media, my way!

well... i'm a true believer in technology and its use to make my own life easier... and up till about 3 years ago, was not a believer in network tv or just tv generally... i hated commercials and it made it so hard to keep up with a series when your in college and partying!.. hehe...

then... the PVR/DVR era took its first steps.. Tivo was unleashed to the mainstream and got fave reviews.. of course, homebrewers/diyers could always make their own PVR/DVR computer box using either linux or win flavors... i of course went the route of windows.. since my linux skills are not that great and i really have no need for a box just running linux and tv... a waste of a good pc imo.. (of course if i was running a webserver on it then that would be a whole diff story.. linux + webserver = solid!)

since that time period of first starting out in the PVR/DVR world (also about the same time that 'dave' killed the hu stream.. coincidence? perhaps.. :P ), i've probably tried or demo'd every piece of windows pvr/dvr software available.. you name it... i have installed and used it for a day (on the windows platform that is..)..

however, my two faves still remain to be SageTV and good ole MS's Windows XP MCE 2005 and now Vista.. of the two, MCE / Vista still rule as champ in my book due to MCE/Vistas integration of the tv recording into the os itself.. its pretty streamlined and uses very low resources..

and it looks pretty good too!..

anywho.. back onto topic.. as for the last 3 years.. well, they've been all prelude to my final project goal.. ability to take my media anywhere...

my latest cellphone actually completes this project by being finally able to sync w/my pc and convert tv shows to it for viewing.. and also its EDGE connection and ability to then stream my whole music library over shoutcast to my mda's TCPMP... oh yea, did i mention its on demand? that i also have a webpage setup w/browseamp to add songs to the playlist, change songs on cue, even download the song to the pc i am listening to it on.. the only missing piece is video on demand serving.. for me its not too feasible since the realist network bandwidth i get on my phone is usually about 100kbps and i'd prob need that size stream to get a decent picture..

but maybe later this year when speeds increase, i'll get back into my vod server project.. hmm.. i might be able to use my pc version of a video server and apply it to mobile file types/stream types.. hmmm.... perhaps a new guide...