{"id":1405,"date":"2014-01-09T15:24:50","date_gmt":"2014-01-09T15:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1405"},"modified":"2014-06-02T22:24:36","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T22:24:36","slug":"media-centre-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/01\/09\/media-centre-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Centre update"},"content":{"rendered":"

My approach to obtaining television material to watch is currently undergoing a significant change, but before we get there, it might be as well to update you as to the continuing evolution of my set-up since I last wrote about this subject<\/a> a little over three years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

First to go was the \u00a330 remote which utterly failed the Wife Compatibility Test. It\u2019s replacement, a Logitech Harmony One for \u00a3150, with its snazzy touch-screen, was deemed more suitable, but when repeated harsh treatment bust the snazzy touch-screen it was replaced with an even snazzier Harmony Touch and then more recently a Harmony Ultimate<\/a> which allows for control of devices hidden in a wooden cabinet and also controls my Philips Hue lights<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When we moved into our new flat, a number of other changes took place. We got our own Sky dish nailed to the outside wall, avoiding all of those tedious single feed issues. I bought a cheap-and-cheerful Sony Blu-Ray\/AV receiver which generally did a much better job of filling the room with 5.1 sound and so I eventually took the step of consigning the wheezing, puffing Windows Media Centre PC to the scrap-heap. Having experimented with a WD Live box which was hugely reluctant to access the files on my NAS drive reliably, I ended up with a Boxee Box<\/a> shortly before they were discontinued. Despite the fact that no further updates will be forthcoming, I have yet to find online evidence of a device which will do a better job of getting a variety of video files off my NAS and on to my TV.<\/p>\n

So, let\u2019s recap. I want to accomplish three things. Watch DVDs and Blu-Rays. Watch broadcast TV (and time-shift it). Watch video downloaded from the Internet. The first two are easily covered by the Sony and Sky boxes respectively and the Harmony remote takes care of selecting all the right inputs. Let\u2019s have a little talk about downloads.<\/p>\n

Most of the shows I\u2019m watching at the moment come from the USA and not all are promptly broadcast in the UK. Not just the premium \u201cbox set\u201d dramas like Game of Thrones<\/i>, Mad Men<\/i>, and Masters of Sex<\/i> but also mainstream network dramas like The Good Wife<\/i>, sit-coms like Parks and Recreation<\/i> and Community<\/i>, and even some reality shows like Mythbusters<\/i> or Kitchen Nightmares<\/i>. It\u2019s a complete lottery which of these will turn up on any of the various Sky channels, even though Sky\u2019s On Demand service makes it easy to catch up on what you\u2019ve missed.<\/p>\n

Enter BitTorrent and, in particular TVTorrents.com<\/a>. Within a couple of hours of the latest episode of Modern Family <\/i>airing, a copy will be available on the site in your choice of compact .mp4 or hi-def .mkv file. I have an RSS feed set up with my favourite shows on it, so my laptop downloads the torrent file automatically, usually overnight, copies it over to my NAS drive, where the Boxee finds it, identifies it and adds it to the list of shows, downloading the episode title and synopsis, all ready for me to watch it that evening.<\/p>\n

Now, Modern Family<\/i> airs on ABC in the states which arrives free in people\u2019s homes. So I\u2019m not really depriving anyone of an income here, am I? True, I get an ad-free version, but I would skip the ads if I recorded it legally anyhow. Is this a crime? What about True Blood<\/i> which airs on HBO in the states? Well, I would give HBO money to let me watch their shows if I could but they aren\u2019t interested in taking it<\/a>, so what choice to I have? Wait a year for the box set to come out? C\u2019mon.<\/p>\n

Of course, I could go to iTunes instead, but UK iTunes doesn\u2019t have a complete (enough) library of these shows either. So, I\u2019ll stick with the torrenting, please and thank you.<\/p>\n

However, some notable torrent sites have bit the dust recently, and so it occurred to me to wonder what I would do if TVTorrents were just to disappear one day \u2013 in the middle of a particularly gripping storyline in Orphan Black<\/i>, say.<\/p>\n

Okay, now enter Netflix.<\/p>\n

It certainly was convenient that the final half-season of Breaking Bad<\/i> was on UK Netflix. But I didn\u2019t have an easy way of getting it on my TV. Hooking up my iPad to the TV was possible, but not convenient and didn\u2019t always work (seemed to be much more reliable with my iPad 3rd<\/sup> gen than my iPad Air \u2013 not sure why). So I tended just to torrent it and watch it via the Boxee anyway.<\/p>\n

But that wasn\u2019t an option for the various Netflix original series \u2013 Arrested Development<\/i>, House of Cards<\/i> and best of all Orange is the New Black<\/i>. And while it\u2019s fun to snuggle in bed watching on an iPad, sometimes you want to take advantage of that big screen out there. And none of my existing devices \u2013 TV, AV receiver, Boxee, Sky \u2013 had Netflix built in. They all had streaming services of some sort, but not that one. Was it worth buying an Apple TV just for Netflix?<\/p>\n

Well, I waited a while, but when at the last Apple event no update was released and Apple was knocking out the most recent model for \u00a375 I went for it, using up the last remaining HDMI input on my TV and having to use an optical cable to get the sound to run through the AV receiver.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very nice. Slick, fast and I have AirPlay back (which an update to the Boxee mysteriously killed) which means that when some of the various automated virtual moving parts in the TVTorrents \u2013 RSS feed \u2013 uTorrent \u2013 RoboBasket \u2013 NAS Drive \u2013 Boxee system fail, I can AirPlay from the iPad to the TV instead. Nice.<\/p>\n

And \u2013 oh yes \u2013 I can get iTunes content on the TV now without having to hook up the iPad. Hmm\u2026<\/p>\n

So \u2013 here\u2019s the thing. Only about a quarter of the American shows I watch regularly are broadcast on UK TV in a reasonable timeframe. But only about a third are available to buy on iTunes UK. Now, I\u2019ve had a US iTunes account for ages (I wanted to download the Movie Trailers app which bizarrely wasn\u2019t available in the UK app store. I think it is now.) although it doesn\u2019t have a credit card associated with it. The reason being that while iTunes was perfectly happy to accept the fake address in Florida I gave it, I have no credit card registered at that address to assign to the account.<\/p>\n

Surely there would be some way of getting cash in there? Actually, there is. There are plenty of services which will sell you US iTunes gift cards, and these can be delivered on-line giving you a line of credit to make purchases from the US store with. Now downloading the latest series of The Big Bang Theory<\/i> is as quick and easy as a few clicks and my Rube Golderg torrent\/NAS\/Boxee system is starting to look obsolete. I\u2019ve finally upgraded my home broadband to Virgin fibre-optic, so now I hardly have to wait before the episodes start streaming in full HD. And while I don\u2019t have copies stored locally, I have access on my TV or any other i-device whenever I want and I can always download there if I need to.<\/p>\n

Actually, that isn\u2019t quite true. This is the most tedious part of a quite laborious post, but I\u2019ll try and make it brief. The Apple TV, which only streams and does not store anything, is perfectly happy for me to have many iTunes accounts and lets me flick between them at will. My iPad however insists that it be \u201cregistered\u201d to one account or the other and I can only change this every 90 days. While it\u2019s \u201cregistered\u201d to my UK iTunes account I can still buy individual episodes or movies or movie rentals on the iPad from the US store, but I can\u2019t download items previously purchased and that includes newly-released episodes where I\u2019ve bought a \u201cseason pass\u201d. After some reluctance, I took the plunge and switched my iPad to the US store, leaving my laptop set up on the UK store (so I can download items previously purchased there and sync them to the iPad if need be).<\/p>\n

Almost all my shows are now available to me, at a cost of between $20 and $50 per year, which I can live with, and I now have the benefit of being able to flip between the Apple TV and the iPad without losing my place. Neat. There are a couple of exceptions \u2013 US iTunes seems very slow to get Game of Thrones<\/i> but Sky Atlantic doesn\u2019t hang about so no problem there. And Saturday Night Live<\/i> is only carried in an expurgated version, but honestly it\u2019s so hit-and-miss I think I can do without seeing every single minute.<\/p>\n

Telling the Apple TV I am using an American iTunes account also causes US apps to pop up, but these are largely useless. There\u2019s an HBO app, but unless I can give it details of my US cable provider, no soup for me. What\u2019s curious is the different ways in which different providers assess your location. iTunes only cares about the source of funding. Got an American credit card? Here, have access to the US store. Netflix on the other hand only cares about where you physically are on the planet. Set up a UK Netflix account and then take your iPad to the states and you will suddenly get access to the American version.<\/p>\n

But, as I already know from using a VPN to get access to iPlayer in Europe, it\u2019s not difficult to fool these apps into thinking that you are somewhere you are not. I wonder about the Apple TV Hulu Plus app\u2026? With a bit of help from Unlocator.com, I had changed the DNS settings on the Apple TV and bingo! I was able to sign up for Hulu Plus at just $7.99 per month (via my US iTunes account) and get access to about half of my favourite shows including full episodes of SNL<\/i>. There are unskippable ads, but they don\u2019t last very long.<\/p>\n

I lose the ability to download a show and take it with me, but if I opt to watch Community<\/i> via Hulu and then want to take an episode on a plane, I can always pay $1.99 to download that locally on to my iPad.<\/p>\n

Obviously this is more expensive than the torrent solution, but I feel better about giving something back to the content creators, even if I’m not always doing it in the way they want me to. And I do feel less at the mercy of the MPAA. Of course, I am now at the mercy of Apple and Hulu instead. But maybe that’s a subject for a future post.<\/p>\n

In the meantime \u2013 that\u2019s my new system. I\u2019ll let you know how it pans out\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My approach to obtaining television material to watch is currently undergoing a significant change, but before we get there, it might be as well to update you as to the continuing evolution of my set-up since I last wrote about this subject a little over three years ago. First to go was the \u00a330 remote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[111],"tags":[115,362,361,358,363,359,357,112,360],"class_list":["post-1405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-blu-ray","tag-boxee-box","tag-breaking-bad","tag-dvd","tag-hulu-plus","tag-itunes","tag-media-centre","tag-media-system","tag-netflix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-mF","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1405"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1484,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405\/revisions\/1484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}