The world as frankps sees it!
Linux
Free as in what?
Intel has launched their Mobile & Internet Linux Project website
0Hearing that Intel now has a relatively fond view of Linux is far from surprising, as they have a tradition for giving out specs for their hardware and even make open source drivers. The chipmaker also has quite a few open-source projects. To help consolidate its efforts and spearhead future developments, Intel has apparently launched the Mobile & Internet Linux Project website, which showcases a number of ideas to improve “power management, user interfaces, use of wireless networks, web browsing, chatting, and software development for mobile devices.” Sadly Intel has not chosen Qtopia, but GTK and is reportedly hoping to garner interest from external programmers such as those found at Canonical and Red Flag Linux, who have both signed on already for the ride.
I still belive that Qtopia is a better choice for embedded linux distrobutions, but see that more and more companies choose GTK. When having said that, the mockup or screenshot from their test device is absolutly gorgouse. Telepathy for chatting seems not to be a bad choice, as it is based on the open standard XMPP, also found in Google Talk. Their choice of using the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine on the other hand seems to me to be a horrible move. It appears to be to massive. A better choice would surely have been Apple’s open source Webkit.
Google buys Marratech
0First time I read it, I wasn’t sure if Google had just bought a couple licenses for internal use. But NO, they have bought the company.
I’m still in a little bit of a WOW mode, cause my favourite and IM client is Google Talk (I have even translated it to Norwegian) and the pro internet collaboration solution has been Marratech. I am not sure if Google will combine them in to one solution, I hope that they can excist in parallell with a thight integration. For those who don’t know Marratech, they have a JAVA client that can be freely downloaded for MacOS X, Linux and Windows (not working on Vista yet… ). But to get it working, you will have to buy a server license meeting your needs (several different licenses are available). The solution supports voice, video (also H.264) and chat, and also has a nice whiteboard and share desktop solution integrated. Mac users can use their external or inbuilt iSight camera.
You can contact me on Google Talk from within this site.
DVB-T with H.264 (MPEG-4)
74 years ago
Please get your coffee cup before you start reading this blog entry, cause this is a longer one…
Introduction
I haven’t been playing with DVB-T for a while, and when Marcus Overhagen open-sourced his DVB-T work to the Haiku-OS project, I wanted to see how the test broadcasts where coming along in Norway. I knew that Norway was not to use MPEG-2, but instead go for H.264 (MPEG-4). It turned out that NTV already had switched their test broadcasts from the Tryvann antenna to the new and better codec some time end of March.
More or less at the same time Golem.de published:
Nachzügler: Norwegen bekommt das bessere DVB-T
Mit MPEG-4 AVC und aacPlus zum terrestrischen Digitalfernsehen
Yes, Norway was to get better DVB-T then Germany. Well, a better technical solution. Norway already had better DVB-T when NTV did test broadcasts with MPEG-2. NRK often got broadcasted with 9 Mbps while German channels typically got broadcasted 2,5-3 Mbps. This basically ment that the pictures from NRK were of a much higher quality, the German channels looked like a movie from a well-used VHS cassette. The reason for this is simply the available bandwidth, and that German suppliers chose to push more channels to consumers. If Norway had gone for MPEG-2 we would probably had done the same mistake. In short, Norway chose to implement a digital terrestrical HD (High Definition) TV and Germany a SD (Standard Definition) TV, something that will make a significant difference now that more and more people get their HD-Ready flat-panel TVs! The test broadcasts are still only SDTV, but NTV/RiksTV will hopefully move fast on to providing a few channels in HDTV (720p/1080i).
It’s all German software
Coding Technologies
The Golem article links to a Nürnberg-based company Coding Technologies. The company specialises in audio codecs for mobile, digital bradcasting and Internet, and seems to be the company that is to deliver the audio codec that NTV has chosen to implement, aacPlus. My first thought was: “Not again, yet another audio codec. Why couldn’t they just go for MPEGSurround?”. But having read about the codec and listened to some of the many radio stations (with the latest VLC/Winamp) that already broadcast in this format, I am convinced that NTV did the right decission. The aacPlus (HE-AAC, High Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding) codec is fully standardized in MPEG-4 and capable of delivering stereo CD quality at 48 Kbps and 5.1 surround sound at 128 Kbps. Also 7.1 is possible. As HE-AAC is supported in the open source FAAD/FAAD2 decoding library, my hope is that Haiku-OS can get it implemented fairly soon.
CyberLink
RiksTV will still only have test sendings till some time in September this year, and only the govermental TV channels NRK1 and NRK2 are freely available. You already need a subscription card (not publicly available) to receive broadcasts from TV2 and TVN (TV Norge). To test the solution you need to get hold of the H.264 codec. There are many commercial codecs available, and sadly most of them cost far to much! Luckily I already have H.264, as I have bought the latest version of CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra Ed (for HD DVD). Here is why you should consider buying exactly CyberLink’s codec, for a US $ 100 you get both the codec, a DVD, HD DVD and Blueray playback software. I don’t know of any better deal!
DVBViewer
I then bought DVBViewer (for 15€), a really impressive TV software made by Bernd Hackbart. Worth every cent (penny) I paid! The viewer is one of the few solutions that allows you to experience Digital TV on your PC. I have for instance not been capable of watching DVB-T with H.264 directly from Windows Media Center in Vista. Nor have I been able to use Hauppauge’s own viewer.
Hardware
Elgato EyeTV Hybrid
When it comes to hardware, I have managed to receive the NRK broadcasts with the USB adapter Elgato eyetv hybrid, which actually is nothing else then a Hauppauge WinTV HVR-900, so drivers are available for both Windows XP and Vista. I chose Elgato simply cause my main home machine is a Macbook Pro. Sadly, I haven’t got around to try receiving H.264 broadcasts on my Mac with eyetv.
Lenovo T60
The first machine I tested was a Lenovo T60 (Intel Core 2 Duo 2500 running at 2 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 64 MB ATI Mobility Radeon X1300, 1400×1050 TFT) laptop running Vista Ultimate Edition. My experience was rather horrible, DVBViewer would be crashing as soon as you started another application or switched to another application to do some work. It would also just die after a few minutes even if it was the only application running. I still haven’t got a clue about what is causing it, Vista, Cyberlink’s H.264 codec, the Hauppauge driver or the DVBViewer?
Dell OptiPlex 745
I was quite disappointed, so I moved over to my work machine, a Dell OptiPlex 745 (Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 running at 2.13GHz, 1066MHz FSB with 2MB L2 cache, 2 GB RAM, ATI Radeon X1300 Pro PCIe 256MB, DVI) still running Windows XP. And WOW, rock solid, DVBViewer hasn’t died on me once!
User Experience
It is quite fun and interesting to see how much the data transfer has gone down, without the picture quality becoming worse! When NTV was broadcasting in MPEG-2, the data transfer was changing constantly, but often up to 9 Mbps. The “new” test broadcast of NRK in MPEG-4 only has a data transfer of 3,1 Mbps. Sadly the broadcast was only in 4:3 and not 16:9. Another problem that all early birds are having, is that none of us are getting any sound. DVBViewer isn’t capable of making use of the aacPlus codec, as it doesn’t find it. I haven’t found a way to show the viewer where the codec is installed. I have both Winamp and VLC installed, so the codec is there. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that DVBViewer is the problem, but I hope that the developer will manage to find a workaround for us. I can hardly wait to try the codec, as the “old” MPEG-1 was streaming with 256 Kbps and wasn’t bad at all! The new codec is streaming at the “impressive” 192 kbps.
With the “new” test broadcasts EPG (Electronic Program Guide) has also been implemented, so with DVBViewer you can read about the upcoming TV shows/programs and schedule your computer as a PVR.
I am looking forward to the day when I finally can show my cable company the finger and move on. I guess many others will do the same! But it all depends on the effort RiksTV is putting down in getting the best channels in their package of about 18-20 channels. Having 50 channels today, and only watching 6-7 of them on a regular basis says a lot!
A few things in the end
I have a few questions that I would like to get answers on, even if I need to find the answers myself:
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Has somebody successfully been able to use the H.264 codec from the FFMPEG project?
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Has somebody successfully received the test broadcasts with a Mac or in Linux?
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Is somebody translating DVBViewer to Norwegian bokmål?
Don’t run out and buy yourself a DVB-T card/adapter for your computer. Most likely many of these cards will not be working satisfyingly in the Norwegian DTT network, as they are not manufactured after the specifications of the Norwegian DTT network. NTV/RiksTV are in the process of establishing test and certification of receivers to make it easier for consumers to choose what to buy.
Testing Lotus Notes 8 and Nokia PC Suite
104 years ago
For quite a while I have been reading about the next version of Notes and Domino 8 (perhaps you better know it under the code name Hannover?), and big was my surprise when they last week got announced as public beta. I have been running Lotus Notes 8 for almost a week now on my Vista desktop computer at home, connected to the university network and our Domino server. As I have understood it, Lotus Notes 8 comes in two versions: One made in C++ and the second one made in JAVA. This means that the Lotus Notes 8 client can run on many supported operating systems, including Windows, MacOS X and Linux. Sadly the public beta didn’t include a Mac version as writing this. The Linux distrobution that IBM supports, is Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (what a horrible long name!).
Sadly, I am still running Notes 8 with version 7 templates and cannot make use of many of the new functionalities. But the new client looks far more thought through and the new poolished look makes it a pleasant surprise to use. One of the most exciting things that I haven’t been able to test out yet, is that Notes 8 offers a standards-based work environment and features support for ODF (Open Document Format). With IBM Productivity Editors, users can create, edit and save a variety of documents in ODF, including word processing, spreadsheet and presentation documents. The Productivity Editors are said to allow users to import and export supported file formats used by Microsoft Office and Open Office file formats, edit those files, and save them in either the original format or as ODF documents. My question is what MS formats are supported? Is the support limited to Office 2003 or does it also support the new formats introduced with Office 2007?
As I am working a little bit from home, on a machine that I have already upgraded to Vista Enterprise, I didn’t manage to get Lotus Notes 7 working. With the public beta IBM only supports Windows XP, but I had no problems installing it on Vista. Configuring it afterwards went as a breeze. It was done in less then a minute, and then I was accessing our Domino servers.You might have already read that I recently bought my first Nokia phone in years, the E60. One of the reasons for doing so, was Nokia’s brilliant syncronization tool PC Suite. It works brilliantly with Vista, I haven’t ran in to any problems with it. It is the first syncronization tool to sync with Vista’s new Contacts solution (which reminds me very much of People in BeOS!), and it also works with Outlook and Lotus Notes 7.x. I am writing 7.x as I am only using Notes 8 with version 7 templates as mentioned earlier.
I was out drinking beer with some of my friends the other day, and we got in to discussions about various collaboration tools, and one started complaining about how bad Lotus Notes was as an email client. It turned out that it was one functionality he was missing, and that was capabilities for users to view incoming e-mail by “conversations,” with related messages appearing together to streamline communications. Well, it’s included in Notes 8!More important for me is the implementation of a simple RSS-reader. This not something big, but simply nice as I can now add corporate newsfeeds in to my Notes environment. It means that I can get news about the services that the central computer department is running next to my calendar and todo list. Making it far easier for me to priortise my work.
Dell Machines With Linux As An Option
04 years ago
One of the reasons why I went out of the BeOS community, was the lack of commercial interests in the platform. There is close to no interest in the platform from the hardware vendors. And guess what, this is not to change. What is to change, is that more and more hardware vendors will come with official Linux support.
One of the bigger and recent examples are Dell:
It’s exciting to see the IdeaStorm community’s interest in open source solutions like Linux and OpenOffice. Your feedback has been all about flexibility and we have seen a consistent request to provide platforms that allow people to install their operating system of choice. We are listening, and as a result, we are working with Novell to certify our corporate client products for Linux, including our OptiPlex desktops, Latitude notebooks and Dell Precision workstations. This is another step towards ensuring that our customers have a good experience with Linux on our systems.
You can say what you want about the Novell / Microsoft deal, but there is a reason why Dell chose Novell for their business models. The deal is also the main reason why I chose to install the latest OpenSUSE on my AMD64 desktop machine at home. Perhaps Dell later will add the option to choose Ubuntu and Redhat later, I sure hope so. But I wouldn’t count on it.
Cool also to see that Dell will add some open source software as an option. I truely believe that OpenOffice is a better option then MS Works.