Auxiliary Memory

The Cat, The Dog, The Robot and The Soul

Since before Biblical times men and women believed that human beings were unique, superior to the other animals that inhabited the Earth. Later theologians would claim we had souls and animals didn’t. Actually, the idea of an immortal soul only seems to arise after the New Testament, because in the Old Testament, life after death is barely hinted at. It was man and woman that got special attention in Genesis, giving them dominion over all the animals, and God eventually told Noah we could eat them. So we hunted and killed anything that swam, crawled, flew, leaped and ran. We sacrificed them by the thousands in honor of God for many chapters of the Bible after that. We justified our dominion by writing off the other beings in our environment as soulless creatures, unable to feel and know, and unworthy of love, empathy and compassion.

Well science is starting to take a second look at the lives of animals. Either we are closer to them, or they are closer to us. If we have souls, maybe they do too, or at least some of them. It’s hard to imagine all the cockroaches having unique identities, personalities and desires, but maybe we just don’t examine their lives long enough before we step on them.

The wonderful science writer Natalie Angier wrote in her NY Times “Basics” column, “Even Among Animals: Leaders, Followers and Schmoozers,” where she tells us about animal personality research. She has a significant quote that I like:

“There are low information processors who don’t attend much to their environment and bulldoze through life,” said David Sloan Wilson of the State University of New York at Binghamton. “Then there are the sensitive ones who are always taking things in, which can be good because information is valuable, but it can also be overwhelming.”

I guess I’m one of those sensitive creatures that are overwhelmed by input, and that’s why I take the time to worry about cruelty to pigs and cows, rather than being the kind of person that just gobbles down the barbecue. But that quote, based on animal studies, is very revealing. Does it explain the foundation of conservatives and liberals? Can we see the seeds of human traits like bravery, leadership, cruelty, compassion, creativity, and so on in animals? It’s natural to assume so if you believe in evolution. If our eyes are a product of continual evolution, why not our individual personality traits?

Would we see this more dramatically if other animals had evolved bigger brains like us and could tell us what they felt? I recently read a story about an uplifted chimp that can talk. Read or listen to the very moving short story “Evil Robot Monkey” by Mary Robinette Kowal. I think the narrated version has more impact and it will only take six minutes.

Anyone who lives with pets knows they have personalities. People who love their animals want them to have souls too. If you search on the quoted phrase “do animals have souls” on Google you’ll find 6,580 replies, many of which that look for theological justification that will give them hope they will see their pets again in heaven.

I don’t think we have souls, being an atheist, but I believe animals have a kind of self-awareness that make them more than animated meat. I’ve always been fascinated by robots, and believe we’ll one day have intelligent machines that are smarter than us humans. They will have to evolve just like us, and I think we’ll see them go through developmental stages equal to various animals. I doubt we have a machine as smart as an ant yet, but it won’t be long before we’ll see machines with personality traits, and soon after that we’ll have machines equal to dogs and cats. Through robotic studies, we’ll eventually understand how much awareness an animal has.

However, we shouldn’t need to wait until then to understand our unethical relationship with the rest of the animal kingdom. We need more animal observers like Jane Goodall. Can you imagine what compassionate observers could report about living among chickens, pigs and cows in factory farms? Are their inhabitants all identical soulless creatures, or do they each have a personality struggling to survive in monstrous living conditions? Maybe I’m wrong about souls. But I’d like to be believe if we have souls its because we earned them. Who knows, maybe in the far future vast AI intelligences will observe mankind and note they come in two kinds, those with empathy, and those without.

JWH – 4/11/10

Will Internet TV Make Cable and Satellite TV Extinct?

There are two kinds of TV, live and recorded. Internet TV sites like Hulu have already proven how well they can handle recorded TV shows. Internet TV even does away with the need for a digital video recorder (DVR). Think of a show, find it, watch it. Internet TV like Hulu is even better than broadcast, cable or satellite for sponsors because viewers are required to watch the commercials. And as long as they have such limited commercials as they do now, I don’t mind watching them. Otherwise I’ll pay for streaming services like Netflix to be commercial free.

Where Internet TV is weak is for live broadcasts, like for sports and 24/7 news. The infrastructure of cable and satellite systems have far more bandwidth for handling live television. That won’t always be so, because I’m sure some kind of broadcast Internet technology will emerge to solve that problem and people will be watching live TV on their iPhones, iPads, netbooks, notebooks, desktops, HTPCs and Internet TV sets.

Digital technology ate the music industry, and is about to eat the book, newspaper, magazine and television industries. I gave up cable TV months ago and for recorded shows I’m in hog heaven by using the Internet TV, which includes streaming Netflix. I also supplement by viewing diet with snail-mail Netflix discs, but I see where that habit could be phased out too. The only reason to get a disc now is for the picture quality of Bluray. Future bandwidth will wipe out that technology too.

Owning music CDs and video DVDs seem so pointless now. I wonder how that’s going to impact the economy and effect the entertainment business. It also makes me wonder about my efforts of building an easy to use HTPC. I’m struggling to get perfect Bluray playback through my HTPC computer, wondering if I should spend $80 for better software, knowing full well in the not too distance future I’ll phase out Bluray too. The HTPC has phased out the LG BD390 Bluray player I bought just last year, and an Internet TV set could phase out my HTPC.

Last night my friend Janis had us watch Bigger Than Life on Bluray because NPR had praised this old James Mason movie so highly. The flick wasn’t very entertaining, but it was fascinating. The Bluray presentation of this 1956 CinemaScope production was stunning in 1080p high definition, showing intricate shadows and vivid colors. Internet TV and streaming Netflix can’t provide that kind of resolution right now, but I imagine it will before 2015.

Technology is moving so fast that we buy devices we want to throw away in a year or two. Growing up my folks wanted appliances and TVs that would last 15 years. I remember Ma Bell phones lasting over twenty years. I’ve had my 52” inch high definition TV for only three years and I’m already lusting for a new set. Will technology ever settle down again so we can buy something that will last a generation? I think it might. Of course it will be terrible for the economy, but I can imagine TV technology that would satisfy me and take the ants out of my pants to have something better.

My perfect TV will still be a 1080p HDTV like we have today. I’m pretty sure we can go decades without changing the broadcast standards again. It will have a digital tuner to handle over-the-air broadcasts (in case the net goes down) and an Ethernet jack and WiFi for Internet TV. It will have two removable bays. One for a computer brain that can be upgraded, and another for a SSD hard drive. As Internet TV is perfected the need for a local DVR will be diminished. That will also be true for an upgradable CPU. There will be no cable or satellite TV. Everything will come to us by TCP/IP. Broadcast will remain for the poor and for when the Internet fails. Cable and satellite TV will go the way of the record store. I also assume all Internet access will be wireless, but it will take 5-10 years to phase out wires. Now that doesn’t mean cable and satellite companies will go under. I expect them to buy into the Internet TV revolution. I do get my internet access from Comcast.

Most people will think I’m crazy by predicting the extinction of cable and satellite TV. They can’t picture living without all that choice. That’s because of the channel switching mindset. We have always thought of what’s on TV by flipping through the channels, even though very little TV is live. Most of TV is recorded, and we fake immediate diversity by offering 200 concurrent channels to watch. Eventually the only channels to watch will be live, because other technology makes it easier to find recorded shows ourselves.

Live TV will go through a renaissance. Cable and satellite TV systems are still the best technology for live TV, and they will hang on to their audiences for another ten or twenty years as Internet broadcast TV is perfected. However, guerrilla TV is emerging on the net, and micro audiences are evolving. For the big networks, how many Today like morning shows will we need for live TV? How many channels to promote sports? How many to 24/7 talking head news and reality shows do we need? How many live PBS networks will we need? Will audience gather around central networks or seek out specialized Internet broadcasters catering to their personal interests?

Ultimately, how much TV really needs to be live? Even 24/7 news shows spend a lot of time repeating themselves. Live TV is leisurely. The hours of the Today show are filled with just minutes of quality content, most of the time is fluff and commercials. And if an opera is filmed live for PBS does it really need to be seen live? Survivor and Amazing Race would be tedious if live.

When the flipping the channels metaphor dies out, and library checkout metaphor gains popularity, TV viewing will change. People love football, war and car chases live, but will even that change too? If you were sitting with you iPad killing some time, will you think, “Hey let’s watch the game in Miami,” or will you want to play a game or watch something recorded? I can easily imagine sites of “WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW!” start showing up, listing thousands of events going on around the world. TCP/IP technology will work better to provide that kind of service than cable or satellite.

Until you play with Internet TV you won’t understand what I’m saying. You’ve got to sleep with the pods or drink the Kool-Aid to buy in. Start with streaming Netflix and Hulu.

And if people love cell phones, Facebook and Twitter to stay in constant contact won’t they love live TV from their friends. Instead of watching the crew of the Today show have fun, why not video link all your friends and create your own morning show? And the emergence of spy networks will also change viewing habits. If every daycare and classroom had web cams, wouldn’t parents spend more time watching them? Won’t all the web cams in the world grabbing eyeballs destroy the audiences of the 200 channels of national networks?

We can’t predict the future. Growing up in the 1960s I never imagined anything like the Internet. All I can predict is change and more of it. But I’m also going to predict that once the Internet and digital upheaval is over, we might settle down to a slower pace of change. Well, until artificial intelligence arrives or we make SETI contact with distant civilizations.

The iPad and Screen Evolution

I got to play with an iPad today for the first time. It was beautiful. I’m going to have a hard time keeping my resolution to not buy one before the second generation comes out. I’ve been trying to find a carry around the house computer for years. I tried a Kindle, iPod touch and a Toshiba netbook. I sold my Kindle to a bookworm friend, and my other two devices just sit around losing battery charge. I use each occasionally, but they have the wrong size screens.

I liked the Kindle for reading fiction, but I wanted something to read electronic magazines, RSS feeds and the Internet while reclined in my La-Z-Boy. The iPod touch lets me read stuff the Kindle didn’t plus my Kindle fiction, but the screen is too small. I installed several ebook reader programs on my netbook, but 10.1” landscape screen is all wrong. Seeing the 9.7” inch portrait screen of the iPad today convinced me it was near perfect for electronic magazines, RSS feeds and Internet reading, and probably for fiction too. It was heavier than I expected, and that might be a drawback. But it was damn close to what I want.

The iPad should do a lot to eliminate paper, which is one of my environmental goals. The iPad also well illustrates the role and purpose of the computer screen. The small screen on the iPhone/iPod touch is perfect for carrying around all the time. The interface is tuned to it’s 3.5” screen. iPhone apps that aren’t rewritten for the 9.7” iPad screen will miss their mark. Putting Windows 7 on a 10.1” netbook screen just isn’t right either. Tiny desktop applications don’t cut it, they need to be redesigned to the screen real estate.

For example, Windows Media Center works great on my 52” television screen. It’s an application designed to work on a TV screen with viewers across the room. It doesn’t need a keyboard. Using regular Windows apps on my big TV is clunky. I can make browsing OK with IE 8 by using the Zoom magnification, so I can play music and read Engadget or Slashdot from the couch, but some pages like Pandora just doesn’t resize or work well on the big screen.

It would be damn cool if Pandora, Rhapsody and Lala all were rewritten to run inside of Windows Media Center. In fact, it would be extremely neat if there was a version of IE for Windows Media Player so I could browse the web with just a clicker. It would need a virtual keyboard like the iPad/iPhone, but that’s doable.

Back in the 1990s pundits started talking about digital convergence. They expected TVs and computers to merge, and that’s rapidly happening, but I don’t think they planned for giant screen TVs. Nor did they expect the convergence with telephones, GPSes and books, or even game machines. Now it’s all a matter of fitting the task to the screen size:

Screen Size	Device	Best Use
1-2”	MP3	Music Audiobooks Voice Recording
2-4”	Phone Camera Video Cam Portable Game	Smartphone GPS Photography Videography Games
5-6”	Ebook	Fiction
9-11”	Tablet	Nonfiction Magazines RSS feeds Photos Games
10-16”	Netbook Notebook	Work on the go
18-24”	Desktop	Work at the desk
26-60”	Television	TV Movies Music Home video Internet TV
> 60”	Projector	Lectures Education

You can watch video on all these screen sizes, and even use all of them with computer applications or games. Telephone features like video conferencing, Skype and web cams have moved to the various screen sizes. I think the iPad has been in development since before the advent of netbooks, and I bet Steve Jobs was sick to see them succeed because that 9-11” screen size was territory ripe for exploitation. I tend to think tablets will win out in that form factor and 12-13” will become the ultimate netbook size for extreme road warriors who want to type on the go, while 16” will be the common size for notebooks. I expect 24” to become the ultimate size for desktop machines, although I’ve discovered I like having two monitors at work, one in portrait and the other in landscape.

Now, is there room for a new form factor and unique applications? I don’t know. Will the future just be ones of refining these screen territories? And will there be some repositioning of functions? Do you need a smartphone if you carry around an iPad? Would a dumb phone be good enough? Some people like everything on one device, like an iPhone, but I prefer the right tool for the job. The iPod Nano is perfect for audio books. They are harder to use on the iPhone. Time will tell how everything shakes out, but I think screen size will be the factor that will determine the ultimate use of each device.

JWH – 4/8/10

An Alternate History of The Tea Party

Let’s imagine The Tea Party movement starting much earlier so they were firmly in power by 2008 and got to make the decisions that President Bush and Obama made. Let’s imagine they released the Kraken of absolute free economic survival of the fittest capitalism. What would our world be like today in 2010?

Picture all those top banks, AIG, GM and Chrysler going down the tubes. Then imagine all their business partners going under, and the domino effect that would have. What would Wall Street and our 401k accounts look like today? And with all those people out of work would the Tea Party even offer a stimulus package? Let’s assume not. Let’s assume they really want absolute free markets and a small government like they claim. What would the unemployment figure be today? No one really knows. But I do believe all the states would be much worse off today, and so would their retirement systems for state employees.

Our whole way of life is built on a giant Ponzi scheme of economic activity. If the economy slows everyone suffers. The loan crisis of 2008 was a hydrogen bomb hitting Wall Street, and what the Tea Party philosophy appears to say is “Absolutely no disaster relief.”

As much as free market capitalists would like to believe, there is no such thing as a free market. All the governments of the world back their citizens and corporations to compete in various ways. The Federal Government has always been a stimulus package for our economy. To have true free markets we’d have to have no government involvement. Government would only be for roads, militia, police, and all those other shared services, but not for helping America to compete in the world markets, or to help corporations and individuals survive within the United States.

If we followed the Tea Party philosophy we’d have to stop subsidizing industries like farming and oil. Big government means lots of jobs. Big government means helping corporations get bigger which means even more jobs. Social services means supporting people who would otherwise be looking for jobs. Applying the Tea Party philosophy means destroying tens of millions of jobs.

If the Tea Party had gotten their way in 2008 I believe we’d have devastating unemployment today, with all the retirement systems, including federal, state, corporate, personal savings, etc. would have been wiped out, and we’d have even a larger portion of the population without medical insurance. The economic Kraken would have eaten us up and shitted us out. But I can’t prove that, but I find it hard to believe otherwise.

What the Tea Party philosophy wants to believe is absolute Darwinian survival of the fittest. And theoretically that might sound good. During our great pioneering days, the weak died, and the strong got stronger. But then we invented democracy and organized into a cooperative civilization. This allow millions to get stronger, grow and thrive.

The history of America is really the history of cooperative effort. Do we really want to go back to era of pioneering when only the strongest individuals survived? Sure, the strongest level of cooperation then was the family structure. I really admire the pioneering spirit of those days, but its only suited for an extremely low population density.

I don’t think the Tea Party people really want to shrink the government that small. I expect most of them are really just nostalgic for the 1950s sized government. But try and imagine a world without Medicare and Medicaid? My mother’s last twenty years cost a lot of money in terms of medical care that neither she nor me and my sister could have afforded. And I imagine that’s true of most people in the U.S. And that governmental supported health care for the elderly and poor created millions of jobs.

I just don’t see how we can go backwards without putting millions out of work. What the Tea Party philosophy wants would so thoroughly reshape our society. Some would get much richer, but most would get much poorer.

All the political conflict in our country comes down to one analogy: There is a knob that adjusts the economy. Turn it one way and it strengthens the individual, turn it the other way, it strengthens the whole. Many Tea Party people believe they would be strengthened by turning the knob to the right. Want to know if that’s true for you? If you are already rich then you have what it takes and that turn of the knob will help you. If you aren’t rich, more than likely you’ll be in the whole that gets poorer. The strong are already strong. Very few people sit on the borderline and would be freed to find new wealth.

Sure it would be nice to pay less tax. If we paid 10% or 25% less would our individual lives be that much better? I would think it would put millions our of work, so for the whole it would bring misery. Would some of our problems be solved if we all paid a little more? I don’t know. I think we should be taxed less in good times, and more in bad, simply to share the good and the bad more fairly.

The Tea Party protestors seem so angry at the government, believing less government would improve our lives. If we had better banking regulators and economists, couldn’t we have avoided some of these economic tragedies? The economy seems to be getting slowly better, and isn’t that due to government intrusion? I am not very political, but I don’t see the size of the government as a problem. When I hear about tainted food, I want more food inspectors. When I hear about terrorists I want more security guards. When I hear that China and India want to go to the Moon, I want NASA to go back.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think everything runs smoothly, or every tax dollar is spent wisely. If bean counters can find ways to cut the fat, or watchdogs find ways to get rid of graft and corruption, or economists can come up with ways to do things cheaper, I’m all for it. I just don’t see the point of making the government smaller if we have to give up services that the majority wants.

Wasn’t the original Tea Party a protest against taxation without representation? We get lots of opportunity to vote and have our voices heard. And if the Tea Party people had something specific they wanted, their job is to get the majority to agree. They are being heard, but their protests are more about anger than legislation. Being against health care reform is just swimming against the tide when many nations much poorer than us already have it. That’s just the way the world is going. We can’t go backwards, especially if we want the U.S. to stay the world leader

And don’t get me wrong, there is lots to protest about. The stimulus money could have been better managed. People losing their homes should have gotten more help. People without jobs should be getting help faster. I think our government is constantly evolving and improving, and sure it has tremendous problems, but over time those will be fixed and new ones will show up. We’ll always have problems and we’ll never reach perfection.

Sarah Palin, The Tea Party, Fox News, and all the politics of anger scares me. I want a stable law and order society and these people are advocating revolution. I feel now how my parents felt in the 1960s. I’m sure many people are tired of liberal progress, but if they studied history, they would see even as far back as pre-history the evolution of liberal thought. The evolution of liberal ideas have been progressing for a very long time. It’s so ironic that conservatives worship the liberal heroes of the past.

Conservatives are just liberals who want to get off the progress train. No matter how right wing some conservatives are, many of their cherished beliefs were once radical. I am reminded of the ending to the movie Things to Come, where two scientists are watching the first flight to the Moon:

An observatory at a high point above Everytown. A telescopic mirror of the night sky showing the cylinder as a very small speck against a starry background. Cabal and Passworthy stand before this mirror.

CABAL: “There! There they go! That faint gleam of light.”

Pause.

PASSWORTHY: “I feel–what we have done is–monstrous.”

CABAL: “What they have done is magnificent.”

PASSWORTHY: “Will they return?”

CABAL: “Yes. And go again. And again–until the landing can be made and the moon is conquered. This is only a beginning.”

PASSWORTHY: “And if they don’t return–my son, and your daughter? What of that, Cabal?”

CABAL (with a catch in his voice but resolute): “Then presently–others will go.”

PASSWORTHY: “My God! Is there never to be an age of happiness? Is there never to be rest?”

CABAL: “Rest enough for the individual man. Too much of it and too soon, and we call it death. But for MAN no rest and no ending. He must go on–conquest beyond conquest. This little planet and its winds and ways, and all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him, and at last out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time–still he will be beginning.”

PASSWORTHY: “But we are such little creatures. Poor humanity. So fragile–so weak.”

CABAL: “Little animals, eh?”

PASSWORTHY: “Little animals.”

CABAL: “If we are no more than animals–we must snatch at our little scraps of happiness and live and suffer and pass, mattering no more–than all the other animals do–or have done.” (He points out at the stars.) “It is that–or this? All the universe–or nothingness…. Which shall it be, Passworthy?”

The two men fade out against the starry background until only the stars remain.

The musical finale becomes dominant.

CABAL’S voice is heard repeating through the music: “Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?”

The role of the conservative is not to stop progress, but to make progress stable and orderly. Wild eyed liberals need conservative reason. There is no communication anymore between the two polarized camps, so we’ve stopped working together. We both just fear each other’s ideas. Now that the liberals have gotten healthcare reform maybe we should focus on fiscal conservation and let the other side have some wins too. Our progress seems to have scared the conservatives into becoming radicals, where they are even willing to abandon their old love of law and order.

JWH – 4/6/10

Building A HTPC

One thing I’ve wanted to do for decades is build my own PC. But whenever I needed a new PC I’d price one in the Sunday ads and always discovered that a PC on sale is cheaper then building one. For the last year I’ve been dreaming of building a home theater PC (HTPC) and I finally did. Best Buy had a much better PC, with an Intel i3 chip with 6gb of memory for sale for $549. So far, my home built HTPC with an AMD Athlon X2 Rigor 240 and 4gb of memory has been about $650, and that’s even using an existing TV tuner card, and I still need to buy some more stuff, like a remote and maybe better Blu-ray software. Even the $549 price would have been a base, because I had to buy a wireless keyboard and mouse.

I based my buying decision on Guide to Building a HD HTPC March 2010 edition.

What finally pushed me over the edge was I really wanted the dang thing to look like a piece of stereo equipment and not a PC, and that meant building it myself. Oh sure, I could have ordered a ready made HTPC, but it would have been hundreds more. I spend a lot of time browsing NewEgg and reading the customer reviews and figured I could build a HTPC too. So a couple weeks ago I started ordering the parts.

The last thing I ordered was the memory (after reading the motherboard instructions very carefully) and I got lucky with free shipping from NewEgg. However, I wasn’t so lucky. The memory shipped from Memphis, and I live in Memphis, so when I saw the tracking info I thought I’d get it the next day. The following day my RAM was in Georgia. I wonder if DHL has a hub there. The lesson here and from Amazon is free shipping means delayed shipping, both from NewEgg and Amazon, and slow travel times. But it all worked out. I had a bad spell with my back and it wasn’t until yesterday that I felt like putting everything together.

A word of warning though to people who are thinking about building their own PC. As the parts starting coming in and piling up on my table it occurred to me that if any of them were defective or incompatible I’d have a hard time knowing. When you buy a PC it comes assembled and tested with a warranty. When you build one, there is no warranty for the whole, and it’s very easy to damage these sensitive parts, so troubleshooting can be nasty, especially if a part is defective from the start. This got me worried about the whole plan.

Yesterday morning, after a good night’s sleep, a shower and breakfast, I jumped into the project. I reread the various instructions and started work. I was very lucky, everything went smoothly. I carefully tested where I was going to install things before I actually installed anything. When I first tried to install the power supply none of the screw holes lined up. Finally I turned it upside-down and they did. Go figure.

I was afraid of two things before I started. Installing the motherboard and installing the heat sink. Both were a snap. The stand-offs were already installed in the enclosure and all I had to do was line them up with the holes in the motherboard. I got a whole bag of various screws and only the smallest fit. None of my instructions explained which exact screws to use at any point. I had to guess. The heat sink had a pad of pre-installed thermal paste and it snapped right on. That’s why I bought the retail box for the AMD chip. I didn’t want to worry about matching a heat sink and applying thermal paste myself.

The worst trouble I had was figuring out where all the wires from the HTPC case went to the motherboard connectors, like power, reset, USB, Firewire, media card readers, etc. The power SW and reset SW gave me the worst time because the pins had a ground pin and I didn’t know which wire was the ground. I got on Google and found out the black or white wire was the ground. And everything was teeny tiny and I have fat clumsy fingers.

When I finally had everything assembled and flicked on the power supply switch nothing happen. I had a sinking feeling that, oh no, I did something wrong. But I didn’t panic. I thought for a second and remembered there was a power button on the front of the unit and I pressed it. All four fans started spinning, but totally quiet. The boot up screens appeared and then the Windows install disc booted. Damn, I was happy.

Here’s my messy table at that point. I used little glass bowls to keep the screws sorted. After Windows 7 easily installed, I threw on the PowerDVD 8 that came with the Lite-On Blu-ray player. I was worried it wouldn’t work with Windows 7 and wouldn’t play Blu-ray discs. It ran just fine and played a Weeds BD disc I had. PowerDVD is now at version 10, and I thought the version 8 wouldn’t be good enough. So far it has.

After I ran all the OS updates I moved the unit over to my TV stand. I have an old Samsung 52” DLP HDTV. That’s when I discovered I really needed a wireless keyboard. I had to use the wired keyboard and mouse about 1 foot in front of my TV and it’s hard to see the 1920×1080 screen that close. So a quick trip to Office Depot got me a cheap Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse. It only promised 10 feet of range, but so far it’s been good enough.

I was able to sit in my chair and configure Windows Media Center, Hulu, Netflix, Lala and Boxee. For some reason Rhapsody wouldn’t install. I’m worried its not compatible with Windows 7 64bit version. [It installed smoothly on my second attempt and everything is cool.] I also configured the Home Network under Windows 7 so my Jim-TV could see my Jim-PC and access my MP3 files.

It’s weird using a mouse instead of a remote, so I need to research remotes that will work with all my programs. Hulu and Windows Media Center have wonderful interfaces that are usable across the den. So does Boxee, but Boxee is giving me trouble – it can’t seem to play Hulu shows. Is there a remote that works with all of these programs and even IE 8? I wished that Lala had a local client. I can play Rhapsody through the web client, but I want to try the local client on the big TV. Boxee is a wonderful concept, having one central location to play all the media types offered on the web, but it hasn’t worked out perfectly. But that requires more testing, and it’s still in beta.

Windows Media Center reports I have room for 1086.5 hours of recorded TV shows. I bought a 1.5TB drive. I figure I might make my HTPC my home server too. I need to research if Windows Home Server wouldn’t have been a better OS instead of Professional 64 bit. I just don’t know. I also programmed a week’s worth of TV shows from the Windows Media Center Guide.

My goal was to build a machine that replaces my Blu-Ray player, my Toshiba DVD recorder, my Pioneer CD/SACD player, and my SoundBridge M1001, and several functions I could only do from my regular PC. Since I gave up cable TV I’ve had no problem living with just five local channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS1, PBS2) but I missed my DVR and onscreen guide. Windows Media Center gives me a DVR and guide. What’s still missing is an easy to use remote. I need a remote that can power up the Samsung TV and Yamaha receiver – I’ll leave the HTPC running at all times. (Jim-TV goes into a very low powered sleep mode that it can wake from to record shows).

This brings up another issue. When it wakes up my HTPC wants me to log in. That means using the keyboard. I’d like to skip the log in but is that wise when it comes to security? I don’t’ know. Another thing to research. But it would be nice if I could get a remote that turned on everything and the computer would just start working. I want to only use the keyboard if I want to use the Internet at the TV, otherwise do everything from the remote or mouse.

The mouse works fine from a chair arm or side of the couch if I’m lying down, but not everything can be controlled from a mouse pointer. I just got a wild idea. I wonder if I could make the TV voice activated? Now that would be cool!

Ultimately I want to make the entire system extremely easy to use. My wife has been very grumpy since I gave up cable and the DVR. (She works and lives out of town and has her own cable TV – so I don’t feel guilty about depriving her.) She hates not being able to pause the TV. Windows Media Center now gives her that ability, but by using the wireless mouse instead of a standard remote. That’s a weird shift.

I have a remote that came with the Hauppauge TV turner card, and I have an older Logitech Harmony universal programmable remote. I’m going to try to make one of those work before buying anything else. However, that’s a lot to make work together. Sound comes from the receiver, which has its own remote. Windows Media Center works with WMC remotes, but I’m not sure they work with Hulu or Netflix or IE. I can play Netflix through Windows Media Center, so that solves one issue, maybe.

And it’s a shame that Windows Media Center doesn’t have the same ambitions at Boxee. If Windows Media Center did everything I could have the machine auto load it and just stay in that program. It would be wonderful if Windows Media Center made a special browser for viewing the Internet and accessing programs and files on the PC. Seeing the Windows desktop at 1920×1080 makes everything tiny and hard to see across the room even when blown up to a 52” monitor. I had to boost the visibility by telling Windows to magnify the desktop by 150%. That helps, but is not perfect. The TV screen mode for Windows Media Center, Hulu desktop and Boxee is the answer. Their interfaces are design to be viewed from ten feet away.

There is a wealth of TV shows that weren’t available to me before that comes over the Internet. I’m not sure I like that. I love the simplicity of local stations, but I am enjoying Caprica. Sometimes I think I would be happiest with only watching Netflix discs that come in the mail. Except for news and the latest documentaries about contemporary events, I’d be perfectly OK with watching TV from Netflix discs. For example I love the new show Parenthood. But I hear it doesn’t have good ratings. If they kill the show I’ll be mad. I’m getting to the point that I rather only watch a TV series if I know the season is complete, or if its a one season wonder that was cut short but wrapped up nicely, like with Freaks and Geeks.

In other words, having a HTPC might be overkill for my simplified lifestyle. However, I have accomplished something on my bucket list and that was fun. I do prefer watching DVR recorded shows to watching them live. And it’s nice to know I have a machine recording my favorite shows when I’m not home to watch them.

JWH – 4/4/10

Update 8/27/10: Overall I’m satisfied with my project except for the Blu-ray player. First off, it turned out to only be a BD/CD/DVD player. I was expecting it to also be a CD/DVD burner, but it wasn’t. So watch out. But more importantly, the PC Blu-ray software is unusable in my opinion. I pulled the Blu-ray player out of my system and installed a CD/DVD burner, and went back to using my LG Blu-ray player. If Microsoft added support for Blu-ray in Windows Media Center I would try again, but playing Blu-ray discs on a PC is clunky with existing software.

I think for a HTPC to succeed it needs one media center type program that does everything. It’s even annoying to switch between WMC, Hulu and Boxee. I don’t want a dozen competing programs offering me television. What’s happened is I use WMC for watching recorded over the air TV shows, and Netflix for everything else.