When Program Guide Data Goes Astray

DVRs revolutionized TV by allowing everyday, non-gadget-oriented people to record shows by simply selecting them from an on-screen guide. You didn’t have to program start time, stop times, and channels by pressing tiny buttons located in the worst possible location of your VCR. Or enter arcane VCR+ codes. With your DVR, you browsed through the guide, found something interesting, and pressed select. Thanks to its program guide data, it knew when that show started and stopped, and which channel it was broadcast on. It even followed time slot changes if the broadcaster decided to shuffle its Sunday lineup.

But what happens if the program guide data goes astray? Continue reading “When Program Guide Data Goes Astray”

Review: The SiliconDust HDHomerun Connect Quatro!

April 7, 2018: Please take a look at the follow-up to this review.

Koherence’s projects have long been powered by SiliconDust HDHomerun tuners. At present 13 HDHR4s are feeding the three production Entangles, and a venerable HDHR Rev 2 handles other sundry tasks. The RF and power supply cabling has started to become quite…entangling…so the announcement of the four-tuner HDHomerun Connect Quatro was received with much anticipation. As soon as a (not quite local) Best Buy got it in stock, I was off to get one for evaluation! Continue reading “Review: The SiliconDust HDHomerun Connect Quatro!”

The Project Entangle Wishlist (i.e. why write a DVR?)

So I’ve been getting this question a lot over the past several months: Why Project Entangle? Why would I go about writing a DVR?

On the surface it’s easy to think I’m crazy (in addition to being inkoherent). After all, there’s the Tablo OTA DVR (in fact I’ve had one since the Indiegogo days, although it’s been gathering dust for a couple years). Plex has added DVR support. And the fine folk at SiliconDust now have a DVR for their HDHomerun devices too. And there’s TiVo. Having been affiliated with them for close to two decades, I have a variety of them from Series2s to Roamios. Continue reading “The Project Entangle Wishlist (i.e. why write a DVR?)”

Project Entangle

Project Entangle is Koherence’s internal platform for developing various media technologies. It began as a test bed for investigating how TiVo-style trick modes could be implemented using HTTP Live Streaming. Since then Project Entangle has blossomed into a collection of platforms.

The Entangle DVR platform supporting in-home and out-of-home playback is currently being alpha tested, with users watching shows on iPhones, iPads and AppleTVs. Another platform variant powers the SFBayATSC ATSC broadcast monitoring system. Continue reading “Project Entangle”

Just What Is High Definition?

I recently read a newsgroup thread that started with someone asking just what high definition was. The thread wound in some surprising ways, with individuals asserting, among other things, that anything 16:9 was high definition and that 480i digital content was high definition (while presumably 480i analog was not). I suspect most of you wouldn’t agree. After all, we all know 720p and 1080i are HD while anything less is SD, right? Well things aren’t quite so clear cut.

Continue reading “Just What Is High Definition?”