technical quest update: bluetooth a2dp anyone?

Just about a year ago, I posted about my technical quest to simplify our AV stack and augment its capabilities. Updates here and here and here.

While we're getting good 5.1 sound out of our Harman Kardon AVR245, it's not a push-button experience (yet). We've got the Harman Kardon HKTS-14 speaker system and in our setup, the front speakers are mounted to the wall on either side of the plasma TV, the center channel is perched on a shelf above the TV (the subwoofer is tucked in the corner) and the sleek HK stands for the surround speakers are stored at the front of the room and pulled around into surround position only when we're watching a movie that warrants the surround experience.

Why do they get stored at the front of the room? Our two little girls would undoubtedly knock them over if left in place post-movie (during the day), and I'd likely catch the wires walking by them since we've got hardwood floors. The net effect is that the majority of the time we don't listen to programming in full surround mode, as the surround speakers are stashed in the front of the room where the aural effect is minimal, at best.

While I could spend the time and energy to route the wires through the wall and attic to mount the speakers on the wall in their proper surround location, that's a wiring headache I'll put off for a long time to come, thankyouverymuch.

But now, David Pogue's column today in the NYTimes about Bluetooth and the End of Audio Wiring has got me thinking of a wireless solution our problem. Surely there's a bluetooth solution to be had here, right? I mean, given the A2DP protocol, I can bluetooth stereo signal streaming wirelessly from my AVR245 to the surround speakers mounted on the wall.

But how to do this?

Google searches on bluetooth stereo surround speakers seem to indicate there's more supply in non-North American markets, but here's a list of Bluetooth Stereo Speaker Suppliers in China that will only grow over time, right?

So what are the prerequisites before I'll add A2DP to my system? I have to be able to use my existing speakers. I've paired them purposefully for the entire system and I don't want to have to buy any bulky speaker to mount on my walls that'll unbalance the system.

What this means the gadget/widget I'm looking for will need to be a combination speaker mount/Bluetooth access point that talks to a Bluetooth gateway plugged into my AVR245. Bonus if there's a way to cut down on the battery consumption needed to run the speaker access points.

But if I can find something like this, I'll leapfrog straight over 5.1 sound all the time and start exploiting the AVR245's ability to pump out 7.1 sound.

Of course, if I get the speaker situation taken care of, then I really should upgrade to a HD-DVD player, and maybe I can use that upgrade moment to swap out TiVo for the DirecTV HR20 we've got... hmmm, better not start this just yet.

the feature creep conundrum

James Surowiecki (of Wisdom of the Crowds fame) has a great article about Feature Creep in this coming Monday's May 28 issue of the New Yorker. In the article, he adroitly addresses the painful situation that technology producers have found themselves in now that design cycles are relatively short, innovation is relatively cheap and the consumer feedback loop is so short:

This spiral of complexity, often called “feature creep,” costs consumers time, but it also costs businesses money. Product returns in the U.S. cost a hundred billion dollars a year, and a recent study by Elke den Ouden, of Philips Electronics, found that at least half of returned products have nothing wrong with them. Consumers just couldn’t figure out how to use them.

Surowiecki points out that a lot of Feature Creep problems stem from the internal-audience problem where the developers themselves don't use the very products they're developing and therefore have no idea how crappy the end product turns out.

I learned at AOL to combat the internal-audience problem by making the producers use the actual goods they're making (aka "eating your own dog food"). Back in 1998, when my team created the 1-2-3 Publish and Easy Designer home page publishing tools, you bet I used them to make and maintain my own AOL Hometown page (still there after all these years. Ah, good times).

The number of features we didn't include in the basic publishing tool was huge, and not all of them fell off the list because of scarce development resources... we had constant battles to strip down the 1-2-3 Publish tool to be as lean as possible so newbie web publishers wouldn't get distracted by gizmos on their way to creating their first web page.

Of course, as a product manager, I cheated by throwing all the gee-whiz features intended for 1-2-3 Publish instead into the specs for Easy Designer, the WYSIWYG publishing tool. The price we paid for including all these things was comically bloated html code in the resulting published pages. As long as you don't view source, the products not all that bad.

I still make sure to use the tools I produce, but my primary interaction with feature creep now is as a consumer. I fancy myself to be a geek and take pride in making as much use of features on my gizmos as possible, only if I have time to study and learn and ham-fist my way through menus of options.

I've come to expect that part of the purchase equation I've internalized is that I'm willing to pay for high-end stuff and yet use only a tenth of the features available on that stuff. Case in point, my Harman Kardon AVR245. Of the 70 buttons on the remote, I use only 5 of them (power, volume up, volume down, FM, HDMI) when I'm not just manually pushing buttons on the receiver itself. That fact in itself tells you just how much of the capacity of the AVR245 I'm using. However, I love the sound quality of the AVR a lot, and even that's an understatement.

I'd like to say I bought the AVR245 specifically because of its sound quality and not because of all the cool kick-ass features I'll some day use, but that's not true. I bought it for the feature set (and the sound quality!), and that's exactly the conundrum Surowiecki talks about in his article:

as numerous studies have shown, people are not, in general, good at predicting what will make them happy in the future. As a result, we will pay more for more features because we systematically overestimate how often we’ll use them. We also overestimate our ability to figure out how a complicated product works.

Maybe I'll spend Memorial Day learning how to use another button on the remote.

toshiba 42hp66 HD plasma snowy picture

toshiba 42hp66 HD plasma picture snafu
Originally uploaded by thomas pix.

Disconcertingly, I'm seeing the snowy/fuzzy picture problem pictured to the right more and more frequently when I first turn on our Toshiba 42HP66 plasma HD TV.

So far, I'm able to get around it by turning the TV unit on and off a couple times seems to solve the problem and eventually the picture comes in clear as a bell.

I'm not sure where the problem might be, but I've noticed that it has the same signal processing problem whether I'm trying to watch TV (the signal from the DirecTV HR20 DVR) or access my Mac's desktop (the signal from the Mac Mini).

Since I'm getting the problem while trying to "see" both TV and Mac, I don't think the problem is due to the Harman Kardon AVR 245 I use as a switch between the devices. Rather, I think it's something to do with the connection between the AVR 245 and the TV itself. I've tested the physical connection of the HDMI cable to both the back of the AVR 245 and the TV, and those both seem fine.

I'm really hoping it's not the actual HDMI cable that's going bad. Not only because I paid the installer the unholy sum of $85 for the cable, but because the cable has been installed inside the wall so there are not unsightly wires hanging from our wall-mounted HDTV.

planet earth as an hd showcase

I love it when all the technology in our living room functions as it should...

Our HR20 DVR has been faithfully recording all the episodes of Discovery Channel's new Planet Earth series, and it's been delightful to watch these high-def tours de force on our plasma TV with the sound streaming through the Harman Kardon AVR245.

Not only are the sights and sounds stunning, but the editing is top notch, too. You can hear the surrounding low rumble of volcanoes and the twitter tweet of all kinds of insects and birds as if they were in the room with you. The flyovers of mountains are as if you're looking out the window of the plain yourself.

And to the editing: as a father of two young ones, I really like how the chase scenes (wolf chasing caribou or leopard chasing goat) are shown up to the moment of the catch but not through to the disemboweling and consuming.

My daughters are mesmerized by these shows and I think they'll be leaving a lasting impression on them for years to come. Way to go, Discovery Channel.

Planet Earth should be the marketing campaign for all things High Def.

how to enable 5.1 sound output from a Mac Mini

As blogged ten days ago, I've been having troubles getting my new Harman Kardon AVR245 seamlessly integrated into my entertainment system.

My challenges included not being able to get a true digital output from my Mac Mini due to the optical cable (S/PDIF) plug incompatibility, not getting the Mac Mini to actually stream 6 channels of sound through the digital output nor being able to use the AVR 245's integrated HDMI switcher.

After a couple hours trouble-shooting today, I've got the system up and running with 5.1 outputs and integrated switching between the Mac Mini's HDMI out and the DirecTV HR20 HDMI out.

Here's what it took:

• Mac Mini digital output: the jack for Headphones/Audio out/Optical out on the back of the Mini is designed to accommodate a mini-headphone plug. If you think you can buy a standard S/PDIF optical cable to hook your Mini to your receiver, think again. You have to buy a separate adapter that'll convert the TOS plug to a minijack-compatible plug. Of course, Apple has a Belkin optical cable kit that has the adapter and will set you back $30 (and takes 5-7 weeks to ship as of this writing), but if you've already got an optical cable, why buy a whole new optical kit? You can hop over to Amazon and spend $1.65 (plus shipping) to buy a perfectly good TOSlink to optical mini adapter. Takes a couple days to get to you, but good luck finding the adapters stocked in a local electronics store (like Fry's). I checked several places and found I'd need to buy a whole "kit" just like the Apple online store is pushing. Adapter in hand, the Mac Mini now has an optical connection to the AVR 245.
• Mac Mini streaming 5.1 sound: I thought once I'd bridged the Mac Mini to the AVR 245 with an optical cable, I'd automagically get 5.1 sound from the DVDs I play on the Mac. Nope. It took a little digging but I found out how to coax 5.1 sound out of the Mini's DVD player (thanks to Dave's recent post on This Much I Know and related Apple Help docs). The default stream is a two channel stream from the Mini. To turn on 5.1 audio in Apple's DVD player, Choose DVD Player > Preferences, and then click Disc Setup. At the bottom of that window, change the Audio output setting to "digital out" and (very important) check the box next to "Disable Dolby dynamic range compression." Voila! Your DVD's 5.1 sound is now streaming out of your Mac Mini. This change to preferences applies to the MacBook, MacBook Pro and iMac, as well if you're using any of them as your DVD player for your TV.
• Integrated HDMI switching via the AVR 245: I'd previously thought that the AVR 245 was hard-wired to match an optical coax and an optical TOSlink to each of the two HDMI inputs. After digging a little deeper into the hundred page User Guide for the receiver, I discovered that I could override these default settings and match each of the HDMI video inputs to one the two optical sound inputs. Why does this make me happy? I can now get rid of the analog push-button HDMI switcher I'd been using to toggle video feeds to our HD TV from the HR20 DVR to the Mac Mini. I can now sit comfortably on the couch and use the Harman Kardon's remote to switch back and forth at the push of a button.
  

Next stop: 7.1 sound, but that'll mean adding more components to my A/V stack, and I've grown fond of the clean four-piece look we've got going now (HD TV, Mac Mini, AVR and HR20 HD DVR).

harman kardon avr245 review

So, I've had my Harman Kardon AVR 245 7.1 Channel Audio/Video Receiver hooked up for just shy of two weeks now, and my ears haven't stopped smiling since they heard the first sounds it pushed through my speakers.

Last year, I picked up the Harman Kardon HKTS 14 6-Piece Loudspeaker System and have been quite pleased with the sound they produce. Oh, what a difference a receiver makes.

Now, this isn't to say the Yamaha HTR-5140 it replaced was bad. However, it is to say that the HK AVR245 is very, very good.

The last time I remember being so conscious of a sound upgrade was when I replaced the standard-issue head unit in my Honda Accord with an Alpine head unit. After picking up my car from the install shop, I sat in the parking lot a good 20 minutes with my mouth agape marveling at the quality of sound.

Flash forward a decade, and the Harman Kardon is having a similar effect on me. I know it doesn't make much sense, but the quiet pieces of songs are actually quieter, and that's what makes the difference in the listening experience. I didn't notice, until hooking up the AVR245, how much noise had been coming through the system to pollute the music I was listening to.

I can get into the technical mumbo-jumbo in a future post, but for now, here are the highlights:

• This is one hefty piece of equipment: all 30 pounds of it. And it's worth every ounce.
• The front of the receiver is beautifully designed with a simple interface: one big wheel to control the volume and a slim line of buttons in a row. Functional simplicity, and the lights are all cool blue.
• There's not an inch of the back of the receiver that's not set up for an input or an output of some kind. I'm almost embarassed at how few cords I have running through the system (for now). I'm confident that'll change over time.
• The included EZset calibration tool is too cool. It's a mic that you put where you plan to do the majority of your listening from, and the receiver calibrates the output level of all speakers to deliver perfect sound to exactly that point of the room (whether you live in a cavern or a padded cell). Sweet.
• Lots of room for upgrades to the system, including the Bridge for my iPod and adding an additional two speakers to upgrade to 7.1 sound.
• The receiver does a great job of outputting Dolby II sound from an analog input.
• Amazon has it for a great price (compared to Best Buy or Fry's), and you can get it for the same price at the link above.
• All the speaker knobs on the back of the receiver are color-coded to match the wires included with the HKTS 14 system. No more crossed wires.
  

The minor complaints that I've uncovered so far:

• There's built-in HDMI switcher for video only, and the AVR245 processes the sound through hard-wired default inputs, one a digital optical, the other a digital co-axial. This is fine if your two pieces of HDMI equipment output via the same media. Unfortunately for me, my HR20 HD DVR and my Mac Mini both have digital optical outs only, so I can't use the built-in HDMI switcher (no sound) and am stuck using the manual HDMI switcher. see Feb 10 post (above) for the good news update!
• The remote for the AVR245 has over 70 buttons, and some of them are multi-function buttons. I use a grand total of 7 buttons. 90% too many buttons for my tastes.
• There's still so much to learn about the receiver, I feel like I've only scratched the surface of possible uses.

Until I do learn more, I'll just keep enjoying these sounds that are comparable to the high-def images coming out of the TV. nice.