Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Gutsy goes beta officially tomorrow!

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I've been using Linux at work for about 9 months now, and switched to Ubuntu from Red Hat Enterprise a few months ago in hopes of having GUI configuration of multiple monitors. The version of Ubuntu that is the newest officially supported one (Feisty Fawn) has no such tool, but the release that is coming out next month (Gutsy Gibbon) does:
And this goes officially beta tomorrow! I'm excited. Of course it's been available in alpha form for a few months now, but the development process is moving along towards the release date next month.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Motorola STB 5C bug?

DVB can be encrypted, making it useless once captured via Firewire. If you're using the Apple Firewire SDK, these channels come up as "Copy Once" in the Copy Protection field. I found a workaround...just play with the Pause and Play buttons during playback and recording. I hope this works for you, and sorry for the intentional vagueness. The DMCA is a scary thing.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

1080p Macbook Update

This is an update to my original post, which is a full tutorial on getting 1080p to come out of your new Macbook.

I've been getting comments about how the workaround given here doesn't work for some particular TV models. Several people have issues with 10.4.9. I would suggest firstly to update to the LATEST (10.4.10 I believe), which is what I've been conducting my tests with.

There is another caveat I failed to mention, and that there is an issue with signal strength that could be at fault. I've read reports on other forums that TVs expect higher signal voltage levels than what the Macbook outputs, resulting in the TV being unable to lock onto the appropriate parts of the signal. This could be the problem for people getting a picture for a moment, and then a garbled nonsense screen. This device could be the answer, although it is pricey. Googling for HDMI ampilfier might help, or if you're and adventuresome electronics tinkerer, you might be able to DIY, that is make a three channel high bandwidth amplifier.

Others have suggested using switchresx:
Take the 1080i settings and just disable interlaced button and set the 30Hz refresh rate to 60Hz. I now get the problem that the picture is totally blurry/blocky. (Thanks David)
This is unfortunate, because when this works correctly, you get a glorious full resolution image that looks breathtaking.

My last bit of additional advice is to bootcamp install Windows if all else fails. XP home is sufficient, and hopefully you have an old copy lying around. I retired an old Pentium II machine I had with XP Home on it, and transferred the license/key to my Macbook. Or you can hope Leopard has fixed this issue entirely, but that is a more expensive solution, and one that we have to wait for until next month.