American Airlines And Gogo Roll Out In-Flight Personal Device Video Streaming To 767 Fleet

From: http://techcrunch.com/

As we heard earlier this Spring, American Airlines became one of the first North American airlines to begin testing Gogo’s in-flight streaming video to personal devices for passengers. Today, the company is announcing a broader roll out of the new entertainment product to its entire fleet of 767 aircrafts, mainly on routes between New York’s JFK, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

We’ve also learned more details about the entertainment product. The system will wirelessly stream content such as movies and TV shows from an inflight library to select types of Wi-Fi-enabled laptops during flights. ‘Entertainment On Demand’ will be available for $0.99 per TV show and $3.99 per movie. Customers do not have to purchase inflight Wi-Fi to use Entertainment On Demand can just click on the Entertainment On Demand banner on the inflight Wi-Fi homepage, select a movie or TV show, enter the form of payment and click “rent.”

American Airlines says that the platform currently offers 100 movies and TV shows, which will remain accessible for viewing after the customer has landed (movies for 24 hours and TV shows for 72 hours). The goal, says the company, is to roll the in-flight entertainment system out to all wi-fi enabled aircrafts. American Airlines actually only received received FAA certification for the system this month.

In the coming months, in-flight wifi provider Gogo plans to make tablets and other devices available for use with the product. I can imagine many users may want to be able to stream movies to their iPads in flight as opposed to using laptops.

Here’s a video explaining how the service works.

How to turn an old PC into a media centre

http://www.techradar.com/
Play media on your TV with an old PC and XBMC

By Simon Pickstock

XMBX has a selection of add-ons you can customise to improve you media centre experience

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For years, Microsoft has been trying to convince us that we need to have not just a PC in the living room to serve up our media, but a full-blown installation of Windows too.

Both Intel and AMD have joined the fray – Intel with Viiv (the brand that no one knew how to pronounce), and AMD with its Live! initiative.

Despite all the marketing dollars spent on these ideas, they've been almost universally unpopular for a few simple reasons. First of all, most people don't want a modern high-powered PC, with all the noise they usually make, in the living room.

Much as we would like to, we won't be sidestepping this aspect in this tutorial; unfortunately, you'll still need a fairly decent PC.

Second, having a PC next to your TV or stereo means that you can't really use it as a standard PC. Trying to run standard applications on a TV screen will make you myopic in an instant, while watching movies on anything under a 24in widescreen monitor in your living room is a very unsatisfying experience.

Last but not least, the incredibly long boot times of your average Windows install make a mockery of any sort of instant-on concept.

XBMC – which was originally an app for the first-generation Xbox known as the Xbox Media Center – has become one of those annoying recursive acronyms so common in the world of software: it's now the XBMC Media Centre.

Despite the name, it's a very capable cross-platform, opensource application that will meet all of your media centre needs. Although it comes in versions for Linux, Windows, and OS X, we're going to look at the Live version.

It can be run from CD or installed onto your hard drive, and it is built around its own self contained operating system.

Get the software

1. First, head over to here and download the Live CD image. It will arrive as a ZIP file, so you'll need to extract it once it's been downloaded.

Inside the ZIP file you'll find the ISO image, a Readme file and two other files. The file named 'installXBMC FromISO.sh' is a script file that can be used to install XBMC in a Linux environment, so unless you intend to do that, ignore it.

Use your standard disc-burning software to make a bootable image from the 'XBMCLive.iso' file and, once you're finished, plonk the disc in the drive of your old computer.

Run the Live CD

2. Before you do anything else, you'll need to change the BIOS settings of the PC that you are going to use as the media centre so that it boots from CD. To do this, press the appropriate key – such as [Del] or [F1] – when the computer starts to enter the BIOS settings, and then go to the Boot section.

After you've made the appropriate changes, make sure you save them before exiting. When you restart, the PC should run the Live CD and show a Boot menu with various options, including choosing the GPU, running in Safe mode and an option to install to your hard drive.

For now, either select your GPU or allow the system to boot to the Live CD automatically. While running the Live CD enables you to get a feel for the application, any settings you change will be lost the next time you reboot, so you're best off installing to your hard drive once you're sure you like what you see.

Install XBMC

3. To install, reboot your machine and choose the last menu option, 'Install XBMCLive to disk (USB or HDD)'. Some older PCs don't support booting from USB devices, in which case you'll have to go with an internal drive.

Be careful here: installation will completely wipe all information from your hard drive, so make sure it doesn't contain anything important before you proceed. Fixed disks must be larger than 5GB, while USB sticks need to have at least 1.5GB of usable capacity.

You'll need to designate the drive you are installing to. If it's a single fixed drive, this will be Drive 1. You'll also need to confirm that you want to install to a fixed disk rather than removable drive as well as entering a password. The install process takes about 10 minutes. After it's finished, remove the Live CD and reboot.

Access your media

4. Rather than a media centre – where your content is stored locally – XBMC is more of a 'media extender', in that it is designed to fetch media across a network from shared folders, NAS drives and other UPnP devices. You can use local folders, but this works best if you installed XBMC in Linux or Windows.

If you didn't do this, you'll either need to set up a network share on another computer on the network or use a removable hard drive or DVD drive. To set a folder's source, click on the media category – say, for instance, 'Video'. Right-click on the 'Videos' link on the next screen and choose 'Edit Source'.

Click 'Browse' and have a look for the shared folder. If necessary, enter a username and password for protected shares. Once this is done you can either add a new shared location using the 'Add' source button, or move on to the next category.

When playing video, moving the mouse to the bottom-left corner of the screen will bring up a Playback menu. Press the [Esc] key to go back up the menu levels.

Add extra features

5. As well as playing back your media collection, XBMC can retrieve weather information, run scripts and be customised with different themes and skins.

If you fancy being able to access forecasts, click 'Weather | Settings | Region' and change the region to 'UK' and the time zone to 'Britain'. You will now be able to enter your location in the Weather section and receive local weather forecasts.

Now go back to the main menu screen and click on 'Settings'. Here you can tweak the defaults for video, music and pictures, as well as editing things like your network settings and autoplay.

Clicking the power icon will bring up a new menu from which you can eject discs from the optical drive, shut down, reboot or enter Suspend mode. The only thing left to do is sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

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First published in PC Plus Issue 287

Hit the mute! Why TV commercials are so loud, and how that may change

Jeff Bercovici

Annoyingly loud TV commercials are like the weather. Everyone complains about them, but no one does anything about them. Except that lately, someone is doing something about it. Several someones, in fact. After decades of neglect, the issue is finally getting so much attention that the familiar explosion of noise signaling the start of a commercial pod could soon be a thing of the past.

The fight against excessive commercial volume has two fronts, legislative and technological. The first line of defense on the legal side is the Federal Communications Commission, which mandates that commercials can be no louder than the loudest parts of the programming they accompany.

But this approach has serious limitations. An action show that climaxes in a burst of gunfire is one thing; a commercial that's as loud as a gun going off from start to finish is another -- especially if the lead-in to the commercial is relatively quiet. And in addition to making their commercials as loud as the FCC lets them, marketers also use various technological tricks to make them sound even louder than they are, like packing more sound energy into midrange frequencies, the ones that the human ear is most sensitive to.

To close this loophole, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) introduced a bill in the House of Representatives last year, the Commercial Advertising Loudness Mitigation Act. CALM would charge the FCC to enact regulations prohibiting commercials from being "excessively noisy or strident." The House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing to consider amendments on the bill Thursday.

And a parallel effort within the TV and consumer-electronics industries may also bear fruit soon. The Advanced Television Systems Committee, a nonprofit whose membership includes broadcast networks, cable operators, and electronics manufacturers, has been working to develop voluntary standards that will let broadcasters measure and effectively modulate the volume of commercials.

"We've been working for over two years to help broadcasters, cable operators, and others come up with a uniform strategy so we can minimize the subjective perception of the volume changing during commercials," Mark Richer, the group's president, tells DailyFinance. "Our experts have developed what we call a recommended practice, which provides guidance to broadcasters and others on how to use our standard in a way that will minimize the 'audio loudness differential,' let's call it, that is bothersome to many people. It's a little more complicated than you would think, and getting everybody to agree on how to do it was not easy."

This week, ATSC will send a ballot to about 190 members seeking approval of the recommendations. Richer expects it to pass within 30 days.

But consumers who don't wish to bet their delicate eardrums on legislation or self-regulation already have some options, and soon they'll have more. TV sets featuring Dolby Volume, a technology that automatically flattens out the sound spikes of commercials, have been on the market for two years. They'll soon be joined by a device called SRS TruVolume, a gadget that performs much the same function while claiming to offer some advantages over Dolby Volume -- above all, distinguishing between commercials and programming, and suppressing the sound levels of the former without affecting the latter.

See the original image at news.aol.com — Why Will Obama's Inauguration Cost so Much?

By David Knowles

In these dour economic times, one complaint made by the people who didn't vote for Barack Obama is: why is the federal government spending so much money on his inauguration? As Tom "Hammer" Delay told Politico:

If Obama were "serious" about changing Washington, DeLay said, "He would announce to the world: 'We are in crisis, we are at war, people are losing jobs; we are not going to have this party. Instead, I'm going to get sworn in at the White House. I'm going to have a nice little chicken dinner, and we'll save $125 million."

Oh, Mr. Delay. This whole inauguration thing must really be painful for you to have to watch. Forced from your position of power due to an indictment charging that you violated campaign finance laws, you're a fine one to lecture Obama on how to be serious about change. But what about the price tag? Is Delay in the right ballpark?

ABC News crunches the numbers and finds that:

The federal government estimates that it will spend roughly $49 million on the inaugural weekend. Washington, D.C., Virginia and Maryland have requested another $75 million from the federal government to help pay for their share of police, fire and medical services.

And then there is the party bill.

We have a budget of roughly $45 million, maybe a little bit more," said Linda Douglas, spokeswoman for the inaugural committee. That's more than the $42.3 million in private funds spent by President Bush's committee in 2005, or the $33 million spent for Bill Clinton's first inaugural in 1993.

So, while Delay may not be far off in terms of the total cost of the event, a good bit of that will be paid via private donations, just as in inaugurations past. Media Matters has more on the apples-to-apples comparison.

We also must consider crowd size. When Lyndon B. Johnson took his oath of office in 1965, roughly 1.2 million people turned up. Until Obama, that record turnout would not be surpassed. Bill Clinton drew 800,000 for his first term, and a mere 250,000 for his second. George W. Bush packed in 400,000 for his first solemn swearing, and about 100,000 fewer than that for his second.

Estimates for Obama's crowd range anywhere from 2-4 million. That's a whole lot more porta-potties to rent. And here is the fundamental difference with those who bemoan another lavish inauguration at a time of economic turmoil and those who want to dance and sing in the frigid cold on the Washington Mall: the former group isn't happy Obama won, and the latter group is. The latter group is larger than the former, judging from most polls, and they are hungry to have something to celebrate.

So, while Tom Delay sits at home with his darkened television, eating his chicken (don't forget the collard greens!) and cursing history, a great many Americans will be having a grand old time, if but for a day or two.

Official Fix for the Zune 30 Fail

By Brian Lam,

Microsoft's responded to the Zune 30GB failure, blaming a leap-year handling bug. And they've provided a fix. Which is to wait til New Years, when the bug will go away by itself. Huh.

Early this morning we were alerted by our customers that there was a widespread issue affecting our 2006 model Zune 30GB devices (a large number of which are still actively being used). The technical team jumped on the problem immediately and isolated the issue: a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year. That being the case, the issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009. We expect the internal clock on the Zune 30GB devices will automatically reset tomorrow (noon, GMT). By tomorrow you should allow the battery to fully run out of power before the unit can restart successfully then simply ensure that your device is recharged, then turn it back on. If you're a Zune Pass subscriber, you may need to sync your device with your PC to refresh the rights to the subscription content you have downloaded to your device.

Customers can continue to stay informed via the support page on zune.net (zune.net/support).

We know this has been a big inconvenience to our customers and we are sorry for that, and want to thank them for their patience.

Q: Why is this issue isolated to the Zune 30 device?
It is a bug in a driver for a part that is only used in the Zune 30 device.

Q: What fixes or patches are you putting in place to resolve this situation?
This situation should remedy itself over the next 24 hours as the time flips to January 1st.

Q: What's the timeline on a fix?
The issue Zune 30GB customers are experiencing today will self resolve as time changes to January 1.

Q: Why did this occur at precisely 12:01 a.m. on December 31, 2008?
There is a bug in the internal clock driver causing the 30GB device to improperly handle the last day of a leap year.

Q: What is Zune doing to fix this issue?
The issue should resolve itself.

Q: Are you sure that this won't happen to all 80, 120 or other flash devices?
This issue is related to a part that is only used in Zune 30 devices.

Q: How many 30GB Zune devices are affected? How many Zune 30GB devices were sold?
All 30GB devices are potentially affected.