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Steve Bass's Weekly Newsletter
TechBite's columnist Steve Bass writes weekly commentary on the technology products he loves, the strategies for getting the most out of them, and the gotchas that can cause computing misery. Plus a couple of weekly laughs.
Stream Movies from Your PC to Your TV
In This Issue
Note from Steve
Watching Downloaded Movies on Your TV
Making the PC-to-TV Connection
Connections: Pros and Cons
How Well Do They Work?
MediaGate MG-800HD
Sling Media Sling Catcher
Follow-up: Secunia PCI Install Problems
Time Wasters
My Home Phone Number
Note from Steve
This is a long newsletter. It's technical and at times downright complicated. [I never knew I had attention deficit disorder until I started reading about media streaming devices. --Tech Edit.]
I know some of you are going to skip right down to the time wasters (nothing unusual right?). At the same time, I get e-mail kvetching that I'm not writing enough about technology. So there it is: I ain't gonna satisfy everyone. And in a way, that's the pleasure in doing my own newsletter: I write for myself, sharing with you what gives me a kick in the pants, and take delight when some of you enjoy coming along for the ride. Even if I'm a day late.
Enough editorializing. Here's my long, tedious, sometimes boring newsletter about the new way to watch TV. And next week, who knows, the newsletter may be shorter. [top]
Watching Downloaded Movies on Your TV
"Watch movies on my PC? No way." I was talking to one of my cousins, not one of the brightest bulbs in the family. It took me a few minutes to explain how he could send downloaded movies -- as well as other Internet content, such as TV shows -- to the TV in his living room.
For the last few months, I've tried two devices that sit near your TV and grab video content from your PC. Even in this dreadful economy, neither one I tried is terribly expensive -- and there are no monthly charges.
Over the next couple of weeks I'll explain how these media streaming devices work. To help you decide if you want one, I'll talk about the pros and cons of how each model works, and some of the setup hurdles. I'll also show you where to get movies and other video content, both legal and -- hold onto your seat -- illegal.
This week I'll cover the hardware; next week I'll tell you where to find movies and TV shows on the Internet. I'll also tell you about a MediaGate portable media player. [top]
Making the PC-to-TV Connection
I tried two devices: Sling Media's $200 SlingCatcher, and MediaGate's MG-800HD, about $240 discounted. I'll have specs and descriptions for you in a minute. Of the two, the MG-800HD is the hands-down winner.
The two are roughly the size of an external hard drive and come with remote controls with the usual array of features; the MediaGate includes bookmarking and fast-forward to speeds of 16X. Each device connects to your TV using component, composite, S-Video, or (if you have a hoity-toity big screen) HDMI inputs, and each supports both standard Pal and high-definition video, up to 1080i.
Audio-out is a typical left-right stereo or (if your TV has it) coaxial or optical digital. Each device has USB and network inputs, and supports Windows XP and Vista. [top]
Connections: Pros and Cons
Understanding the five ways these products--and others like them--push a movie from the PC to your TV will help you understand which one is the best fit for you.
External Hard Drive: Copy the video files onto an external hard drive or Flash drive, and connect it to the device's USB port.
Positives: About the easiest method -- literally plug and play. The movie starts almost immediately. The hard drive can store lots of movies; the size of the Flash drive limits you.
Negatives: You'll need to buy an external drive, or Flash drive, and schlep it to your computer to delete movies you've watched and refill it with new movies; the drive can be noisy. [top]
Internal Hard Drive: Install a hard drive into the device.
Positives: Installing the drive isn't difficult; again, the drive can store lots of movies and the movie starts almost immediately. It's handy to take the device with you to, say, a hotel, or a friend's house, and connect it to their TV to watch movies. (You can do this with an external hard drive, too, but it's not as convenient.)
Negatives: You'll need to buy a hard drive-- mine is 40GBs; detaching the device from the TV and bringing it to your PC to load more movies is a hassle; the drive, and small fan in the device, can be noisy. [top]
Hard-wired Network: Movies are sent from your PC or server over your network, hard-wired from your router, using standard network CAT 5 wiring.
Positives: You don't need an extra internal or external hard drive; all file management is done on your PC; with a network connection, and access to the Internet, you watch YouTube and view other content directly from the Internet.
Negatives: You'll need to have a network cable running from your router to the device at the TV. Configuring the device to recognize the network ranges from a five-minute job to being lengthy and challenging. You'll also need to have an available port on your router. [top]
Wireless Network: Movies are on your PC or server and beamed over your wireless network.
Positives: You don't have to crawl under the house to lay cable; as with the wired network, you won't need an internal or external hard drive; all file management is done on your PC; access to Internet content.
Negatives: Like the hard-wired option, setup can be difficult -- or surprisingly easy -- depending on your computing skills and the complexity of your network. Streaming can sometimes stutter if the distance between your Wi-Fi router and the device is great, or if there are walls blocking the signal. [top]
Screen Capture: Whatever is displayed on the PC's monitor is captured and streamed to the TV.
Positives: The device doesn't need codecs, so you can watch any video that displays on your PC's monitor -- YouTube, Windows Media Player output, Netflix streaming video, and even PowerPoint presentations. (For details on codecs, read A Fix for "My Video Won't Play!"). Installing the device is straightforward.
Negatives: You'll need to have a network cable running from your router to the device at the TV; Wi-Fi isn't available. Poor-quality video on the PC looks worse when displayed on the TV. The PC has to be turned on and you have to start capture software from the PC; it takes a while to get used to the interface. [top]
How Well Do They Work?
MediaGate MG-800HD: MediaGate's device gives you lots of ways to get movies, pictures, and music to your TV. Here's the stunner: When you finally get the MG-800HD configured correctly, it works as advertised.
The MediaGate MG-800HD
When I first tried the MG-800HD, it found all the PCs on the network -- mine, Judy's, and my test notebook -- but it couldn't locate my network server. That was essential, because that's where I store everything I want to watch.
Even after five years designing and manufacturing network media adapters, MediaGate sometimes releases products before they're fully tested and ready for consumers. As late as spring 2009 -- four months after the MG-800HD was released -- MediaGate was still getting user complaints and releasing firmware updates. The help I received on MediaGate's forum was terrific (thanks, guys), but it took a July firmware upgrade to solve my problem. [top]
Nonetheless, the MG-800HD works perfectly and it's a beauty. Accessing the network is fast and pictures are clear and sharp, With its Internet connection, I can scroll around YouTube and watch videos, play music from Live365, and tune in to Internet TV. Of course, now that the novelty of all that has worn off, all I do is watch movies and TV shows. And boy is that fun.
Not everything's perfect. The remote is functional, but designed by the same orangutan who worked on the SlingCatcher's remote (as you'll read about in a sec). The layout isn't smart. For instance, two of the buttons surrounding the Play/Pause button (see red arrows in image below) should control the volume. Instead, the bottoms stop the video and start the next (or previous) video. Unlike previous models MediaGate has released, the remotes allowed bookmarking anywhere within the video. This one automatically bookmarks when I close the file. And previous models allowed fast-forward to speeds of 32X, this one's limited to 16X [top]
MediaGate's remote designers ought
to go into another business.
You have lots of ways to connect the MG-800HD to your TV: Composite, S-Video, HD components (Y, Pb, Pr at 480p, 720p, or 1080i), or HDMI (480p, 720p, 1080i, or 1080p). If you don't have an HDTV, you can get away with the typical composite using an included yellow, white, and red cable. The MG-800HD supports 5.1 surround sound using the SPDIF digital audio output. And here's a surprise: Because it's connected to the Internet, it can also act as a BitTorrent client.
The delicious thing about the MG-800HD, in addition to being able to play high-definition video, is the number of video formats it supports. The standard ones are no biggie: .avi, .wmv, most versions of .mpg, .mp4, .asf, .m2ts, .mov, DivX, and H264 .avi. It can also play directly from .iso, .vob, .ifo, .tp, and .ts files. New to the 800HD is the ability to play the .mkv format, an alternative to .avi and .mp4, and more commonly seen; MediaGate has also licensed the RMVB codec from RealVideo. What all this gobbledygook means is the MG-800HD plays nearly everything you throw at it. [top]
The MG-800HD gives you five ways to connect to the outside world. The easiest is to copy the videos onto an external hard drive and bring it into the room where the MG-800HD is connected to your TV. Connect the external drive to the MG-800HD's USB 2.0 port, turn everything on, and start watching.
If you have an extra internal SATA or IDE drive, install it inside the MG-800HD. Copy movies from your PC to the MG-800HD and connect it to the TV.
If your network's hard-wired, and you have a cable near the TV, you can use it to connect to the MG-800HD. It can also handle a Wi-Fi signal. My Wi-Fi router is close to the TV -- about 25 feet -- so the wireless signal was as good as when I used the hard-wired connection. Regrettably, the Bass International disclaimer is in effect: Mileage varies, so there's no way to guarantee how your wireless connection will perform.
By the way, the MG-800HD's predecessor, the MG-450HD, may be a cheaper alternative, if you can find one for sale. It has fewer codecs, and it doesn't have Wi-Fi capabilities, but it's adequate for most people. And it has a better remote. [top]
Sling Media SlingCatcher: The SlingCatcher, using Sling Media's SlingProjector feature, lets you play whatever's on your PC's monitor on your TV, and control it from the couch. So if you're a Netflix subscriber, for instance, you can use its Play Instantly feature.
SlingCatcher with silly remote control
On the PC side, Sling Media recommends the maximum video window size (not screen resolution) to capture is 1024 by 768, but 800 by 600 is best. You'll need a fast PC: a 1.6-GHz Intel Core Duo CPU or 3-GHz Pentium IV with at least 1 GB RAM. SlingCatcher doesn't capture Blu-ray video and it won't work on 64-bit versions of Vista. It plays on the TV full-screen and the display quality is most times excellent, but depending on the source video, it can be just fair.
The SlingProjector software has to be downloaded because isn't included with the
SlingCatcher package. It took me about 20 minutes to configure the software and another 20 to understand how to use it. It really wasn't all that traumatic.
It's clear that the engineer who designed the remote hasn't actually used it, and that was disappointing. The remote is V-shaped and awkward to use; it doesn't sit comfortably in my hand. It functions flawlessly, though, because I can control the playback of the video on my PC just by pointing to the SlingCatcher.
The showstopper for some of you is the device requires a hard-wired network connection and a free port on your router. Silly, but true: It doesn't have Wi-Fi capabilities (which even my next microwave oven probably will). [top]
Another downside is the SlingCatcher uses old technology. It was released early in 2009, but was in development for a couple of years before that, so it's missing the ability to stream videos from your PC or server, as the MediaGate device can. While it can play videos from an external drive or Flash drive (which, amazingly, needs FAT32 formatting), it doesn't have enough built-in video file formats to satisfy technophiles like me. It supports media formats, including WMV, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264 and Xvid, and handles other mainstream files such as .avi, .vob, .mpg, .mov, and .wma. But oddballs -- .mkv, say -- are beyond its capabilities.
Yet for $199 (down from $300, on the Sling site no less, and probably lower through discounters), the SlingCatcher does a great job at streaming video from your PC's screen.
Next week: MediaGate's latest portable media player, where to pick up movies and TV shows. [top]
Follow-up: Secunia PSI Install Problems
Some of you had trouble installing Secunia PSI, the slick, free tool that checks to see if your system needs security updates. (See Tool of the Week: Secunia PSI.) The problem seemed to occur with people who use an older browser (if you're curious, see Why do I get NSIS Error).
The company responded to my e-mail, tweaked the install program, and sent me a new link. Click ftp://ftp.secunia.com/PSISetup.exe (or copy and paste into your browser) and you're good to go. [top]
Time Wasters
An addicting game, clever hot air balloons, bike riding skills you'll envy, weird BBQ grills, and Dilbert.
It's oh-so-simple. Walk the robot through the maze using your cursor keys. Along the way, touch a clock for extra time, a key to open the door to the next level, hammers to break through inconvenient walls, and maps to show you the entire maze. Those maps are important because I promise you're going to get lost.
Just walk the robot through the maze and
get to the next level by getting a key.
The hammer works
great on knocking through walls.
Bike Riding 101 is six minutes of amazing bicycle stunts. I'll bet you never rode your bike like this as a kid. (I know I didn't...)
Even run-of-the-mill hot air balloons are fun, but these balloons are way more interesting because the designers went a little berserk.
Got milk? Sure but some hot
air might be better.
I'm a charcoal guy. Propane's good for wimps and people who aren't willing to get their eyebrows singed [Hello, Carl!]. So I can't help but wonder what a gas-guy would do if confronted with one of these big, weird, and ultra-cool BBQ grills.
Having a few friends over for a BBQ? Impress
them with one of these rigs.
You think the guy in the cube next to you has a problem with underarm perspiration? Nope, no way. Check out the guy in this commercial...
Dilbert, whose boss reminds me of someone I used to work with, sometimes makes me laugh out loud. [top]
My Home Phone Number
If you have any questions about either of media streaming devices, just give me a buzz. LOL--yeah, right. That was just a ruse to make sure you headed down here to check. But listen, while you're here, do me a favor. Yeah, you know the pitch. Forward this newsletter to your plumber, electrician, and general contractor (if you're still on speaking terms), and tell them what they're missing by not subscribing to the TechBite newsletter. If you can't forward it, point them to this subscription page: http://www.techbite.com. By the way, if you're enjoying this newsletter and getting something out of it, become a TechBite member by sending us some financial support using PayPal. I promise, good things will eventually come your way... [top]
___________
Steve Bass is the publisher and self-appointed Chief Content Officer at TechBite; he continues to experience the cool feeling of having his own newsletter. Send him your feedback at TechBite. To sign up for TechBite's free Steve Bass Technology newsletter, head for our signup page.
Steve's also the author of "PC Annoyances, 2nd Edition: How to Fix the Most Annoying Things About Your Personal Computer," available on Amazon. It covers XP, but not Vista. If you haven't purchased your copy today, don't wait, supplies are limited...
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