Response To Light

Things have a way of coming together.

First, I have over 500 DVDs that essentially are just sitting on a shelve. What I really want to do is copy them to hardrive and get rid of them. Second, one my usb external hardrives died. With the cost of drives being what they are, I got a 1 Gb NAS with 2 Terabytes of Storage. With these two things as catalysts, I decided I would create a Media server for my XBOX360.

After a bit of research, I decided I would use TVersity as my Media manager. It can serve out movies, audio, and Internet Streaming Video to a wide variety interfaces including web pages, my Xbox360, my iTouch, and others. It also seemed to be the easiet to setup and get going. With a bit of configuration, I had managed to start streaming to my Xbox. Even though I was using 100Mb wired connection things seemed “slow”. I decided to upgrade my infrastructure backbone from 100Mb and Wireless G to Gigabit and Wireless N.

For Boxing Day, I found some phenomenal deals on Gigabit Wireless N router/switches and a couple of Wireless N USB adapters. I also managed to find an inexpensive Gigabit NIC for my server. These upgrades improved things dramatically. But there was another problem. The Xbox is downstairs and mostly used by the boys. What I REALLY wanted was to stream media upstairs to the plasma in our bedroom. And wouldn’t it be REALLY nice if we could stream HiDef media?!?

I looked at several devices but the one that seemed to have it all was a PS3. With built in Wireless, Blu-ray, the ability to stream multiple formats and, oh yeah, it plays games. At the time it seemed like a no brainer. There were a couple of hiccups however. First, the version of TVersity and the firmware that the PS3 had did not play well together. Movies stuttered horribly. I could not even consider HD Movies.

The first thing I figured out was that the PS3 liked the m2t format. Some of the movies I was encoding were mkv or Matroska file format which had to be transcoded on the fly. While my server is a true blue dual processing CPU machine, I am also running my Virtual Machines on it. Anything I can do to keep transcoding to a minimum is a bonus. I found a program called mkv2vob which converts mkv files to mpeg. This seems like a pain except to convert the file to m2t or m2ts is change the extension. If the extension was acme.mpg, I would change it to acme.m2t. That’s it! That’s one thing done.

However, as the PS3 is almost as far away as it could from my wireless router, I was always getting low connection rates. I checked to see if there was anyway to get a USB Wireless N Adapter but everything I read was no go. While I know that you can convert some routers into wireless bridges, I had a hard time trying to figure which wireless n routers could do this. In the end I purchased a D-Link Xtreme N Duo Wireless Bridge / Access Point. I also changed my router setup from allowing both Wireless N/G connections to just N. While there are a couple of devices that can no longer access the network, the primary devices work great and this alone has more than doubled throughput. Stuttering while watching movies was reduced again and I noticed that I could stream movies formated in 720p.

I found the last piece of the puzzle while looking for other solutions to the TVersity/PS3 stuttering problem. It’s a PS3 Media Server Project. You can get more information here. This is a JAVA based client that specializes in streaming content to the PS3. It works great! With this as the final piece, I have been successfully streaming HD movies without issue. Actually I should say that I can stream 720P and below. Streaming 1080P wirelessly does cause stuttering. However, as my plasma can only handle 720P (It’s 3.5 years old) this isn’t that big a deal.

The other format that works well is VOB. Currently I use MactheRipper to copy my DVDs and then on the actual server I use Join VOB Files Tool to create one VOB file. Sometime this week I will endeavor to find an application that can copy a DVD to one VOB file. Also I have not checked to see if the new files can be streamed to the Xbox360. This isn’t a huge deal but it would be nice to be able to stream to both devices.

I spent a lot of time figuring this out. I have downloaded more conversion packages than I care to admit to. If you are reading this, I hope this helps!

Tim

It’s got rough spots but it works…

For the past 5 months I have been looking for a new jointer. When I first started woodworking 4 years ago (has it really been long?), I purchased a Mastercraft 6” Bench Jointer. While it has served me well, it only worked for shorter pieces and it seemed to tear out everything except soft wood. Given that I am now a committed woodworker for life, I decided I really needed to get a “real jointer”. I went to all of the woodworking shops in my area but I couldn’t really find a deal. While I wanted a jointer, I could not justify the $450 – $750 price that everyone was asking. While doing a quick search of Kijiji, I found an old King 6” jointer at a decent price. I quickly went to pick it up, put new blades in it but after two days of trying to adjust the knives, I gave up. No matter what I did, one blade was always higher than the others.

The day before Christmas I decided to purchase a Veritas Bevel Up Jointer with a fence. Strangely enough, they didn’t have any and wouldn’t have new stock until mid January. After this, I gave up.

About a month ago, a flyer came in the mail from KMS Tools (one of my new favorite places to shop for tools). They had an incredible special on their Maxwood 6” Deluxe Jointer for $299. Maxwood is their house brand – although they are doing away with this line. This jointer normally sells for $549 which is a pretty good price but the $299 is incredible. While I am aware of the “dangers” of buying off brand equipment, I decided this was too good a deal to pass up. I drove the hour up to Red Deer and purchased it.

When I got home, I immediately went about putting it together. First let me say that the instructions are terrible. I actually went online to find instructions for several other manufacturers in effort to figure out how to put everything together. I was able to figure out most of it but by no means was it easy.

In the end, there were two issues. 1) The belt was too tight. Every time I tried to joint a piece of wood, it would trip the circuit breaker. 2) The fence was skewed.

I know I could have adjusted the motor to fix the belt issue and have been done with it. However I really didn’t want to start fussing with and everything else that needed adjustments. In the end, I bought a couple of feet of linked belt and used it instead. Using the correct length, I immediately fixed the tension in the belt.

It is hard to explain how the fence was skewed except to say that two holes were not in alignment and this caused the fence to not be straight. To fix this I used one of the holes and just had to tighten the screw against the fence assembly itself. This is clearly not ideal but it worked. There is still a bit of a skew but only about a 1/2 inch. This is acceptable.

Once this was fixed, I spent more time getting everything aligned. Getting the fence perfectly square was an exercise in patience. It seemed that every time I tightened up the fence adjustments, it would come out of square ever so slightly. It took me about 45 minutes before I finally nailed it. With everything working and aligned I could finally use it.

You might think that with all of these issues I might be unhappy. You would be wrong. With everything adjusted, this jointer works great! Taking light passes and a slow feed, I can now get reference edges in all of my rough lumber. I checked both tables and the fence for flatness and everything checked out. I knew going in that this might take a bit of work and there was a certain amount of risk but for the price the results have been worth it. The 1 hp motor seems powerful enough to handle what I have thrown at it so far. I only take light passes so this should be fine. The surfaces are smooth and square. Tear out is minimal even in difficult grain. Recently I have been recycling wood pallets. The extra long bed has been very helpful here. With the exception of the fence all other adjustments are good. That said, I do wish adjusting the fence were easier. One other note: I do like having the power switch high.

I am giving it three stars assuming I had to pay full price. In comparison to some of the other jointers I have used in the past, the fit and finish is not quite the same as some of the General’s or Delta’s I have used. That said the jointer is working quite well doing what it’s suppose to. At the discounted price, I would it give four stars. You get a lot of jointer for the money.

Hope this helps!

Tim

PS – I would be interested to know if anyone else has this jointer or even what jointer this is based on.