End-user perspective on small office tools & technology

Searching For Tivo & HDMI Cable Insanity

tivohd_wremote_rf_300rgb440I hate to admit this, but on December 24th my wife and I went to Best Buy looking for a last minute gift. We decided that her younger brother needed a Tivo. Ours is a three Tivo household, although only TivoHD sees any real use these days. One you get used to having a DVR you want one on every TV, and radio too for that matter.

Though we’d had two SD Tivo units for years when we bought or HDTV we initially got the Time Warner HD-DVR instead of Tivo Series 3. The Tivo Series 3 units were $800 at the time, more than we were willing to pay. That experience was enlightening, like stepping back into the dark ages. What crappy menus, and basically no intelligence at all in the software. The CableCo DVR was simply dreadful.

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Vera, Z-Wave & I: Day 1

logo-zwaveToday was the day that I finally got around to taking the Vera home automation system out of the box. It was a simple beginning as I have only one Z-wave device to control at present, a Monster Cable lamp dimmer. In about two hours I was able to get Vera on the network and upgraded to the latest firmware. I also had it controlling my one lamp. Woo Hoo!

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Jeff Pulver on HDVoice

Today Jeff Pulver posted a blog entry giving his sense that HDVoice will spark a renaissance in the VoIP world. He feels that carriers will be able to differentiate themselves on the basis of quality and earn customer loyalty. He’s outright enthusiastic about HDVoice.

I find Jeff’s focus in this area encouraging. Jeff has a lot of clout and could help push wideband telephony into the thoughts of people who might otherwise pass it by.

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Asterisk to Support Polycom’s Siren7 and Siren14

asterisk1Just a brief news item from my notes of the December 26 VUC call with Steve Sokol. We learned that Digium is planning support for Polycom’s Siren7 and Siren14 codecs in a future release of Asterisk v1.6. These are also known as G.722.1 and G.722.1 Annex C. They offer wideband calling at bitrates much lower than G.722 calls.

Siren14 supports bitrates of 24, 32 or 48 kbps and 14 khz passband making it equally well suited to music as voice applications. Siren7 supports bitrates of 16, 24 or 32 kbps with 7 khz passband.

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Retiring snom’s m3 From Our Home Line

snom_m3_persp_1_typo3_032Since mid-October the snom m3 has been the only phone on our home account. That’s when the old Panasonic KSU finally breathed its last gasp. I’ve been using one of the snom handsets in my office since they arrived in January. In general I’m pleased with the device. It does what I need and it’s been reliable.

About a week ago my wife came to me with one of the little snom m3 cordless handsets in her hand. She wasn’t mad, but she said that the little phone is source of frustration, and she’d like me to replace it on the home line.

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