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Comcast WNPB and TVGOS

Since Comcast has decided to take away the analog PBS channel from Morgntown (WNPB 24) that was on channel 8, those people who use the TVGOS (aka TVGuide On Screen) on their TV’s / DVR’s will now see that their listings are blank… From what I have found so far, Macrovision (who supplies the TVGOS data) worked with PBS channels to provide the info in the VBI (Vertical blanking interval. Sort of like Closed Caption data) over those PBS Channels that were broadcasting in Analog. Well it seems now that with more and more channels going to Digital ATSC transmission, CBS is now the “carrier” chosen by macrovision to host the data on a subcarrier on one of their digital channels. So now it appears that either KDKA out of Pittsburgh is not providing the data or Comcast is stripping it some place. Who knows, all I know is that now that data is not provided to the TV and the TV just sets there and keep saying that the setup is in progress.

This really sucks as I was just getting used to having the TVGuide info stuff on the screen with out having to look at the cable box on another tv to see the info. So long for that  until KDKA/comcast can figure out how to fix it.

So please Comcast/KDKA fix the problem!

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PHP 1, PERL & SED 0

So I have been trying to figure out how to get PERL and SED to replace a set of random characters in a line with a fixed set of characters. I tried for about 2 days on Perl and sed, but could not get it to work right. So last night I tried PHP and got it in one shot. So say I have a file that has a part of a line that looks like this:

Variable1=test&Variable2=test%2312&Variable3=92ns10i9js

and I want to replace what ever is in the Variable2 value to be just a bunch of X’s or some other fixed value. Nothing I could do in sed and Perl would work, I ended up with this in PHP:

$buffer2=ereg_replace(“&Variable2=(.*)&Variable3″,”&Variable2=XXXXXXXX&Variable3”,$buffer);

So can any one tell me how to do it in Perl or sed?

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Comcast and WNPB

Seems Comcast has finally realized that WNPB has multiple digital channels. I noticed last night that channel 8 on the cable was showing snow, which I thought was interesting as it has been working for months since the switch. But now it appears that they have maybe moved it to 712 and started showing the HD version of it. They also added channel 699 which carries the second subchannel on WNPB.. Just wondering now if they have then in clear QAM or if they encrypted them. They better in be in the clear…..

More info from the West Virginia Public Broadcasting page…

And from the looks of the article, it appears that they are dropping the analog WNPB channel from the line up. Funny that they are saying they are offering a new PBS2 channel, this channel has been available over the AIR for months now.

And yes, they added 3 new channels in clear qam 24.1, 24.2, 24.3… They took away channel 8 analog, but if you have a cable box and go to channel 8 it just shows the same thing as 24.1. So they have taken away more analog now…

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The PC Tax

After reading this PDF about the Apple Tax, I  find it interesting that they do not include anything about the PC Tax…..

So here is my take on the stuff that is missing:

1. OS Upgrades for a multiple PC house vs a multiple MAC House. Most households probably have more than one PC/Mac in the house now days. So when a new OS comes out, how much does it take to “upgrade” the house.. Looking at the current price of Microsoft Vista Home Premimum, it is $115.99 for the Upgrade edition. MacOSX Leopard is currently $129.00. So for one computer, yes MacOS is a little more expensive, but lets look at if you have 4 computers in the house. To upgrade your 4 PC’s to Vista, you are going to pay $463.96. If you have 4 Mac’s, to upgrade them to MacOS X Leopard, $199.00.. Yes that is correct it costs you $264.96 more to upgrade 4 PC’s than it does to upgrade 4 Mac’s. This is because Apple offers a “family pack” pricing, which allows you to install the software on up to 5 Mac’s in the same household. Microsoft does not do this.

2. Office Software. If all you need is basic Word processing and spread sheet’s, iWork from Apple does everything you would need. Once again a single upgrade would cost $79, and they offer a family pack too, for $99 you can upgrade 5 Mac’s. Now look at Microsoft Office Home and Student it is $94.45 per computer. So for 4 PC’s, we are up to $377.80 now vs the $99 for iWork on the Mac. Difference of $278.80.

3. Virus protection. For the most part (read as 99%) Mac’s are free of Virus’. So there is no “software” needed on them. But on PC’s you better not even connect it to the Interwebs with out having a virus protection software on the machine. So If we look at the sort of “defacto” Norton Antivirus, it costs $39.99 a YEAR per PC. So for our 4 PC’s it would be $159.96 a YEAR, whereas our Mac is $0.

If we add all this up as if Vista and Office just came out, our cost for upgrading a house of 4 PC’s would be $1,001.72.. Versus if we were to upgrade a house of 4 Mac’s to the newest MacOSX and iWork, it would cost $298.00. For a difference of $703.72. So a having a house of Mac’s is about 70% cheaper to upgrade than a house of PC’s is.

One section of the article is just plain wrong:

Finally, there is a category of costs that could be called opportunity costs, options that are simply not
available in the Apple world.  These options include cutting edge technologies that buyers really want
including HDMI (for connecting a PC to a TV for viewing high-definition content), the aforementioned
Blu-Ray, eSATA (for fast access to external storage), media card readers (for interoperation with other
digital devices like cameras), built-in 3G wireless (to stay connected anywhere cell service is live),
fingerprint readers (to easily access secure data), and TV Tuners (to watch and record broadcast
content).  These technologies, revolutionary now, will one day be standard on all systems.  Too bad if
a Mac buyer has any interest in them.

Has the person never heard of USB media card readers? They are UNIVERSAL… I have a couple of them, work great with the Mac. I also have an Elgato USB TV Tuner that does HDTV, clear QAM and allows my Mac to record shows. There is no reason  you couldn’t put a Blu-Ray reader in a Mac Pro, or even get a USB enclosure for it. Just because some PC’s come with all this stuff built in, unless you are going to user it, does it really matter if it is there. Heck I have a new printer that has one of the Media Card readers in it, so when it is connected via USB to the Mac it looks like any other removable media device.

The final part of the article that sort of is ridiculous, is the author assumes that to do wireless on a Mac you need an Airport Extreme. Sorry to burst your bubble, but there is a reason it is called 802.11[abng] it is a standard that EVERYONE uses. You don’t need to have a specific brand unless you really want to be brand loyal or don’t know any better. I have a $40 Linksys wireless router that works 100% fine with the Mac’s I use. He also talks about the $100 cost for the family pack of the iLife software. I have 3 versions of this, and it is worth the money. Microsoft has NO comparable software offering for that price with the functionality that iLife provides. Even if they did, they would not be selling 5 licenses for $100. It would probably be $50 to $80 per license.

The other issue that he brings up is that most software that works on Windows XP will work on Vista, but people who switch from PC to Mac will have to buy all new software. This is not entirly true. You can use Windows XP/Vista on Mac Hardware either via BootCamp or VMWare Fusion/Parallels Desktop. I do this for a couple of applications that I need that are only available on Windows. But for the most part I have found that everything I need for my day to day computing on the Mac is free software. There are only a couple of programs I have bought because I needed functionality that the provided.. But for the most part there are equivalent Mac programs for every Windows one, and most of the time they are better and some times Free.

I think the next time before some one tries to say how much more Mac’s cost they need to really do their home work. Yes the hardware costs more up front, but in the long run, it last longer, runs better and has less problems. I used to have a Dual G4 for a desktop. It used dual 533Mhz processors and ran MacOSX Tiger just fine. Try running Vista on a Pentium III and we will talk.. Windows is getting better about the bloat, but they still have a LONG way to go.

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memory in mac part duex.

So the memory works freaking awesome in MacOSX.. However in BootCamp with Windows XP SP3…. It will only allow Windows to see 1.99GB of ram. That freaking sucks.. So far the only thing I have found that will fix it, is upgrading to Vista or Windows 64 bit… ECK!