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panasonic bd-60 + inglourious basterds

By Matt Brotherson on January 22, 2010

After having trouble viewing Crank 2 Blu Ray on my BD-60 and then witnessing similar behavior for Inglourious Basterds, I thought the SD card trick would work. Nope.

I spent a while researching and decided to update the firmware to the latest version. After the update I was able to view Inglourious Basterds.

For any of you Panasonic BD-60 people out there with troubles – update your firmware either via the internet or burn a CD with the file from Panasonic support on it.

Posted in asides | Tagged Blu Ray, firmware, Inglourious Basterds, Panasonic | Leave a response

rhapsody over satellite

By Matt Brotherson on March 23, 2009

After having my Sonos whole home audio system along with Rhapsody streaming over the Internet for more than a year, I can’t help but ponder something that most definitely has been asked before. Why aren’t we seeing service providers creating portable devices that can stream audio directly from a satellite?

Satellite TV/Internet exist. GPS devices fetch your location and map the location you’re heading to via satellite. It seems entirely plausible that one could make a portable device or a car head unit that is capable of accessing the libraries of your paid subscription service such as Rhapsody and stream that to you anywhere you are, regardless of lack of an internet connection.

We love being able to have virtually any track at our disposal while using the Sonos or downloading it to an MP3 player with Rhapsody to Go. It would be pure audio utopia to stream tracks to your car wherever you are. Get a song in your head – search it and play it instantly.

What do you see as the major hangups in this scenario? I’m not seeing satellite “bandwidth” as an issue as they already push HD channels out with full 5.1 audio tracks and high bit-rate video. Is it a safety issue where companies don’t want drivers distracted searching for a song? (Disclaimer like the GPS units would solve that!) Costs for deploying the satellites? Maintenance? I think the idea is great…but why have we not seen it yet?

Posted in announcements | Tagged portable, Rhapsody, satellite, Sonos, streaming audio | Leave a response

flac or uberstandard?

By Matt Brotherson on June 1, 2008

Three years ago i purchased a Rockford Fosgate digital media server. This device streamed MP3’s from my PC to my hifi setup. At that point i decided to rip all of my CD’s for access by the streamer. The omnifi only supports MP3 or WAV so i chose to rip everything according to the uberstandard at the highest possible bit rate per the standard.

Fast forward three years and i have since ditched the bug laden Omnifi. However – the open source simplecenter that powered the interface to the PC is awesome…perusing the source made me very happy to see their technology choices. The replacement? A Sonos system! Since seeing this incredible whole home audio system in action at the owner of my company’s house i had to have one.

Now that I’ve got a system that is totally bug free and supports lossless audio formats I’m rethinking my decision to go with the uberstandard. Now that hard drive space is ubiquitous and my player supports it FLAC with its own DAC has peaked my interest.

What say you audiophiles? FLAC or go home?

Posted in asides | Tagged FLAC, lossless audio, media streaming, omnifi, simplecenter, Sonos, uberstandard | 2 Responses

man in the middle

By Matt Brotherson on April 27, 2008

Occasionally your team won’t be the only team on a big league project. Sometimes you find yourself as the man in the middle. This is the first time that i find myself on the outside of the good ‘ol boy network. For the perseverance of the team we must push through. The shame of it is when the good ‘ol boy network determines enterprise solution decisions. Good times.

Posted in asides | Tagged good ol boy, hose job, outside, teamwork | Leave a response

WebSphere + JNDI + Spring Framework + Hibernate

By Matt Brotherson on January 23, 2008

Thought I’d post a snippet of applicationContext.xml for all the people out there trying a JNDI data source wired up in IBM’s WebSphere Application Server through Spring Framework and Hibernate. I couldn’t find this information as a whole anywhere out there so hopefully it helps someone.

Hit the jump for the xml. Continue reading “WebSphere + JNDI + Spring Framework + Hibernate”

Posted in code | Tagged hibernate, java, spring, websphere | 4 Responses

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