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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

A home media network - How hard can it be?

I've been toying with the idea of implementing some kind of home media network for a while now - being able to move audio and video files around the house over the network between multiple devices. As I've reported a few times in the past, I've had great success with the music side of things, being able to get my iTunes library to both my Roku Soundbridge and my Apple Airport Express.

Video is quite a different beast though. Being quite the Mac fan, I've been coveting the AppleTV for just such a purpose although I can't justify the cost at the moment. I wanted to get my toe in the water relatively cheaply, just to see what was possible.

My first purchase was a D-Link DNS-313 Network Attached Storage (NAS) enclosure. I had a large SATA drive kicking around doing nothing, so I thought that having a network-accessible repository for my video files - in the form of the NAS - would be a good starting point. My idea was that any media streaming devices I subsequently got would be able to see the NAS, browse the files, and then the data would be able to cross the network and play. That was the theory anyway.

Part of the reason I chose the D-Link is that it was advertised as having a built in DLNA/uPNP compatible media server - meaning any devices that adhered to the DLNA standard would automatically work together. This sounded ideal.

After installing my SATA drive into the DNS-313 (which was a pleasingly simple process) I copied a few video files over to it. I discovered that the process of sending 2GB movie files over the network was, unfortunately, excrutiatingly slow - but I figured the end justified the means. The video files were encodes of some of my DVDs, which I had ripped using Handbrake into M4V/H264 files - which is the standard format for Apple devices, and generally thought of to be a good combination of quality, size and compatibility. A superb tutorial on the process is over at the blog of Olitee.

So, I had my "media tank", complete with video files. Now I needed something to play them with.

For a while now, I had been lugging our laptop up to the bedroom to use as a DVD player with our 22" LCD TV. The laptop has an HDMI output for simple connection to the telly. I thought that the laptop would be able to see the files on the NAS and play them. I opted for the well-regarded VLC player for this purpose, due to its open-source nature and ability to deal with virtually any kind of file you throw at it.

And this is where problem one arose. I could see the files on the NAS, and VLC played them without an issue EXCEPT every few minutes, the playback would stop, VLC would rebuffer, and then the file would start to play again. This, in my opinion, rendered the whole thing unwatchable. I wasn't sure why this was, but I decided to try alternatives.

I'd had my eye on the range of Western Digital TV (WDTV) devices for some time, and they had been getting good reviews. The basic model relied on local storage of video files, whereas the better "Live" model had a network connection, and seemed to offer what I was looking for - "playback of files up to 1080p from local or network storage". When I secured a brand new one for £43 on eBay, I decided that it was definitely worth a try.

The WDTV Live is a very small unit, offering HMDI, component or composite connections to your TV. I opted for HDMI as the single cable carries both picture and audio. I hooked it up to the network and tested it out. Now the WDTV could see the NAS unit in two different ways - firstly as a basic SAMBA network share, or as a DLNA media server. Thinking that the media server seemed like the best option, I tried it. But what's this? Where are the video files? They're not there! The WDTV resolutely refused to display the M4V files contained on the NAS. Weird. I thought that the WDTV had fallen at the first hurdle - no M4V support.

So then I tried connecting to the NAS using the SAMBA share option. This time, all the M4V files showed up without a problem. Excellent. Maybe it wasn't a file format issue after all. So I tried playing one, and encountered exactly the same stopping/rebuffering/starting problem I had with the laptop. Bugger. But at least they played.

I decided that my network was to blame. Clearly, the videos can't transfer across quickly enough to satisfy the demands of the playback unit. I tested a few files playing back from a USB memory stick connected directly to the WDTV, just to check that I got smooth playback from the files and it wasn't my encoding that was to blame. This worked flawlessly, as I suspected it might. No problem with the format of the files themselves, obviously.

It was then that I saw my desktop iMac's shared "Movies" folder also displayed the WDTV's network menu. For the sake of completeness, I thought I'd try playing back the files from here, instead of from the NAS. And guess what? Once again, flawless uninterrupted playback. Obviously, the network speed wasn't an issue after all. This led me to suspect the blame lay with the NAS.

I had almost given up hope with the NAS as a source for my media files, but I thought I'd give it one last test before deciding to ditch it, and this test came in the form of a shiny new Sony Blu-Ray player, the BDP-S370.

This, in addition to being able to play blu-rays and DVDs was network-capable (having an ethernet port on the rear) and DLNA-compatible. Maybe I'd have more luck with the NAS's DLNA server this time. After setting it up and getting it on the network (which was incredibly easy!) I went to the menu and tried to find the NAS. There it was! Superb. So in I went, and encountered exactly the same problem I'd had with the WDTV. No M4V files. At all. What's up with that? I again hooked up my USB flash drive containing a few movie files to the bluray player's USB port to check compatibility, and unsurprisingly I got excellent playback without a problem.

I came to the conclusion that the DLNA server on the D-Link didn't like M4V files. I tried copying some AVI and DIVX files to it to test out this theory, and the WDTV and BDP-S370 could see them just fine. Playing them back smoothly, was - yet again - a non-starter though, and anyway, I wasn't about to start re-encoding my files. Olitee tells me MPEG4/H264 is the way forward, so that's what I'm sticking with.

So one upshot of all this is that my NAS is rubbish. So rubbish that I'm getting rid of it - it simply doesn't do what I need it to. It's DLNA-implementation doesn't support M4v, and as a SAMBA share it's simply not fast enough.

Overall, the issue is that I still don't have a "one stop" solution - yet. However, at least my encoding "strategy" works and my files are compatible with my devices. How I get those files to my devices, is - for the moment at least - open for discussion.

Art Attack - embedding iTunes album art

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I'd had a bit of a tricky time with getting my new Android phone to display album art properly in its media player, and I also mentioned that I'd discovered why. Here's an attempt at an explanation...

iTunes - which you're probably familiar with - has a very useful feature that automatically fetches album art for any CDs that you import into its library. It's a simple case of right-clicking and selecting "Get album artwork", and hey presto, you have a beautiful album cover to look at instead of that sad, generic placeholder.

This is not without its problems though. I discovered that if you use this feature of iTunes, the program doesn't embed the artwork into the music files themselves. Instead it creates a separate folder inside your iTunes library called "Album Artwork" and stores everything in there. The music file in iTunes has a link to the requisite album art in this folder, and displays it when required. This has the advantage of making the files themselves a bit smaller - however the converse of this is that outside of iTunes, the files don't have any artwork of their own.

So how to fix this? Well, I purchased the Macheist bundle a couple of months ago, and part of that bundle was an absolutely FANTASTIC program called CoverScout. This went right through all 600 albums in my library, located the artwork in the iTunes album artwork folder and copied and embedded it into every file. Superb! Took a while, but it needed absolutely no input from me - all completely automatic.

However, if you don't have CoverScout (and you're too cheap to pay for it) there's an alternative in the form of Doug's "Embed Artwork 2.0" Applescript which will do the same thing (only without the pretty interface and all the additional useful features!).

Once your artwork is embedded in the files themselves, wherever you take your music files, the artwork goes too. Now, my Android music player looks much prettier and my computer-related OCD is satisfied - at least until I discover the next problem!

Needless to say, these solutions are Mac-specific. If you're a PC, then I have no idea what you should do (apart from get a Mac, obviously).

Powerful stuff

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my purchase of the Firestone Audio Fubar IV DAC/headphone amp, and the new lease of life it had given to my digital music setup. I won't repeat myself here, but needless to say I was (and very much still am) incredibly impressed with its performance. I also mentioned in that post that I was considering getting the matching add-on power supply for the Fubar - called The Supplier.

Several Firestone Audio customers were reporting good things on internet forums about the performance gains that the dedicated power supply brought to their original components. This is something that I've always been a little sceptical about, because electricity is electricity, right? Surely it doesn't matter where it comes from, as long as it comes from somewhere. However, I was thinking that the "wall wart" mains adapter that shipped with the Fubar IV looked a bit cheap in comparison to the quality of the unit itself, and with it being a European unit it shipped with a 2-pin plug. This meant I had to use a 2-pin to 3-pin adapter as well. I figured that this combination probably wasn't the best source of power for a component that was all about audio detail and fidelity.

Anyway, it came to my attention that Firestone Audio's website were doing another of their crazy price drops on The Supplier (you need to keep an eye on the site, because these deals are worth looking out for) and it was reduced from 115 Euros to 75 Euros. Taking into account currency conversion and shipping charges, that still meant £25 off the price from any UK dealer. Needless to say, this was the nudge I'd been looking for, and I went and ordered one. I figured that for that relatively modest outlay, I could take a risk and it would be an interesting experiment. If all else failed, there was always eBay!

There was a bit of a delay taking delivery of The Supplier. A combination of popular demand and the Icelandic volcano meant I had to wait three weeks to get my hands on my new purchase. However, the lovely people at Firestone more than made up for this by also sending me their newly-released FRX-001 dedicated audio rack that they've designed exclusively for their components for me to review.

The first thing that I noticed on opening up the box for The Supplier was that again the mains cable was a 2-pin European one, with an adapter to turn it into a UK 3-pin. No matter though. Wanting to really give The Supplier a chance to shine I declined to use this option. The Supplier has a standard figure-of-8 mains socket on its rear, so I simply grabbed a UK-plug figure-of-8 cable that I had lying around and plugged this in instead. I then unplugged the Fubar's original mains lead and hooked up the output of The Supplier to the input on the Fubar, and we were up and running.

With my Grado SR80i's plugged into the Fubar, I decided to leave the system playing some tunes on repeat to give it all a chance to warm up and "settle in". I've absolutely no idea if this actually makes a difference or not, but I thought I'd give it a try. Certainly when I first got the Fubar IV it became better over time, gaining some warmth and clarity as it got run in, so I figured I'd give The Supplier the same benefit.

Itching to try it out, later that day I settled down for my first proper listen. I'd anticipated flicking through a few well-known tracks to test things out. In actual fact, I ended up listening right through four of my favourite albums all the way through from start to finish. I was loving the music so much, I just kept going. The sound was just so natural - warm, yet detailed. Not in the slightest fatiguing. Most of all, enjoyable!

With a more critical head on, the next day I decided to be a bit more analytical. I did some straight A-B swapout testing of The Supplier. Listen to a track with Fubar alone, then listen again with the Supplier. I tried a range of music - electronica, acoustic, rock, classical. All had a definite improvement in clarity and dynamics when listened to with The Supplier. The improvement is, I will admit, subtle - but it's definitely an improvement.

Onto more aesthetic matters, I've now also got my two Firestone components at home in their new dedicated Firestone rack, as you can see in the main photo. Cleverly, the rack has a system of rubber stoppers on the underside of each shelf which stops the components from sliding around when plugging in headphones and the like. The fact that my little head-fi system looks so amazing on its new miniature rack is just the icing on the cake. Superb stuff.

Frankly, this little setup is brilliant on so many levels. It brings genuine hi-fi quality to the world of digital audio convenience, it's relatively cheap and amazingly small. I love it!

A complete package

I decided that my Sony in-ear headphones were getting a bit long in the tooth (eight years of living in my ears is quite enough), and I was hunting for decent replacements. I was considering the widely-praised Sennheiser CX 300-II Precisions, but, at £40, they were right at the top of my price range so I was trying to find something cheaper.

However, when I discovered that they were under £15 at Amazon, I really didn't need an excuse, so promptly ordered a set. If they were 5-star award-winning earbuds at £40, then their new lower price was the icing on the cake.

This post isn't necessarily about the Sennheisers themselves though. Needless to say that they are very good, and a significant step up from my existing Sonys. But the real reason that I wanted to write about them is the incredibly innovative packaging that they came in. When I ordered from Amazon, I noticed they were listed as being in "Eco packaging" but I didn't really understand what this meant.

Essentially, the headphones are packaged purely in cardboard. There's none of the VERY annoying plastic blister packaging that these things usually come in. Every single part of the box is corrugated, recycled cardboard. Every last bit. Not a piece of plastic in sight. This in itself is laudable, but the really clever bit is the way it all fits together. Even the hanger to display it in a shop is an integral cardboard part. It's a brilliant concept, and one that could do with being adopted by a number of other manufacturers.

I love good, attractive, well-designed packaging so long as it's not excessive. Obviously I'm a big fan of Apple's boxes and containers. Similarly, I've been very impressed with Nintendo's efforts of late. There's nothing wrong with that at all. But for small, cheap items like headphones, why bother with all the unnecessary oversized plastic? It's probably conceived as a way of adding to the perceived value of the product, but for me that doesn't really work. Personally, I'm far more inclined to think favourably about a purchase if I've been impressed by a clever or innovative design. A superb idea, and one that deserves some recognition I think.

FUBAR!

As I've previously mentioned, I got a very nice pair of Grado SR80i headphones for Christmas and they're quite superb. I had the idea a while back (inspired by this CNET article) to get together some kind of "head-fi" setup using my Airport Express as a source. I've gone into some detail about how the iPhone Remote app works with the Airport Express to stream music around your house, and I had been using the Grados plugged straight into the 3.5mm jack on the AE.

Me being me, of course, I knew that there were gains to be had by using an offboard DAC instead of the cheap one built into the AE so I went about researching my options. There was the "two-box" approach, involving a separate DAC in turn feeding a separate headphone amplifier, or there was the "integrated" option if I could find a combined DAC/headphone amp that I liked the look of and could afford. My preferred route was to have everything in one box - tidier, less faff, no worrying about system matching - so after much internet surfing I came across the Fubar IV, made by Firestone Audio. It has digital inputs for optical (which the Airport Express uses), coaxial and USB. I discovered that the manufacturers were offering a hefty discount (125 euros instead of 225) in their post-Christmas sale and all the reviews of the unit were glowing, so I went for it.

Just a few minutes after taking delivery, I had the Fubar IV hooked up via an optical lead from my Airport Express, with my SR80i's plugged into the headphone socket. With the iPod Touch Remote app controlling my iTunes Lossless library, I was listening to quite amazing sound, far more in keeping with the quality of the Grados than I had been experiencing direct from the Airport Express. Most impressive!

I headed over to the What HiFi forums - where I had heard about the Fubar IV in the first place - and posted a brief review. Excerpt below:

"It's a good warm, round sound from solid bass through to well-defined treble. It does show up poor recordings, but with a well-produced album it's giving some excellent results. I've been noticing lots of extra details that I'd never really heard before, even in albums I know really well. The separation of different parts is superb, and it's very easy to pick out an instrument and follow it through a track - but at the same time there's a really nice cohesiveness to the sound overall. I'm used to listening to my music through my separates hi-fi, but I can honestly say that this little set-up is blowing it out of the water!"

Firestone Audio also sell a dedicated power supply for the Fubar, called The Supplier, which is supposed to bring further musical gains. I dare say that once some more funds become available, I shall be investing in one of those too! All round, it's a brilliant little setup, and ideal for people whom a full separates system isn't practical or realistic. I was dubious about whether "head-fi" could really be "hi-fi" but I have to say - I'm converted.

Fixing my Denon DCD-825 CD player

Although it's 14 years old, I've grown very attached to my Denon CD player and when it stopped playing discs I was most upset. The most probable cause was a defective laser/lens assembly, so I found out that it's actually a generic Sony unit - the KSS-240A - which is still widely available. A quick visit to eBay and £20 later, and I soon had a new unit waiting to be fitted. I wasn't really sure how to do it, or even if it would work, but I figured the best way to learn was to try it!

See my Flickr set here.

Remotely interesting

I've had two Roku Soundbridges for quite a while now. I started with just the one soon after they were first released in the UK, and I loved it so much that I bought a second one soon after for another room. The principle is simple - they're merely audio streamers that use your iTunes library to wirelessly pipe your music to an attached hi-fi. The good bit is, the system works seamlessly and they look nice, which is always a bonus.

However, a couple of months back, my original Soundbridge gave up the ghost. After extensive testing, I came to the conclusion that it was shafted (I think it may have been the power supply) but try as I might, I couldn't get it working again. I looked around for a replacement unit, but it turns out they're now as rare as rocking horse poo, and the only place I could get one was secondhand on Fleabay. I considered alternative options like the Squeezebox Duet and the Sonos multiroom system, but they were way out of my price range. I thought about an Apple Airport Express, but discounted it because I needed to be able to control it without sitting at my computer.

However, it was while I was researching these options that I came across the iPhone/Touch remote app for controlling iTunes. I'd never really noticed it existed before as I had no real need to use it, but I decided that it just might be what I was looking for to make the Airport Express a viable option. I searched around a bit more, but strangely I couldn't get a definitive answer about whether I would be able to use it to remotely control an Airport Express attached to iTunes. Not even the combined geek-knowledge of Richbos and OliTee could answer the question.

I figured that there *should* be a way of using the Remote app to control iTunes to, in turn, stream its music to the Airport Express - all via wi-fi. If it did what I wanted - and if it worked correctly - it would be quite an elegant solution. I could be sat in the kitchen, use the Touch to browse the iTunes library held on my iMac, choose some music and tell it to be sent to the Airport Express in the lounge. Or was I just expecting too much?



First things first - I downloaded the free Remote app via the Apple App Store. Dead easy, and all done in seconds via the Touch itself. Within no time I was enjoying controlling iTunes using it, despite being sat only two feet from my iMac. So far, so good - but a bit pointless without the Airport Express.

I managed to secure myself an Airport Express on eBay for the very reasonable sum of £45, and just two days later I was feverishly unboxing it. I figured that I might be able to just plug it in and get cracking, but even though its an Apple product, it's not *that* clever. There's still some configuration to be done - but it's reasonably simple.

Firstly, my Airport Express was still configured to its previous owner's settings, so as soon as I tried to connect to it with my iMac it requested a password. Fortunately, it's an easy job to do a factory reset and wipe the unit of its configuration. Hold down the reset button for ten seconds, and there you go.

Once that was done, I ran the Airport Setup Utility on my iMac. My mac is normally hooked up via ethernet, but for this step I had to activate the built-in wi-fi so that the iMac and Airport Express could talk to each other. Very quickly the iMac had detected the wireless signal that the AE was broadcasting, and I connected to it. The utility then takes you through some simple steps to find out how you want to use the AE. I opted to make it a client device on my existing wi-fi network (which was sufficient for my purposes) and with that it was set up and raring to go. A 3.5mm jack to stereo RCA lead to connect it to the AUX input on my hi-fi and I was ready to unleash some tunes.



I fired up iTunes, and after a bit of searching I located a previously unseen dropdown menu in the bottom right of the screen which listed both my computer and the new Airport Express as speaker options. From this you can choose one or both to determine where the audio from iTunes gets sent. I chose both, just for fun, and hit play. I was pleasantly surprised to hear my music emanating from both my computer speakers and my hi-fi speakers in the other room, both in perfect sync with each other. Result!

So then - moment of truth. I switched on the iPod Touch and selected the Remote app. I went to the 'settings' screen (from where you choose which iTunes library to connect to) and, right there in front of me, were two new menu options for 'Speakers' - it listed my iMac and my Airport Express, with on/off switches next to them! I navigated through to my library, found a new album and pressed play on the Touch. Again, without so much as a hiccup, the music changed on both computer and AE.

I then discovered that you can activate and deactivate the speakers from the 'Now playing' screen without having to go back to the 'Settings' page every time. Simply tap the album cover, and not only do you get shuffle, repeat and genius options at the top you also get speaker options at the bottom. I spent a good five minutes switching the speakers on and off - just for fun!

So the upshot of all this is - yes, it works as I wanted it to. And it does it beautifully. So well, in fact, that I'm thinking of eBaying my other Soundbridge and buying another Airport Express. It's a brilliant, elegant and simple solution - how very "Apple"...

Physicality

A curious notion has been swilling around in my head for some time now regarding "our" relationship with the physical media I love so much. Were it not for the books, CDs, DVDs, computer games, photo albums and vinyl records (yes, VINYL!) there would be so much more space in my house. I'm very attached to this stuff, and it got me thinking about the brave new digital world we're living in now.

My good friend Rich did one of the most brave and awe-inspiring things I can think of a while back. He jacked in his job, sold his house and waved goodbye to almost all his worldly possessions - and then upped sticks to the other side of the world.

Whilst I am incredibly impressed with this exciting (and slightly extreme) take on downsizing, I was thinking the other day that I don't think I could be without all my "stuff". However, I constantly think we have far too much of it, and that it could be streamlined and much better organized.

I've ripped nearly my entire 300-strong CD collection into iTunes, so why don't I just sell/donate/bin the discs? Surely I don't need them any more? They're just taking up room?

I could buy a huge hard-drive, rip my huge DVD collection as DiVX movies and then ditch all the discs that are filling a floor-to-ceiling set of shelves next to me as I type this.

All the books in the house have been read over and over - surely we could donate them to a library?

As for the vinyl - I must be living in the dark ages.

But no. It's not going to happen, for two (maybe more) reasons.

1) I like having this stuff. "Physical" items are reassuringly real and tangible. Files on a computer just don't seem the same. The feel of the pages, the colourful artwork, the fidelity of the sound and pictures. It all adds up to something quite distinct, and something that I really enjoy.

2) What if you DO ditch all this stuff, and then - god forbid - something happened to the backups? Hard drives fail all the time. Now don't get me wrong, I'm fairly anal with my backup routine, but there's a nagging (irrational) voice at the back of my head saying "but what if the backup failed as well?!? Had you thought of that?"

The thing that's really been making me think, though, is that - for me - the ownership experience is just evaporating. I used to cherish going out and buying an album or a DVD that I had been looking forward to for months. I knew the release date well in advance, and the expectation was something to be cherished. I realise that we're only talking about relatively cheap items, but I selected my purchases with care. DVDs were always released on a Monday, and I'd even go so far as to pre-order items because I knew other people coveted these things as much as I did, and not to get my hands on them on release day would be sacrilege. I knew exactly when the "2-disc director's cut special collector's edition DVD with remastered footage, DTS sound and all the extras" was going to hit the shops, and I'd make the pilgrimage into town during my lunch hour to get it. I'd get back to work and occasionally take the sacred item out of its carrier bag and look at it, even going as far as to open the cellophane packaging so that I could wonder at the gatefold packaging and inlay cards.

Now I realise that you can still buy these things in real high-street shops, but I just don't any more. Whilst I enjoy/enjoyed the "retail" experience, I'm not so attached to it that I can afford to burn money. Internet retailers undercut prices by massive margins - why would you spend an extra fiver just so you could have the item in your possession on "release day". Just stick your order in on the website, and in a few days your faceless postie will manhandle a scruffy jiffy bag through your letterbox. You probably won't even bother opening it straight away.

We're so inundated with "stuff" these days that it's impossible to keep track of it. Who knows when that new album's being released, and honestly, who cares? And, as the volume increases, the quality goes down. Do manufacturers put the care and attention to detail into their releases these days? Do they hell. Stick the disc in a box and shovel it out as cheap as possible. No-one really cares these days. Better still, make it a digital download and we don't even have to worry about a box.

"Back in the day" there would only be one major DVD being released on the hallowed Monday, or computer game on the Friday. Now you don't know where to look - JUST TOO MUCH STUFF.

As far as I can tell - to my mind at least - there's only one retail experience that still lives up to my rose-tinted view of the world, and that's console releases. They still are real events. Witness the queues at midnight, the frenzied pre-ordering, the internet "unboxing" photographs. Ordering on the internet doesn't gain you anything - prices are fixed, and delivery will take positively AGES.

Funnily enough, the best products that still live up to my peculiar ideal recently have all been made by Nintendo. First there was the Gameboy Advance, then the Gamecube, then the Gameboy Advance SP, then the DS, the DS Lite and the Wii. I watched their development with feverish excitement, consuming every last bit of news I could get my hands on, then got excited when the release date was announced. I pre-ordered as soon as I could, and then the day would come where you I walk into a shop, slap the cash down on the counter and walk out with a real, tangible item that I had just bought there and then. Take it home, set it up - marvel at its shinyness. Bliss. But saying that, even hardware isn't that exciting any more - it's just a means to an end.

Quite honestly, the "ownership experience" is going, if not already gone. Digital downloads, streaming media and BitTorrent - why would you need anything else? The youth of today measure their musical and cinematic appreciation in how many gigabytes they've got, not whether it's actually any good - both in terms of content AND quality.  Will they ever understand or appreciate the wonder of buying, owning and using something "real"? I doubt it. The physical world is dead. Jack in grandad, and shut up.

Wholly unnecesssary

Much to the despair of my better half, I've just spent ten US dollars on a piece of really cool - but utterly pointless - software called Delicious Library. You may be aware of it already (it has been around a while) but essentially it's a cataloguing/library management tool for keeping track of DVDs, video games, CDs and books. It's Mac only (because it's too cool for Windows) and the killer feature - purely because it's so beautifully geeky - is that it scans the barcodes on your media in order to import it into the libray. You can do this via a firewire camera or if you're lucky enough to have a Mac with a built in iSight camera then you can use that instead.

I can't begin to tell you about the unadulterated peurile joy I've been having scanning in all my DVDs and games. I still need to do my CDs, but that's a mammoth task for another day!

At the moment, due to being stuck in the Mac dark ages with OSX 10.4 Tiger, I've had to limit myself to version 1.66 as opposed to the new and very shiny version 2.0 which only runs on Leopard.

And whilst I'm on the subject of OSX upgrades, I've been reading that OSX 10.6 "Snow Leopard" will only be for Intel-based Macs. So that's me stuffed then. I was going to miss out 10.5 altogether and jump straight to 10.6, but that now looks like it won't be possible. So is 10.5 the end of the road for my dearly beloved G5 iMac? It certainly looks that way.