cygweb

When we got our new TV almost a year ago, Sears threw in a JVC progressive-scan DVD player for free. At first, it seemed fine, but then on some movies I noticed stuttering during side-to-side panning scenes that bugged me occasionally. I wasn't the only one who noticed.

Well, I was living with it, only occasionally seeing the problem. But that was before I watched LXG Friday night. I enjoyed the movie, but it showed off the bug in almost every chapter. That got me wanting a quick fix, so on Saturday I checked out the usual suspects and narrowed down my next DVD player to either a Sony or a Pioneer DV-563A. This thread on the AVS Forums provided many good testimonials for the Pioneer.

At Circuit City, they had the Sony disconnected on a shelf, but the Pioneer was connected to a Sony 34" HDTV and had Finding Nemo loaded up. Being able to demo the Pioneer gave it an edge up, but the kicker was for that about $20 more it had DVD-Audio and SACD compatibility, neither of which the Sony can handle.

I bought it and confirmed that it played the problem scenes of LXG flawlessly, and it even cleaned up Monsters, Inc., where I noticed in a few scenes the JVC was susceptible to a chroma upsampling error.

Now, the JVC will be switched from "480p" to "480i" mode and do bedroom duty. And our venerable Sony from '99 will move to GeekCentral (my basement paradise).

Moral of the story: if you're getting a DVD player for free, that probably means someone else didn't want to buy it. ;)

Update: Compatibility entry at DVDRHelp.com.

Do you think there's anyone out there who participates in the hastily-organized birthday clapping and singing of the waitstaff at a TGI Friday's (or similar establishment) that isn't in the honoree's party? I have no problem with the celebration, mind you. Yesterday, it just struck me as ironic that the announcer always seems to invite the other patrons to participate, and no one ever does.

I've upgraded the site from MT3 Beta 1 to Beta 3. Things have looked great so far, except for the occasional Error 500. There are several new templates that I'm going to check out, so you may notice a difference on some of the pages a little later.

Please let me know if anything doesn't work for you.

I've created a test version of the site to check out the new default templates. I'm learning CSS at a glacial pace, so I'm thinking of molding my existing content and colors into the new template style to give the site a facelift. Any thoughts on the new MT3 style? I'll probably start tweaking the test site's style tonight (while watching "Survivor" and "CSI", not "Friends").

I'm glad I'm not an iTunes Music Store customer: APPLE TUNES UP.

Why Big Music thinks that anything greater than $12-$13 is an acceptable price for a single-CD release (or online equivalent) is beyond me. The fact that they're trying to make legal online music more expensive to purchase than its physical (and higher-quality) counterpart is enough evidence for me to declare they aren't showing an interest in developing the digital music marketplace.

(Seen on Slashdot.)

Update: Apple denies they're raising prices.

Microsoft To Say Recommended Hardware Platform For Longhorn OS Will Include Dual-Core CPU

Intel Drops Single-Core CPU Development To Focus On Dual-Core CPUs

But, AMD Has Been Planning Dual-Core CPUs For Some Time

Is it just me, or does Intel look like the follower here? Between this and their reverse-engineering and adoption of AMD64 extensions, they're doing whatever they can to remain relevant.

In the interest of balanced coverage, I like what this article says Apple is trying to do to get more content for the ITMS. Digitizing rare works for online distribution is major goodness and is quite distinctive.

I was surprised to read the announcement from Mena at Six Apart (makers of Movable Type) that the forthcoming free version of MT3 will have a more limited feature set than in the past. The limits of one author and three weblogs for free fit with my current use of the software, but there are plenty of users, many of whom helped beta-test MT3 without being informed of this change, who exceed these limits. 6A has every right to charge for their software or its use as they see fit, but the secrecy about this particular change is disappointing.

I went back through the major news items from 6A about MT3 (listed below) and none of them mention the specific change I'm referring to, nor do they mention the tiered pricing structure of the MT3 Developer Edition. The different pricing options for MT3D are listed here.

• Movable Type 3.0 (December 2003)
• Alpha Testing To Begin Soon (January 2004)
• Testing Begins & More Info about 3.0 (March 2004)
• Movable Type 3.0 Beta Testing (April 2004)

Will I continue to use this software? Time will tell. I've really grown to like it and have enjoyed helping to beta-test it. Let's see how 6A responds to this inital wave of reactions. Another item that concerns me is how "Personal" and "Commercial" uses of MT will be further defined; does my use of Google ads mean that I'm running a commercial site?

Update: "Push button publisher"? I prefer the term "weblogging hobbyist". Tim makes some good points, but I don't think I'll be moving over to TypePad anytime soon.

Update: I must have misread something. I thought they weren't releasing the free version of MT3 yet, but it's currently available for download. I'm reading around that the author/weblog limits of the free version are on the honor system. I'll definitely be checking it out.

The site is now moved over to the MT 3.0D templates. Hope you like the look. I'll continue to tweak it over the next few days. 3.0D seems very solid.

I encourage everyone who'd like to comment to register with TypeKey, but I'll continue to accept unregistered comments for now.

Suggestions? Post them.

Via Lessig News: Groups Seek Legal Copying of DVDs

I think some of our legislators need a reality check.

From the Horse's Mouth: Microsoft Details Windows Server Roadmap

This is where my bread is buttered; I have to say that I think Windows Server 2003 is one heck of a server OS. One thing that has smoothed the transition between Windows 2000 and 2003 for me at work is how reliable the in-place upgrade process has been. Being only a minor version upgrade, it works much better than the few in-place upgrades I did of NT4 to Windows 2000. So much cruft is kept from the older install in terms of registry settings that an upgraded server can sometimes be a handicapped one.

I hope WS2003 R2 brings another smooth transition. Of course, I and many others consider each Service Pack release to be a minor version upgrade. It should be interesting to see what R2 brings to the table that an SP wouldn't. I expect Longhorn Server (due in 2007) to be a major transition.

Another fun aspect of all of this is figuring what hardware to run this stuff on. I'm anxious to bring in our first 4-way Opteron Server once the x86-64-compatible WS2003 version is released, even though it's supposed to compare favorably to the Xeon even with the 32-bit version of the OS.

While I'm talking about work, I should share that we had our "Spring Fling" this afternoon; an afternoon of games, drinks, and ice cream with my co-workers. My team played volleyball together for the first time, and narrowly lost our first-round game. However, I played horseshoes for the first time in forever and my team won our first-round game and came within 4 points of winning our second-round one. Thanks to Mother Nature for only sprinkling us with a few stray drops; it is nice out there today.

Right now we're halfway through participating in a neighborhood yard sale. We don't have a lot of stuff out, but we haven't sold a thing. UGH. "In a week we'll be getting on a plane to Florida," I keep telling myself.

There's no such thing as junk; things just have varying degrees of relative worth. ;)

Update: We're happy because we sold our old family room suite for only a little less than what we wanted. And I traded a set of old shelves with my neighbor for some CDs. The work was worth it, even though we're taking a lot of stuff back to the basement.

While we were busy with our yard sale yesterday, the other shoe dropped. I don't believe all of the excuses, but I can appreciate the fact that changes and clarifications to the licensing were made quickly as a result of user feedback. I've read elsewhere that 6A doesn't have PR skills and should invest in that area; indeed, it's hard to communicate price increases without upsetting your customers (well, perhaps not so hard for some).

I think my take on the whole MT3 licensing situation was tame compared with some of the caustic comments and boycotts out there (many trackbacked on this page). I've only been an MT user for nine months, but I've grown quite accustomed to it. It's done well for me. I think there's a very large group of us out there that like MT but haven't donated for our use. We'll see how that shapes up for me once I reach my one-year MT anniversary and (hopefully) MT3 Gold is out there along with a host of new & updated plugins.

I'm not looking to take bread off of anyone's table, but at the same time I'm keeping the costs and flexibility of this particular hobby in check. I stand by all the comments I made in my earlier post.

Thanks to Six Apart for continuing to provide one of the best blogging platforms out there for free.

The final episode of The Practice last night was awful. I hope Fleet Street is good.

I grabbed Machina 2 SHNs from Sharing The Groove. I'd heard about this release but had never actively tried to grab a copy. I've neglected to listen to the Pumpkins for too long; this is pretty cool stuff.

Only a few of my friends know the good times we had hanging out and listening to Siamese Dream. My favorite track from that album is still "Quiet".

I can't believe I missed this in my Inbox; Rush is releasing a cover album in June as part of their 30th anniversary celebration! Cool!

Leave some headroom, Boyz!!!!

I'm glad to see that the sixth-seeded Calgary Flames beat the Sharks last night and will be the first Canadian team to play for the Cup since '94. I haven't seen a ton of their games, but I think they would have a better chance of winning against the Flyers than the Lightning.

I expect the Broncos to be calling a lot of "tackle eligible" goal-line plays this season with the retirement of Shannon Sharpe, the departure of Clinton Portis, and the move of Dwayne Carswell from tight end to tackle. Sharpe called Carswell the best TE the Broncos had, although they are deep at the position going into training camp.

Regarding Sharpe's joining the CBS NFL broadcast team: I think I'll enjoy his analysis and insight more than I did Deion's.

I'd been drooling over the In Absentia DVD-A both online and in Media Play for a while, but Don sent me this link to it this morning and I jumped on it. Talk about a nice exchange rate! I'll believe it when the order ships. ;)

Thanks, dude!

I'm back from Tampa Bay! What a cool week for us to have gone down there; the weather was superb, Stanley Cup fever gripped the area, and we got to do a lot of great stuff before the hordes settled in for Memorial Day weekend.

The Bills' first-round pick J.P. Losman has penned an article about his minicamp experiences so far. An interesting read. He seems like a confident guy:

Bills fans obviously associate No. 7 with [Doug] Flutie. But if things work out the way I envision, there will come a time when No. 7 will be linked with me the way No. 12 is linked with Jim Kelly.

If Don can blog about his failing hard drives, I figure I can blog about my own electronics problems. ;)

Yesterday I picked up a Boston Bravo Center speaker to match up with my main Bravos in the home theater setup. I also have a Boston PV600 subwoofer, but no surround speakers. It took some time for me to get the speaker cabled up and the receiver configured to use it. When I was done last night, the speaker was working fine.

This morning, it was not working any longer. 8( I've narrowed the problem down to the fact that the center channel output of the receiver (a Sony STR-DE545) is no longer working. Since the receiver's had no nechanical issues to this point (it's about 4 years old, I think) I suspect that the exposed speaker wire connector leads may have contacted at some point and blown the channel's amplifier. I can connect the speaker wire up to either of the surround-channel connections and get a test tone, so I'm pretty sure of this.

Flat-rate Sony service for this out-of-warranty receiver is $120. I can buy a new STR-DE595 (the closest current model to the DE545) for $199 locally. I haven't yet taken the receiver out of the entertainment center for inspection, but unless I have the ability to discern any parts from the L or R surround channels that I could sacrifice to get the center channel back online, it's either going to be diagnosed and fixed by a pro or moved to other duty and be replaced by the DE595 (or something else).

I admit to being a fan of Sony audio and other than a slight hissing problem at low volumes, the receiver has been fine for our needs until now. It seems a shame to have to buy another receiver to be able to use the center channel, but I think it would be more of a shame to spend more than $100 to get it fixed when for $100 more we could replace it and move it somewhere in the house where it could do 2-channel duty.

It's hard enough convincing my wife that electronics break down after a certain amount of time. Now I may have to convince her that I didn't mean to break the receiver just to get a new one. ;)

Update (6/1): I checked it out today and now the center channel's working! Perhaps it was just a temperature issue. One thing that made me think there was hope was the fact that I still heard a hiss coming from the speaker even when it wasn't playing anything. Cool!

Update (6/2): Argh! Spoke too soon, it's not working again - it's still hissing, though. I think I'll probably have to take it out and look at it. It might just need some cleaning.