Streaming audio to iPhone

Spent a bit of time trying to find an easy way to stream audio (in my case the "stereo mix"/"what you hear" of my onboard sound) to iPhone, and found it surprisingly unstraightforward.

Long story short, got a solution working with the following components:

• Icecast2
• edcast (used to be called oddcast)
• nscrt.dll and enc_aaplus.dll copied from WinAmp installation into edcast installation for HE-AAC support
• FStream iPhone App (although the streams can be played directly in Safari on iPhone)

I have edcast pumping four different streams - mono and stereo at various bitrates, to give me options depending on listening and network conditions.

DVBViewer, EVR, Handbrake-Encoded AVC

Odd behaviour using DVBViewer to play back AAC/h.264 videos encoded using Handbrake. Container format doesn't seem to matter - tried m4v and remuxed to mkv, same result. Doesn't happen on all videos.

Setup:

XP SP3, DVBViewer 4.6.0.1, Haali media splitter, MainConcept AVC decoder, Enhanced Video Rendered (EVR)

Symptoms:

DVBViewer takes about 30 seconds to start playing the file.

Resizing the DVBViewer window results in aspect ratio changing in video frame, hard to tell what the relationship is, but not correct. Can easily get a long narrow strip of video.

Observations:

Video plays fine in Graphedit using the same filter chain - no delay, aspect ratio correct.

Video plays fine on Windows 7 machine.

Changing AVC decoder makes no difference.

Changing to Overlay mixer instead of EVR fixes the issue.

Workaround:

Set Video B option in DVBViewer to use Overlay mixer and set "Auto B" condition to ".m4v"

- not ideal, but works for now

ATI HDMI audio broken after automatic driver update

Windows 7 x64 - Automatic Updates installed a new driver for my ATI Radeon HD 3400 series graphics card, which caused the HDMI audio output to stop working. Control Panel reported it as "Not plugged in".

A quick google suggested it may be a clash between the ATI drivers and those for the onboard Realtek audio.

Solution: manual installation of new audio driver.

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/ -> High Definition Audio Codes -> ATI HDMI Audio Device (not sure why it was red)

After a quick reboot, everything's back to peachy.

tolltag.ie savings

Useful post on the new M50 toll charges here, but figuring out the cheapest option for casual users may be a little more complicated than you might think. The table below shows how much you'd save or be out of pocket using a tolltag.ie tag for the first 113 times you use the new tolling system... If you see yourself using the M50 less than 80 or so times in the next few years, you might be best going for the video system...

Red means tolltag is more expensive or the same cost (for that many trips), green means tolltag is cheaper.

no. of uses	video cost	tolltag cost	TT credit	TT saving
1	2.50	40.00	37.80	-37.50
2	5.00	40.00	35.60	-35.00
3	7.50	40.00	33.40	-32.50
4	10.00	40.00	31.20	-30.00
5	12.50	40.00	29.00	-27.50
6	15.00	40.00	26.80	-25.00
7	17.50	40.00	24.60	-22.50
8	20.00	40.00	22.40	-20.00
9	22.50	40.00	20.20	-17.50
10	25.00	40.00	18.00	-15.00
11	27.50	40.00	15.80	-12.50
12	30.00	40.00	13.60	-10.00
13	32.50	60.00	31.40	-27.50
14	35.00	60.00	29.20	-25.00
15	37.50	60.00	27.00	-22.50
16	40.00	60.00	24.80	-20.00
17	42.50	60.00	22.60	-17.50
18	45.00	60.00	20.40	-15.00
19	47.50	60.00	18.20	-12.50
20	50.00	60.00	16.00	-10.00
21	52.50	60.00	13.80	-7.50
22	55.00	80.00	31.60	-25.00
23	57.50	80.00	29.40	-22.50
24	60.00	80.00	27.20	-20.00
25	62.50	80.00	25.00	-17.50
26	65.00	80.00	22.80	-15.00
27	67.50	80.00	20.60	-12.50
28	70.00	80.00	18.40	-10.00
29	72.50	80.00	16.20	-7.50
30	75.00	80.00	14.00	-5.00
31	77.50	100.00	31.80	-22.50
32	80.00	100.00	29.60	-20.00
33	82.50	100.00	27.40	-17.50
34	85.00	100.00	25.20	-15.00
35	87.50	100.00	23.00	-12.50
36	90.00	100.00	20.80	-10.00
37	92.50	100.00	18.60	-7.50
38	95.00	100.00	16.40	-5.00
39	97.50	100.00	14.20	-2.50
40	100.00	100.00	12.00	0.00
41	102.50	120.00	29.80	-17.50
42	105.00	120.00	27.60	-15.00
43	107.50	120.00	25.40	-12.50
44	110.00	120.00	23.20	-10.00
45	112.50	120.00	21.00	-7.50
46	115.00	120.00	18.80	-5.00
47	117.50	120.00	16.60	-2.50
48	120.00	120.00	14.40	0.00
49	122.50	120.00	12.20	2.50
50	125.00	140.00	30.00	-15.00
51	127.50	140.00	27.80	-12.50
52	130.00	140.00	25.60	-10.00
53	132.50	140.00	23.40	-7.50
54	135.00	140.00	21.20	-5.00
55	137.50	140.00	19.00	-2.50
56	140.00	140.00	16.80	0.00
57	142.50	140.00	14.60	2.50
58	145.00	140.00	12.40	5.00
59	147.50	160.00	30.20	-12.50
60	150.00	160.00	28.00	-10.00
61	152.50	160.00	25.80	-7.50
62	155.00	160.00	23.60	-5.00
63	157.50	160.00	21.40	-2.50
64	160.00	160.00	19.20	0.00
65	162.50	160.00	17.00	2.50
66	165.00	160.00	14.80	5.00
67	167.50	160.00	12.60	7.50
68	170.00	180.00	30.40	-10.00
69	172.50	180.00	28.20	-7.50
70	175.00	180.00	26.00	-5.00
71	177.50	180.00	23.80	-2.50
72	180.00	180.00	21.60	0.00
73	182.50	180.00	19.40	2.50
74	185.00	180.00	17.20	5.00
75	187.50	180.00	15.00	7.50
76	190.00	180.00	12.80	10.00
77	192.50	200.00	30.60	-7.50
78	195.00	200.00	28.40	-5.00
79	197.50	200.00	26.20	-2.50
80	200.00	200.00	24.00	0.00
81	202.50	200.00	21.80	2.50
82	205.00	200.00	19.60	5.00
83	207.50	200.00	17.40	7.50
84	210.00	200.00	15.20	10.00
85	212.50	200.00	13.00	12.50
86	215.00	220.00	30.80	-5.00
87	217.50	220.00	28.60	-2.50
88	220.00	220.00	26.40	0.00
89	222.50	220.00	24.20	2.50
90	225.00	220.00	22.00	5.00
91	227.50	220.00	19.80	7.50
92	230.00	220.00	17.60	10.00
93	232.50	220.00	15.40	12.50
94	235.00	220.00	13.20	15.00
95	237.50	240.00	31.00	-2.50
96	240.00	240.00	28.80	0.00
97	242.50	240.00	26.60	2.50
98	245.00	240.00	24.40	5.00
99	247.50	240.00	22.20	7.50
100	250.00	240.00	20.00	10.00
101	252.50	240.00	17.80	12.50
102	255.00	240.00	15.60	15.00
103	257.50	240.00	13.40	17.50
104	260.00	260.00	31.20	0.00
105	262.50	260.00	29.00	2.50
106	265.00	260.00	26.80	5.00
107	267.50	260.00	24.60	7.50
108	270.00	260.00	22.40	10.00
109	272.50	260.00	20.20	12.50
110	275.00	260.00	18.00	15.00
111	277.50	260.00	15.80	17.50
112	280.00	260.00	13.60	20.00
113	282.50	280.00	31.40	2.50

Copy succeeded - or did it?!

You would think in this day and age that these things wouldn’t happen...

I have a 3.5” HD connected to my laptop via one of those USB things. I was backing up my wedding videos onto it when it spun down for no apparent reason and spun back up. Windows didn’t give any sign of a problem, but I was suspicious.

Event viewer showed a warning (*not* an error), whose text was “An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\D during a paging operation.”

After the copy operation completed “successfully”, I ran a binary comparison on the file that was being transferred during the blip, and lo and behold, the files are different! It astounds me that kind of data corruption can happen (with an event logged to boot!) and Windows just continues on regardless, with no indication to the user that their data is now fubar.

Flabbergasted!

www.o2.ie

'nuff said

Irish Postcodes

There aren't any. Not really anyway. Dublin and its suburbs have some pseudo-postcodes (Dublin 1..Dublin 24, oh and Dublin 6W (long story)), but that's it; the rest of the country has nothing even resembling a postcode.

So this goes out to website developers: puleeeeease, don't make postcodes mandatory on web forms when the address is in Ireland!

Please?