Engadget HD Podcast 182 - 03.09.2010
By Trent Wolbe 
posted March 9th 2010 6:15PM
posted March 9th 2010 6:15PM
3DTVs get their big launch at Best Buy this week, but we kick off with talk of TiVo's latest legal victory. We do talk 3D for some time though and can't wait to see if the in store demos live up to what we saw at CES -- we also take some time to try to clear up some confusion in regards to HDMI, 3D and all the requirements and standards. Finally we talk about why an IR emitter for a iPhone is a bad idea, why we don't really care much about Real's loss to the MPAA and why you should wait for the BBC's version of Life on Blu-ray rather than watching it on Discovery.Get the podcast
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Hosts: Ben Drawbaugh, Richard Lawler
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Program
03:10 - Comments from Podcast 181
09:00 - TiVo's $200m damages award in EchoStar case affirmed, EchoStar to appeal (again)
15:58 - Panasonic's VT25 3DTVs will be nearly 50% off Japanese prices, launch this week at Best Buy
21:50 - Panasonic G20 HDTV review shows plasma's still got it
23:37 - Samsung debuts 3DTV LED LCD ads during the Oscars
28:03 - HDMI 1.4a spec released in full, lays down mandatory 3D format support details
39:27 - New Potato's FLPR IR dongle gives your iPhone home automation capabilities
40:00 - RedEye mini converts iPhone, iPad or iPod touch into IR-beaming universal remote
47:73 - RealNetworks to stop selling RealDVD, your copyrights are safe -- for now
54:44 - Discovery's next epic series Life airs March 21 on seven networks, June 1 on Blu-ray
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Have to say I am with Richard on being disappointed in Tivo. I was hoping for something spectacular and am really let down about it. I was hoping maybe they would want me to move back from Media Center to Tivo but I guess I have to wait until Series 5.
And Ben, sorry to say I don't know anyone who will agree with you that the 360 is just as fast as a dedicated box. I'm not saying it is that much slower but it's just not as snappy. But we are talking about hundreds of a second in speed and I never seen this with a couple of hardware extenders. It's nothing to do with my hardware or setup. I have been running a HTPC before Media Center on Windows XP was out and normally replace the hardware every few months and it is overkill for a HTPC, even various routers and network configurations. No wireless is involved, it's nothing to do with hardware. The 360 in general can be a bit sluggish not just with Media Center but even the native 360 OS, such as with menus and what. But there are also features not there for the 360 which I would like to see it to be identical, like as you mentioned the sound on 2x fast forward is nice to have.
Just wanted to add that even though I am saying that the 360 is only a few hundreds of a second slower in responsiveness that going to be fine for almost everyone. The way I see it is that I have a HTPC sitting right there so there isn't a reason for me to not have it plugged into my TV. A year ago I was planning on buying a house instead of having a condo and the plan was to have it in a server room in the garage but I am putting off the house until end of this year. Maybe then I will go ahead and use the 360 on my main TV instead of having the HTPC plugged in. Otherwise I really don't have a reason not to.
@Brian
Here are two videos I did. One on the PC and one on the 360, are you telling me you notice one is slower than the other?
http://hd.engadget.com/2009/07/27/windows-7-media-center-review/
@BenD Yes.
There is a difference as you are using it. Yes, we are talking less then a second and it's not all areas of Media Center but it is there. I mean even on a 360, hitting the home button (whatever the X is called) and moving through the menus doesn't always snap between them, and some games running affect how it responds.
I'm not saying there is a 5 second lag, I am saying there is a split second delay. Even in the various forums, such as TGB, people notice it.
@Brian
Interesting, I guess I'm not sensitive to it. Either way it isn't worth the cost of a HTPC connected to a TV. You can't put a price on never needing a keyboard or a mouse in the living room.
@BenD
I guess you can put it like that. Honestly I wouldn't have known the difference until I started running Wnidows 7 beta and when Xbox Live went down so did the 360 being an extender. The wife didn't like that so well so I had to hook up the HTPC to the TV and hadn't gone back since. Mostly because my condo doesn't really allow me to put the box anywhere besides under the TV so I figure why not just plug it in? Plus I benefit with a slightly better response time and a few other things missing from the extenders. But I am sure when I buy a house later this year that it will be going into the garage and will be using the 360 exclusively. You also can save power since my HTPC uses half the power the 360 does, and is quieter. But I'm not really concerned about the power part.
I'm not trying to get into politics here but technically, the DMCA is not legal on the federal level, as most federal laws legally aren't. The Tenth Amendment specifically states 'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people' This means, if it's not in the constitution, the federal government does not have legality. Today, most everything on the federal level is not legally legal. States can have their own laws and can choose to allow the federal government to intact laws, if they wish to follow it. With the DMCA, and other laws, the States are allowing the federal government to intact laws for various reasons. Most of the time they follow what the feds want based on money. But if you follow what is happening in the past year or so, States are starting to push back and are telling the Feds no, they will not obey various federal laws.
With regards to building a system on par with the tivo premiere xl i found this just looking through off the shelf deals without any assembly and computer building required.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Gateway+-+Desktop+with+Intel%26%23174%3B+Core%26%23153%3B+i3+Processor/9698918.p?id=1218153427813&skuId=9698918&st=i3
+
400 dollar ceton card
gives you a 4 tuner media center system with a 1tb hard drive and 6 gigs of ram. Also the i3 chipset mother board combo here supports bitstreaming for a blu ray player later.
for 950
as compared to the tivo premiere
which is about 500 bucks with 3 years of service 300 if you pay upfront (466.20 if you pay monthly)
gives you pretty much 800 bucks up front for a tivo xl premiere.
I'll be paying the 160 dollar delta to get the extra two tuners and the ability to add in a blu ray player with bitstreaming in a few months for 60 bucks.
The x factor is of course ownership of the 360 which drives the cost up another 150- 200 bucks if you don't have one.
@normychas
Thanks for the suggestion, but we really want to try and make it cost the same as the Premier. So $700 for a 320GB or $900 for a 1TB.
@BenD The thing that's going to kill you is the cost of Windows 7. With a $700 budget, -$400 for the Ceton card, you're left with only $300 for your machine. That would be possible, but you're going to burn up over $100 on your Windows 7 licence, more if you, er, buy a legal copy (remember that OEM licence is only legal if you build the machine then resell it, Microsoft wants you to buy the retail full version for $200).
But let's think. We can get a $70 Pentium Dual Core Wolfdale, $80 mobo, $80 4gb memory, $50 hard drive, $80 case with PSU... and that's using on board graphics, we're already over budget, and with no DVD drive (not really essential with a USB drive) and no OS. I'm really looking forward to this feature, but I'm nervous of your ability to pull it off. I do think that's a lot more likely at the $900 price point than the $700 one.
@mmaestro
I've found a few PCs with an empty PCI-E slot and Windows 7 pre-installed for $300. In fact I think I'm going to just pick one up from Best Buy, uninstall the crap ware, and call it a day.
With regards to building a system on par with the tivo premiere xl i found this just looking through off the shelf deals without any assembly and computer building required.
the gateway DX4831-01e goes for 550 at best buy
+
400 dollar ceton card
gives you a 4 tuner media center system with a 1tb hard drive and 6 gigs of ram. Also the i3 chipset mother board combo here supports bitstreaming for a blu ray player later.
for 950
as compared to the tivo premiere
which is about 500 bucks with 3 years of service 300 if you pay upfront (466.20 if you pay monthly)
gives you pretty much 800 bucks up front for a tivo xl premiere.
I'll be paying the 160 dollar delta to get the extra two tuners and the ability to add in a blu ray player with bitstreaming in a few months for 60 bucks.
The x factor is of course ownership of the 360 which drives the cost up another 150- 200 bucks if you don't have one.
I'm hoping this comment will come up in the next podcast. Ceton's Quad Tuner. Supposed to launch in about 2-3 weeks time. Do we have any preview of it? What will availability be like? I've got my money saved up for this card, just waiting on it to be available for purchase.
@James5mith
dont we all.
Not sure if any of the guys have a review copy of the quad tuner card but it looks to me at least that ceton will in fact hit their launch date of March 31 which is never a given with regard to media center products (ie the dish network media center plugin) . As proof Cannon PC recently had the ceton card listed up for pre order. It was down within a few hours but they did have it up which leads me to believe they received some kind of communication from Ceton. I'm pretty certain that engadgethd is planning to review the quad tuner card since theyve talked about it so much in the past.
I had a copyright question after hearing the podcast. The Library of Congress keeps a vast media collection that includes music and films. They must be updating from one type of media to another. Do they operate in violation of the DCMA? Are they exempt?