Usability News - Living Room PCs are not going to Take Off, argues Ovum
Well - there you go! While I do agree that a PC is generally too complex to just becoming another appliance, I beg to difer greatly in opinions about this article. Just this saturday night I argued tha case that if we could somehow come up with somthing that has my current Media Centers capabilities, bundled with Apples cool design and usability practices and then priced a bit lower than what Apple does historically, we'd be sure to have a hit. If you can even build it all into a TV set even better. Like the iMac. I guess that the iPhone will also turn the mobile phone market upside down. Precisely because they know how to create contextual aware software and wrap it into some real nice packaging. Therefore: Living Room PC's will take of - provided they are done right!
Monday, January 29, 2007
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
The Green Button - New QuickGuide Beta
The Green Button - New QuickGuide Beta: OK - here's the deal. After installing a new TV-tuner that should enable us to watch digital tv I've been fiddling around with a number of different small utilities to make our Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) in Media Center actually show listings for the various TV channels that we can receive.
After installing the TV tuner we got all the channels I hoped for. However for some reason Microsoft has decided that we can only receive 3 digital channels (only Danish). We have an additional 6 Swedish channels to chose from as well. Media Center, being as user friendly as it really is, does not give me the option to chose where I want to download EPG data from (this would probably confuse some users), and for some bizarre reason also applies its own format to the data instead of following the standard XMLTV format (but then again that's Microsoft for you). This is a know issue (especially for us living outside the U.S) and there are numerous post in various forums about this.
I've now tried various grabbers to get the data down and they all work fairly seamlessly. Another issue entirely is to actually get data from the XML file into Media Center. Enter QuickGuide. I found that this works rather well (although file tweaking, batch file writing, and XML editing was involved). But following the instructions given in the link in the title made it work. And now I have all the EPG data I wished for.
Now only one (or maybe a couple) question(s) remains: Why can't Microsoft make it so that normal users (like me until 2 weeks ago) can just set it up as it is now, but leave it to the "pros" to decide for themselves (hide the option well in the back of the Settings menu)? And why don't they use standard XMLTV? And why don't they just use the EPG data actually transmitted with the digital TV signal (during my nights searching for a solutions for this I found that they plan on this sometime in 2007 - I hope that is so!).
After installing the TV tuner we got all the channels I hoped for. However for some reason Microsoft has decided that we can only receive 3 digital channels (only Danish). We have an additional 6 Swedish channels to chose from as well. Media Center, being as user friendly as it really is, does not give me the option to chose where I want to download EPG data from (this would probably confuse some users), and for some bizarre reason also applies its own format to the data instead of following the standard XMLTV format (but then again that's Microsoft for you). This is a know issue (especially for us living outside the U.S) and there are numerous post in various forums about this.
I've now tried various grabbers to get the data down and they all work fairly seamlessly. Another issue entirely is to actually get data from the XML file into Media Center. Enter QuickGuide. I found that this works rather well (although file tweaking, batch file writing, and XML editing was involved). But following the instructions given in the link in the title made it work. And now I have all the EPG data I wished for.
Now only one (or maybe a couple) question(s) remains: Why can't Microsoft make it so that normal users (like me until 2 weeks ago) can just set it up as it is now, but leave it to the "pros" to decide for themselves (hide the option well in the back of the Settings menu)? And why don't they use standard XMLTV? And why don't they just use the EPG data actually transmitted with the digital TV signal (during my nights searching for a solutions for this I found that they plan on this sometime in 2007 - I hope that is so!).
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
At last: PS2 in the house
Finally! My 6 year old wanted a Play Station for Christmas - and of course he got it. Being an old (and misery) dude I never wanted to buy one because I know myself good enough to know that I couldn't argue the case of spending the money and then using it so little as would be the case (I'm way past the time (untill he gets a real intersting game) where I spent whole nights shooting monsters in dungeons).
I was through serious considerations of going for the X-Box (because I could use the Media Center Extension on it, and he would therefore be able access the favorite recorded kids-shows from the living room), but ended up with the PS/2 because he needs to get into the gaming world first.
We've had some serious football games (FIFA 07) and it's really amazing to watch his approach to learning the system. There's absolutely no reading (or asking for that matter) of manuals. It's pure trial and error. And it seems to work: he already beats me half the time. I'm not quite sure how much is inteded and how much is pure luck that he hits the right buttons at the right time (he hits the buttons a lot!!!). Anyway: Quite impressive user interfaces that are easy to learn; the kid of 6 (who can't really read yet) navigates effortlessly through them. And even more funny: much easier to watch DVD's on than our regular (low price) DVD player residing in the little girls room.
I was through serious considerations of going for the X-Box (because I could use the Media Center Extension on it, and he would therefore be able access the favorite recorded kids-shows from the living room), but ended up with the PS/2 because he needs to get into the gaming world first.
We've had some serious football games (FIFA 07) and it's really amazing to watch his approach to learning the system. There's absolutely no reading (or asking for that matter) of manuals. It's pure trial and error. And it seems to work: he already beats me half the time. I'm not quite sure how much is inteded and how much is pure luck that he hits the right buttons at the right time (he hits the buttons a lot!!!). Anyway: Quite impressive user interfaces that are easy to learn; the kid of 6 (who can't really read yet) navigates effortlessly through them. And even more funny: much easier to watch DVD's on than our regular (low price) DVD player residing in the little girls room.
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