I think Popcorn Hour shot themselves in the foot when they launched their next generation C-200 media player. For about $300 (US) you get a box that does what it does and nothing more, has not native disk storage, has a small but fervent following and is not hugely customizable.

On the other hand, for $330 (US) you can get the Acer Aspire Revo with the ATOM 330 (dual core), ION hardware accelerated video processing, 2GB RAM, 160GB drive (plus a cute and usable wireless keyboard and mouse) and for $0 and about 10 minutes with a very easy guide, you can have a great XBMC media player that can do just about anything you want because it is standard PC hardware in a tiny little box. (OK, so that was too much of a run on sentence, but you get the idea.) Oh, if $330 is too much, there is a $200 version that has the same graphics !

What surprised me was that the Revo came with Windows 7 64bit Home edition. What surprised me more was that the obvious way of using XBMC was not the fastest or the easiest.

I first tried installing XBMC for Windows and it looked to be working perfectly. Then I tried playing one of my HD TV shows (a 1.1GB h.264 MKV file) and it shuddered – badly.

Next I tried the special DSPlayer version of XBMC that is setup to use the ION graphics. After about 5 hours of messing around with guides and trial and error, I threw in the towel.

Finally, I downloaded XBMC Live and using a handy guide, spent less than 10 minutes to create a bootable SD card (could have as easily been a USB stick) and had the Revo flying along perfectly. I even tried an action scene in an HD movie (performance hit 8Mb/sec video stream) from my NAS and the Revo was not even breaking a sweat – CPU(s) were about 20%-25% load.

My final setup – all anyone sees is the TV and me using the iPhone as a remote …

• Acer Aspire Revo R3610-U9022 (hidden behind the TV)
• network connection (the Revo has wireless ‘N’ but I don’t)
• HD (1080p) flat panel TV connected to the Revo with a single HDMI cable
• wireless mouse and keyboard (bundled with the Revo) (hidden in a draw) for the occasional upgrade or new feature
• NAS for most of my video
• XBMC Live installed to the Revo’s hard drive
• iPhone XBMC Remote (collect3)

So, my advice ? Get the Revo. Get XBMC Live. Try it with the SD or USB instructions. If you like it, format the drive and install it for good. Later, if you want, you can follow other guides and install downloaders for podcast, streaming video, and more. Even if you don’t leverage the Revo for all of it’s idle time and other capabilities, it is still a great deal for a great media player.

I’ve been watching, and attempting to record, the defensive behavior of the common Barn Swallow. When they feel one of the nests is in danger, all of the swallows take to the air and dive and swoop and make noise. The goal is to confuse the predator and then to scare it away with "attacks" consisting of fast fly bys with screeches at the moment when the bird is closest to the predator.

The video captures a few of these dives and starting at 00:55s you can see a pass in slow motion. This is followed by another pass in slow motion and then still frames.

(note the bird song as it is slowed down)

I’m just starting to use more video in conferences. Like many, telephones, web conferences, and now even video are an integrated part of work. The catch phrase is “unified communications”.

Over the holidays, I installed a HUE webcam. It is getting more and more use with co-workers. My home office is not spectacular but I manage to keep it presentable. Not every does this. Perhaps they should check out www.webcamclothing.com !

In doing a little reasearch for my post of video conversion for the iPod, I came across the following picture. I reminded me of Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs – specificly, Rick Moranis‘ character, Dark Helmet.  

Toshiba?s ?360-degree? head mounted display

Toshiba has developed a giant full-faced helmet that weighs around three kilo and facilitates the wearer to see a full 360-degree view on a 40 cm dome-shaped fish-eye screen. The idea of full ?360-degree viewing is fabulous but do you guys think it?s really fabulous with that gigantic 3 kg helmet on your head? It could have been a ground-breaking gizmo if they had made it a bit small. …
Source: Coolbuzz

And clearly, I was not the first to make this association. The “Dark Helmet” search results contain the Toshiba HMD !

I was going to give this post some funny, thought provoking or obscure title but then realized, the task at hand is to provide a little bit of useful information. So instead, this will be plain and simple.

(For those who are way too hyper to read any further, here is the download link and the screen pic show the settings I use for videos with do not exceed the max resolution of the iPod. For everyone else, feel free to keep reading.)

If you have an iPod that supports video and you have videos that are not supported by your iPod, the solution is to convert them. There are lots of tools to do the job. iTunes will do it for you but very inefficiently (slot and bloated results). You can buy software that make light work of it for you (at a cost). You can use ffmpeg if you like command-line tools (a call to all Linux users here). Or you can use SUPER.

SUPER? stands for “Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer”. (And for the record, SUPER actually uses ffmpeg but you don’t need to know what it does <grin>.)

If you need a simple, yet very efficient tool to convert (encode) or play any Multimedia file, without reading manuals or spending long hours training, then SUPER ? is all you need. It is a Multimedia Encoder and a Multimedia Player, easy-to-use with 1 simple click. SUPER? is 100% FREE to download and to use. SUPER? does NOT require any additional external codec to be installed, absolutely nothing. SUPER? can also play and save Internet Media Streams with different protocols ( mms://  rtsp://  http://). 
Source: eRightSoft

While the quote looks like an advertisement, it true so I call it a testimonial. I’ve used a lot of different software to convert video podcasts, the odd TV show from my old PVR, or a funny video off the Internet. Most did a good job. SUPER did a good job with a decent user interface, batch processing, and at the magic price point of $0.00.

The only comment I will make about SUPER is their website. It has lots of good information *and* it’s hard to find the actual download link. There are a number of links that you expect to be the download, but each one takes you to the next page of information. Only after getting thru all of the pages of features, descriptions, examples, etc, will you get the actual link to download. So, I suggest you read thru all of the pages *and* here is the download link.

A couple of notes of video resolution you may or may not have read – the iPod Video (or iPod 5) officially supports up to 640×480 resolution starting with the 1.2 firmware. *But*, if you are planning to view the movie thru a TV, projector, or other output device capable of greater resolution, then what you are more interested in is the “307200 pixel” limit. With a few exceptions, if the width x height of the video will be less than 307200 pixels, you don’t need to reduce the resolution. I say “with a few exceptions” because if you are close to exceeding the maximum resolution, then you may need to understand “macroblocks”. I won’t go into them here. You can read up on that elsewhere. Suffice it to say, you can load a 16:9 widescreen video onto the iPod at up to 720×405 and it will play!