I learned this week that “Automatic” often means “Crap” in the world of network auto negotiations – I have a new internet connection, and when I allow my modem to auto-negotiate a connection, it gets “taken for a fool” by my ISP. I guess the ISP want’s to stop me from using all of the bandwidth I pay for, so they “encourage” customers modems to auto negotiate a slower connection. Upon digging into my ADSL 2+ modems settings, I found that under the “Line Mode” option in the ADSL Parameters menu, I could FORCE my modem to negotiate the ADSL2+ connection I am paying for, instead of the slower standard generic ADSL profile my ISP sneakily seems to want the device to auto negotiate.
If your connection seems to be slow, check your ADSL Parameter settings and make sure your line mode is equivalent to the ADSL plan you are paying for.
As mentioned in THIS post, I bought a WD TV Live Hub unit a month ago, and I have been fairly happy with it so far. The premise/purpose of the unit is good, it is well featured in hardware, but the firmware/operating system is not as good as it could be, given the potential of the units hardware capabilities. I have found it to be slow, kinda clunky, and a bit frustrating when it comes to finding media quickly, as I have a large collection. The current version at time of writing is 2.07.17. Since purchasing the machine I have tried several versions of the firmware, and have settled/rolled back (using WD’s own rollback instructions and previous OS builds on the WD Firmware Rollback Page) to version 2.04.13, which in my opinion, and the WD Community opinion, seems to be the best offering so far.
Last week however, my 3 week old unit simply refused to boot. It didn’t work. I would press the power button on the remote and see the screen above, and then the unit would just turn itself off. I tried the using the power button on the unit, and it yielded the same result, automatic shut down after the loading screen. I was quiet enraged. My wife gathered up the units box, dug the receipt out, and was set to drive me back to the store to exchange the unit, when I proceeded to do what any grumpy male geek with a failing piece of technology would do – I took to it with a screwdriver, pried it open and voided the warranty!
I did learn a lot about this unit during this process though, and will share it with you now – and as always, I am sharing MY experience! Should you CHOOSE to try to replicate my experience with your device, and FAIL, it is completely your own fault, and I take no responsibility what so ever!
After Googling the symptoms, it appears that this is a VERY common problem with this unit, and the folks at WD refuse to acknowledge it as an issue. However, there is a VERY simple fix, but it does involve opening the unit. Inside the box is the main PCB (Printed Circuit Board), and there is a smaller PCB for the POWER button connected to the main PCB with a few wires. This seems odd for the power button to be on a different board, but it is a gift from god that it has been designed this way. It seems that something on the smaller power PCB, or perhaps the power button itself shorts/fails, hence as soon as you start the unit, the switch thinks its been pressed and it turns the unit off.
The cure, simply disconnect the smaller power button PCB. YES, you read correctly, just disconnect it! There is a power button on the remote you can use to switch the unit on and off anyways. The ironic part of this is that I actually found it harder to open the unit than disconnect the power button PCB. My first instinct was to crank on the thick chunky bit of plastic with the scallop shapes, but I soon learned that this was just an aesthetic, the actual lid is the thin piece above the groove in the aesthetic scallop bit.
To open the case, take your preferred case opening screwdriver and insert it between the thick bit and the thinner top panel at the back of the unit above the composite (yellow) video output.
Once you have made a gap you will see the fastening tabs that hold the lid on, and its just a matter of forcing the top upwards and gently pushing the fastening tabs towards the inside of the case. Below shows you the different types of tabs you will need to defeat to lift the lid.
Once you have the lid off, its a simple matter off locating the power button PCB, and the wires that join it to the main PCB. The power button PCB wires mount to the main PCB underneath, but the white terminal is easily visible, and requires little effort to disconnect. I just flicked it of with the screwdriver I used to open the case.
Once the wire is disconnected, you can re-fit the top panel, plug the box in again, and watch your unit boot back into that familiar home screen!
Now, if you want to win a prize (Charlie Sheen’s Tiger Blood), look closely at the photo’s in this article and be the first to comment with the reason why everybody who reads these articles should take extra special note of my disclaimers, and why Australian Geek Guys die younger than American Geeks!
Have you ever been browsing in Safari on your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad and wanted to capture a screen shot of a web page? Perhaps you have transferred some money in your bank accounts and want a quick grab of the reference number? This is actually a feature that is built right into iOS4!
To capture the screen of your device to a JPEG picture image at any time, all you have to do is hold down the “Home” button, then press the top button, and release them both together. Your screen will flash, the device will make the camera “snap/click” sound, and the screen will be saved as a JPEG image in your camera roll, to do with what you please.
I know this probably isn’t in the best taste, but I couldn’t help noticing the hand placement of the woman on the cover of At Home Tennessee magazine. Perhaps instead of calling it “The Pets Issue” it should be “The Red Rocket Issue”……
Ask anybody about their favorite episodes of Seinfeld, and the “Low Flow Shower Heads” episode is sure to be mentioned. As funny as this episode is, low flow shower heads are a reality, and I found this out first hand this week upon moving into our new house. My first shower was a dreadful, dreadful experience. On second thoughts, it can not actually be classified as a “Shower”. It was more an inadequate “Trickle”.
Now, I know we all need to conserve water, and respect the environment, and Low Flow Shower Heads help us sustain precious resources………but I am quiet sure my discharge of hot air after an inadequate shower does more damage to the ozone, so with that in mind, this is how I hacked my low flow shower heads.
**DISCLAIMER** – As stated, this is how “I” hacked “MY” shower – your system may be VERY different, and I take no responsibility should you fail catastrophically in your attempt to hack YOUR low flow shower head. This is simply an account of MY experience.
It’s not actually the “Shower Head” that is the problem. This is a DECOY phrase those “They” people use to mislead you. It’s the plastic “restricter” installed in the angled mounting piece of the arm that limits the flow of water.
Where my shower arm mounts to the wall, I found a Hexagonal shaped coupling that screws to the hot water pipes. When I screwed it off, I found the water flow through the pipe was restricted by a plastic restricter. This restricter reduces the waters ability to flow through the pipe considerably by simply “blocking” it, hence the flow of water is low.
I learned that I could easily remove the plastic restricter from the waters path by “picking” it out with a small flat blade screw driver.
Once I picked out the restricter, I remounted the arm back to the wall, and voila! I was now able to wash ALL of the shampoo out of my hair!
Have you ever been sent a video, or downloaded a video from the internet that just wont play? Isn’t it frustrating! Most times it is because the video has been encoded with a codec (compressor/decompressor) that is not on your computer, therefore your system doesn’t know how to play the file.
There are a lot of tools out there to help you with this problem, and with only a few of them, you will be able to play 99% of everything you come across easily.
Once you have downloaded and installed your codec identifier, just drag and drop your pesky video file onto it, and the identifier will analyse it and tell you everything you wanted to know about it, as well as a bunch of stuff you didn’t! Once you have identified the codecs used in creating the file, you can set about searching for it, installing it, and enjoying your video.
As mentioned in my “How to play almost any video with VLC Media Player” post HERE, you can play pretty much anything with VLC Media Player 😉 – But if you don’t want to download a new player, and you are happy using Windows Media Player, or Quicktime, there are some FREE “plugins” which add extended capabilities to your favorite media player. Windows users will definitely want to get your hands on the K-Lite codec pack. There are small, medium, and large packs, but again, 99% of everything you will want to watch will work if you install the “Standard” pack. For Mac owners, Perian is definitely the first plugin you will want. It will allow you to play AVI, XVID, DIVX, FLV and MKV straight away, and for those who want to watch Windows WMV files, Flip For Mac is the solution. If you go to their site, they will push you hard towards their paid version, but there is a free version if you go via Microsoft HERE which will do everything you want it to do.
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I learned this week that “Automatic” often means “Crap” in the world of network auto negotiations – I have a new internet connection, and when I allow my modem to auto-negotiate a connection, it gets “taken for a fool” by my ISP. I guess the ISP want’s to stop me from using all of the bandwidth I pay for, so they “encourage” customers modems to auto negotiate a slower connection. Upon digging into my ADSL 2+ modems settings, I found that under the “Line Mode” option in the ADSL Parameters menu, I could FORCE my modem to negotiate the ADSL2+ connection I am paying for, instead of the slower standard generic ADSL profile my ISP sneakily seems to want the device to auto negotiate.
