Dish Network VIP 722 receiver vs KQED ATSC signal

The Echostar VIP 722 receiver is a very nice DVR. It can play and record TV from both over-the-air DTV broadcasts, and from satellite. It has one OTA tuner and two satellite tuners.
One of my most frequently watched channels is PBS, specifically KQED out of San Francisco. The 9.1 subchannel is their HDTV channel.
I have found that on half the broadcasts, the Echostar 722 displays a picture on 9.1, but is unable to decode the sound.

In the process of setting up a software DVR on my HTPC, I found that it can decode the same broadcasts, with sound. This is a problem with the 722 DVR.

I filed a report to Dish network tech support and had the issue escalated to their engineering department. I will update this page if I get a response.

Logitech Webcam Software trouble under Windows 7

Earlier this year, I reported my good experience with the Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 under Windows Vista x64. Unfortunately, after installing Windows 7 x64 (clean install), my experience is no longer good. The application that comes with the camera causes many problems.

1. Clicking on "microphone" in LWS causes the application to hang
   
2. Cannot bring up "manage audio devices" in Windows control panel . It never comes up
   
3. LWS 1.10 installation does not complete (window not responding, hung for hours)
   
4. Skype settings window hangs (clicking tools/options in the menu)
   
5. Skype won't make calls . An endless dialtone rings even after one tries to terminates the call.
   
6. Skype won't exit
   
7. LWS.EXE cannot be killed from task manager
   
8. uninstalling the LWS application 12.10.1113 solves all of the above problems.
   But of course one can no longer take snapshots without this application installed.
   
9. Reinstalling the software does not help. All the problems come back. This is with the latest LWS110_x64.exe package.
   

I'm hoping that Logitech will provide a solution, and I will update this blog if they do, but so far, I have been out of luck. In the meantime, if you have similar problems, and can live without the Logitech Webcam application, uninstalling it may solve your issues.

Migrating Yahoo messenger chat archives manually

One thing that the Yahoo messenger program is missing is the ability to import or export chat archives. This can become fairly important if you have a lot of people in your buddy list, as I do over 700. The problem manifests itself when you do a full reinstallation of your Windows operating system, as may sometimes be required. Or if you are migrating from, say, Windows Vista to Windows 7, you may not want to do the in-place upgrade, but instead to a "fresh" install of the OS.

In this example, the system was previously running Windows Vista 32 bits. The archive files were located in :

C:\Windows.old\Users\atoy\Local Settings\VirtualStore\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\Profiles\atoyccb\Archive\Messages

A new OS, Vista 64 bits, was installed. The new archived messages are now in

C:\Users\Charito\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Yahoo!\Messenger\Profiles\atoyccb\Archive\Messages

You can copy the old archives over by following the following steps :

• Open a command-prompt window as administrator
  
• Copy over the old archives to the new location :
  
  
  

  XCOPY "C:\Windows.old\Users\atoy\Local Settings\VirtualStore\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\Profiles\atoyccb\Archive\Messages\*.*" ">C:\Users\Charito\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Yahoo!\Messenger\Profiles\atoyccb\Archive\Messages" /S
  

  
  
  

A better solution to a programming book's linked list problem

As astute readers of my blog know, I left my job at Sun last month. After taking some well-deserved time off, I have been looking for something new.
Despite 14 years professional experience, 20 years coding experience, and a lengthy résumé, I was stumped by some coding puzzles at a couple of large companies.
So, last monday, I picked up a book at Barnes & Noble titled "Programming Interviews Exposed, 2nd edition", to help get past the torture tests I have to endure in this tight job market. I have been reading it as a leisurely pace, trying to find the problems first on my own, before checking the solution.

I am writing this article and reprinting the problem with the author's permission.

On page 31, the author defines a typical linked-list structure :

typedef struct Element {
    struct Element *next;
    void *data;
} Element;

After some fairly basic coding discussion of linked lists, a slightly more complicated problem appears on page 35.

head and tail are global pointers to the first and last element, respectively, of a singly-linked list of integers. Implement a C function for the following prototype :

bool remove(Element *elem);
The argument to remove is the element to be deleted.


The authors spend much of pages 36-38 discussing that the problem is mostly about
"special cases", in particular when deleting elements at the beginning or the end of the list.

The author's final solution reads as follows :

bool remove(Element* elem) { 
    Element* curPos = &head;

    if (!elem)
        return false;

    if (elem == head) {
        head = elem->next;
            delete elem;
        /* special case for 1 element list */
        if (!head)
            tail = NULL;
        return true;
    }
    while (curPos)  {
        if (curPos->next == elem) {
            curPos->next = elem->next;
            delete elem;
            if (curPos->next == NULL)
                tail = curPos;
            return true;
        }
        curPos = curPos->next;
    }
    return false;
}

While my first inclination was to also have a special case, I quickly stroke that part out on paper. I think the code really does not have to be so long if you use a double pointer to refer to the
head. This eliminates the first special case for updating the head pointer when removing the first element. And therefore, there is no longer a need to update the tail pointer in two different places, which further reduces code size.

bool remove(Element* elem) {
    Element** curPos = &head;

    if (!elem)
        return false;

    while (*curPos) {
        if (elem == *curPos) {
            *curPos = elem->next;
            if (elem == tail)
                tail = elem->next;
            delete(elem);
            return true;
        }
        curPos = &((*curPos)->next);
    }
    return false;
}

The only thing I changed from my piece of paper was the name of the temporary variable, and the formatting, to match that of the book's authors.

Windows 7 vs Fedora Core 11, and Linux in general

This year, my father also wanted to upgrade his computer, as did my mother. I had a shop build one with the exact same parts. I imaged my mother's computer drive with Acronis, and imaged it back to my father's computer. So far so good. But I had installed Windows 7 with its default setting, which creates two partitions - a "recovery partition", which was about 100 MB, and a regular Windows 7 NTFS partition, which was about 931 GB.

My father has been a Linux user for a very long time, and only desired Windows for very occasional use. In the past, it was fairly easy to dual-boot Windows & Linux. Not so this time.

First, I had to shrink the Windows NTFS partition using the "shrink" tool. But this didn't work. There were a variety of unmovable system files towards the end apparently. Even after defragmenting the drive, the shrink feature of the Windows disk manager could only reduce the drive by a measly 300 MB ! The solution was very complicated : I erased all the partitions, reinstalled Windows 7 with a small partitions, and then re-restored my mother's computers into the small partition from my backup drive using Acronis True Image 2009. Now, I had a working Windows 7 installation, and some free unpartitioned space.

The next 3 days were spent trying to install various versions of Linux, mostly Fedora Core 11 64 bits, as well as Ubuntu 8.x. This was always unsuccessful. Typically, the Fedora installation program just crashed with exceptions. Just hours before I was supposed to leave, I got the idea to delete the 100 MB Windows 7 recovery partition. I then restored its content from the Acronis backup onto the large Windows partition, and booted with the DFSEE tool to make the Windows 7 partition active. But Windows 7 still didn't boot correctly. I then booted the Windows 7 DVD and used the recovery option. Amazingly, that worked. I now had a single 212 GB NTFS Windows 7 partition that was booting. After that, the Fedora Core 11 installation proceeded like a breeze.

Moral of the story : if you want to dual-boot Windows 7 and Linux - do not let the Windows 7 installer create the recovery partition when you get prompted to let Windows create additional partitions. Just say no !

Windows 7 vs LSI Logic 53C1030 Ultra160 SCSI controller

I have been using SCSI controllers in one form or another in some of my PCs for over 15 years. At this time, I have only a couple of SCSI devices left - one 36 GB hard drive made by Seagate that spins at 15,000 rpm, and a DAT DDS-4 tape drive made by HP. The last SCSI controller I bought was purchased in 2001 and is based on the 53C1010 Ultra160 SCSI chipset by LSI Logic, formerly Symbios, formerly AT&T, formerly NCR. This chipset worked wonderfully under a variety of operating systems, from OS/2 up to and including Windows Vista x64.

Enter Windows 7. Earlier this wednesday, I attempted to migrate the system containing this SCSI controller from Windows Vista x64 to Windows 7 x64. I was told that there was no driver for Windows 7 for the controller. This was quite disappointing, after 8 years of loyal services. I disabled the device in the device manager, and proceeded with the installation of Windows 7 anyway.

At the time of this writing, I have been unable to locate a proper driver for this controller under Windows 7 x64. This means the OS can no longer see my two SCSI devices. I don't care much about Windows no longer seeing the DDS-4 tape drive as I wasn't using it under Windows. But I am bothered by no longer seeing the SCSI hard drive, which still contains a bootable copy of OS/2 Warp Server for E-Business SMP. While that SCSI hard drive is formatted as HPFS, and can therefore not be mounted under Windows 7, it could still be imaged and backed up with Acronis True Image Home, at least under Windows Vista back when the SCSI controller worked. I may end up going back to Windows Vista on this system if I can't resolve this issue. Or I might move my OS/2 installation to another drive.

Windows 7 vs Kaspersky Anti-virus 2009

I recently acquired the above anti-virus for the low of sum of "FAR" (free-after-rebate), ie. I only paid the sales tax on it. This is a good program that performs well under Vista x64.
When I attempted an upgrade of one of my computers to Windows 7 RTM (final version), the installation program instructed me that KAV was incompatible with Windows 7. I was forced to uninstall it before proceeding with the upgrade to Windows 7. At the time of this writing, Kaspersky only has a beta program for Windows 7. I hope they will issue fixes soon, as Windows 7 final version has been available to developers for a month.

Windows 7 vs Acronis True Image Home 2009

For the last 6 months or so, I ahve been using the excellent Acronis True Image Home 2009 software to image the hard disks of several home computers under Windows Vista x64. During a recent trip to France, I traveled with a hard drive containing a drive image so I could get to all my files.
To my dismay, I found that I was not able to fully access the data under Windows 7 (RTM, ie. final version). True Image Home 2009 still has some issues under it. Specifically, at the time of this writing, it's unable to mount drives from the backup archive as local drive letters under Windows 7. All is not lost, since the restore feature of True Image still works. However, it takes much longer. I wanted to mount the drive to use the command-line XCOPY program to only copy certain types of files from the archive. Unfortunately, the True Image Restore feature is limited, and does not allow such file filters. I ended up having to restore a full directory, and then deleting all the unwanted files, which took much longer - in fact about 4 more hours than it should have.

Let's hope that Acronis will issue a patch for True Image 2009 to fix the drive mounting issue under Windows 7.

Video memory setting in VirtualBox with 30" monitor

In recent months, I have been running Sun's Virtualbox software to run multiple guest operating systems. One of my two monitors is an HP LP3065 30" LCD, which has a 2560x1600 resolution (4 million pixels).
Virtualbox has a very nice feature which allows the desktop to be resized up to the host's resolution. In theory. When I tried to use the feature, I noticed that the guest couldn't be maximized. The reason turned out to be that the default video memory in Virtualbox was insufficient. 2560x1600 at 32 bit color depth requires 16384000 bytes of video memory. Once I increased the video memory to 16MB, I was able to maximize the guest OS window to fill up the entire screen.

Windows 7 ATI HDMI audio vs digital coax audio issue

A few weeks ago, I was in France. I took advantage of the occasion to upgrade my mother's computer to much more recent hardware, as well as her television to a new 46" LG LCD HDTV. The PC was setup with the final version of Windows 7 x64.

She kept her old PC monitor, a 15" LG LCD, with only a VGA connection, as well as her old Yamaha RX-V420RDS amplifier, which long predated HDMI.

The PC sported a Sapphire video card with an ATI Radeon HD4850 chipset and dual DVI outputs. One output went to the 15" LCD with a DVI->VGA adapter, and the other went to the TV with a DVI->HDMI adapter and a 15m HDMI cable.

The PC audio was connected to the digital coaxial input Yamaha amp via a 15m coaxial cable.

After I taught her how to switch back & forth between her 2 displays in Windows 7, my mother noticed a very odd problem : when she was using the TV as her display, all sound disappeared ! But when she switched back to the 15" analog VGA LCD, it came back. I was unable to debug the issue for her over the phone. But I still had some more time before flying back home, and determined the root cause of the problem in person : Windows 7 had seen it fit to automatically redirect all audio to the HDMI output of the video card when the display was switch to the TV !

This was of course not what was desired for her setup. The TV's audio was muted and we had no intention of using its built-in speakers. We wanted the audio to always stay on the digital coax output hooked up to the Yamaha amplifier . I fixed this in the Control Panel by disabling the ATI HDMI audio output device. I hope this will help someone else running into the same issue of lost sound when switching displays.

Annoying Cubase license scheme

Last week, I bought a pair of Yamaha KX61 keyboards to replace a broken organ. They came with a limited version of Cubase software, called Cubase AI. Unfortunately, the software refused to install on my Vista 64 box, crashing in the annoying license checker scheme. The exact error message was Syncrosoft Protected Object Server has stopped working.

After much research, I found the solution to this problem :
1. Disable DEP in Control Panel/System/Advanced/DEP
2. Reboot the computer
3. Reinstall Cubase
4. Re-enable DEP, with the exception of the SYNSOPOS.EXE program., which lives in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Syncrosoft\POS on my system, but might be in C:\Program Files\Syncrosoft\POS for those with 32-bit systems.

Naked DSL and Cable Internet without TV

These days, I make most of my telephone calls either from my (pricey) cell phone, or over the Internet. I have little need for my landline telephone line. Except I'm forced to pay for it because it is required to have DSL service with my current Internet service provider. The service runs over AT&T landlines. While AT&T has made "naked DSL" available to its customers, this only applies to those who subscribe to the AT&T internet service. Not to other internet services running on the AT&T cicruits. So, I'm subscribing to a $7.28 measured rate service. To which $6.88 of various taxes and fees are added, for a total of $14.16. For a service that I don't want or need. For over 7 years. This should be against the law.

Lately, I have been thinking about switching over to cable internet, because much higher download and upload speeds are available. However, once again, one is forced to purchase unwanted basic cable TV service when ordering cable internet from Comcast. I get my TV service by satellite and over the air, and have no use for cable TV. It appears that Comcast is now relaxing this requirement to purchase basic cable, but only for one of the lower speeds, and for a temporary introductory period of 6 to 12 months. After that, the monthly rate more than doubles, due primarily to the extra added cost of the unnecessary basic cable TV service. Once again, this bundling of service should be against the law.

Share on ovi disaster

I guess some things in life are too good to be true.
The web site Share on ovi , operated by Nokia, had been offering unlimited image hosting, for free. It included such great features as the ability to retain the original picture size and let viewers see it, as well as on-the-fly resizing, sorting by shooting date, creation date, etc. It was everything I wanted in a picture hosting site, and for free ! I uploaded about 4GB of pictures from my Pentax K200D DSLR to ovi in the past year. Only to find out that the site no longer has any of its useful features. Viewers can only download a very small reduced picture, all the sorting is gone, etc. There isn't even an option to pay to get these features back. They are just gone. So, I'm now faced with the prospect of finding a new picture host. It probably won't be a free one. But I hope it's one that won't become useless soon after I start using it.

Pinnacle studio 12 vs 24-bit audio

When editing my piano videos, I found out the hard way that WAV files recorded in 24 bit could not be added to the videos. Only those recorded in 16 bit worked. I hope that helps someone else trying to do music videos with Pinnacle, since the limit doesn't appear to be documented anywhere.

IDE DVD drive + IDE to SATA converter + AHCI BIOS + Vista

This is your free "incompatibility of the day report".

If you try the above combination, the Vista install DVD will take about a half hour to boot, and will never be able to install.

The moral of the story : if you are going to enable AHCI in your motherboard BIOS, you need to make sure that all your devices are real SATA devices, and not using any IDE to SATA converter. I found this out, the hard way.

The specific components I ran into this with were a Samsung DVD burner, Unitek IDE to SATA converter, XFX nForce 750a motherboard with AMI BIOS, and Vista x64 SP1 boot DVD.

Incompatibility of the day : GA-P35-DS3R vs Hauppauge HVR-1800 vs PNY 9500/9600 GT

For inexplicable reasons, installing a PNY 9600GT video card together with a Hauppauge HVR-1800 capture card on a Gigabyte P35-DS3R motherboard causes Vista not to be able to resume from ACPI S3 sleep mode.

Other combinations are OK with S3 resume, including P35-DS3R + E-VGA 8600 GT + HVR-1800, P35-DS3R + PNY 9600GT . I even tried on another motherboard, an XFX nForce 750a SLI . No problem there with the same PNY 9600 GT video card and the HVR-1800.

I also own a PNY 9500 GT video card, which I tried. It has the exact same compatibility problem as the PNY 9600 GT video card.

So, I can't really say which of the 3 components - the Gigabyte P35-DS3R motherboard, the PNY 9500/9600GT video card, or the Hauppauge HVR-1800 is most at fault. All I know is that they don't work right together with ACPI S3 resume . This is one of the major problems with PCs today - so much hardware can be installed together, but most of the combinations are never tested.

Positive SLI experience with dual 8600GT cards and XFX nForce 750a motherboard

For reasons that I will explain another day, I have been switching video cards around a lot between my home computers. When I built my HTPC in 2008, I chose a video card with the same chipset as for my main PC - one based on the nVidia Geforce 8600GT chipset cards. One board was from E-VGA, and the other from Palit. The HTPC is now running with a slightly slower, but cooler and quieter, PNY 9500GT. My main PC is now running with a much faster PNY 9600GT. The 3rd PC had a built-in video card on its XFX nForce 750a motherboard, and supported SLI. However, like most built-in video cards, it was relatively underperforming, and it only had one digital video output. I have a requirement for two DVI - one to drive my Gateway FDH2401 24", and a second one to drive the monster HP LP3065 30" LCD that's getting delivered on wednesday, to replace the CMV-221D 22" that I sold last friday.

So, in this 3rd PC, I disabled the built-in video card, and after mucking with the jumpers on the motherboard just like in the good old days of non-PNP ISA cards, plugged in both video 8600GT cards into their respective PCI-E slots.

After a reboot, I could see that the graphics performance went from 5.9 in Aero and 5.5 in 3D in the built-in Vista benchmark, vs about 4.3 for the built-in 750a. After enabling SLI, the 3D score went up to 5.8 . I guess it's a little disappointing to just go from 5.5 to 5.8, but it shows SLI is working. The 5.8 was the lowest of all scores - everything else was 5.9 . The other PC with the lone 9600GT gets 5.9 in both Vista graphic tests.

This was with a single Gateway FHD2401 display running at 1920x1200. The second HP 30" display will run at 2560x1600 when I get it. I hope the presence of two video cards will help the performance when it gets hooked up.

VGA to DVI conversion success : Ambery HDV1

I received another signal converter today, the Ambery HDV1. I had ordered it last week from Ebay. It is not in the same price range as the model from Central Computers that I tested over the week-end - about 3 times the price - more with shipping and sales tax. It also has the interesting property that it works ! I connected the VGA output of the Roland VS-2400CD to the VGA input of the HDV1. I then used a DVI to HDMI converter, and an HDMI cable, and plugged them in to the DVI output of the HDV1. The HDMI cable went to port #1 of my Monoprice HDX-501 switch. And my Gateway FHD2401 displayed it nicely.

The HDV1 is supposed to support up to 1600x1200 resolution, which I have not tried, since the VS-2400CD will only output 640x480. But it could be useful down the road to hookup other VGA stuff, like my boyfriend's laptop.

Avanquest Disk Utilities vs Vista x64

On April 11th, I purchased the Avanquest Disk Utilities - a software package comprised of 4 different programs : Partition Commander, Perfect Image, System Commander, and Disk Copy & Clean. All fairly handy programs to have when one is constantly changing hardware, backing up, restoring, and installing and de-installing software, as I always am.
The box stated that it supported Vista, in large characters.
I opened it today and attempted to install the first program - Partition Commander. Unfortunately, it doesn't support Vista 64 bits. Same story for Perfect Image - which I was most interested in out of the 4. System Commander works, but I already had a license and I knew that. Disk Copy & Clean runs from the boot CD.
Overall, that's 50% of the programs that only run in 32 bit mode. I then noted that, in very small print, on the other side of the box, there was a note that it only worked in "32 bit only". I must have missed it during my purchase. I even looked for confirmation of 64-bit support online before I opened the box, since I knew I couldn't return software. It was nowhere to be found.
Fortunately, Avanquest has an excellent 90-day money back guarantee on this program, but now I have to mail it to them at my expense, and I am out the sales tax. I can't return the program to the retailer.

Central Computers HCV0101 VGA to HDMI converter vs Roland VS-2400CD

I have been wanting to go all-digital for my displays in my home office. Don't ask me why, the reason would be longer than this blog entry.

One device has stood in the way until now - the Roland VS-2400CD digital audio workstation. As I have mentioned before in this blog, it is an embedded system, featuring only a VGA analog connection, and there is no possibility of installing a different video card. It outputs a fairly low 640x480 VGA resolution.

Thus, the only way to connect this device to a digital display (DVI or HDMI) would be to use an analog to digital signal converter. This used to be an expensive conversion box. Not anymore.

Earlier this week, I spotted an inexpensive signal converter on Central Computers' web site, model HCV0101 . The total cost was under $40. On saturday april 11, I decided to give it a try. I first drove to the Santa Clara store. They were out of stock, and directed me to their Sunnyvale store, where I purchased it.

Once I got home, I hooked it up - and got no picture whatsoever. The specs on the unit listed 640x480 as one of the resolutions :

640x480 60Hz 75Hz

I hooked up the VS-2400CD to my display via the analog VGA connection again. I then noticed that it was set to output 640x480 at 66 Hz for some reason. One of the very few display settings on the Roland is the vertical refresh rate. I turned it down to 60 Hz . I hooked up the converter again. And then, I got a digital picture ! I guess the converter can only handle those two specific refresh rates of 60 Hz and 75 Hz, and nothing else in between.

The 640x480 picture did not look good on the Gateway FHD2401, but that's because it tries to stretch it accross the screen in "wide" mode, and it's supposed to be a 4:3 resolution. That problem is common to both the direct VGA connection and the converted HDMI output. Unfortunately, the only setting on the Gateway that will solve that problem is using the "native 1:1" setting - but this results in the picture only being postcard-size, since the screen is 1920x1200. This problem has nothing to do with the converter though, and everything to do with the scaler in the Gateway FHD2401 and its lack of settings.

I thought I was done with the VGA->HDMI converter, but unfortunately not so. Later in the day, the unit started losing the HDMI connection. It turns out the HDMI connector on it is very loose. I think I got a defective unit. Another trip to Central Computers may be in order.

Update : I got a replacement unit. Clearly an open box one. And it behaved the same. It worked for a minute or so and then kept losing the signal. I guess a signal converter for that price is too good to be true. I returned it on April 13.