Wireless Schmireless

On a more serious note, I'd like to sum up the progress in some quantitative or qualitative way. I guess in the spirit of sportsmanship lets go in reverse order, but be aware this article contains swears.

In last place, falling behind all of the other technology I've encountered has got to be my Wireless Keyboard and mouse. It came as three parts,

Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop Receiver 2.1

Microsoft Wireless Multimedia Keyboard 1.1

Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse 2000

So worst first, the Receiver. Its a USB dongle with a 1m cable, and I'm going to blame the poor signal strength, short range and "Your wireless strength is low" and "your keyboard/mouse battery is low" dialog boxes on the Receiver as representative of the technology. Even with the keyboard less than 12 inches from the receiver it can complain about signal strength, and within twenty minutes of new batteries you can get low battery warnings. Fundemetally, this product is technologically flawed and an almost identical product on Microsofts website uses RF at 27Mhz. This cannot be found on the "Sell Sheet" detailing the "products leading edge features and functionality", but is detailed on the Technical Data Sheet. I didn't see this printed on the box, and would not have bought the product if I'd known.

Flawed technology and architecture aside, lets look at the cramped keyboard with spongy keys and fucked up layout. I refer to the insanity of screwing with the layout of Home,End, Insert,Delete, Page Up, Page Down. Please for the love of all things good in this world, do not move these keys. If you've decided to use a Qwerty layout in this day an age you must have a health respect for standards and moving these buttons if just going to piss me off - they are aligned vertically, 2x3 instead of 3x2 and the delete key is double size and there is no insert. Insert is an extra function of PrintScreen. I'm a programmer, and actually use my insert button and miss it when its gone. I'm also a gamer, and often have actions bound to function keys. I rely on instinct and on feeling the spaces between groupings of keys to press the right button. The decision to split the function keys into four sets of three buttons instead of three sets of four buttons is just total fail.

And the last of this unholy trinity, the Mouse. Its the least bad of the three. Its just a second rate, sluggish, uncomfortable mouse. Its small, has only two buttons and makes your hand feel cheap. It doesn't move as well as a good mouse but thats it. No significant complaints - its just not very good. Its not a gamers mouse.

I spent some time reflecting on this, on my expectations of both the capability of wireless technology and of the strength and value of the microsoft brand. The biggest immediate disappointment was the wireless range. It wasn't much longer than the length of a wired keyboard. I bought this to control my TV, but the range of the device was so short I couldn't use it while sitting on the sofa.

It was bought with a purpose, with a specific goal in mind and failed to deliver. Its worth noting that if I'd wanted a second-rate uncomfortable keyboard and mouse to use next to my PC within six inches of the the receiver then this would have fit the bill and would have got a great review, so it is all a mater of perspective. I think its a bit of a crock because radios havn't been referred to as "wireless" since Frequency Modulation and the twenty-first century usage of the term is usually assigned to something a bit more high tech than 27Mhz RF.

There is no geek-chic in this device, and its got the feel of something that is cosmetically wireless, not practically wireless. On any numerical scale other than binary, this product is going to score "One Star"

Causality

It could be observed that we create problems to solve, the devil makes work for idle hands - or in contemporary terms Parkinsons Law states Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

So I think its worth taking time to nod at causality. "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly...". With a sense of purpose and all the resources I could muster I wanted to sit and watch a movie - the are echos of a HTPC blog after all. Of course, this meant building a PC with components and drivers and whatnot that would provide 1080p playback and after the dust settled from a few false starts ended up with Ubuntu. Then I really needed storage space for my existing DVD collection and for new HD media as I get hold of it, which led to constructing and configuring a file server.

"Swallowing a spider to catch the fly..." Lets re-iterate that the goal here was to sit and watch a movie.
Well of course I'd pre-upgraded to a gigabit LAN for this, re-buying cables and switches to be able to move that data around as much as I'd need to. However running a cable down to next to the TV proved to be too much, so I moved from 54Mb Wireless-G to 300Mb Wireless-N, getting a new wireless router and a USB wireless adapter for the media player machine, which was soon replaced with a pair of Ethernet-over-mains network adapters.

"Swallowing a bird to catch the spider..." By now I'd lost sight of my goal.

But, I've got a new BSD fileserver with a ZFS storage pool that has 6TB of disk and an HDMI media machine capable of putting 1080p on the screen. Oh, and I bought a new LCD TV for all of this of course, which was the catalyst for the process. With a gigabit LAN and 300Mb wireless and Ethernet-over-mains for maximum connectivity.

"Swallowing a cat to catch the bird..." By now I'd gained so much momentum I didn't need a goal.
And bought a hammer drill to mount the TV on the wall, and hit stone while I was drilling because the chimney breast was ~of course~ solid, so that became a chore in its own right. And squared it with a plumb line because I couldn't find my spirit level and just refused, at this point, to buy a second spirit level.

"Swallowing a dog to catch the cat..."
Since I'd robbed the video card from my PC to use in the media machine, it was time to buy a new fanless 9800 GT. But there is no sense buying a fanless card when I'm still using a stock CPU cooler so a peltier-effect water-cooling unit and an acoustically padded case justified a silent video card.

I intend to stop before buying a horse.

There is probably a lesson in causality here. Would it have been easier to quit half way through? Maybe, maybe not. Am I navigating the path of least physical resistance? Least psychological resistance? Perhaps I just didn't know what 'Done' looked like so have just carried on making changes.

Second to that, do I own a Home Cinema or am I the servant answering its beck and call? I'm starting to fear the latter.

Net Woe King

Setting up a HTPC machine using Ubuntu is of course only a fraction of my problems solved, and from the perspective of today, only a fraction of my problems created.

Remember if you can, advertisements for Wireless G when it was launched. They showed a cross-section of a house and garden, with wireless B coverage in a small red circle that covered most of the house and the Green Wireless G range stretching to the bikini laptop girl by the swimming pool.

While one doesn't expect a new wireless router to provide a swimming pool or laptop bikini girls, back in the day I saw the advantages and spent the extra on a new router, PCMCIA card and a pair of PCI wireless adapters and prepared to live the rock star dream of wireless G networking.

I was rewarded with bandwidth decimating signal strength, and very quickly took up my prize of Cat5 cables run through doorways, across the stairs and everywhere else I didn't want them.

Fastforward to the distant future of 2010 where the picture for wireless N is... You've guessed it a red circle barely escaping the confines of the house representing Wireless-G and a laptop bikini girl enjoying her 300mbps bandwidth Wireless-N on a sun lounger by the pool.

Something is wrong with this picture. Has wireless G got slowly worse over the years, have houses, people and all our worldly goods got much bigger or have we just been lied to about wireless ranges? I fear all of the answers there.

As should now be apparent, my wireless-N router has delivered no blistering bandwidth, increased range or swimming pool. We do have a pond in the garden, and it has frogs, but they don't really factor into the equation when you are trying to stream media from online or from a fileserver in the spare room.

This is the future, where is my internet?

I've got a Wireless-N router, a selection of colour coded Cat5e cables, and a couple of gigabit switches. Its cheap kit and should give excellent performance above and beyond my meagre domestic needs.

To prevent the wireless bottleneck, I'm also equipped with 100Mbit Ethernet-Over-Mains. It does work - gets me about thirty to forty megabit file transfer to the Karmic Koala next to the TV. I'm not sure that Ethernet-Over-Mains is a long term solution, but its functional, easy to install and works even connected to a 30m extension cable, allowing you to run a single line out into the garden that carries power and Ethernet so you can sit next to the pond and google frogs.

I shall revisit this topic once Wireless-N works for me, or I decide to give up on the wireless dream until the next technological breakthrough shows that actually Wireless-N only reaches to the house but Wireless-X will stretch to the laptop bikini girl by the pool.

For now, I will content myself with Ethernet-over-mains, my networking solution to a problem I've created by putting a PC in an awkward location in the house while I divert my attention to finding media to watch - A task in itself and one for another day.

In for a penny

The challenge presenting itself now is twofold. Will Ubuntu rise to the challenge and be able to play 1080p - this is a purely technical question. But the limiting factor could be the poor user who has to install and configure the system. Will Ubuntu work with less effort than I'm willing to spend. Now there is the question. While I've got a compiler I know I can get anything working, and if I don't have a compiler... well there are always 1's and 0's. I'm already in for a penny, I don't think I'm in for a pound.

I could always just use my quad, and a PS3 only costs a couple of hundred quid, both of these might be preferable to Ubuntu.

My problem is that the h264 decode is only using a single core, but really I want to push the workload onto the GPU which can handle the decode easily and provide free image processing, filters, shaders thrown in. There is an alternative, which is to get multicore CPU decode. You don't get any post-processing, but since I'm only using half my cores and decoding more than half of the video

This article says that I can get multiple cores enabled using CoreAVC

http://www.zimbio.com/Ubuntu+Linux/articles/524/1080p+HDTV+H+264+Playback+Linux

It involves PAYING MONEY for the Windows version of AVC, booting into Windows, doing some things, booting back. You know what, I'm already putting this on the list of last resort options - possibly even after that. Multiple Core rendering doesn't really excite me, it'd probably be good enough - but is good enough really good enough? Probably not.

This guide adds multicore CPU too

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1049449&highlight=ffmpeg-mt

Which is an interesting read, and I looked at a few other people talking about the same subject. While this does look like something I should do, I'm really going to try for GPU playback and then this is kind of my fall back option.

Now VDPAU is where its at. This is GPU playback, I read a discussion that the latest drivers nerfed vdpau and thought back to that "install 17x or 18x drivers" question. There is a moment when you realise that you've only been trusted with one actual choice, and did it wrong, but further digging showed that 195.30 has vdpau broken and in the older 190.32 it worked ok. Lets cross our fingers and hope that it worked with 18x too and install VLC.

VLC is pretty good as far as media players go, and I'm comfortable installing and using it. The shocker in this world is.. It worked. Silky smooth 1080p.

So in an odd turn of events, Ubuntu has saved the day. I've still got to get the YouTubes working, and I suspect a range of other apps. Mount a webcam and get Skype going, that sort of thing, but the actual point of it all was to watch a film - and that at least, I can do.

Ubun to the rescue.

Continuing in HTPC territory, to maintain my guise of a technology blogroll.

Skipping the details, I've tried each combination of CPU and video card, I've used 32 and 64 Bit versions of windows and Ubuntu from a Live CD and nothing promising has shown up.

It wasn't actually an exhaustive test of all combinations, but it was enough to exhaust me nonetheless and at best I'm getting a single-core and no GPU assist on playback - which can't cope with 1080p and stutters. The one combination that worked was my quad with the fanless 9400, using DXVA. While I'm happy for that video card to be used in a media centre, I don't want to put by quad core PC out to pasture for watching the occasional film and use the slower Duo every day.

Expectations lowered sufficiently I booted back into WinXP to come up with a plan and was greeted with a virus. It was one of *those* days, so I evaluated my resources and options. With nothing to lose and everything to gain I took a punt and pressed Alt-F4. Permanently. Using the LiveCD I replaced "C:\" with "swap" and "/" and let Ubuntu out of the box. Begone, Windoze and never darken my desktop again.

A fresh Ubuntu 9.10 install needs a few things. First off, it needs Google Chrome which installed fine. It also asked for 224MB of extras from the Ubuntu update manager so I made the executive decision that it knows more than I do and I should just trust the advice of an expert. Besides at 50mpbs, 224MB installs pretty quick. At this point I've got nothing to lose that I haven't already lost and my 1080p media doesn't play for missing codecs.

Next off Ubuntu told me it wanted propriety video drivers, giving me the option of the nvidia 17x and 18x package, so I picked the more recent 18x driver. I think it was the illusion of choice, but I didn't have anything to go on except nVidia thinks the new ones are better and who am I to argue?

Well, my 1080p still doesn't play but a little R&D deliver MediBuntu which looks reasonably promising. http://www.medibuntu.org/

This looks like it gets me ffMpeg and avcodec so after a successful apt-get I fire up Totem and..

Nothing. But this is why I installed Ubuntu BEFORE doing to research, because now I've got something to play for.

This website told me to Install Ubuntu Restricted Extras
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats

Which I did and now my 1080p does play, it stutters in the same way I'd expect if it was CPU bound but at least I get h246 in my eyes and AC3 in my ears.

Now the game is afoot. I'm sure the Intel E6600 CPU and nVidia 9400 are capable of providing perfect 1080p playback, so now I'm software limited. Are the drivers good enough, and is Ubuntu just going to be the same problem with a different boot screen?