Oct 2011 BD Purchase Part 1 – Harry Potter, etc

 

 

 Some random purchases made this month, was expecting Macross Frontier Movie 2 coming, but these pop up. So with the two more Harry Potter movies (Bestbuy exclusives), I now have six movies, two movies away from a complete collection. Last time I was buy these Harry Potter movies were way back in 2007 I believe, when HD-DVD was on the verge on disappearing. And the two bottom from target has to be the cheapest Blu-rays I’ve ever got, just in time compensating the ultra expensive Macross Frontier Movie 2.

CIFS mounting – webOS vs. Android

 

So I’ve been experimenting CIFS mounting on both webOS and Android lately. The CIFS mounting mounts a windows SAMBA network and displays as a folder in webOS or Android system, so that you can access your network share files as if they are local files. It’s a cool way to share music and video files, the ones that are typically large in size and cannot be conveniently copied or limited by the size of internal storage of Touchpad (32GB is still small). For my personal interest, I’m particularly interested in playing large video files (mkv) on Touchpad without transcoding. So let’s see how it plays out on Touchpad.

So on the webOS side, we have Network Drives, a homebrew CIFS mounting program. It was relatively easy to use. It supports unicode. Other programs including Kalemsoft media player and Internalz pro (need to enable hidden files) can access the shared files. The only issue I have with this program is sometimes I’m unable to unmount it unless I reboot. But otherwise it’s been pretty solid. Now the video playback part, on webOS, we only have two choices aside from the official player: Touchplayer (a port of mplayer) and Kalemsoft media player. Touchplayer only does soft decoding, and for me it’s not working at all. Kalemsoft media player, $5.99 is probably the only and the best choice for webOS platform. It does play majority of the video formats. It plays mkv to some degree since there are so many codecs supported by the format, it’s not easy to play everything. As for the mounting part, since it’s using wifi, anything HD or high bitrate will have trouble play smoothly.

For Kalemsoft media player, the 0.4 update is quite significant. It can read unicode pretty well. It has a really well thought interface that includes a preview window with stream selector. BTW, it has really good performance with wmv. The wmv files shared from Japanese P2P somehow are packed differently with the audio, so that my PS3 always have problem picking up the audio, same thing happened on Android platform, but Kalemsoft plays them without any issue.

It even detects the secondary video stream from some Japanese ts streams. But unfortunately as the stream is HD, it’s unable to stream it smoothly. It’s more like playing powerpoint…

The 0.4 beta now supports srt, ssa, and ass subtitles. But unfortunately you don’t have much control over how to display them. First off, there’s no border on the subtitles, well you can choose to show the backgrounds like the hearing aid type, but for normal subtitles, there’s just no border which means if you were playing any 4:3 content, the subtitles will go blend into the background. You do get the choice to set a few, mostly primary/secondary colors, but white is always my preference. You can’t control the subtitle position, which means for 16:9 content, the subtitles will show up in the black bar, a good way to solve the color blending problem… Also the default font size, even with the largest, it’s still on the small side as seen in the screen cap. For mkv, I tried some 720P anime fansubs, which played pretty well. But for high bitrate HD video, especially the ones with DTS, it still choked. But still, these are the best result you’ll ever seen on touchpad without transcoding.

 

On the Android side, we have CifsManager. It is not very intuitive as it requires rooting and the matching kernel module (cifs.ko) file in order to display files in unicode, otherwise you get a bunch of squares. Or another choice is ES file explorer, which supports SMB share directory, not in the same sense as real mounting, but it’s just far more straightforward.

And for the players, we have tons of choices, but the results are quite similar – they don’t work as good as Kalemsoft media player for webOS. It maybe a problem with current CM mod not fully enable hardware acceleration or software decoding, or video players for Android just plain suck.

Thoughts about webOS

 

 

Update:

HP has just released webOS 3.0.4, it makes the touchpad almost twice as fast (well, after the corresponding Govnah and UberKernal update which means still have to overclock to 1.5Ghz)

Well, just some random thoughts after installing CM7 for my HP touchpad. This maybe a rough comparison between webOS 3.0.2 vs. Android 2.3. This could be just some random rants as well… It is more expanded than the initial impression post I posted a few days ago.

Some good features about webOS 3.0.2:

1. Fairly good looking tablet interface. Dual/Triple pane, consistent design throughout the apps. Big plus for landscape mode.
2. Card system for multitasking. So that you always know what apps are running.
3. Synerge for managing multiple accounts, including many popular services.
4. Rotation lock/unlock in the notification area.
5. Good keyboard, especially with the numbers on top. Long pressing the numbers give you more features. Sometimes the keyboard layout isn’t consistent though.
6. Printer, although it only supports certain HP brand printers, it gives you easy access to print from almost every app. To bypass the limited printer support, you can install Touch2Pc Printer on your computer (this computer has to be always ON if you want to print something though)

The ugly about webOS 3.0.2:

1. Slowwww, almost everything is running slow, even after overclocking to 1.5Ghz, the apps are still running very inefficiently. Average app launching time is 5s-15s. This along with the language localization are the two real deal breaker for me to support webOS.
2. Very bad browser. The loading is extremely slow. The browser doesn’t have tabs. External links from certain sites almost never works (maybe killed by ad blocker?) And there’s no third party browser aside from advanced browser!
3. Card system takes way too much memory, you run out of memory fairly quickly. It might also be a problem trying to find the card you need.
4. Almost all the included apps didn’t have enough function. The email app doesn’t support search, nor finding labels for gmail. The calendar app won’t sync with google calendar automatically. The photo app lacks sorting, also only displays very low resolution. The video app supports practically mp4 with h.264 ONLY. The music app sometimes can’t handle unicode, can’t play music smoothly in the background.
5. Apps in HP catalog (app store) are mostly junk. What’s worst is that not a lot “HD” versions are available. I’m still puzzled why it’s so hard for developers to program some good apps. Also the apps are NOT cheap, the average is around $5-$10, many of them lack trial mode. You could end up spending a lot for crappy useless apps. The HP catalog doesn’t allow refunding.
6. Poor language localization. Well, it’s almost non-existent. With 3.0.4, it’ll add Chinese localization, but that’s about it. Poor unicode support. Both iOS and Android system support all almost all the major languages out of the box.

Now on the Android 2.3 side, the system is obviously NOT made for tablets. Even for the tablet optimized 3.0, things are not looking good either. The percentage of the “HD” versions on Android market are sparse just as HP catalog probably due to 3.0 is closed source and not too many real tablets are out there. Hopefully with the release of 4.0 ICS, things will change. The system also lacks a rotation lock/unlock function as seen in webOS. Majority of the apps are obviously designed for the cellphones, which use portrait mode most often. Or even if they do support landscape, they require manually readjust, or only rotate in certain angles, or in landscape mode, you lose access to certain function. It doesn’t have as elegant printing solution as webOS, either.

Some specific apps for directly comparison, these are the apps I use most often:

File Management:

Internalz for webOS: it’s not a native app for webOS 3.0, therefore it only supports portrait mode, but the graphics work fine. Coupled with file manager from preware, it’s a decent file manager and ipk installer for webOS.

Gemini File Manager for webOS: one of a few other options from HP catalog, $2.99. It’s a dual pane manager, supports windows SMB local network.

ES File Explorer for Android: Very versatile file manger. Supports almost every function (local, SMB, FTP) you could think of. It even has a music and video player built-in.

WiFi File Explorer for Android: manage your files via wifi. It’s a good compliment to ES File Explorer.

 

Chinese IME input:

Baidu IME for webOS: The design mimicks the native keyboard, even down to those number keys. The only problem is that it won’t remember the last input (English or Chinese), every time it seems to enforce Chinese. Also there seems to be no way to change input method like in Android, once you install this input, it will be your default keyboard.

Sogou IME for pad for Android: It is the only Chinese IME input that has a pad version. The design also resembles the webOS IME, but the number keys are not turned on by default. This is the only one that’s optimized for pad use, what can you do… Generally, I like Baidu better, if it ever gets a pad version, I would switch to it immediately.

 

Book reader:

Amazon Kindle: The webOS version has a double page design (like a real book) in landscape mode which the android version lacks. But the android version has a dictionary which can be handy for people like me who’s not a native English speaker. The webOS version also has a slightly more intuitive, clearly labeled interface.

pReader (epub) for webOS: The native alpha version is the “HD” version. It’s extremely buggy. Lots of functions such as bookmark, jumping to specific chapter don’t work. The unicode support is spotty.

FBReader (epub) for Android: It’s very light weight. It has full support for epub format. It uses ColorDict. The only function it lacks is a bookshelf function. Otherwise this would be perfect.

There are a few other good ones for Android: ireader, moon reader, Aldiko, etc. But I prefer FBReader for its performance.

Adobe reader (pdf) for webOS: It’s only pdf reader I’ve tried. It lacks a lot of important function such as bookmark, quick access to chapter. People on precentral has been spending some effort to add these missing features. But I don’t have much use on reading pdf docs anyways. It also has some problem with unicode support.

Thinkfree Office (pdf) for Android: I didn’t try it enough to conclude anything. But it does open pdf…

 

Dictionary:

Hoshidict for webOS: Has tons of dictionaries to download, and they appear to be pretty accurate. The only thing it’s lacking is online function, it doesn’t support searching for google translation or wikipedia. So it’s a very decent offline dictionary ONLY. It doesn’t support pronunciation either.

For Android: Well, there are quite a few dictionaries here. Aedict is for Japanese, ColorDict is for multi-language. For online dictionaries, you also got google translation, WWWJDIC, etc.

 

Office:

Quickoffice (doc, xls) for webOS: It gives you basic function to edit doc, docx, xls, xlsx, but you can’t insert photos, nor draw your own pictures. It has integration with dropbox.

Thinkfree office (doc, xls) for Android: Aside from the basic function, you CAN insert photos, draw your own pictures. The “free” version that comes with my LG cellphone does not have integration with google doc, but the full version supposed to have it.

 

Note taking:

Tapnote for webOS: It is keyboard based. It has integration with dropbox. But the app is not cheap, costs $5… You are better off just using Quickoffice. I got it for free from the HP weekly giveaway, thankfully…

FreeNote for Android: It has a unique keyboard, handwriting mix mode. It also combines with calendar, to-do list. The interface is a little bit messy. But overall it has probably the most flexible features among all the note taking apps. The only feature it’s missing is export formats other than the only jpg, png or pdf are much preferred, or even better doc/docx.

Picture Viewer:

Synergy (native app) for webOS: It syncs to a lot of popular online photo services aside from manage your local photos. Only problem is that it doesn’t have sort function so that your photos are all over the place. Another problem is it indexes the online photo to local device with lower resolution.

JustPictures! for Android: It syncs to a lot of popular online photo services as well. It has sort function. Account management is not intuitive, but it does work. Wish it has a double pane design as webOS.

Comic/Manga Viewer:

One of the primary reason I bought for the Touchpad is to read manga.

ComicShelf HD for webOS: This is the only comic/manga reading app available for webOS, sadly… Well, if the native photo app supports sorting by names, I wouldn’t even need this app! That is to say I’m not satisfied with ComicShelf HD at all, it has way too many limitations and it runs slow as hell. It can only read *.rar, *.zip, *.cbr, and *.cbz files, and they all have to be placed in only “comic” folder. The way it reads pictures is that it first have to unzip, unrar all pictures, therefore it could take a longgggggggg time if the zipped files are too big. Sadly it couldn’t read uncompressed images… And the moment you close the card, you lose your unpacked files. It has very poor support for unicode, your file name cannot include any foreign characters, otherwise they won’t be recognized. It doesn’t have a right to left mode. It doesn’t have a single page mode to split pictures if they are scanned in per page. Well, for $1.99, I didn’t lose much.

Manga Reader for webOS: This is the only comic/manga reading app available for webOS to read fan translated manga. It downloads manga from certain server, and display it. It can not read your own manga unlike ComicShelf HD. The quality on the downloaded manga (English fan translated ONLY) is very poor, texts are often heavily dithered, and the fan translated manga has way too many watermarks on them, between chapters could be from different groups. Occasionally there is also server problem? so that the manga cannot be downloaded completely. The functionality however is more polished than ComicShelf HD. For $2.99, you get to enjoy some fan translated work as much as you can.

Perfect Viewer for Android: Like the name suggests, it’s really perfect. It has ten times more features than ComicShelf HD, it runs ten times faster as well. It opens compressed *.rar, *.zip, *.cbr, and *.cbz files within seconds. It doesn’t care where your manga are placed, it recognizes unicode extremely well, even for those wrongly coded character downloading from Share/Winny.

ComicBricks for Android: It has pretty much the same function as Manga Reader for webOS, but it only downloads from Chinese website (which means majority of them are Chinese translated). Image quality is far better, but it also means files are larger. It can be used as standalone manga reading app as well, but I would rather use Perfect Viewer. ComicBricks for finding the manga, Perfect Viewer to view is the perfect combo for Android!

Printing:

As I said earlier, webOS features a very convenient printing system, it’s accessible from almost all apps. For Android, cloud printing is worth trying, as long as you have an HP eprinter or any computer that uses google Chrome on. The most annoying part is that it’s not integrated into the system, so you have to print it inside this app. Another one I’ve tried is printershare, which costs $12.99, but thankfully I got it from Amazon daily app… It works similarly as cloud printing as a standalone app. Only difference is that you don’t need google cloud service, thus no computer is required to print.

Video Player:

KalemSoft meida player for webOS: it supports a lot of more media file types than the native ones, avi, mkv, wmv just to name a few. Subtitle support is non-existent. Mkv works ok, but don’t expect to work on all of them. If everything fails, there’s always the streamer to do real-time transcoding from PC to touchpad.

Moboplayer for Android: it supports a few media file types (everything is done by soft decoding here, otherwise none will play, at least on current CM7 mod). But still it lacks good support for mpeg2 HD (ts, tp), wmv etc. The mkv appears to work, 720p appears to play a bit laggy, can’t seem to switch audio track if more than one track is included. Video doesn’t always have the correct aspect ratio. It does support subtitle for mkv, externally or internally. Some other considerations: MX video player, Diceplayer, Vital player etc.

For online video, there is no dedicated youtube app for webOS, instead you use the web browser. Crackle works pretty decent, even better ad block seems to do a good job at blocking any ads. Hulu, you have to install the patch from preware to work, and it works intermittently.

For CM7 mod, currently the youtube app sort of work, but sometimes the aspect ratio is not correct, sound cracks, lots of stuttering, buffering etc. Crakle app does not work, website access is spotty not to mention the quality is so poor…

 

Screenshot Taking:

WebOS support screenshot taking natively by holding “Power”+"Home” keys together. It even works in games. (Also by holding “Power”+"Home” keys longer than 30s, you can reboot the device, I only have to do it once for an app causing the system freezing up… But after I added CM7, I have to do this more often since the alpha release has some sleeping issue, as well as rebooting issue)

For Android, the CM7 mod has native screenshot by holding “Power” button (my LG phone doesn’t have this option). The quality is much better than webOS. Or alternatively, you can try shootme (root required, no longer available on market). It runs on background, you shake your phone and it takes pictures.

 

Twitter:

Spaz HD for webOS: you don’t have much choice here. Spaz HD is free, and it’s pretty much the only twitter client that’s optimized for tablet. You get all the standard functions here, including photo attachment, url shortening. I wish it can let you choose the width of column since I really only need two columns, but it enforces you to use three columns…

Glimpse for webOS: For $5, you get tons of tools in one card. And twitter is one of the many available tools. The interface closely resembles the official twitter webpage. All the major functions are there.

RSS Reader:

NomNomNom for webOS: My favorite webOS app. It revolutionizes the way I read RSS feeds. The card system works extremely well for pulling feeds with pictures and texts. I can get way more contents than the google reader way, but I also get lots more junk information… The only thing it’s missing is an integrated web browser to take you to the original site by directly clicking on the feed. It’s pointless to blow up the feed if it’s the same content, the “Get More Content” is not functioning well.

Google Reader for Android: Nothing to comment here, just wish that they could bring two panes back when they have a tablet version. With this I spent far less time reading than NomNomNom since I’m more selective by just reading the title.

Taptu for Android: OK, I’ve finally found the alternative to NomNomNom on Android platform. Taptu works similar. The difference is that NomNomNom shows three cards at a time, but taptu here shows a lot more. I still prefer NomNomNom though as you can read the entire feed.

 

OBi110 VOIP device Brief Review

 

So the ooma worked for only about 3 days, then no matter how I tweak it, the voice quality suffered, particularly the upload speed which results people who received my calls can’t hear me clearly. The voice became garbled. Therefore I have to choose my next device – OBi110 Voice Service Bridge and VoIP Telephone Adapter. Apparently, this device works well in my setup. Well, except for some reason, the phone service always disconnect at around 30min on first call. The subsequent call never has this problem.

Most importantly, the voice quality is much better for the upload speed, although there’s still some occasional package delay/dropout as reported by people who got my call. The initial setup of the OBi110 is pretty easy, provided that your google voice account is already setup. Then all you have to do is to sign up account on OBitalk.com and put in google credentials. You can directly access the adapter using the IP address unlike ooma. The setup options however are definitely NOT for newbies. The interface also is a bit laggy. The call history doesn’t seem to be very accurate. But for US users you don’t have to do any changes.

The device supports caller ID, but lacks E911. For E911, you can subscribe to callcentric and pay the tax using the SP2. But some settings are required inside the device.

Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with this device for now. Hope google won’t charge for a lot for the coming year.

Ooma optimization – Connection, Port forwarding etc

Got ooma VOIP device, so far so good. Here are a few things I did following some online discussions:

QoS (quality of service) Explain – The Proper Way:

First of all - it's best if OOMA is installed in-front of the router.
That's a #1 rule for any VOIP service if you want it to be the most reliable.
The difference in quality could be just in that 1 call out of 100 but the difference will be there.
OOMA in front of the wireless router is a MUST if you want to have the best quality of your phone service.
Rule #2 is to then properly setup QoS to ensure your phone voice quality will never suffer under any internet bandwidth usage pattern in your household. No matter how much bandwidth you have (DSL users normally limited with 3mbps in download, cable users vary from 10 to 15 to 25 mbps, FIOS is 50 mbps and higher) - there will be those few (or not so few) times when you'll be using a lot of bandwidth streaming some Netflix movies, downloading/uploading some movies, playing online games and so on.
So reserving bandwidth for OOMA calls is very important.
Below applies only to the configuration when OOMA is in front of the wireless router and thus can control the bandwidth.
The way OOMA does it is exactly as described in the first post of this thread:
- when OOMA QoS is not set and you are in a call - OOMA starts throttling down bandwidth it leaves for everything else very UNINTELLIGENTLY - it simply reserves about 70 to 80% of internet bandwidth for that ongoing call and let the rest to be used by the wireless router (your Internet). I guess the reason it's done is that with QoS is not set (empty or set to 0/0) OOMA doesn't know bandwidth capability of the internet line and by default assumes that it's the slowest line available thus reserving 80% of its bandwidth to ensure quality of ongoing call. I'm sure this not so smart behavior will be fixed eventually via firmware update but until those times not setting QoS or setting it to 0/0 is not recommended.
The way QoS works at this time is that OOMA will reserve approximately 20% of your Internet bandwidth if it's specified in your Upstream and Downstream settings of QoS on "Advanced" page. So if your cable provides 10 mbps on downstream and 1 mbps on upstream setting those settings in QoS to 80% of those values is actually INCORRECT. And the explanation is simple:
80% of 10 mbps = 8 mbps.
OOMA will now assume that your internet bandwidth is 8mbps and will reserve 20% of it when calls are in progress:
20% of 8 mbps = 1.6 mbps
So when you are in call your internet bandwidth of 10mbps will be throttled down by OOMA to (8 mbps - 1.6 mbps) = 6.4 mbps. If you receive a 2nd call and have two calls in progress at the same time - another 1.6 mbps will be used so your maximum internet bandwidth (or speed of downloads) will be decreased to (8 mbps - 1.6 mbps - 1.6 mbps) = 4.8 mbps.
So we are down to a very important question - OOMA had reserved 10 mbps - 6.4 mbps = 3.6 mbps to provide quality of one ongoing call - but does OOMA really needs so much bandwidth for one call? The answer is NO.
The highest amount of bandwidth used by the highest quality call is not more than 0.4 mbps.
You need only 0.4 mbps for one ongoing call or 0.8 mbps for two concurrent and ongoing calls (when you use both lines of OOMA at the same time). This numbers are EXAGGERATED by me - no more than 100 kbps (or 0.1 mbps) is actually required for high quality call.
So how do you setup QoS properly - without sacrificing too much bandwidth and without affecting quality of your calls?
You have to set your upstream and downstream values in QoS to much higher of your actual bandwidth.

In the example above with actual bandwidth of 10 mbps down and 1 mbps up (most common cable bandwidht in the USA) you should set your bandwidth to about 12000 (12 mbps) in downstream and 1200 (1.2 mbps) in upstream settings.
And the calculations will be as follows:
downstream bandwidth allowed for Internet = 80 % of 12 mbps = 9.6 mbps
downstream bandwidth allowed for 1 ongoing call = 20% of 12 mbps = 2.4 mbps
And here is the trick - OOMA will think that it's going to get it's 2.4 mbps for an ongoing call and will happily allow 9.6 mbps for Internet usage. But in reality your internet is limited to 10 mbps so the actual bandwidth you left to OOMA is 0.4 mbps per call which is more than enough to ensure excellent call quality.
If you have any other bandwidth - you can use the calculations above to approximate correct settings for your QoS values.
If you have DSL line and your bandwidth is limited to 3 mbps - I would make the calculations above to allow only 0.1 mbps per call to ensure you don't waste your bandwidth when you are on the call and on the internet (i.e. streaming Netflix movie) at the same time.
Hope this post will help someone to perform proper QoS configuration.

 

If you connect the ooma behind the router, you have to connect an Ethernet cable to its home network port to access the management page. Thankfully there is a way to get around this.

1. Setting Ooma Telo Port Forwarding, with Ooma Telo located behind (LAN Side) of your router. Add Port forwarding so that you don’t have to connect a computer to the Ooma Telo Home Port for viewing or modifying Ooma Telo settings.
a. Access your Ooma Telo home port by plugging in a patch cable from the Ooma Telo home port to a computer’s network card port. Sometimes you have to restart your computer after installing the patch cable, so that a proper connection occurs.
b. Type http://setup.ooma.com in you browser address window and hit enter. The “Ooma Setup” window opens.
c. In the left hand Navigation window, select “Advanced”.
d. At the top of the page record the Home Port IP Address: number (Probably 172.27.35.1).
e. At the bottom of the page under Port Forwarding, select “Add New Rule”. Enter the following:
i. Start Port: block enter 80.
ii. End port: block No entry.
iii. Type: Select TCP
iv. Forward to IP address: Enter the Home Port IP address that you recorded above (Probably 172.27.35.1).
v. Select “Add Rule” with your mouse.
f. From a computer connected to your router, in the browser address window, enter the Ooma Telo Static IP address, or IP address that your router assigned to the Ooma Telo. Looks Like http://192.168.1.199.
g. Ooma setup window should open, without the computer being connected to the Ooma Telo Home Port.

 

There is also another solution which is far more complicated than this, but it didn’t work very reliable. So just stick to this one!

Ooma suggests that you turn off Quality of Service settings in Ooma Setup, by setting upstream and downstream Internet speeds to Zero, if the Ooma device is connected (behind) to one of the router LAN ports. Than if your router provides VoIP priority, the Ooma device IP address is reserved with a permanent lease, in the router, and then the router VoIP priority is set for the Ooma device's IP address.
Ooma uses iLBC (default codec).
Ports:
This is what Ooma lists for ports, but I have never believed the list is complete.
http://www.ooma.com/app/support/advance ... vice-ports
More Information:
Star Commands
*15, *16, *17, *18, *19 - Call number using Bluetooth headset 1,2,3,4,5
*06, *06, *07, *08, *09 - Intercom with Bluetooth headset 1,2,3,4,5
*67 - Do Not Send Caller ID
*69 - Return last call
*70 - Disable Call Waiting Tone
*82 - Send Caller ID
*91 - ????
*96 - Use iLBC Codec
*97 - ????
*98 - Use G711 Codec w/o Fax mode
*99 - Data/Fax call
*#483 - Google Voice
*#*#001 - Speak the current Telo Version
*#*#191 - Unregister all handsets
*#*#501 - Bluetooth Discovery
*#*#511 - Turn off Telo key press sounds
**0 - Line1
**1 - Line2
dial *#*#099 on the phone attached to Telo to issue a factory reset

Finally Completed My Laptop Mouse/KB set using Logitech Unifying Technology

So my laptop was equipped with Bluetooth, I was thinking of using Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to save an USB port. But it looks like there are a couple issues:

1. Price. Bluetooth mouse and keyboard are pretty expensive, I’m not willing to spent so much.
2. Battery Life. Bluetooth radio, at least v2.0 consumes too much energy.
3. Performance. Looks like I can’t find a single good Bluetooth mouse on the market based on the reviews I have read. Most of the issues are connections, it appears Bluetooth tend to drop connections more often.

So I have to go back to the traditional 2.4G RF route. I’ve been using a Logitech M310 mouse for months now. It does support Logitech’s Unifying technology, just look for the unifying logo. It’s just that the mouse doesn’t come with a Unifying dongle. Last week, Staples offer a cheap K360 keyboard, so I was able to complete my Mouse/KB combo. The pairing of unifying devices are super simple, all you have to do is to download the software, turn off/on the devices, and you are all set. It’s far easier than Bluetooth, so I was pretty impressed. Also the unifying dongle performs the same as the non-unifying dongle with great range.

The K360 features a laptop like chiclet keyboard, very compact. It has exactly the same layout as on my SONY laptop, including the sucking PgUp and PgDn. But I guess it’s a good thing, I don’t have to get used to yet another layout. The FN function keys it provided performs a different set of task than my laptop keyboard. And there are six multimedia keys which are good compliment to the laptop keyboard. The only thing it’s missing is the backlight. But currently only K800 has that feature, and that’s $80 which is way too expensive.

HP touchpad webOS 3.0 initial impression

So I’m one of the fortunate ones who got a HP touchpad 16GB during their fire sale last week. I’ve been using this device for the weekend. And here are some of my impressions, with comparison to my phone which is powered by Android 2.2.

Overall I wasn’t super satisfied with the performance compared to my Android phone. Operations as simple as swiping between screens when multiple cards (HP’s way of multitasking) are opening. App launching speed is generally slow. Most operations require clicking the home button. There are instances when the OS prevent you from creating more cards (equivalent of force close on Android). All of these happen even after disabling logging and overclocking the device. This is very unacceptable since the hardware seems pretty good: 1.5Ghz dual core processor, 1GB memory seem all wasted. Even my 600Mhz 256MB Android phone can run multitasking very smoothly!

First about the booting time, there are two kinds of booting:
1. Normal booting, takes a long time. (My laptop with win 7 could probably boot faster)
2. LUNA restart which is required when you install patches from preware.

Wifi connection - apparently I can connect it to both 2.4G and 5G mode. Three days into using it, I figured I want to change the wifi connection, but when I’m sitting right next to my router, the damn thing cannot detect the WiFi signal (2.4g) Touchpad WiFi seems defective? Can't find any network! Sure a simple reboot will fix this problem, but it’s really not very acceptable.

The screen is 1024*768 4:3. The aspect ratio isn’t optimized for widescreen movie viewing, nor good for general web viewing. Maybe it’s just me used to the widescreen monitors… The screen is glossy, and if you look at the screen with tiliting when it’s off, you can somehow see the dots for the touch panel. The screen has a lot of backlight bleeding when viewing in the night. Overall the screen is mediocre at the best.

The storage, I got the 16GB model. When I got it, I have only around 11GB available space. The app size is usually pretty big, could be about the same size as windows program. And webOS has a limitation of 2GB file size. There’s no expandable storage option, but it seems the device does support USB host?

On the software side, first the webOS lacks support for a lot of languages. It only gives the usual English, Spanish, and French support. There’s no asian language support (IME), but it does support unicode. You can get apps from both official HP App Catalog or Preware (homebrew). Only very few apps are optimized for Touchpad, majority of them are for small screen mobile phone, if viewed under Touchpad, they will be in simulation mode which only occupies half of the screen. The useful apps on HP App Catalog are usually paid program, could range from 0.99 to over $10, averages about $5, and most don’t offer free or trial version. So you have to be fairly rich to use this device. HP has been offering some free code for the paid apps, but they run out in a few hours. The ones on Preware are mostly for older webOS, therefore they mostly don’t run well. The most useful ones are a few patches such as unthrottle the downloading speed, overclocking the device. For optimizing the device, just follow this one.

Notification system, I think the notification bar is too thin, it’s very hard to press the buttons accurately especially when it wear the ipad folio case (not fitting perfectly). The system incorporates web search, email, music, general setting (screen rotation lock, airplane mode, wifi, etc). I think it generally works OK, especially the email notifications, but I still prefer Android’s pull down style.

The power button, it doesn’t support reset, vibration, etc via long press of the power button like Android or Symbian. There is a patch on Preware, but it didn’t work for me. So to restart the device, you have to go to Settings->Device Info->Reset Options. It’s just way too long process.

Pre-loaded software are minimal at the best, includes web browser, email, calendar, contacts, Skype video, picture video browser, music player, Amazon Kindle, youtube, maps, memo, PDF, office, but none of them are perfect IMO. The web browser loads webpages very slow and almost fails loading external links EVERY SINGLE time. The browser is NOT multi-tabbed, to switch between tabs is a pain. Also there is no way to adjust text size, the text on a 10in device is just way too small IMO. The email is all right, but again since the web browser fails loading external links or emails with pictures, I can’t really check some of my emails. The calendar works OK, it syncs with Google calendar, I installed the default to month view on Preware. The contact feature is not super useful, but it does sync with Gmail. The Skype video has very inferior quality, the video just breaks up, I don’t think the either the device or the OS can handle it. The picture and video browser, I’m not sure why they combine these two together. It can sync with Photobucket and Snapfish for the online photo. I happen to use Photobucket a lot, so I definitely appreciate this feature, it’s far more convenient than the individual app on Android. But unfortunately the picture browser doesn’t support sorting, the pictures appear in random order (maybe by creation date?), while I generally want to to be in name ascending order. Sadly it doesn’t include syncing with Picasa which I use a little bit on the Android phone. The video player, I haven’t tried it yet since I don’t have any mp4 format (which is the only one that’s compatible), majority of my encoded videos are avi, wmv, and mkv. There is a 10Mbps and max 2GB limit on the video. They have a handbreak preset for Touchpad on precentral. I’m not sure if the h.264 this device support is main or high profile. The music player is good enough, it doesn’t play APE or FLAC. Amazon Kindle works fine here, but it doesn’t offer dictionary like the one on Android. Youtube, there’s no separate app, instead it’s just a website link. The device can play 720p video with adequate framerate, but chock on 1080p. Maps, I’m not sure which service it’s using, doesn’t look like google maps. There’s no GPS equipped on these WiFi only models. The only thing I’m pretty satisfied is the account management, which they call synergy, it offers a lot of services which you can manage multiple accounts easily. The box.net and dropbox accounts are only integrated with Quickoffice though, meaning only word, excel, PDF files can be pulled. In order to have full access to every file, there is a separate box.net app. (You get free 50GB storage for box.net as an HP Touchpad owner). There’s no dropbox app though.

For productivity, the touchpad comes with Adobe PDF reader and Quickoffice. For the latter, the new update 8/29 enables local word and excel editing, functionality is very limited. Not as good as thinkfree office on android, my cellphone could do more than what quickoffice offers such as inserting pictures and drawing pictures.

And the system doesn't come with a native camera app, instead you have to pay .99 for an app with only a single button - capture. No zoom, no white balance, no contrast, nothing. And the camera is front only. Both the camera and the Skype video quality are very poor.

Aug 2011 BD Purchase – Rurouni Kenshin OVA Tsuiokuhen

 

 

Thanks for Aniplex US to import this, otherwise we would have to pay far more than $65 due to currency conversion issue.

 

It’s pretty much the Japanese edition plus an English translated booklet. The booklet is not as fancy as the original Japanese one, but gets the job done I guess. The packaging is digipak, and arranged from right to left. The spec includes 1080p 4:3 video, LPCM, DTS-HD 5.1, and English DTS.

 

PS3 firmware 3.55->3.56->3.60->3.61->3.65->3.66 Nothing but Security Patches!

Haven’t updated for the firmware for quite some time, but nothing notable new features have been introduced since 3.55, because SONY has been busy combating with hackers. But thanks to that we all get some free games.

3.55 and 3.56 are pure security patches to disable jailbreak.

3.60 adds online storage (manual) and controller save setting.

3.61 forces user the PSN login password after the infamous hacking which caused the network down for almost two month.

3.65 and 3.66 are security patches as well. 3.65 is not mandatory, while 3.66 is, not sure what new has been added.

Scenasrist BD, x.264, qpfile chapter points

 

So I’ve been doing some experiments with x.264 encoding for Scenarist BD. I’ve been encoding with x.264 for a while, but pretty much for subtitling purpose since playback on raw BD while subbing is still too much to ask, even for my 1st gen i7 setup. And for professional production, I’ve been using Sonic CineVision 100%. Not that I’m super satisfied with the result, I can’t seem to find a better choice. But for anything under 10Mbps, the performance is really terrible.

So I decided to try x.264 by following this site. It’s pretty self explanatory. The only difficulty is putting the chapter marks on I frames. CineVision and Scenarist BD use very similar *.csv format for chapter marks, while x.264 requires qpfile which is somewhat different. The former ones use HH:MM:SS:FRAME#, and they have to be 24000/1.001 sped up ones (have to do 23.976->24 fps conversion, same goes for 30fps 30000/1.001), while qpfile uses total frame#. My NLE software is SONY Vegas, and I use frameserver as output, then create avs file, finally serve into megui. Unfortunately, this route doesn’t honor the chapter marks set in Vegas. So the qpfile is required. And if the chapter marks don’t match, you’ll get warnings in Scenarist BD (exact wording: PlayListMark is not an I-Picture). Although this is allowed in BD spec, you’d always want the chapter marks to be on I frame. In my experiment, the timecode in Vegas matches Scenarist BD format. SO here is what I’ve been doing:

Sample *.CSV file for CineVison is:

The timecode is copied from Vegas:

Same clip, just change the time format in Vegas, then copy it to a newly created qpfile (with notepad *.qpf):

0 K -1
4882 K -1
7075 K -1
10660 K -1
11062 K -1
14824 K -1
17700 K -1
21357 K -1
23359 K -1
25134 K –1

As for the timecode in Scenarist BD, you can use *.csv or *.tsv. The former is simpler, while the latter supports chapter name. The difference here between CineVision and Scenarist BD is that in Scenarist, you have to specify framerate and nondrop or drop frame.

Timecode Format    23.976    NonDrop   
Chapter Number    Timecode    Chapter Label    Mark Type
1    00:00:00:00       
2    00:03:23:10       
3    00:04:54:19       
4    00:07:24:04       
5    00:07:40:22       
6    00:10:17:16       
7    00:12:17:12       
8    00:14:49:21       
9    00:16:13:07       
10    00:17:27:06       
11    00:18:19:19       
12    00:20:31:05       

So for timecodes directly from Vegas, there’s no need to do frame conversion, but frames from DVD ifo or BD mpls files, it’s very likely that frame sped up is needed.