November 2005 - Posts
As I mentioned earlier this week, I'm working hard on getting all of the media in our house digitized and avaialble all of the places we watch TV (living room, office, home theater). I've been hoping that the Xbox 360 would serve as the perfect device for accessing media in the living room (in addition to playing games). Well, it looks like I can forget about that idea...
Today I came across this article:
In summary, you can only watch video from two sources on the 360:
- Downloaded from Xbox Live Marketplace (I don't even know what that is...)
- Streamed from a Windows Media Center 2005 PC (WMV and MPG2 files ONLY!!!)
So, there is no way to watch DIVX or XVID files from the 360...and no way to watch any video files streamed from a PC running Windows Media Connect.
Man, what a disappointment...the device is absolutely capable of doing it, but the options simply aren't there.
I guess the search for the ideal living room device continues...
What's the number one requirement overlooked on most corporate line of business (LOB) application development projects...I say it's reporting. Most businesses can't answer fundamental questions about the data flowing through their systems becuase they don't have a reporting infrastructure in place to collect, analyze, and present data to the end users.
On most projects reporting it at most an afterthought. Once the system is up and running development might be asked to put together a couple of quick reports that will provide at most a cursory view of the data the system is generating. Businesses need more than this. They need a deep understanding of the data if they are going to make the right decisions.
Ever wonder why Walmart has lower prices than other stores? Well, there is no one answer to that question, but one answer is their investment in analyzing and understanding their data. They do a better job of collecting and analyzing data then their competitors which allows them to operate their business more efficiently and effectively than their competitors.
The military has a term that comes to mind whenever I talk about reporting - Situational Awareness. There is a great defintion here:
Situational Awareness is the ability to identify, process, and comprehend the critical elements of information about what is happening to the team with regards to the mission. More simply, it’s knowing what is going on around you.
This concept is more applicable than ever to business environments. Having the ability to access and understand the data your business is producing is crucial to success.
I was an Accounting major in college...analyzing and understanding numbers has always fascinated me. Recently I've been taking a look at the new reporting and data analysis tools Microsoft has provided with SQL Server 2005. The tools really are remarkable...if you haven't taken a look at them yet, take a few minutes to walk through some of the demos for Analysis Services, Integration Services, and Reporting Services.
Reporting needs to be promoted to first class citizen status when it comes to corporate LOB projects. The companies that do this will continue to have an advantage over their less well informed competitors.
Over the past 2 years I've been on a quest to get our media in the house 100% digital and PC accessible. Music was pretty straightforward...rip everything to an electronic format and get it on a share. Took a few weeks, but toughest part was choosing WMA or MP3 (I went WMA).
Movies were next and were a lot more work. First I had to learn how to rip movies...not an easy task, but not too bad with tools like AutoGK. The second challange was figuing out how to watch the ripped movies in the living room. I went through several options here (some legal, some not so legal...), but settled on a D-Link DSM-320. It struggles a bit with high bit rate movies, but overall does a nice job. They have since come out with DSM-520 which should address the issues with high bit rate movies, but I haven't tried it.
The last thing I tackled was TV. Here I took a look at Windows Media Center, Beyond TV, and Sage TV. All three packages essentially turn your PC into a full featured DVR. I ultimately settled on Beyond TV becuase it offered some key features that Media Cetner did not:
- A software extender that allows me to watch live or recorded shows from any PC in the house (we currently have 3 desktops and 2 laptops...).
- The ability to auto-compress recorded shows (to WMV files). This makes it easy to take shows with me when I travel.
- Web programming...I can setup recording from any PC that can access the Web.
Media Center a REALLY close second and had some killer features that BeyondTV did not...namely support for OTA HDTV and a full media browser interface. HDTV support really was the killer. I have an ATI All in Wonder HDTV card, so I was ready for HD in terms of hardware. I stuck with Beyond TV because of the software extended. The ability to watch TV from my PC at home was killer for me.
Snapstream released v4.0 of Beyond TV last week and they added in one big new feature - support for HDTV (OTA only...). I upgarded over teh weekend and overall am very happy with the product. I now have a single program guide that gives me access to SD programming via DirectTV and HD programming avaialble in Chicago. It does all the things you would expect of a full-featured DRV; watch one show while recording another, pause live SD or HD shows, etc... I highly reccomend Beyond TV if you are looking to do a PC based DVR.
The only 'complaint' I have is that I can not get the software extender to work for HD material on my desktop. Based on the support forums, it looks like there is an issue with running the Link software on a PC with an nVidia 6600GT card. Hopefully they will have a fix for this soon...otherwise it might be time for a new vdeo card.
One of the things I've been working on over the past few months will be shown off today. Clarity built the demos for the Steve Ballmer keynote address at the VS/SQL 2005 launch event today in San Francisco and I was the Engagement Director for the project. We built the 'Get Down Digital' demos that will be shown in the keynote today and during the opening keynote at each of the launch events around the world.
Building demos can be a frustrating/challenging process. We basically had 12 minutes of demo time to show off the work of thousands of MS employees over the past 5 years. Obviously not an easy task...hopefully what we came up with will do the product justice...Microsoft truly has delivered some remarkable products today.
You can watch today's event live or delayed here:
http://www.microsoft.com/emea/steveballmerlive/