Gadget Review Of The Year - 2012

Well, it's that time again. Seems like only a couple of months ago that I was writing the 2011 version of this post, but here we are at the end of 2012. My good intentions of posting more frequently on this blog have gone by the board, but at least I haven't abandoned it entirely. Anyway, I suppose I had better get on and tell you about the gadget comings-and-goings at Low Fidelity Towers over the past twelve months.



At the start of the year, we embarked on the grand Home Cinema project. You've probably seen the photos that I posted (here and here) documenting its conversion, but needless to say it was quite an exciting time. We completely revolutionised the room, turning it into a proper cosy home cinema complete with full 5.1 sound. I used the amp and speakers that I already owned, but the new gadgets came in the form of a Samsung 40-inch UE40D5520 TV and a new Sony BDP-S380 Blu-ray player.



After that fairly hefty financial outlay, things remained quiet on the gadget front until April, when I purchased a first-gen iPad from a friend. I couldn't justify buying a brand new one, but this was the perfect antidote to keep my iPad desire at bay (at least for a while).

After getting rid of a few old bits on the mighty eBay, I decided to get a USB MIDI keyboard to try and kickstart some music-making. I've not really done a lot of music in the past few years, and I decided it was time to try and get back into it. I bought the M-Audio Keystation 88es, which has semi-weighted full size keys and it has been a good purchase. I don't think a "proper" pianist would think much of it, but it's ideal for me to tinker on.

I bought a new digital-to-analogue converter to use with my hi-fi in September. I had been using my Firestone Audio Fubar IV, but I felt that the system would benefit from a proper, dedicated DAC to handle the audio conversion between my Apple TV and separates. I opted for the Arcam rLink - it's a very simple device, but it works very well, and it's so small you can hide it away behind your other components. I was so pleased with it all, I splashed out on a very nice hi-fi rack to put it all on.



Speaking of the Apple TV, as you may know I had two of these for Airplay duties - one in the lounge and one in the bedroom. They were second-generation ones, and I hadn't ever seen the need to upgrade them to the latest 3rd-gen ones, as I didn't really need the extra 1080p capability. However, when Twitter friend Sam told me that she had sold her 2nd-gen Apple TV for £150 (substantially more than the original £99 RRP) I decided to follow suit and sell both of mine. (In case you're wondering, the 2nd-gen is sought after because it is possible to jailbreak it, something that I was never interested in). I re-purchased two new 3rd-gen Apple TVs and sat there with a tidy £100 profit in the bank, and an urge to spend it on yet more gadgets!



The opportunity to spend it came in the form of the iPad Mini. As soon as I saw it announced at the keynote in October, I knew that it would be mine (oh yes, it would be mine). I had the £100 from my Apple TV sales, but where would I get the remainder from? I decided that the first-gen iPad that I had bought back in April would have to make way for the Mini, so I stuck it on eBay. Within an amazing 13 minutes of listing it, it had sold, and there I was with enough cash to buy the Mini. After much internet searching, I finally (just before Christmas) managed to secure the black 16GB wifi model, and it found its way under the tree to be unveiled on the big day.

The final gadgets of the year also came at Christmas, in the form of a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 audio interface and a Behringer C1 condenser microphone. Alongside the MIDI keyboard, I'm now all set up to make some music and hopefully this will bear fruit in 2013.

Anyway, happy new year to you all. Thanks for reading, and hope 2013 is a good one.

Old Skool iPad & GiffGaff Goodness

I've wanted an iPad ever since the day Steve unleashed them on the unsuspecting tech world, but I've never been able to justify the cost for what is - essentially - a luxury gadget.

When the "New iPad" showed its face a couple of months back, my Apple-loving associate Olitee decided to upgrade his first-gen iPad to the new one, and I, in turn, bought his old one off him for a bargain price. Admittedly it doesn't have a pretty Retina display or an all-powerful A5X chip but to all intents and purposes it does what I need it to.

More interestingly though - and here I am, finally getting to the point - because it is a 3G iPad I've been exploring my options with regards to pay-as-you-go data plans for it. The cheapest and most flexible plan turned out to be with GiffGaff, a SIM-only internet-based company who offer both mobile phone and mobile data tariffs. They send the SIM out to you for free, and once you've got it you can activate it via their website and top it up with your choice of minutes, texts and/or data.

For the iPad, they do plans ranging for £5 for 500MB through to £12.50 for 3GB. Each of these amounts will last for 30 days, and you can choose to buy another 30 days' worth at any point. Ideal for me, as most of the time I'll be just using wifi, but if I ever need to I can buy one of these bundles and off we go.

The only small complication is that GiffGaff only offer regular-sized SIM cards, and as you probably know the iPhone and iPad use MicroSIMs. No problem though, because GiffGaff supply a downloadable template for you to print out and use to trim the SIM down with scissors or a craft knife - and it's surprisingly easy to do!

Once the SIM is cut down to size and in the iPad, you have to input the APN settings manually, but again this is very easy. Go to "Settings -> Cellular Data -> APN Settings" and then put the following in:

APN: giffgaff.com
Username: giffgaff
Password: password

Once you've done all this, turn off the iPad completely and turn it back on again. Hey presto, you have yourself 3G mobile data! Do be aware that if you go to the "View Account" option in the Cellular Data settings, it will show an O2 logo and report "Device not recognised - This iPad has not been registered properly on our systems". Don't panic - nothing is wrong, it's simply because GiffGaff utilises the O2 network.

If you're considering signing up with GiffGaff - either for a phone or data plan - then click here to order your SIM and we'll both get a free £5 top-up when you activate your account.

Cinematic 2

Well I'm pleased to say that the grand home cinema room project is now finished! Carrying on from where we left off last time, I'll talk you through the pictures.

The next steps were to paint and wallpaper prior to laying the floor.



Then I set about laying the laminate flooring (something which I had never tried before, but which was thankfully pretty easy).



And once the floor was down, I hung the curtains.



Next job was to tidy everything up with new skirting board and architrave. I had it delivered pre-cut into approximately correct lengths, so I painted it prior to installation - note the improvised system to raise it up off the floor!



I chickened out of fitting the skirting myself - I know a rather good joiner who came and did it for me (took him about 2 hours - it would have taken me all day and it still wouldn't have looked as good).

Once the DIY was all finished, I went shopping!



And then came the fun part - getting everything up and running! All the components (with the exception of the TV) were the same as the ones in my old house, so I was familiar with the setup and it all came together very quickly.

Here's some photos of the finished result:



 



 



So there you go - finished! I'm really pleased with how it has turned out, and after the grand premiere (Avatar, in case you were wondering) I'm very impressed with the sound and picture too. Already I'm starting to think of future upgrades (better speakers? Wall mount the telly? Projector?) but for now, this is very nice indeed.

Cinematic

And so it begins... after testing out the concept for a couple of weeks last year, I've started the official conversion of the garage room into a "proper" home cinema.

The room was initially a garage, and the the previous owners converted it into an office, complete with desktops, masses of power sockets, nasty fluorescent lighting, carpet tiles glued to the concrete floor and a weedy electric heater. It wasn't a very "cosy" room to say the least.

The plan was/is as follows: New insulated floor, raised up off the concrete underneath; installation of a decent radiator, fed off the existing pipework in the adjacent utility room; strip lights removed and replaced with adjustable downlighters; speaker cables chased into the walls terminated at a binding plate; relocation of power sockets; laminate floor, painting, new skirting and architrave.

So here's a few photos.

Firstly, the subfloor, complete with nice warm Xtratherm insulation:

And the boarding over the top of it:

And the ceiling spotlights...

Speaker cables fed through wall cavity down to below skirting level:

And the binding plate on the main wall:

And finally the radiator!

At the moment, I'm enduring the tedium of painting everything, and then I'll be wallpapering the main end wall which will be behind the TV and AV equipment. Then it'll be on to laying the flooring before tidying it all up with skirting and architrave. Once all that's done I can reward myself with a brand new 40-inch TV! I'll post again when I'm a bit nearer to completion.

Little and often

When I was writing the 2011 review of the year the other day, it didn't take me very long to read through all my blog posts - there were very few! I can blame that on all sorts of things (mainly moving house I think).

So, for 2012 I've decided to go with a "little and often" approach. There will still be the larger "how to" posts when a subject demands it, but I figure I quite liked having my blog as a more regular snapshot of what I was up to on a day-to-day basis.

So, depending on your point of view, this will either be a good thing or the worst idea in history. Your choice.

Anyway, today is notable for two reasons - firstly, I've just taken delivery of some new cycling clothing, as it is my intention to actually ride that very expensive and lovely road bike that's in the garage. Secondly, I'm sat typing this in a new coffee shop called Victus. I decided to be radical and spurn Starbucks in favour of a new experience. How very 2012.

Gadget Review of the Year - 2011

Well, if I'm going to do a review of the year, it had better be right now because there's only five hours of 2011 left.

Things were a bit lean on the gadget front this year, mainly because I bought the ultimate gadget in June, a new house! We had been talking about moving for some time, but we finally decided to bite the bullet and go for it. We weren't prepared for quite what a massively time-consuming (and to be honest, stressful) thing this would be, but it's done now and we're settled in nicely.

Other than that rather expensive purchase, I managed to acquire a new Xbox 360 Slim (after the other one suffered a rather drawn-out demise). It's a much more sleek unit than the old one, and having 250GB of storage is a bonus. It has also proved its worth as a decent media player too, as I've been using it as a stop-gap DVD player and media streamer in the lounge.

I also got a second Apple TV for the bedroom, and I also got round to migrating my iTunes library onto an external hard drive to free up space on the iMac. I've been upgrading a lot of my music to Apple Lossless, and ripping a lot of DVDs, so having the extra storage has been pretty much essential.

Other than that, in November I retired the HTC Legend and managed to finally get my hands on the Gadget To Rule Them All, an iPhone 4. This is, it goes without saying, quite the most magnificent thing in the known universe and why I didn't get one sooner is beyond me. Obviously, I considered the new iPhone 4S but ultimately it came down to money, so the 4 ended up being the better deal. iOS5 is excellent, and it has already become indispensable.

The final gadget acquisition of 2011 was an Apple Magic Trackpad for my birthday just a couple of weeks ago, and like all Apple gadgets it is superb - it really takes advantage of Lion's multitouch features, and now I've got used to it I can't see myself going back to a mouse any time soon.

And I can't let it go without saying that 2011 was a sad time for the gadget world when we lost Steve Jobs. We won't ever see another quite like him.

So goodbye 2011, and let's hope 2012 is filled full of gadget-goodness for you all. I have my eye on the home cinema conversion for starters - let's see how that one pans out!

iPhone, therefore iAm

If you've been hanging around here for long enough, you'll remember my inner turmoil back in mid 2010 when I was trying to choose a new mobile phone. I eventually settled on the HTC Legend, and in the main I've been pretty happy with it. Android is a fairly decent operating system, and the availability of decent apps improved immeasurably in the 18 months that I had the phone. My main gripes were to do with the hardware of the phone itself, rather than the operating system. Firstly, there was nowhere near enough onboard storage (the phone was constantly telling me it was running out of space) and the screen was a bit small for web surfing (and more recently, Kindle reading).

So anyway, my 18 month contract came to an end and it was time for me to choose yet another new phone. Would I go Android again? Or would I, just maybe, finally opt for the iPhone? When the iPhone 4S was released, I was - like everyone else - a bit disappointed by it being just a gradual evolution of the iPhone 4, rather than an all new iPhone 5.

But at the same time as Apple showed the world the iPhone 4S, they also sneaked out - with little fanfare - a cheaper, 8GB version of the iPhone 4. With it being effectively a "last gen" phone with less storage space, Apple were asking a very reasonable price for it.

I'd heard a lot of good things about the Tesco phone network, and in particular their good-value 12 month contracts. I figured if I could manage the upfront cost for a handset, then 12 months would be ideal.

The amount of minutes, texts and data on offer for £25 a month were more than enough, but the handset prices were still a little on the high side. If I wanted the latest-and-greatest iPhone 4S then I'd have to find £335 for the phone itself. However, if I was happy to slum it with an 8GB iPhone 4 it would only be £200. Talking to friends who were still stuck in their iPhone 4 contracts for several more months, but who were still incredibly happy with the performance of the 4, I decided this was the way to go.

And here we are. I've now had the 8GB iPhone 4 for a little under 2 weeks, and I absolutely love it. I realise it's not the 4S, but compared to my wilderness years without any iPhone at all, it is just brilliant. So finally you can hear the end of my "I wish I had an iPhone" moaning. It's here, and it's staying.

Thanks Steve

Steve Jobs - 1955-2011

Like a lot of people, I woke up this morning to hear the incredibly sad news about the death of Steve Jobs. We all knew he was ill, probably very ill, but I wasn't expecting it so soon. The way he'd been talking when he stepped down as Apple CEO a few months back, I figured he still had years ahead of him.

So many people have said so many poignant and truthful things already today. Friends like Rich, Oli and Sam - just regular, everyday Apple fans - have already paid tribute to a man who touched their lives in a unique way. I can imagine others (those who obviously don't understand) saying "But you never even met the guy! What's the big deal?"

I'll take a moment to share my perspective on Steve, and what he did for me.

I've used Macs for a long time. Back before the original iMac. Before the iPod. Before they were cool. For me, there was always something great about them, even those monochrome Mac Classics that I used in the early nineties. They had character. They were different.

And then, Steve came back to Apple after his "wilderness years". He launched the iMac, and what a machine that was. Then came OSX. Then came the iPod. In those revolutionary products, Steve captured the attention of the world and showed them something that they didn't even know they wanted, but simply had to have.

Through my job, I got to buy and play with a lot of Apple kit. The G3 iMac, in particular, revolutionised my view of what a computer should be, and should do. I was never going back. I'm sat here typing this on an iMac right now.

Apple's meteoric rise has been astounding. Only recently, Steve's guidance saw the iPad become their next massive success - and again, a product that "experts" thought wouldn't sell because there was no market for it.

Today, it seems like everyone is brandishing an "iDevice" like a style accessory. The majority don't have Macs, and never will have. They probably don't know the first thing about the history and evolution of that piece of technological wizardry they're holding, and nothing of the contribution Steve has made to their lives.

If I've got one regret about how massively successful Steve made Apple, it's that not enough people will look down at their Apple product on this monumental, awful day, take a brief quiet moment and think to themselves, "Thanks Steve".

I like to move it (iTunes, that is)

When I bought my iMac last year, I foolishly thought that a 500GB hard drive would be plenty big enough. But you know what they say, you can never have too much storage and my recent regime of ripping DVDs into iTunes as well as upgrading a lot of my music to lossless files has meant that those 500 gigabytes have been getting used up pretty quickly.

I figured that I needed to locate my burgeoning iTunes library somewhere else, off of the iMac internal hard drive. I had a few options, and the one uppermost in my mind was Network Attached Storage (NAS). After discussing this with Olitee though, he was firmly of the opinion that this wasn't necessarily the best option. Not only was it expensive, it might not work exactly as I wanted it to. I'd still have to have iTunes running on my Mac in order to be able to get my files to my AppleTV and Airport Express. His answer was a big external hard drive, locally attached to my Mac instead.

However, the thing I liked about a NAS was that - if it was a two-bay one, with two separate drives inside - it would automatically mirror one drive to the other in case of failure. I wouldn't be able to do this with an external hard drive would I?

I've used Apple's Time Machine to back up my computer ever since it was first introduced in Leopard, and I love it. It's incredibly reliable. What I didn't realise though, is that Time Machine will not only back up your main Mac drive, but it can also backup up other attached drives (providing they are formatted for Mac), so clearly, if done correctly, I could get Time Machine to backup my external iTunes library in addition to my main Mac drive.

So, learning from my "you can never have too much storage" lesson, I decided to go the whole hog and get two new drives - a 1TB for my iTunes library, and a 2TB for Time Machine.

Moving your iTunes library is reasonably straightforward, but there are a few potential pitfalls along the way - things have to be done in a certain order. You can search for "moving iTunes to external drive" if you want some more in-depth tutorials on the subject, but here's how I went about it.

Firstly, because I wanted Time Machine to be able to backup my iTunes drive, I needed to format it for Mac use. By default, most external drives come preformatted as FAT32, and rather stupidly, the ones that are Mac formatted cost more money?!

Anyway, you need to fire up Disk Utility, choose your drive in the left-hand column (make sure you choose the right one!) and then go to the "Partition" tab. I only wanted the one partition, so I chose this from the dropdown and ensured "MacOS Extended (Journaled)" was selected. Hit "Apply" and in only a few seconds you have a freshly formatted drive, ready to go.

The important thing to realise at this point is that you CANNOT just drag-and-drop your iTunes folder onto this new drive and expect it to work. It won't. You need to let iTunes do your housekeeping for you - that way the iTunes program can keep track of what is going where.

Needless to say, before you start messing with any of this, make sure you have a backup in case things go awry.

Then, in iTunes, you need to go to the File menu, and then choose "Library" -> "Organise Library".

From here you'll get a dialog giving you two check boxes - the lower of the two says "Reorganize files in the folder iTunes Media". If you've already got your library set up this way, then it will be greyed out and you won't be able to click it, so you needn't worry about this step. If, like me, you didn't have it this way, you can check this box at this point. DON'T choose the upper "Consolidate files" checkbox just yet - that comes later! Click "OK" and iTunes will set everything up in neat subfolders for you, in a central repository called "iTunes Media", subdivided into music, movies, TV shows etc. To be clear, you don't HAVE to do this - you can leave your folder structure as is, but to my mind allowing iTunes to set it up makes the next steps easier.

The next part is to tell iTunes that you want to move your library somewhere else. You do this via the iTunes "Preferences" option. Go to the "Advanced" tab, and you'll see "iTunes Media folder location" at the top.

Click the "Change" button and navigate to your external iTunes drive (I named mine, rather imaginatively, "iTunes"). You need to create a folder inside this drive for your media files, so create one at this point using the "New folder" button. You can name this new folder anything you like, but I opted for the default "iTunes Media". Click okay, and then ensure both the "Keep iTunes Media folder organised" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" checkboxes are ticked. Click "OK".

Now comes the slightly scary bit. Go back to the iTunes "File -> Library -> Organise library" menu, and this time check the "Consolidate files" box. Click "OK", and iTunes will warn you that it's about to copy everything into the new location and that this cannot be undone. Click "OK", and the long and arduous task of moving everything will commence. This could take minutes or hours, depending on the size of your library.

Bear in mind that this does not remove your original media files from their previous locations - it copies them, not moves them. This means that you'll have all your music, movies and so on in two locations now - the new one, and the old one. Clearly the object of the exercise is to free up space, so you need to find your original "iTunes Media" folder and drag it to the trash. It's VERY important not to trash any of the other iTunes files - just the media folder. The other files "iTunes Library.itl", "iTunes Music Library.xml" etc are vital to the correct operation of iTunes. If you get rid of these, you'll lose all your play counts and playlists.

Quite iTunes, and then restart it. If you've done things correctly, iTunes will simply restart without protest. If it does, then you can empty the trash, deleting your original media files and freeing up all that lovely drive space!

For most people, that will be quite enough tinkering. Everything will work as it should, and when you add new music or videos to iTunes, they will be stored on your external drive along with all the others. However, if you've got computer-OCD like me, you'll want to move all those other iTunes files that I just mentioned too.

Make sure iTunes isn't running, and then go to your original iTunes folder location, and there will be those few files (iTunes Library.itl, iTunes Music Library.xml, iTunes Library Genius.itdb etc) and folders (Previous iTunes Libraries, Album Artwork etc) in there. You can copy and paste these into the root of your new iTunes drive (i.e. NOT in the iTunes Media folder) and then, once this is done, you ned to start up iTunes whilst holding down the option key on a Mac, or shift key on a PC, and iTunes will ask you to choose an iTunes library. Click "Choose library" and navigate to your new drive and click OK. iTunes will start up, and from hereon will remember where to find its files. You can delete the original files once everything is working correctly, or if you're paranoid like me, you can back them up safely in a separate folder somewhere else in case of disaster.

All of this will mean that you've moved all of iTunes, wholesale, to your new external drive.

By default, Time Machine WON'T be backing up this new drive at this point, so make sure you go to the Time Machine preferences and remove your iTunes drive from the "Exclude" list under the "options" menu. The next time Time Machine works its magic, it'll backup not only your internal drive but also your external iTunes drive as well. Sorted.

And we're in.

It has been ten days now since we moved into our new house, and things are starting to resemble something approaching normality. We still have a lot of boxes which haven't been unpacked, but they're mainly books and CDs, because as yet we don't have any shelves to put them on.

I've had Virgin Media TV, broadband and phone installed, and as part of the install upgraded to their 500GB Tivo. This has taken a bit of getting used to, as it is a much more complicated (but also more capable) device than the old V+. As for broadband, Virgin insisted on me having one of their SuperHub combined modem/routers - which I didn't really want, but customers apparently don't have any say in the matter. I was happy with my separate cable modem and router, but I guess it's one less power plug. Despite the SuperHub being 802.11n, the wifi doesn't even reach halfway across the house so I've been making do with my old Devolo 85mbps homeplugs, just to get the internet where I need it.

However, I've today set up something a little better - still not my intended wired gigabit network, but certainly more robust than my current solution.

I've gone for another product by Devolo (because they really are the best when it comes to powerline networking) but this time I've opted for their dLAN 200 AV Wireless N adapters. Instead of each plug just having one ethernet socket, these have three, and not only that but each acts as a 802.11n wifi access point as well, which is handy.

Basically what this means is that I've got three wifi access points, giving good coverage all over the house, and the ability to hard wire all the devices that support it as well - three in the lounge, three in the cinema and three in the study. The monitoring software tells me that I'm getting about 115mbps across the wired devices which is good enough for the time being. I don't rely on wifi all that much (I'm not a big fan of it really) but if I do need it (for phones, laptop, Wii, Kindle etc) then it's available.

On a more disappointing note, it looks like it'll be some time before I'm able to set up the garage conversion as the home cinema. I'm sorely missing my 5.1 surround sound, but there are other priorities at the moment - apparently we need furniture and stuff?

Moving on up

I've recently noticed that my last blog post was way back in February, and now we're in the middle of June - so let me apologise for my lengthy absence. I do have a good excuse though.

It would appear, that after much stress, we're moving house at the end of this week. We put our house on the market at the beginning of March, and finally, last weekend we exchanged contracts on our new property.

I hadn't realised quite what an all-consuming exercise moving house would turn out to be. Between that and work I've done nothing else in the meantime. There have been no new gadgets, and no new projects at all - obviously they've all been on hold pending the move.

What this does mean - now that we're finally going - is that the new house will present all kinds of new opportunities for gadgets, tech and tinkering. I'm very much looking forward to it.

Some ideas that I've had so far:

• A wired gigabit whole-house network


• A dedicated home cinema room, possibly with a projector


• A Network Attached Storage media library


• An Apple TV and Airport Express house-wide audio/video system


• A new, upgraded, bigger, better lounge hi-fi

I dare say there will have to be some decorating and general DIY that will have to come before any of these projects, but it's nice to have a plan isn't it?

As a starter for ten, I've got the Virgin Media engineer coming on Monday to install my new Tivo system so at least that's one new gadget to be getting on with. I've also got a new Fatman iTube valve amplifier/iPod dock system on the way courtesy of Audio Affair, which I won in one of their Twitter competitions last week. Once I've unpacked all those cardboard boxes I'll try and blog about both these additions to my gadget world. Stay tuned, and bear with me please... this may take some time!

It was all going so well.

After my triumphant victory over the red ring of death last month, I had been feeling pretty good about my ability to fix broken tech. Not only had I mended my old CD player but I'd now brought an Xbox back from the grave.

Buoyant from these successes, I then went about taking my washing machine apart in order to replace the perished door seal. I was invincible!

Sadly, my geek-pride was about to take a bashing. My Xbox promptly died again. Red ring of death and everything. Try as I might, I couldn't resurrect it again. I was beaten.

However, not to be completely thrown by my apparent failure, I used this as an opportunity to buy a shiny new Xbox 360 Slim. Every cloud has a silver lining I guess.

I'm still waiting to find out if the washing machine repair fares any better...

Green Is Good

After yesterday's post about my Red Ring of Death nightmare, I received my x-clamp conversion kit in the post this morning. Eight screws, eight carbon steel spring washers, eight metal washers and sixteen nylon washers. I couldn't begin to wonder how a few pence worth of bits from a hardware shop would repair my 360, but I was prepared to give it a try.

Needless to say, the installation of these bits is more than a little fiddly, but so long as you're organised and patient, it's not difficult. Here's the tutorial I used for this part:



I followed the instructions to the letter, plugged everything back in and tested it. Here's the result:



WOOT! I shall see how long it lasts, but for now - we're up and running again!

A visit from the Red Ring of Death

It had to happen sooner or later. I've owned my Xbox 360 for a little over three years now, and it was only a matter of time before it decided to call it quits and break down. I'd been experiencing graphical glitches and lockups on the 360 for a couple of weeks, and I knew that it was on its way out. Sure enough, at the start of this week, it resolutely refused to start up, displaying the dreaded "Red Ring of Death" - three red flashing lights on the front of the machine, which under normal circumstances would be a friendly green colour.

I went to check my Xbox account to see when I'd registered the 360, and sure enough I was just outside of my warranty - how very typical. With Microsoft wanting the best part of £100 to even just look at my Xbox, I decided that drastic times called for drastic measures.

Having received some guidance from tech guru Tom, I discovered that my most likely fix would come from tinkering with the heatsinks which are supposed to keep both the CPU and GPU cool. The internet is alive with reports of how the cooling in the 360 is particularly rubbish, and the method of securing the heatsinks onto the chips (flimsy metal x-shaped brackets) was the main culprit. The accepted method of sorting this out is to crack open your 360, rip out the offending x-clamps and replace them with something more substantial.

I'm not going to replicate the methodology of getting into the 360 on here - there are some brilliant tutorials and walkthroughs on YouTube. Without them I would have struggled to even open up the Xbox, because Microsoft really don't want you to get inside. However, once you know how (and so long as you have the requisite T10 and T8 torx bits) it's relatively easy. The videos I found most useful were these:





Getting the x-clamps off the bottom of the motherboard was the most difficult part, but with a little patience and perseverance you can manage it. And this is the point I find myself at at the moment. I've stripped down the 360, removed the x-clamps and heatsinks, cleaned the CPU and GPU and I've ordered a set of screws and washers from eBay. I really don't know whether this little project will work or not, but even if it doesn't I'm really no worse off.

Standby for update...

2010 Gadget Review of the Year

Back in both 2004 and 2005, I wrote "Reviews of the Year" on my old blog, summing up the previous twelve months and the gadgets that had come and gone. I must admit, there was much more to write about back then (probably something to do with the disposable income I had burning holes in my pockets) but I've decided to revisit the concept for 2010, because it has been a pretty good year for new and shiny tech. So, here goes...

Apple iMac - February 2010

I finally decided to part with my much-loved G5 iMac at the start of the year, and went on an eBay selling spree to raise funds for a replacement. I opted for the 21.5" Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, and I've been incredibly pleased with it. Admittedly, every time I see a real-life 27-inch model I covet it greatly, but the 21.5" is fine for my purposes. It's a massive leap in performance from its predecessor, and I've not regretted the purchase one bit. (Original post here)

Firestone Audio Fubar IV DAC - March 2010

After getting a pair of Grado SR80i headphones for Christmas, I was looking for a way of combining them with my existing Apple Airport Express to give a proper high-fidelity listening experience. I decided the best way to do this would be via an offboard digital-to-analogue convertor and eventually plumped for the Fubar IV. I fell in love with it straight away - superb sound, compact size, built-in headphone amplifier. Perfect. (Original post here)

Firestone Audio Supplier - May 2010

Following the success of the Fubar IV, I went one step further and purchased the matching dedicated power supply, The Supplier. Connected up to the Fubar IV, it just took all of the things I already loved about it and improved them. I think the Fubar/Supplier combination has been my best gadget purchase of 2010. Brilliant. (Original post here)

HTC Legend - May 2010

Also in May, I decided to stop procrastinating about getting a new phone and decided to take out an 18-month contract on an HTC Legend. Running Android and sporting a very fetching all-aluminium body, it has recently been updated to 2.2 Froyo and has proved to be a brilliant little phone. I see my friends toting their new iPhone 4's, but I think the Android/HTC combination can match the iPhone almost every step of the way. I will admit that I would love the iTunes integration of the iPhone, but other than that for the money I'm really pleased. I still have another 11 months to live with it, and I hope it'll continue to go from strength to strength. I'm wondering if it'll ever see 2.3 Gingerbread though... (Original post here)

WDTV Live - July 2010

A cracking deal from eBay meant that I took the plunge on a Western Digital TV Live media streamer for the bedroom TV, and on the whole I've been quite impressed with it. Since getting the new AppleTV (see below) my enthusiasm has been tempered somewhat, but for less than half the price of the ATV it has proved more than capable. I don't like the interface, and if there was better integration with iTunes (rather than just SAMBA sharing) it'd be much better, but generally it's pretty good. Wouldn't buy one for the full £90 RRP though - that's AppleTV money.

Sony STR-DA2400ES AV Receiver & Sony BDP-S373 Bluray Player - July 2010

I got a bonus at work and promptly blew it all on these new bits of home cinema kit. I managed to resist the urge to start replacing all my DVDs with Blurays, and I'm glad I did because I've discovered that on my 720p 32-inch TV, there's really not a lot to be gained in terms of picture quality. HD audio is nice, but I'm still fairly impressed with Dolby Digital 5.1 to be honest! I do like having the convenience of HDMI switching on the receiver though, and having automatic sound calibration is superb. Although I'm not using the player for Blurays, the DVD upscaling is excellent and the network features are a nice touch.

2nd-Gen Apple TV - September 2010

After the new Apple TV was unveiled at the beginning of the month, I immediately preordered one. It was exactly what I was looking for to bridge the gap between iTunes on my iMac and the TV in the lounge. And, having used it for a few months, it does this job admirably. I haven't bought or rented anything from the iTunes store, I'm just watching my own content on it. The whole experience is very "Apple" - simple and slick, and using it alongside my iMac and Airport Express makes for an excellent multi-room music solution too. (Original post here)

Amazon Kindle - December 2010

Having only got this a few days ago, I can't write anything particularly in depth about the Kindle, other than on first inspection I think I'm going to really like it. Some people have bemoaned the fact that it's "just" an e-book reader (apparently I should have bought an iPad at five times the price) but ever since I first clapped eyes on the new model, I've wanted one. If it gets me back into reading again, it'll be a superb gadget. Full opinion to follow, once I've actually used it in anger...

All in all, it has been a year of very satisfying gadgets. I'm hoping that 2011 will be more of the same.

Swype for Android (plus UK workaround!)

I've been waiting patiently for a while for the Swype keyboard for Android to become more readily available. Up until recently, you could only use it if you were lucky to have it preinstalled on your phone or you were privileged enough to be part of the very limited beta programme.

However, as of today they've opened the beta up to anyone who cares to register for it.

Head over to http://beta.swype.com and sign up, and you'll be sent an email to download the software. Because it's a beta, it isn't distributed through the marketplace, so it's downloaded as an APK file. As such, you need to enable your phone to allow non-marketplace software sources but once you've done that it's all plain sailing. If you do get stuck, there's a very thorough tutorial.

Having signed up, downloaded and installed Swype on my HTC Legend, I have to say that my first impressions are that it must be some kind of black magic! I haven't found a word that it doesn't get right first time - I've even been trying to trip it up with obscure words. You don't even need to be that precise with your gestures, it still seems to know which word you wanted.

Now that they're allowing more people to use Swype, I can see it becoming the default Android keyboard for most people. I wouldn't be surprised if Google licence it and build it into the OS itself. It really is that good.

Got an Android phone? Get Swyping.

*** UPDATE ***

As you can read in the comments below, Dave has pointed out that there is no UK localisation at present. Which means that you're going to get American spellings for some things. I actually hadn't noticed - I guess there aren't *that* many words that are spelled differently for it to be a constant annoyance (I reserve the right to change my mind on this of course....)

*** UPDATE 2 ***

Having now done a bit of research, I've discovered how to teach Swype new words. This gives you a workaround for the lack of UK spellings. To teach it a new word, tap out the letters individually followed by a space - this is then added to the custom dictionary. So if you, for example, create a new text message and go through and manually tap in a few UK spellings of common words - things that end in "-ise" or "-our" - Swype will then recognISE (see what I did there?) them the next time around. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but better than nothing while we wait for a proper UK version?

New Apple TV - installation and setup

As you're probably aware from my terribly geeky unboxing video, I've got my hands on one of the new 2nd-generation Apple TVs this week. I thought I'd go through what I've learnt from setting it up and using it, in case this can be of benefit to anyone else.

Firstly, hooking up the cables is incredibly easy: 1 power cable, 1 HDMI, 1 ethernet. You don't even have to use ethernet because the Apple TV has built-in wifi, but seeing as my router is six inches from the Apple TV and the wifi at LowFidelity Towers is a bit flaky (blame the Victorian architecture) I thought I'd settle for trusty CAT-5.

Once I'd plugged everything in, I immediately got a picture on my telly from the Apple TV, so no problems there. However, I couldn't find my iTunes library under the "Computers" menu. When I went to it, the Apple TV told me I'd need to enter my Apple ID username and password so that it could use the Home Sharing feature of iTunes. I dutifully entered those details, and... nothing. It told me that I'd need to activate Home Sharing on my Mac too. I was fairly certain it already was on, so I went and checked. Sure enough, yes, it was already enabled. So what gives?

I decided that the age-old IT remedy of "turn it off and on again" might help, so I went to iTunes "Advanced" menu and turned off Home Sharing. Then I reactivated it, re-entering my password. Hey presto, there's my iTunes library showing up on the Apple TV now. Don't know why this step was necessary, but it worked.

Next thing was to play back some media. I'm routing the HDMI through my Sony STR-DA2400ES home cinema receiver, so the theory went that this should carry both video and 5.1 audio signals. Music worked just fine and dandy, the sound coming through in stereo just as I'd expected. I then played one of my Handbraked m4v files. Picture was lovely, and the sound was coming through - but only in Pro-Logic, not Dolby Digital 5.1.

I went into the Apple TV's "Settings" menu, then into "Audio & Video" and found the option for "Dolby Digital Out". There are three settings: Off, On and Auto. I opted for "On" and tried the movie again, and this time got beautiful 5.1 straight away.

Next step was to get the Apple Remote app working on my iPod Touch. The app was already installed, so I then went into the "Settings" menu again, then "General", "Remotes" and finally to "Remote App" where it tells you to turn on Home Sharing in the app itself. Sure enough, on the Touch it was now asking for my Home Sharing username and password again. I typed them in, and immediately I had access to an "Apple TV" library from the main screen.

Finally, I wanted to set up my Logitech Harmony 555 universal remote to work with the Apple TV, rather than use the bundled Apple remote from the box. I went into the Logitech software on my Mac, and added a new device. I opted for "Media PC", then "Apple" as the manufacturer and typed the name in as (rather obviously) "Apple TV". I didn't get a lot of feedback as to whether this was correct or not from the software itself so I had no clue if it would work, or if the device even existed in Logitech's archives. I decided to take a chance that it was okay, and set up a new activity as "Watch Apple TV", which turned the TV on, the AV receiver on and set it to the correct input and then turned the Apple TV on. I updated the remote (still no clue whether this was right or not at this point) and once it had done its thing, I pointed it at the system and hit the button. Sure enough, everything worked seamlessly. Everything on, on the right inputs and all the buttons on the Harmony working correctly. Not only that, but because the Harmony has buttons for previous and next chapter as well as fast-forward and rewind, I could also skip chapters in my movie files - something that I couldn't work out how to do with the Apple Remote.

All in all, absolutely superb so far. I'm very impressed!

New Apple TV unboxing

Well, it has arrived - and I thought I'd have a go at doing a brief unboxing video for you. So here it is in all its glory...



I'll post a proper update once the AppleTV is actually up and running, but for now that's your lot!

On iPods and AppleTV - a response to Apple's media event

Having decided to wait until the cold light of day before posting a response to Apple's 1st September media event - in order to minimise the effect of the Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field - I find myself marginally impressed with the offering that was placed before us yesterday. I often find myself feeling a bit "meh" about Apple keynotes, as they never seem to deliver what they promised. However, I think they've done a pretty good job with their lineup this time.

So what have we got? We've got all-new iPods, that's what we've got. A new Shuffle, a new Nano and a new Touch.

I was never taken with the third-gen Shuffle, with its lack of buttons and "voiceover" function. This, to me, screamed just one thing - "you can't use your own headphones any more". Being a bit of an audiophile, I had no intention of using Apple's earbuds, so the Shuffle was off the cards. I had been perusing eBay in the hope of finding a 2nd-gen to overcome this problem, but they're going for silly money (probably because no-one liked the 3rd-gen). Naturally, now Apple have seen the error of their ways and (sensibly) decided to put the buttons back on the Shuffle, I'm very happy. And at £39, I hope one will be coming my way this Christmas.

Onto the Nano then. Or should that be more accurately named the "iPod Shuffle Touch"? Not much bigger than the Shuffle, it now has a 3cmx3cm touch screen - just big enough to display 4 icons at once. I'm not really as convinced by this idea - it just seems too different to the original concept of the Nano. Yes, we still have a decent amount of flash storage, but over time the Nano had become a genuine competitor to the Classic in terms of its capacity and functionality. Hell, it even had a decent camera on it - which now, unfortunately, has disappeared. In an effort to make it smaller, it seems to have lost some of its "essence". And it's a bit pricey too. I'm sure it will sell well, but not to me.

And onto the iPod Touch then. I, personally, think Apple have done a brilliant job with this - although some will disagree. Slimmer casing, Retina display (very nice indeed), A4 chip (bringing performance on a par with iPhone4), front and rear cameras, Facetime, HD video recording, Game Center - the list goes on. So what is there not to like? Well, one of my Mac-loving compatriots has decried the Touch in no uncertain terms for the quality of its rear camera. If you were hoping for the (rather good) 5MP unit from the iPhone4, you'll be very disappointed. The Touch's camera manages all of 0.7MP. That sounds pretty poor (and, to be fair, is), but that does equate to HD-resolution video (960x720). In company with the iOS iMovie app, this will make a lot of YouTubers very happy indeed. And, for my money, the camera is perfectly capable of doing all the fun stuff with apps that I would want - Evernote snaps, barcode reading, Dropbox, Twitpic etc. The front-facing camera/Facetime combination is also a very pleasing offer.

As for the iPod Classic, this is the only iPod that didn't get an update - but then, what is there to update? Massive storage, brilliant UI, plays anything you throw at it, sounds great, lovely screen. End of.

I'm interested to see whether the upcoming iOS 4.1 update makes my current iPod Touch run any better. At the moment, it's a bit laggy. Steve promised that 4.1 will fix "iPhone 3G performance issues" so I hope that goes for iPod Touch too.

So, finally, onto Steve's "One More Thing", or as he quipped last night "One More Hobby" - the AppleTV. I've admired the AppleTV from afar ever since it was released, but I've never quite got round to taking the plunge. The price was a bit steep, and the implementation was always a bit half-assed and I never quite convinced myself that I genuinely needed one. However, now things are different. We now have ourselves a second-generation AppleTV. And the best bit? £99. That's a price point I can like, and cheap enough to make it worth a try. Recently, the movie collection on my Mac has been growing (mainly thanks to the brilliance that is Handbrake) and getting those movies to my televisions has been a bit hit and miss. I bought a WDTV Live recently, and it's very good. It's very similar in functionality to the new AppleTV, insofar as it is able to find media on my Mac and stream it to my bedroom TV over the network. However, there are a few things I don't like about the WDTV - the UI is ugly, its networking is wired only and it has no integration with iTunes, meaning that I just get a massive list of folders and filenames instead of the glossy artwork and metadata that I've painstakingly added.

The lack of purchasing content from the AppleTV isn't an issue for me - I neither purchase nor rent video content from iTunes. I merely want this unit to plug into my TV, display my iTunes library (movies, TV shows and music) on the screen and play it. Hopefully that's exactly what it will deliver. I've got my preorder in, so in four weeks' time I'll be able to tell you whether it does.

The art of fettling

I've had my new home cinema toys for a few weeks now, and I've had a very enjoyable time getting everything up and running and configured just the way I like it. Sometimes that is the best part of getting new kit - once it's all sorted out, there's very little to do with it (which is nice in itself) but the gadget freak in me likes to mess about with settings and make sure everything is as good as it can get.

Whilst the new AV receiver (the Sony STR-DA2400ES) has automatic calibration, it didn't get the levels quite right as far as I was concerned. Not enough centre channel, too much sub and rear effects. With a bit of fettling, I'm now much happier with it - so the moral is to not necessarily blindly trust the microchip, because undoubtedly your ears are better than an algorithm.

My next issue was that I had acquired a very low level hum from the subwoofer. It was never there before with the old amp. With a bit of Googling, I found out that it was most likely a ground loop hum - and this was backed up by the fact that my old amp only had live and neutral wires in the plug (the earth pin was plastic) whereas this new amp has all three pins wired up - essentially this creates one great big circuit around the earth loop, which adversely affects the sensitive audio circuitry. I don't fully understand the physics of it (maybe Olitee will stop by and explain it) but as far as I could tell, the common solution was to wire the ground pin on the back of the amp (usually used to ground record players) to a metallic part of the subwoofer casing.

I went out to Maplins, bought a packet of ring terminals and a couple of metres of thin wire (total cost, £2.38), soldered it together and then sanded the paint off a small portion of the sub's metal backplate. Then I attached the wire between the amp and that part of the sub, and hey presto, no humming. As far as I'm concerned there's some sort of witchcraft going on there, but if it works, I'm happy.

Another bit of fiddling (as I alluded to last time) has been getting this new system to play digital video files successfully. I've discovered that the Blu-Ray player will happily playback my MP4 files that I've encoded with Handbrake, and even better it will also decode the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks from these files as well. However, it will only work with storage attached directly to one of its two USB ports - not over the network (despite the fact that it is connected to it). This has made me hanker after some kind of dedicated solution for playback of video files, because the Blu-Ray interface is, at best, slow and clunky. It works, but it ain't elegant.

This got me thinking about investing in some kind of small Nvidia Ion-based computer to run a combination of Ubuntu and either XBMC or Boxee. Both have their advantages, and having tested both out on my iMac, I can see that this would be a superb solution. However, we're looking at around £200 for a capable computer like the Acer Revo or similar, and when there are a lots of rumours buzzing around about an imminent new AppleTV (allegedly much cheaper than the current one) I would be daft to invest now. I'll hang on.

Finally, I've just found out that Lovefilm have added four hours per month of digital movie streaming to my current package at no extra cost, and rather pleasingly I can use this via the Blu-Ray player. I haven't tried it yet, but I shall report back.