Category Archives: Tech

Ceton InfiniTV4 USB

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So I finally pulled the trigger and picked up a Ceton InfiniTV cable card tuner.  I’ve been eyeing these one of these since I first heard about them a few years ago. But at the time of there initial release they were pretty expensive, round $400-$500 and they only had a PCI express version.  Fast forward a few years and now the price has dropped to $200 and there is a USB version as well.

Basically all you need is a Multistream Cable card from your cable provider Cablevision in my case) and it allows you to watch and or record up to 4 HD streams of anything you can get with a cable box on your PC.

Setup was surprisingly easy, contrary to all the horror stories I’ve read online of people having tons of issues activating cablecards and dealing with cable company reps who have no idea what they are doing. It took only about 10mins to install and setup, even Cablevision (very much to my surprise) was quick and efficient in activating the cable card.

I still want to play around with assigning tuners to other computers in the house and using my 360 as a media center extender but so far everything is working great.

 

Shut up and Take my Money!

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Seriously just shut up already and take my money, Its sad that in this day and age how many times I find my self thinking those very words when trying to watch a movie or tv show online.

The year is Two Thousand and Twelve we are in the 21st Century  the internet, computers, and all those other internet capable devices we love are now common household objects. The days of going down to a video store to rent a movie are gone. Between Netflix, Amazon VOD service, Zune Market Place….and yes I suppose iTunes there are plenty of ways to quickly and conveniently get video content into our homes and in front of our eyeballs.

Yet it astonishes me how many companies refuse to adapt to new technologies… It’s like they don’t want my money. I mean It’s not like I don’t want to pay, I will gladly pay a reasonable fee to watch something or watch some ads to be able to watch something for free with out having to jump through DRM hoops or deal with antiqued media.

If Technology has evolved and you haven’t evolved your business model with it the correct response isn’t to kick and scream about the new technology, or try to make new laws limiting the use of it, or try to sue everyone, the right response is to evolve or die. At every major technology shift in the media industry I am sure there have been people complaining about having to adapt. Imagine how musicians felt the first time some one came up to them and said, “Hey I can record your singing on this record (or wax cylinder or whatever) thing and people can listen to you any time they want… You mean they don’t have to pay for a ticket at a club every time they want to hear me!?!  They can just buy one record and listen to me as much as they want! I am sure they thought that was a crazy Idea and hated it, but just like recorded music wasn’t the end of musicians or the VCR wan’t the end of the Movies or Cable wasn’t the end of television its not about the end of something its about the evolution of it.