A nagging annoyance with home-theatre setups is our lack of control over them — so much content in different places, huge audio-visual files that require management beyond simple operating system applications, and still far too many file formats to work with. Following are a few toys that can help tame your viewing and listening experience.
DVR Xpander
Apricorn
250GB $129 (U.S.); 500GB, $199 (U.S.)
Available in Canada on-line and select retailers
Many digital-TV set-top boxes, for reasons of economy, come with small hard drives in them, about 80 gigabytes. The size was determined largely by the mix of high-definition and analog the average customer was likely to want to record.
That formula has become outdated. More programs are broadcasting in high definition, and the capacity of the set-top boxes is being sorely tested — high-def programs require much more disk space than analog programs. Try to store one season, or about 24 episodes, of a favourite series in HD and you can blow your 80 GB limit. And yes, there are people who want to save an entire season of their favourite show.
DVR Xpander, from Apricorn is designed for subscribers to those cable companies that use the Scientific Atlanta 8300 HD set-top box, which in Canada means Rogers. The device can expand your storage capacity by adding between 250 to 500 GB of extra space so you can record and keep hours of more TV shows.
- Join the Conversation with Jack Kapica Thursday at 1 p.m. EST
Apricorn's DVR Xpander is designed for subscribers to those cable companies that use the Scientific Atlanta 8300 HD set-top box for their digital TV, which in Canada means Rogers, and in the United States means Time Warner, Cox Cable, Cablevision and Comcast.
Set-top boxes can be configured in so many ways it's very difficult to walk into Future Shop and get an expander without knowing what you're doing. Service providers can disable various USB, Firewire or eSATA ports or limit what you can do by fiddling with the software, all in the name of either protecting copyright material or disabling the use of services that subscribers can't get.
That said, the Apricorn DVR Xpander couldn't be simpler to install — power down the 8300 HD box, plug in the Xpander's enclosed eSATA cord, turn on the drive and then turn on the set-top box. The 8300 HD will find and automatically configure the Xpander. From then on, it can be largely forgotten.
The Xpander comes in two sizes — a 250-GB model and a 500-GB model — and it differs from the set-top box drive in one major respect: While recording to the Xpander, you cannot rewind at will, which Apricorn says is unavoidable; moreover, you're not really sure when the 8300 HD is recording to the Xpander. Once the program is recorded, however, all features will work again.
HDMI Automatic Switch
IOGEAR
2x1 switch, $169.95 (U.S.)
4x1 switch with optional remote net yet released
Available in Canada online only
The snarl of cables needed to connect a home-theatre setup can be maddening; the only real way to cut this down is to use an HDMI interface, which takes digital audio-video signals and puts them into one high-speed cable. This system is becoming more common — market researchers at In-Stat estimate HDMI-enabled device shipments will grow 78 percent per year through 2010 — despite the horrifying prices manufacturers are demanding for them.
Until HDMI becomes universal, there is another issue: Most home-theatre components still have only one HDMI connector, meaning you can't connect more than one device to your digital flat-panel TV.
Think of it this way: Let's say you just bought Apple TV, and want to connect it to your 42-inch LCD TV using HDMI. But the TV set's HDMI port is already taken up with the cable from the set-top digital converter box. As more devices adopt HDMI — your DVD player, gaming console and such — the problem will become critical.
Enter IOGEAR's HDMI Automatic Switches. One HDMI cable comes in from the set-top box, and two others go out — one to the TV set and the other to the Apple TV.
The box works wonderfully. But it has three minor disadvantages. First, it requires power to work, and thus presents you with an extra cable to deal with. Next, it's called an automatic switch, but the two-cable version requires switching by pressing a button on the front of the unit. The 4x1 unit, not yet released, will come with an optional remote control, which is another addition to your collection of remote controls. Finally, it has two rather bright blue LED lights on top of the box, which have a dramatic effect on a darkened room.
Until all your home-theatre components have two HDMI ports, one in and one out, this is one way to reduce cable snarl and make use of a superior connection technology — HDMI supports 1080p resolution.
One caveat: HDMI cables are compliant with the High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection standard, which ought to limit some of your future recordings.
Replay A/V
Applian Technologies
$49.95 (U.S.), available online only
Applian Technologies has carved itself an impressive niche in the market for recording audio and video that's being streamed on the Internet or through your computer. Its latest software is Replay A/V (now in version 8.0), which supports Windows Media, Real, Flash, QuickTime, Shoutcast, iTunes Radio and other formats.
Once captured, the streams can be converted to MP3, WAV or iPod Audiobook files.
The product can capture up to 10 multiple streams simultaneously (for that you should have a broadband connection), bypassing whatever sound card you might have installed.
It's ideal for capturing online radio shows (if you have a satellite-radio subscription, for instance), copying audio books or streaming video.
One feature can convert a podcast to a bookmarkable file on your iPod (so you can return to the place you were last listening), and handle BitTorrent podcasts too. It will capture video clips as well, either from a webcams or a TV Tuner card.
Applian has included streams from online radio and TV stations in a Media Guide, containing 1,261 radio shows, 5,252 Radio Stations, 20,700 Podcasts and 511 online TV stations, and a URL finder locates stations not listed in the guide. Replay A/V will also schedule recordings for people who can't be there at the correct time.
Replay Media Catcher
Applian Technologies
$39.95 (U.S.), available online only
A much more specialized software package from Applian is the Media Catcher, a recorder for streaming Flash and MP3 sites. It's designed to capture and play back signals from ABC.com, NBC.com, MySpace, YouTube and Google Video. Until this tool came along, it was impossible to capture a Flash file.
It's simpler to use than Replay A/V; users click the Start Recording button, and then play the streaming Flash video or MP3 audio to capture. Once the software detects the media stream, it will continue to save a playable video or audio file on the PC hard drive. It can also record multiple streams simultaneously.
Replay Music
Applian Technologies
$39.95 (U.S.), available online only
Focused specifically on MP3 audio files, Replay Music will record music from online radio stations, MySpace, music videos and digital music services. Each piece of music is automatically tagged with the artist, song title, album and genre and separated into individual tracks. The resulting music can be burned to CDs, or copied to iPods or MP3 players.
The one drawback is when it records from stations that like to overlap the end of one song with the beginning of the next, leaving no gap for the software to recognize as a separate song.
Replay Music is also programmed with a proprietary song-recognition technology that can add the artist, song title, album and genre information to each MP3 file.
A sharp-eyed reader will recognize that Applian's products appear to side-step digital rights management (DRM) technology by recording the stream from the player, not from an original file. Yes, it's true — and it's all legal.
DRM technology is used to keep people from passing on digital music to file-sharing systems; keeping them from being copied from one computer to another is a side-effect, one that the recording industry is in no hurry to correct. Which means, yes, you can take a song legally purchased from Puretracks or iTunes, capture it with Replay Music, and have a DRM-free copy, meaning you can then copy it to any of your players. In law, this principle is known as Fair Use.
You step over the legal line when you mass-distribute the resulting MP3. Applian is aware of this and includes a warning:
"Support The Artists! If you like a song you've recorded, please BUY THE SONG! Replay Music is not intended to be a replacement for music stores, rather it allows you to listen and make an educated purchase. There are many good reasons to buy music: You help support the artist. Your downloaded file will be of the highest quality. You'll sleep better knowing you did the right thing."
