On the subject of mediaplayback, now dig this a 400 disk CD/DVD changer!? Had it not been because I am fully into streaming (Netflix) these days this would have been a god send gift – no more shuffling around with cd’s/dvd’s strangely however no mention of Blueray disks?
Anyhow, read more here if this is up your alley 🙂
http://uncrate.com/stuff/sony-400-disc-dvdsa-cdcd-changer/
Update;
After just a few clicks in google I found the Blueray ‘version’ 🙂
http://www.electronichouse.com/article/review_sonys_400_disc_bdp_cx7000es_blu_ray_megachanger/
I’m surprised I never heard about these models before, could be because of their initial pricing which was somewhat steap.
Today my Roku2 set top box arrived from the USA (my first order via www.shopusa.com which seem to have workd fine), I had ordered this to be able to watch Netflix in my bedroom and the Roku2 box seemed the easiest and cheapest way.
The device which comes with remote and build-in wifi seemed nice, small and elegant and I did not expect many issues connecting it, I had read in advance that the service www.unblock-us.com was supporting this unit so everything should be a brease.
Well things did not go acording to plan 🙁
First things first, www.unblock-us.com works by you replacing your DNS servers with servernames (or rather IP’s) they provide, well the darn box has no network settings it gets it’s configuration from DHCP and that is it. Well no problem, I run a Windows 2008R2 server with DHCP so I just created a new reservation for the MAC address of the Roku 2 box and setup the Unblock-us DNS server ip’s for this reservation – and sure enough this part worked like a charm (note you have to follow the instructions on the www.unblock-us.com site and activate the service before starting to use it, I’m not 100% sure how they register you, likely by your external IP – but how do they deal with dynamic IP’s then??).
So now I had the device connected to my WLAN and tv. The first thing is then to link the Roku box to an account, you need you computer for this – so I created an account and entered the ID-code from the Roku 2 box (it displays a code you need to enter into your new Roku account to link the device to your account), and everything worked like a charm (I used a P.O.Box address in the USA as my postal address and my American Express as credit card, everything was fine). But now began my trouble, see the device somehow knew that it was not in the USA and only showed a few totally uninteresting streaming channels (no Netflix, no Hulu etc. etc.), and now began a lot of googling – I found these two threads that seemed to give some insight to the matter;
http://support.unblock-us.com/customer/portal/questions/141869-roku-2-not-showing-us-content
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1695235
And the issue appears to be that the account somehow is not accepted as a fully valid USA account, now I tried deleting the account and recreating it via a USA vpn as some suggested, I tried different credit cards, I tried creating a USA Paypal account but nothing solved the issue. It was suggested that by using a verified USA creditcard you might overcome the problem, however USA credit cards are hard to come by in Europe :-/ I only know of a few places where you can obtain these and these are not free so a streaming service would end up being fairly expensive 😐
Link to obtaining a USA credit card;
http://www.unblock-us.com/how-to-set-up/us-unlocked
https://readmydamnblog.com/?p=1860 (might also work)
I did however in the end find a liveable solution to my torment, once the device is fully configured and setup you unlink it from your Roku account – then you wait a few minutes and either restart the Roku or refresh your channels – this strangely enough caused the device to remove all channels BUT at the same time restore the Netflix launch button to the frontpage – and now Netflix works (and possibly also Hulu) – you still need Unblock-us not to forget, however all other channels are gone… Ok, my objective was to get Netflix so I’m happy with this, but at the same time it’s a shame to not be able to try out all the other stuff – but I guess there is no winning every time 🙁
Btw; the powersupply supports both 110v and 220v so no problems there other than the wall jack which a universal adapter took care off
So status at the moment is; Got Netflix working (by unlinking the Roku from my Roku account) but now that is all the device can do….. Hrmpf I am not totally satisfied, but guess this will have to do…
Streaming and Netflix navigation seem to work fine, quality is not fully as good as when I stream from a PC but quite acceptable. Do let me know if anyone figures out a way around this messy situation.
Another odd thing about the Roku 2 box, there is no standby? you need to unplug the darn thing to shut it down, acording to Roku it is because it uses so little power, now I don’t know in these days where we all are suposed to be thinking about the environment :-/
UPDATE March 8th 2012;
Found this site that appear to offer a workaround for any non USA credit card problems, I have not had the need to test it myself but it looks like a workable solution:
http://www.buyfrompowerseller.com
You may be an IT administrator or just the person in charge of helping your users (or friends for that matter) configuring iPhones. Now setting up an iPhone is not hard once you have tried it once or twice, but it is still time consuming and lets face it not very fun, well imagine that you had a piece of software in which you could prepare the configuration and then just sms the configuration to anyone? Well it is almost as easy as that 🙂 and best of all, I will show you how 😀
What you need is the “iPhone configuration utility” from Apple, you will find it here;
http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/enterprise/
Now you install this and are set to go, with this software you can create configurations for the iPhone (or iPad) and by connecting the device to your machine you can transfer the settings directly, this is easy enough but as mentioned you can do even better – you can send the configuration over the internet – the latter however require a web-server and maybe a little more skill that the average home user.
Anyhow, if you are an IT administrator etc. and need to setup a log of iPhones, then this is interesting for you.. You create a configuration with “iPhone configuration utility” and upload this to a web-server, eg. as http://www.webserver.com/iphonesettings.mobileconfig and now you can just sms the link to this page/file to new employees or BOD “bring your own device” users. Now one word of caution though, if you publish your config this way you MUST omit ANY sensitive information like email, domain name, username and passwords, this however is not a problem – any information not entered will just be prompted – so if you omit the username and password the user will just be prompted for this when installing the configuration (information like this is likely known by the user, or could be included in the sms). That some outside user may be able to read what mailserver you use is not really a problem, this information is already public knowledge via eg. NSLOOKUP – so there is really no security issue with this unless you include passwords etc. which you should avoid as mentioned.
The settings set this way are entered into the phone as a “Profile”, you can configure that this “Profile” can be removed “Anytime”, “Via Password” or “Never” (never mean that you need to reset the device to remove), if you remove the “Profile” it will also remove all data related to the profile (eg. if email settings was part of a profile, it will also remove the emails as part of the removal – but if you setup additional email’s manually these will be left alone).
What can you configure;
Almost anything, just to mention a few things; Email, VPN, WiFi, Policies (you can enforce password etc. etc.).
See my walktrough here for more details etc;
Ps.
If you upload the configuration to a webserver, you may need to set the mime type and remember to NOT change the extention of the file (.mobileconfig).