Planet TLLTS

So what if you’d like to watch a recording from you MythTV system on your Android phone? Android phones have an onboard video decoder that will let them play h264 encoded videos (youtube) easily in whatever resolution the phone’s screen will allow. Basically you’ll need to re-encode the MythTV recordings into a suitable format The most direct option is to use ffmpeg to convert the videos for use on your phone. ffmpeg literally is the swiss army knife of multimedia in the F/OSS world. You can basically convert any video/audio file into any other format using a multitude of codecs. ffmpeg is a commandline tool that has a lot of flags that a noobie might be a little intimidated by. Here’s my ffmpeg command to re-encode videos for my Nexus One:


ffmpeg -i inputfile.mpg -aspect 16:9 -s 800x480 -vcodec libx264 -b 480k -r 13 -acodec libfaac -ab 128k -sameq -pass 1 -f rawvideo -an -y /dev/null && ffmpeg -i inputfile.mpg -aspect 16:9 -s 800x480 -vcodec libx264 -b 480k -r 13 -acodec libfaac -ab 128k -ac 2 -sameq -pass 2 outputfile.mp4

The above command will do a 2 pass encoding of the video file using the x264 encoder for video and faac for the audio. While more time consuming 2 pass encoding improves the quality of the video greatly. The videos tend to come out much smoother with little or no artifacts. I tested the above command with both hi-definition and standard definition recordings that were captured with my PVR-1212 and my HDHomerun capture devices. A one hour HD recording that was roughly 4.1 gig in size was re-encoded to a 332mb file that plays perfectly on my Nexus One in 800×480 resolution. I tried bumping up the video bitrate and frames per second rates. As a result the files were slightly larger and improvement in video quality was negligible. I also tested playing back my videos on a co-worker’s Verizon Droid phone and they all played back without issue. It should be easy to bump down the resolution to 320×480 and have the videos work on lower powered Android phones (G1, Mytouch3G, Hero, Eris, Backflip). I forwarded my settings to John Baab, the developer of MythExport. Hopefully we’ll soon have a default Android preset that will let you re-encode your MythTV recordings right from the menus in Mythbuntu. Good times.

Every Android user would like to be be able to use their cell phone as a broadband modem. It’s a nice option to have if you can’t jump on a public access point. Most cell carriers say you shouldn’t be doing this and it will break the TOS agreement. You should be ok doing this as long as you don’t go too crazy that often. In order words don’t be downloading Linux distros or other large files. There are wireless tethering apps that let rooted Android phones connect to the phone via bluetooth or wifi. I’ve used these apps on my G1 running cyanogenmod with no ill affects. Reading the warranty of my new NexusOne it explicitly says that rooting the phone will void it. Considering I paid the full unlocked price for my Nexus One I think I don’t want to void the warranty at this point. So my tethering options are slightly diminished. The easiest way of doing this is using a program called proxoid on your Android phone. The main requirement is that you have the Android SDK installed and working on the machine you want to tether your phone to. You’ll also need to connect the usb data/charging cable to your computer. Make sure you have usb debugging checked off in your system settings on your phone. This article explains all tethering options (included rooted phones) and this How-To explains how to tether without rooting and using a proxy. This post was made on my laptop tethered to my Nexus One.

In my last posting I talked about my decision to purchase an HTC Nexus One phone from Google and what I was looking for in a 3rd generation Android phone. My phone arrived on Friday afternoon and I was very excited to be upgrading to a new device. The first thing I noticed about the phone is how sleek, thin and light the thing is compared to my old G1. Another thing that jumped out at me was the beautiful large display and finally having a standard 3.5mm audio jack. Powering up the phone you see a lovely 3d accelerated bootup animation. Android 2.1 is a nice step forward compared to the latest Cyanogenmod ROM (based on Android 1.6). The phone has a 1ghz snapdragon processor and the result is every application is extremely quick and responsive. The 800×480 display is absolutely gorgeous (clear,crisp and sharp). The area where the NexusOne really shines is on the web. Viewing web pages on the high resolution display is leaps and bounds ahead of where it was with the G1. This phone on the same T-mobile network as my G1 seems exponentially quicker. Video streaming works very well on both a 3g connection and wifi. I re-encoded several HD and SD video recordings using ffmpeg (libx264 encoder) from my MythTV box and watched them on the NexusOne. Everything I played looked great. A decent pair of headphones comes with the phone. The headphones have a small controller with three buttons (play/pause, skip forward/backward) and a built-in microphone. If you’re listening to music or watching a video and a phone call comes in the media player will pause your playback and start your ringer at a moderate audio level. Terminate the phone call and the media player starts up automatically. Nice touch. My biggest concern of moving to the NexusOne was losing a hardware keyboard. The virtual keyboard in landscape mode works very well for me. As you’re typing words you’ll see a list of possible words appearing in the toolbar above the keyboard area. At any time you can select one of the suggested words and it will auto-complete it for you. The voice recognition features of the NexusOne are pretty damn impressive. When typing in any application you can switch to voice mode by hitting the microphone key and the phone will prompt you for a voice entry. For me the accuracy rate is about 85% which is decent considering I have a pretty strong New York accent. Speaking a little slower than normal improves the accuracy quite a bit. Using voice input for searches & starting phone calls seemed to work much more accurately than dictation. I’m sure the voice features will improve with time. I’ve been showing off the phone for a couple of days now and everyone is pretty impressed with it. Flash is supposedly coming to Android 2.0+ devices in the next couple of months. While everyone generally dislikes flash having it will improve wider adoption of Android phones. Being able to play videos on Hulu will be something to hold over iPhone/maxi-Pad owners. For better or worse flash is very pervasive on the internet. I now understand why Apple wants to sue HTC out of existence. More to come later.

It’s been far too long since the last time I posted. I’ve been very busy but excuses are lame so I’ll just get on with things. I’ve had my G1 Android for almost a year now on T-mobile. I’ve really taken to Android and absolutely love the platform. The applications are great and I generally like the developer friendly approach Google has taken to help get applications into the marketplace. While I’ve enjoyed my time with the G1 it’s shortcomings are painfully obvious. First is the attrocious battery life. I’m lucky I can make it halfway through the day without having to recharge the battery. No standard 3.5mm audio jack is an annoyance. The biggest positive for the G1 is the slideout keyboard. It’s a decent “starter” Android phone but I’m ready to move on to one of the newer more powerful phones. A very nice TLLTS listener sent me a bricked white G1 that was basically brand new but would lockup when booting up. I tried every trick in the book to get into a terminal prompt or to boot into a recovery image. This thing was truely bricked. The only way to get it to work would be to replace the motherboard.So I decided to sell my old G1 along with this bricked G1. I found a guy down the Jersey shore who wanted a bricked white G1. He had a Mytouch3G that was in excellent condition and was willing to work out some sort of trade. So I traded the bricked G1 + $100 cash for the Mytouch3G. I then sold the Mytouch3G for $220 on Ebay. I did play with the Mytouch3G for a couple days and it’s generally a nice improvement over the G1. It definitely has better battery life than the G1 and not having a physical keyboard didn’t seem to bother me that much. Still the lack of a standard 3.5mm audio jack bothers me plus I want a newer phone that has a higher resolution screen and a beefier processor. My two main choices were the Motorola Droid or a Nexus One. I’ve played around with the Droid on several occassions and overall it’s very good device. The only negative would be switching over to Verizon on a more expensive plan than my current T-Mobile account which costs me $60 a month. Honestly I’m very happy with my current alotment of talk time. So I was seriously leaning towards the Nexus1 at this point. Anyone who’s used it seems to like it a lot. This past week Apple announced a lawsuit against HTC for 20 alleged patent violations. That basically sealed the deal for me and I placed my order for the Nexus1 shortly after selling the Mytouch3G on Ebay. I also plan to sell my G1 on Ebay next week. Expect to see a bunch of posts in the coming days as I put the Nexus1 through its paces. I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

Since I bought my droid, I have been either asked over and over what apps I am using/installing or have been offered someone elses list. I figured it was time to make it official here and provide my own, with the note that this is still evolving since I just got the phone a couple days ago. Without further ado:

Mobile Defense
This app is the cellphone equivalent to Prey on your laptop. It’ll help you find and retrieve a lost or stolen cellphone.

Pandora
Internet radio stations just for you! Seriously, if you don’t know what Pandora is by now, just go home.

Barcode Scanner
More than just a toy, it’s a way for you to check prices and get info on merchandise and even install apps! This is a must have app.

ConnectBot
This is your ssh app. Works well and a must for you Linux guys like me!

AIM
Aol Instant Messenger for Android.

The Weather Channel
Always need to know what the weather is going to be like when I get into Philly and now I can get that info quickly on my cellphone anytime I need it. It also lets you add multiple sites/cities.

HandyCards
This is a great application that you can use to scan in your store discount and rewards cards to keep them in your phone, where they are handy. Slick program and works great!

Flashlight
Yes, there are a ton of these and some even use the built in camera flash for light, but I chose the simple white screen version. Works great!

ColorNote
This is a quick and convenient way to take some notes when I have to.

Jewels
Hey, even I play games occasionally. This is one of those fun little jewel games. Match 3. Fun and addicting. I would have put frozen bubble on there but then I would never get *anything* done.

Droid

Finally, after carrying around cellphones for over 10 years, *I* got a decent one.

It was time for me to re-up my contract with Verizon and high time I got a good cellphone, so I picked the Droid, at the behest and recommendation of several of my friends. To be honest, this thing kicks butt and takes names.
The best comparison I can give is that of it to an iPhone. I use an iPhone at work on my on-call rotation. Up until this point, I thought it was *very* cool and fast. Now I know different. The Droid whoops it without batting an eye. The Droid has a huge, bright lcd touch screen, it’s ultra thin and hides a full querty keyboard. It plays all your non DRM encumbered media – and beautifully I might add. It browses, it emails, it texts, it takes notes, it plays games, it has HUNDREDS of other apps and, hell, it even makes and takes phone calls if you can imagine. This thing is even better than the other android phones I have seen, being faster by an order of magnitude with a bigger screen and more storage (16Gb by default). The best praise I could give it it what I told Dann about it earlier, and that is this is what the Nokia N series Linux handhelds could have and should have been if Nokia had pulled their heads out of the sand. And did I mention that it’s fast, because it is. Stop reading this and just go buy one! You’ll thank me later – from the gmail account on your Droid.