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Review: QCast Tuner for PS2
It can handle many media formats; to me, the most important are MPEG-1, MP3, and JPEG. But it also handles DivX, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, Ogg Vorbis, and PNG, and can be updated to handle other formats. But it doesn't handle the majority of my movie file archive, which are QuickTime, and that's a shame. And if you try to open a file it can't read (I changed some .mov files to .mpg, as it filters by name), it seems to hang.
I got the PS2 Network Adapter installed first, popped it onto the back of the machine, and ran the setup disk to configure it. Then I played a game of Madden 2003 online. I scored a touchdown on a tight end slant on the first play, then got one more play at the end of the half (a 30-yard reception to Troy Brown), and then didn't take another snap. Stupid 1-minute quarters. I lost 14-7.
Then I remembered I had this QCast Tuner thing, and I installed it on my PowerBook G3/500, where I keep my images, my MP3s, and my EyeTV recordings. It didn't take much to set it up, same as with the initial setup: I manually entered my IP address, router address, etc. and the IP address of the PowerBook G3. The software on the PowerBook updated and configured the PS2 software, and restarted it, and I was ready to go.
From the main screen you can elect to view pictures, or play music and video. I tried music first, where I had shared my iTunes directory, which has one directory per artist (except for compilations, which are in a separate directory). I have 293 directories in this directory, and there is no good way to skip to the bottom of the list; you can go one screen at a time, but that takes a little while. So I picked Ben Folds to start out with.
The user interface, apart from not handling long lists well, has several usability problems. To go up a directory, you select the ".." directory, which is something that Unix geeks know, but most PS2 users would expect to use the triangle button or something.
You cannot play songs from these lists, either; you need to add them to the playlist, then hit L1 to switch to the playlist, and then play from there. To get the ID3 tags to show up, you have to hit L1 again, and select that option (along with the shuffle and repeat options). And if you leave the playing screens (which makes the music stop, so you can't manage playlists while playing music) and come back, those options get reset.
You cannot get the time remaining of a song, and the UI doesn't show the full track name -- or track number -- if it is too large for the available space (it has trouble even with track "1/10", though "1/9" fits). And you can't scan forward or backward in a song or movie (which is often the case with streaming software), you can only pause, play, stop, and skip to another file.
To make it easier to find what you want to play, you can make playlists. Select the files you want to play in the interface, and save the playlist, which is stored on the server. I didn't want to do this for all my MP3s, but I had an easier solution: I wrote a small Perl script to create symlinks to my MP3 artist directories in other directories beginning with the first letter of the artist; and I share that directory of directories of symlinks instead. So instead of going down a list of 390 artists to get to Wesley Willis, I just select W, and he's right there.
My problem with EyeTV was greater: as noted in my review of EyeTV, the filenames bear no resemblance to the contents of the files, unlike the MP3s. But the solution I wrote for EyeTV was easily modified to serve me here, too. The playlists are just text files with the path (relative to the share point) on one line, and just the filename on the next line.
I thought I could change the filename line to be any arbitrary text (like "McLaughlin Group 2003.04.11") and have one playlist for all my EyeTV recordings, but that didn't have any effect; the display still showed the filename. So instead, I created multiple playlists, one for each program. So the playlist "EyeTV: McLaughlin Group" has paths for each McLaughlin Group recording I've got saved. It would have been nice to have an EyeTV playlist directory, instead of naming the playlists "EyeTV: ", but I could find no way to make nested playlists. If a playlist is not in the root playlist directory, it is not recognized as a playlist.
I can now watch the shows I used to have to watch on the computer, on the TV. It makes me feel kinda dirty, like it should have been on the TV all along. Oh well. And any changes to my music and TV recordings are regularly updated, as the two programs run via cron every half hour (and I can even begin watching a program that is currently recording).
QCast is bitten by the iTunes ID3 comment bug whereby data is stored with a frame header of "COM ", which is illegal. So QCast doesn't recognize any of the ID3 tag at all. I can't blame QCast for Apple's bug, especially since it bit my code too; this was the final straw that made me convert all my tags to ID3v2.2.0 (only v2.3.0 and v2.4.0 are affected). Maybe the QCast people can fix that problem when they add QuickTime support (he says hopefully).
The final issue I have is how to integrate it into my TV "experience." I don't want to have to turn on the PS2 and wait for it to boot every time I want to listen to music, so do I leave it on whenever I am around? And my system isn't set up to easily switch between PS2 and TiVo and DVD; my switch box has no remote, but does switch to a device that is turned on, which is nice for DVDs, but useless for when you leave the PS2 on all the time. I could plug the PS2 into the spare inputs on the VCR (which is on a separate input to the amplifier, and has its own button on the remote control), but that is kinda sloppy. And do I buy an IR remote control for the PS2? Is there an IR remote that can turn the PS2 off and on? These are problems mostly inherent in the design of using PS2 for multimedia, and there's not a lot I can do except to try to figure out ways to do things that work for me.
Basically, QCast Tuner is a nice idea, and it works well despite its UI and design flaws (some of which can be fixed on subsequent updates, I imagine), if you can fit it into your setup (or change your setup to suit it). I'm still undecided on using it long-term, but I am going to keep trying it out for awhile and see how it goes.
Ever wonder why MS is so fascinated by the video game market? Sure it has the potential to be profitable one day, but that's not the entire story about why it matters to Microsoft. I doubt Microsoft would want to stake their future on such a fickle industry.
Keep in mind for a moment that televisions are in a central room in the house, they are getting much better resolution and features (HDTV), and they are near one of the two big data pipes that comes into the house (Cable). This makes for a pretty compelling location for a computer.
MS is interested in this market in part because it is possible that if set top boxes take over what PC's do today to any significant degree, that could be a huge threat to Microsoft's future. Imagine a PS2 with a cable converter that can also do word processing, surf the web, etc. That's potentiall pretty compelling and it doesn't require Microsoft at all to happen. Microsoft created the XBox at least in part as a hedge against this future. It's not so tough to get into the market now but if it took off, Microsoft could find themselves high and dry without a console they control.
A PS2 with a cable converter frankly is an unholy alliance as far as Microsoft is concerned.
With TiVo's release of the much anticipated Home Media Option (anticipated by me, anyway), I renewed my quest to find a way to integrate my computer's media files with my TV. TiVo's solution is not an option for me, because I don't have a Series2, and even if I did, the TiVo solution doesn't work with DirecTV units (for now, anyway).
I have a DirectTV Tivo, Better than a normal Tivo (can record 2 shows at once), but still wont allow you to download video. Picked up a ReplayTV with Ethernet jack, output my tivo into the replay TV, and then used DVArchive to copy the videos over to my PC or MAC. For TV output, I just plugged my 2nd video port out from my Ati 9700 to the SVHS in on the tv.
Seems to work ok, thou the video quality is far from perfect quality that the digital Tivo records in. I was tempted to see the quality on video in on the Ati all in wonder 9700. But too expensive at the moment to try. I have an mpeg1/2 hardware encoder, but it looses audio sync after 45 minutes (known dazzle problem)
The main problem with using a 3rd party machine, (other than tivo) is you miss applications or file support on your PC. (not the use of qcast...) Even with a cheap 300 dollar kit pc with video out/in and a nic/wifi seems to better solution than software and ps2/xbox.
I own the PS2/Linux kit, and would have liked to get vlc to work on my PS2. I have since heard about QCast but sounds kind of disappointing.
However, it does work with MPEG-1 streams and probably MP3 would work as well (I've played MP3s on my PS2 but not over vlc).
The problem with MPEG2 and DiVX are processing power. Unless you program the builtin MPEG decoder, you are using the weak EE risc processor to decode MPEG-2, and it drops frames badly.
If someone were to port these formats to the native HW, PS2Linux would be a viable alternative.
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Enter to win a free QCast Tuner here!
I have such little traffic your chances of winning are pretty good!
Can anyone outside of the US who's got one of these things comment on whether the QCast disc is region locked or not?
For those of us outside the US who don't have the luxury of using something like a Tivo to store all of our digital media to watch on the TV without a PC nearby (let alone record!), this sounds like a perfect option.