First of all you need to install all sorts of packages that are needed to compile the drivers. I’m not sure whether you need all of these, but if you install these you should be okay.

I did everything below as root.

apt-get install fakeroot build-essential
apt-get install crash kexec-tools makedumpfile kernel-wedge
apt-get install git-core libncurses5 libncurses5-dev
apt-get install libelf-dev libdw-dev asciidoc binutils-dev

do uname -a to get the current kernel version you are using.

root@clumix:~# uname -a
Linux clumix 2.6.35-28-generic #49-Ubuntu SMP Tue Mar 1 14:39:03 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux

now install the headers for that version. Example:

apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic

wget http://www.medianow.com.au/data/Linux4Quad2.zip

unzip the package by running this

unzip Linux4Quad2.zip

You should then have a directory called “Linux4Quad” – change to this directory

cd Linux4Quad

Untar the tar-bzip file in this directory.

tar jxvf digitalnow-quad.tar.bz2

You should now have a directory called “digitalnow-quad” – change to this directory.

cd digitalnow-quad

And now there is yet another tar-bzip file to uncompress. Don’t run the install.sh script as it won’t work.

tar jxvf v4l_dvb_digitalnow.tar.bz2

Now you need to modify the “.version” file under the “v4l” directory to match your kernel version.

VERSION=2
PATCHLEVEL:=6
SUBLEVEL:=35-28
KERNELRELEASE:=2.6.35-28-generic

Now you need to compile the software and this will take time to complete depending on your PC specs. I found on a quad core machine it took about 10 minutes. Run this from the “digitalnow-quad” directory.

make

Once this completes successfully you need to run this to install:

make install

then reboot the machine.

I found that for some reason my MCE remote stopped working. I suspect the mceusb module was being loaded incorrectly due to the installation of a custom v4linux drivers (or something silly). So I edited /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

and add

blacklist mceusb

rebooted again and all worked fine.

Note: you may find that if you update you kernel that you will need to recompile and reinstall these drivers in order for the card to work again.

The screen is a dream to look at. I found that after using for some time and then having to look at my iPhone screen that you miss the large screen immediately. Pictures and videos look terrific and browsing the web is simply a breeze. Unless of course you go to a web site that has flash or java in which case it’s difficult to use with those sites. Given that apple has sold millions of iPads and will probably sell millions more maybe website developers will start abandoning flash and java overtime – only time will tell.

The iPad definitely won’t replace me netbook at this point in time. Whilst I would prefer to use one integrated device for everything, there are just too many holes that a full windows OS covers. Eg. I run hubb networks software for stock information. This is written for windows and definitely will not run on an iPad. However given time maybe future apps will catch up and I can find an alternative. I also can’t plug USB devices into the iPad, though apparently there is an adapter for plugging in camera’s available. At the moment there is just too many things I rely upon that run on windows in order to make a complete move away from it – but maybe my view change over time.

I discovered the kids absolutely love the iPad. My niece used it to play a Thomas the Tank Engine app on weekend and she could not get enough of it. The interesting thing is that nobody real taught her how to use it. She was able to immediately understand that it all worked through touch. This shows just how versatile the touch interface really is and just how simple it is to use. However I couldn’t or wouldn’t leave the iPad alone with a child as I don’t think it’s tough enough to cope with the beatings that kids could give it. Way too expensive as a toy too. Perhaps we will see adaptions for young children in the future.

The keyboard is okay. Whilst a normal keyboard might have more tactile feedback I have noticed that you do learn to adapt to a touch screen keyboard quite quickly. In fact this article was written using the iPad through the word-press app and I think my typing is just as good as it is on normal keyboard. I have the official apple iPad case which does enable me to put the iPad on a lean and this does make typing easier.

I discovered that when I first setup my iPad that iTunes just put all of my apps that I have installed on my iphone straight unto the iPad. This was a little annoying as there are heaps of apps that didn’t really want on my iPad to begin with. However this has helped me to be able to assess applications on the iPad that would probably not have considered otherwise. I found there Serena number of apps that have the capability to run on iPad and iPhone and take advantage of the larger screen. Eg. WordPress, IMDB, Amazon.com and goggle. I have discovered some apps have specific Ipad version which is a little annoying as I had to uninstall the iPhone version and reinstall the iPad version. Eg. eBay, shazam, backgrounds and bloomberg. But there is still a heap of apps that seem to only have iPhone versions. Eg. Facebook, pay pal and Skype. These iPhone apps still run but they don’t take advantage of the larger screen and iPad capabilties. I’m hoping these will eventually have iPad specific apps in the near future too.

Reading magazines on the iPad is just like reading the real thing only better. I have the zinio app installed and I’ve subscribe to Digital camera World. This magazine usually costs me $16 Australian to buy and is 1-2 months behind by the time I receive it from the UK. Now it costs me $6 and I can get it on my iPad straight away. This is a full color magazine and it read exactly the same as the paper version. Up until now this has only been a dream and reading it off a monitor didn’t quite do it for me.

I will post more as I keep experiencing new things on my iPad.

For some reason on Fedora 9 gdm is different and you can’t easily configure it to auto login through the GUI, but here’s another way.

Edit /etc/gdm/custom.conf and add this to the file. You could use gedit or vi whatever suits you, but you need to do it as root.
[daemon]
TimedLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLogin=username
TimedLogin=username
TimedLoginDelay=0

Obviously you would replace “username” above with the actually “username” you wish to login automatically.

Now reboot and test it!

2) Noise cancelling
With a touch of a button be able to cancel out any surrounding noise such as idiots playing their music too loud in public or even the wife. I’m so going to get a mouth full for that suggestion – hence the reason for this option.

3) Force Field
I want to be able to press a button and enable a force field around me. That way I could insult anybody I like in public and never fear them seaking immediate punishment upon me. I guess this would be good right up until the battery depletes – which as you know is fairly quick with an iPhone. Or it could just provide a cover above me to act as an umbrella so that I don’t get wet. No more carrying around an umbrella and no more getting poked in the eye with other umbrella’s thanks to my shield.

4) Site to Site beaming
This means I could instantly beam myself to another location. Okay, okay – I stole this from Star Trek and I guess I wouldn’t need an app to fetch my car because I wouldn’t need a car with this option.

5) Smell saving.
You should be able to save smells. Now I’m not talking about those aweful smells – though having the ability to email/SMS smells to people you don’t like might be good. Instead of calling SMS, Short Message Service, we could call it Smelly Message Service (SMS). But, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to forever save the smell of your new leather jacket, favourite perfume (to remind you of your girl friend or wife) or a fresh ocean beachy smell (whatever that is anyway).

6) Instant make up.
Instead of having to wait hours for the wife to put on her make up, just press a button and it’s done. Actually I think the ladies would probably love this feature. You could automatically setup a whole bunch of presets such as clown face, midnight panda, cup cake, cake it on and powder puff.

7) Frequency jamer
Gives you the ability to jam all frequencies within a 10km radius. This would be very helpful on the train to stop of those annoying people screaming into their phones – they simple wouldn’t work. But of course it should allow you to use your phone whilst jaming everybody else – just to annoy everybody.

8 ) Holographic head’s up display (HUD).
Why do we need to be pined down to a boring 2d touch screen. The screen should pop out of the phone in front of you and provide a holographic interface. It should be able to put a full heads up display (HUD) in front of you as you walk. That would be cool. You should be able to look at something/one and get relevant information about that entity, such as stock options, material, dimension (height, width, lenght), weight, cup-size and whether or not the entity is wearing panties (not that a married man like me would ever consider using this option – it’s for all you single people out there). It would be so useful to know whether the mailbox is wearing panties – don’t you think?

That’s all the crazy things I could think of at midnight on a Sunday night – thank god it’s a public holiday in Sydney tomorrow I can sleep in. Yipppeee!

Have you got a suggested feature (I don’t want serious feature – be creative people) – then feel free to add a comment.

Bing Screen Shot

I “binged” myself (I guess that’s a new term) and found my panaramio pictures on the first link.

The video searching looks pretty good too. It will display a thumbnail of the results and if you put your cursor over it, you can watch it directly out of the search results page.

Only time will tell if Microsoft can make a dent on Google though.

Step 1) Download v4l-dvb version that works!

hg clone http://linuxtv.org/hg/~stoth/v4l-dvb/

Step 2) Compile and install the v4l-dvb software (you should be root)

cd v4l-dvb
make
make install

Step 3) Download and install the firmware.

There is a small script included that you can use to get the firmware. It is under v4l-dvb/linux/Documentation/video4linux/extract_xc3028.pl

If you take a quick look inside of this script it should explain how to use it. Here are the instructions from the script.

# In order to use, you need to:
#	1) Download the windows driver with something like:
#		wget http://www.steventoth.net/linux/xc5000/HVR-12x0-14x0-17x0_1_25_25271_WHQL.zip
#	2) Extract the file hcw85bda.sys from the zip into the current dir:
#		unzip -j HVR-12x0-14x0-17x0_1_25_25271_WHQL.zip Driver85/hcw85bda.sys
#	3) run the script:
#		./extract_xc3028.pl
#	4) copy the generated file:
#		cp xc3028-v27.fw /lib/firmware

Step 4) Reboot. This should complete everything you need to do.

Step 5) Check dmesg log to see if it works. You should see something like this:

cx23885 driver version 0.0.1 loaded
cx23885 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
CORE cx23885[0]: subsystem: 18ac:db78, board: DViCO FusionHDTV DVB-T Dual Express [card=11,autodetected]
cx23885_dvb_register() allocating 1 frontend(s)
cx23885[0]: cx23885 based dvb card
DVB: registering new adapter (cx23885[0])
DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Zarlink ZL10353 DVB-T)...
cx23885_dvb_register() allocating 1 frontend(s)
cx23885[0]: cx23885 based dvb card
DVB: registering new adapter (cx23885[0])
DVB: registering adapter 1 frontend 0 (Zarlink ZL10353 DVB-T)...

Your done!

References

http://www.fusionhdtv.co.kr/ENG/products/DVBTDualExpress.aspx

http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DViCO_FusionHDTV_DVB-T_Dual_Express

http://linuxtv.org/hg/~stoth/v4l-dvb/

#!/bin/bash
video="$1"
newvideo="${video/%tod/mpg}"
ffmpeg -i "$1" -acodec copy -vcodec copy "$newvideo"
mv "$video" "$video.done"

You can download this script here –> tod2mpeg

Run this script by putting the TOD video filename after the script name.

Eg: tod2mpeg mod123.tod

It will use ffmpeg to convert to mpeg and once completed will append “.done” to the end of the TOD filename. You should be left with a mpeg file of the same name. eg. mod123.mpeg.

You will notice a whole bunch of messages coming out of ffmpeg. Just ignore these.

I’ve also written a little wrapper perl script to enable me to run tod2mpeg on multiple files. Download this here –> tod2mpeg-multi. You will need to make sure that you already have the tod2mpeg script in your path somewhere (eg. ~/bin/ or /usr/local/bin).

You will need to pass a list of TOD files into this script like this:

ls *.tod | tod2mpeg-multi

I’ve played around with mythtv for some time and I think I’ve come up with the perfect workflow of how to convert nuv to dvix avi’s. And yes, I did try nuvexport and it didn’t work very well – most of the time the video and audio was out of sync.

Step 1
- Configure the mythtv transcoders to resize and convert to MPEG4 (DIVX).

Step 2
- Editing the video you want to convert/export removing all commericals etc.

Step 3
- Initiate a job in mythtv to transcode the video and cut the commericals out and transcode into nuv mpeg4. Now you should be left with a nuv file which is essentially a DIVX file already.

Step 4
- Use nuvexport and export the video out of mythtv as a nuv files. When I do this I usually remove the video from mythtv altogether when prompted. Some people might wonder why I wouldn’t just convert the file using nuvexport. I’ve found that it’s only successful about 10% of the time and most of the time it get’s the video and audio completely out of sync.

Step 5
- Run this script with the file name as the first argument.
#!/bin/bash
video="$1"
mencoder -ni -oac mp3lame -ovc copy -vf harddup -noskip -skiplimit 0 -o test.avi "$video"
mv "$video" "$video.done"
newvideo="${video/%nuv/avi}"
mencoder -forceidx -oac copy -ovc copy -aspect 16:9 -o "$newvideo" test.avi
rm test.avi

This script will re-encode the video using mencoder. You will note that I only transcode the audio and not the video – this is just copied. I found that this produced a avi file that couldn’t be fast forward. Therefore I quickly run mencoder over the file again and force the index to be rewritten. This seems to fix the problem and the avi is seekable again.

That’s it. You should now have a proper DIVX AVI file that you can use just about anywhere where dvix is supported.