Comments for Andy's Tech Blog

Comment on Non Geographic Numbers by andy

andy — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 10:17:39 +0000

Thanks for the comment, but this article was more focused on the cost to the business for receiving the call rather than the cost to the caller. Owning an 0800 can be a substantial cost to the business. 03 numbers give the best of both worlds as costs to the business are reasonable and cost to the caller are low as they are included in any plan minutes.

Comment on CrunchPad by James Wu

James Wu — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:25:44 +0000

I have to say I’m really impressed with your posts and blog overall. I stumbled on your site accidentally but am now happy I did. I’ll be stopping in to read more often now. Thanks again !
Thanks,
Lou

Comment on Stealth Laptop Backpack by Hellen CLARK

Hellen CLARK — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:39:55 +0000

Nice website, I found you while looking for some blog related search and want to give you a compliment while I was here.

Comment on CrunchPad by devious

devious — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:31:37 +0000

hmm… a giant iphone with no telephony?

Comment on OCZ 128GB Solid State Drives by Suzie Magrey

Suzie Magrey — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 21:43:49 +0000

Looks interesting

Comment on 3 Skypephone by bonaparte

bonaparte — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:23:20 +0000

Keep your Skype phone and wait for the updated S2 version! I’ve had nothing but problems trying to use the 3 Skype client software on my Nokia phone. It seems that Skype works much better on the Skypephone.

Comment on Myka BitTorrent Device by andy

andy — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:54:25 +0000

Thanks for the points you make Doz, I appreciate your interest. Let me help to provide some of the answers:
1) A pity, but certainly no deal breaker for me. And given the lack of 1080 content anyway, it will be a while before this becomes an issue.
2) I agree I have seen some horrible Open Source UIs, but then again I have seen some real nasty ones from major manufacturers too. But like you I would like to see some screenshots before I part with my cash.
3) As the Myka supports the H.264 High Profile (up to level 4.1) it’s max bitrate is 50 Mbits/s, same as Blu-ray, etc.
4) As the decoding is done in hardware I think a lack of hardware MKV chips is an issue, they plan on releasing firmware upgrades to add new codecs & container formats. No idea about Video_TS folders although I would like to see support for those too. No news on Flash either, but for me it is not an issues as most flash video is extremely low resolution and so I have no desire to play it on my TV.
5) Their site states that it will have a remote control.
6)
7) Dolby Digital supports 5.1 audio.
It has RSS support although exactly what form this will take is crucial to my use of the device. I needs to be able to take an RSS feed and filter the results for things like codec, quality etc, as well as filter by episode for example so you don’t get endless copies of the same one.
9) No details have been given yet, but you would expect a minimum of WPA-PSK. Have not seen a G based WiFi product that does not support WPA.
10) I would hope it was 1000 (Gigabit), but 100 would be enough, though not ideal.
11) Almost nothing reads HFS+ except if it is manufactured by Apple. I would never format an external drive in HFS+ purely for that reason. While FAT32 or NTFS have some issues at least you can plug them into pretty much anything and have it work.
12) Again AFP is a very niche protocol for Apple users. SMB (CIFS) and NFS are the 2 must haves.
13) 256MB is enough for the Apple TV and lots of other STBs. As you don’t have to run a massive OS and the decoding is done in hardware this should be fine.
14) Again doing the video decoding in hardware massivly reduces the overheads on the system so a 450MHz processor is reasonable.
15) No N WiFi that is a shame.
16) I agree on the pricing. Although it is aimed at a completely different audience than the Apple TV or the Roku NetFlix box, $299 as a base price point is too high, for that you should be getting a much bigger drive than an 80GB, so most folks would buy this “cheap one” and shove their own upgrade drive in.
17) Again I agree, but if you want a dedicated box…
18) Could go either way here. Will just have to wait and see.
19) As you can tell from the logo they have licensed the Official BitTorrent software, just which exact version remains to be seen but probably the 6.+ version based on the uTorrent code with the inbuilt RSS would be perfect as that is light and tight with the best features and a great web interface.
20) The BitTorrent client is uPnP, is that what you mean or are you asking about other features being accessable from the web?
21) I doubt these will be available. There is some interest from the developers in a Myka API/SDK so that would really bump up the features if they went ahead with that.
22) Again it would be a nice feature, but without a keyboard it is a bit limited.

I am looking forward to getting my hands on this pioneering product. While it does not do absolutely everything it does the 3 key things I want from an STB (Video to TV, Large Hard Disk, BitTorrent with RSS) I know that D-Link and Netgear are working at adding BitTorrent features to their Routers and NAS products and as time goes by more manufacturers will jump on the bandwagon.

Comment on Myka BitTorrent Device by doz

doz — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:17:58 +0000

Cool – with a couple of caveats:
1. Only 1080i output, not true HD.
2. No screenshots of the UI. Linux products often have ropey UI’s and it is of some concern to me that the Myka site has no screenshots whatsoever. Since the Myka team were asking for input on UI design in March 08 it will not be a mature UI. Worryingly Fred of the Myks forum asked on May 13 2008 hoe the UI was “coming along” and there has been no reply. I suspect Myka are taking pre-orders before even completing their UI. Very suspect.
3. No indication of max bitrate for H.264 content playback.
4. What about MKV support? VIDEO_TS folders? Support for Flash?
5. Remote Control? No indication if it comes with one.
6. The device supports remote logins. Using which protocol(s)?
7. No support for 5:1 audio
8. RSS support?
9. Wi-Fi security protocols? WPA support?
10. Is ethernet connection 10/100 or 10/100/1000?
11. Can it read HFS+ formatted drives? As a Mac user this is very important.
12. Support for AFP? I doubt it! And iTunes Music Sharing? Can I not play my iTunes library through this thing?
13. Is 256MB DDRAM really enough? If downloading torrents and playing video at same time wont there be lots of memory swapping (=poor performance).
14. The processor is a 450 DMIPS SOC. Is this a 450 MHz processor? Surely not.
15. No ‘n’ support for Wi-Fi
16. Price point too high.
17. Myka 500GB only $150 short of Core 2 duo Mac Mini, and the Myka 160GB is $20 more than a 160GB Apple TV.
18. Myka appears to take 3.5″ drives. The 500GB model especially could get very hot and make lots of fan noise (although this remains to be seen).
19. What torrent client is it using?
20. UPnP? Firewall?
21. support for iPhoto, flickr, youtube
22. Will it have a web browser?

The answers to some of these questions are in the forums (apparently there will be uPNP support), but many remain unanswered (like gigabit or not). Why should I have to dig through forums to answer these q’s. All this info should be on Tech Specs page. Moreover a promise on a forum post for a given feature may not come to pass when the device finally ships.

So many questions.. How can Myka expect people to pre-order this device without answers to (most of) them? And without screenshots?

doz