Are you, like me, either unable to afford Tivo or your cable company's DVR? Sure, the players are now pretty cheap, but the service is still pricey. Suppose that you could build your own personal video recorder(PVR) on a PC that will record digital broadcast signals, and can be scheduled to record your favorite programs. Would that be of interest to you? If so, go here to find out how to do it. Excerpt:

Q: Will I need to upgrade my PC to work as a digital TV PCR?
A: A fairly recent one, with at least a 2-Ghz Pentium 4 or Athlon 2800+ processor or higher, at least 512MB of RAM, and an 80GB or bigger hard drive will probably be fine. For our step-by-step guide, we used a 2.6-GHz Pentium 4 system with 1GB of DDR333 RAM, but an even faster processor would have made some things (such as converting the recorded files to different resolutions) quicker and easier. ATI recommends at least a 1.2-GHz processor and 256MB of memory for its HDTV Wonder card, but frankly, that's a bit low.
...
Q: What kind of software will I need to build the digital TV PVR?
A: For this step-by-step, we chose to use KnoppMyth, a combination of Knoppix Linux and the Linux PVR software MythTV. It's the simplest way we've found to build a dedicated digital TV PVR, and MythTV has a huge range of features: It can search for programs by title, actor or description, read RSS news and weather feeds, show your digital photos, and play internet radio stations. Plus, KnoppMyth installs from a single CD, so you don't need to know Linux to install and run it.

Q: I'm not sure I'm ready to build a dedicated Linux box to record digital TV. Is there a Windows alternative?
A: Yes. ATI includes software with its HDTV Wonder card that can view and record digital TV signals, including HDTV ones. You can schedule recordings and pause live TV; the card also includes an analog TV tuner. We've tested it and found it was able to record digital TV signals with relative ease, although it did require a fairly fast PC to be able to record and play back HD video. Another alternative is the AccessDTV Digital Media Receiver, a PCI card that includes software that can record and display digital TV in Windows. We haven't reviewed this device, though.

I have a couple of aging PC's sitting around my house that I've been meaning to tinker with, and this type of project will put them to good use. PVR, here I come.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 02:09 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Outsourcing overseas? How about over only 3 miles of seas? Excerpt:

What San Diego-based start-up SeaCode Inc. plans to do is nothing if not novel: anchor a cruise ship three miles off the coast of Los Angeles, fill it with up to 600 programmers from around the world, eliminate visa restrictions and make it easy for customers to visit the site via water taxi. The two men behind the venture -- Roger Green, who describes himself as an IT and outsourcing veteran, and IT consultant David Cook, whose job history includes a stint as a ship captain -- recently discussed their plan in an interview with Computerworld.

What is the business model? Green: The promise of the benefits of outsourcing in distant lands doesn't come free. Most of the gotchas are related to the geography and to the cultural difference.

What are some of those gotchas? Green: Communicating requirements, doing knowledge transfer [and] managing the project are very difficult to do even when you are in the same building, [let alone] when it's across the world.

That's the same argument made by nearshore providers in Canada. Cook: But we offer the price of India with the proximity of the United States -- that's the differentiator.

Look to see a bill in Congress outlawing this in the near future.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 11:52 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Blogging was the topic of choice in Yahoo's Tech Tuesday column. Sadly, no mention of Physics Geek or MuNUviana. Sigh. Our time will come.

Update: Recommended dowload: FeedDemon for RSS feeds.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 09:46 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Snow White and the Seven Matrix Constructs. Or something like that.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 10:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Live out in the boonies where neither DSL or cable broadband are available? Don't depair: there may be hope for you yet. Excerpt:

Satellite
If you're out in the sticks, DirecWay satellite Internet service may be your first, best, and only hope for broadband access. The service works by connecting your PC to a geosynchronous satellite, which links to DirecWay's terrestrial gateways to the Internet. Today's systems do away with the clumsy landline connections of yesteryear for upstream data. And while data rates can be acceptable (up to 500 Kbps), the delay introduced by a 44,000-mile round trip from home to satellite and back makes DirecWay inappropriate for gaming, voice over IP, and virtual private network connections.

Cost: $50 to $100 per month

Best for: Rural locations

Pros: Available almost anywhere; provides access in rural areas otherwise outside of broadband's reach.

Cons: Expensive; limited bandwidth; high lag times make it inappropriate for many applications; requires southern view of sky to find satellite.

Broadband Over Power LineBPL takes advantage of the same phenomenon that lets DSL share signals with voice traffic--electricity travels at a lower frequency than data signals. Companies have therefore decided to offer broadband over the electrical wires that come into homes. Although BPL tests have been ongoing around the country, working deployments remain limited as power companies weigh whether or not to get into the broadband market. Still, cities such as Cincinnati, Ohio, and Manassas, Virginia, have BPL service. In Cincinnati, Current Communications offers service through Cinergy for $30 to $50 per month, depending on the download speed you want (3 Mbps is the current max).

Opinions on the prospects for BPL are split. Research firm Telecommunication Trends International projects that worldwide BPL deployments will jump from $57.1 million in 2004 to $4.4 billion by 2011. But Radicati Group analyst Teney Takahashi says bluntly: "Power line broadband is not going to happen."

Cost: $30 to $50 per month

Best for: Remote areas not served by cable or DSL, or any area poorly served by cable or DSL

Pros: Power lines are ubiquitous and reach homes not served by cable or by DSL-capable phone lines.

Cons: Not widely deployed; significant issues with the data signal producing broadcast interference; power companies lack the service bundling advantages of phone or cable providers.

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Google Earth. Link found via Balloon Juice.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 10:13 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Interesting link here. Depending on what browser you're using, this site can tell you:

1) your connection speed

2) information about your hard drive and CD-ROMs installed

3) spyware or parasites infecting your system

4) and a lot more

Worth checking out, even if several of the tests only work in IE.

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