This evening I tried out the IOGear GBU321 Class 1 Bluetooth USB dongle. I learned a few key things:

• To use this after installing the IOGear GBU221 Class 2 Bluetooth USB dongle you must uninstall the drivers for the GBU221, then reinstall the same drivers (at least run the same setup file) this time inserting the GBU321 at the right time during the installation routine. Then delete any devices that remained from the prior installation and re-pair your bluetooth devices.
• When used with the Sony DRBT-50 headphones the range is not noticeably better than when I used the IOGear Class 2 USB dongle. This is true even though Class 1 devices are supposed to have a range of 300-400 feet versus 30 feet for Class 2 devices.
• The Nokia BH-604 headphones don't work any better with this dongle than with the IOGear GBU221.

I have some more Class 1 dongles coming next week. I will report what I learn from trying them.

The significance of Bluetooth headphones (the ear encapsulating kind) being surprisingly good is that this is a solution to my problem of how to listen to podcasts. I have detailed in previous posts my difficulty in finding a good solution to listening to podcasts at home given various constraints. Actually using a computer turns out to be a pretty good solution.

I had been so caught up in consuming digital media use non-PC devices like TVs and Audio components that I had overlooked the conventional PC. Without Bluetooth headphones using the PC would have consigned me to not using headphones at all or being tethered to the computer with USB headphones. Neither was an satisfying solution.

With the advent of good quality, over the ear Bluetooth 2.0 headphones (a category that I think only includes the Sony DR-BT50 and Nokia BH-604), however, I am able to log on to our living room laptop, turn on the Bluetooth headphones run J River Media Center, "connect" to the headphones using the Bluetooth tray icon and then listen to whatever I want using Media Center. I can start listening at any point I want, pause, load up a playlist, etc. All the great features of PC media players are now at my disposal without being tied to sitting in front of the PC.

I have been experimenting with bluetooth headphones over the past 5 days and have the following interim conclusions:

1. Bluetooth 2.0 headphones can produce better sound quality than most other wireless headphones. They lack the occasional crackle of analog wireless headphones and aren't subject to a break in the sound that can result from body movement when wearing infrared wireless headphones. These are problems that have bedeviled attempts to make decent wireless headphones for listening to music for years.
2. However, bluetooth 2.0 headphones (at least when used with a PC (as I have done so far) aren't as easy to use as the should be. Not even as easy as using them with my cell phone.

Here is what I had to do to set up and then use two different sets of headphones I have been experimenting with:

Setup:

1. Download drivers from IOGear site
2. Put the IOGear Class 2 USB dongle in the USB port of my PC
3. Install the drivers (including rebooting the PC)
4. Pair with the set of headphones
5. Disable handsfree telephony and headset services from devices tab - properties
6. From Sound system tray icon, Playback Devices, set default speakers to Bluetooth Stereo Audio

Not so bad, but using them ideally would just require turning on the headphones. Not so. Here are the steps To Use the headphones:

1. Double click Bluetooth Devices system tray icon
2. Turn on Sony DR=BT50 headphones
3. Wait until headphones show up in Devices as connected then
4. Go to audio tab, select headphones and click connect

Note that for the Nokia BH-604 headphones I have been testing, I almost always have to repeat these steps (including turning the headphones off and then on again).

I plan to experiment with other Bluetooth dongles and a device that promises to connect the headphones wirelessly to my receiver, I'll report on my results.

I find the audio quality of the both headphones perfectly acceptable for listening to music even if not "audiophile" quality.

Both sets of headphones allow me to control basic elements of J River's Media Center, like pause, play, skip to the next track and skip to the previous track. The same is true for controlling Windows Media Player 11.

Connection issues aside, I like the audio quality of the Nokia headphones better and their controls better, but the extra steps to connect to Nokia headphones are sufficiently annoying that if I had to choose right now, I would choose the more expensive Sony headphones.

I am interested to see if the Nokia phones' issues are linked to the particular Bluetooth dongle I'm using and what the real capabilities of a Class 1 Bluetooth dongle might be (with a range of 300-400 feet).

In trying out some new Bluetooth headphones I discovered that the sound icon had disappeared from the system try on my Vista Business PC. I quickly found the answer, which I reprint here for the benefit of others:

1. Click -Start > type “regedit” in the search box. You’ll see regedit appear at the top of the Start Menu. Click on it.
2. If you have your system permissions set to ask if Windows is allowed to open-click “Continue”.
3. Navigate to, (and you’ll have to do this manually, search did not work for me), key ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion \TrayNotify’
4. Delete ‘IconStreams’ and ‘PastIconsStream’
5. Right click the Task Bar, choose Task Manager > Processes > Click explorer.exe to highlight it and click “End Task”
6. Keep Task Manager open, go to Applications and on the bottom right corner you’ll see a button that says “New Task”
7. A pop-up box will appear, in the field type “explorer.exe and click ok.
8. When these steps are finished, Windows Explorer reboots itself, (without rebooting the computer), and either the icons will reappear, or you can go back to the Task Bar > Notification Area and choose which icons to show.
   

Our home's Media Center installation (identified as DWAnderson) has been nominated as one of the five best in the Ultimate Media Center Enthusiast Setup competition. Please vote for it by sending an email to vote [at] thedigitallifestyle.com.

The third post in a series.

I would like to listen to podcasts in our Living Room and have the ability to resume where I left off listening after frequent interruptions from my family. I have nice audio system there: xDream wireless headphones connected to an audio system containing a Roku Soundbridge M2000 connected to J River Media Center running a UPnP server. Unfortunately, the Roku does not support fast forward and rewind within tracks, and attempt to pause playback for a significant length of time results in a disconnection from the server. This makes listening to long podcasts impossible because once interrupted, there is no practical way to resume listening.

I thought I might have an answer to this dilemma if I replaced the Soundbridge with a Squeezebox Duet. This product may someday replace my Soundbridges, but that day had not yet arrived. This product would allow me to listen to podcasts, but after trying this product for a week, filing bug reports and participating in the forums for this product, I realized would have to give up too much. The product is still to raw. It functions, but not quite as represented in ways that are problematic for me.

First, the Duet will not connect to UPnP servers. Logitech aims to have this addressed in the next release of their software, but the capability does not exist now.

Second, the Duet will not fast foward or rewind through any WMA files. There is some false information that this is only true for WMA lossless files, but this is not the case. Contrary to the documentation for the Duet, the device does not play any WMA files natively and must transcode everything on its server, making it hard for Logitech to implement seeking within WMA files. Most of my music was ripped into WMA files, so this limitation is quite annoying.

I tried out the pre-release builds of the SqueezeCenter software hoping some of these problems might have been addressed. I discovered they had not been and there were other problems with that pre-release software as well.

I'll monitor Logitech's progress in addressing these issues and certainly would try this product again. The device itself is nicely built. Having a remote with a graphical user interface is nice. There is a lot of third party support for SqueezeCenter (their server software). Logitech's bug reporting system lets testers know what is going on to solve their problems. But, I'm not ready to spend $400 and hope that my issues get resolved.

In contrast, I once had hopes that Roku might implement seeking within tracks for their devices, but their attention to their Soundbridge products is virtually nil. They work well, but the lack of fast forward is a thorn in my side.

Take a look here. They (noitalugnairt and mutnemom) also have in common being non-words that might be the subject of Google searches. I'll be interested to see if this is the case!

I took a break from Grand Theft Auto IV this evening and I tried out two new Media Center applications this evening: vmcNetFlix and MC Menu Customizer.

vmcNetFlix allows managing your Netflix queue and watching certain Netflix content by streaming it to your Media Center PC and extenders. Upon hearing that the latter functionality finally worked with extenders, I promptly changed from Blockbuster's mailed DVD rental program to Netflix. The fact that this application works reasonably well is sufficient to recommend trying it our. Installing the Netflix viewer and then going through several initialization sequences on the extender and on the Media Center PC is a little annoying and kludgy, but you really can't argue with the result.

I am also trying MCMenuCustomizer, which let's you make some modifications to the crossbar menus that appear in Vista Media Center. I notice, that it won't get rid of the menus that Yougle created for itself, but I have not really explored this further. Nevertheless it installed without incident and many users seem quite enthusiastic about it.

The first post in this series is here.

We run four media server applications in our house simultaneously. I wish there was one media server we could run that would do everything well, but alas that is not the case.

We run J River's Media Center for the UPnP server that serves our three Roku Soundbridges and provides the PCs in the house with access to a shared media library. This application does some things really well: management of my media library and tagging of media; podcast download management integrated into the server software and customizable viewschemes (e.g. the how you drill down in menus to select media you want to play); a really robust smartlist feature that, for example can be set up to let a single button push on my remote control select a random contemporary album to play from the Soundbridge, while another button press will play a randomly selected classical album.

We also have a PC dedicated to running Vista Media Center (which records TV shows), has copies of favorite movies and serves four Xbox 360 Media Center Extenders throughout the house.

And we run an Orb media server as well because this allows me to access all the media files on our home server (including newly downloaded podcasts) from my Widows Mobile 6 phone.

And we also run a Twonky UPnP server because (i) Vista Media Center won't play MPEG4 video files (the format of many video podcasts natively), (ii) the XBox 360 dashboard media player won't work with the J River UPnP server, but will with the Twonky UPnP server, and (iii) Orb is unreliable with fast forwarding MP4 files (which I believe it transcodes when serving them to the Xbox 360).

Sure, maybe four servers aren't necessary, but they each serve a unique purpose.

More on how even these servers aren't enough to overcome the some of the difficulties inherent in listening or watching podcasts next.

Thomas Hawk has a good post on this and his experience with TagCow. His post is a comprehensive response to my wife's oft repeated suggestion that I outsource our photo tagging to someone in India or a kid in our neighborhood.

Ben Drawbaugh writes that he has found a nice solution to his home lighting control problems. I was glad to see he found a solution that works for his Insteon switched. I have been using some Insteon switches from Smarthome in X-10 mode (together with HomeSeer and an USB interface device) and that has worked reasonably well for me-- except for one room where control is inconsistent.

We put in a host of X-10 switches about three years ago when we remodeled our house at a cost of about $1600 for parts. I didn't do much research when I went with X-10, other than that it was relatively inexpensive. Having done more research later, I now realize that people have problems with all sorts of control systems X-10, Z-Wave, Insteon, so I am not sure what I would pick if doing this today.

As with wireless networking, go with whatever works for you.

Since moving to the suburbs a little over two years ago I have started listening to podcasts on my 35 minute commute to the office. I have discovered some that I really enjoy: BloggingHeads.tv; Games for Windows; 1Up Yours; The Media Center Show; and Engadget HD to name a few.

Despite considerable time and resources spent on digital media devices and infratructure, listening to podcasts is made more difficult than it should be in a variety of ways:

• Automatic downloads of podcasts are less reliable than they should be
• Accessing podcasts (including syncing) on Windows Mobile Devices is less than ideal
• Resuming a partially listened to podcast can be challenging
• Unless I use my Windows Mobile Device, there i sno good way to listen to podcasts in the car

Part of my discontent relates to my high standards for convenience. But given the scarcity of free time, I would like to spend as little time as possible setting up my media so that I can actually spend time listening to or watching the media.

That scarcity of time also leads me to want to listen to podcasts in many different places. This desire leads to a number of technical challenges, e.g. the ability to access the media in different places and continue playing a program for where I last left off. These challenges don't exist for casual music listening or with TV and movies that are usually watched only at home in a single sitting.

Podcast listening seems to require pushing the digital media envelope in ways that I'll elaborate on in future posts coming soon. These posts will include my experience trying the new Logitech Squeezebox Duet digital media player.

Ian Dixon blogs about the possibility of setting up a group of Media Center Extenders in a closet so that only speakers, displays and a remote are present in the room where the user is.

I have never understood the attraction of having everything in an equipment closet. It has always seemed to me that having central media storage, but independent networked media players with separate amps, speakers and separates was the way to go. See http://www.flickr.com/photos/39919647@N00/

That approach simplifies wiring, allows one to fix problems where the media is being used, allows the user to add physical media (e.g. DVDs, CDs, flash memory) where the media is being used, allows the user to see the often informative displays on the devices and allows for flexibility in swapping out and upgrading components without major a major redesign of the system.

For example, I am considering replacing one of our Roku Soundbridges with the Squeezebox Duet. This would never happen with components in a closet. In fact neither of these devices could even be used with such a system.

Friends I know who have such systems have complained that they quickly become outdated and that any change requires a vist (and charge) from the custom installer.

These systems may be useful for people whose budgets significantly exceeds their interest in customizing their media consumption experience, but that group is a pretty small minority.

I am watching MSNBC coverage of the Indiana and North Carolina Democratic Primary results and I am struck by how profligate the network is with almost all of the exit poll results for Indiana (which has not yet been called) except the aggregate percentages for each of the candidates! The race is "too close to call," but that doesn't explain this.

Why don't the networks tell us who "won" according to the exit polls? The polls have closed, so they can't affect the results. Are the exit polls so lacking in trustworthiness that they aren't really informative? If that is the case, why are the demographic breakdowns from the exit polls thrown around and talked as if they were gospel? (They don't even mention margins of error when talking about them!)

Something doesn't make sense here.

I have owned the Sanyo Xacti HD1000 for a few months now and have not regretted the purchase. The small size (i.e. you can fit it in a capacious jacket or pants pocket), decent HD video and the ability to take decent 4MP stills, make this a great HD camcorder for home video.

One advantage I didn't appreciate as much at the time of purchase: it used standard MPEG4 rather than AVCHD video. I read complaints AVCHD video editing at the time, but assumed they would be addressed soon. It appears I was wrong (try looking at some of the recent comments as well).

Right about the time I upgraded Windows Server Update Services 3.0 (WSUS) to Service Pack 1 and installed Vista Service Pack 1, the automatic updates on most of our home PCs seemed to stop working. In fact, they were still working for everything but the "selfupdate" of the Windows Update client application (which is what actually installs the updates on each PC).

I the WindowsUpdate.log file identified the following error: "2008-05-03 14:11:27:417 6132 e28 Setup WARNING: Failed to stop the WU
service, error = 0x80070005 " This error had cropped up last fall and I worked around it by manually installing the new Windows Update client. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a way to manually install the latest Windows Update client, so I was forced to finally address the root cause of the problem-- whatever that was.

After about eight hours of searching message board posts, experimenting with various possible solutions and some dialog on the message boards a search turned up the answer (modified slightly for my situation):

1. Changed the "Automatic Updates" service to "not defined" (both
   startup and security settings)
   
2. Deleted the following registry entry on the clients: HKLM\SYSTEM
   \CurrentControlSet\Services\wuauserv\Security
   
3. When group policy was updated the problem was solved.