old skool text-tv
(It is really really fast)
- Flicking subtitles on and off as you please
(I like to watch some movies without Danish subtitles)
- Real 16:9 widescreen
(more pixels)
- The channel DR2 is included
- Pause live TV
(to go make coffee and still not miss a thing)
I think all it needs now is some sort of script that detects advertisements and displays peaceful fishies or a roaring fireplace instead 
Published on 26. March, 2006
in Uncategorized.
A lot of Danish people have asked me about subtitles.. Here is at bit on how they work with digital TV, the Miglia TVMini and EyeTV.
This new format is paradise
The screengrab is real widescreen and with nicely rendered semi tranparent subtitles from the Danish channel TV2. Subtitles can be enabled and disabled at any time during live TV or when playing back recordings. I think the subtitles work well in their own grey semi transparent layer on top of the normal TV signal. Some subtitles on DR1 are yellow with a huge black box around them, but I guess that is part of some kind of test.
Let’s go explore a bit by control-clicking or right-clicking a recording in EyeTV and choose Show In Finder:
Every recorded show looks like a this:
But wait there is more. You can right-click or control-click it to Show Package Contents:
Here is a MPEG-file and some other files I do not know what to do with:
If I open 0000000009d6d902.mpg in VLC and press option + I the following meta information appears:
The file contains five (called 0 to 4) streams and VLC does not seem to be able to playback the dvbs subtitle stream.
Trouble in portable paradise
If I choose to convert my recording to a DVD or iPod video (h264 M4V-file) the subtitles completely disappear. DVB subtitles are just not very portable yet. If I want to watch a forign film or show with subtitles on, I will have to make do with EyeTV on my Mac.
I tried using my DVI to S-video cable with my MacBook Pro and the TV-set and it worked like a charm. It is worth noticing that the Miglia TVMini USB-device does not have to be plugged in to playback recorded shows.
Published on 24. March, 2006
in Uncategorized.
As I promised earlier today, here is how the automatic format switching works with my new digital TV-tuner. As an example I am watching a normally formatted show in 4:3 (with and without the blazingly fast Text TV)..
And the next program automatically switches to widescreen 16:9..
Same height. Notably different width.
Published on 24. March, 2006
in Uncategorized.
I know it is just at test signal until it comes “out of beta” on March 31st – but TV2 somewhat messed something up last night. This show looks like it is widescreen (16:9) but it is being broadcast in the standard TV-screen format (4:3). Black bars all around…
What is real widescreen? What are you talking about?
The problem is not that my Miglia TVMini can not decode the widescreen-format.. When the next real widescreen (16:9) show airs I will post a screenshot for comparison. The DVB-T 16:9 format has more pixel-width than 4:3 (and they seem to have the same number of pixel-height). More pixel real-estate is the keyword that makes Kasper happy.
Published on 23. March, 2006
in Uncategorized.
Finally I have received 1 GB Kingston (KVR667D2S5/1G) which I ordered more than a month ago. I guess demand is high and supply is low on that particular type of memory. My MacBook Pro has now been revived, uplifted, changed. It is a world of a difference between 0,5 and 1,5 GB 
Published on 22. March, 2006
in Uncategorized.
Attention Danish Mac users!
Apple Store Denmark has a limited time 10% discount on Miglia TVMini until 23rd of April. I can not direct link to the TVMini, but it near the bottom on the front page. With this USB2-device you can watch free to air Digital Terrestal TV (DVB-T or DTT).
I have just received my TVMini yesterday.
- I ripped the package open
- Downloaded the latest universal version of EyeTV from elgato.com
- Dragged EyeTV to my Applications folder and opened it
- Punched in the code from the TVMini package
- Plugged in the TVMini into my MacBook Pro
- Followed the EyeTV setup steps
- ..and within a minute I was watching DR1, DR2 and TV2 in crispy clear quality
First impressions
It is smooth and easy to record, fastforward/rewind, even pause live TV. EyeTV has a buffer and remembers what you have been watching for almost an hour. It is of course possible to adjust how much harddisk or RAM space you want to waste on that feature.
Recording
The Electronic Program Guide (EPG) makes timed recordings a walk in the park. Just place a red circle on any program and it turnes into a red spot. EyeTV will launch in the background automatically to record the show using a measly 6% CPU load. Normal TV watching takes 30% CPU load of just one of the cores on my MacBook Pro. Watching or recording on the go does not seem to affect my battery significantly. The time indicator went from 3:30 to 3:10 in a few seconds but stayed on 3:10 for at few minutes. I have not tried burning with Toast og converting anything to iPod format yet.
Subtitles
Yes, they work great on all Danish channels. You just have to enable them in the View-menu. The subtitle feature can also be turned on and off while watching recordings. I have included a screenshot of some daytime tv-show with Danish subtitles. The quality of the transmission itself is nothing special, but the subtitles are perfectly rendered:
Conclusion
My old trusty VHS is shaking with fear – and probably with good reason.
Published on 19. March, 2006
in Uncategorized.
PithHelmet 2.6.5 has universal appeal…
This release is mostly for native compatibility with the new Intel Macs. I did add a few new rules that should scrub the latest annoyances from most pages, so even if you aren’t on an Intel Mac, I think it’s worth upgrading. Oh, I also added a Russian translation.
Go get it and block some popups, ad images, cruddy flash-animatons and horrible midi loops.
Published on 16. March, 2006
in Uncategorized.
Another one of my favorite things
I have been using cocoAspell since I got my PowerBook two years ago. I am really starting to miss those wavy red lines beneath a few of my Danish scribbles. It is amazing to have spellchecking in every application.
This was posted at cocoaspell.leuski.net:
March 14. cocoAspell does not work with Intel Macs. I will release an update to cocoAspell as soon as I get my hands on one of those machines (which ought to be sometime later this month).
I am looking forward to the universal version. Keep up the good work!
Published on 14. March, 2006
in Uncategorized.
I have yet to come across a media file which VLC Media Player can not play, except some Windows Media files.
With VLC my MacBook Pro’s Rosetta PowerPC emulation makes video clips flicker and jump while the CPU usage goes through the roof.
The VLC media player nightly builds contains a number of more or less stable OS X Intel solutions. I went throught a few builds and landed on one that solved my flickering movie problem and almost does not crash
True, VLC does not play recent Windows Media WMV10 files. Our friend Microsoft has recently accquired a solution for this from a company called Flip4Mac. Flip4Mac/Windows Media Components even does streaming neatly embedded in Safari. Only trouble is that it is not universal yet.
VLC tip: Try the script called Delete_Preferences located on the VLC disk image. It will delete all your precious preferences and the cache folder – thus eliminating a few sources of strange errors.
Update on Flip4Mac: Antonio suggests a workaround solution for intel Macs. Check it out here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=366987 . It works for me, with a bit of lag
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