OrbLive

Sample video recorded with a hauppauge pvr-250 in mpeg2 format transcoded on the fly and streamed in real time to an iPhone using OrbLive. Quality setting is set to maximum over wifi:


Sample video recorded with a hauppauge pvr-250 in mpeg2 format transcoded on the fly and streamed in real time to an iPhone using OrbLive. Quality setting is set to medium over 3G:


- I picked up OrbLive for $10.
- there is a free lite version available but it only lets you try 3 random pieces of media from each folder.
http://www.orb.com/
http://revision3.com/systm/mediastreaming/
- I've been testing it quite a bit for the last couple of days. I installed orb about a year and a half ago and tried it with my wife's att 8525 which worked ok. Since then I've built a new quad core server so I decided to reinstall it and give the dedicated iphone app orblive a try. It's like simplify media but on steroids because it streams video (with transcoding if needed), livetv (with compatible tuner), photos, live camera, and other Internet content too. You can stream all of it over 3G too.

Orb service revisited
- First, not a whole lot seems to have changed on the pc side of things in the past year and a half. For streaming to consoles or other PC's orb is still pretty bad with pretty awful video quality with interlace artifacts. It's fine for music I guess. I still find the web portal pretty unwieldy and slow.
- The orb service that is installed can still eat up quite a bit of resources especially if you add a lot of media folders with thousands of files. HDD activity is pretty brutal not in just generating the database file but also the logs it keeps which can grow quite large. On my q6600 oc to 2.9ghz cpu would spike sometimes to 25% during initial transcoding/buffering. Memory usage is around 70 MB for me though this can grow much larger if you have a lot of files.
- Don't rapidly add/remove media directories or you can end up corrupting your orbmedia.db file. I did this and ended up uninstalling, running orbcleanuptool, and reinstalling. Then I added one media folder at a time and let it database it all before adding another one. I'd watch the orbmedia.db file until it stopped growing. It seems to be working much better now. You can check by looking in C:\ProgramData\OrbNetworks\OrbMediaV2\OrbMedia.db (at least in vista). When the file stops grown and no more OrbMedia.db-journal are created, it should be done updating the database.
- Once all your media is properly databased, stop the orb service, and backup the database file. The media database file can easily get corrupted and this will save you the trouble of having to completely uninstall orb and reinstall it. You should do this anytime a significant amount of media has changed.
- If you've added network paths MAKE SURE you stop orb before you shut down or reboot any of those remote machines. If the network path just disappears while the orb service is still running you will very likely corrupt your orb media database. If that does happen then just stop orb, delete the database file, and copy over your last back so at least you don't have to start from scratch, and restart the orb service. Orb service will update the media database on its own during pc inactivity.
- It says it will support any formats that you have codecs installed that will allow it to play in windows media player. I didn't find this entirely true since I can play MKV's just fine in wmp yet they don't show up in orb. UPDATE: looks like you can add additional file extensions that it scans for.

Orb on the iPhone
- Quality is highly dependent on your isp upstream bandwidth. I only get around 500kbps up on my dsl. If you are using that upstream bandwidth for other applications, you better hope you have a good QoS router like dd-wrt.
- Streaming audio works quite well. It's nice having your entire music library available. Sound quality isn't bad. Buffering happens at a minimum. There are short pauses (say < style="font-weight: bold;">Satellite Radio and Orb
- There are add ons to stream xm or sirius:
http://www.millardsoftware.com/uxm
- I more or less followed these instructions.
- A few tips: make sure you click the delete cache button after you first install. Also, I highly recommend you reboot the pc after install.
- Make sure you pick the high bandwidth url (64kbps) vs the low (32kbps).

Recommended. Having the massive amounts of media off your home pc hard drives available on your iPhone almost anywhere is all kinds of awesome. Just make sure you have a pretty beefy machine that you don't mind leaving on all the time. Overall it does quite a lot for $10 and you can get quite a bit of functionality for free with just installing orb on your pc and using the safari browser on the iphone (or really any mobile phone browser). For me the $10 was worth the added convenience and video transcoding abilities. If they just polish it up a bit, add the ability to sort songs in track order, and resume, then they would truly have an iPhone killer app on their hands.

UPDATE: 5/5/09
- If all you want to do is stream your music collection I highly recommend you also check out Simplify.

Thermaltake BlacX HDD Docking Station (ST0005U)

- Picked one up from newegg for $30 after $10 MIR.
- Sure it basically duplicates the functionality of a sata to usb cable but puts it into a very convenient package. You hook this up to your pc either via USB or eSata. Then, you can quickly and easily swap any SATA hard drive (2.5" or 3.5").
- I like how there are two sets of flaps to keep the dust out. The smaller cut out is for 2.5" laptop hard drives.
- The only sata hard drive I had sitting around to use for testing at the time was a 320gb 5400 rpm 2.5" laptop hard drive.
- first I tried it over usb. Hooking it up vista 32bit installed the usual drivers which are already built into the OS pretty much like any sata to usb cable or external enclosure. Next, I dropped the hard drive in much like inserting an Atari 2600 cartridge (am I dating myself?). Then, reach around back and turn on the power. After a few seconds for the drive to power and spin up it shows up just fine with a drive letter. HD tach shows around 15.4 MB/s which is about right for usb 2.0.
- To remove the drive first make sure you go to your tray and safely remove the drive. I highly recommend USB Safely Remove which adds a wealth of features like making sure a device always gets the same drive letter, adding hot keys for quickly removing a device, and showing what is preventing you from removing a device and releasing those locks. It's well worth the $14. Next, power off the dock, wait a few seconds to let the hdd spin down, and then press the handy eject button that pops the drive out.
- Next I wanted to test eSATA except all 8 of my sata ports were being used (5 hard drives, 2 dvd burners, 1 blu-ray/hd-dvd reader/dvd burner). I picked up one of these a while back for $15 from newegg when it was on sale, and now I finally found a reason to install it (and I finally got to use one of those tiny 1X pcie slots):
Rosewill RC-216 PCI Express eSATA II x 2

- First, configure the jumpers to determine which 2 out of the 4 ports you want active. I wanted the two external ones so that required moving all the jumpers. The manual included in the box was a bit confusing. Make sure you download the pdf manual from here which has photos that make it much clearer on how to set the jumpers.
- Here are few tips that I got from reading the newegg reviews. If the IC chip reads EN29LV040A (which mine did) then you need the updated firmware and flasher which is NOT on rosewill's support site. Newegg reviewer theholmboy was nice enough to post it here which will save you the trouble of emailing support for the files. So boot to pure dos, rename the bin file to something that conforms to 8.3 format (I just renamed it to up.bin) as the flasher doesn't support long file names. Then type jm36xupd.exe /w up.bin. It shows a menu with two items (1 - raid something, 2 - mass storage something). I just picked 1 and it flashed just fine in just a few seconds. After a reboot you should see the version number for the jmicron bios go up.
- After first boot vista automatically installed some ancient drivers. After another reboot I updated the drivers to JMB36X_WinDrv_R1.17.46WHQL.zip
Just go to device manager find the controller, update driver, browse, and point to the floppy32 directory. After another reboot you are set.
- I did several tests with hot swapping the hdd without issue. Since you are bypassing the bridge chip entirely and going straight to sata transfer rates are the same as if you installed the drive internally. HD Tach reported 51.2 MB/s. I expect around 100 MB/s with a modern 7200 rpm desktop drive. My 1.5 TB seagates should be in tomorrow.
- UPDATE: got my 1.5 TB seagates in. They are all firmware CC1H which is the latest. hd tach reported 102.1 MB/s, 16ms.

Storage Costs
- So this is how I plan to use all of this. I'm planning to use hard drives for cheap, quick, and convenient long term archive storage. Lets first do some cost analysis.
Right now the cheapest archive storage are dvd+r 4.7gb blanks. They run for around $20-30 for a spindle of 100. I only use verbatim brand discs burned at 8X for maximum reliability. $30 is you every day price (sam's club). You also have to add the cost of storing the dvd's. I like to use large 300+ binders. A seagate 1.5 TB hdd is $130. Lets run the numbers:

dvd+r 4.7gb:
$.30 per disc
328 disc binder for $16 shipped
$.0488 per disc for storage
$.3488 total cost per disc
$.3488 / 4.7GB = $.0742 per GB

HDD:
$130 / 1500GB = $.0867 per GB

Difference = $.0125 per GB

To put in other ways:
A single 1.5 TB HDD = about 320 DVD's
320 DVD's cost around $110 so you pay about $20 premium by going HDD for each 1.5TB of storage purchased.

To store 50GB (size of a dual layer blu-ray) cost $3.71 on HDD. Cheapest BD-R I've seen are at fry's:
5 pack BD-R DL $70 ($14 each)
5 pack BD-R $30 ($6 each or $12 for two discs to get to 50GB)
So it costs 3-4X more to store the same amount of data on BD-R vs HDD.

for kicks lets look at dvd+r DL (8.5GB)
Samsclub has a 50 spindle verbatim for $60
$1.20 per disc + $.0488 storage = $1.2488 total cost per disc
$1.2488 / 8.5GB = $.147 per GB!!

Note: all size calculations I used the published GB (not GiB). I also don't take into account differences in file system overhead like UDF or NTFS.

- Blank DVD media prices have been about constant for the last year. I see HDD $/GB to continue to drop as densities increase.
- You also save a lot of physical space since the dvd binders do take up a lot of shelf space.
- By not leaving the HDD plugged in all the time like in an external enclosure and instead putting it back in the anti static bag and shelving it, you reduce risks from power surges and such.
- The other issue with hard drives that are left on a shelf is magnetic decay and stiction. I have a friend how has worked in storage for many years. He asked the storage expert on their team about this. He said basically stiction is a non issue these days with fluid bearings. He also felt magnetic decay was mostly a non issue, and the data should be fine for at least 10-15 years even though hard drive manufacturers are weary to claim those numbers (probably due to liability exposure). I've also seen this linked from several places. Believe what you want but I'm going to trust my friend. Having said that I will still burn a copy of critical data like family photos on dvd's. Redundancy is still the best insurance policy. I'll let you know for sure in about 10-15 years.
- Another thing to consider is will SATA still be used in 10-15yrs? You will still need a way to read the data off the hard drives for the foreseeable future.
- You might not fill up an entire DVD so there could be some wasted space so you won't obtain 100% efficiency. That might impact the pricing numbers a bit.

Highly Recommended. BlacX makes HDD as an archive medium feasible, extremely fast (over esata), and convenient. It will only get more economical.

UPDATE: 2/6/09
- I'm having some odd issues so I've went back to the latest rosewill drivers v1.1. I'm still doing more testing but it works for the most part.

Sony Wireless Stereo Headset Bluetooth (DR-BT22iK)

- Picked it up from Fry's for $60 when it was on sale.
- a2dp compliant.
- Only one thing to charge (the actual headphones) since the dongle draws power through the iphone 3g connector (it doesn't seem to drain the iphone battery much). Unfortunately this also means you can't charge the phone while using the dongle.
- Pairs fine as a headset to the iphone directly for answering calls (mic is also built into the headphones). It seamlessly lets you answer calls using the controls on the headset and also pauses your music when taking a call and resumes after hanging up.
- All the controls work fine with the iphone (play/pause, next/prev) though you do get the usual warning that this device isn't designed for the iphone. Just ignore it. It works just fine with the iphone.
- The dongle is quite small. It does have a very annoying bright blue led that flashes twice every 5 sec while in use. Nothing a little electrical tape can't fix. The other advantage of having an ipod specific dongle that connects to the ipod connector is you don't have this extra transceiver to hold like with the maxfun which connects to the headphone jack. If you are listening to audio it's not a big deal. But if you are watching video podcasts then having to hold that extra bluetooth transceiver with the maxfun does get quite cumbersome.
- Sound quality isn't too bad. Bass is very good. Treble is a bit muffled. Using the treble boost EQ setting helps quite a bit. Actually the maxfun headphones had better treble (though worse bass).
- Headphones are pretty comfortable. There is minimum pressure on your ears/head.
- Battery is suppose to last 10hrs. The headphones has it's own wall wart for charging. I wished it used mini usb.
- Range is pretty good. Just don't put too many walls between you and the dongle.
- The manual actually shows you how to remove the batter from the headset.

Highly recommended. You gain quite a few conveniences by having a device designed specifically for iphone/ipod. I really like having the controls built right into the headset. Sound quality is acceptable. If a2dp support ever gets added to the iphone you should be able to just drop the dongle which would be awesome. It's a bit pricey but not too bad if you can get it on sale.

UPDATE: 7/15/09
- I've been using these at work daily for 5 hrs or more at a time. I would still prefer a little less pressure but overall these are the best out of the bunch I've tested. You can now find just the headphones + charger (new, oem packaging) for around $30 shipped on ebay.

Maxfun MX-BT30 Bluetooth Stereo Headset

- Picked it up for around $25 shipped from this amazon seller. Sometimes these go on sale at stootsi.com too for about the same price.
- UPDATE: They seem harder to find now. You can get them from ebay though for around $30 shipped (I bought a second pair from the seller: ship4free).
- has proper a2db BT profile support.
- Includes a nice BT transmitter with a standard 1/8" mini headphone plug (nice and universal so it will work with my sansa e280 too) for devices that don't have bluetooth or don't support a2db (like the iphone 3g).
- It has a microphone so you can make calls.
- Sound quality was a lot better than I expected for $25. It actually had a pretty decent amount of bass.
- Headphones are very light and quite comfortable. I haven't used them for a long stretch of time yet.
- Charge using standard mini usb (cables included). Initial charge was about 4 hrs. Manual states battery lasts for 10 hrs.
- Range is ok. Just stay in the same room. If you put a wall between the headphones and the transmitter it will cut out.
- There is just a very tiny bit of delay in the audio. I was watching video podcasts on the iphone with these and the audio seemed just the tiniest bit out of sync though hardly noticeable, and it really didn't bother me that much.
- The pouch only has a single magnetic clasp in the middle. I kind of wish it was a zipper or something.

Highly recommended. It's an incredible value at $25 compared to other options. Sure they aren't the best but quite impressive at this price point.

Netbooks and video playback

So my brother got an Acer Aspire One A110L over the holidays $250. It has the usual Intel Atom N270 1.6ghz cpu and and Intel GMA950 integrated graphics. He did rip it apart and upgraded the memory to 1.5gb and swapped the 8gb flash memory with an ipod hard drive and then installed windows xp on it. So I decided to run a bunch of video playback tests to see what it could handle. This information might be handy for those of you who are wondering how well an atom based netbook would be as a portable media player.

1) VLC, dvd iso: perfectly smooth, looked great, cpu at around 25%.
2) MPC HC, divx, typical cd sized movie encode: perfect, cpu around 15%.
3) MPC HC, mpeg2 TS recorded from broadcast HDTV using hdhomerun. plays fine, cpu around 75%
4) MPC HC, h.264 TS recorded from hd pvr, 720p, default settings, latest coreavc, unwatchable, too jerky, cpu 100%
5) MPC HC, x.264, 720p, dvd5, MKV, 720p, coreavc: out of 6 files tested only 3 played smoothly but cpu was always around 95-100% so it just barely plays.
6) MPC HC, x.264, 1080p, dvd9, MKV, 1080p, coreavc: not watchable, very jerky, cpu 100%

So there you have it. Basically standard definition stuff runs fine. You can pull off 720p barely if you encode it right. I was really waiting on a dual core atom netbook but if you believe this it might never happen. If we had dual core I bet it would chew through most media. I still kind of want one. Samsung NC10 and the HP Mini 2140 or the newly announced dell mini 10 all sound interesting. If you think about it the lower end netbooks like the acer aspire one isn't that much more expensive than the 10" portable dvd players, and a netbook does a heck of a lot more than just play dvd's (either from ripped iso's or maybe a slim usb powered dvd drive).