Archive for category Technology & Home Entertainment

UPC / NTL launch High Definition TV service

Aug 5

Posted by Tom Doyle in Technology & Home Entertainment

: Image via Wikipedia

It may be many moons behind, but the UPC’s launch of it’s new High Definition TV service is a very much welcomed addition its list of services. UPC have been doing some great deals lately, in particular their broadband, TV and phone service from as little as €49 p.m., but this is surely their greatest offer yet.

For only an extra €7.50 per month to those who already have a digital NTL subscription, you can now get a High Defintion service. So what’s the catch you might say? Well I personally rang them up to avail of the offer, but they unfortunately don’t have it in my area yet.

UPC / NTL’s lack of availability is surely one the biggest downfalls in terms of their business offering. This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to avail of one of their services only to be told it’s not yet available in my area. I’m getting closer to switching to Sky every day – I have a HD TV that I simply can’t get use out of… C’mon UPC, get your act together!

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Tags: Broadband, High-definition television, Sky Digital, Television, UPC Ireland

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Kryptview, IT Gate, Dbox / Dbox2, Dreambox & Starview 4 – All cracked

Jun 17

Posted by Tom Doyle in Technology & Home Entertainment

: Image via Wikipedia

Since March, forums that discuss information related to the so called “dodgy boxes” have been a hive of activity as desperate “dodgy box” users search anxiously for a fix for their defunct boxes. In March, NTL released a new encryption on it’s network in Ireland that effectively rendered all of these boxes useless. That new encryption is now known to be Nagravision 2.

However, it wasn’t long before the elite hackers for the Kryptview box were able to release a patch to bypass this new encryption and get their boxes back up and running. Other boxes, such as the IT Gate, Eurovox and Starview weren’t as fortunate. So far, three months on, there has only been fixes released for the IT Gate and the Starview 4 (The Box Super USB). For the owners of other, older versions of these boxes, the chance of getting a fix looks slim.

The hackers don’t seem that interested in helping the “old” customers in Ireland, but will gladly help you if you purchase one of their latest and greatest machines. That makes total sense from a business perspective. This is the best opportunity they have to get people to upgrade their boxes.

This has definitely been a huge success for NTL who were determined to remove these boxes from circulation – or were they? Think of it like this, apparently they’ve only scrambled the premium channels with the new encryption. Channels such as Sky Sports, Setanta and the Adult channels were the first to go. Yet, they seem to have left other channels only available to their digital subscribers. There’s clear evidence that NTL’s subscriptions greatly improved when the dodgy boxes were in full flow. Nearly everyone you spoke to had heard of these boxes and had jumped ship or cancelled their Sky subscription. Obviously Sky and Setanta weren’t too happy about this and let NTL know.

Now though, where are they going? Are they going to roll out Nagravision 3 that will most likely kill all of these boxes for a very long time (there has yet to be a crack for Nagra 3) or will they just continue with Nagravision 2? No-one seems to know the answer to this and only time will tell.

UPDATE: Dbox, Dbox2 & Dreambox now all have fixes. A few other linux boxes have been fixed too (just not sure what they are called!)

UPC / NTL launch new encryption to beat the hackers (tomdoyletalk.com)

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Tags: Encryption, Nagravision, NTL, NTL Ireland, Setanta Sports, Sky Sports, The Box

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New PlayStation Motion Controller Demo

Jun 3

Posted by Tom Doyle in Gaming, Technology & Home Entertainment

When Nintendo released the most innovative controller the gaming world had ever seen back in 2006, Sony said that motion controllers were just a fad.

Obviously due to the phenomenal success of the Nintendo Wii, Sony have decided to released a prototype of their next generation motion controller, aptly named the PlayStation Motion Controller. The PlayStation Motion Controller is due to be released as a peripheral to the PS3 and isn’t planned solely to be released with a new console. It’s due to be released in 2010. Here’s the demo video of the controller in action.

Of course, Nintendo are due to release an add on for their Wii controller that will make it more sensitive later this month.

In the meantime, Microsoft who also claimed the Nintendo Wii was a fad, have been working hard on the so called “Project Natal” controller for the XBOX 360.

So far it looks “way out there”, maybe they are just using it to sow up all the patents before someone else does!

Here’s their demo video for Project Natal:

PS3 Motion Controller May Be Best Game Motion Capture Yet [Sony] (gizmodo.com)
Sony joins new ‘controller wars’ (news.bbc.co.uk)
E3: Struggling Sony vows that it ‘will not become complacent’ (guardian.co.uk)
E3 2009: Microsoft launches Project Natal Xbox 360 controllerfree games system (telegraph.co.uk)
Sony Unveils New Portable Game Player (nytimes.com)
E3 09: Sony shows off new motion controller, not SIXAXIS 2 (destructoid.com)
E3 2009: Sony demos PS3 motionsensitive controller (telegraph.co.uk)

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Tags: Microsoft, Nintendo, Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Motion Controller, Sony, Wii, XBOX 360

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Watch Live Premiership Football on your TV for FREE! (with the help of a PS3 and a few other tools…)

Apr 22

Posted by Tom Doyle in Football (Soccer), Internet & Computers, Technology & Home Entertainment

: Image via Wikipedia

After missing last nights sensational game between Liverpool and Arsenal, I decided I needed to sort out my entertainment system to once and for all be ready to watch live Internet football on my TV. I have to admit to watching many games online through P2p services such as TVU, Sopcast, TVants etc, as geeky as it sounds. There was no better excuse than tonights must win game between Manchester United and Portsmouth.

From past experience in streaming video files from my PC to my playstation, I knew this was the best place to start. TVersity is such a great little program that allows you to set your PC up as a media server with ease. Another great feature of TVersity is the ability to stream live Internet streams directly to your PS3. TVU Player has been my TV streaming tool of choice, simply because the quailty seems to be in most cases better than Sopcast.

All I needed to do now was figure out how to set up a mini streaming server that would take the video from TVU Player and allow me to stream it as a web address. After a little bit of searching, I found the information. Here’s a link to the forum that this post was taken from: http://forums.tversity.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=9503&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

And here’s the text ripped to save you having to move from this wonderful website……

TVUPlayer:

1) Install TVUPlayer

2) Install VLC media player

3) Open TVUPlayer and select the channel you want to stream.

4) Right click on your “VLC mediaplayer” shortcut on the desktop, chose “properties”.

5) Target:“C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe” http://localhost:8901–sout “#duplicate{dst=std{access=mmsh,mux=asfh,dst=:1234}}”

6) Go to Tversity and add the video url: mms://127.0.0.1:1234

Now you should be able to stream TVUPlayer chosen channel

SopCast:

1) Install SopCast

2) Install VLC media player

3) Open SopCast and select the channel you want to stream.

4) Right click on your “VLC mediaplayer” shortcut on the desktop, chose “properties”.

5) Target:“C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe” http://localhost:8901–sout “#duplicate{dst=std{access=mmsh,mux=asfh,dst=:1234}}”

6) Go to Tversity and add the video url: mms://127.0.0.1:1234

Now you should be able to stream SopCast chosen channel

=================================================

This didn’t work straight away for me – I had to play around with the port numbers for a while before it would.

One thing to remember is that you should choose the channel you want to stream on TVU or Sopcast before using your VLC shortcut.

From your Playstation3, go to Video, choose your media service (should be there with the TVersity Icon) and choose Video, Internet and you should see your stream. Click on it and that’s it! Happy Days!

TVersity – Free & Awesome Media Server (shankrila.com)

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Tags: Manchester United, Manchester United F.C., Streaming media, TVants, TVU Player

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UPC / NTL launch new encryption to beat the hackers

Mar 14

Posted by Tom Doyle in Technology & Home Entertainment

: Image via Wikipedia

UPC (Formerly NTL) have finally launched their new encryption to prevent illegal access to their service. Forums are buzzing with discussions on the latest move by UPC to once and for all eradicate the pirates who use their service for free with the so called “Dodgy Boxes”.

Whether they’ve moved to Nagravision 2 or 3 is so far unclear, but most of the people on the afterdawn forum aren’t holding out much hope for a “fix” to compromise this latest encryption.

According to the forums, MUTV and the Adult Channels are the ones that have been hit first. They also suggest that over the next few days, people using Starviews, Eurovox’s or any other dodgy box will slowly see their channels disappear.

If I worked for UPC, I would so far count this as a huge success as users of the forums seem to have given up any hope of there ever being a fix. Well done you!

But I imagine a lot of people will begin to change over to Sky now as it’s a much better offering!

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Tags: Dodgy Box, eurovox, eurovox pvr, Nagravision, starview, Starview / The Box, The Box

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Sound garbled / muffled when streaming MKV files to the PS3 (TVersity)

Jan 10

Posted by Tom Doyle in Technology & Home Entertainment

Yet again, I’ve been playing with my PS3. I’m constantly trying to improve the configurations to get the best from the system.

I encountered an an unusual situation today when streaming high definition MKV files to the PS3. Basically, although the picture was perfect, the sound was garbled or muffled which made it impossible to listen to.

So what’s the fix says you? Well I’m running a Windows Vista machine and the fix for that was simple. Go into your services and find the TVersity service. Change this service to run with your account as opposed to the “local system” account and voila, you should have no more issues!!

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Tags: PlayStation 3, PS3, TVersity

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Connecting an external hard drive to the PS3 (PlayStation 3)

Jan 8

Posted by Tom Doyle in Gaming, Technology & Home Entertainment

: Image by Nick Slide via Flickr

Ever since I got my hands on the PS3 at Christmas, I’ve been spending most of my spare time trying to set it up as my main media centre at home. Being able to use my PS3 as a blu-ray player, a DVD player and of course being access to all my digital media without having to connect my PC to it, was the ideal situation. The idea would be that I’d just connect up my external USB hard drive and go for it. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out to be as straight forward as I had hoped.

One of the most inconvenient issues with the PS3 is the lack of support for other disc formats. When connecting an external hard drive, it can only be formatted as FAT32. So what you might say? Well it’s absolutely pointless – that’s what.

FAT32 doesn’t support files over 4 GB, so you can’t put files larger than that on the drive and access it through the PlayStation. So let’s say you have ripped your favourite Blu-ray disc to your external hard drive (for backup of course), you won’t be able to store it on an external device as the file size is likely to be a good bit greater than 4 GB. That means each time you want to watch a Blue-ray movie, you will have to get up out of your chair and insert the disc…. how inconvenient.

There is of course the option of streaming the files with TVersity as mentioned in a previous post, but since I haven’t got a spare computer, I have to turn on my laptop each time, what I’d really like is just to be able to switch on the PS3 that has the USB drive attached and do nothing else.

And before anyone else tries to tell me that the PS3 supports ext2 and ext3, yes it does, but only on the internal hard drive. It doesn’t work with the External one as I’ve tried many things for this.

So anyway, let’s say you do want to connect your external USB hard drive to your PS3, here’s what you do….

Ensure your hard drive is formatted to FAT32. If you have a large hard drive, you won’t be able to use Windows to format it, so use this program : http://www.compuapps.com/download/Swissknife/swissknife.htm
Create folders similar to the PS3 system on the USB hard drive e.g.;
“Picture” (not Photo), “Music”, “Video” and “Game”
Connect your USB drive to the PlayStation and voila!

I hope this saves someone the time I wasted trying many different options!

To Sony – it’s time you started supporting ext3 or NTFS formatted external hard drives on the PlayStation 3.

Stream music, videos, YouTube and pictures to your PS3 with TVersity

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Tags: Blu-ray Disc, Digital media, DVD, Hard disk drive, PlayStation 3

21 Comments

LuzernTech Continue to Get Away With It

Jan 2

Posted by Tom Doyle in Rantings, Technology & Home Entertainment

It’s been six months since I posted my first article about LuzernTech, the “Online Supplier of Refurbished Equipment”. I wrote about my experience when buying a DVD player from them, through the auction site eBay.

After contacting the National Consumer Agency, I finally got a full refund. However, they still appear to be causing a lot of people, a lot of heartache. Just take a look at their negative feedback for the last 6 months, it’s clear that they are still pulling the wool over a lot of peoples eyes.

Apart from the apparent lack of communication from them, the same issue that I had seems to have arisen a number of times yet again. The issue? Well in a nutshell, they refused to refund me the delivery cost of the item even though what they sent me was broken. This is obviously illegal, yet they get away with it because not many people seem to know their rights.

Another nasty tactic they seem to use a lot is that if one of their “auction items” sell for too low a price, they seem to send you out either a broken one or tell you that they don’t have any in stock. This is clearly a breach of the terms of usage on eBay.

It seems that neither the National Consumer Agency or eBay really care what this company are doing. For the NDA, they’re probably too small to be concerned about. For eBay, they are probably making a nice few bob from them.

So the only way things will change it seems is if people stand up and stop buying from them. Let’s face it, it would be a great service if what they say they offered was true. You can see this from the positive feedback from the lucky ones….

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Tags: Auction, eBay, Luzern Tech, LuzernTech

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Stream music, videos, YouTube and pictures to your PS3 with TVersity

Dec 31

Posted by Tom Doyle in Gaming, Technology & Home Entertainment

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: Image via Wikipedia

This year, my ultimate Christmas present was a Blu-ray player. However, with the average price of a decent Blu-Ray player being around €300, I thought it might as well get a bit more bang for my book and go for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) which cost only €360 (from play.com).

I had loads of plans on what I’d do with it when I got it. I really wanted the new PS3 to become my media centre, where I could utilise all of the many media files I have on my computer. My first plan of attack was to do the most nerdy thing and install Linux on the PlayStation. After I did this, I realised that it was a pretty poor way of doing things as it runs quite slow.

What I really needed was something simple that could play all the files I have on my computer. After much searching I found a great little program called TVersity.

TVersity is a free program that acts as a media server and can be easily accessed from your PlayStation 3. The beauty of this software package is that if the file you want to play from your computer is not supported by the PS3 natively, TVersity will convert and stream it to the PlayStation in a supported format. I tested streaming an 8gb MKV file over my local wireless network and it worked seamlessly.

Not only can you stream your local files, you can also set up RSS feeds such as YouTube for example, and access them from your PlayStation with ease.

If you, like me, needs something to get use out of their HD TV, download TVersity, hook it up with your PlayStation and enjoy the fun!

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Tags: Blu-ray Disc, Linux, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PS3, Sony, Video game

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The Box Super USB Review

Dec 4

Posted by Tom Doyle in Technology & Home Entertainment

I got a chance to have a look at another one of these so called “dodgy boxes” the other day. The latest and greatest offering from the the Starview creators is The Box Super USB.

My instant reaction when I saw it being turned on was the huge improvement in the graphics and interface. It really has come along way from the first Starview box. Additionally, with it came a USB stick, branded with The Box logo which can be inserted into the newly added USB port of The Box for backing up channel data and of course doing firmware updates.

The firmware update is a million times easier than the laborious R232 cable scenario. You simply copy the files from your computer to the USB stick, insert it in the USB port on The Box, hit menu, go to USB and select the file that you’ve just copied. It updates in seconds and no need for wires everywhere!

The Box Super offers the pause live TV and record functions that a lot of other devices are offering now. I unfortunately didn’t see this in action as the external HDD didn’t work with it for some reason. From what I’ve heard, unlike the Eurovox, it has two tuners, so you can view one channel whilst recording another.

Other than that it does all the usual stuff. Is it worth the upgrade? I would have to say yes, for sure!

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Tags: starview, Starview / The Box, The Box

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Archive for category Technology & Home Entertainment

UPC / NTL launch High Definition TV service

Kryptview, IT Gate, Dbox / Dbox2, Dreambox & Starview 4 – All cracked

New PlayStation Motion Controller Demo

Watch Live Premiership Football on your TV for FREE! (with the help of a PS3 and a few other tools…)

UPC / NTL launch new encryption to beat the hackers

Sound garbled / muffled when streaming MKV files to the PS3 (TVersity)

Connecting an external hard drive to the PS3 (PlayStation 3)

LuzernTech Continue to Get Away With It

Stream music, videos, YouTube and pictures to your PS3 with TVersity

The Box Super USB Review

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