The Safety Blog - I am Wright.com

Well, I have finally gotten the XBMC to work the way that I want it to…I have been having trouble with my XBMC not wanting to display any of the wide icons and use the nice cover art or scrapers that I had been gathering and installing. It wasn’t until I deleted the contents of e:\apps and totally copied all the new files back on, that it finally started to work properly. Man I have to tell you, it is so SWEET to finally get it working the way I want it to…The only downfall that I can see is that I currently have it streaming all of the content wirelessly over my G network and it is having some problems keeping up when I attempt to stream the High Definition Diggnation content that I have downloaded from Revision 3. However, all the other content that I have thrown at including all of my recorded TV shows that I have begun to collect show without any problems what so ever, and once I edit out all of the commercials they work splendidly.

I think that I am going to have to invest in another TV tuner card as this seasons lineup is proving to be one of the most anticipated for me that I can remember…I currently have 3 High Definition PVR’s in the house that I am going to use as my primary source but at some point my goal is to do away with them and use my XBMC to do all of the work…Hopefully not that long as I would really like to eliminate the $80 a month I am spending on the subscription and rental costs from Comcast.

Tags: Technology, XBMC by David Wright - IamSafetyGeek
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Well it is official, I have now converted my life over to Google…I have adopted Gmail, Gcalendar, GBlogger, etc….I think I will have to change my name to GSafetyGeek…

All joking aside, I have discovered how easily everything fits together and just makes your life so much easier.

The winning combination is Google and Firefox…You should try it too, you just might like it as much as I do….

Tags: Technology by David Wright - IamSafetyGeek
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Well I have been working on soft-modding my original XBox in order to turn it into a Media Center using the XBMC interface. Well it is not as easy as I thought it would be as I am having trouble getting it to work as the replacement “dashboard”, but I do have it working as a application and I must say that it is AMAZING. The XBMC Community has done an awesome job at making a truly finished product. The graphics, user interface, and functionality of the program are the best I have seen.

I am very hopeful that I will be able to work out my problems with getting the dashboard to load as I would like it to and I will post when I finally getting it working the way that I would like.

Tags: Technology, XBMC by David Wright - IamSafetyGeek
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From Broadband Reports.com
(http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Still-Waiting-on-Comcast-TiVo-87141)

TiVo service via Comcast has been a long time coming, considering the deal was originally announced back in 2005. Comcast certified the platform for deployment to customers last June, though no deployment date was specified by either company.

This week sees reports that Comcast will fund further development of the software for use on both Motorola and Scientific Atlanta boxes (the latter making up around 25% of Comcast’s userbase), with a New England Launch “shortly”:

Comcast is expected to roll out TiVo-powered DVRs on Motorola set-tops “shortly” in the operator’s New England division, which includes metro Boston, Southeast Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. That marks another delay on the project, as analysts had expected the deployment to begin as early as August.

Meanwhile, Tivo released some unimpressive earnings that are being blamed on TiVo’s “failure to anticipate how quickly consumers and retailers would fall in love with HDTV products.” Apparently, TiVo is awash in a surplus of standard definition DVRs as consumers take the high-def (and pesky CableCARD) plunge.

This has been a long time coming and I can honestly say I am really excited about it…Also, it is the only reason that I have not canceled my Comcast subscription and gone back to DirecTV. Depending on how well the implementation and the new Tivo experience will dictate whether or not I will stay a Comcast customer or not.

Tags: Technology by David Wright - IamSafetyGeek
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Well I have been a Comcast subscriber now for almost a year and for that year I have done nothing but complain about how bad their digital video recorders (DVR’s) are. I was first given the Motorola DCT6412 and I had two of them, one in the entertainment center and the other in the master bedroom. Both of these units had to be replaced twice due to error messages which I fully believe due to them getting hot. It was not uncommon for me to walk in the room and to hear their internal fans running full bore. I have since taken them back to my local Comcast office (and with must attitude) gotten them replaced with what appears to be a newer model the Motorola DCH3416. These models are much sleeker looking, run cooler, and have not yet had any errors or the hesitating that the DCT6412’s did.

The overall usefulness of the Comcast DVR interface is something to behold…If you have ever used a Tivo, UltimateTV, DirecTivo, or ReplayTV this is not even in the same solar system. It has got to be the worst user interface I have ever used. Some of the best functions of the the aforementioned systems is the ability to conduct searches, wishlists, or saved searches by title, actor, genre, etc., however, the Comcast system will only allow you to schedule recordings for shows that currently show up in it’s joke of a TV guide. Additionally, the Comcast DVR does not remember what you have watched so, let’s say you record and watch Burn Notice on USA on Thursday evening, then every time that SAME episode is on it will record it again and again and again even if you manually tell it not to record.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Comcast, I believe the quality of the signal coming into my house is more than acceptable and on that basis alone I will continue to pay for the service. However, if there was ever a way to get the UltimateTV interface, the Tivo’s forward thinking options, and the OnDemand and reliability of Comcast; that is a winning combination.

Tags: Technology by David Wright - IamSafetyGeek
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