It's things like that always make me question the inflation rate.
It's a great little unit - everyone should own one, unless you have Foxtel and have an iQ instead. Or a Tivo. Take your pick - if you don't have a PVR, go and buy one. I got from mine here.
Enough plugs for people I don't know.
The Topfield has sat there for a year or so, doing what it was originally designed to do. Recording TV programs. It has two tuners, so you can record two channels at the same time, or watch one and record the other etc etc. At least you can if you have an external aerial and some reception, which we don't have, so we can only use one tuner.
But enough of my woes.
The great thing about the Topfield is that it's been opened up to allow nerds to develop their own TAP applications, which are apps you can download from the interweb whats-it and install on the Topfield to extend its capabilities. I've known about this for a year, but only extracted my digit last night to give it a go.
First port of call were the Topfield forums, where 5 minutes of browsing led me to download the three things that I needed:
- The USB drivers for Vista
- A set of Topfield Windows applications, which essentially allow you to copy things back and forth from the PVR to a PC/laptop
- MediaManager and PhotoManager, which are two TAPs that allow you to store and play/show MP3 and JPG files from the PVR
As I was fiddling around with this at around 1am this morning, I started asking myself "Why?"
Why the hell do I want to display photos on my TV and play MP3's through it? What is the point? When am I ever going to want to do this? Is this just a case of screwing around with technology for the sake of screwing around with technology? Kind of like having one of those old drinking bird toys, but connected via USB to a laptop so that you can count how many dips it makes per minute.
I couldn't control myself though - I just had to get it working, and I did (after following the most incomplete instructions on the planet). I managed to pull some recordings from the PVR to the laptop (and even watch them on the laptop), as well as upload some photos to the PVR and play them on the TV.
I watched the photos scroll across the TV a few times in screensaver mode, and then turned the TV off and forgot about it. I doubt I will want to do this again.
Next step is to upload some MP3's and see what they sound like. But again, I am wondering why I would bother. I have a laptop with a few thousand songs on it which I can sit next to me when I'm reading a book, so why bother with the PVR?
Then there is the horror of actually getting music onto it.
We have a few hundred CDs in storage. I have ripped most of them to MP3 and stored them on our NAS. Because I hate Windows Media Player, and like using an iPod, I've then imported most of them into iTunes. iTunes of course changes them to some stupid AAC format, and that's what I have on the laptop. Since the PVR only has a USB connection, I need to load the MP3s onto the laptop, plug the laptop into the PVR and then transfer the files across.
Ugh.
If I then rip another few CDs, I need to repeat the whole process. Rip CDs with Media Player and store the MP3s on the NAS. Import MP3s into iTunes on laptop. Copy MP3s to laptop, take laptop to lounge room and copy to PVR.
The whole process is about 3 stupid steps too long. This just shows how far technology still has to go before things become simple and straightforward.
I am thinking however of installing an FTP TAP on the PVR, buying a wireless USB thingy and connecting it to the PVR and seeing if I can throw files back and forth wirelessly using FTP.
Seriously, I have too much time on my hands.
I was discussing this at work today and I heard a new term being throw around - "nerd knobs", as in "that bit of software had every nerd knob known to man on it", meaning that it had lots of settings that could be fiddled with. If one good thing comes out of this exercise, it will be me learning a term I had not heard before.
No comments:
Post a Comment