Information Echo

My ISP (Rogers) has had increasingly unreliable DNS servers for some time now.

I called their tech support line about the issue a few weeks back since there was one site in specific that seemed to be a chronic issue, but as I somehow expected the level one tech support person was only vaguely aware of what DNS was in the first place. Of course, the usual procedure ensued - they try the website on their end, and if it loads, there is no problem, right?

I suppose I could have pushed the matter, or if I really wanted to express my displeasure, change ISP’s because of it, but it didn’t seem worth fighting about.

Instead, I switched to OpenDNS and left my ISP’s DNS servers as only a third-level emergency backup.

The setup was of course, simple - I simply changed my routers default DNS settings, refreshed, and everything was up and running.

In addition to being much more reliable (all my formerly problematic sites now load reliably) it also has a great many extra features that have already become a great plus to me, the primary one being content filtering.

When I upgraded our Mac’s to Leopard I was looking forward to using the account level parental filters for when our kids (ages 7 and 10) are surfing, but after utilizing the “Approved Websites Only” option for a month, I eventually had to downgrade to the “Attempt to block adult content” option instead. The Approved-Only option was a great feature, but a few websites that the kids were using were full of URL jumps (many with a wide array of IP based addresses, presumably a load-spreading tactic) which made the approved-only option a lesson in frustration - every time one of the sites in question jumped to a different IP address, Leopard would pop up a window seeking administrator approval.

Sometimes this would persist 6 or 8 times in a row before the site would function again, only to repeat the next time the kids logged in. There is apparently no way to approve an IP range, only physical domain names, so it was tedious.

Clearly, this wasn’t going to work, so now the accounts are set at the “block adult material” setting instead. This means that websites will reliably work again, but it also means that allot of websites that I don’t want the kids to have access to in the first place are now once again accessible.

Typically our kids are well behaved on the computers, and they are in public areas of the house, but none the less, I still believe in filtering what children that age are allowed to see on the ‘Net.

I blocked a few via the router, but it has an expectedly limiting filtering system.

OpenDNS on the other hand not only provides a reliable DNS server once again, but provides a multitude of filtering and content control that is adjustable via my account page.

Works for me.

After suggesting I’d stay away from the stores today, I ended up going to Future Shop after the fact to try to recover the $100 difference between what I paid for our new camcorder recently, and what they were advertised at in todays flyer.

It’s a good thing I did this, as I discovered that the sale was today only - if I had waited until tommorow to go and try to get the difference surely I would have been out of luck.

That said, they balked at giving me the refund since it was one of those famous “10 Units Per Store” sales, which according to their logic didn’t qualify me to receive the difference versus what I paid since this was “a promotional price”.

When they realized I was ready to run this one to the wall (I offered to return the camera and promptly re-buy it in order to achieve my goal) they finally saw that I wasn’t going to give up easilly, and they refunded me the difference.

However, the manager (who had to authorize the refund) didn’t fail to try to up-sell me after the fact, suggesting I buy the extended warranty. It was clearly an effort to make up some of the refund they were begrudgingly offering me, but I wasn’t going to bite.

For the fun of it I asked how much it was and wasn’t surprised to learn that it was roughly 40% of the value of the camcorder.

I casually suggested that since the camcorder I purchased was a hard drive model it was much less likely to break down when compared to traditional tape based models that have countless hundreds of moving parts.

I then politely declined the warranty.

Not ready to give up yet, she then suggested that the extended warranty was good for “more then just mechanical failures”, it also covers routine head cleaning and other maintenance.

Sorry? Head cleaning on a hard drive camcorder?

Do these people have any idea what they’re selling?

Today marked the beginning of the boxing day sales.

I had little to no interest in actually going to any of the retail stores. Based on past experiences all the good in store deals are sold out within the first hour or so - most newspaper flyers that I’ve looked at recently had plenty of “Door Crasher” specials, but if you looked closely most were limited to only a handful of each item at each store. What good is that $125 1 Terabyte external hard drive if there’s only 1 allocated per store, and none available online?

Add to that the fact that many others do actually go out and proceed to pack every store to rafters, I decided to stay away.

Instead I checked out a few of the Big-Box store websites this morning to see what was listed there.

Aside from finding out that my newly purchased Camcorder is now listed for $100 less then what I paid for it only a week ago (Grrr) I promptly found many good deals. As usual, the real-time “Quantity Available” numbers were dwindling quickly as the morning wore on. One item I was looking at (a 500 Gig USB external HD) showed 95 units available when I first looked.

A half hour later it was down to 20.

When I decided to finally buy it online I thought I was still ahead of the game when I discovered 8 remaining. I figured I had actually snapped up a great deal, one that many others would miss out on.

However, a short while ago for no apparent reason I thought I’d check the Future Shop website again to see if any new items had popped up - I was surprised to see the same external hard drive still prominently featured on the main page, and when I looked at the details again the quantity available indicator had somehow miraculously increased to over 1200 units.

Is it just me, or does this smell of an effort to create a sense of urgency during the prime AM sale hours, only to dump the real glut of available product that they had all along later in the day?

[Edit: In the time it took me to type this blog entry, another 200 units appeared...]

I picked up the new camcorder a few days ago, which ended up being a JVC MG130 hard drive model.

So far, so good, but I cannot believe some of the terrible choices that JVC made - choices that have caused allot of less then tech-savvy people to run away screaming and return it to the store they bought it from.

Primarilly this seems to be the result of JVC using a non standard “.mod” video format. I learned that this is simply a slightly modified version of the standard .mpg video format, and in many cases simply changing the file extension allows it the files to be played with many applications, but many others choke on the file, displaying the video, and no audio.

For example, on my Mac, VLC Media player will play the renamed files easilly, but the all important iMovie shows the video, but no audio.

Reportedly this is the exact same result for those on the Windows side of things, as well - versatile media players will handle the file, but a great number of video editing suites simply won’t handle it directly.

The result is what ends up being a often tedius (and seemingly unnecessary if JVC could have just adhered to some standards) conversion step before one can import the video into your video editing program of choice, and actually manipulate your video. Even the act of simply importing the video to burn it to a DVD on your computer (without actually needing or wanting to edit it) seemingly requires this extra conversion step.

With a potential for up to 30 gigabytes of video (the size of the hard drive) this can be a time consuming and space consuming process.

Along with a manual that is laden with bad translations, gramatical errors, and even one glaringly poor translation printed on the video camera itself (”IN EXTENDED USE UNIT HEAT UP THIS IS NORMAL”) one must wonder who’s making the decisions at JVC.

However, in the end, the camera takes great video, and the speedy and direct-access nature of a hard drive video camera is outweighing the inconveniences. For many others, however, this hasn’t been the case.

I posted a lengthy review at my favourite Reviews website - Epinions.com. You can find my review by clicking here, or you can read the text of my review by clicking the “More” link below.

Continue Reading »

Over the last few days I’ve been moving all of our home movies from Hi-8 cassette to DVD. I had done most of them over the years already, but when I finally sat down a few nights ago to take stock of the situation I came across several that I had not yet done.

However, one of the reasons why jobs like this have been on the back burner is that our video camera (an older JVC Hi-8 model) is on it’s last legs. Despite buying a new battery for it (at considerable cost) about 4 years ago, the battery failed again in late 2006, leaving little option except to remain tethered to a receptacle if you actually want to record anything beyond about 5 seconds in length.

Looking at the cost of another replacement battery for a camcorder which is nearing 5 or 6 years old anyways (making it decrepit at the speed of todays technology) has made me realize that it’s time to replace it, instead of fix it.

Another factor pushing us towards this was the realization a few days ago (when I started the dubbing to DVD process) that the last thing we taped was last Christmas. With so much of our lives preserved on tape, this will leave a huge gap, and unless we do something to get a new camcorder soon, the trend will only continue. Every time we sit down and watch the videos of years passed, we realize how much the camcorder is worthwhile - essential, almost.

Pictures are great, memories can be vivid, but nothing beats video.

So, in the last few days we have been scouring the flyers and catalogues looking for a replacement, but the choices are not as easy at they once were. Now one can choose from traditional tape based camcorders (which are now considered entry level and are very inexpensive) or move up to one of a multitude of alternatives - DVD camcorders, Hard Disk camcorders, or High Definition camcorders.

A HiDef camcorder would be tops on my own list for obvious reasons, but with price tags still starting in the $1000 range, it’s simply not in the budget.

A DVD camcorder would seem to make sense, but with anemic recording times (averaging about 30 minutes per disc based on what I’ve read) as well as short battery lives, I’m not sure that this is the solution either.

An entry level MiniDV or Hi8 camcorder would be the cheapest option, but since I am now interested in doing video editing on our Mac’s, many don’t offer the features necessary to facilitate this. The ones that do all have varying reviews indicating that they’re just not up to the task when it comes to transferring the resulting video from the camcorders magnetic tape to digital video for our computers.

That leaves HDD camcorders, and we seem to be focusing our attention there - they seem to offer the best bang for the buck for people like us who want versatility and the ability to directly import the results to our computers and edit or archive it. I’ll edit choice parts of many videos into nicely presentable DVD’s (iMovie, anyone?) and then simply copy the “everyday” video as it fills the hard drive and then burn it to DVD’s easily on the iMac.

My only (mostly unfounded) concern is that this leaves me without a “master” recording like I have with our old Hi8 camcorder. Currently I have not only the DVD dubs of our home movies, but also the original Hi8 tapes which I have carefully preserved. With a HDD camcorder, once recorded to DVD, there is no “originals” any longer, but since it’s a lossless process of going from HDD to DVD, this is mostly a psychological issue for me - If I have a DVD (or preferably two) burned, the video is safe. Given the large size of the original digital video from the Camcorder itself it’s unlikely I’ll keep much of the original video once it’s burned, as it would quickly fill up the hard drives on our Mac’s, so I do feel like I’m loosing the “originals” in that respect, however.

It seems like a bit of a technological leap going from my comfort with old fashioned magnetic tape to the latest and greatest HDD camcorder tech. Curiously enough making leaps like this is rarely an issue for me, but when it comes to such important things as recording our family history, the decision becomes more important, and I become more reluctant to go away from what I know, to what’s “new”.

Then again, considering I’ve taped absolutely nothing in nearly the last 12 months, it can’t be any worse, no matter what we buy.