iPhone Advert
Posted January 21, 2007 
Comments(2) It made me laugh, so I thought I would pop it up. Interestingly if you goto YouTubes site this has been taken down on request, hmmm….
Posted January 21, 2007 Comments(2) Media Center and US Content
Posted January 21, 2007 Comments(0) A couple of people at work have asked me how to get some of the US only features working on Vista Media Center.
I have not put it off for any particular reason, It's just I forgot to do it.
Anyhow, it's easy! Copy the registry file content below into notepad and save it out into a .reg file.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layouts\00000409]
"Layout File"="KBDUK.DLL"
"Layout Text"="United Kingdom"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout\DosKeybCodes]
"00000409"="uk"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\MCE.GlobalSettings]
"systemGeoISO2"="US"
Yeah I know it looks like this will set your keyboard into US, it does but we swap the location over so that the US is actualy UK.
You can do this for any country by changing the DLL etc over to your keyboard.
Oh, nearly forgot, make sure you do a Guide Update after doing this (Tasks/Settings/TV/Guide/Get Latest Guide Listings)
iPhone
Posted January 15, 2007 Comments(3) I noticed that Gary had given me a bit of a bash over my iPhone reaction.
I just wanted to make my impressions clear.
I've been an 'advanced phone' user for a good many years now, I have in the past used Nokia, Ericsson, Sony, and of late Microsoft (HTC) phones, and over the years seen them advance to the state of my current phone which my parents call my mini PC (HTC Universal).
The iPhone looks AMAZING! however it has some serious shortcomings, most of which should be expected, seeming this is Apple's first foray into the phone market (we will forget the RokR).
The iPhone falls short on some serious areas. What connected phone would be without 3G? I don't want to browse over GPRS, and it's damn sure that there will not be a WiFi zone like there is in San Francisco around where I live any time soon.
The lack of developer support is a joke, what's going on there? It runs OSX? yeah right just like my phone runs Windows Vista, the kernel may be loosely related but that's about it. All of the clever video voice-mail and the likes are network dependent, and not many of them will upgrade there infrastructure just for one phone. Do you think Nokia and SE have not looked at doing similar stuff for years?
There were also some strange decisions going on, first they say we are partnering with Google, then say that Yahoo! are going to be the iPhone mail partner. Who the the heck was smoking crack in the boardroom when that decision was made? Steve give up the hard drugs and go back to pot, cause that decision is just plain dumb! Google mail vs Yahoo! mail? I'd rather use Mutt or Pine than Yahoo! (in fact I would rather be sent to prision for a crime I did not commit, and accidentaly bend over to pick up the soap in an all black shower than use Yahoo!). However my dislike of Yahoo! asside, Gmail is possibly the best 'free' mail system out there at the moment, why use a decrepid aging pile of dog muck that get's blocked by almost every decent spam filter engine instead?
Like I said, I have nothing against Apple, I own my fair share of iPods and Macintosh's after all, and what I do confess is that Apple make very good designs.
I would like to see Apple do well with this device, but I'm afraid it's probably better off if they take the phone stuff out and put a hard disk in instead, that way we would get a decent Video iPod, and let's be fair that's what we all really wanted instead of the iPhone anyway.
p.s. While I'm bashing companies, Microsoft PLEASE call me back about my Xbox 360, I've had 3 now, none of them work and I want to play Rainbow Six : Vegas!
Media Center WideScreen
Posted January 14, 2007 Comments(1) I've been playing with coding a MCE Vista Plug-in for downloading Video's from Easynews of late, and I've come across a very useful command in the MCE developer documentation that I thought would be worth sharing.
If you start MCE on a Vista PC using c:\windows\eHome\ehshell.exe /widescreen Media Center will launch in Wide Screen (16×9) for you to test things etc, however the one slight downside is that it will only display in 16×9 when in windowed mode, and not full screen.
However it's great for testing how apps will look on a TV. But I'm sure you can find something else useful to do with it.
Bugatti Veyron - The Powerhouse
Posted January 12, 2007 Comments(4) 
The EB18/4 'Veyron' - to give it its full concept name - started life in 1999 at the Tokyo Motor Show as a concept car designed by Volkswagen's Hartmut Warkuss. It was never intended to be put into production, but rather as a marketing piece for the Volkswagen Audi Group's (VAG) takeover of the Bugatti name. At that point in time, the French car manufacturer had just been bought from its previous Italian owners by the German Volkswagen Audi Group. The Veyron was the first Bugatti in a long time to not have been designed by ItalDesign.
The marque was put into the watchful hands of the Audi part of the group, which joined the also recently purchased Lamborghini. It was decided to place them under the stewardship of Audi as they are well known for their pioneering use of technologies and designs.
The concept was called the EB18/4. In line with all previous code names for Bugatti models, the numbers came from the engine inside the car, in this case a W18 (3 banks of 6 cylinders) and 4 turbo chargers. The car was shown at various shows around the world, with no modification; a rare thing in a concept, as they preceed major style changes.
However in 2001 Ferdinand Piëch - VAG Chairman - announced at the Geneva Motorshow that interest in the Veyron had been so high that the group would undertake the task of making the car production ready. He also stated that the car would be the fastest, most powerful and most expensive car in history. Now, some would think that the announcement would put people off, and yet VAG stopped taking orders for the car well before the first road going prototype had even hit the road.
There were some changes to the specification of the concept car that were announced as well. The car would not be using the W18 engine, instead it would use a W16 engine, which had already been shown by VAG in their 1999 Bentley Hunaudières concept car. This would be increased in power by adding 4 turbo chargers to it. Top speed was promised to be 250mph (403kph) and the car would have in excess of 1000Bhp.
This announcement, as it turned out, was almost the end of the Veyron project. The story of this car is not its immense performance, it is the engineering that had to go into the mammoth project that created it.
You see there was a problem. The car's design had been shown and signed off by would be purchasers, so the car's looks and shape had to remain fairly close to the concept. Purchasers had also been told that the car would be the fastest, most powerful car ever created. Unfortunately for the Veyron team, these two factors struggled to sit nicely together, and the resulting Veyron is a testament to all of the team involved in making it work.
Late in 2001 the Veyron was promoted from concept to advanced concept, and VAG announced that the car would go on sale in 2003. However, all did not go well.
Reliability and top speed stability were causing issues, so much in fact that one of the prototype cars was destroyed in a high speed accident, and another spun out and crashed at an event at Laguna Seca during a public demonstration.
This rather public demonstration of the handling issues slowed the development process down. Not only was the construction of more prototypes needed, but the motoring press grabbed hold of the Veyron's issues and it started to become a running joke that the car would never make it to market.
Bernd Pischetsrieder took over the running of VAG, and it was thought that he would kill the Veyron project. It had already developed new technologies that could be used in the rest of the VAG range of cars, and many believed that Bernd would drop the project while VAG could still save face. He did something that any other engineer junkie would have: he sent the car back to the drawing board for major overhauls in key areas.
There is a much used quote from Gordon Murray, who designed the McLaren F1. It appeared in Evo magazine - "The most pointless exercise on the planet has got to be this four-wheel-drive 1000 horsepower Bugatti. I think it’s incredibly childish this thing people have about just one element — top speed or standing kilometre or 0-60. It’s about as narrow minded as you can get as a car designer to pick on one element. It’s like saying we’re going to beat the original Mini because we’re going to make a car 10 mph faster on its top speed—but it's two foot longer and 200 kilos heavier. That’s not car designing — that just reeks of a company who are paranoid."
There were the handling issues that had to be solved. There were also braking issues; testing had shown that the car's weight was an issue at 1890kg. The biggest problem though seemed to be cooling. The massive 8ltr engine with 16 cylinders, 64 valves and 4 turbo chargers - the engine is termed a W16, and is best thought of as two narrow opposing V8 engines - generated a massive amount of heat. It was proving difficult for the teams involved to keep the car cool enough to be reliable.
The car kept loosing luggage space, to be replaced by yet another radiator. In fact, the final production car not only has the top of the engine exposed to the elements, but 10 radiators as well. These radiators break down as follows: 3 radiators for engine cooling, 1 engine oil radiator, 1 hydraulic oil radiator, 1 differential oil radiator, 1 transmission oil radiator, 1 heat exchanger for the air/liquid intercoolers and 2 radiators for the air conditioning system.
With all the car's power now cooled and reliable, the Veyron needed a transmission capable of putting the 1001bhp and 922ft-lbf to the road. Audi had released the DSG Gearbox to the world, and it was decided that this, along with Audi's knowledge of 4 wheel drive, would form the drivetrain platform. This caused issues: nothing that Audi had available could manage to harness the massive power output from the engine.
Because of this, the team turned to British company Ricardo for help. The Ricardo team created a custom, 7 speed, dual clutch gearbox for the car, and helped Audi's engineers enhance the 4 wheel drive system and software to be able to reliably cope with the car's performance.
With all the parts in place, the car underwent testing in a variety of places for the hot and cold tests that are required of production cars. It was also spotted in testing at the Nurburgring, as the engineers honed the suspension and engine mappings. This testing also saw the addition of the automated downforce system.
This aero package can create in excess of 3420 newtons of downforce; the car is lowered to only 8.9 centimeters ground clearance, and has a high performance mode, where the car keeps its aero profile as small as possible and is able to reach its 252mph top speed. This mode needs to be activated by using the key in a special lock, and this in turn makes the car do a system check on all of the cars major systems: from tyre pressures, to oil quality. The day-to-day aero profile - called the handling mode - only actualy allows a maximum of 234mph to be achieved.
T
he Veyron was unveiled in its final production version on the 19th of October 2005, at the same place as it was initially shown in concept form: the Tokyo Motorshow. The car was then shown at the Dubai Motorshow in December 2005, and it is rumored that 6 cars, including the demonstration models at the event, were sold on the opening day. The car was officially unveiled for sale at the Los Angeles Motorshow in January of 2006.
The retail price for the car was 1Million Euros.
It was announced that Bugatti would make 300 cars over the Veyron's five year production life, and in March 2006 over 70 cars were officially sold; this amounts to 14 months of the car's production. Due to this, Bugatti announced that production of the cars would be increased. The 70 that had been paid for due where to be completed before the end of 2006.
Bugatti does not have many dealers around the world, and because of this VAG announced that the cars would be sold and serviced through their Bentley dealer network; if a serious problem with the car was to occur then a mechanic would be flown out to the owner within 24 hours.
The crowning achievement of this car, in my eyes, is what Gordon Murray said about it after driving the final version of the car - this appeared in Top Gear Magazine: "One really good thing, and I simply never expected this, is that it does change direction. It hardly feels its weight. Driving it on a circuit I expected a sack of cement, but you can really throw it at tight chicanes. Breaking is phenominal and the primary ride and control are good too. It's a huge achievement". So huge an achievement that he ordered one.
Performance Statistics
0-60mph : 2.5sec
0-100mph : 5.5sec
0-150mph : 11.3sec
0-200mph : 22.2sec
0-250mph : 55sec
Engine : VAG W16, 16 cylinders, 64 valves, 4 Turbo Chargers
Displacement : 7993cc with a square bore and stroke of 86mm with 9.0:1 compression.
Tyres : Custom Michelin Run Flats
Front : PAX 245/690R520
Rear : PAX335/710R540
Wheelbase : 2710mm
Length : 4462mm
Height : 1206mm
Width : 1998mm
Power to Weight : 524bhp per tonne.
Power per Litre : 125.25bhp
The 7 Speed DSG gearbox can change gears in 8ms, faster than all Formula one cars at the beginning of the 2006 season, before the introduction of the Honda and Toyota seamless shift gearboxes.
Top Speed 253mph - electronically limited due to tyres - 257mph physical limit if de restricted.
Average fuel economy : 8mpg
Fuel economy at 253mph : 2.1mpg - this means the car can empty it's 100ltr tank in 12 minutes.
Interesting Facts
If racing a McLaren F1, the F1 could be allowed to reach 120mph before the Veyron starts, and the Veyron will still hit 200mph first.
The Veyron's handbrake system includes a special emergency stop mode that will stop the car if the main brakes fail. This includes a special ABS system to arrest the car in the shortest possible time. This, coupled with very clever cross drilled and turbine vented 8 pot brakes, and the fact that the rear aero stabiliser extends to 70 degrees to act as an air brake, can arrest the car from its 252mph top end to 0 in under 10 seconds.
Due to the car's aero profile, the engine had to generate 2bhp per 1mph over 200mph.
If Bugatti sell 300 cars at £1Million each, the VAG group will have lost £4.25Million per car, due to the mammoth production cost involved with the R&D project. This is not as bad as it sounds: a lot of the technology in the Veyron will filter down into the VAG range of cars at some point in the future.
It is also rumoured that a 'Sport' version of the Veyron will be unveiled shortly. This new car is rumoured to be not only lighter, but more powerful as well. With 1200Bhp and less weight the 'Sport' could get close to the 280Mph mark. That is, if Michelin can create an adequate tyre.
Conclusion
So there you have it, the Bugatti Veyron, not only a great engineering achievement, but a good car too.
I'm just glad that in the modern era, there is a company like the VAG group willing to risk reputation and money on a project like the Veyron. Yes, it may not make them any money, but it has proved that they are the masters of engineering, and because of that their reputation as one of the premier car makers in the world has been cemented into the minds of all petrol heads on the planet.
As such, it wins not only my Car Of The Year award, but my engineering award for the year as well.
Mobile Edition
Posted January 10, 2007 Comments(0) I've just added the ability for the site to be rendered nicely on mobile devices.
So for those with Windows Mobile, welcome to the new low bandwidth version
24 Season 6 Leaked
Posted January 7, 2007 Comments(0) 
24 Season 6 episode 1, 2, 3 and 4 have been leaked onto the net. The episodes first appeared on an Asian BitTorrent site, and now are available pretty much anywhere.
If you want to download them and have a look what it's all about then they are available on Easynews
Episode 1 , Episode 2, Episode 3 and Episode 4
They are just brilliant! Jack back to his best.
The talk however is will it kill off Fox's launch of season 6 next week? Well no, most of the people that will download it and are in the states will watch it anyhow, plus the other people not in the states are just going to download them anyhow, go get them, and get into the season early.
The source of these episodes seems to be a leaked copy of the Season 6 Disk 1 disk getting out into the wild.
Terratec Cinergy DT USB XS Diversity
Posted January 7, 2007 Comments(0) 
The Terratec Cinergy DT USB XS Diversity is one of the first Diversity devices to reach the market.
Diversity allows you to take the best parts of the signal from two aerial sources and combine them to create the best signal possible.
The box includes everything you will need to use the Cinergy DT USB XS Diversity straight away.
There is the device itself, a USB extension cable, remote, remote sensor, two magnetic aerials, two suction bases, converters for the mini aerial sockets, and the software.
Installation is as simple as inserting the device into a USB 2 socket, popping the driver CD into the drive and installing the software. After plugging the aerials in and scanning for channels using the Terratec Home Cinema software you are free to watch.
The version of Terratec Home Cinema that comes with the Cinergy DT USB XS Diversity includes the Diversity mode.
To test the diversity mode I decided to see if the included aerials were capable of holding a BBC1 signal whilst on the move in a car. I stuck the aerials to the two separate side windows of the car, turned on the Diversity mode, and tuned into BBC1.
I was not expecting the channel to remain watchable, but to my surprise the channel was rock solid whilst I was driving at 40Mph. Even going around corners and driving into built up areas did not disrupt the signal! Quite impressive.
After testing using my laptop - as if I was a mobile user - I decided to see if the little USB device was good enough to use in another of its likely locations, in the home.
The reason I class this as a likely location for use is because media center PCs are getting slimmer and slimmer, and most PCI/PCI-E dual DVB-T tuners are full height cards and won't fit in some of the smaller cases. This means that if you want a dual DVB-T tuner, the easiest way is to use an external one like the Cinergy DT USB XS Diversity.
To test the device in these conditions, I connected it to the Vista Media Center PC that I have been building to replace my Sky+ installation.
I was looking for a USB or half height dual DVB-T tuner, and when I had the chance to test the Cinergy device I jumped on it. The device fills all my needs: it should be reliable and well performing based on my previous tests of the XS's big brother the Cinergy 2400i DT, it is also well built and includes all the necessary drivers for Vista Media Center.
After plugging the device into my digital aerial and scanning for channels in Media Center I had a full channel lineup, a good sign as Media Center can be picky with channel reception.
I scheduled some recordings, making sure that some of them overlapped so I could test the Cinergy DT USB XS Diversity's abilities when recording two channels at once, as this usually shows up any issues that may exist with bandwidth on the device and between the device and the PC.
No issues located however; the Cinergy DT USB XS Diversity records two channels without any issues, and there is no sign of skipping and stuttering in the recordings, even on the channels that are difficult for some tuners to receive (Sky3/UKTV History).
Conclusion
The Cinergy DT USB XS Diversity is a great USB receiver. It is well built with a nice design, it has some really good features with the dual aerial inputs and the Diversity functionality. The only issue that I can see is that at the moment the Diversity functionality is only available when using the Terratec software, however some third party applications will enable its use shortly.
I can recommend this card to any laptop user that travels and would like to take a TV with them. I will also heartily recommend the device to anyone who does not have space in their Media Center PC for a full height card. The USB device could also be used to add two more tuners to an existing dual tuner Media Center setup, therefore allowing you to record three channels whilst watching a fourth (registry hacking is required to enable this).
The device retails for around 75GBP (111Euro/144USD) and for that price it is more expensive than some of its competition, but the build quality and Diversity functionality more than make up for the small price difference. Support seems to be as good with this device as with the Cinergy 2400i DT in that there is already 32 and 64bit BDA drivers for Vista available.
It is also worth noting that Terratec also sell an Apple version of the device, so even OSX users need not feel left out.
Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT
Posted January 4, 2007 Comments(0) 
The Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT is the first PCI-Express dual digital tuner TV card on the market.
Let's have a look at the card, for my test's I will be using Windows Vista Ultimate as my bench operating system. This is great for two reasons, Windows Vista will have a much larger Media Center exposure than XP MCE 2005 (as it's shipped as standard) and most importantly has native 64bit support in Media Center, this means that for the first time we will need 64bit drivers for Media Center.
The great news is, that even though Vista is not officially released yet Terratec have already got drivers available for the card, and even more importantly they have both 32 and 64 bit versions of them available.
Unboxing the card showed that Terratec have put some thought into the card, the box includes everything you may need, the card obviously, but there is also a USB infrared receiver and controller that will allow you to control Media Center as well as the included software.
Talking of which as well as the Windows XP drivers, there is also the Terratec Home Cinema software that has all the usual DVB-T features. There is however another great addition is the inclusion of Cyberlink's Power Cinema software, so even those that don't have XP Media Center or Vista can get the nice Media Center style 10 foot interface.
The card itself is a really nicely put together piece of equipment with it's white PCB.
Both of the Micronas tuners are well shielded and the card only requires one antenna connection.
Installation into a spare PCI-Express slot was a brieze, and after downloading the latest drivers for vista installation went straight in.
To make sure all was working well I popped on the Terratec Home Cinema software and kicked off a scan for channels.
I was not expecting too much in the way of reception, as the antenna that the card was connected to was a standard analogue one, and I live in a class 2 antenna area. To my surprise the software brought back all of the major channels, and only a few of them had some partial stuttering. The Terratec software also had another bonus hidden, it includes a subscription to the TVTV program data service.
After all went so well with the Terratec software I decided to fire up the Vista Media Center interface.
On first coming up, and going into the TV settings Vista Media Center said that a new tuner had been found, so I clicked through the screens to set the card up. After the setup all the channels found with the Terratec software where available to me in Vista Media Center. Why was this so surprising? The card that I was previously using (a Hauppauge Nova T) struggled to get some of the channels, and just did not find some of the fringe channels using this antenna.
After setting a few recordings up in Vista Media Center so that the card would have to use both tuners at the same time, and inspecting the output video it seems that both tuners on the Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT perform just as well as each other.
I have been using the card in this PC for a month now with no issues raising there head.
To benchmark the Terratec I popped the Hauppauge back into the box and disabled on of the Terratec tuners, this forced Vista Media Center to use the two different manufacturers of card to record dual channel recordings. Both cards were plugged into the same booster/splitter box and the Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT clearly out performed the Hauppauge on every test, I even swapped the aerial cables round to make sure it was not a badly screened RF cable. This showed that the tuners on the Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT are certainly more sensitive, and as such are more capable of holding a weak signal.
That said after plugging both cards into my DVB-T antenna they both received and recorded all channels available in my area, however even then the Hauppauge showed more dropout and stutter issues.
Conclusion
I would rate this card very highly indeed, everything that I have seen so far is good news. The card is relatively cheap (around 70GBP / 130USD / 100Euro), performs exceptionally well, and has great support (Hauppauge, who after all are the market leaders have very few 32Bit let alone 64Bit drivers at the moment).
I would highly recommend one of these cards for your Vista Media Center project at a drop of a hat. I'm very happy with the one I have, so much so that it has replaced my trusted Hauppauge card.
Corsa VXR?
Posted January 3, 2007 Comments(0) 
Vauxhall are going all out on the power front, not pleased with the Monaro VXR, Vectra VXR and Astra VXR, now the little sister the Corsa VXR joins the fray.
The 178Bhp 1.6ltr Turbo charged Mevira engine gets uprated to 190Bhp (192Lb/ft torque) and dropped into the little Corsa. That said after driving a recent Corsa I hope they uprate the chassis (even Steve who drives a Land Rover for his day to day drive has noticed that the handling is not all that hot as well).
The Corsa VXR get's 18" alloys, triangular mirror's and a claimed 6.8sec run to 60.
If it turns out anything like the Astra or Vectra then you will be 'power understearing' your way to new tyres on a far too regular basis.
With some luck it may get some of the Monaro charm, but I doubt it as it's not rear wheel drive.
