Inside View

Time to Cull Streaming Services

Bernie Goldbach in Clonmel. Now logo from our Samsung TV app.

NOW IS THE TIME to reduce the number of streaming services in our home. I'm asking Mia (14) to edit this blog post as we run through and justify the services we currently use.

What to do when eir Vision Freezes @eircare

WHILE PREPARING for an extra week of school holidays, we discovered our eir Vision box freezes. Suggestions appreciated to help restore normal service to our Netgem STB.

UPDATED 2 JAN 2021: An eir call centre tech thinks there's a possible over-voltage condition on the line so he's sending a tech out to the house to look into the line quality.

UPDATED 3 JAN 2021: On a Sunday, an eir technician spent more than an hour opening access panels next to our home and throughout our housing estate before he found the cause of spurious voltage on our line. He solved the eir Netgem STB problem and sorted out a landline issue I had not reported.

Using WD TV with Old Local Files and YouTube

WHEN I BROUGHT Amazon video streaming into our Irish home, the first thing my wife wanted was the service on a TV screen. I'm halfway there--we bought ourselves a media player from Western Digital that gets our YouTube content onto an inexpensive TV.

Photo of WD TV box by @topgold.

Getting Amazon Prime onto the TV screen takes a little more work--probably with an Amazon Fire TV connection and a little tweak from Overplay.net. Our major problem is with the 12-year-old Sony Wega television. It doesn't have an HDMI port and I don't know how effective the frame rate will be if I get a SCART-to-HDMI adapter.

Digital TV in the Lap

Bernie Goldbach on Boyle | Photo of digital native

ALTHOUGH OUR 4YO knows the difference between a TV and a tablet, her viewing preferences are lap-based.

Mia knows her way around interfaces on iPads and other iOS devices, Xoom Media Players, Windows phone and DVD menus. If Saorview, the new digital terrestrial service, had icons for programmes, she could easily find her way around the DTT and radio channels.

But our four year old's normal digital viewing position is cradling a tablet in her lap or viewing it as it sits in a stand on the table. Five hours a week she has a tablet in the back seat of the car, sometimes yapping on playlists served by the Mifi dongle on the dashboard. This is a media consumption pattern that I would not have predicted in Ireland when I first stated my online journal in the late 90s. I'm going to start asking Mia to share her thoughts about how she finds and consumes multimedia. I am very intrigued by what touch points she sees in her media landscape.

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Bernie Goldbach tracks info to present at EdTech events.

Living with Weak Saorview and a Humax HD Problem

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | 260 words

AFTER SEVERAL WEEKS of Digital Television frustration, we've a new (EUR 38) Gigaboost antenna in the attic and a wireless interference-free way of watching Saorview. Although the better antenna resists electronic noise, it's still affected by sheets of rain. As suggested on Facebook, it's quite remarkable to watch government ministers endorsing technology easily disrupted by rainfall while living in a country reputed for its rainfall.

For nearly a year, we operated our Saorview receivers with a puny indoor antenna. Then something happened (perhaps the transmission power was reduced) with both transmitters located west and north of us. The little antenna was woeful plus its reception pattern was easily blocked by 3G handset operations. We had to get a different solution for the loft antenna (pictured) and Maplin in Limerick obliged.

One note for DIYers who follow my blog: the Maplin antenna kits do not come with all the connectors you need to make the installation complete. I needed a small metal connector with exposed threads for the antenna cable. This should've been obvious to me because (1) I opened the box before paying for it and (2) the cashier asked me if I had all the coaxial parts. I needed another EUR 2.40 part and once I had it, we were sorted. Almost.

Road Runner in 3D Animation

Road Runner - Coyote Falls 2010 from Animation-HD on Vimeo.

WE START TRAINING animators in Tipperary Institute next August and that means rolling out the best shorts I've in my collection. I have fond memories of the roadrunner from Thursday evening meals in the Air Force Academy. The coyote and the roadrunner would play on gigantic screens as 1500 men ate dinner underneath. That scene will never be repeated.

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Warner Brothers -- "Coyote Falls" with credit to Matthew O'Callaghan (Director), Tom Sheppard (writing), Greg Lyons (producer) and Christopher Lennertz (Music).

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