ATSC

I want this blog to be an education to some out there, and one exciting thing that I have found not many of my friends know is the wonders of ATSC signals in our atmosphere.

"An ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) tuner, often called an ATSC receiver or HDTV tuner is a type of television tuner that allows reception of digital television (DTV) television channels transmitted by television stations in North America, parts of Central America and South Korea that use ATSC standards."

If you bought a TV in the last six years or so, it will probably have an ATSC tuner in there that you have never used and (back to my conspiracy theory brain) I think that "they" really don't want you to know how to use it, mainly because it represents something truly free for a good portion of our population.

Free TV, yes, free, really free.

I bolted one of these on the side of our old house in Gibsons.

It cost $89 from Amazon and I mounted a wood "plate" on my siding, ran a coax cable through to the living room, attached that to a little amplifier and then to the coax in the back of my Samsung plasma TV. I then went into the TV menu, found the "scan" submenu and scanned for "AIR" signals, it was a success and we could pick up eight channels, a few in HD and the rest in SD, but nevertheless, very good quality.

I could go on about how, before this official version of an antenna existed  I had made a test version out of coat hangers (instructions on Youtube folks - search for coat hanger HDTV)  and even before that I had punched my GPS coordinates into a website calling itself TVFOOL and it predicted, rather accurately I should note, all the free channels I could receive at my location.

I won't go on though, as the message here is, if you are in a good location, you can receive free HD programming using this method and in Canada it is mandated by the CRTC. In addition, if you are within 30 or 40 miles of the USA border, you can also pick up their ATSC signals. It all depends on your own location and the LOS (line of sight) to the transmitters.

In our new location in Sooke though, we have no LOS to any transmitter because of mountains and terrain, so we are officially SOL.

Onwards and Downwards

The Apple TV phenomenon is a typical thing in my experience, it stems from corporate greed I suppose and an unwillingness, particularly by companies like Apple, to allow users to tinker with their products.

The original Apple TV, or ATV1 was quite a big, silver unit, produced around 2007 and allowed users to connect to their online iTunes account and stream content. I just googled it and the ATV1 was originally called iTV by Apple, was announced in September 2006 and started shipping in March 2007. It was not a true standalone device until 2008 (as it needed to attach to a PC running iTunes to load authorized content) but a software update cut the umbilical so it could stream directly from the account and at the same time oddly made the onboard hard drive redundant.

Apple and iTunes, one big annoyance for a lot of people, Apple like their profits and they like to operate a walled garden with their media, so the ATV1 had access to Apple media, and nothing else.

Technically gifted people did not like that, so they found ways to replace the operating system on the unit, to make it more useful, and Apple did not like that, so when they developed the ATV2 or 2nd Gen Apple TV, they closed off some loopholes in the hardware.

Yet, the tech community found a way into the new variant, call it what you will, hacking, jailbreaking or revitilizing, the wizards out there found a way in to improve the capability of the device, and in doing so, affected Apples profits in some small way.

In less than 18 months Apple introduced the "new and improved" third generation device and you guessed it, removed the back door that allowed the community to modify the gizmo and as far as I know, this third generation device has not been successfully hacked, Apple introduced their fourth generation device in 2015 and phased out the previous units.

If you cruise eBay you will see that the ATV1 sells for buttons, and the ATV3 can achieve $50 plus or minus a tenner. Yet the ATV2 is a sought after device, capable of being hacked and with the ability to stream at 1080P at a pinch, but run cool and happy at 720P (the ATV1 gets so hot that it can be used as a space heater when streaming video) so the ATV2 is still selling for around $200

As I had an attached PC to my TV setup, I did not need a hacked ATV2 to run XBMC so I sold the ATV2 for a few hundred bucks and went and bought a new ATV3 from London Drugs for $89 plus taxes.

I have no intention of buying the ATV4 but I may buy an ATV1 at some point in the future.

Just to keep the house warm.

Close but no cigar...

I was off digging for photographs and I came upon this one, so this will be good to discuss the original cord cutting setup and demonstrate how our configuration changed many times over the four year period.

This shows an iteration of the setup, the photo was taken in March, 2013

The Dell Optiplex had been moved downstairs serving the second TV, the black box on top of the DVD player was a small Core 2 Duo PC and it was connected to the external antenna with a Hauppauge USB dongle. ATSC and QAM capability. The ATV is there, but I believe it was a 3rd Generation, mainly as I discovered that the 2nd Gen could sell for $200 on eBay, so revenue neutral kicked in and I flogged it and pocketed the difference as the newer model was selling for around $100.

The Roku there is probably a 2nd Gen XS and the XD had migrated downstairs.

At this stage of the game, we were getting around 8 channels of ATSC from the antenna.

The box to the left in the stereo unit is a Dell Optiplex C2D tower, with full size ATSC and QAM cards, it was our first DVR and I would set it up to record programs, you will have noticed that I have mentioned QAM twice now, and we'll talk about that later.

Where was I?

Here we are, four years into the experiment of living without cable TV in the house, and everything is ticking along fine. The main reason is that over that time, the media industry has become competitive for the cord cutters dollar and options have increased greatly. I am sure there are readers out there who have been living happily without a cable bill for a decade or more and giggle at our paltry four years.

But four years it is, and counting.

In December 2012 we abandoned cable TV and subsequently our monthly bill of around $80 disappeared. We had already been using Netflix for a year or so at that point and that was eight bucks a month and in addition, to take advantage (at the time) of the USA Netflix library, we were subscribing to the Unblock-US service, a smart DNS that tricked the geoblocked content into being available.

Netflix have since fixed that backdoor, but we enjoyed the US content for some time and during that time, the Netflix Canada library became humungous. Unblock-US is still very useful, and I'll probably talk about that in a future post.

So, back to our start in 2012, our setup then was a Roku 2 XD, an Apple TV 2nd generation and a Dell Optiplex 960 desktop attached to the TV via the Displayport connector. The Apple TV and the Dell made use of Unblock-US and in addition, the Dell had a half-height ATSC card installed and I attached that to an external 8 bay antenna.

I will check if that was the original cord cutting setup.

I hear distant mutterings now about the cost of all this and I will address your concerns as we progress. If you go back a couple of posts you will see my comment about being revenue neutral on tech stuff, and as with many things in my life, I keep track of cash and I had made a promise to myself, and the missus, that all my tech purchases would come from eBay profits and not from the household budget and true to that, every piece of our 2012 setup had been funded in that way.

I'm off to dig out a photo or two, will be back soon.

Cutting the Cord

In the early years of this millenium, when I constructed that HTPC, I believed it was always going to be an addition to cable TV, that the ability to stream digital content to the TV, or stereo, was going to enhance the home theatre experience, I don't recall that I expected it to replace cable.

However, a few of my fortune telling moments on one of my old blogs indicate I was thinking differently.

http://dryspot.blogspot.ca/

I aplogise, for you out there, no time actually went by for you, but in here, in the confines of cyberspace, I just spent almost an hour giggling at my old stuff.

You noticed I typed aplogise did you not?

Where was I?

Like a Fox

I have a lot of time on my hands and I do like to spend money, but at the same time, I get the most warm and fuzzy feeling when I save real money. You could argue that my track record over the years with buying and constructing tech devices does not really demonstrate a canny approach to saving money, but I'll politely point out that I retired three weeks before my fiftieth birthday and I don't give a monkeys left nut what you think.

I like to buy tech stuff, and in the last decade, I would estimate that I am revenue neutral, I sniff out bargains, I buy many, many tech things, and after playing with them, I sell them again, usually at a small profit. I do keep hold of some though, they become my "little friends".

Smart like a fox, or is it crazy like one?

The last post was about the retired Roku 1 that was discontinued in October, and I bought one, just to make a spare TV into a streaming device. The retirement of a third generation device peaked my interest in the new fifth generation offerings from Roku, and I just had to have one, but again, I had to have one under my own terms.

The Premiere+ has had amazing reviews online, voted editors choice on PC Mag, and as I already owned a "little friend" which was a Roku 3, my research told me that the Premiere+ would be a nice upgrade, plus of course, my Roku 3 could be repurposed.

I do a lot of lurking on eBay, after all, I do have all the time in the world, being retired as I am, so I just bided it, biding time, time was officially bided, until I bidded.

These numbers may seem silly in years to come, but at a time when the MSRP is $109.99 plus taxes and Walmart are selling for $99.88 + taxes (the .88 to attract our Asian friends no doubt) well, the fox found one, brand new, on eBay for $85 including taxes and shipping.

Crazy?

I thinketh not.

Race to Zero

I told you about that first HTPC that I built at the start of the millenium, and at the time I bought an expensive Toshiba TV that had a rudimentary HDMI port, so that we could enjoy the benefits of this "TV attached PC" for what it was worth and yes, we enjoyed some benefits, we played some digital movies, we watched some shows that had been burned to CD or DVD, disks that our normal DVD player just ignored. It was a step forward, but it had cost a lot of money in the process. If I could estimate the cost of just the PC hardware, along with a frustrating Gyration "air mouse" control system, I would have spent around $2500 and change.

It is amazing to marvel at the difference in online capability that has occured in just 14 years, not only from the bandwidth available, but also the cost of access to streaming media.

This was bought at Walmart a few weeks ago for just $33.50 including taxes :

It's a third generation Roku 1 and production ceased in October, to make way for a bunch of new units. Regardless, it is a powerful third generation Roku, with HDMI output and composite cable included if needed, a reasonably fast processor and buffer memory, 802.11 b/g/n, a remote and even a couple of Duracell batteries.

This old tech geezer has been using Rokus for four or more years now, and in humble opion mode (HOM) I believe the Roku is perhaps the best thing since sliced bread when it comes to watching Netflix, in addition, there are a lot of official streaming channels here in Canada, plus a few very good private channels which can make a good case for cutting the cord.

I am sure we will talk more about cord cutting...

There are a couple of downsides to this model, it has no high speed wired ethernet port, no audio to remote, but, it has composite output and analog audio, jeepers, those two features in a third generation unit outweigh any negatives. You can buy this unit and make any twenty-five year old TV with composite input a smart TV.

Thirty-five bucks.

That was different.

I run a nice machine (by my standards) here in the homestead. It's a Dell Latitude E6410 laptop, and it cost me a few hundred bucks two years ago. It's not a gaming machine, it's an email, surfing, facebook and media transcoding device.

Yes, I grab music or video from online sources and transcode it.

Don't you?

I recall that in 1992, because I am an old tech geezer, that I bought a 386 machine, a number greater than 286 which must have been better, soon to be be passed by a 486 the following year.

The 386 cost me $4800 with a printer. That's 1992 dollars, and with inflation at say, two percent, that equates to around $7800 in todays money. I needed that 386 to justify a tax return that year, and of course a more important reason.

I needed to play Doom!

That was different, I admit, but today, if my trusty E6410 becomes very unhappy or dead (which it is showing signs of) well I will just have to jump on to eBay and buy another, and the question is, what are they going for at the moment?

Well, the first hits on eBay for the i5 version (sold items) are around $80 to $115 for one that is working and that's about the price of admission to my level of acceptable tech.

However, a respectable Dell Core 2 Duo, or C2D, can be had for half of that massive price tag and will do everything (besides the video transcoding) in a reasonable timeframe.

Five grand down to fifty bucks in twenty five years, does that screw up Moore's law?

How to get a great deal on an Xbox One (Early 2016)

I've recently gone through the "upgrade" from the Microsoft Xbox 360 to the now almost two year old "next generation" console, the Xbox One.

This post is to detail how I went about buying the new console as cheaply as possible and the entire research process took a month or so, so here are the nuts and bolts in a five minute blog.

This is a Canadian blog, so all amounts are Canadian dollars.

It's not a difficult path, but finding the so called "refurbished" units on the Microsoft store isn't as easy as you would imagine. The most direct way was to google it and then proceed from there.

It intrigued me that the base unit was a penny under $320 and the unit with the Kinect sensor was just $30 more. The units came with a current free game and the Kinect version added a one month Xbox live offer. The customer reviews were glowing.

If you continue to follow this blog, you will see that I use eBay a lot and I use the sold item search feature on the site to find out relevant information about market prices on tech and games.

It made sense to buy the Kinect version, even though I did not want the sensor, I also chose the most current and most popular free game that sold well on eBay. The following numbers all include taxes if applicable and the shipping on the unit was free.

Refurbished Xbox One with Kinect, Just Dance 2016 and 1 month Xbox Live.   $391.99

The numbers from my sales on eBay include any fees.

Kinect Sensor           $65.76

Just Dance 2016       $29.26

The free 1 month of Xbox live never arrived, so Microsoft gave me a $10 gift card.

So, my next generation unit cost me a total of $286.97 which is pretty good if you think that stepping into any of the electronic superstores or Walmart in Canada would extract $391.94 from your wallet, although some may say that it was a lot of effort to save $104.97 but that's fine as it's my money. I encourage you all to go spend your money as you wish and keep our economy going!  

I hear what you're thinking.

The great reviews on the Microsoft site are obviously filtered, but customers say that their refurbished unit was like new, and my experience was the same. The console, kinect sensor, headset, controller, free duracell batteries, cables were all pristine and had that new console smell and experience. The only indicator it was refurbished was the box of course, and a big sticker on the unit that was easily removed. I could not find a scratch or flaw and my thoughts are these units are new and it's a Microsoft marketing strategy, just a way to entrap us cheap buggers into upgrading.

I plugged it in, it started downloading and upgrading the forked Windows 10 software and a mere six hours later it was ready and raring to go, all I needed was a next generation game to play...

I'll review the console at some point in the future. 

Evolution of the HTPC

HTPC or Home Theatre PC's have been on the market for quite some time and my first attempt at building a "silent" computer back in 2004 failed miserably. I had spent a considerable amount of time sort of researching, and bought a $200 Silverstone full size HTPC case, model LC03

I added a 500W fanless PSU which cost almost the same as the case, and then started selecting the core components based around an ASUS motherboard and PCIe video card and an ATI HDTV Wonder complete with it's own antenna to pick up ATSC digital signals.

This first HTPC was an expensive but educational exercise, a success in that it did what it was supposed to do, stream movies to our TV, play music through our amplifier, pick up the single ATSC channel at the time, which was City TV from Toronto and it could also be a DVD player.

It was a failure because it could not be silent. The fanless PSU produced a lot of latent heat and I had to have a case fan running with a speed control to keep the heat down. In addition, the CPU fan added it's own little slice of low level noise, plus the quiet, yet noticeable hum of the hard drive.

In a quiet home theatre environment, my first HTPC sounded like a freight train.

There's always a first post.

Welcome to the Old Tech Geezer, a blog I've been meaning to start for many years and a topic that has been close to my heart now for four decades. I've grown old playing around with computers and tech, and it's about time that I documented some of the joy in playing with the stuff, old and new.

I'll start when I left school, I don't see the point in discussing my Etch-A-Sketch.

Here's the first piece of kit that graced my palm, the type 3 Sinclair Cambridge calculator I bought in the West end of London in November of 1974 :

The Sinclair Cambridge cost me about sixteen quid at the time when I was earning thirteen a week before my "expenses" and it was already an obsolete model by the time I could afford it. That's the story of my life I will say, that whenever tech arrived in my life, others had been enjoying it for a year or more before it entered my life.

The Cambridge I owned had an interesting quirk, if you divided stuff by zero, it would go off into an endless counting mode, a function that would keep my small brain amused for hours.

In addition of course, you could spell BOOBS with it.