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News Archive for Tuesday January 5, 2010 Goto Current News Page
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| Upgrades for AppleTV 1080P Video Playback (swapping out Airport card for Broadcom Video Accelerator + XMBC) |
| There were some earlier articles on this back on Dec. 29th but I missed it earlier. Here's a mail from someone at XMBC.org:
"AppleTV 1080p video playback
Two things, first XBMC for (Mac/Linux) now supports the Broadcom Crystal HD Video Accelerator. See http://xbmc.org/davilla/2009/12/29/broadcom-crystal-hd-its-magic/
Second, an OSX kext/library for the Broadcom Crystal HD has been released. See http://code.google.com/p/crystalhd-for-osx/
This enabled playback of 720p/1080p content (including decrypted BluRay) on the AppleTV. (Screenshot on google code page)
-Scott"
This would involve swapping out the Airport (wireless) card for a mini PCIe card like the BCM970012. (See notes in this anandtech article.) Not an expensive card, but for anyone that doesn't already have an AppleTV the WD TV Live ($120 at some sources) seems to be very popular with a wide list of (non-DRM'd) codec support plus 3rd party firmware to add a lot of non-standard features.
Scott replied to that:
"Yes, Broadcom card is swapped with internal wifi card. It's a good swap as I'll give up wifi (use wired) for full blown 1080p HD playback. This combo still beats what's out there in price/function/form-factor. Closest is some Nvida Ion (zotac) running Linux and that's a few $100 more than the AppleTV.
WD LiveTV is nice but does not hold a candle to XBMC with respect to capabilities and skins plus media info and management.
-Scott"
I've never used a WD TV Live personally but recently saw a page on 3rd party (modified) firmware for it that adds a lot more functionality. (Of course as usual a work in progress and some have bricked their units, but then WD's own firmware update about a month ago (quickly pulled) also bricked some.) |
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| Burning (HD Camcorder file) AVCHD Discs on std DVDs in OS X (Updated) |
(Eddie's post earlier today - added a simple possible solution below from another PS3 owner.-Mike)
I have a Canon HD camcorder (HF11) and looking for a way to burn AVCHD on standard DVD discs of the footage. (For playing on Blu-ray player in PS3. Some other BR players support AVCHD discs also.) I won't be doing any real editing so that's part is not important. I was considering a stand-alone burner like the Canon DW-100, but it doesn't support the MXP (24Mbps) recordings of the HF11 and also doesn't have DVD+R DL support. I was tempted on the Sony MC6 (w/LCD) that supports more disc formats but everything I read says it won't work for burning AVCHD discs with non-Sony camcorders. (If anyone has been able to burn from a Canon HD camcorder SD card with a Sony MC6 or MC5 - please send a note how. I know you can use the composite inputs but that only burns MPEG2 DVDs.)
Anyway this leaves burning software as an option. I would rather use OS X and not run bootcamp/windows to burn the discs (with Nero, Sony Vegas, Pinnacle Studio, etc.).
If you've burned AVCHD DVD discs in OS X, let me know what software you used.
(Thanks to all that have replied so far. Not read all but most mentioned Toast 10. I knew Toast 10 (w/plugin or Pro version IIRC) was an option after seeing so many less than positive comments from Toast users in general I was wondering about other choices. Final Cut Pro is out my price range.)
Update: Here's one reply that noted a simple solution (never tried this personally - I was thinking the disc would need some 'type' coding like DVDs)
"AVCHD solution
I ran into the same problem as you have, and found a somewhat expensive, but effective, workaround using a Playstation 3. I'm using a Panasonic SD-1 camcorder that records to a SDHC card. If you find and burn the AVCHD files (with M2TS, MTS or M2T file extensions - you'll need to find them on your card) to a standard blank DVD (easily done in the finder, even without copying the files to the internal HD of the mac), these files will play natively on the PS3, which will also play back the embedded 5.1 audio through your sound system if you have one set up.
Of course, this only is a solution if you have a PS3 (or a BluRay player that will natively play AVCHD, I suppose)... I find that for our family videos, this is an easy and cheap way to back up everything we shoot (the MTS files are highly compressed and you can fit a lot of video on a single DVD). The PS3 makes it easy to watch the videos as we need them and it's an added bonus to hear the surround sound which works surprisingly well.
Using VLC you can also play these files on a fast mac (my Mac Pro works great, our Mac Mini doesn't fare so well... choppy) right off of the backup DVDs.
I hope this is helpful to you.
Take care, Matt"
Sounds like a perfect solution for him. (He didn't care about editing and has a PS3.)
FYI: Matt later wrote the PS3 wouldn't sequentially play all the AVCHD clips on the disk - but see Wednesday's news for a PS3 owner's tip (PS3 setting) for sequential playback.
(BTW - I don't have a PS3 or a Canon HF11 (which has 24Mbps bit rate option), but I tried copying MTS (AVCHD) files from my old Panasonic SD9's SD card to a DVD+R burned in the Finder (OS X 10.6.2). I thought my Pioneer 51FD player supported AVCHD discs but it won't play it - display just shows "data disk". I need to check the PDF manual for the 51FD again. Bought as store display for under $100 a few months ago with no box/docs so had to d/l a PDF manual. I was impressed they're still posting firmware updates for it. Updated to firmware 1.38 last month.)
Update: I burned an AVCHD disc in Bootcamp/Windows using Pinnacle Studio HD v14 ($49.xx retail std version) of the same SD card files and it Did Play in the Pioneer 51FD.-Mike) |
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| Any readers using a remote AC Power Switch? |
"I have question that I hope you or your readers can help me with. One of my servers has been crashing a lot. I have done all of the usual maintenance: cleared caches, repaired permissions, ran Diskwarrior, etc etc. I think I have narrowed the problem down to either Retrospect 6 (tried version 8 and it's terrible) or Spotlight problems. (I sent him a link to an article from last month where someone w/Retrospect network B/U problems recommended ChronoSync. I'd find and correct the problem asap as power cycling is something that's not good practice for your data (or drives/electronics).)
In any case, it's a production server and I can't afford to be down. The problem is that, when it's crashed, I can't restart it remotely. Even though I can ssh in and kill all the processes, it still hangs on and won't shut down (shutdown -r now does not work).
So, in the short term at least, I thought I might get a device that you plug into the power line and that can be shut down and restarted over the LAN, so I can restart remotely. I was wondering if any of your readers had any experience with these. Here is one I found: NP-0201D.
I remember the old "Powerkey", but that is only dial-up and doesn't seem to have been updated in a long while. Obviously this is a short term fix, because it's not good to just kill the power, but it might save my butt, since I am the only 24/7 support.
-Jim W."
If anyone has use one of these (or something similar), send a note with the details. Thanks.
(Received more than a dozen replies in the first 24hrs - much appreciated!)
FYI: See Wednesday's news for Jim's Follow-up on Remote AC Power Switch and his Retrospect Problems. (He's going with an APC unit and may have solved his Retrospect problems with the latest v8.x version.)
Update/FYI: I had sent Jim text copies (cut and pastes) of the reader replies to his post but have now also put them (w/links to products in some cases) on a separate page here - see Reader Feedback on Remote AC Power Switches. |
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