This morning I was met with an unhappy surprise. My home theater wasn’t working when I went to listen to the Radio Mozart stream.

I use Apple’s AirPlay to pass an Internet audio stream from iTunes to an Apple TV, which is connected to the home theater. The Onkyo audio/video receiver [...]]]>

This morning I was met with an unhappy surprise. My home theater wasn’t working when I went to listen to the Radio Mozart stream.

I use Apple’s AirPlay to pass an Internet audio stream from iTunes to an Apple TV, which is connected to the home theater. The Onkyo audio/video receiver (AVR) was not delivering the video stream and so the audio stream was sacrificed as well. This issue was not new. The problem has been recurring for many months. In the past, I was able to play around with the input source to the AVR and get it working again. Once it was working again it would continue to work until the receiver was powered down, usually by CL&P dropping our electricity.

This morning was different. No matter how much I played with the input sources or re-seated the HDMI connections on the back of the receiver it just wouldn’t work. I figured it was time to give up after 15 minutes and buy a new AVR.

I was pretty happy with Onkyo so I figured I would get a newer model. After a bit of research at several sites, I settled on the TX-NR709. It had all the features I wanted, like 8 HDMI inputs and some I would never need, like the phono (turntable) input. I looked at several websites—Amazon, B&H Photo, Newegg and others. The best total price for the unit was offered by Crutchfield. I put the receiver in my shopping cart. Before I began the checkout process I thought to read the Amazon customer reviews.

68 customers had rated it on Amazon, for an average of 4 stars. 76 people “liked” it. (I don’t know what Amazon’s “Like” means.) The distribution of ratings skewed towards 4 and 5 stars.

I always check the more critical reviews, the 1 and 2 stars. This time was no different. The first 1 star review was from J. Walker. He complained that he had problems with the HDMI main output, on not one but two new units. That’s troubling.

J. Walker’s review had elicited 15 comments. The first one, from Brad, said:

Try this: To reset the AV receiver to its factory defaults, turn it on and, while holding down VCR/DVR, press ON/STANDBY. “Clear” will appear on the display and the AV receiver will enter standby mode.

It fixed the HDMI main out problem on mine. Keep in mind you lose ALL your settings when you do the hard reset.

I thought that might be just the ticket for my misbehaving Onkyo receiver.

I went to my receiver and did what Brad suggested. The word “Clear” appeared in the Onkyo’s display and the unit powered off. I pushed the power button to turn it on and everything works again!

I went to my shopping cart, deleted the new receiver, and closed the webpage. $600 saved by reading the customer reviews and comments. Thanks Brad.

Tuesday evening, March 27 at 7:30 pm I will present a one hour, two part program:

You [...]]]>

Tuesday evening, March 27 at 7:30 pm I will present a one hour, two part program:

• Before Oscar: a moving history of motion picture technology from its inception in the 1870s to 1907.

• After Film: a brief demonstration of how to compose and edit a digital video using Apple’s Final Cut Pro X.

You will learn how motion pictures were invented and turned into a business in the first part of the presentation. You will see some of the very first motion pictures ever made, dating from the 1870s.

I will demonstrate how modern motion pictures are composed using Final Cut Pro X, one of the big three, professional video editing programs, in the second half.

My presentation is the main program at the Connecticut PC Users Group March meeting, which is open to all and begins at 6:30 pm.

The meeting will be in the east dining room of the Silver Star Diner, 210 Connecticut Avenue, Norwalk. The program is open to all. If you come by stick around after and join us for pizza, salad and beer.

I hope to see you there.

My wife and I don’t go to the movies much, except lately. We went to three movies in three nights last weekend. This was preparation for Sunday’s Academy Awards party we are going to. We saw Martin Scorcese’s best picture nominee,

Those who tell stories rule society.
Plato

My wife and I don’t go to the movies much, except lately. We went to three movies in three nights last weekend. This was preparation for Sunday’s Academy Awards party we are going to. We saw Martin Scorcese’s best picture nominee, Hugo, one of nine nominees. We also saw the nominees for animated short film and the nominees for live action short film¹. We had previously seen three other best picture nominees—The Artist, The Descendants, and Midnight in Paris. We have not seen the five other best picture nominees.

Since I do video broadcasting and post production editing, I look at other people’s video a bit differently from someone who doesn’t work with video. I try to study video technique when watching a movie or television show. I look at the technical aspects, like framing, lighting or switching, and the story telling techniques.

I wonder how I might improve the video. For example, I would have cut Scorcese’s Hugo, trimming 15 to 20 minutes from the film, to make the story-line move faster. I even think about which scenes I would crop or cut entirely.

I am not the only one who does these mental exercises. Recently, a fellow decided to recut Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 Pulp Fiction. The original movie is not in temporal sequence, which can be disorienting to the viewer. Tarantino wanted to disorient his viewers. The “new” version puts all the scenes in correct temporal order making the movie easier to understand but not as riveting. Tarantino got it right. You can watch the recut version on YouTube.

Hollywood was looking backward last year. Only two of the nine nominees for best picture are set in the present. Six of the others are set in the past. Midnight in Paris is both contemporary and historical. There are no future-oriented or sci-fi nominees.

Hugo, set in the 1930s, introduces the general public of 2011/2012 to George Méliès, a real person, whose film-making career ran from 1896-1913. He made 531 films. Many of them were very short due to the technical limitations of that time. His most celebrated film Le Voyage Dans La Lune, produced in 1902, is less than 15 minutes long. It was hand-colored, frame-by-frame. There are about 10,000 frames in the film. Méliès also worked with and invented many special effects, some of which are evident in this film.

I am wowed by what the early pioneers of cinema accomplished without benefit of digital computers or modern video cameras. If you are interested in the history of cinema check out Eadweard Muybridge, pictured above. He created some of the earliest video, beginning in the 1870s, using multiple shots taken with still cameras that were then pieced together to make motion.

In 1872, he was hired by Leland Stanford to settle whether a horse always had a foot on the ground when cantering. It doesn’t, as you can see in this animated image created with Muybridge’s photos. Muybridge was a fascinating person and a rogue. He murdered his wife’s lover. I am surprised no one has ever made a full-length film about him.

¹ If you are looking for something out of the ordinary to see, I recommend the 2011 live action short film nominee Tuba Atlantic and the full-length 2001 film Elling. They represent Norwegian film-making at its best.

Also, check out The Man with the Movie Camera a 1929, Soviet, experimental movie done by two brothers. It shows a day in the life of the Black Sea resort city of Odessa. It is not scripted but quite riveting. The use of montage and the incredible editing, done by the director’s wife, are fantastic.

One thing missing was the ability to play videos stored on [...]]]> Roku boxes are great. They let you watch Internet video, pictures, and listen to Internet audio programs. Roku recently enabled playing content from a locally connected USB device. Roku boxes are easy to install, easy to use and are inexpensive.

One thing missing was the ability to play videos stored on our computers via our local area network (LAN). Apple TV, a competitor to Roku boxes, allows us to connect to our iTunes libraries to stream video and audio from our computers via our LANs.

Installing the Plex server on your computer and as a Roku channel adds this missing feature. Plex can serve your iTunes video library and other video stored on your computer. The Plex Media Server links to the Roku Plex channel. This works on both Windows and Mac computers.

Here’s how to set up your devices:

Setup your computer to serve media

1. Download the Windows or Mac versions of the Plex Media Server from plexapp.com.
2. Install the software downloaded in step 1.
3. Make certain that the Plex Media software is running.
4. Locate the Plex icon on your Windows System Tray or Mac OS X Dock.
5. Right click on the icon and select Plex Media Manager…
6. Add your local media to the Plex Media Manager.

Setup your Roku device to play media

1. Go to roku.com in your browser and sign into your Roku account.
2. Select Add a Private Channel under the Manage Account section.
3. Enter plex for the channel name. (Note: it should be all lowercase.)
4. The Plex channel will show up on your Roku.
5. Open the Plex channel and select the video you want to play.

The Plex Roku client is currently a beta feature. Only video content is supported for now. Photo and audio (music and podcast) support will be added eventually.

You can find out more at http://elan.plexapp.com/2011/05/03/plex-on-the-roku/

There are more channels. The [...]]]> Television was a great wasteland, filled with mindless shows like Leave It To Beaver or Petticoat Junction. I read books if I wanted to find stimulating ideas and thoughtful discussion when I was growing up. Video content has changed in the intervening decades.

There are more channels. The channels are more focused in their missions. Some have interesting names like The Biography Channel, History Channel or Discovery Channel. These channels originally promised interesting content. The pressure of ratings has shifted their programming from educating us to satisfying the masses. Biographies of historically relevant figures, such as Napoleon or Catherine the Great, have given way to puff pieces about Angelina Jolie or Lindsay Lohan.

There are fewer episodes. Programming is expensive. Why it is more expensive today than in the early days of TV is a mystery to me. In the 1950s and 1960s, TV shows usually had 39 episodes per season. There were no in-season reruns. Today many shows have 20 or less episodes per season. Weeks-long breaks are scheduled between new episodes.

More TV shows are talk shows or reality-based programs. Writing scripts, hiring real actors, directing the actors and compiling the show takes more effort than hosting reality programs or talking heads. Economics dictates content.

Many of the talking heads on old media TV, like CNN, FOX News and MSNBC, feature dogma and opinion rather than in-depth analysis and insight. I am underwhelmed by the Wolf Blitzers and Larry Kings. Glenn Beck seems truly moronic. And don’t get me started on The View’s or Oprah Winfrey’s contributions.

Sure, Charlie Rose can be fascinating but he’s one guy. Nova has some interesting programs. Brian Lamb compiled 800 great book author interviews on the C-SPAN show Booknotes. It ended in 2004. Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report are fun. These two shows are often stimulating but their primary purpose is to amuse first and inform maybe.

TED (Technology Entertainment Design) is always informational, entertaining, and stimulating. TED is not old media television. TED is new media video, only available on the web. If you want to watch TED on your TV you need an Internet-connected HDTV or Blu-ray player, an Internet-connected set-top-box (STB) like a Roku player or Apple TV, or a game console like the SONY PS3. You can always watch TED on your computers or smartphones.

TED is an organization, headquartered in New York and Vancouver, “…devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading”. It is owned by The Sapling Foundation, a nonprofit. TED has two annual conferences and several related venues like TEDx, which are independent TED-like events hosted around the world. TED presentations are recorded and made available on the website for watching whenever you want. The videos are set in an auditorium with a speaker on stage. There are always lots of smart people in the audiences.

Most presentations are a combination of speaker and slide show. The presentations are usually short, most being 18 minutes or less. There are some longer presentations as well.

You never know what you will find when you search the site. I filtered the site for “Arts” and came across a presentation by David Byrne, the former front man and force behind the rock group Talking Heads, talking about How architecture helped music evolve. That led me to Herbie Hancock’s all-star set. That led to Qi Zhang’s electrifying organ performance. She’s an organ player worth watching and listening to. I did not know she existed before exploring TED.

TED seeks a deeper understanding of the world, and hopes to turn that understanding into a better future for us all. Watching them in the present is a better use of your video time than watching old media. Be smart and give it a try. I think you will agree.

It is ironic that I am writing about the decline and fall of the written word. The written word had a great run, starting perhaps as many as 6,000 years ago with Sumerian cuneiform. Writing has to compete today with more compelling and natural forms [...]]]> Click image above to watch video

It is ironic that I am writing about the decline and fall of the written word. The written word had a great run, starting perhaps as many as 6,000 years ago with Sumerian cuneiform. Writing has to compete today with more compelling and natural forms of human communication—audio and video—often served on the Internet.

Many people bemoan the decline of printed material. They equate the rise of the Internet, and inexpensive-to-produce video and audio, coming at the detriment of printed words, as a decline in civilization. You may be someone who holds this opinion.

It is easy to understand the sense of loss and disconnectedness caused by this technological shift. At its core, this attitude is elitist and reminiscent of the Luddites. This attitude ignores the democratic nature of the shift from printed to electronic communication. Time is limited. We elect to use our time in the way that makes the most sense to ourselves. Most people prefer to watch TV, listen to music, audio books or podcasts, or surf the Internet over reading a book, newspaper or magazine.

Writing and the written word is not natural. We must be schooled to read and write. It was the best disciplined, efficient way to communicate or archive information when alternatives were word-of-mouth, painting or smoke signals. The use of the written word exploded over the course of civilization because of this. Johannes Guttenberg’s invention of movable type printing accelerated the use of the printed word in Western culture and eventually worldwide. Public schooling further accelerated this trend.

Public schools, grades K-12, are conservative by nature. They are slow to change. They revel in the written word having had centuries to perfect their skills in teaching and assessing its use. Our teachers are written word experts. They are rarely expert in the creation and use of video and audio. Our children learn this from each other, from Hollywood, YouTube and other sites on the Internet. They have eclipsed the education system in their understanding and use of these newer technologies.

I find that listening to a well-narrated audio book trumps the written word. The narrator, often a professionally trained actor, brings the author’s words to life. The narrators often employ different voices for different characters. Non-fiction is also enhanced by having it spoken versus reading it yourself. Tables, charts and images are the only-missing piece.

I view audio and video is to the written word as oil painting is to drawing with pencil. These activities require training and discipline. The author, artist or director has to tell a story, communicate what is on their mind. The better the story telling, the more likely the audience will appreciate the effort. Mastering oil painting is more difficult than drawing. The painter often begins with a sketch but adds color, stroke, technique and dimension, as well as form and perspective. The same is true of audio and video. One begins with a script and then fills in the detail and enhances that script. Creating a good video requires many more skills than writing the script.

While schools may be slow to adopt technology many librarians understand and are changing. Librarians are evolving their missions from being keepers and lenders of printed material. Our local libraries, Westport and Wilton, Connecticut spring to mind, have become public facilities for all types of human communication. They have public computer terminals, lend audio books and videos, and host movies and seminars. They make online audio book borrowing available via the services of the Online Computer Library Center. If libraries are moving beyond the printed word, shouldn’t we all?

]]> http://rhftech.com/blog/2010/01/the-printed-word-is-fading-from-view/feed/ 3 http://rhftech.com/blog/2009/12/prague-canon-1dmkiv/ http://rhftech.com/blog/2009/12/prague-canon-1dmkiv/#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:27:34 +0000 Richard Frisch http://rhftech.com/blog/2009/12/prague-canon-1dmkiv/ by Philip Bloom

This is wonderful cinema.

Prague: Canon 1DMKIV from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.