Geek with Family

My Sony PSP frustrates me. As a long distance remote in my listening room for my iTunes upstairs, it can be very slow when loading Coverbuddy/iTunes album art web pages. I have to wait for all the little album thumbnails to load on the page before I can pick the album I want and I guess because of the PSP browser’s poor caching every bit of the UI loads fresh including the play and skip buttons. The PSP/Coverbuddy combo is almost free so I put up with its clunkiness.

In moments of frustrated weakness, limited gadgets like the Hercules Wireless iTunes Controller look very attractive with its simple monochrome text display and scroll wheel:

Hercules Wireless iTunes Controller: The Hercules Tunes Explorer Wireless is yet another USB wireless iTunes remote control, but with a twist. It integrates a small back-lit LCD screen which ‘displays the song titles, play lists etc’ and so allows you to ’select your music without having to go to your computer.’ It has a side mounted thumbwheel for scrolling and since the device is RF and not infra red it is not limited to line of sight. I can imagine this could be a very handy little device for controlling your den computer from the bedroom, for example (provided of course that it’s compatible with the Airport Express).

The Hercules Tunes Explorer Wireless is €49.99 (~$65) and is PC as well as Mac compatible.

[Via Playlist]

I’ll stick with my PSP for now, but if you don’t have any iTunes remote the Hercules could overcome the feat.

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog.)

Popularity: 19% [?]

I knew I shouldn’t have upgraded to iTunes 7.

Now when streaming music to my Airport Express from iTunes 7 it takes forever to switch to the next song and worse it will just stop playing randomly. iTunes will actually get stuck at the 0:00 of a song and when you toggle play and pause it skips to the next song still stuck at zero. I have to quit iTunes at the MacMini to get the signal back to the Airport Express. None of the dot updates have helped.

So is my PSP/Airtunes Dance Party over?

Continue reading iTunes 7 Breaks My PSP+Airtunes Setup - Airfoil to the Rescue

Popularity: 18% [?]

Now that I have my Mac Mini set up to deliver my whole iTunes library to my listening room through Airtunes with Sony PSP remote control, I needed to rewire my hi-fi components. The goal: deliver the digital Airtunes signal through the best DAC in the path and passing the analog signal cleanly through to my loudspeakers. I have no budget, so I must only use components I already own.

I also wanted to test how much I could combat the compressed audio feed’s nasties in the analog realm. My weapons: Taddeo Digital Antidote II and Rogue Audio Magnum 99 Preamp. One of these components won the battle and the other almost lost the whole war.

Continue reading PSP + Airtunes + Coverbuddy = Dance Party Hi-Fi Wiring

Popularity: 17% [?]

Not able to afford an additional $2500 investment in remote music server hi-fi equipment I had to make due with music server components I already owned: Airport Express, Mac Mini, Onkyo TX-DS989 AV Receiver and a Rogue Audio Magnum 99 Preamp. With some additional software on my Mac Mini I could remote control the music served to the remote system in my listening room with my Sony PSP.

Continue reading PSP + Airtunes + Coverbuddy = Dance Party Software Setup

Popularity: 14% [?]

I’ve never bought entertainment software for convenience’s sake. If I try to purchase something I already own, Wife_o_Geek vetoes with, "Don’t you already have that? We need diapers." I can’t smell a dirty diaper while riding the train to work, watching Samurai Champloo on my PSP. We move out of electronics and into the baby aisle.

Why buy expensive UMDs and iPod TV Videos from the iTunes Music Store? You can rip and re-encode the DVDs you own, right? Not so fast, that’s illegal and you’ll get sued by the MPAA.

When dealing with electronic forms of entertainment you want your money to go toward improvements to the experience: higher resolutions, bigger screens, more surround sound channels, crisper and clearer, less noise, whatever. You may have a hard time paying for tiny resolution, formatted for a 2 inch screen, mono or stereo sound (Dolby Pro Logic II on headphones with some UMD titles), and compressed and noisy audio and video.

Continue reading Mobile Video Convenience versus Home Theater Quality

Popularity: 13% [?]