The problem

For the best part of a year now I have been living in a US apartment away from my desktop computer, leaving me with my MacBook Pro as my only computer for work and media. I bought an Apple TV, which has since become my main device (along with Netflix streaming) for renting movies and watching movies or TV shows that I purchased from iTunes.

For a while now my iTunes media folder has been slowly but surely eating up all of the spare capacity on my MacBook Pro’s 200GB Hard Disk.  Music, apps and movies had taken their toll. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I started downloading TV shows from iTunes. Before I knew it, my media folder was over 100GB, my HDD was full and I still had two and a half series of The Wire to download from iTunes. Finally, I couldn’t upgrade Xcode 4.

Something had to give!

I had looked at a number of different ways of moving my media folder off of the laptop. I had already moved my 60GB iPhoto library to a 1TB backup USB WD Passport Disk Drive but it was hassle to have to hook it up every time I wanted to use iPhoto, which is not nearly as often as I use iTunes. Dedicated NAS drives and media servers are expensive and take up room, which there isn’t a lot of in an apartment.  So I needed something small, fairly cheap and that didn’t need wires.

I did a bit of digging and noticed that the Airport Extreme Base Station has a USB port and a feature called AirPort Disk. AirPort Disk allows you to share Hard Disks over its zippy dual band 802.b/g/n network. However, Apple do not make any mention of specifically using it to host your iTunes media folder. In fact, when I went to my local Apple store, and explained what I wanted to do, the sales person had never even heard of AirPort Disk! I bought one on the understanding that I had 14 days to try it out and return it.  I plugged it into my LinkSys cable modem/wireless router, configured it in bridged mode and plugged my passport drive into the USB port. Sure enough, the disk appeared in finder as 2 shared disks on my network. I had partitioned the disk into two separate logical drives, one for media files and the other for TimeMachine backups.  The first test was to try using the iPhoto library on the disk and it worked without a hitch, though not quite as fast as when the library is located on the Mac.

Next up was to copy my entire 100GB+ media folder to the passport drive.  To do this I plugged it in directly and copied the files over. It took approx 1 hour to copy the files. Once the copy was complete, I unmounted the passport drive and plugged it into the Airport Extreme Base Station. I fired up iTunes, opened Preferences and changed the media folder location to point to the new location on the new mounted AirPort Disk volume. I restarted iTunes but all of the media was still pointing to the local media folder.  I renamed the folder (not wanting to delete anything in case it didn’t work) and restarted iTunes.  I looked at the location of my iTunes files and strangely enough, they now pointed to the local media folder with the new name!

In the end I finally decided to delete the entire local directory, safe in the knowledge that I had a backup on the passport drive as well as in Time Machine.  When I restarted iTunes, the files were finally pointing to the correct location on my shared volume.

The Big Test

Finally for the big test, watching a movie that was being streamed from my shared disk to my Mac via AirPort Disk and then from my Mac to the Apple TV using Apple’s AirPlay technology. At best it would probably buffer horribly and drop connection occasionally. At worst, I thought it would fail miserably.

The result?

It worked perfectly with almost no noticeable buffering!  Playing, pausing, forwarding and rewinding TV shows works without a hitch.  I have downloaded all the remaining TV shows from iTunes and have been happily watching TV shows streamed from the shared drive ever since.

Conclusion

I had been mainly worried about the speed of the USB drive for streaming 720p movies but I have been knocked out by how fast and reliable the connection and how good the performance has been.

So far there haven’t really been any real issues. Occasionally, I might need to establish the connection between the Mac and the shared disk through Finder or iTunes might complain that it can’t find the media. Not a deal breaker in my opinion.

I guess the biggest problem is backing up media on the wireless drive. I haven’t had a chance to play with Time Machine to see if it can back up shared drives, as my Time Machine is complaining that the latest backup is too big for the 400GB shared drive partition. Something that seems to happen quite regularly for me unfortunately. It is possible to connect a USB hub to the Airport Extreme meaning you could connect multiple disks for backup or extra capacity. You can even connect a USB printer and have it shared on the network. Though I don’t know what affect these would have on performance.

I am really pleased with the result and the added bonus of the faster 802.11n network that I now have being much faster than my old 802.11g network on the LinkSys modem. This allows me to download new media while streaming it to the Apple TV – something I wasn’t able to do with my 802.11g router.

You can even access your AirPort Extreme shared disk remotely via the Internet if you have a MobileMe account but I haven’t looked into that yet.

If you are in need of the space, it might be worth considering trying this but be warned: using AirPort Disk for iTunes is not officially supported by Apple so don’t blame me if it doesn’t work for you or stops working in the future. I have only tried it with a Mac, so I don’t know if it works with MS Windows iTunes software. Also be sure to make multiple regular backups of your media!!

Let me know if you have been using AirPort Disk for iTunes, if you know of any problems that I will likely run into or if you have a better way to store your iTunes media remotely.

I recently bought an iPod Shuffle 3G (3rd Generation) from the Apple Store to use while in the gym (I did try my iPhone 3GS first but after accidentally throwing it 6 feet in the air, I felt that it was better left in the gym locker).

I had wanted a shuffle for a while but the cost per GB seemed a bit steep. So when the 3G was released with a price reduction to £45 for the 4GB version, I jumped at the chance. Finally I wouldn’t have to listen to endless loops of Cascada and Dizzy Rascal on the jukebox! The main feature of the 3G Shuffle is the lack of volume/play controls on the device. All controls are now on a little switch on the earbud cable. They have a proprietary chip that make the player incompatible with regular earbuds. I know Apple earbuds aren’t the best but my iPhone ones work fine for me so it wasn’t a big issue.

On opening, it is a thing of beauty, simple and elegant, as you come to expect from Apple. I painstakingly created my “Gym Workout” playlist and copied it onto the shuffle. Off I went to the gym and everything was great. For the first hour that is. Then I noticed that the annoying computer voice kept interrupting my and telling my what playlist I was listening to. Again and again. It even interrupted itself! Then, the sound controls stopped working and eventually the main play/pause button stopped working. So off I went to see my local Apple Expert and he was happy to give me a new set of earbuds. The next day I took my new earbuds to the gym and within 20 minutes, they too had failed.

It seems pretty clear that the chip inside the earbuds doesn’t like moisture and is not well protected, which is not a good thing when the primary use of the player is for listening to music while exercising. A quick look around the Internet and its clear that I am not the only one with this problem. To make things worse, because of the proprietary earbud chips, there aren’t a lot of options. There are some accessories on the Apple Store that allow you to use regular earbuds such as the Scosche tapLINE extension lead and tapStick but they are relatively expensive and when added to a new set of earphones are more expensive that the Shuffle itself! I haven’t tested these yet so I don’t know if they are resistant to moisture.

It says a lot about a product when you have to spend more than the original cost to make it suitable for its task. I am afraid I have to give the iPod Shuffle 3G a big fat “F minus” and recommend anyone looking for an mp3 player for exercise to avoid it like the plague. Sort it out Apple!!

I recently switched from Sky to O2 for my broadband provider. I had been on Sky Mid package for a few years and it was good value and worked well (Don’t get me started on Pipex!!).  Earlier this year Sky informed me they were doubling their rates (unless I took their Talk package too). Around this time I felt that their connection was becoming more unreliable.

I decided to switch to O2 Broadband as they use ADSL2, had good rates for O2 mobile customers and got consistently good reviews on thinkbroadband.com. The switch took a couple of weeks and was pretty seamless. However, I noticed that my new connection was significantly slower. Speed tests confirmed that I was only getting 300-400Kbps for both up and downstream.

The main suspect for this was my setup at home. I have an extension lead from the hallway master phone socket to an extension socket under the stairs, and another upstairs to the office where an adsl/phone extension socket connected to my router. I connected my router directly to the master socket and did a speed test.  Sure enough, the speed jumped to 2.7Mbps/1Mbps downstream/upstream.

While this may seem obvious, I had been getting 1.5-2Mbps with Sky with the exact same setup. I did know that extensions add interference but it didn’t seem to impact the speed that much and I preferred to have the router upstairs out of the way. Though for some reason it has a much bigger impact with O2. It could be something to do with their modem or ADSL2. To their credit, their instructions do say that extensions may affect performance.

Anyway, the moral of the story is to connect your router to your master socket or at least be aware of the effect extensions may be having on your Internet speed (BroadbandSpeedChecker.co.uk).

With the gorgeous Sony Reader being launched this Friday, it is starting to make some headlines. The Times is questioning whether it signals the death of the paperback. Though, I think that a 70 year old librarian might not be the demographic that Sony are going after. Asked for her opinion, she brings up a good point “If you dropped it in the bath it would do terrible damage”. That’s right people, be warned. If you drop your Sony Reader in the bathtub, Civilisation as we know it will come to an end!

Last Friday I got my hands on a brand new 80GB PlayStation 3, having traded in my troublesome Xbox 360. As well as the PS3, I bought GRID, Metal Gear Solid 4, Gran Tourismo 5: Prologue, an extra rumble controller, HDMI cable and a rented BluRay Movie. Here’s how I got on: Read the rest of this entry »

At the start of the month, I wrote about the launch of Sony’s sexy new eBook Reader. I managed to get my hands on one of these for 5 minutes while in the US last week.

Its very slim and light, while still sturdy. Great for throwing into a bag when travelling. The display was really clear and very readable. The non-backlit display meant that it was very similar to reading a real book with very little strain on the eyes. There is no scrolling, so if you zoom in, it repaginates the book. There were 3 levels of zoom, the middle one I found to be the most readable. The only minor issue was the response lag, taking a second or two to respond to a page turn or go back to the menu. Its a slow transition too, with a fading effect from the previous page to the next. Though, once you are used to it, it doesn’t cause any major problems. I heard rumours that colour displays are not that far away, which would be a major bonus, especially for reading non-fiction books such as text books.

For my 2 cents, these things are going to have as big an impact as mp3 players did a few years back, maybe not this Christmas but definitely in the next year or two. The question is, are Apple going to get in on the act?

Sony’s new Reader is now available for preorder on their UK Store for £199. It is a lovely looking piece of kit capable of storing 160 eBooks from a library of thousands of titles available on Waterstones.co.uk. Its thin, light, sleak and uses a special 6″ screen that acts like real ink and is easy on the eye. I want one.

*Update – the price is £199 + VAT with free delivery.

From the BBC Editor Blog:

I have restrained myself to such an extent that I have not uttered a single word about the new iPhone in the last 36 hours, on TV, on radio or online. So, while I’m here, wasn’t it just a little disappointing? Still no video, the camera stays at the original 2mp, and no ability to cut and paste. And isn’t the price cut proof enough that Apple misjudged the European market, and needed to kick-start sales?

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Canon 40D Remote Live View

Tonight I finally got to play with my new DSLR camera, the Canon EOS 40D. As Royal Mail are taking their time to deliver my Compact Flash Card, I have been unable to use it in anger until now. I had read about the Remote Live View feature of the camera so I decided to try it out tonight. As you can see from the picture, not only can you remotely operate the camera from your PC, you can also see the real time Live View image that the camera will display on its LCD. The photos are instantainously downloaded to you PC as soon as you take them too. It is a brilliant bit of software, a lot more interesting than developing financial software that is for sure!

I am only really starting out in photography so I have a lot to learn. Apologies for the flash reflection!

This week I purchased a pro-sumer Digital SLR camera from a well known high street chain. I was encouraged to take out their accidental damage policy claiming that I was actually buying my next camera. If it was broken, they would replace it “whatever happens”, if it couldn’t be repaired within 21 days, with an equivalent model, even if it was more expensive. It works out at around £30 a year for 5 years. So if in 4 and a half years a new model comes out and I accidentally run over my camera with my car, I should* get it replaced by the newer model. Of course it doesn’t cover loss or theft. I was thinking of getting some sort of after care as DSLRs are known to be delicate and very expensive to repair and it should give me peace of mind when using it “in the field”. I have 14 days to cancel the policy, what should I do??

* Whether I do or not I don’t know, sounds a bit too good to be true IMHO.