Following up on
this post from earlier this month, about the trials and tribulations in adding external storage to my DirecTV HD-DVR. I've returned the Buffalo DriveStation unit back to Fry's. We used it with moderate success to buffer two weeks of Olympic events, but the DVR was markedly less stable and there were noticeable gray-screen delays when deleting saved programs or browsing the list. That, combined with DirecTV's lack of support for the eSATA port and anything their customers might want to attach to it, made the decision to return it a pretty easy one.
What would DirecTV have to change in order for me to use external storage on the DVR?
- Supporting the port in hardware, by which I mean acknowledging its existence; recommending specific drives and performing compatibility testing.
- Supporting it in software, by which I mean not having to reboot the DVR to use external storage; using external storage as additional space for the internal drive and not, as is presently the case, an either-or situation that doesn't transfer saved programs or Prioritizer entres.
For now, I'll stick with the internal drive. The Olympics were really the only situation, aside from our recent three-week vacation, in which we risked running out of space on the internal drive, so I don't anticipate needing more any time soon. If I do, and DirecTV still isn't supporting eSATA, I'll probably investigate an internal upgrade.
Labels: DirecTV, eSATA, HR21
Our DVD review of
The Nightmare Before Christmas (2-Disc Collector's Edition) is up on MousePlanet today:
Once the actual feature begins, the care with which Disney's artists and technicians did their work in creating this restored and remastered version is plainly evident. The picture is clear, with no pops, scratches, or compression artifacts. In fact, it's crisp enough that you can clearly see minute details like Sally's fluttering eyelashes and the textures on Jack's books about Christmas, and you can easily see characters and objects in dark scenes, such as inside Dr. Finklestein's laboratory. The graininess mentioned in the 2001 review is completely absent. As compared to the earlier DVD release, this remastered transfer is true anamorphic widescreen, meaning that the picture expands to fill the entire screen on widescreen televisions.
The surround sound presentation is equally clear and bright, with good channel separation. Song lyrics—this is, after all, a musical picture—are easy to understand even for me, and I usually have to turn on subtitles when watching musicals.
I want to take a minute to thank MousePlanet's chief copy editor Lani Teshima, who accepted this article at 11:30 pm last night for publish today and got it done.
Iron Chef video game coming to the Nintendo Wii and DS:
Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine lets players square off in Kitchen Stadium and battle through a series fast-paced and intense culinary challenges. Each victory advances players closer to a final showdown that will determine who will reign supreme as the next Iron Chef America.
I hope the bonus rounds let you battle it out with the real Iron Chefs. Give me Hiroyuki Sakai and Rokusaburo Michiba any day over these Iron Chef America guys. And don't forget floor reporter Shinichiro Ohta shouting out 'Fukui-san!' every few minutes.
We absolutely will be getting this when it comes out.
Allez cuisine!
Angel the dog credited with saving kittens:
A two-year-old dog that had been turned over to the Nevada Humane Society's shelter in Reno is being credited with rescuing six abandoned kittens.
[...]
They were walking on the hot day with temperatures in the 90s when the dog became obsessed with something in the bushes. When she refused to move on, Gomez investigated and discovered a box full of 3-week-old orange tabby kittens that were frightened and hungry.
Photos of Angel and the kittens at
Reno Gazette-Journal.
Rachel Maddow to Replace Dan Abrams on MSNBC:
Just in time for the closing rush of the presidential election, MSNBC is shaking up its prime-time programming lineup, removing the long-time host –- and one-time general manager of the network — Dan Abrams from his 9 p.m. program and replacing him with Rachel Maddow, who has emerged as a favored political commentator for the all-news cable channel.
The moves, which were confirmed by MSNBC executives Tuesday, are expected to be finalized by Wednesday, with Mr. Abrams’s last program on Thursday. After MSNBC’s extensive coverage of the two political conventions during the next two weeks, Ms. Maddow will begin her program on Sept. 8.
What can I say? I already mentioned how Rachel Maddow is tops in my book (with Keith Olbermann a very close second) so this for me is terrific news.
From TPM Election Central at
Talking Points Memo, originally linked from MaddowOnline:
To our knowledge the Obama campaign didn't release it to the national press, but Team Obama is airing a new radio spot in Wisconsin -- the home of Harley-Davidson -- attacking John McCain over his recent quip at a biker rally that he'd much rather listen to the 'roar of 50,000 Harleys' than the cheering of 200,000 Berliners.
The spot quotes McCain's joke, then calls him a phony for opposing a requirement that the government buy American-made motorbikes. 'But when it comes to his record,' the announcer says, 'American-made motorcycles like Harleys don't matter to John McCain.'
Click below to listen to the ad.
Rachel Maddow's Life and Career :
Unlike her beautiful, bilious conservative female counterparts or the cocksure boys-on-the-bus analysts, however, Maddow didn't get here by bluster and bravado but with a combination of crisp thinking and galumphing good cheer. Remarkably, this season's discovery isn't a glossy matinee idol or a smooth-talking partisan hack but a PhD Rhodes scholar lesbian policy wonk who started as a prison AIDS activist.
All of which raises a crucial question: does Maddow's unlikely success, reliant on her ability to defy cliche and categorization at every turn, signal a move in punditry away from the thuggish and the angry and toward the lucid and sophisticated? Or has her powerful charisma and canny career management allowed her to break the rules--without actually breaking a mold?
Rachel Maddow is my number-one political news source and has been since she filled in for vacationing Al Franken just as New Orleans was flooding.
Updating
this post from earlier this year, here is the current network map done on
Gliffy.
Changes/additions from last time:
- Added Apple MacBook Pro notebook (GJETOST)
- Added Maxtor 500GB NAS box (EDAM). Still need to switch this to static IP addressing.
- Added Buffalo DriveStation Combo 4 1TB eSATA box (MOZZARELLA) for DirecTV DVR storage.
- Removed the "TBD" file server from the diagram, since now with the 500GB NAS there is no need for a full-fledged file server.
Total live storage:
| Device | Capacity |
|---|
| BRIE | 80GB |
| GJETOST | 200GB |
| STILTON | 500GB |
| EDAM | 500GB |
| GuestRoom (DirecTiVo) | 500GB |
| LivingRoom (DirecTiVo) | 500GB |
| MOZZARELLA | 1TB |
| Total: | 3.28TB |
|---|
Not all of this storage is immediately available for arbitrary use, but if I really wanted to I could ftp to either of the DirecTiVo boxes or mount the eSATA box as FireWire on the Mac. Also, somehow the two DirecTiVos don't have cheese names. How did that happen?
Labels: cheese, gliffy, network map
With the Olympics coming up -- starting tomorrow! -- and now that we can watch them in HD, and NBC's promise of
over 1,000 hours of programming, well, I took a look at the storage capacity on my DirecTV HR21-700 HD+DVR. It has an internal 320GB drive, which translates into around 37 hours of HD programming. Obviously that would not be enough to buffer the events we want to watch. The HR21 (and its predecessor, the HR20) have an
eSATA port which can be used to add external storage, but it's not actually supported by DirecTV. It's there, and if you can get it to work then great, but they aren't going to help. Luckily the various online communities (notably
DBSTalk.com) have stepped up with lots of information and helpful tips, and after a bit of research I decided to give this a try. My main requirement was one terabyte of available storage, and I was also not looking to spend a lot of money. Finally, it had to be something I could buy locally -- unfortunately I started this mini-project too late to try to buy it online.
I started with a
Western Digital My Book Home Edition ($279.99 list, $199.99 at Fry's). It was the most attractive and least expensive of the available options. Unfortunately, and if I'd read all of the eSATA threads on DBSTalk.com I'd have known this, the My Book series are for some reason not compatible with DVRs. Specifically on the HR21, booting with the unit attached gets to the second screen of the six-screen boot process and then goes into an infinite reboot.
Next, I tried a
Seagate FreeAgent Pro ($259.99 list, $237.49 with a white sticker at Fry's). I went with this one when the WD didn't work because I was looking for another "known" brand name. Unfortunately, again, not supported. On the HR21, booting with this unit attached gets to the third of six boot screens and then hangs.
After returning the Seagate unit, I found a
Buffalo DriveStation Combo 4 ($229.99 at Fry's, around the same on
PriceGrabber). This is the least attractive of the three--it looks like nothing more than a
Radio Shack project box--but its form factor is such that it can be tucked into the stereo cabinet out of sight. I unplugged the DVR, connected the eSATA unit and powered the DVR back on. And it worked! The DVR got through all six boot screens and came up normally. As expected, there were no saved recordings or Prioritizer entries--they don't move over from the primary drive--so the available space reads as "100%". 1TB should give me around 110-120 hours of HD recording.
The one remaining sticking point is that existing saved programs and Prioritizer entries are not copied to the external drive, but remain intact and inaccessible on the primary internal drive as long as the external drive is connected; and the only way to switch between internal and external drives is to completely power off the DVR and connect/disconnect the external drive before powering the DVR back on. It should be possible to simply copy the contents of the internal drive to the external bit-for-bit and in fact at least one
third-party DirecTV upgrade vendor offers a copy service for an extra $59 when buying a new drive. If they can do it, I'm sure I can do it, but doing it would involve delicately easing the DirecTV DVR out of the stack and opening it up and I'm not sure I want to go that far right now.
So, to summarize:
Labels: Buffalo, DirecTV, eSATA, HR21
I'm starting a new Web site and need a logo. If you're any good at that sort of thing and are interested, please
email me.
The DHS laptop policy is not new (I mentioned it
back in April as we prepared to go on our cruise) but for the first time, the actual policy has been published. See links in the articles I've excerpted below for details.
Travelers' Laptops May Be Detained At Border -- Washington Post
Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.
Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Homeland Security: We can seize laptops for an indefinite period -- CNet News.com
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has concocted a remarkable new policy: It reserves the right to seize for an indefinite period of time laptops taken across the border. A pair of DHS policies from last month say that customs agents can routinely--as a matter of course--seize, make copies of, and "analyze the information transported by any individual attempting to enter, re-enter, depart, pass through, or reside in the United States." (See policy No. 1 and No. 2.)
DHS claims the border search of electronic information is useful to detect terrorists, drug smugglers, and people violating "copyright or trademark laws." (Readers: Are you sure your iPod and laptop have absolutely no illicitly downloaded songs? You might be guilty of a felony.) This is a disturbing new policy, and should convince anyone taking a laptop across a border to use encryption to thwart DHS snoops. Encrypt your laptop, with full disk encryption if possible, and power it down before you go through customs.
Crossing Borders with Laptops and PDAs -- Bruce Schneier
Last month a US court ruled that border agents can search your laptop, or any other electronic device, when you're entering the country. They can take your computer and download its entire contents, or keep it for several days. Customs and Border Patrol has not published any rules regarding this practice, and I and others have written a letter to Congress urging it to investigate and regulate this practice.
But the US is not alone. British customs agents search laptops for pornography. And there are reports on the internet of this sort of thing happening at other borders, too. You might not like it, but it's a fact. So how do you protect yourself?
Encrypting your entire hard drive, something you should certainly do for security in case your computer is lost or stolen, won't work here. The border agent is likely to start this whole process with a "please type in your password". Of course you can refuse, but the agent can search you further, detain you longer, refuse you entry into the country and otherwise ruin your day.
There seem to be two common ways around this: encrypt the drive (and disguise the encryption) or use network storage. It seems to me that while encryption is less reliant on external factors -- what kind of Internet connection can you get overseas to upload your confidential files before returning home? -- it also would tend to draw more suspicion from CBP if there is any evidence of encryption.
For our cruise, I cleaned all confidential files and data off my laptop before we left, since I was only bringing it to download photos from our cameras and not to do any actual work. If you need to travel out of the country for work and don't want -- or corporate policy forbids -- nosy CBP officials pawing through your confidential data, give serious thought to how you're going to handle the border crossing. And do it before you leave.