Strange Bedfellows? The Most Digital Amp Meets the Most Analog Subwoofer.

This week my wife (rockstar, clearly) completed the system I have been slowly building up over the last four years. She got us a REL T/5X subwoofer. Spoiler: it sounds amazing! I am so happy with it. It’s a great sounding, but perhaps odd, pairing with our Danish amp.

Edit 12/28: I am eating a little crow this week. There are some changes below as I switched back to the Lyngdorf DSP method.

Crow, plated

As I was trying the different ways to pair the sub with the rest of the system, the weirdness of this combination hit me. We have the “baby” Lyngdorf TDAI-1120 digital amplifier, which is a small integrated that is just about as digital a piece of audio gear as you can buy. It’s basically a computer plus DAC that has a power output stage. It’s 100% all-in digital signal processing (DSP) including not just built-in streaming, but digital room correction and EQ. It appears on our home network like a computer, and you control it through a built-in web interface.

Amplifier	Lyngdorf TDAI-1120
Turntable	U-Turn Orbit
Streamer	Home-built PC (remote, to control noise)
Speakers	Q Acoustics 3020i
Subwoofer	REL T/5X

One thing that has driven the selection of our components is that, as you can see in the photo, we are very constrained in terms of space for the “front wall” of the system. Our listening room is a small den which has four doors – two for passing through the room, but also one to a coat closet (to the left of the TV in the photo) and half bath (right). I wanted some modern, good looking speakers, but they had to be bookshelf size to fit in the available space, and ideally mobile so we could pull them out to a better location acoustically, but store them safely against the wall. The Qs and their matching stands are a perfect solution given the constraints.

Even though the 3020i’s are relatively deep for a bookshelf speaker, and ported in the back, there is no way around the physics of a small speaker. They can fill our small room and they sound pretty good, but together with the Lyngdorf amp I don’t think you would call the sound “muscular.” They can only move so much air at bass frequencies.

This is where the REL comes in, obviously. Without an unlimited budget or unlimited time to audition equipment I readily admit that I picked it on reputation and reviews, but it seemed to fit my priorities. This is a music first, two channel system that we also use for our TV. I didn’t want some booming car-audio style woofer, but something that would just fit in seamlessly, fill out the bass and not draw too much attention to itself.

The REL’s piano black finish is something to behold

We listen to a very eclectic mix of music, so I want the system to sound good with good recordings and poor recordings. My wife needs something like a live performance of Pearl Jam’s Given to Fly to totally rock, and I listen to stuff from Mandolin Orange’s super quiet acoustical work, to southern rock and Americana to Brandi Carlile’s gigantic vocals, to hip hop to classical music. Our son is a jazz musician, so lately I have been listening to a lot of jazz too. And we have no format allegiance – records, Tidal, purchased digital downloads, ripped CDs, anything goes.

Every review puts the REL T/5X in that category, and boy it delivers.

So why is this pairing strange?

The very steampunk REL wireless transmitter, Crown logo and all

I had always assumed I would use both the bass management and room correction features of the TDAI-1120 once I was able to purchase any subwoofer. But as much as this amplifier is digital, the REL is analog, all the way down to the genuinely strange three lead wire they ship with it to connect to your speaker-level binding posts.

In assembling the two together I quickly learned the details of the available methods to get a signal to the REL. The Danes (TDAI-1120) want you to reconfigure the outputs in the amp, through the web interface, to send front speaker output to the two regular channels and dedicated sub output to the RCA jack, so that their DSP can high-pass the speakers and low-pass the sub. This has the advantage of taking the burden of full-range sound off the front speakers, and the amp itself, and passing that off to the separate amp in the subwoofer.

But the Brits (REL) very, very much want you to send the full-strength speaker signal to the by now semi-famous analog crossover circuit that they provide inside the sub, bass management be damned. It’s actually almost comical how many times in both the subwoofer manual and the manual for the wireless module they try to persuade the new owner. “Just trust us. You want to use the high-level signal.” This level of repeated hints and persuasion is an effort to overcome the frankly janky/slightly scary prospect of hooking up that weird cable’s three bare wires to the speaker outputs.

So I tempered my rush to get listening and tried both methods. In case you are the one other person on the planet trying to combine these two components, here was my experience.

REL’s optional wireless setup. We need this because the sub has to go in the back corner of my room, not up front with the speakers.

The first thing I tried was the digital method, REL-manual exhortations to the contrary. I connected the left preamp RCA output (the sub out) from the Lyngdorf to the REL wireless transmitter’s RCA Low Frequency Effects “LFE” input. From there the signal goes wirelessly to the subwoofer and acts as if it were plugged into the LFE input on the unit itself. According to the manual I thought this should bypass the internal crossover circuit and allow the Lyngdorf to tailor the signal to the right range of frequencies. This was a mistake, I think, but more about that later.

Edit: Narrator: This was not, in fact, the mistake. There was a mistake made, but it was a different mistake.

Here I have to insert an aside and just say the connection of these components is not helped by the alphabet soup of different connections and acronyms. The back of the REL unit is a little baffling. However, the paper manual in the box is somewhat helpful in decoding them, though I had to read it over a few times. If you follow the setup procedures, then the strange language (high level, low level, LFE, Low .1, High/Low Level, Home Theater Reference etc.) does start to make sense. So do read the directions!

Sweet, Sweet Digital Bass Management

I went through the Lyngdorf setup routine as if the system had two front speakers and a separate subwoofer, basically making the design on the amp’s web interface mimic the physical speakers. I set the crossover points for both, appropriate to the bottom range of the front speakers, 80 hz. I then ran through the room correction routine, with the Lyngdorf’s mic sampling the room. This is the textbook setup that would align with the philosophy on the Danish/digital side of this divide.

The result was … not great. There was a lot of low range bass, but it was boom-y and intrusive, and there was a gap between the low frequencies and the midrange of the music. I want to be clear, though, that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the DSP bass management or the REL – it’s more a disagreement between these two components. But sound is sound, and this was not sounding right.

Edit: This was actually the mistake!

Here’s what happened. I was in a bit of a rush, but sub integration takes time. I put this together quickly, and then played one of my favorite tracks, a live performance of Whiskey Legs from the Tedeschi Trucks band. As it turns out, and after a whole lot more listening to different tracks and genres, and reading up, I have concluded that that specific recording has something unique going on with it, perhaps an interaction with the room, the placement of the sub, or unusual EQ. That caused this outsized booming bass kick drum.

I have since changed course and returned to connecting the REL with the LFE input, through the REL wireless module.

OK, OK, Hook up That Weird Cable.

My next attempt involved a deep breath and that three lead, speaker level REL cable. Here I have to note that Lyngdorf warns against connecting a high level signal of this type, so proceed here at your own risk.

First I looked online to double check what you really are supposed to do when unpacking the thing, because it has this strange arrangement of insulation on the end. I am really glad I did. This video is helpful in explaining what the arrangement of insulation on the wires is about:

Using the technique in the video above, I connected the REL wiring to the Lyngdorf left and right red binding posts and the black wire to the phono ground screw, as suggested in their instructions for digital amps.

I then plugged the finished end of the REL cable into the jack on their wireless transmitter and removed the RCA subwoofer-dedicated cable. (When I turned it on, I was getting a hum from the sub at this point, which I was able to track down to failing to rotate the blue plug in the jack to seat it fully – you have to turn it about 1/4 turn until it fully locks in place.)

At this point what you have to do with the Lyngdorf is a little counter intuitive. You have to pretend the sub does not exist and put it back into the original two-channel, front-speakers-only, full range setup:

Yep, according to the Lyngdorf, the sub should not exist.

The reason is that the REL will “lift” the full range of music off of the speaker cable signal. If you were to specify that there’s a sub or high-pass the front speakers, which means filtering out bass, then the sub will not “see” the low end of the audio signal.

Having done this, a sample of music sounded much better. It was more like the sub was just reinforcing everything instead of going BOOM BOOM with every kickdrum hit.

Now we were closer. I made some adjustments to the level and the crossover physically with the knobs on the back of the REL, by ear. It’s doing all the crossover work at this point. Then I re-ran the RoomPerfect room correction software with the Lyngdorf mic.

You may be wondering, without using the digital signal processing (DSP) bass management feature, can you still use the room correction function, and the answer is absolutely yes. The three speakers (left, right, and sub) just act as if they were some setup of two-channel audio with more capable bass, perhaps a set of bigger floor-standing speakers. Room correction and bass management are not mutually exclusive.

So now these two are sounding amazing together. Chocolate and peanut butter, or whatever analogy you want to apply.

In retrospect, and apologies if I don’t get all the engineering right here, I think this is the issue:

The REL itself, using hard wiring, has a total of three types of input, confusingly named Low Level Input, High Level Input, and Low Level .1 Low Frequency Effects (LFE). Further, the three inputs are presented in two “groups:” Low Level Input alone, and High Level Input and Low Level .1 Low Frequency Effects (LFE) together, which are named in combination as REL Theater Reference.

Low Level Input

This is one of two RCA connections, and this would be the one to use bass management from a digital device like the Lyngdorf or a Blue Sound device, etc. But it’s not supported by the wireless interface, so I don’t think this is an option for me given my room.

Edit: This is basically correct except for the comment that this input is preferred. It’s the LFE input below that is best for bass management using the amplifier.

High Level Input*

This is the speaker level input and cannot be used with bass management in the amplifier. It can only use the built in crossover in the REL. But that crossover is excellent, so functionally this works really well, even with a digital amp.

Edit: This is not supported by Lyngdorf and (my assumption) could void your warranty. REL seems to continue recommending it though.

Low Level .1 LFE*

This is the other RCA connection, but it is specifically for home theater bass effects and does not work well for music.

(However, it is supported through the wireless interface in case you wanted to use it for watching movies, etc. The theory is not to use this connection or the High Level for music, but rather for home theater to use this with the High Level input, when your amp has a “.1” bass channel specifically for movies, and the movie soundtrack as a .1 channel. My amp is only 2 channel and has no home theater aspirations.)

Edit: Here my understanding was really incomplete. Take two.

LFE is confusing because it means two subtly different things. The real/original meaning of Low Frequency Effects (LFE) is that it’s the name of a channel in home theater audio multichannel audio signals. This is sometimes called “point one” or “dot one” from home theater labels like 5.1 channel surround sound. The idea is to have a movie with a dedicated channel for low bass, to handle explosions and helicopters and such.

The second and perhaps less correct meaning of LFE is that it’s a label on an input to a subwoofer (or a setting on the input controls of a subwoofer). On the REL itself and on the REL wireless transmitter there is a jack called .1 LFE. While thought of as being designed to connect to this home theater channel, what this in fact means is “bypass the sub crossover and pass the signal straight from the amplifier.”

This excellent Lyngdorf video talks about the LFE channel, and cleared this up for me: https://youtu.be/HfpVMgXcFd0?feature=shared&t=75

With regard to the REL, the .1 LFE input has only a 120hz and above filter on it, which is not harmful, and the reason for it is explained in the video above. It also has a dedicated volume knob. The important thing is it bypasses the other REL crossover circuitry, actually making it perfect for integrating a sub using the amplifier’s bass management, despite the label.

A better label for this physical input might be “unmodified signal up to 120 hz.”

*Only two out of the three input methods, the ones shown in blue and together called REL Theater Reference are supported by the REL wireless connection.

In Summary

So what I think this means is that you have to choose between either:

• Running wirelessly, not using your amplifier’s digital bass management
• Or running an RCA cable from your amp’s subwoofer out to the REL Low Level Input, which would enable bass management.

Edit: This was only partially correct. Better:

• Running wirelessly over the sub input labeled “.1 LFE” but using that to carry the bass-managed signal from the amplifier to the sub. Ignore the label, and understand it to mean “unmodified signal from the amplifier up to 120 hz”
• Running an RCA cable from your amplifier preamp output to the sub and not using the amplifier’s bass management, using the sub’s physical analog controls for crossover. You cannot high-pass your front speakers this way, but that might be fine depending on the details of the speakers.
• Taking a risk of damaging the amp, per Lyngdorf, and connecting the high level path through the REL wireless connection. I didn’t experience any damage from doing this out of ignorance, and it did sound really good, but there is probably a reason for the manufacturer’s warnings, and having slept on it I decided I don’t like taking the risk.

But you can’t have it both ways, I don’t think.

Happy listening

This Mandolin Orange record, recorded live at the Moody Theater in Austin, is a great one

Getting Exceptional Sound from Windows 10

I had a breakthrough this week! It’s tempting to write some sort of clickbait-y headline (Wait Until You See This One Trick for Audiophile Sound from Windows!) but I will resist. Still, I told my wife it feels like I just improved the stereo by $300, without spending a dime.

The setup we have is sort of a mid-range thing I have been assembling over several years, keeping to a tight budget:

• The HTPC (original subject of this blog) is my audio streamer via Tidal and Plex, with a decent home theater video card from NVIDIA that can output quality digital sound
• A Denon AVR S640H receiver
• Q Acoustics 3020i stand-mount speakers
• A TV and a U-Turn turntable (irrelevant for our purposes today)

It sounded good to my uneducated ears, perhaps even very good, but not like “WOW that sound image is incredible.” I learned from Steve “Audiophiliac” Guttenberg to keep on fiddling (with settings, room placement, etc.) before assuming more money is required, so I kept after it.

There was indeed a magic combination of settings. When I hit upon this it was truly a WOW moment.

Step 1: Audyssey

The Denon has a room correction system called Audyssey, with a mic to configure it. I ran that, but the settings are super cryptic, and so I fiddled with all the settings and even A/B comparison with manual EQ. The best setting for the room and the music I like seemed to be with Audyssey on using its sampled room correction, but set to their “Flat” profile instead of the “Reference” profile. Reference seemed to roll off some of the upper end, and in folk music I enjoy like Mandolin Orange, it created a slightly closed-in or muffled sound.

Setup > Audyssey > MultEQ -> Flat

Step 2: HiFi Source

Fairly basic, but you’ll need a CD-quality source. In Tidal this means verifying the stream preference is set to HiFi. In Plex, which I use to play back locally stored music files, it’s a matter of ensuring you have lossless format music files (ALAC, FLAC) when possible.

Step 4: Remote the PC

PCs are noisy with fans and drives; I relocated ours out of hearing in a nearby closet, and ran the wiring inside the wall. Control happens with Bluetooth/wireless mouse.

Step 3: Bypassing Windows System Audio

This was my breakthrough this week. Things were sounding “sort of pretty good” but I was honestly shocked at the difference this next change made. In Windows 10 there’s a setting to allow or prohibit exclusive access for a single application to the audio output*. It seemed innocuous enough to me – I had set this to OFF in order to allow us to eliminate a remote by controlling audio volume at the PC. BUT, for lossless audio a side effect of this is that the sound signal is piped through the Windows system audio libraries and resampled, in order to possibly be mixed with other sounds from the OS or applications. I had shrugged this off but it turns out to be hugely important – running the signal through Windows instead of allowing applications to pipe it straight and unaltered to the receiver resulted in an audible loss of quality.

Start menu > Type “Sound” > Open the Sound Settings

Pick your receiver output and then click Device Properties

Click Additional Device Properties

Click the Advanced tab

Ensure Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device is ON

Click OK & dismiss all the sound settings

Switch to the Tidal application and click on the speaker icon in the bottom right corner, then (More Settings):

Turn on Exclusive Mode

If you are a Plex user, there’s a similar setting. Open Plex and click on the Settings icon, then choose Player

In Player, turn OFF Normalize and turn ON Exclusive Audio:

I hope someone out there using a PC for streaming gets some use out of this. I made this change, and on my system, anyway, it was a revelation.

Cheers.

* Here I need to clarify that there are two-three ways for high quality audio to get “out” of your computer: USB stream, HDMI (PCM) or Optical. With the equipment I have HDMI (PCM) is the best option. My receiver doesn’t have the capability to accept USB, and HDMI is a better setup for me logistically than Optical.

HiFiBerry Amp2 Full Assembly

Hi all – I recently did some shopping around for a way to revive some older, but high quality, loudspeakers that have been retired from our main entertainment system. After encouragement from John Darko’s videos (and especially here) I found the most economical way to get the setup I wanted might be to get one of the Raspberry Pi-based HiFi audio streamers. It’s essentially a tiny computer on a credit card sized board, with a dedicated, high quality sound card that sits on top.

There is a wide, maybe even bewildering variety of individual components in this arena including streamers/transports, digital-analog converters (DAC) and amplifiers. The descriptions of all these things can definitely be cryptic until you get familiar with the functions involved. What I was after was a compact, economical, all in one solution such that I could just take these old speakers and play audio on them from internet services such as Tidal and Spotify. In gadget-speak that means:

1. A streamer to pull music files from the internet
2. A digital-to-analog converter (DAC) to convert the digital music to a stereo signal
3. An amplifier to power the speakers

Consumer devices that do all of this at HiFi quality are available, for example, the Bluesound Powernode 2i, but they can get quite expensive if they have all these functions – network streaming, DAC and amplifier – or if you have to buy several separate components.

After comparing a few options I ordered a HiFiBerry Amp2 bundle from Switzerland, honestly based on the fact it comes with a decent case. Instructions for how to assemble it and details about it were a little sparse, so I decided to make a really detailed walkthrough and complete set of photos here.

Full disclosure – this is definitely a DIY kit project sort of thing, and not a ready-to-run consumer device. If you like fiddling and feel comfortable building things, though, it’s great. You’ll need some computer savvy and basic assembly skills (nuts, bolts and stripping speaker wire; no soldering). This post covers the physical assembly of the device. I may do another with the software setup at some later date.

This photo shows the most important, but not all, the components that come in the bundle:

1. Standard Raspberry Pi 4B computer (green, bottom right)
2. Two-piece black metal case (the Pi is shown sitting in the bottom half of the case)
3. Heat sink to keep the computer CPU cool (the black sort of waffle-looking thing)
4. The magic bit: the HiFiBerry Amp2 sound card (black) which combines a clean power supply, a DAC and a small but powerful amplifier all in one
5. Nuts, bolts and rubber feet

Not pictured:

1. A special power supply that plugs into the sound card but powers the whole device, instead of the standard USB-C power.
2. A micro-SD card to act as the machine’s “hard drive.”

So here’s how it goes together. First the Raspberry Pi gets mounted to the bottom half of the metal case with four small screws.

Next we put four stand-offs on the black Amp2 card, from which the card will “hang” from the top half of the case

With those in place, the card is mounted to the case top with four screws. Shown is the top of the case, upside down on the table, with the sound card installed.

Next the heat sink sticks to the CPU with peel-and-stick adhesive. This is an extremely tight fit, and I had to be careful to allow enough clearance along the row of pins (GPIO) at right for the sound card to plug in safely.

The next step is probably one rough spot: very carefully, taking care not to bend any of the pins that connect the sound card, nor break the headphone jack, the two halves of the case get pressed together. This means the pins on the Pi get inserted into the corresponding sockets on the sound card.

The result is a nice, if simple, tiny all-in-one, about the size of a box of kitchen matches

Assembly complete, how do you hook this up? This end of the device has USB and a network jack. You can use wired network, or it’s simple to turn on the wifi and stream from the internet wirelessly.

This side of the device has the “clean” power supply jack (the large round one). To the right of that there are six small porthole-looking openings. The first two are alternative power supply connections, and the other four are your speaker connections. Below are the four standard Pi interfaces: USB-C, two HDMI and headphone jack. When this is running, only the top row is used. It’s, in fact, prohibited to power the Pi using the “normal” power brick method through the USB-C connection.

The top of the device has openings for set screws that clamp the speaker wires in place. The other four black screws are the ones holding the sound card in place.

Wiring the speakers to this was definitely a bit of a stunt. If I rewind here to a photo of the sound board, you can see where the speakers connect, at bottom right (+ – – +). The challenge here is that these terminals are plastic/insulated, but the case is metal and seems prone to shorting if there’s bare speaker wire in contact with it.

The trick with wiring the speakers, and this is my least favorite feature, was to very carefully trim the cable end to a length where the wire insulation could pass through the openings in the case and prevent the wires from touching it. I have 10 gauge speaker wire and I think that is absolutely the maximum that will fit in the openings.

Here’s the result after quite a bit of wrangling to stuff the insulation through the openings.

The final setup is nice looking, but can also be discretely hidden away

Possibly tune in next time for the software setup (I used piCorePlayer) or check out Mr. Darko’s video about that.

Giant. TV. Plus Fixing It.

You know that old joke, “If the Black Box can survive a plane crash, why isn’t the whole plane made of that stuff?” Well, hold that thought, and we’ll come back to it in a minute.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, my wife and I finally gave in, after many years, and bought a shiny new 55″ LED TV. It feels completely, over the top indulgent. Our old TV was a 22 inch thing that served us well but would not exactly wow anyone with an immersive theater experience.

After reading reviews, I was completely stoked to buy this last-of-the-plasma TVs from Best Buy. It was an epic deal, and the TV gets astonishing ratings for picture quality. It was deeply discounted.

Unfortunately, two hours of effort by web and phone ended with the realization that that TV is advertised, but you cannot actually buy one. Very sad.

Second best is still pretty good: we settled on a Vizio M Series 55 inch after reading online recommendations that said, essentially, the full backlight array of dimming LEDs gives the best picture for the money and comes close to plasma. Once we got it last Friday – and we’re not really TV people – we were astonished at the picture quality. I mean, “Wow.” We watched The Empire Strikes Back to break it in, so to speak, and I have never seen such a realistic picture. It was quite literally like being on the set with the cameraman, watching the actors live. It is so good, in fact, that some of the special effects and props even lose a little magic because you can see like every paintbrush mark on the mattes.

Problem

In our euphoria, after the movie, we turned off the TV. It would not turn back on again.

This would have been disappointing in any case, but after this life-altering, staggering movie experience we were seriously bummed. I was dreading the inevitable thoughts of returning the TV, trying to choose yet another one, wondering if that would also have this problem.

I was able, with a few hours of troubleshooting, to isolate this behavior: the TV would power on one time, and work correctly, but if the HDMI source was plugged in, it would not power on a second time. If I unplugged both the HDMI cable from the HTPC and the power, then hooked it all back together, the TV would work. But only once. If you turn it off, it won’t come back on.

An email to Vizio yielded the typical canned response, reset the power system by holding this and that button for 30 seconds. No help.

An online chat with Vizio to live troubleshoot also did not yield anything. The woman helping was super nice, but we just went through a factory reset and reproducing the issue, with no solution.

Of course, being the IT guy, I have reasonable google-fu. I rationalize that this had to be an HDMI problem, and probably had to do with the handshake that two devices do when they connect, to negotiate settings and resolution and so on. I located some other people online who had vaguely similar issues, especially with PCs connected to TVs: missing picture, missing sound, and so on. But not this exact power issue.

On a whim, though, many of those articles recommended this gadget called a Gefen HDMI Detective, and I decided to buy one through Amazon and just see if it would fix the issue. It’s a tiny box, about half the size of a deck of playing cards. What it does, in layman’s terms, is spoof the target for an HDMI connection, so that the source sees the box instead of the TV behind it. You plug the TV into one side and the HTPC into the other side and it makes the HTPC believe that the signature of the TV (EDID – Extended Display Identification Data) is always present, even if the TV is off.

(Undisclaimer – I have no relationship with Gefen whatsoever. YMMV.)

GEFEN HDMI Detective

I am please to report that I have luck or Karma or something going today, because this little guy fixed the issue entirely. What must have been happening is that when the TV is switched off, while the HTPC stays running, it disappears from the point of view of the HTPC. When powered back on, there is some incompatibility in the handshake that would normally be required between the TV and the HTPC. Our old TV negotiated that without any issue, but the new TV, for whatever reason, doesn’t.

So, we have this amazing new TV, and now the important ability to turn it on and off at will. Win!

Black Box

Back to the airline joke. If whatever is in this little black box solves this HDMI handshake issue why don’t all TVs just have that thing built in?

But Which UI?

A ten-foot UI, which implies both a “big view” and a remote, is required to make using a home theater enjoyable. This moment in time is filled with amazing options, but also pain, as media platforms and devices shift around. There are really two issues are bound together: the large-format display and remote control have to work seamlessly together. They also have to work with the physical devices we have, like TVs and Receivers, which seems simple, but these devices still have a long way to go before they really converge.

On the software side, the viable options are plain Windows 8, using the Start screen and apps, third-party applicaitons like Plex Home Theater and XBMC or Windows Media Center. For remotes, it feels like we are at this pivot point where Infrared will die soon – but very slowly – and smart phones will take over.

What I think this boils down to in the HTPC realm is:

• We need a ten-foot display, and there are some – but on Windows, things are complicated. Media Center is dying off, the Windows 8 Start menu / Windows Store Apps sort of work, but with gaps. The third-party options like Plex Home Theater or XBMC are interesting, but finicky, and they don’t always keep pace with all the delivery channels. Everything is in flux. It’s an exciting time, but it’s impossible to create a unified user experience today.
• We need a decent remote control, too. Good old infrared (IR) remotes are pervasive, but also antiquated. They remain ubiquitous for the non-PC devices we use like TVs. On the other hand, there are really interesting inroads using phones and WiFi instead, which, long term, seems like a much better and more reliable platform, but they can’t control the other devices outside the PC. I bought Unified Remote, and it’s pretty amazing – but it won’t change the source on my receiver or turn off the TV. I was desperately hopeful for CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) that would enable devices to control each other over HDMI, but infighting among vendors has all but made that DOA.

MCE is in Hospice, but Windows 8 is a Teenager

The first pain point here is that Media Center is wonderful – it might be the best TV-like, ten-foot UI ever. But it’s dying.

Beautiful, Extensible Ten-Foot UI that Nobody is Building For

This is what stings: Media Center is expensive, and beautiful, and has the architecture to be extended with Netflix or HULU or VUDU or Amazon Prime – but nobody is really building that. So today it has great support for TV and movies, but if you buy Media Center expecting this wonderful ecosystem of add-ins for modern media delivery, it’s just not there. There are odds and ends that people have built as shareware, but they are extremely brittle. There is a Netflix plugin (shown) but it’s old and dead and doesn’t support even passable image quality or surround sound like their Win 8 app.

Windows 8 touch-designed apps, even the much maligned start screen, nearly works as an HTPC UI – the tiles are big enough, and it can launch window-less apps, which is really what you want for a TV. It is extensible, but in the form of complete apps instead of add-ins. But:

Dude, where’s my remote?

The Store Apps (FKA Metro) UI would be wonderful for the HTPC, if only it supported a remote control. More on this in a sec.

Other solutions also exist, including Plex Home Theater and XBMC (Now Kodi). I tried them both, just to educate myself. Plex is pretty amazing, and we use it. The most magical thing it does is “throw” media to practically any device. But these are open-source projects, and they are rough around the edges. They can be tough to configure correctly, and my experience has been the add-on apps vary in quality from fair to poor. None of these theater UI applications seems to cover all the functions of an HTPC well – from broadcast TV to disks to online services like Amazon or HULU or Apple iTunes Store. At least not yet.

So, there are choices galore, and at this moment no clear winning solution. One measure of what is available is just to watch and see what we really use at our house.

Among our activities I’d say the features that get the most use are Windows Media Center for TV and conventional movies, the Win 8 Netflix app, YouTube, Rhapsody, and Apple services for rentals either through iTunes or Apple TV for movies that aren’t available on Netflix, and occasionally Plex. (Minecraft, obviously, but that’s another category altogether :-).

Amazon Prime and Steam pop up maybe once a month or so. Every couple of months I rip a few movies with Handbrake for the media library.

What gets used has to do with both what people want to see and how hard it is to get to that content with all the different solutions, so in an indirect way it becomes a measure of the quality of the software.

The 2000s Answer Still Works. Kinda.

How many times have you pointed the ol’ remote at the TV and pressed buttons just to have a lag, or miss, or “repeat yourself” by mashing on buttons. Picked up the wrong remote? IR is basically a 1980s or 1990s technology still hanging around, but it does still work. It’s main advantage, and probably it’s Achilles heel, is that it’s so deeply built into all this traditional equipment we have.

Ye Olde Remotes

So, the traditional approach for HTPC is to make that IR tech work with a modern PC. Some machines, like Macs, have an IR receiver built in and a remote as an option. Others, like my home-built HTPC, add a creepy little eye like this one, on the end of a cable, to receive the IR signal from an old-school remote:

IR Eyeball

The good news is that these can be made to work – and they are genuinely useful, even today. You can sit in the LayZBoy, aim a remote at the PC and do TV-ish things. The bad news is that it takes this special hardware and hacks to set it up, and it’s still IR. There is pervasive wireless tech like WiFi available, today, so problems like requiring line of sight to the TV, and the kludgey proposition of converting IR signal codes into keystrokes that get passed to applications feels more and more antiquated to me as time passes.

In any case, I got a media center remote (pictured) with the TV tuner card as a bundle, and it was really interesting to see how it works and set it up. I even customized the remote configuration (See how) to do some special things like switch the PC’s source to Apple TV and back using a remote button. The instructions, though, are symptomatic of the age of this technology: they all start with phrases like, “First you need to locate the remote.ini file in ‘C:\Windows’ and open it.” I had to decode the format of this text-based INI file and use a process of trial and error to customize the function for a button. In my twisted world that can be fun, but it’s not what you’d call a modern consumer experience.

The good news is, in the short or medium term, this tech still drives other equipment like TVs and receivers, so it’s a bit more seamless to turn things on and off or change sources. Other technology like WiFi remotes can’t really do this yet. That means, for some, “Universal” remotes like Harmony are interesting, but the flavors that still use IR are both enabled and hamstrung by the basic IR platform. Programming remotes, or IR blasters and repeaters … yeah. Ugh. Logitech has branched out into hybrid solutions that incorporate WiFi, but I feel like this tech is dying off.

Some modern things flatly don’t work, like controlling the Windows 8-native Netflix app. That app is fantastic, but as far as I can tell there’s just no IR remote support, and perhaps not even plans for any. Everything in flux.

The Future is Close

As soon as non-computer devices can catch up, like TVs, WiFi remote control will probably take over. It’s so much better in every way – it does not require line of sight, it allows a controlling application to choose a device to work with using a network identity, so there’s no problem of cross talk where one IR device accidentally affects the wrong target. It’s software, not hardware. It has really nice mouse and keyboard functions. All win.

WiFi, Software Universal Remote

I installed Unified Remote, which is made by a small Swedish company – more evidence of my private theory that most good things come from Sweden. In the sphere where it can work, which is admittedly limited to the computer itself, this is amazing, and probably what the future will be across more devices. It does just what one would expect – it turns your smart phone into a remote control. What sets this apart is that it’s a universal remote app, not tied to any specific program on the PC (unlike a dedicated Plex remote app for the phone, for example). Really interesting. It works well, except for the need to change “context” in the remote app itself, from the controls for one program to the controls for another.

As I alluded to earlier, the Netflix app for Windows 8, which is required for HD and surround sound, can’t use an IR remote – but it can use this one from my phone, handily.

What’s Next?

Predicting the future is always a dangerous game, but having worked with all these products, I think:

• Windows Media Center still works today, but is going to die off or have to be reinvented. It’s expensive, and the ecosystem is gone. Still, it remains one of the best options for the basics of watching television, blu-ray, DVDs and a library of movies using a ten-foot UI and remote. The architecture is there to add functionality (e.g. the Netflix module) but, tragically, that space is dead. Nobody is making stuff to connect media center to all the amazing new media sources. If you buy it, don’t expect it to deliver on the promise of integrating new media. That makes me sad – there is a chance Microsoft will reinvest and update this for the new world, but they might not.
• Windows 8+ inbuilt features could take over, if the Windows 8 app arena grows to cover most of the new media options. The Netflix app is a great example. On the other hand, iTunes is emphatically not.
• Plex and XBMC, er, Kodi will keep improving. If they can negotiate the minefield of IP restrictions and agreements with networks (Amazon, ABC, NBC, HBO, CBS, ESPN, etc.) they could be contenders. My worry is that they won’t be able to do that, and things will continue as they are, where channels or plugins basically just scrape the web, and as a consequence break periodically.
• It’s possible, sadly, that appliances like Roku are so convenient that they kill this space off altogether except for hobbyists like me. That would be a shame.

If you are going down this HTPC path, I guess my advice would be this – on the software front, if you really watch TV in the conventional way, and DVR shows, etc. then get Windows Media Center. If not, skip it and save the $100, and use Windows 8 features, supplemented by Plex, instead.

On the remote control side, you definitely need one, but perhaps skip the IR remote options and go for a universal software remote like Unified Remote. Unless you really have a compelling need to power on and off the TV itself or change sources using a universal IR remote like a Logitech Harmony, the IR remote, while it works, isn’t that great.

Put another way, if you just have an HTPC as your dedicated media hub, without other sources, then maybe manipulating the other devices isn’t so important, and you can skip all the headaches of an IR remote.

A cheap USB keyboard and mouse, though, is worth the money for the occasional times when the phone soft-remote just can’t accomplish what you need.

In any case, the new HTPC has been a fantastic way to negotiate all this change without throwing away and replacing physical devices like Apple TV or Roku boxes, etc. Exciting times!

Build

I just finished a final update to the HTPC, and it reminded me I am supposed to be blogging :-). While I had the case open I took a few photos, so I thought I’d put together an overview of the build.

This is sort of an old-school tower PC. I wanted my two boys to be able to work on it as they have interest, and maybe add things in the future, so to me it made some sense to go with a tower rather than trying to make the machine compact. There is a lot of empty space inside the case, and if I were doing a more design-y living room HTPC I would definitely go for a smaller and more attractive case — but this is half HTPC and half kids’ hobby kit, so a tower it is.

I found the lease-offensive affordable case at Microcenter came from Thermaltake. The quality is only fair, but the case is very practical and has been really easy to work on. I don’t need to be too precious with it, which is nice.

Overview Photo

The machine is built around an ASRock motherboard that is designed for home theater, with features like 7.1 channel surround sound, HDMI plus an HDMI pass-through, and optical audio out. The motherboard has built-in storage interfaces including 6 SATA3 ports and 9 USB3 ports that will allow plenty of movie and photo storage options without any need for a separate disk controller and such. I am just using the integrated graphics on the CPU (Intel Haswell processors improved integrated graphics dramatically) so there’s no video card.

Broadcast TV is pulled from the air and rendered by a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR card, which also came with an infrared remote control. Working with Windows Media Center, this provides DVR-like functions including scheduled recording, pausing and rewinding live TV without a separate box like a TiVO or DVR.

The big disks are a media library but also act as a central backup location for all our computers, using Crashplan’s computer-to-computer function.

Key Components (Shopping List!)

Motherboard	ASRock Z87 Pro4
Processor	Intel Haswell Core i5 4670K
Memory	8 GB RAM whose brand I cannot even remember. Amazing how this is a commodity now.
OS Drive	Samsung 120 GB SATA3 SSD
Media Drives	3 x 3 TB 7,200 RPM disks made into a single drive by RAID 5 / Windows Storage Spaces (6 TB net usable)
Case	Thermaltake V3 Black Edition “Black coating makes stylish inside look?” Um, whatever.
Tuner	Hauppauge Win-TV 2250 kit with remote control
Network	We are in an old wiring-challenged house, so this uses a tiny USB dongle that provides WiFi 802.11n to our Asus RT-N66U router
Peripherals	2 x Microsoft Xbox Wireless Game Controllers for Windows
	Super Cheap(R) Logitech Wireless Mouse/Keyboard Combo
	Windows Media Center Remote, bundled with the TV card
	Boosted Leaf indoor TV antenna

I have to say that building this thing was surprisingly easy. Everything today is pretty modular and standardized, so with just a bit of care choosing components and asking some questions, a machine like this just comes together. USB, SATA3 and HDMI make life so simple. I had just a few bumps in the road.

I will date myself here, but I thought the coolest parts were:

• The storage is so easy today: SATA3, with six ports right on the motherboard, meant disks are basically plug and play. RAID setup with Windows 8 Storage Spaces for the three 3 TB media drives I got was ridiculously easy. Six TB of space! SIX!
• The ASRock HDMI passthrough is sweet. I was able to program a blue button on the Media Center Remote that will toggle the signal going to the TV from the PC display to our Apply TV and back.
• The wifi networking is embedded inside a tiny USB dongle. I’m not sure how, but it works.
• USB! Humble USB. I remember before we had that. <Shudder>

Here are some more photos for the hardware geeks:

 

Dust proves this gets real use :-). The Intel i5 processor is obviously behind the Intel fan.

The WinTV card is center/left. The TV antenna and the remote control receiver plug right into it from the back of the machine. It uses one or optionally two slots, one for the main board and a second that adds more i/o options. Interestingly, it has its own chips onboard to convert the incoming TV video signal to something Windows-friendly, faster than the CPU could.

 

The tower case holds all the disks without issue. Top to bottom, on the right, are the Blu-ray, the SSD for Windows and programs, then three 3TB disks that are presented in Windows as one giant Media drive. The one extra trip I had to make to the store was for the bracket to adapt the small SSD to the big slot provided by the case.

The ASRock board provides more than enough output options (top). The machine is connected to the TV by HDMI and to our home theater “receiver,” which is a cheap home theater-in-a-box, by Optical Audio (aka TOSLink) for surround sound. I was actually amazed that the surround works: not only with Blu-ray and DVD, but Netflix, Apple and other streaming services’ HD movies often come with Dolby 5.1 surround, and when this is connected correctly, it does produce true surround sound.

That tiny “Tenda” USB dongle, somehow, is full 802.11n wireless networking.

At the bottom you can see the two components of the TV tuner. The antenna connects to the coax port on the bottom right, and the remote control receiver plugs in at bottom left.

So, this is where my Cable TB subscription savings went. Still, it’s been really fun to tinker with, and my boys are learning a lot.

So Far

It probably seems silly, but I thought it might help to post what I’ve been able to make the home theater PC actually do before the deep dive into how. Skip ahead for tables of features below. This post is hype-free, showing what I personally really use and have working.

Each of the features I got to work has a wildly varying user experience: some things were simple to install and work well in the living room with the necessary 10-foot UI. Some things work but were painful to set up, or the experience of using them in the living room is less pleasant. In the tables below I’m putting a purely subjective score for made-up metrics L.R.E. (Living Room Experience) and S.U.E. (Setup Experience). A high bar for these is this: was a product simple and elegant to install, and did it do what it said it would? Could I then just sink into a recliner across the room and play or watch or listen? Or did I spend an hour reinstalling, or messing with INI files, or discovering the fancy-sounding plugin didn’t really work?

What I took away here is obvious but maybe underappreciated: the physical environment for using the home theater makes a huge difference. Applications with UIs that can’t use a remote, or where you can’t see what you are doing from across the room, quickly become annoying. Some of these applications are truly amazing pieces of tech and fit this scenario well, but at the same time others were a real challenge to install, or require a black belt in hacking to use.

So, here’s what One Guy’s HTPC can do so far:

Feature	Using	S.U.E.	L.R.E.
Watch TV	Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 TV tuner card controlled by Windows Media Center, with a boosted antenna.	A+, yet C-*	A+
Eliminate Cable	We cut the cord!	B	B
Onscreen TV Guide	TV tuner card plus Windows Media Center has a cable-like guide built in.	A+	A+
Record TV	TV tuner card plus Windows Media Center has a DVR/TiVo-like function built in.	A+	A+
Watch DVDs	Internal LG Blu-ray/DVD drive controlled by Windows Media Center.	A+	A+
Watch Blu-ray Disks	Internal LG Blu-ray/DVD drive but with separate software disrupting the experience.*	C+	C+
Watch Personal Media Files (Movies stored as files in a central library)	Windows Media Center plus metadata manually added with Media Center Master and Plex with automatic metadata. Plex has a client installed right inside Media Center.	C	A-
Rip DVDs to files	Handbrake	C	B
Play Personal Music Files	Windows Media Center playing iTunes library files or iTunes playing same iTunes library files.	B+	B+
Listen to the Radio	Windows Media Center with the TV Tuner card had a surprise in store: FM Radio.**	A+	A+
“Throw” Movies to Other Devices	Plex. Plex’s features in this area are astonishing.	B	B
“Throw” Music to Other Devices	iTunes + Airplay + Airport Express boxes. (Yes, really. From a PC.)	B	B
Watch Netflix	Windows Media Center has a not-so-great plugin. See Apple TV section below.
Watch YouTube	Windows Media Center has a not-so-great plugin. See Apple TV section below.
Watch Amazon Prime Streaming and Purchased Movies	Windows Media Center with Amazon plugin, plus Amazon Unbox utility, plus Media Center Master. Not elegant. DRM problems.	D+	B-
Watch Web Media using the Browser	Browser with wireless keyboard and mouse.****	A	C-
Watch Web Media using a dedicated UI	Plex has plugins for web content that are great when they work, but often they don’t.	C	B
Rent Apple Movies	iTunes	A+	C-
Play games	Steam’s Big Picture feature + two wireless Xbox controllers = multiplayer games.	C-	B+
Minecraft	Minecraft works using a wireless keyboard and mouse.	C-	B+
Minecraft Server		C-	B+
Remote	TV Tuner card package came with a Media Center remote and IR onboard.***	D	B+

* The Windows Media Center integration with this tuner card was great and worked the first time. Their bundled software, however, leaves a lot to be desired, and I ultimately removed it.
** This seems obvious in hindsight, but I had a “wow!” moment when I realized I could pause and replay live radio. Freaky!
*** I’ve been trying, only partly successfully, to make the Media Center remote the only required remote. It works for most things but there are still major gaps.
**** The web browser works but it’s terrible in the living room.

Cheating

So, here’s a little cheat I allowed myself. The purist would want everything to work in the PC, but we had an Apple TV already, and it is really a joy, so I kept it. I found a motherboard for the PC that has an HDMI pass-through, allowing one cable from the Apple TV into the PC and then one cable out of the PC and into the television. The down side here is that the process of actually switching the source at the PC is clunky and brittle.

These features are provided by the Apple TV:

Feature	Using	S.U.E.	L.R.E.
Rent Apple Movies	Apple TV passing HDMI signal through the PC. UI is better than iTunes, which has no 10-foot UI on the PC	A+	A+
Netflix	ATV has a much better Netflix UI than Windows Media Center.	A+	A+
YouTube	ATV has a much better YouTube UI than Windows Media Center.	A+	A+
iTunes Music		A+	A+
Internet Radio		A+	A+

With the two systems, the setup in the living room has most of the features we wanted. It remains harder to use than I would like, with a few quirky issues, but it definitely does a lot and it’s quite flexible. In future installments I’ll expand on the “how to” for the features I managed to get working.

To PC or not to PC, That is the Question

Faced with the bewildering array of options and services out there today, I made a matrix like the one below to decide how to proceed. I would recommend this if you haven’t decided whether to take the plunge with either cord-cutting or an HTPC. Because not everything works on every device, this helped me to prioritize what I wanted most, and then make the best choice. I was surprised how tough this is.

Across the top I put the devices I would consider, and down the left side I put all the features I felt are important to my family. I started by filling in the matrix with a simple yes/no, then added weighting in terms of how important things are.

Device*	Smart TV	Apple TV	ROKU	Xbox	Wii	TiVo	Mac	PC
Cable TV	Y						?	Y
Over-the-air TV (Tuner)	Y						Y	Y
Netflix	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	S	Y
iTunes Content		Y					Y	Y
Amazon Streaming	Y		Y	Y	Y		Y	Y
Amazon Purchases	Y		Y	Y	Y		Y	Y
HULU	Y	Y	Y				Y	Y
Ultraviolet	Y		Y				Y	Y
Spotify	?						Y	Y
Video Games				Y	Y		S	Y
Web Browser	Y						Y	Y
Web Content	Y		Y					Y
Play DVDs							Y	Y
Play Blu-ray							S	Y
Rip to Library							Y	Y
Play from Library		Y					Y	Y
Record TV	S					Y	?	Y
10 Foot UI	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y		Y
Any Remote	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	S	Y
Universal Remote	Y							Y

* This example isn’t complete or exhaustive – there are more devices and probably more features you might want to list. Which boxes are checked seems to change weekly as new devices hit the market, so I won’t even try to keep this chart current – but it was a useful device :-).

For me, with our priorities, the decision boiled down to these things:

• Could we be rid of cable?
• Could we have one (or only a few) device(s)?
• Could we record TV periodically?
• What would the user experience be like? Could we get to the magical, mythical single remote?

We aren’t really into games more than a few basics, and we don’t watch sports much – that meant that the game consoles, even with their multiple functions, weren’t all that compelling, and the heat was off cable TV. (If you are a real sports fan, cable is probably still unavoidable, and that implies a cable box.)

This led me to zero in on fewer options: a Smart TV, our existing Apple TV or a Roku, a dedicated Mac, or a traditional home theater PC.

The Smart TV option was really tempting from an ease-of-use perspective. Plugging it in and having it probably work is attractive. What put me off this was two things: the notion that the software would be static compared to the dramatic changes happening with all things Internet media, and the realization I would still end up buying separate machinery for games and for DVDs or Blu-ray disks.

The Mac was also attractive, and I have been a fan of Macs and a Mac owner for a long time – 25 years. The issue is that while the Mini is an attractive form factor for a home theater PC, there’s no fully functional 10-foot interface for the Mac. There’s a minimal remote control and some basic functionality in iTunes, but you really can’t sit on the couch and operate a Mac as a media center with comfort. It’s much more like you have to constantly walk up to the TV where you can see the 2 foot interface and set it up, or you have to have a Mac next to you to Airplay content over to an Apple TV. Ironically, even as an Apple fan this isn’t the user experience I wanted to end up with.

So a PC seemed to make the most sense. What bubbled to the surface comparing all the options was that my annoyance for having a bunch of equipment and wires, and the associated nuisance of operating it all, was a compelling set of criteria. I really wanted one machine to do everything, if that was possible. On the other hand, I had no illusions: I would have to steel myself for a lot of fiddling around to make a PC with specialized hardware, like a tuner and a remote, actually work.

Options, Options, Options

There certainly is no shortage of home entertainment electronics today – not only do we have a glut of actual devices, there’s even a glut of kinds of devices: tablets, game consoles, smart TVs, laptops, phones, set-top boxes, DVRs, docks, on and on. Convergence of capabilities for media has ironically created a proliferation of different, semi-compatible devices. In terms of capability, it’s a magical time. In terms of real use, and buying decisions, it can also be messy and frustrating. Most of us have at least a small pile of these gadgets.

While I’m a bit of a gadget guy, having eleven-teen different devices in the living room, with six remotes, inconsistent and even cryptic user experience, and the whole dance of “to play a blu-ray on the xbox to the TV with the receiver press the orange button on the big remote then the function button on the middle-size remote except if the red light is on and it’s Tuesday …” Ugh. Horrible.

At this point in the twenty-first century most of these capabilities could be managed using software. There are some hardware components required, but they’ve finally converged on standard, commodity components: Wifi, USB, HDMI, DVD/Blu-ray, multi-purpose processors, touch screen, standard media formats. [The market seems not to agree with me, though – more on that later.] As my kids reach the age of wanting all the game console flavors and gadgetry, I’m rebelling a bit and saying, “Why can’t this be one experience in software, and not a tremendous pile of expensive, disposable appliances.”

My ideal setup would be simple:

• A monitor (formerly TV)
• A set of reasonable speakers and amplification to drive them
• A single, good quality remote control with less than 50 buttons, where, for example, I don’t need to give a guest an instruction manual
• A computer that delivers the media, games, TV, music and entertainment through a pleasing 10-foot UI
• Cost that doesn’t completely empty my bank account

As imperfect as it is today, the thing that comes closest is a home theater PC.

Other people have certainly done this before. The crazy part? Because no company has really delivered the software part of this solution – perhaps because it’s hard to discover how to do that profitably – I am having to work really hard at this to get most of the way to my simple, low-effort entertainment-convergence dream. It’s a high-effort proposition, where I have to locate and combine a lot of mostly-working different software, with user experience ranging from good to “OMG what happened here.”

So, there’s a contradiction: there’s no solution you can buy, so if you want to get to convergence, you really have to treat it as a hobby. It’s imperative to enjoy fiddling with strange and not-quite-working-yet solutions, or else you’ll want to chuck your HTPC in the river.

This blog will be a place to jot down my experience making this stuff work, and why, right or wrong, I made the selections I did.

I am happy to report that we do have a functional HTPC, with a lot of what I wanted: cable-cutting (we have no Xfinity in this house any longer, and none of my money goes to Comcast – can I get an “AMEN”), a remote control that works in the living room, free OTA TV with the ability to easily record shows/skip ads, video games with wireless controllers.

PS: I hope some software company will have the courage and wile to make this convergence happen, in a shrink-wrapped form, that escapes the sabotage wrought by media companies. (Could it be Apple? Roku? Microsoft?) Microsoft had a shot with Media Center, but they seem to be squandering that, either because they can’t make a profit or through lack of vision.

One Guy’s Home Theater PC

I’m a guy from Saint Paul, Minnesota. In 2013 Santa Claus delivered a home theater PC to my kids, which they were very excited about because it was “free.” The whole thing came in parts, in separate boxes – which made me wonder a little what Mr. Clause was thinking – and I had to assemble it from scratch, install all the software and make it work. It’s been a fun learning experience.

A friend of mine said, “Dude. Blog that. For science!”

So, here is the blog, detailing how this is built, what works, what doesn’t, perhaps some helpful tips. I am no expert in this field, so observations blogged here will range from vaguely handy to suspect. That said, your comments and suggestions are most welcome.