Cool Tech Reviews

Chris Lanier provides a tutorial on setting up the Media Center editions of Windows XP and Vista for automatic commercial skipping using DVRMSToolbox:

Everyone should know about DVRMSToolbox that lets you do just about anything with your Recorded TV files. However, the more time that goes by the more I see that people are not taking advantage of what DVRMSToolbox has to offer. Today I wanted to give everyone a basic introduction to one of the coolest features, automatic commercial skipping!

Get it while it lasts before the movie and TV studios find a way to rain on the parade.

One of the oddities of retail electronics sales that always gets my goat is the widely varying prices on cables. While you can make an argument for paying modestly more for better quality analog cables, there’s no reason to do so for digital cables, but don’t expect the retailers to tell you so or even offer a choice. Anyway, Ben Kuchera at Ars Technica had the exact same frustration trying to find an HDMI cable for his Sony PlayStation 3 and did some comparison shopping. Excerpt:

The price differences between cables that are essentially the same can be incredible. $100 one place, $30 someplace else, and $20 online. The fact is many places like Best Buy only carry a few brands and jack the price up. It’s worth spending the afternoon shopping around for your cables. Best Buy had expensive HDMI cables but cheap Wii component cables. Meijer didn’t have Wii component at all but they had a $20 HDMI cable. Don’t get fooled into thinking that just because you’re paying more you’ll see a better picture, or it isn’t worth your time to check around.

If you’re still skeptical, keep your receipts. Buy the $100 HDMI cable at the Sony Store and then a $20 Monoprice cable, and try them both. See if you can see $80 worth of difference. If you don’t, take one back. The price difference will buy you a new game, and it’s worth proving to yourself that the lower-priced cables are just as good.

Much more by following the link and be sure to read the comments which are both hilarious and eye-opening.

Back in October, I mentioned a phone service called Futurephone that used a loophole in the heavily regulated US long distance telephone rate structure plus cheap Internet bandwidth to provide “free” ad-supported phone calls to numerous foreign countries via a rural telephone company in Iowa. Soon other entrepreneurs jumped on board and there were a number of “712″ (the rural Iowa area code) calling services, but it all came crashing to halt this month when AT&T got a phone bill for $2 million dollars and sued:

Guess who got stuck with a big bill for all those “free” international calls touted by outfits like FuturePhone? None other than AT&T, which has filed a lawsuit in Iowa claiming that “deceitful and unlawful schemes” like FuturePhone’s caused a jump from $2,000 per month to $2 million per month in the fees billed AT&T by an Iowa rural telco.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, Central Division, AT&T’s lawsuit seeks to stop FuturePhone as well as the telcos who provide local infrastructure from continuing with their operations that use regulatory-fee arbitrage and VoIP to provide international calls for only the price of a long-distance call to Iowa. Though the case was just filed on Jan. 29, it has already apparently caused FuturePhone to shutter its service, and has produced nothing but “no comment” replies from the Iowa LECs we contacted who were also named in the suit.
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Boiled down, AT&T’s main argument is that because the calls are not actually “terminated” in Iowa — AT&T says Iowa is just a midpoint in what is really an international call — AT&T shouldn’t have to pay the LECs the termination fees.

While it’s certainly satisfying to see AT&T get a big phone bill, it’s now clear that beyond advertising revenues, an essential element of the business model was the receipt of cash subsidy payments from AT&T. The lawsuit will delay those indefinitely while litigation proceeds and this effectively shuts down the “free call” companies. Futurephone has now closed and it’s likely just a matter of time until the others follow, although Pat Phelan, the founder of allfreecalls.net, claims on his weblog that he plans a workaround. He surely gets points for trying, but I suspect that the ultimate conclusion is that it was fun while it lasted.

I’ve always been hopeful about Internet video downloads even though the available services always seem to leave quite a bit to be desired. Gizmodo’s Charlie White summarizes the problems nicely in Top 10 Reasons Why Movie Downloads Suck, but I’d like to call out a couple of them:

3. No computer in the TV room: Most people don’t have a computer near the TV, and getting a downloaded movie from one to the other is awkward at best.

10. Too complicated: Finally, all of that knowledge and computer know-how needed for downloading movies is simply nonexistent in the skill sets of the average movie viewer. They’re just not willing to go through the learning curve to get the digital data from the PC to the TV screen when they can effortlessly pop in a DVD.

These aren’t problems for a “power user,” but they surely are impediments for the casual consumer. That’s why I was interested to see the alliance announced last week between Amazon’s Unbox movie download service and TiVo, the digital video recorder makers, to provide Unbox downloads automatically and directly to the TiVo DVR. The details of the announcement are here, but the FAQ may be more illuminating.

In a nutshell, if you are the owner of a broadband connected TiVo Series2 or Series3 DVR, you can register the unit with Amazon from your PC and whenever you purchase any video at Amazon Unbox (again from your PC) you can specify that it be delivered to your TiVo. If you delete it from the TiVo, it can be downloaded again free from your Amazon Media Library.

It’s not perfect because you can’t order the downloads from the TiVo, but it neatly gets around the two problems listed above. Of course, there are still more of the “10 Reasons” to overcome, but at least it’s a start. Amazon’s Unbox had a very shaky launch, but presuming that they have ironed out the bugs, the only downside that I see is that broadband connected TiVo Series2 and Series3 boxes aren’t particularly common - TiVo estimates that there only are 1.5 million potential candidates. However, if you happen to own one it would be worthwhile to head over to Unbox and at least kick the tires when this rolls out later this year.

Update - March 7, 2007: The Amazon Unbox TiVo service is now live.

Candace Lombardi at ZDNet:

A group of leading printer manufacturers, including Kodak, Canon and Hewlett-Packard, said Wednesday it’s backing a recent standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

Standard ISO/IEC 24711:2006, which still needs industry adoption, establishes how ink and toner cartridges for inkjet printers and all-in-one printers must be tested. (Actually it’s inkjet only so no toner is involved - ed.)

The standard cites how many cartridges must be tested to determine an average lifetime (nine of them), what constitutes a standard test document (five pages printed with default printer settings) and the kind of machine on which the cartridge must be tested.

Analysts agree that there has been a longstanding need for this kind of standardization in the industry, but they’re not sure it will make much difference to consumers.

“It’ll make a difference to those consumers who actually look at that info, but I think the vast majority of consumers don’t look at that,” said John Shane, director of communications supplies consulting service at InfoTrends. “For that small percentage who does, this will be a good way to help them compare.”

It’s a shame that more people haven’t caught on to the fact that inkjet printers are sold at low ball prices in order to get consumers to buy high priced ink refills. Yes, some manufacturers publish “pages per cartridge” numbers and even better, some reviewers try to estimate “pennies per page,” but it will be nice to get them all using the same metric. Will the test be gamed? Sure, just think about “default printer settings” for a minute and what you would do if you were head of printer sales for some vendor. However, a fully documented test is a start.

When it comes to personal media players, the iPod is the 400 pound gorilla in the market, but there are some nice offerings from lesser known companies, one of which is the Meizu M6 Mini Player (sometimes spelled Miniplayer) which Amazon is currently listing for approximately $155. Some specs:

• 4 GB
• 2.4″ 260K-color QVGA (320×240) large and vibrant TFT-LCD screen
• Touch Pad Control with Intuitive User Interface
• MP3, WMA, OGG and WAV Audio Playback
• Xvid Video Playback
• Supports BMP, JPG and GIF Photo Formats
• FM Radio with 30 presets
• Built-in rechargeable Li-ion battery, plays up to 20 hours (less with video)
• USB 2.0 Compliant
• Built-in microphone and voice recording
• Text Viewer, Games, Calendar

There are more details at the Meizu web site as well as some slightly different models, but let’s cut to the reviews.

Ubergizmo:

They say imitation is the best form of flattery, and Meizu has conjured a masterclass by delivering a multimedia player that is high on everyone’s wishlist.
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Apple should sit up and take notice of how their future iPods should function like from this experience.

thegadgetsite reviews:

The Meizu Miniplayer M6 could very well become the next big thing. If you’re looking for the best flash player currently out in the market look no further than the Meizu Miniplayer M6.

Jason Chen at Gizmodo loves it but mentions one caveat:

Well, there’s no support for either the Apple iTunes store or PlaysForSure stores like Napster. Thus, you’re pretty much need to either rip the songs into MP3 format or rip your songs from your CD collection—or download them illegally. If you’re looking for a gift for someone who’s anti-iPod, the Meizu Miniplayer will give you zero regrets.

Finally, Digital Audio Player Review (who has a long review here) also points to the following video which demonstrates the features:

Less enlightening but shorter and more glitzy is this Miezu commercial video.

To net it out: If you don’t miss a branded store like iTunes selling music and are willing and able to get your own MP3’s from whatever source, then the Meizu M6 Mini Player has a robust feature set that makes it a good value.