Episode 33 - A Better Camera for YouTube. Win a Zune. [Discussion]

[marilee]

Dual Boot XP and Vista: We have step by step instructions. You asked, we review the Popcorn Hour A-100 media player. Google Earth. Inside the Internet Archive. Drying wet electronics. Zune Giveaway: Your Questions from YouTube!

Watch or download the episode here. (http://revision3.com/tekzilla/archive/)

[masherscf]

Oh Patrick, I feel your pain. My daughter bricked at least 2 cellphones by putting them in her mouth. Baby drool destroys small devices.

[mrpopular]

Maybe I have a overly perverse mind, but damn that was kind of a weird intro

PNorton "So Pull out the teabags, boil some water, and take a load off"

[atomsk]

More Camilla please?

[tobyweston]

Maybe I have a overly perverse mind, but damn that was kind of a weird intro

PNorton "So Pull out the teabags, boil some water, and take a load off"

lol my thoughts exactly, i think my mind may be just a bit to dirty for my own good :P

[hifilistener]

Rather than Baywatch let's go with Son of the Beach. Patrick can be Notch Johnson, and Veronica can be ?????

Episode name: Attack of the Slobbering Phone

[bani-banan]

+1 for baywatch.

It was REALLY weird hearing Swedish again. (I've been inside for 3 weeks without any human contact - Doin' an experiment)

Awesome episode, like always.

"Toby":

Om du använder ATi grafikkort så är det bara att öppna upp ATI catalyst, sedan går du ner till "bildskärmar" och väljer "rotera". Det borde få saken gjord!

Swedish-meatball clan assemble!

[puuhis]

I love the way you've started to include weird little animations and segments like Camilla's swedish corner. :)

But as a finnish guy I have to pass the title of the language thats hardest to understand to our neighbours in Norway. ;)

[computoman]

Che cosa dice en englese: Om du använder ATi grafikkort så är det bara att öppna upp ATI catalyst, sedan går du ner till "bildskärmar" och väljer "rotera". Det borde få saken gjord!

I still prefer mythtv over all those pretender boxes. At least you can upgrade it hardware wise and software wise.

[perc]

I love the way you've started to include weird little animations and segments like Camilla's swedish corner. :)

But as a finnish guy I have to pass the title of the language thats hardest to understand to our neighbours in Norway. ;)

Norwegian is like a silly version of Swedish. Danish sounds like swedish spoken by someone with a hot potato in his mouth. Lots of painful throat sounds and vowels.

Finnish is just... uh, logical I guess, but the grammar is hell for a rantahurri like me. ;)

[leortnoc]

More Camilla please?

seconded.

[westudi]

I've got to say that I love my Media Center PC that I use for our theater system. I have about 750 gb of storage on it right now, and have slapped several (about 150) of my dvds on the drives for easy playback via MyMovies (http://www.mymovies.dk/) in MCE. I also have the PC hooked to our LAN via cabling. We tried simply using wireless, but the higher quality video would tend to lag every 30 seconds or so if it were stored on another system on the network.

I also can access the drives on my MCPC so that I can watch the DVDs in my bedroom, or on any other PC on the network. Basically, MyMovies + MCE = heaven. Of course, Media Center also allows you to access your music quite nicely too. Eventually, I want to set up a media server (with several TBs of storage) to store our entire DVD and music collections.

Also, my manlove for Roger just increased. I've been a Doctor Who fan since the mid 80s, and was actually watching City of Death last night as I dosed off. I love the new version of the show too. In fact, I use the image below for my signature on another message board:

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w215/primusmetal/doctorjenny.jpg

[djoutlaws]

Nathan is one lucky dude!

[aximxp]

great job guys, the majority of online tech shows have problems with pacing/hosts that are too far on the a/v club end of the spectrum. it's not easy walking that fine line between entertainment and informing viewers so good job finding that sweet spot.

it is the mix of great tech content and teabag jokes that keeps me coming back so high fives all around team. and great find with miss belmont.. the randomness really makes the show blow by!

cheers from ontario and keep it up!

[highjive]

hi long time viewer of revision3 from ireland just wanna know as a collage project had a idea how can i do a simple version of revision3 i will be creating my own web server from old pc and as its collage prog i am on about making it easy to use heard of mcm (media contex managers ) that ye are using are they that good to use or should i try something like wordpress to start off with remember its just a collage comunity in ireland and yes some part are still working with 56k modem in some god awfull parts

[burkhartmj]

I've got to say that I love my Media Center PC that I use for our theater system. I have about 750 gb of storage on it right now, and have slapped several (about 150) of my dvds on the drives for easy playback via MyMovies (http://www.mymovies.dk/) in MCE. I also have the PC hooked to our LAN via cabling. We tried simply using wireless, but the higher quality video would tend to lag every 30 seconds or so if it were stored on another system on the network.

I also can access the drives on my MCPC so that I can watch the DVDs in my bedroom, or on any other PC on the network. Basically, MyMovies + MCE = heaven. Of course, Media Center also allows you to access your music quite nicely too. Eventually, I want to set up a media server (with several TBs of storage) to store our entire DVD and music collections.

Also, my manlove for Roger just increased. I've been a Doctor Who fan since the mid 80s, and was actually watching City of Death last night as I dosed off. I love the new version of the show too. In fact, I use the image below for my signature on another message board:

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w215/primusmetal/doctorjenny.jpg

woah woah woah, why have I never heard of this! I've been looking for a way to do exactly this in vista MCE, so thank you sososo much man.

[westudi]

woah woah woah, why have I never heard of this! I've been looking for a way to do exactly this in vista MCE, so thank you sososo much man.

NP, glad to share the love.

[rikf]

... that Veronica was eating? How have I not discovered this yet?!

[fishtoprecords]

Great show. Loved the Nordic bit. And V can sing.

Isn't there a warning sign on iPhone saying "do not use as a chew toy for teething infants?"

[kilroyperrywinkle]

Okay, I don't want to buy a new computer, I just want a set top box that will give me the Windows Media Center experience but I cant find anything thats under 200 bucks that seems worth it. That popcorn thing looked good but its clunky, I don't want to drop 400 bucks for an Xbox or PS3 because I dont play games that much... So what am I left with? Even if I do use the Xbox 360, the media center part of it doesn't do divx movies only the dashboard does, is that the same for all extenders?

[cacogen]

Yeah, just use GParted...


This show is working very well right now and is a pleasure to watch.

Good job.

[cablegeek]

Veronica My Wife and I were watching the show and she wanted to know where you got your watch. Sorry My boss commands and I unwillingly comply.

ouch! slap from boss. stop! quit hitting me.

any way sorry she would like to know.

[photeu]

Finally Camilla on screen! And with a flag and all… that helped me get some sense of pride back after yesterdays fail in the hockey world championship (CAN vs. SWE, 5 - 4 :(). Tonight we’ll butcher the Fins though. Anyways... she should obviously get some sort of segment of her own.

Snyggt jobbat Camilla

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[CaptainOlle]

Tonight we’ll butcher the Fins though. Anyways... she should obviously get some sort of segment of her own.

We'll see about that :D But anyways, it's great to see some Swedish influence on Rev3.
I agree with Patrick, finnish sounds quite wierd, probably because it's not related to any big language (infact finnish is the biggest language in the Finno-Ugric language family (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Human_Language_Families_(wikicolors).png)).

Here's a sample on some finnish (http://youtube.com/watch?v=C1TzmWJlv7w&feature=related) for anyone interested in what it sounds like. The guy is Antero Mertaranta the quintessence of Finnish ice-hockey

[spiri]

Awesome with a Nordic touch! I don't understand Swedish perfectly, but I did catch some of it :p

You need a Danish intern too ;)

[nextgenxbox]

Loving the video questions... reminds me of the ol' screen savers/call for help days.

[cybersuchus]

Wow, Pat and Veronica have become quite the winning match. Tekzilla went from just being fun to watch, to becoming an absolute blast.

I'm in agreement with all the others on Camilla. She was awesome in her brief Systm moment, and this was even better. I don't know Swedish, but the whole concept of answering the question that way, was just neat.

Oh and Veronica, big +1 for the Animaniacs reference. I haven't heard faboo in such a long time. I say that should be the replacement for absosmurfly.

Nathan; dude if you're on the forum I got ask: How the heck are you watching Tekzilla? I just got back from Sydney. You guys are paying out the arse for internet there ($40 for 2GB of downloads). I have a friend in Newcastle who listens to TwiT and Diggnation, but he can only listen to them. If he tries to watch the shows, it blows his bandwidth budget for the month. So are you "borrowing' bandwidth from school, or what?

[perc]

Tonight we’ll butcher the Fins though.

*fniss*

[photeu]

*fniss*

Perkele!

gg

[perc]

Perkele!

gg

;)

Jag bryr mig inte om hockey annars, men vi lyckades ju slakta er och då måste man ju bara gotta sig lite.

(translation: I don't care about hockey, but you just have to gloat a bit about butchering the Swedes.)

[shadowtech]

I vote the Swedish intern should be promoted to co-co-host.

[tyashki]

Nathan; dude if you're on the forum I got ask: How the heck are you watching Tekzilla? I just got back from Sydney. You guys are paying out the arse for internet there ($40 for 2GB of downloads). I have a friend in Newcastle who listens to TwiT and Diggnation, but he can only listen to them. If he tries to watch the shows, it blows his bandwidth budget for the month. So are you "borrowing' bandwidth from school, or what?

I can maybe answer as an australian HD Rev3 viewer. For me, while I may only get a few gig a month I can request my ISP to mirror files, such as some podcasts and linux distros. All of these don't count towards my quota, so I can just wait a day and watch some HD goodness.

Also, not all internet in Aus is this bad (I'm using HSDPA), my friends down in sydney have a ADSL2+ connection with 80GB of data a month for about $100, which is about the best we can get AFAIK.

Also, more Camilla, I love the voice even if I can't understand it!

[baldmonkey]

Snyggt jobbat Camilla.

Rev3 crew, ask her to speak in "dalmål" and you will get something more like the swedish chef.

[jaywilliams]

Great show, as always. And I agree with some of the other forum members, lets see more of the Swedish intern!

Also, did someone mention Doctor Who? :)
I'm a BIG fan of the good Doctor, so it's always great to hear that there are other stateside fans which are forced, like myself, to use alternate *cough* methods to watch shows.

For others out there, I'd recommend a certain user named "MadMartha", and her files over on some site that ends with nova. ;)

[azali]

My vote is in: make Camilla a regular!!!!

[mateo]

I have to take issue with your Popcorn Hour review. It seemed to inaccurately label the device as slow, when that's not true at all. What was slow was the Media Service Portal. That is a WEBSITE, it's not part of the PCH device. It's slow because it has a lot of graphics and the PCH doesn't have a very good web browser. Add to that the fact that MSP is a small small company who probably can't afford very fast servers and you see why that 1 feature is slow.

I'm not saying the PCH is perfect, it certainly has its flaws, like the slowness of MSP, and not so great music player, but 90% of buyers get it for strreaming videos. And it does that absolutely superbly. I could tell that Patrick had only played around with the device a very short time. You don't have to go back to the setup screen to adjust the zoom of videos, there is a zoom button that adjusts on the fly.

It's really a very good device for doing this one thing. And it's much cheaper than the competitors. I'm sure Apple TV is great, but you are locked into iTunes with it. PCH just requires access to shares, you can use any operating system with it, or none at all if you want to play off usb flash cards.

[veronicazilla]

I have to take issue with your Popcorn Hour review. It seemed to inaccurately label the device as slow, when that's not true at all. What was slow was the Media Service Portal. That is a WEBSITE, it's not part of the PCH device. It's slow because it has a lot of graphics and the PCH doesn't have a very good web browser. Add to that the fact that MSP is a small small company who probably can't afford very fast servers and you see why that 1 feature is slow.

I'm not saying the PCH is perfect, it certainly has its flaws, like the slowness of MSP, and not so great music player, but 90% of buyers get it for strreaming videos. And it does that absolutely superbly. I could tell that Patrick had only played around with the device a very short time. You don't have to go back to the setup screen to adjust the zoom of videos, there is a zoom button that adjusts on the fly.

It's really a very good device for doing this one thing. And it's much cheaper than the competitors. I'm sure Apple TV is great, but you are locked into iTunes with it. PCH just requires access to shares, you can use any operating system with it, or none at all if you want to play off usb flash cards.

Mateo... now, you wouldn't happen to WORK for Popcorn Hour, would you? I'm just wonderin', since this is the first post you've ever made on the forums... and you're throwing around percentages and fun facts and such, which means either you're a huge fan or you're from the company.

It's not a big deal, but we prefer if people stay upfront about that kind of thing instead of astroturfing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing).

[tobyweston]

Looks like they got people scouring google for bad reviews and attempting to change peoples opinions.

Must be hard work for them lol

[davmoo]

I but 90% of buyers get it for strreaming videos

Did you know that 84% of all statistics are made up on the spot?

[westudi]

Did you know that 84% of all statistics are made up on the spot?

I thought it was 91% half of the time.

[dark_shroud]

I use my 60gig PS3 as a media center extender. It's a Divx certified device, it has built-in wireless, as well as a 10/100/1000 ethernet jack. I have it hooked up via ethernet since I have a gigabyte home network and stream a lot of video. I have a card reader on mine so I can take cards right out of digital cameras and view them on the PS3.

Because of the built in browser I can download Rev3 shows straight to the PS3's hard drive to view them. Not to mention that it's a top notch Blu-ray players as well as upscaling DVD player.

[badweasel]

Mateo... now, you wouldn't happen to WORK for Popcorn Hour, would you? I'm just wonderin', since this is the first post you've ever made on the forums... and you're throwing around percentages and fun facts and such, which means either you're a huge fan or you're from the company.

It's not a big deal, but we prefer if people stay upfront about that kind of thing instead of astroturfing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing).

So I'm a first time poster as well, but I do not work for popcorn hour. I actually was glad to see you guys review it, although I also don't feel that it got a fair review. The other poster, whether he works for them or not, is correct that you showed the SLOWEST part of the device. I'm not saying PCH is for everyone, but I think it has it's place and is good for some users.

I also think there are some other valuable facts that should be given about it. Having JUST received mine on Saturday I have just those facts...

1. It takes FOREVER to arrive. Mine took about a month from order date to arrival.
2. It's not slick like the AppleTV. You navigate through folders (TEXT) to get to media files. This means you have to be a bit more organized with your files so that content is easy to locate.
3. I added the hard drive and I have a serious caveat on that process: The ATA connector on the device is smaller than on the hard drive. Not paying attention I was off by a row and bent a pin on the drive. AMATEUR!
4. No wifi (which you mentioned) is annoying. No Gigabit.. Ethernet is only 100 Base T. Moving large files to the PCH takes a while.
5. Last of the negatives.. I bought it for ISO support which I can't get to work. So that's a bummer, but I expect to eventually figure that one out.

now for the positives...

I picked it over AppleTV because it plays a lot more file types. I'm not one of these people who have a ton of downloaded (pirated) video files, but I do have videos of my daughter and family, other videos and shot films I've made, and was looking for a "media tank" to store this stuff, kids videos (blues clues) and a way to stream content to my HD TV without too much transcoding. I think PCH is going to work well for that..

1. It easily connects to both mac and windows over my local network - both directions. It's a NAS, so I can mount it on my computer and manage the files on the hard drive. OR I can navigate my computer's hard drives from it and easily stream almost any media to it.
1.5. It works with mac!
2. You guys had it set up weird cause it was playing in the center of the screen. I haven't seen that and it makes it look like it sucks. It upconverts SD to HD quite well. And the right HD files look great on it.
3. HD DVD transport streams seems to play great on it.
4. It plays MANY different video types. VOB files and (eventually-hopefully) ISO files. So FULL DVD quality playback - upconverted. As opposed to AppleTV which requires an H.264 transcode in order to play.

So I do recommend PCH for the hacker type, but just know what you're getting in to first. It's one of those still in development early adopter gadgets.

PS Veronica.. Love the show (oh and you too Patrick). By the way I'm a total mac guy. Hate windows. Stood-in-line-day-1-to-get-an-iphone-type-mac-fan-boy. I would have got an AppleTV had it been more open.

[suzq]

... that Veronica was eating? How have I not discovered this yet?!
And I thought I was crazy over chocolate, lol!

[julian_photo]

my media centre is still running off an old modded xbox. Now yes it won't really handle HD very well just do the speed of the cpu in the sucker. I some times use the xbox360 as well as its much quicker. I do however like the interface and general user experience of xbmc a lot better.

[krisdt]

More Camilla please?
One vote from me too! :)

[atomsk]

I think that our wishes have been granted, she does the NHTSA advert in the new episode. ^.^

[camilla-swedish-intern]

Finally Camilla on screen! And with a flag and all… that helped me get some sense of pride back after yesterdays fail in the hockey world championship (CAN vs. SWE, 5 - 4 :(). Tonight we’ll butcher the Fins though. Anyways... she should obviously get some sort of segment of her own.

Snyggt jobbat Camilla

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Thanks for hte flag man
and now, get ready for football on Tuesday...
I'll wear my Swedish outfit for sure
Sweden - Greece, right?

[eugovector]

Here's an alternate review of the Popcorn hour in case anyone is interested:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1118284/popcorn_hour_a100_review_179/

When I reviewed it months ago, the Media Portal features were very buggy. After seeing Patrick and Veronica focus on it almost exclusively (ignoring the unmatched format and resolution support), I gave it another shot. The interface is still sluggish, but Tekzilla in lowBR 720p did still look great for internet video. Overall, I'd cal it much improved and a great way to get Rev3 to the bigscreen. Imagine if ABC distributed LOST the same way?

[vw195]

Here's an alternate review of the Popcorn hour in case anyone is interested:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1118284/popcorn_hour_a100_review_179/

When I reviewed it months ago, the Media Portal features were very buggy. After seeing Patrick and Veronica focus on it almost exclusively (ignoring the unmatched format and resolution support), I gave it another shot. The interface is still sluggish, but Tekzilla in lowBR 720p did still look great for internet video. Overall, I'd cal it much improved and a great way to get Rev3 to the bigscreen. Imagine if ABC distributed LOST the same way?

I have a 360 and PS3 and overall the 360 plays the most formats. The 360 is my media center of choice, mainly cause the PS3 wont play native .mov's