Digital TV Experience

I have some experience with a Samsung smart TV I will summarize here.

TV

I have access to analog TV signal, and I must tell you this is not what a digital TV was made for. It’s acceptable, but

• the image is not sharp, thanks to the low resolution
• the aspect ratio of the picture (aka picture size) changes among channels, or even between programs
• the TV tries to enhance the quality of the image (e.g. sharpens the edges at still images), and sometimes that can be annoying
• no electronic program guide (EPG)

I tried to receive DVB-T signal but I couldn’t. Just a few channels with long breaks in receiving. Though the image quality was wonderful and I got EPG.

Teletext

Teletext comes with the channels supporting this technology. It is the shadow of the analog era. Digital TVs try to enhance this technology:

• store pages in memory, no need to wait for paging
• more txt display modes

Don’t expect too much from this.

Multimedia

Digital TVs support a standard protocol (DLNA) for receiving multimedia streams from other devices. Just put the two devices onto the same subnet of your LAN (use the same router with cable or Wi-Fi) and the two devices will see each other. In my case I run a Samsung AllShare DLNA server on my desktop computer and

• I can select the movie I want to play from the TV’s menu
• I can start playing the movie on my TV pressing a button on my computer using AllShare or Windows Media Player.

Smartphones have the same capabilities. Moreover

• I can start playing a movie on the TV from my computer pressing a button on my smart phone
• I can control the TV from the smart phone as a TV remote (needs special app on your phone)

You can by a NAS with DLNA support and you will have an always online media server without noisy fans.

HDMI

Connecting a HDMI cable to the TV and the computer, means the computer’s desktop can be displayed on the TV, in excellent quality.

Even the sound can be redirected to the TV’s speakers or sound system. Just open the sound playback devices and set the TV as the default sound device.

If your TV supports HDMI Ethernet channel, you can use your TV as a(n Internet) router for multimedia device (blue-ray player etc.).

Smart features

I have access to a Samsung smart TV. It has an Internet browser and apps can be downloaded from a store. There are some useful apps like online radio and TV  channel guide, but the most useful app is the Internet browser. It has Flash support and loads most of the websites I tried to visit.

For better experience I suggest you to buy a wireless keyboard and mouse. There are multimedia keyboards combining these devices into a small device just like a game controller.

Less CSS and IIS 7

In case you are using Less CSS to generate CSS markups, IIS won’t find your .less files by default. You will get a 404 Not Found error. The problem is the missing MIME type.

The solution is simple, just register the MIME type for .less in web.config:

<system.webServer>
  <staticContent>
    <mimeMap fileExtension=".less" mimeType="text/css"/>
  </staticContent>
</system.webServer>

jQuery and DOM dimension measurement

I had to rewrite a code that used standard DOM functions (like offsetWidth) to jQuery functions (like outerWidth).
This is a simple document visually summarizing the differences.

Link: jQuery HMTL with height cheat sheet (DOCX)
Link: jQuery HMTL with height cheat sheet (PDF)

Pin m3u to taskbar

I wanted to pin (keep permanently) some .m3u files to my taskbar. A lot of radios publish their live streams in .m3u files and I could have listened to them with just one click.

It is really simple in case of Windows 7. Just drag and drop the .m3u files to the taskbar (to an empty area) and these files will appear in the pin list of their default program. In my case this program is Media Player Classic.

This is a great feature of Windows 7!

Autofill TFS password on Codeplex

  I hate filling in TFS credentials every time I connect to TFS server on Codeplex. I’ve just found an easy way to automate it.

Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows 7 have a new component called Credential Manager. You can store Windows, Certificate-based and Generic credentials. It means these credentials can be automatically provided by Windows on request. So you just simply don’t have to type them in every time you log on somewhere.

Codeplex

These are the steps to automate the Codeplex login process:

1. Open Credential Manager
2. Choose Add a Windows credential
3. Specify the Codeplex server name at Internet or network address, fill in the rest
4. Click OK
5. Open your TFS project

You won’t be prompted for credentials anymore.

Avast and Chrome hangs

I’ve run out of NOD32 license so I’ve downloaded Avast Home/Professional version. It is friendly, fast and seems to know a lot. So I’ve installed it and I was totally happy.

After a while Chrome started crashing randomly. I couldn’t even kill chrome process, not even with Process Explorer. Restarts helped, but just for a while.

I found forums about the same symptoms with Firefox, and a few with Internet Explorer. I’ve already uninstalled Avast and I’m moving back to NOD32. Safe, fast and simply works. I will never use free antivirus software again.

3D Studio Max on Vista

I tried to run 3D Studio Max 9 on Vista but it just crashed. Autodesk does not support Vista in this version. There is a really simple solution:

1. Find 3dsmax.exe in the installation directory
2. Open Properties window (right click on the file and select Properties)
3. Select Compatibility tab
4. In the Compatibility mode section select Run this program in compatibility mode for checkbox
5. Select Windows XP (Service Pack 2) in the dropdown control
6. In the Settings section select Disable desktop composition
7. In the Privilege level section select Run this program as an administrator
8. Click OK

Now 3DS Max should run without any problem.

Earth Hour – 28/03/2009

Earth Hour will be today at 8:30pm local time. Non-essential lights and electrical appliances will be turned off for one hour. I’m not sure it is very useful, but at least it turns attention to climate change.

Some websites change their design from colorful to black (like Blackle). Some of the advertise themselves as energy savers. Well, I’m not sure about it. It used to be useful in the age of cathode ray tube (CRT) displays. Black color used much less energy compared to white color. Unfortunately liquid crystal displays (LCD) employ a totally different  technology: they covers light to display dark colors. It means it doesn't matter the color you are displaying, the energy cost will be almost the same (or even more).

So use black background if you are using CRT displays – and use whatever color you favor if you are using LCD display.

And take part in Earth Hour if you wish. Probably I will. Turn off what you can for an hour at 8:30pm local time.

ASP.NET Membership Configuration

I’m using ASP.NET membership provider to manage ASP.NET users and roles. I’m using IIS 7. I can say just one thing: use IIS 7!!! You can manage the whole ASP.NET membership task from IIS7 MMC.

The best part: it gives much more information about errors compared to ASP.NET Configuration web-based configuration editor. I’ve extended the schema with own tables and I made a wrong constraint so I couldn’t create new users. I got a generic error message in web-based configuration editor tool. I got a specific error message in IIS 7. I couldn’t have traced back the error to the database without IIS 7 (or just with huge effort).

Moonlight 1.0

I’ve just seen that Novell published Moonlight 1.0, the open source implementation of Silverlight for Linux. It’s very good for everyone, I can see just one problem: it’s Silverlight 1.0 implementation. Microsoft Silverlight is now in version 2.0.

Can Novell follow (or catch) Microsoft? They can, but it seems to me that they are unable to follow them fast enough. They are late with almost a whole version. And that’s too much for me.

Link: Moonlight 1.0 brings Silverlight to Linux

International Internet censorship

I've just read that the government of UK is contacting the government of US to create an international Internet censorship system. I was really happy when I read it first. I read the whole article after that and I wasn't happy at all.
They want to create a classification system for all the sites and make the ISPs to force the classification and remove 'improper' sites and pages.

I was happy because I think there should be a strong control over the pages kids can access. There should be strong control over pages that contain illegal content. But these should be categorized by an independent judge considering laws, not a group of people with morale influences.

Let's take the most recent case with Facebook.com. They don't allow images about moms breastfeeding their babies. It's OK from their point of view and they own the web application. On the other hand there is no law against such images and there are laws in many states of the US that moms can breast-feed babies in public places. It's their choice. Imagine that some group of people in an 'Internet Censorship Board' would take the same step.

I would be happy with a system that would build up as follows:

• Sites should rate themselves (or by something like the Certificate Authorities)
• Intentional misratings should be punished somehow (by the law, blacklisting or something like that if it's needed)
• There should be applications built into the browsers or standalone versions that can filter content by these ratings

If you look at popular sites dealing with sexuality they usually mark themselves somehow. A standard is missing and I think it should be an open standard.