I had pretty high hopes for my recent HP MediaSmart (EX485, ~$500) acquisition but, after a fun-filled day of disaster recovery, I’m second guessing my purchase. This Macworld Best of Show award winner supposedly offers multi-OS backup, including Time Machine support. It can also act as a central iTunes server, stream media to your Xbox 360 (Twonky), run SageTV, and even permit remote access. The EX485 sure looked like a good start in fulfilling my desire for a ‘personal cloud’.

To configure the Windows Home Server (based on Windows 2003), I went for convenience and used my Vista Ultimate (thanks, Ivan!) Boot Camp partition. Later, I hopped on over to OS X and installed the HP software. My first task was a full Time Machine backup, which went smoothly – taking only a couple hours over WiFi. That was Saturday. Yesterday (Sunday) is when it all unraveled. (more…)

I was away on a business trip when Zeevee launched their re-branded “Zinc” multimedia front-end for Windows. However, CEO Vic Odryna was kind enough to still pass me a pre-release Mac OS X build to play with.

But first a little backstory… ZeeVee launched the clever but overpriced and perhaps overly complex ZvBox last summer – which streamed a variety of media from PC over coax to QAM-tuning televisions throughout the home. I don’t imagine sales were strong. But Zeevee has found success by commercializing their technology. And the Zviewer software took on a life of its own. Rumors of ZvBox mothballing their consumer hardware have been greatly exaggerated… new stuff’s in the pipeline.

Back to Zinc (formerly Zviewer) – which they’re calling an ‘Internet video browser.’ And indeed it really is a browser. Unlike Boxee, which has built their application on top of XBMC, Zinc is a super-customized Mozilla (Firefox) build. Meaning, it’s likely web video can’t be blocked. (Related, Boxee tacked on a browser as the latest salvo in their ongoing Hulu battle.) I’m not certain what Zeevee’s release timing is, but the beta build I’m playing with makes it seem pretty close. Stay tuned.

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Following up my previous integrated Windows 7 codec support coverage, I saw from Volker Zota at heise that some new developments in the Windows 7 betas have come to light. According to the investigative work of an ffdshow developer, as reported to Dan “BetaBoy” Marlin of CoreCodec, the latest beta of Windows 7 blocks the usage of third party video decoders from Windows Media Player and MCE. There are some very notable caveats to the information as it stands right now: this is after all just a beta and might not be in the final released version of Windows 7, there will likely be work arounds, especially for other player software applications (like VLC and Media Player Classic), and because Windows 7 will come with h.264 already installed, many users will never need third-party decoders anyway.

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I’ve dabbled in “the cloud” for some time. The majority of my digital photos were (publicly) hosted on Flickr until I tired of repeated theft reports and Yahoo censorship incidents. And for awhile, I was backing up on Mozy’s servers. More recently, I tried to replace iDisk, MobileMe photo galleries, and Mozy with a SugarSync subscription – but it hasn’t really met my, perhaps unreasonable, expectations.

Also, there’s the matter of cloud privacy and longevity… Most services extol the virtues of their data protection schemes. Yet, most are protected by a simple password. Which can be lost. Or that encrypted data may inadvertently be shared. While data loss and downtime can also be issues, a bigger concern is companies pulling the plug. And this isn’t an issue limited to failed startups. Both HP and Yahoo are shuttering cloud services this month. Not to mention Yahoo sucked the life from and then blew up the top worldwide Internet photo repository. If you can’t rely on a major Internet player like Yahoo to keep their doors open for service, who can you trust?

Bringing us to the concept of a “personal” cloud, which probably begins with local networked storage. While many computer geeks are comfortable tunneling home or “terminaling” in, we’re starting to see some more consumer-friendly solutions come to market. Apple’s recently updated MobileMe service ($99/yr) facilitates access to a Time Capsule or external drive (“airdisk”) via Back to My Mac. While the concept is good, the execution appears to be lacking. Gizmodo reports connectivity issues and only OS X is supported.

At CES, I spent some time checking out the promising Pogoplug ($80) – which is both a device and a service. The small Linux device, available next month, turns any USB drive into both local and remote networked storage. Accessible from a variety of operating systems, web browsers, and the iPhone. I hope to take an early look at this hybrid cloud solution (your drive, their web service) in the near future.

One of the selling points of true cloud storage is off-site backup. Which isn’t really addressed by a home cloud solution. Perhaps, it’s time for the distributed storage of a “family cloud”. And maybe more generous broadband caps with a bandwidth meter, Comcast.

On Sunday, I spent several hours on the phone with both the TiVo and Digital River (TiVo’s online license key fulfillment provider) technical support teams. After installing generic TiVo Desktop 2.7 software under the Windows 7 Beta, the desktop software would not accept my TiVo Desktop Plus License Key. It kept reporting that I had an invalid key. The only solution TiVo’s support team had in its database was to reinstall the app – which didn’t work. Digital River issued me a new license key which the TiVo Desktop 2.7 app also rejected. After a couple hours and four phone calls we/they all gave up. I was about to try installing the older TiVo Desktop version 2.6.2 when it occurred to me to try running both the installer and the app in Windows Vista compatibility mode. Voila!

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Like Brent, I read that the Adobe Air Hulu-scraping software MyMediaPlayer can no longer access Hulu video streams. Most coverage has portrayed the situation as Hulu, LLC targeting this specific program. But Hulu periodically tweaks the way they serve content, requiring unsupported third parties to make changes. I’ve seen it a few times with PlayOn, but this developer isn’t interested in keeping up.

In general, I think we (tv-viewing consumers) all agree Hulu should be more liberal in sharing their advertising-laden programming (poor Boxee) and/or provide additional outlets: television hardware, mobile clients, etc. And, in fact, that may indeed be the case… Recently announced media streamer ZillionTV (below) is financially backed by Hulu’s studio founders, NBC and Fox (among others).

Ted Malone of Sling Media is in agreement. Despite a business relationship with Hulu, or perhaps because, he’s called them out in the comments on NewTeeVee:

Hulu needs to start acting like a platform and less like a cable company. [...] As long as customers are accessing Hulu’s content (with Hulu’s ads), where is the problem? [...] Bad move Hulu.

While I certainly understand and support his position, he of all people should realize the content providers are still somewhat skittish and the situation is complex – in terms of licensing, quality of service (QoS) concerns, regional restrictions, getting paid… and other sticking points we’re probably not aware of. Though, given Sling’s growing stable of studio relationships, they should be. But I’m all for whatever it takes for Sling to pipe Hulu content directly to my SlingCatcher without a PC in the mix. Make it so, Ted.

If you’re one of the many people running the Windows 7 beta you’ll be interested in this. Microsoft has announced several of the changes/updates being made to Windows 7 that will be included in the soon-to-be-released Windows 7 Release Candidate. A few of the media-related highlights from their notes include:

• Improved Internet Radio playback
• Improved playback support for video content from digital camcorders and cameras
• Cleaner Now Playing view
• Filtering content that cannot be played
• Resume from sleep
• Quieting Windows Media Player sync relationships
• Easier access to advanced settings
• Jump List improvement
• Enriching the Device Stage ecosystem

Not a bad list of improvements. However I don’t see too much directly related to Media Center, other than several “behind-the-scenes” fixes. Read the rest of this entry »