WinTV HVR-950Q mystery

Here's all I know: I just bought a WinTV HVR-950Q to watch HDTV on my laptop while I'm in NYC. I've got it working with the internal decoders and the EVR renderer but the framerate when viewing Live TV in 1080i is only 29.97 de-interlaced by blending fields.

I had just noticed the ability to use third party decoders in my WinTV 7 program and was able to use the Cyberlink PowerDVD 7 MPEG-2 decoder in windowed mode. Framerate is a smooth 60 when playing 1080i channels through this decoder.

When I went to full screen though, the USB stick always stopped decoding after a very short while.

Looking at my logs, I was getting the log entry "[DEBUG] Source Aspect Ratio: 16x9" every 1/100th of a second in full screen mode when using Cyberlink (resulting in a log file of over 10MB).

Another look at the log reveals a message saying "[DEBUG] Short sleep (5 seconds)".

Also, sometimes attempts to reset to the old decoders lead to BSODs and complete system lock-ups. Changing the settings were also shaky for a bit but a simple XML file change can help.

If anyone can help me on this or can convince the manufacturer to release a bugfix, feel free to.

Leaving on a Jet Plane...

But I know when I'll be back again. (Anyone catch the song reference?)

July 13th will be the day I'm back in Vancouver, but not before a little tour of the Oregon beaches and the Olympic peninsula so I actually go for the flight home on July 8th.

And, I don't have a girlfriend to say "I hate to go" to. (Any of you know the song by now?)

MMVA 09 online HD Fail

Finally, a fail that I can report that doesn't involve me.

The HD feed of the MMVAs (The MuchMusic Video Awards) is multicast in 3 different bitrates...

600kbps, 1.4Mbps, and 3Mbps (only 3Mbps is 720p30HD)

Thing is, if your connection craps out on HD (and it has on my 25Mbps Cable connection), the feed transision is a terrible color bars and a bouncing grey box feed. :P

So, why would you add a bad feed to your multicast stream? Outrageous and it gets the gigantic...



Award.

Edit: ATSC and HD cable is much more reliable. And at the moment the new problem is it randomly stops. But that could be my 25Mbps connection crapping out.
Silverlight right now is next-gen my (bleep) when it comes to keeping a reliable feed.

Heck, another...



Never using Silverlight agsin.

Edit #2: And now there's a tone with the bars. :P :P

Your only solution, refresh the page if this happens. If IE8 crashes, Ctrl-Alt-Del the thing. Let the MS bashing begin (everywhere other than here).

Edit #3: Now the music mismatches the video... Refresh the page... AGAIN.

Edit #4: Now... NO VIDEO! Screw this, this stinks anyways.

Edit #5: OK, it's back... But I bet not for long. And there's a 2Mbps HD bitrate now. But I'm going to dinner... And this seems a little bit like Twitter...

A GTX 275 it is...

It's risky, but I'm willing to bet that there will be lower prices for the GTX 275 in the mid-July timeframe, allowing me to get that instead of a GTX 260.

The reasoning to get the 275 instead of the 260 is due to the fact that the 275 has nearly an identical processor to that of the 285. The higher spec chips passed tests that make them binned as the higher and superior processors. And any which chip that has defects that prevent it for going to the higher specifications gets binned as a 260.

I will obviously go non-overclocked (I only have a Corsair HX520 power supply. It meets the 40A minimum but should be solid enough to handle the load) and go with a EVGA card.

I'll also make a multi-cam Vimeo video comparing performance boost from the old card to the new one.

New York fail?

I'm scared, this week of fail is a bad omen to my trip to New York.

I've heard (and this is a freedom of speech post) that the NYPD can arrest you without explanation if they think you're doing suspicious activity by taking pictures or videotaping suspiciously.

There will be no FOTC real locations in NYC video tour due to that. I have to keep to the tourist's clause of no tripods to keep myself safe and not to venture outside of designated tourist areas.

I guess this is the first vacation that I won't be a video producer.

Print to tape Fail

I just got a Firewire 400 and 800 Expresscard for my Tablet PC to do my video editing works "On the road".

Capturing works fine, but when I went to feed data to my HDV cameras, it...

ed.

When will the fails end and the wins start? I doubt anytime soon...

Hiring Freeze + Union = Fail on Volunteer Job

This shows that the local TV stations are struggling. But this does not contradict that some spend way too much on American Programming instead of the well-being of the station.

This is clearly yet another...



The title clearly describes it so I won't re-iterate it.

Guess it's back to Team Fortress 2 all summer long for now.

The week of fail... will it ever end?

Edit (June 22): It turns out that might just be for paid internships only. Will continue in private.

Edit (June 23): Nope, unions mean even unpaid internships aren't allowed. Still a Fail until about 1 1/2 years from now.

Well, Paul F. made another video...

And I tried to brainstorm one, but it was full of...



In fact, the video is of me trying to brainstorm...

All these disconnections to connections I once had is having a bad effect on my health. Seriously.

And even the video right now is failing to show and it seems it'll take another 24 hours to show. Full of fail indeed...

Edit: It's finally up. Get ready for some serious fail.

Jack's Angry Dance: Video Brainstorm Fail from Jack Zhang on Vimeo.

Just saw the Ed Edd 'n Eddy movie

And, it's sad to see the series go. This movie was to be the final episode to wrap everything up.

But, I can't post my visit to AKA video until the movie has aired in North America (not to mention I'd have to get Vimeo Plus to retain video quality in HD), so it's not likely for the near future.

In a surprise turn, they've gone Widescreen for the first time for the SD broadcast (or that might just be restricted to the countries where it's aired). I'd love to see it in HD 1080p with lossless 5.1 surround sound on Blu-ray.

One classic icon walks off into the sunset. Sigh......

School's now officially over... until report card day.

Time to ramp up my gaming on TF2 (but not L4D until I get the GTX 260 card), as this summer might be one of the last few times in the next year I get to take this big of a break.

Dave Shumka, a student of the BCIT Television program, tells me that the course is around 65% hands on work and 35% paperwork. However, it is heavily crammed and coordinated to finish the whole thing in two years. No time for gaming... only Folding @ Home.

I go back for the report cards on June 25th and then the next day I head off for New York. I hope the rest of the summer would be my first summer job volunteering for The CityNews List.

School's out, Steam is in

At this moment, I'm installing my Steam games onto my Tablet.

Though L4D would lag horribly on the tablet, TF2 at DirectX level 8.0 would run almost as fast as my 9600GT on High but the setting on the tablet would be low.

Just gonna have to make sure the computer is stationary or else the HDD protection system would interrupt some critical reads and writes.

Edit: Apparently not the 9600GT performance I was expecting, the fastest frame rates I was able to get from my tablet was around an average of 45fps. But the good news is it never dipped below 19fps. (except on L4D on all the lowest settings. 15fps even in 852x480.)

Math test tomorrow, I'll try to not let The List distract me

Since a awkward incident back on June 2nd, I've lost contact with Citytv. This is good (in a non-sarcastic way) since I need to focus on this last test for Principals of Math 12.

But I think the probability of a meet and greet are getting slimmer, almost as slim as winning the Lotto 6/49.

And at the moment, all I see in the above sentence that is important is "Probability", as that's the last section in the Math 12 textbook we've been told to study.

This is great (in a sarcastic way), I've lost connections to Insomniac, Greedy, and Citytv for the time being. Will update if I ever get a reply from The List. (Though I doubt it, and makes a great reason to study for my test)

I'm Sorry The CityNews List

Apparently someone from the production contacted my Vice-Principal and wanted to talk.

I think of that as a huge deal and for all the grief and discomfort I've caused, I'm sorry.

I definitely hope everyone isn't bitter over there.

Edit: Yes, they aren't bitter, but a F-bomb on the phone did startle me today. But Amanda (another producer) told me that was due to tied phone lines.

Still a fan of The CityNews List.

I want a new video card, Garland wants to play TF2

So, I'm thinking about making my move to 3D gaming (True 3D gaming with shutter glasses and 120hz displays) and I know my 9600GT is not gonna have the best effect when I play games like TF2 or L4D. I'm thinking of getting the EVGA GTX260 Core 216 55nm card in the near future to TRULY future-proof my mATX gaming/editing rig. (and get far better PPD in Folding @ Home.)

Garland Chang also found an interest in playing TF2 now that he's seen all the "Meet the Team" videos. He said his system was not capable of playing the game and I'm thinking of selling my 9600GT to him once I get my GTX260 (The 9600GT I'm selling to him is self BIOS Overclocked to SSC speeds, but doesn't work well with L4D because of that). I hope he has a good Power Supply and a PCI-Express x16 bus on his motherboard.

And, does he even have a Steam Account yet?

Greedy, Tough, Luck

Thinking that I would get his voicemail, I called Victor Lucas to update him on my situation with BCIT and stuff and got patched DIRECTLY TO HIS iPHONE!!! (Possibly in the middle of a E3 press conference!)

I can't believe the tough luck I get for this... I'm thinking The CityNews List is a far better path for the current short term now that I've had this huge embarrassment...

I'll probably talk about it on Stop Podcasting Yourself.