Nick Versus Technology
It’s been a over a year since the Federal switch to HDTV, yet I didn’t buy an adapter or a new TV. For the past two years I’ve been using Hulu and Netflix instant streaming to watch the shows I like when I have time, and don’t have 100 channels competing for my attention. That been said I’d been saving money for a while to do a home entertainment upgrade for a while, and had decided to buy the toys through a company discount. When I went to find the link off the corporate intranet, I saw there was a message that if I bought today not only could I get a speaker bar for half off, I could get a Blu-Ray player that also played Netflix instant streams. Netflix instant streams on TV! ZOMG!
The Blu-Ray player and speaker bar came first. Not having a HDTV to hook them up to, I hooked them up to my standard definition TV and put in the only Blu-Ray movie I had. While I had to admit the speaker bar sounded amazing, Blu-Ray gives no advantage on a standard television (Imagine that). This is where I also realized that the Blue-Ray’s Netflix support was dependent on getting an Ethernet cable to it. My cable modem and router are all upstairs, so I moved all the equipment downstairs so I could hook the router directly to my Blue-Ray player. No luck; the downstairs cable outlet apparently doesn’t have data.
| What Nick Has | What Nick Doesn’t Have |
| Okay Picture Great Sound |
Netflix Instant Streaming |
The TV was supposed to ship two weeks later, but instead it shipped early and was supposed to arrive the while I was in DC. I had it held at the Fed Ex office, but this meant I had to pick up in Kansas City, and my Mini just wasn’t up for the job. Thankfully a friend agreed to help, but I ended up sitting in the back seat holding the TV up for the entire 30 minute trip.
Go ahead, ask me about my day.
I got it home, but only had composite cables which would not do. Another trip to Best Buy, and now I had the necessary HDMI and optical cables. I also bought an Apple Airport Express to use as a Wifi to Ethernet bridge to the Blu-Ray player. I hooked the HDMI and optical cables up, and am blown away by the picture and sound. Unfortunately setting up the Airport Express does not go as well. Unlike the ease of configuration of most Apple products, the Airport Express is positively stone age. It has one amber light that blinks at you when something goes wrong, and usually the only solution is to stick a paper clip into it’s reset button.
| What Nick Has | What Nick Doesn’t Have |
| Great Picture Great Sound Stream iTunes to new speakers Share a hard drive |
Netflix Instant Streaming |
Later I found out why my Wifi bridge wasn’t working. Wifi to Ethernet bridging involves creating a WDS network, which my 802.11g router doesn’t support. At this point I had been throwing money at Best Buy, so why not a little more. I decided to replace my 802.11g router with an Apple 802.11n Airport Extreme Base Station. My (arguable) logic was that if I wanted to stream movies, I should upgrade my Wifi network to something fast. The Airport Base Station also adds support for connecting to a USB printer over your network, something I’ve needed for a while. (Ironically, I needed to download a software update to my laptop to configure the router, but couldn’t connect to the internet because my router wasn’t configured. Progress!)
| What Nick Has | What Nick Doesn’t Have |
| Great Picture Great Sound Incredibly fast network Stream iTunes to new speakers Share a hard drive Share printer |
Netflix Instant Streaming |
After more configuration, the router and the Airport Express start talking to one another. I finally had an Ethernet line that went to the Blue-Ray player. I hooked it up, and then went through the menus looking for the Netflix support – wait, where was the Netflix support? I looked online for the latest manual to my Blue-Ray player and found the following.
What. The. Fuck.
Since I had already done all this work to run Ethernet to my TV, I decided to see what else I could do. As it turns out the TV also an Ethernet port, which gives you the ability to download software updates and browse the web. When I say “browse the web”, I mean “look at the three pages the manufacturer gives me access to using a convoluted interface.” It also gives me access to the weather, which might be useful if my TV wasn’t against a window. I then hooked my Linux box through HDMI to my TV, only to discover that Netflix instant streaming doesn’t support Linux. I also don’t want to think of all the extra money I spent that I shouldn’t have.
So our final scorecard is
| What Nick Has | What Nick Doesn’t Have |
| Great Picture Great Sound Incredibly fast network Stream iTunes to new speakers Share a hard drive Share printer Check the weather Browse 3 dumb web pages Check the weather Subversion server Apache server |
Netflix Instant Streaming |
Technology: 1. Nick: 0
March 18th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
You could stream Netflix through a new PS3 or Xbox360. I mean, as long as you’re throwing money at this thing ;) Wii support for it is supposed to be coming this spring too. Or you could just use that tv as a really big monitor for your laptop and go that route. Don’t give up!
Oh, and color me jealous.
March 18th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
I would point and laugh, but I had a similar WTF expereience with a second hand TiVo.
Remember when TV just had the one dial, a 300 ohm two wire hook up, and a coax? Those were the days.
March 19th, 2010 at 4:21 am
…or you could get a new TiVo and get Netflix through that. (Which is a Linux box…)