Can I Cancel Cable TV?
on October 19th, 2009I don’t know about you, but I would love to cancel my Cable TV and just use a computer and the internet to get programming. Preferably free. It seems like we are getting closer to that, but how close are we?
We’ve done articles in this newsletter about Home Theater PC’s. In case you missed those articles, a Home Theater PC is a computer that is connected to a projector or TV and to the internet. It is used to obtain or record and also play back media like video and music. Video includes TV shows and movies.
Here’s what’s a Home Theater PC can do today.
A home theater PC (HTPC) can play music CD’s and movie DVD’s. Most PC’s can do this.
Your HTPC can act as a media server. Store all of your media there and share it. Then any computer in the house can access it. Other TV’s in the house can access it if you purchase and connect a media sharing device that lets you access media on your HTPC.
You can go to websites like YouTube and Hulu to watch videos and TV shows on your HTPC. You can also watch TV shows on the network websites. But not all shows are available and there is often a delay of days to weeks before you can see them.
You can install a TV tuner that will not only allow you to watch TV shows, but will also act as a DVR so you can record and playback. If you hook an antenna up to it, you can only get over the air stations. You can hook cable TV up to it, but you can really only get basic cable this way.
As far as movies go, services like Netflix are starting to offer the ability to stream movies to your computer. So if you are a Netflix subscriber, you can watch some movies that way.
There are ways to download music, TV shows, and movies and watch those on your HTPC free of charge, but by doing this you are violating the copyright on that media. You can be sued for this.
In a nutshell, we aren’t there yet. We are just part of the way there. Without cable or satellite TV, you can’t watch any stations other than local broadcast channels. You might be able to see the shows after the fact, but then again, you might now as all shows are not available.
If you only watch network TV, then an HTPC would be great on its own. But for the rest of us, that’s not enough. Not yet, anyway.
Streaming Versus Downloading Media
on September 18th, 2009
When you access music and video over the internet, there are basically 2 ways you can get the content. Some content is streamed to your computer while other content is downloaded. It’s a good idea to understand the difference, so we are going to try and explain it in this article.
Actually, you probably already understand downloading. When you download Music or Video from the internet, you download a file to your computer. You can place that file on your computer wherever you want to. Then you can open that file and view or listen to the content. The file stays on your computer until you remove it. So you can generally come back and listen to or view it again and again.
Streaming, on the other hand, is different. When you access a media stream on the internet, no file is downloaded to your computer. The music or video comes in real time and is played real time. It’s not stored on your computer, so if you want to listen to it or view it again, you have to stream it again. It’s kind of like an on-demand live broadcast.
As you know, the most popular video website is YouTube. You may be wondering which of these models it uses. It uses downloading, but it downloads the file to a temporary location that’s hidden from view. Take a look at this picture:
This is from YouTube. You will see this at the bottom of any video you watch on YouTube. See the download position? That’s how much of the video has been downloaded to your computer. The playback position is where you are in the video as you play it back. If the playback position catches up to the download position, the video will pause and wait until it downloads some more of the video before it starts playing again. If you run into this a lot, you can either get a faster internet connection, or you can pause the playback yourself and wait for most (if not all) of the video to be downloaded and then play it.
If you come back and try and watch a YouTube video again, it may not have to download it again. It all depends on of that copy of the video is still in that temporary location or not. Those temporary files get cleaned out periodically.
An example of a type of website that uses streaming is any radio station website where you can listen to their live broadcast. Another example is hulu.com. On that website, you can watch TV episodes, movie trailers, and even a few movies.
If there is media content that you plan to watch or listen to over and over, then it would be a good idea to try and find a source for that where you can download it to your computer. Especially if you have a slow internet connection, or if you have bandwidth limitations on your internet connection.
Changes at Pandora
on July 16th, 2009If you listen to music on Pandora.com, you know what a great service it is. If you have never tried Pandora, it’s unique. You enter an artist or song, and it will play that music, and similar music. Of course, you need a high-speed internet connection. The cool thing about Pandora is that you can discover a lot of music that you weren’t exposed to before.
The reason I mention this is that Pandora recently announced some changes to Pandora’s service. Free users will now be limited to 40 hours of music per month. Previously, there was no limit. However, due to heavy licensing fees they have to pay, they are forced to implement this policy. If you are a free user and you hit the 40 hour limit in a particular month, you can either stop listening until next month, or you can pay $0.99 to get unlimited listening for the rest of the month.
Another option is to upgrade your Pandora membership from free to Pandora One. By doing this, you eliminate all advertising. You get higher quality audio (192 kps). You can download the Pandora player and use that to listen to music so you don’t have to use your web browser. You can personalize how Pandora looks too. It won’t stop every hour and ask you if you are still listening either. And, of course, you get unlimited play time. The cost of Pandora One is $36/year.
Record and Watch TV on Your Computer
on May 12th, 2009You already know that there are many websites you can go to and watch videos. You can watch most TV shows online at places like hulu.com or on any of the TV Network websites. But when you watch a TV show on a website like this, it often doesn’t look very good. It may not be a full screen picture. And there may be a lot of advertisements in it or around it. Another drawback is that it usually takes at least a day, and sometimes a week or two after a program has aired before you can watch it online.
Many people have cable or satellite TV and have something called a DVR. DVR stands for Digital Video Recorder. It allows you to easily record and watch TV shows. It’s kind of like recording and watching shows on video tape, but there are no tapes. It uses a hard drive that can store a lot of programming.
DVR’s have a lot of advantages. The biggest advantage, in my opinion, is that you can skip commercials. I rarely watch a TV program live anymore. I record it on my DVR and watch it later. Then, I can skip the commercials. It saves time and it makes for less of an interruption in the TV show. DVR’s also make it easy to record weekly TV shows. You can tell your DVR only to record the new episodes so it won’t record the repeats.
Basically, a DVR is a specialized computer. But you already have a computer. Can you turn your computer into a DVR? Of course! Here’s how!
First you need to know how the TV signal will be getting into your computer. Will you be connecting a cable TV to it or will you be connecting an antenna to it? Next you need a TV tuner for your computer. A TV Tuner can be a card that is installed on the inside of your computer, or it can be a box that sits on the outside of your computer and connects to your computer with a USB or FireWire cable. When you are selecting a TV Tuner for your computer, there are a few things to keep in mind.
1. If you will be feeding a cable TV signal into it, make sure you get one that supports Clear QAM. If you don’t, some channels will not come through.
2. A TV Tuner can usually support one or two signals simultaneously. If you want to be able to record one program and watch another one live, or record two programs at the same time, get a TV tuner with dual tuners.
3. Get a TV Tuner card that comes with a remote control so you can sit on the other side of the room and watch. That way you don’t have to be sitting right in front of your computer if you don’t want to.
4. Make sure you get one that supports HDTV. SDTV is going bye bye.
By the way, the most popular brand of TV Tuners for computers is from a company called Hauppage.
Once you have a TV Tuner and you have either an antenna or cable tv cable connected to it, then all you need is the right software. Most TV Tuner cards come with software. This software varies in function and quality. You should try the software that comes with yours to see if you like it. If you don’t like it, there are alternatives. You don’t have to use the software that came with your TV Tuner.
If your computer has Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate on it, then you already have some good software for this. Windows Media Center can do all of this. Don’t confuse this with Windows Media Player. They are two different pieces of software.
If you don’t like the software that came with your TV Tuner, and you either don’t have Vista, or don’t like Media Center, then a good choice is SageTV. In fact, sagetv.com can be your one stop shopping because you can purchase a bundle that includes a TV Tuner and SageTV software. For example, click here to see one of their bundles.
The possibilities are endless.
Pictures in an Email
on April 29th, 2009Many of us send and receive pictures attached to e-mail. But an e-mail can actually contain a picture embedded in the e-mail itself. Most commercial e-mail advertisements and newsletters are this way. These e-mails often look more like a web page than an e-mail. We sometimes embed pictures in this newsletter.
Most e-mail programs have the capability to block these embedded pictures and many of them do that by default. You might ask, “Why would I want to block pictures from my e-mail?” There are two reasons. One reason is that spam e-mail often contains offensive pictures like porn, for example.
Another reason is that an invisible picture can be embedded in an e-mail so that you don’t know it’s there. This invisible picture can notify the spammer that you opened the e-mail they sent you. This doesn’t allow the spammer to harvest any identifying information about you and it doesn’t infect your computer, but it does tell the spammer that your e-mail address is valid. And the problem with that is that once a spammer knows he has a valid e-mail address, he’s going to send lots of spam to it. In addition, he’s going to sell that address to other spammers. So the biggest reason to block images is to avoid getting more spam.
If your e-mail program is set to block images, when you display an e-mail, there is usually a button or link at the top of the e-mail message that gives you the option to unblock pictures for that e-mail. So if you get an e-mail from someone you trust, you can click that to view the pictures. Otherwise, they will be blocked.
If you don’t like that, you can change the options on your e-mail program so that it allows the pictures. If you do that, however, we recommend that you set your e-mail program so that it does not show a preview of e-mail messages. If you turn preview off (called reading pane in some e-mail programs), then to read an e-mail, you have to double-click on it.
If you use webmail like Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, or Gmail and you read your e-mail on a website, then you don’t use an e-mail program. Most webmail will allow pictures by default but if you look at e-mail in your junk mail folder, it will block them there.
Put Your Pictures to Music
on April 29th, 2009If you’ve got pictures on your computer, a fun thing to do is to create a slide show. And to make your slide show more enjoyable, you can add background music to it.
Your digital camera probably came with software that allows you to pull pictures from your camera, organize your pictures, edit your pictures, and so forth. Most of the software that comes with camera isn’t all that good. Some are better than others, but did you know that you do not have to use the software that came with your camera?
The highest rated software for organizing and editing photos is called Picasa. The best part is that Picasa is free. You can download it for free from Google by going to http://picasa.google.com. Picasa has a lot of features, but in this article I want to concentrate on how to create a slideshow with music playing in the background.
First, Picasa can only play music that is stored in mp3 or wma format. So make sure your music is in one of those formats. If you aren’t sure what format your music is in, look at the file name. All files in Windows end with a period and then three letters (or numbers). This is called the file extension. You can identify what kind of file something is by the file extension. So if your music files have a file extension of .mp3 or .wma, then Picasa can play them. There is a setting in Windows that may prevent it from showing you the file extension. If you don’t see any file extensions, then you can hold the mouse pointer over the file. Hold it there for a few seconds and it will tell you what kind of file it is. If it says MPEG Layer 3 Audio File, it’s an mp3. If it says Windows Media Audio File, it’s a WMA file. If it says anything else, it’s not in the right format for Picasa. You can go to Download.com and find a free audio converter to convert them.
To create a slide show with background music, select the pictures you want in your slide slow. Now right click on one of the selected pictures and choose “Add to Album” and then select “New Album”. Now you will get a window that asks you to give the album a name. Enter a name for the slide show. At the bottom of that window, put a checkmark next to “Use Music for Slideshow and Movie presentation” Now click the Browse button and select the music you want to play during your slide show and click Open. Now click OK. That’s it!
To view your slideshow with music, click the green play button. You can turn it into a movie by clicking the “Create Movie Presentation” button to the right of the play button. This will create a movie file. You only need to do this if you want to send the presentation to someone, or if you want to burn it to a DVD that can be used in a regular DVD player.
Picasa is a great photo organizer and it’s easy to create a simple slide show with music, but it’s very limited on what it can do. If you want to create a nice slide show movie with titles, text, effects, multiple songs with the flexibility to control each picture and each song, then try Windows Movie Maker. Windows Movie Maker comes with Windows XP and Vista, so you probably already have it.
Would you like to see a movie created using Windows Movie Maker? Click here. Scroll to the bottom, and play the bottom video. This video was created using Windows Movie Maker and is a combination of videos and pictures set to music.
For information on how to use Movie Maker, click here.
Playing Music on the Internet
on February 28th, 2009
You know you can purchase music on the internet from many places like Amazon.com, Walmart.com, Itunes.com, and many more. Once you purchase them, you can download them to your computer. At that point you can listen to them on your computer, or you can put them on your portable music player (mp3 player, ipod, smart phone, etc), or you can burn them to CD, or whatever.
But did you know you can listen to music for free on the Internet? So if you mostly listen to music on your computer, you can listen to all the music you want for free. You can’t put the music on your portable music player and you can’t burn them to CD, but you can listen to them on your computer.
There are many places you can do this, but my two favorite websites for listening to music are pandora.com and playlist.com. Both let you listen to music over the internet. But there is a big difference between the two.
Pandora asks you to enter the name of a song or artist. What it does then is to use that information to play songs or artists like the one you entered. If it plays a song or artist you don’t like, you can tell it to skip it and it learns from that so that in the future it won’t play songs or artists like the one you skip. This is a really good way to get exposed to other artists and songs you may not have heard before. I also find it interesting to type in the name of a song or artist and see what it starts playing. Pandor also has what it calls genre stations. You can specify a genre and it will play songs from that genre.
Are you in the mood for a certain type of song? Type in a song that fits that mood, and Pandora will play a lot of songs that fit that mood.
Playlist.com, on the other hand, gives you the ability to create a playlist. You have to specify all of the songs you want to hear. You create a playlist, and playlist.com plays it for you. Simple. Of course, you can save your playlists and play them whenever you want, from any internet connected computer you want. You can build a playlist for different moods or different types of music, or whatever you want.
Something else that playlist.com is good for is to play a specific song for a friend. Let’s say you ask a friend if they heard a new song called “Computer Talk” They say they are not sure. All you have to do is go to playlist.com and type in “Computer Talk” and then play them the song. Then they can hear the song and figure out if they have heard it or not.
So if you want to hear specific songs or songs from a specific artist and you don’t mind building a playlist, then playlilst.com is the website to use. But if you just want to listen to a certain type of music and would like to hear some artists or songs you’ve never heard before, then Pandora is the way to go.
Music and Video Websites
on February 28th, 2009You’ve heard us say it over and over. The internet is a dangerous place. One of the most popular things to do on the internet these days is to access media content. By media content, I am referring to things video and music. Because this is a popular thing to do on the internet, it is a big target for infections like viruses and spyware.
To help our customers with this problem, Computer Troubleshooters has created ctonline.tv.
The purpose of this website is to give you a place to go to find legitimate places to access media on the internet. Keep in mind that just because it isn’t on ctonline.tv doesn’t mean it’s not legitimate. But if you stick to the sites listed, you will greatly reduce the chances of your computer becoming infected from a media website.
Check out ctonline.tv
Online Video, CODECS, and Security
on October 21st, 2008Watching video on a computer is a very popular thing to do these days. Lot’s of people go to places like YouTube to watch videos. You can watch TV shows on line as well as news video. Something else many people are doing these days is downloading video to watch on their PC. Home Theater PC’s are very popular too. You can turn A PC into a full fledged home theater with DVR functionality.
But as with all things relating to computers these days, there is a danger with online video that you need to be aware of.
To save space on web servers and to save bandwidth on the internet, video is stored in a compressed format. There are many different types of commpressed formats. When you watch a video, the video has to be un-compressed for you to view it. This de-compression is done by something called a CODEC. There are many different kinds of CODEC’s for all of the different video formats. Windows comes with a few CODECs, but not very many. At some point when you are trying to view a video, you may get a message that you don’t have the required CODEC to view the video. And that’s where the danger is.
A CODEC is a program and a program can contain a virus. So don’t go downloading CODECS from just anywhere. Here are our recommendations:
- Only use main stream players to play video. These include Windows Media Player, Apple Quicktime, Real Player, WinAmp, Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Shockwave, VLC Video Player, and Media Player Classic are the players that are generally safe to use.
- If you get a message telling you that you don’t have the right CODEC or if you get a message that says to click here to download the correct CODEC, don’t do it.
- If you are in need of a CODEC, the best and easiest fix is to download a CODEC pack. A CODEC pack is a collection of a bunch of different CODECS, all in one package. A safe place to get CODECS is free-codecs.com. Here is a list of good CODEC packs. K-Lite Mega Codec Pack, XP Codec Pack, and Vista Codec Package.
And, as always, make sure you have up to date anti-virus and anti-spyware protection.