Review
All Narfed Up photography and words by Bryan Villarin
Review: Netflix Player by Roku
I ordered the Netflix Player by Roku as a late Christmas present for my mom. I’ve had Netflix for over a year, but sometimes we have those days (weekends) where two movies won’t cut it.
The appeal to this device is simplicity because my mom is completely illiterate when it comes to technology.
It took less than five minutes to plug in, connect to my wireless router and enter the activation code on the Netflix website. I had already queued up a bunch of movies I thought my mom would want to watch. She mentioned “The Bone Collector” the other day, so that christened the Netflix Player.
Quality
We have a flat screen tube television. I connected the Netflix Player using the composite video and stereo inputs. We don’t have a LCD high definition TV or surround sound. Our internet connection is 3 Mbps (minimum 1.2 Mbps required).
Considering what we’ve got, I’m very pleased with the quality.
Interface
Wow. The user interface is amazingly simple. Queue movies into the Instant queue through the Netflix website, then they’re available to watch from the Netflix Player. Instantly.
After watching a movie or TV show, I can just remove it from the Instant queue without needing to visit the website.
Speed
Once I pick a movie and press play, it took 45 seconds to buffer. After that, I didn’t notice any stuttering. To try the resume feature, I paused once in the movie and went back into the main menu to navigate around for a bit. Resuming play took about 45 seconds.
I paused the movie to go back a few seconds in the movie and it took 20 seconds to resume play.
To pause and resume, it’s instant.
Selection
At the time of this writing, Netflix has 100,000 DVD titles and 12,000 choices that can be watched instantly. Most of those 12,000 are older movies, but there are some new ones.
I’m not sure why some movies are available while others aren’t. Spider-Man 3 is available, but Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 aren’t. National Treasure: Book of Secrets is available, but National Treasure isn’t.
In any case, I figure that by the time I see those 12,000 titles, hopefully 50,000 more will be available.
Final thoughts
This is the simplest and least expensive way to have access to lots1 of on-demand movies and TV episodes. Although you’re tethered to $8.99/month (the cheapest unlimited Netflix plan), that’s much cheaper than cable or satellite. Sure it’s only been two days, but I think the Netflix Player rocks.
- I didn’t say comprehensive. ↩
GotPrints for awesome and inexpensive business cards
I ordered business cards through Mpix my last couple times around. A box of 100 is $20, with gloss being an additional $3.00.
Then, Noel told me about GotPrint, which is all he uses. They’re in Burbank — much closer to me than Mpix.1 With a one day turnaround, plus one day for shipping, I just received my GotPrint order of 500 business cards2 for $10.99!3
GotPrint uses gloss on both front and back sides of the cards, while Mpix only uses gloss on the front.
The difference you see in my [horrible] photo above is because their Photoshop template required web-only colors. Also, the scaling was a bit smaller. I didn’t adjust my layers for this when I copied them from the previous file. The gradient on the GotPrint cards looks better than from Mpix, but that might be because these cards are kept in my wallet.
Ultimately, I love ‘em! When it comes to business cards, it’s GotPrint.
Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM lens review
Photodoto announced that BorrowLenses would hold a lens rental giveaway for a free 2-week lens rental. I wrote:
I think I’d want to try a Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 because I’m very much into street photography right now and my 50mm is too close for comfort.
Max at BorrowLenses chose me! As a cool ego boost, he liked this photo blog, too. How awesome is that?
In the course of two weeks, I took over 600 photos. As of now, 67 of them are uploaded to Flickr.
My simple review
My expectations were already high. The Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 is slow. While the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II is an inexpensive, fast prime lens, it takes a long time to focus in low-light situations. It’s pretty noisy, too. (For the price, it’s still really good, though.)
When I received the Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM lens, I was very pleased with the build and feel of the lens. I immediately took a self-portrait [above] to test it out. Awesome. Of course, since the Canon EOS 40D has 1.6x field of view crop factor, it’s like a 136mm focal length.
I don’t pixel peep, so don’t expect that analysis here. Just know that for basically all the photos I took with it, I loved the quality and bokeh it produced. At 19% the cost of the Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II USM, I wouldn’t even hesitate.
My picks from the two weeks using the 85mm lens
You can view all the photos I took with the Canon 85mm f/1.8 USM lens at this Flickr photoset.
Thanks to John at Photodoto and Max at BorrowLenses.com!
AeroPress customer support rocks
A few weeks ago, the rubber stopper on my AeroPress started to come off easily when removing the plunger from the chamber. It didn’t affect its operation - it was just annoying.
So, I emailed Aerobie received a very quick reply that they’d send a replacement seal.
A few business days later, I received it in the mail, removed the old one, and popped on the new one. Perfect!
I’m so stoked with awesome customer support like that, especially since they didn’t bug me about a receipt.1
I’ve had the AeroPress since March 2007 - over a year and a half now. It still works perfectly.
- It’s probably inexpensive anyway, but still. ↩
The $50 film camera project
I wasn’t going to participate in Epic Edits $50 film camera photo project. But, when I went photowalking a few weeks ago at Balboa Island with Brian Auer and Alex Orsburn, Brian offered to let me borrow his Minolta SR-T Super, 135mm f/2.8 lens1, and eight rolls of film. He’d even get them developed and scanned for me - what a great friend! I didn’t want to make it hard on him, so I only used two rolls. The roll I’m using here is Ilford Delta-100 Professional 135-36 Black & White Print Film (ISO-100).
Brian loaded the film, set the ISO speed for me2, and I was ready to go.
Technical specs
The following is what what mattered to me most:
- built-in light meter, coupled with the shutter speed and aperture
- shutter speeds: Bulb, 1-1/1000
- aperture and shutter speed displayed in viewfinder
- a quick return mirror
Experience with the film SLR camera
I’ve never photographed in full manual. I was scared of needing to adjust aperture, shutter speed and focus before pressing the shutter. Fortunately, there was a light meter. Phew!
Brian told me that he sets his shutter speed at 1/1000 (max) then adjusts the aperture accordingly. So, it’s kind of like aperture priority. Once I got into a groove, it wasn’t bad at all.
Sorrows
The only film I’ve ever loaded was in those inexpensive point-and-shoot cameras. Align the film behind the shutter, snap the roll in place, then close the back. No need to wind because the camera did the rest. Here, it was a bit more involved, so I asked Brian for help. With the Minolta SR-T Super, you have to wind once, press the shutter, then repeat, until it was all the way around the spool.
Manual focusing was my other minor annoyance. I missed quite a few photos because I wasn’t focused and ready to press the shutter.
Joys
I felt less conspicuous because I was taking photos one exposure at a time - no continuous bursts. Also, it wasn’t as big as my Canon EOS 40D3.
The lack of instant gratification is exhilarating. I framed a photo, pressed the shutter, and that was all I could do. No chimping possible.
At times, digital feels too clean. Since I’m in a street photography mode, the slightly gritty “feel” of the film photos appealed to me.
Like I said earlier, that light meter was clutch.
Photos
These are my three favorite photos:
You can view the rest of the roll at Flickr. I hope you like them!
P.S. Thanks to Brian Auer for lending me the camera, developing and scanning the photos, FTP-ing them to his server for me to download, and taking photos of the camera itself. He rocks.
*****
I’m writing a short follow up which didn’t need to be crammed into this post. It’ll be up by next Monday, at the latest. If you don’t want to miss it, please subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks!
Update 9/23/08: I just realized I never posted my follow up. Blast! I promise it’s in draft right now and almost ready to publish.
After one week with the Drobo v2
I wrote a few days ago to brag that I finally have a Drobo. I just wanted to share my experience with it these past seven days.
Installation
Followed the instructions right out of the box and everything was a breeze. I realized that I didn’t have a Firewire 800 port, but rather Firewire 400. So, until I get a cable converter, I’m using USB 2.0. My two 500 GB hard drives went in, I powered it on, and the Drobo drivers installed onto my Windows machine.
Next, I installed the Drobo Dashboard software to get the hard drives formatted. It stated five minutes to format, but it only took one or two minutes. Once that finished, I updated Drobo Dashboard and Drobo firmware.
That’s it. Within maybe 10-15 minutes, I had 460 GB of protected hard drive space.
Usage
I copied all my photos and Lightroom catalogs from my main hard drive to the Drobo. As of now, it’s using 192 GB. I’m not sure if I’ll move more onto it because everything else important is already being backed up to my Amazon S3 bucket with Jungle Disk. Maybe I’ll setup a Replicator job to sync into a folder on my Drobo.
Performance
Copying the ~200 GB of files was going to take awhile, so I walked away. (Actually, we had band rehearsal for a few hours. I’m sure it was done way before that, though.)
I’ve been currently working with those Lightroom catalogs off the Drobo. I might switch that to my main hard drive for a speed boost, but it’s not bad. I’ll bet it’ll be better if I was taking advantage of Firewire. Soon enough.
Noise
I can barely hear the Drobo fan. It’s on top of my desk, maybe 2-3 feet away from me. With the TV on, music playing, or a house fan on, I don’t notice it.
Concern - firmware updates
I stumbled onto this horror story:
I briefly [owned] a Drobo and had it connected to my PowerMac G5 tower. Up until the first official firmware update, I was a happy camper. All the cartoon physics you described were in effect.
However, after the update, my Drobo would not remount, so I rebooted. This was the first time I’d seen this behavior so [I] was surprised.
I called Drobo tech support, sent in a diagnostic file from the Drobo, then waited. [I’d left it off the entire time for fear of wrecking something.] After a few days, I was given explicit restart instructions, [...] generated another diagnostic file, then waited.
A week went by, then two. [...] After several more calls, checking on the techs and providing two more diagnostic files – by this time, it was nearing 4 weeks – I was told that my data was gone. I asked if they could [examine] my drives [...] and was told there was nothing to recover.
The tragedy of this is that I was only backing up 400MB of old project data. Up until then, I loved my Drobo and swore by it. Now, I just swear at them when I hear the name and advise [...] all to stay clear of this product until it’s out of beta, or to use with severe caution [...]. (source)
I’ll email Drobo tech support because this is serious.
Example - Let’s say I had about 1 TB of data on my Drobo. If a new firmware version was released, before upgrading to that, would I need to back that data off onto another external hard drive…just in case? That defeats the simplicity.
Unless something is broken or a firmware update greatly increases reliability and performance, I probably won’t touch it.
Reasons for purchase
- I don’t want to worry about losing data WHEN one of my hard drives dies.
- WHEN I need more space, I love how easy (and inexpensive!) it’ll be to buy/install more internal hard drives.
- I won’t have lots of clutter associated with various external hard drives along with their accompanying cables and power cords.
- Maintenance isn’t a concern.
- Tweaking isn’t a concern.
Conclusion
This device isn’t for everybody. Once you understand what it can and can’t do, I think you’ll buy it with excitement. For more information, visit the Drobo website.
Disclosure: I bought the Drobo with my own money. I didn’t get any money out of writing this review. But, if you do end up purchasing it through Amazon, can you use my referral link below? Amazon will give me a really tiny cut. Thanks!
Other reviews
- Hands On With the Drobo, A New Kick Ass Digital Data Robot (Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection)
- Welcome to Drobo 2.0 — Two Times Faster and Now Offering Firewire Support (Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection)
- Hardware review: Drobo (Raoul Pop)
- Three weeks with my Drobo (Kevin Cupp)
- Drobo review (Matt Westgate)
- Drobo Goes Firewire - This Week in Photography (TWiP)
- Regarding backups (Hivelogic)
- Drobo: Storage a-Go-Go (John Nack on Adobe)
Update (9/11/08) - Firmware updates addressed
I got a reply from Drobo three business days later. It follows:
Firstly, Drobo is [f]astest on USB in Windows. We highly recommend not using [Firewire] on a Windows [c]omputer due to Windows driver instability.
Second, [f]irmware updates are the first and most safe step in troubleshooting any Drobo issue. The Drobo has been out of Beta for almost a year now. Chris H’s comment was from a Beta Drobo from the records I found. Drobo has a backup firmware in case the update is not installed correctly. The Drives and data are never [a]ffected by firmware updates [anyway].
Also, if you have any doubt at all, you could always standby, power down, eject the drive pack (all the drives in order) then power up and update the firmware. Then standby, power down. insert drive pack, power up.
Lastly from the above, I doubt the Beta Drobo died due to the firmware update, It was most likely a multiple drive failure soon after doing the update.
If Drobo dies you can replace and Drobo and put your drives in a new one and have your data.
If a drive dies the Drobo handles it automatically and asks you to replace it.
I’m pleased that they addressed my concern about using USB rather than Firewire. I guess getting that cable is overkill. But, should I/we be happy with that reply altogether? I hope so.
I love Story of the Year
I just started listening to Story of the Year’s latest album, “The Black Swan.” I’m not sure how I missed it - it was released in April!
Anyway, they’re one of the few bands where practically every song on their albums rock. I love their vocals, harmonies, heavy guitar riffs and energy. I hope you do, too.
If they’re in your area, you’ll want to see them live. They put on an amazing show.
Enjoy!
[Review] USB-RJ11 Skype Phone Adapter
Months ago, I spotted the USB Skype Phone Adapter. I printed it out and kept it in my someday/maybe file. Last week, I finally ordered one.
Why?
My mom is the primary Skype user. I set her up on the $2.95/month unlimited calls to US & Canada plan for family and friends here, Canada, and Hawaii. Our AT&T landline costs extra outside our area code, so we use our cell phones for those calls. But, we should be using Skype since it’s unlimited1.
When she uses Skype, she has a headset and sits in front of my computer. With this doohickey, she won’t have to. Yay!
The USB-RJ11 Skype Adapter lets you make and receive both Skype and regular landline calls, all from the same phone.
Continue using your phone for landline calls as you normally do. But when you want to make a Skype call, pick up your phone and press * to switch to Skype calling mode. Then dial a SkypeOut call to any phone number, or dial a Skype contact, all from your phone’s keypad. Your phone rings for both landline and Skype calls, just pick up the phone and start talking!
The USB-RJ11 Adapter transforms your existing phone into a dual-mode Skype/landline phone, no additional equipment required.
- Use any standard telephone for Skype and landline calls
- Phone rings on incoming Skype and regular calls
- SkypeOut and Speed-Dial integration with Skype
- USB powered, no external power required
- A landline connection is optional, so you can also use your regular or cordless phone as a dedicated Skype phone.
I’m not paying for SkypeIn, so the phone will only ring for standard landline calls.
The instructions are very simple. Once I had it setup, I took a screenshot of my mom’s contact list, had her choose speed dial numbers, then printed out the list and instructions for her.
Funny story — I changed the adapter key switch from “*” to “9” because I wanted it to act like a business phone. You know, like how you dial “9” for an outside line? Anyway, about 10 minutes into testing and making sure things work, we get a knock at the door. (It was about 8:50pm.) I open and it’s the police2!
He asks me if I called 911. I said I hadn’t, because nothing required me pressing that combination. He explained that it was cool3 and that dispatch just heard a phone call from this number, then a dial tone. I gave him my information4, then he was on his way. He was really cool about it.
I switched the key back to “*“.
Conclusion — I know, I’ve only used it for less than a day. But, if you use Skype and you’d like to use it away from the computer, the USB Skype Phone Adapter rocks!
Disclosure: I bought the product with my own money and I’m not getting paid for this review
Update 4/24/08 8:45pm: When on a Skype call and multitasking on the computer, the device will sporadically switch from USB to LINE. Then, I need to manually press “*” to switch back to the Skype call. Fortunately, the call isn’t dropped. Does this mean I can’t use the computer heavily while Skype is being used?
I emailed John Morley about this two days ago, but haven’t heard a reply from him yet. Not good.
I’m running SkypeMate 3.0.2.47 and Skype 3.6.0.248.
- The legal bit – as part of their fair usage policy you’ll get up to 10,000 calling minutes per month. ↩
- I think he’s really a sheriff. ↩
- His words. ↩
- Again, he told me that it was no biggie. ↩
Battery replaced with ipodjuice.com
Almost two and a half years ago, I replaced my iPod battery. It worked great until a few months ago, when I started to notice that it won’t hold a charge.
Last week, I finally forced myself to order a replacement battery. I didn’t go with iPodResQ (which is now iResQ) because they are one of the companies that send two small, inadequate tools. (Oh yeah, look closely at the picture — one of mine broke!)
ipodjuice.com offers a longer-lasting battery — 1100 mAh, compared to 850 mAh from iResQ. Plus, ipodjuice.com sells the iOpener, which is larger and more sturdy compared to the other iPod “tools.”
The only problem that came across was my fault. After I finished installing the new battery, I closed it up, and turned my iPod on. I got an error — a folder with an exclamation point on the screen — which meant I didn’t plug the hard drive back in all the way.
I had a harder time reopening it the second time around because I dulled the iOpener a bit. The manual said I could use sandpaper to resharpen the edge, but all I had was a razor blade. After a mixture of pure perseverance, sweat and fury, I finally reopened it. With the connection to the hard drive reseated, the iPod worked fine. Awesome!
Note: There’s a micro screw that got loose. I’m not sure how big of a deal it is, so I’ll keep in a plastic bag for now. Other than that, it’s fine.
Conclusion — If your iPod battery isn’t lasting as long as it should, go to ipodjuice.com. They rock.
FedEx is garbage to me
I’m expecting a package that was supposed to be delivered by FedEx yesterday, March 12th. They “tried”, but nobody was here. “Customer not available or business closed.” Lies! My mom was home at 4:47pm and she didn’t hear anything.
Today, March 13th at 3:52pm, I’m home. I check the FedEx tracking number a little after 4pm, and I get the same message.
Erroneous!
I called customer support and told them what happened. The address was verified correctly, so that wasn’t the problem. She notated the complaint, which doesn’t help the situation at all. I want justice.
Since they can’t deliver in a timely manner, I offered to drive to Hacienda Heights to pick it up. Nope, they closed at 4pm. Plus, if I wanted to pick it up, they’d have to notate it to the terminal, which would take 24-48 hours. Wait a minute - are they using pigeons to send messages back and forth?
Ridiculous. FedEx, stop giving me problems and do your job.
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