Category Archives: gadgets

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I finally found the time to rewrite the gallery section of the site. It’s good, but not good enough. I still want to set up a navigation for going through the pictures. Haven’t really seen any navigation code I like, though.

I recently got myself a universal remote, so I don’t have to live with five-six remotes on the table. Really nice. I found that there are two main problems with universal remotes. Either, the remote is touch screen, which really doesn’t give you the tactile sense of the buttons, or it’s a normal looking programmable remote, which means that you lose functionality on your device if you use it.

Fortunately, the good people at Harmony fixed both these problems. I got myself a Harmony 688 (company got bought by Logitech). It’s programmable, and it has assignable buttons on the display, that at the same time give you tactile support and custom buttons for your device. It’s the best of both worlds. I really love my Harmony remote. The programming of the remote is a snap. All you need to do is go to the Logitech website, set of what you want to do and download the new software image to the remote. All automatically.

There are only two downside. One is that it’s currently only for Windows (there is no way to transfer the software image to the remote from Linux, where I am most of the time), and sometimes the timing of the remote is off (as in, I have to push the the button several times for the device to react). The former problem is apparently being worked on, and the latter problem I can problem fix on the website. Just have to get around to it.

All in all, I really like this remote, and would highly recommend it for anyone who is looking for a universal remote.

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I just bought my parents a Nokia Mediamaster 260 S, so that they can watch Hotel Cæsar without hurrying through dinner. The Nokia system is one of the first DVRs in the Norwegian marked (I think).

Having owned a TiVo while I lived in the US, it was really difficult watching tv again without a DVR. Once you tried one, it’s kinda like watching movies without sound. Sure, you can live it with, if you never knew better, but once you get a taste of the sound experience, it’s hard to go back.

One of the thing I love about my TiVo is the Season Pass. It means I can program my TiVo to record the whole season of a tv-show, say Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. Note, I mention Buffy, as in I record the show based on the name. That means, if the show is moved to a different time or even different network, TiVo is intelligent enough to know it. It also know when a show is in rerun, and skips that episode. If a show are on more than once in a week, or are extra long a given week, TiVo knows this and adjust accordingly.

The Mediamaster only records shows by date/time. That means it won’t be aware of shows moved in time or network. You are also limited to how often you want to record a show to daily or weekly. Some shows, like Hotel Cæsar or The Daily Show, are on weekdays. Which means you have to create five record entries.

The Mediamaster also have some annoying features. I was watching a record of Scrub, when another show I had set up for recording started. Instead of just record the show in the background, the Mediamaster stopped the playback, and showed the live-show. I know better than the system what I want to watch.

TiVo’s program list is by date and program name. It also have a short description of the taped show. OTOH, the Mediamaster will only show the name of the show you have taped. There are no indication when the show was taped, nor what the content is. Very annoying. Coupled with somewhat frequent crashes, it is somewhat an exercise in frustration.

The Mediamaster is a nice first try. Unfortunately, it’s not the first DVR on the marked, and I fail to see why Nokia didn’t just license the TiVo technology, instead of coming out with such an inferior product. Basically, the Mediamaster is an glorified VCR, and nothing like a DVR heaven that TiVo is.