Sunday 9 September 2007

MP3, MP4 - what a pain in the arse

We have a very good digital video recorder - a Topfield. You can download TAPs and install them on the recorder to extend its functionality. A TAP is a Topfield Application (I think) that has been written by an 'enthusiast'.

ie, a nutter in Finland who has not seen sunlight for 3 months and is subsisting on powdered coffee and seal fat.

The TAPs are a great idea, and I have no idea whether other PVR or DVR manufacturers have allowed or encouraged the same sort of thing to be done with their kit. My brother has a Panasonic unit, and he loves to fiddle with stuff, and he has never mentioned anything like it.

There are lots of TAPs, but the only one of any interest to me is something that will allow me to store music on it and use it as a jukebox. Someone has already thought of that - they exist. They just have one problem. Or I have just one problem. They play MP3's, and I have ripped all our music into iTunes for use on the iPod. Thanks to Steve Jobs and his stupid format, I would have to re-rip the entire CD collection into some idiotic application like Media Player, then upload it all to the Topfield.

I might consider that when I retire, and I have 20 years of trying not to be bored to death. In the meantime, I'm just not going to bother.

It just goes to show that Jobs does have cunning plans. If I had bought one of his Apple media centre whatever they are things, my problems would be solved. Except that his whatever it is called thing was not on the market when I bought the Topfield over a year ago.

Life was so much simpler when all we had to worry about was whether we bought an LP or a cassette.

I have been pondering the wisdom of buying some sort of box that plugs into the stereo and allows me to play music stored on the PCs. But I can't be shagged doing that either. And why should I bother anyway? We don't even listen to the radio when we are in the lounge room (although that is partly because I haven't really worked out how to use the tuner portion of the stereo. I know that sounds silly, but trust me, when the people at Philips designed out home entertainment unit, they didn't put much thought into ease of operation).

Let me wind back the clock a bit. Around 20 years ago, the home entertainment system consisted of a TV, a VCR, a big amp, a tuner, a record player and a twin deck cassette player. It was all piled up in a big stack, and almost none of it was state of the art. I was a uni student, and it had all been put in a very incoherent fashion. The VCR was quite advanced - it featured a remote control. Except that it was not an infrared unit - it was connected to the VCR by 20 feet of cable, and someone somehow bent the plug and that was the end of the remote. We were too poor to replace it, so for a while, someone had to be delegated to pick their arse up out of the beanbag to change channels, adjust the sound, fast forward and all that.

Then a miracle happened. Mum came to visit, was horrified by all the cobwebs around the place, so she bought me a cobweb sweeper-upper. This hi-tech unit was a broom head on a really long broomstick - about 20 feet actually.

After much diligent practice, we found that it was possible to work almost every control on the entire entertainment system using nothing more than a 20 foot wooden pole (after removing the broom head and throwing it over the back fence). We could even adjust the volume, and that meant twirling a dial.

Now if I could operate a stack of equipment that stood about 5 feet high with a 20 foot long bit of dowel, then surely I should be able to figure out how to drive a home stereo that consists of one "brick", has a proper remote control and actually came with only one set of instructions.

Nope. Next time you are looking at a league table of the top suppliers of home theatre equipment, don't bother looking at the top for Philips. You are looking in the wrong place for a good reason.

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