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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

The Six Biggest Media Center Annoyances (and How to Fix Them)

October 24th, 2012Top Story

The Six Biggest Media Center Annoyances (and How to Fix Them)

By Alan Henry

The Six Biggest Media Center Annoyances (and How to Fix Them)The best thing about having an media center is that you're in control and can watch whatever you want. Unfortunately, you also get the pleasure of troubleshooting when plug-ins break, files won't play, and nothing works right. Here's how to take an HTPC that's driving you crazy and whip it back into shape so you can enjoy the show.

I love my home theater PC (HTPC), but it's not exactly perfect. For a long time, XBMC wouldn't download art, plot data, or cast information. The interface is difficult for my friends, who are used to cable TV. Using a keyboard and mouse on the couch sucks sometimes. We're willing to bet you've noticed this with your HTPCs and just deal with it, or you've held off building one because of similar annoyances. You don't have to settle for a second-rate experience. In this post we'll show you how to make your HTPC work the way you want it to.

My HTPC Won't Play Some of My Files

The Six Biggest Media Center Annoyances (and How to Fix Them)

Nothing's worse than sitting down to watch a new episode of your favorite show only to find out that the file is in a format your chosen media center can't play. You have two options on how to fix this:

  • Get a media center application that transcodes video on the fly. A few apps, most notably Plex, Subsonic, and PS3 Media Server all do this seamlessly. Transcoding makes sure you can watch any type of media on any device you happen to be using, including smartphones and tablets. You can either transcode on the source machine (if the files are stored on a home server or other computer) or your HTPC itself. Pick whichever computer has a faster processor to do the decoding.
  • The Six Biggest Media Center Annoyances (and How to Fix Them) Convert all of your media to a single file format that's compatible with everything. This method requires a bit more work up front, but has a potential for less problems when you're actually trying to watch your videos. Basically, you just need to go through your entire library and convert all of your media to a common format. You can then set up a system that converts it as soon as you download or rip it, so you don't have to do the extra legwork yourself. If you use uTorrent, we've shown you how to roll video conversion into your download process easily. Alternatively, you can use previously mentioned DropFolders with Handbrake, which will watch a download folder and convert whatever comes through it automatically, without you lifting a finger.

Whichever route you choose, the end result should be the same—all of your media should play seamlessly with whatever tool you prefer to watch it. The transcoding method tends to lock you into a specific app, but if you're okay with that, or you know that app is available for all of your devices and set-top boxes, then it's a bit more futureproof. Converting your music and movies on your own takes a lot more work up front, but leaves one fewer link in the chain that could cause problems when you're trying to watch your movies.

My HTPC Won't Add My Music/Movies/TV Shows To Its Library

The Six Biggest Media Center Annoyances (and How to Fix Them)

This is the issue that actually inspired this post. For months, my movies and TV shows were playable in XBMC, but it wouldn't download posters, DVD cover art, or background information for any of my files. The fix turned out to be somewhat simple: my filenames and directory structure made sense to me, but they made no sense at all to XBMC. We've talked about how to organize your media for XBMC before, and while normally the process is automatic, it didn't work for me. In my case, adding a whole drive with a bunch of unorganized folders and mixed media just caused XBMC to give up. All it required was a bit of organization.

The main change I had to make was to use a supported naming convention for my TV shows and movies so XBMC (or Plex, or anything else) could recognize what they were. Organizing movies and TV shows into separate folders helped a lot too. If you have a lot of files to rename (like I did,) grab an app like The Renamer (Windows) or NameChanger (OS X) to help speed up the process.

Home Theater PCs Are Too Expensive

Building an HTPC doesn't have to be an expensive proposition. We've shown you how to build one for less than $500, and another for around $200, but you can go even lower than that if you wish.

Your cheapest option is probably to grab a $99 Apple TV (less if you get a refurb!). It's a great set-top box to begin with, but you can take it up a notch by jailbreaking it and installing XBMC or Plex (although the current gen isn't jailbreakable, the 1G and 2G models are.) XBMC will let you play any video type, stream from other computers, and more that the Apple TV won't do on its own. Need more choices? Check out our guide to finding the best set-top box for you for even more affordable, feature-packed options.

Where Do I Store My Movies?

The Six Biggest Media Center Annoyances (and How to Fix Them)

You've probably heard us talk about streaming from a home server, from another computer, and even from smartphones, but where should you actually store your media? The best place to store your movies depends on how you plan to watch them. Here are a few scenarios:

  • Store and watch movies on your HTPC. This is obviously the easiest method: if you have a big enough hard drive in your HTPC, you can just put the movies there. However, if you need more than one hard drive, need to transcode videos, or want your HTPC to download stuff in the background, you'll need a pretty powerful HTPC, or you'll lose some performance while all that is going on. It's probably cheapest, but it's also a single point of failure, and it too needs to be on all the time. Also, if you have something like a jailbroken Apple TV, this isn't an option because it doesn't have internal storage.
  • Store and transcode movies on your main PC, watch them on your HTPC. If you need a place to store, transcode, and download media, you can always do this from your main computer. Your powerful computer can handle things like converting files and automatically downloading movies and TV shows as soon as they air, then you can stream them to your HTPC for watching. It's a power-hungry setup, and your desktop PC will have to be turned on pretty much all the time, but it's an option that doesn't require another computer.
  • Store movies on a NAS, watch them on your HTPC. This is our suggestion, mostly because your NAS, whether you buy one or roll your own, is designed for low power consumption. This is good, since you'll need to keep it on all day, which you probably don't want to do with your desktop computer. A NAS gives you multiple hard drives for massive storage, RAID for redundancy, and enough power to do all that renaming, transcoding, and even downloading for you—without such a harsh strain on your energy bill. Photo by Craig Morey.

It Feels Like I'm Using a Computer, Not a Set-Top Box

The Six Biggest Media Center Annoyances (and How to Fix Them)

We've tackled this topic before, so it's not terribly difficult to get your HTPC in order so anyone can flop down on your couch and use it. Your first step is to get and set up a remote for your HTPC to put people at ease—after all, you may be comfortable with just a keyboard and mouse, but many people aren't, so keep it stashed away unless you need it. Even better, grab your tablet or an old smartphone and use these iOS or Android apps to control your HTPC from anywhere in the house.

That takes care of the remote problem, but your HTPC's interface could probably use some work too, right? You can tweak a few settings in XBMC to make it more friendly to non-geeks right out of the box, though a new skin can also be helpful. If XBMC is too much trouble, give the more friendly Plex a shot, or try XBMC plugins like PseudoTV, which aim to make the interface more like a traditional channel guide—full of virtual "channels" loaded with TV shows and movies that you've downloaded.

I Can't Find Anything I Want to Watch

The Six Biggest Media Center Annoyances (and How to Fix Them)

Cutting the cord does mean giving up some programming. Whether you've had that cliffhanger spoiled before you got a chance to watch the episode or you just miss your live sports, there's a tradeoff. That doesn't mean you're out of options. There's always Hulu and Netflix, or you could drop a TV Tuner into your DVR and attach an HD over-the-air antenna to it to watch and record live television. Add the Blucop XBMC repository to unlock the Free Cable plug-in, which offers streaming video from just about any channel that puts its TV shows on the web, including ABC, CBS, Food Network, SyFy, and more. If your favorite network puts an episode on its site the day after it airs, you'll be able to see it right away.

Check out all of the official and unofficial repositories to see what's available, and our picks for the best XBMC add-ons too—you'll be surprised what you can stream directly to your HTPC without limiting yourself to the things you've downloaded or ripped. With all of the streaming options, you'll never run out of new material to watch. Then, once you've identified what you can't stream, you can turn to the internet for everything else.


Most HTPCs and set-top boxes go out of their way to be easy to use—after all, using them is supposed to be fun and get you right to your music, TV shows, and movies—they're supposed to enhance the experience, not detract from it. That said, if you're running into issues with your home theater setup, hopefully these suggestions will make it a little easier to manage. Once you have your library in good order and a system for where your files land and how they're accessed set up, and once you have the interface tweaked just the way you like, you'll never be comfortable going back to some proprietary cable provider's interface.

Title image by Tina Mailhot-Roberge.

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New Fashion Blog Lets You Spy In Real-Time on Williamsburg Hipsters

October 24th, 2012Top Story

New Fashion Blog Lets You Spy In Real-Time on Williamsburg Hipsters

By Adrian Chen

New Fashion Blog Lets You Spy In Real-Time on Williamsburg HipstersWilliamsburg, Brooklyn, is increasingly coming to resemble an all-year, urban Gathering of the Juggalos. It's hard to walk down Bedford Ave., Williamsburg's bustling main drag, without seeing someone dressed like an exploded taxidermist workshop or a steampunk pirate scientist. Now the entire internet can gawk at the real-time sartorial displays on Williamsburg thanks to Styleblaster, a new, slightly-creepy project that's part-street style blog, part-surveillance state.

This month, Jules Laplace, the technical director of New York City creative agency OKFocus, set up a webcam pointing out his window on Bedford Avenue. His roommate, the internet artist Jack Kalish, programmed the camera to snap a photo whenever someone walks by and instantly upload it to Styleblaster.net. Visitors to Styleblaster can click a top hat if they see something they like, and a popular page features photos that get the most votes. Think of it as a crowdsourced Sartorialist.

The algorithmic nature of Styleblaster makes the blog more democratic than the highly-discerning eyes of the street style bloggers that often troll Williamsburg. "There's more to Williamsburg than hipsters and rich ex-Manhattanites," LaPlace told us in an email.  "Lots of normal people go out on a brisk fall day, expecting to be seen, especially on Bedford Avenue.  Everybody has their own style, and our site celebrates that." Currently, the most popular photos on Styleblaster reflect the Web's eclectic tastes: The first is a couple of fashionable ladies that wouldn't look out of place in a New York magazine spread. The second is some dude with his hands down his pants.

Some people will be uneasy at the thought of random internet strangers judging them as they walk down the street, but LaPlace insists Styleblaster's intents are innocent. "Our site isn't here to judge people or make fun of them… there's enough of that on the internet already, thanks," he said. "This is really a positive thing that's about everyday fashion first.  I think you'll agree — the weirdest things are some of the haircuts!"

And despite inevitable comparisons to the infamous "creepshot" forums of Reddit, LaPlace is right. Context matters: Taking photos of people in public is perfectly legal and, unlike creepshots of women, Styleblaster captures every single passerby, from a chaste, overhead angle. It's an innocent people-watcher, instead of a skeezy peeping tom. Every square-inch of Bedford is probably documented by dozens of Instagram users every hour, so the additional surveillance of Styleblaster is negligible. And LaPlace said he'd be happy to take down any photos if a subject complains.

There's a chance the Styleblaster camera will even "become a destination for New York City peacocks to traipse by and show off what makes the neighborhood hop," as LaPlace writes in Styleblaster's "about" page. People willingly hang out at the Levee on a Saturday night, so anything is possible. It would be a nice gesture, though, if LaPlace put a sign up warning people they were about to be splashed on Styleblaster so they could fix their hair.

New Fashion Blog Lets You Spy In Real-Time on Williamsburg HipstersStyleblaster founders Jules LaPlace and Jack Kalish.

In any event, we should get used to this sort of thing, because Styleblaster is representative of a larger movement towards blurring the boundaries of real life and the internet. LaPlace's project is an example of the "New Aesthetic," an amorphous movement/ scene/ trend/ something that's been the talk of the internet for about a year now. The New Aesthetic is centered on "an eruption of the digital into the physical," as sci-fi writer Bruce Sterling put it, a jumble of animated .gifs and QR codes, 3D-printers and 90s nostalagia that's been championed by young artists, designers and writers on Tumblr who came of age with Geocities and AIM. They're taking sensibilities born in the rough, raw cracks of the early internet and mapping them onto the real world. Sometimes they push too far, as when the artist Kyle McDonald installed spy cam software on computers at Manhattan Apple stores for a project and was rewarded with a Secret Service raid and a computer fraud investigation. Or when the fantastic Instagram photographer Daniel Arnold was banned from Instagram for posting a picture of a topless sunbather. A silly project like Styleblaster will hopefully not end in a similar fiasco. Much worse will come around eventually and the privacy police should keep their powder dry.

Just keep your hands out of your pants in public and everything will be OK. You should be doing this anyway.

[Image via Gothamist]

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The Man Who Spent 17 Years Building The Ultimate Lamborghini Replica In His Basement Wants To Sell It

October 24th, 2012Top Story

The Man Who Spent 17 Years Building The Ultimate Lamborghini Replica In His Basement Wants To Sell It

By Mike Spinelli

The Man Who Spent 17 Years Building The Ultimate Lamborghini Replica In His Basement Wants To Sell ItTwenty-two years ago, Ken Imhoff started building a Lamborghini Countach, by hand, in his basement. Seventeen years later he was done, and the world watched as he smashed a hole in his house to get it out.

As Jalopnik has exclusively learned, Imhoff is now planning to sell it. But why?

"Daddy's down in the basement," Ken Imhoff's daughter — first in diapers, later as an elementary-then-middle-schooler — would tell relatives who wondered why the family patriarch was always missing from the dinner table.

Ken was in the basement designing and machining and welding and measuring and sanding and painting. He was trying and failing and trying again. He was building, from scratch, an Italian sports car from the 1980s, fabricating the tubular space-frame chassis, constructing the wooden bucks from which he formed the body, and building the engine – a Ford 351 Cleveland V8 with gleaming chrome velocity stacks, (in case you were wondering if it had the correct V12).

The Man Who Spent 17 Years Building The Ultimate Lamborghini Replica In His Basement Wants To Sell ItWith necessary breaks for work and sleep, and accounting for occasional lapses in productivity, Ken was down in that basement for 17 years. Some years he would feel overwhelmed and lose interest, then — wracked with guilt every time he passed the basement door — he'd figure out a way to start up again. Sometimes he'd dive right back in where he left off, other times he'd find a new facet to work on to get his mind off a problem he couldn't solve.

He had to get the car exactly how he wanted it — and he wanted it perfect. Ken estimated it would take him five years, and wound up off by 11 years. Twelve if you include getting the car out of the basement. Still, he did meet his most recent goal – the last of many micro-goals that helped him get the project finished — of rolling it out in time for his 50th birthday.

Now he wants to sell it.

The Man Who Spent 17 Years Building The Ultimate Lamborghini Replica In His Basement Wants To Sell ItThe story of Ken Imhoff's hand-built Lamborhini Countach replica has transcended Internet lore. Mention "the guy who built a Lamborghini in his basement and had to knock the wall down to get it out" at a bar in Cleveland or a pub in Newcastle and it's a sure bet at least someone there will know what you're talking about.

Ken's supercar opus started as a deep personal connection with the Lamborghini Countach. Ken says it was sparked by the Hal-Needham-fever-dream opener of the movie Cannonball Run. You know the scene: A piano-black Lambo on a desert highway skids to a stop by a 55-mph road sign; the door scissors upward; we see stiletto heels; a statuesque blonde passenger in a skin-tight body suit bounds out; she's shaking a can of Krylon; she runs to the sign, sprays a red X over the 55, flashes a 1000-watt grin, jumps back in the car and it takes off – pursued in vain by the highway patrol.

Boom.

He had to have one. But, c'mon. A Lamborghini Countach? Yeah right. Whenever he thought about how he might someday get that car – an insurmountable goal for a middle-class kid from Wisconsin – he heard his dad's voice, saying, "Why don't you just build it yourself?"

"My dad instilled in me from when I was very young, Ken says, 'If you can make it, don't buy it.' My idea was to buy a kit car, with the idea of getting something on the road pretty quick, not to spend a lot of time on it. I couldn't afford it. It was my dad who convinced me I could just build it. Make it small projects over time, and it would accumulate into a finished project." Five years, tops, he thought.

The Man Who Spent 17 Years Building The Ultimate Lamborghini Replica In His Basement Wants To Sell ItSince Ken's story went public, back in 2008, car freaks have held him in the kind of regard normal people reserve for Seal Team Six. He became the car hobbyist's übermensch, a regular guy who, through superhuman focus and insane determination, led him to a remarkable automotive achievement. Ken had been working in machine shops since he was 16 years old, and although his day job was as a process engineer, he'd always messed with cars. In that way, he was like us. If he could build a Lamborghini in his spare time, we'd think, the least we could do is just shut the hell up and finish the BMW 2002 or '66 Mustang languishing in our garage.

September 22, 1990.

The Man Who Spent 17 Years Building The Ultimate Lamborghini Replica In His Basement Wants To Sell ItTwo weeks after Ken and his wife Eileen's honeymoon, Ken started work on the car we now know as the Basement Lambo. He'd only known Eileen for two months before he asked her to loan him $2,000 to buy a ZF transaxle from a DeTomaso Pantera. (She agreed, as long as he didn't tell her parents. He paid her back.) In the early days of the build, she would sit in a barca lounger reading a book, with their dog at her feet, while he worked. Eventually the dog retreated upstairs, and she followed. Eileen recalls being pregnant with their first child, now a teenager, when Ken fired up the engine for the very first time.

So why on earth would he ever he want to sell it?

"I saw that it was starting to show little signs of corrosion here and there, and it started gnawing at me that I'm not taking care of this thing the way I should. I'm doing it a disservice. And I thought, 'boy, could I actually sell it? Could I actually pass it on to somebody else and be okay with that?' I was a little concerned that I could actually let go of it. I worked on this thing for 17 years.

The Man Who Spent 17 Years Building The Ultimate Lamborghini Replica In His Basement Wants To Sell It"I get that same reaction from when I tell people I may want to sell it, and they say 'How could you sell that?' Most people don't understand, and I have to go into a lengthy conversation about how it's a journey and now we're at the destination, and now I want to do something else. And it's another project. That's what I need to do." He gestures to the shell of a Studebaker Hawk that now shares garage space with the Lambo.

So would you buy it? [Update: Interested? Make him an offer.]

Here are the specs (more at KIengineering.com):

- All hand formed aluminum body representing a euro spec 1982 Countach LP5000S
- Real Lambo tailights, parking lights, windshield, badges
- All tube space frame
- Ford Cleveland Boss 351 (514hp@ 6800rpm) with a Probe 377C.I. stroker kit with
- Forged 11.75 comp. pistons H-beam rods
- .630 lift roller cam and Milodon gear drive
- Crower pushrods and S.S. roller rockers with S.S. HiFlow manley valves
- Ported and polished heads and Hall Pantera Weber manifold
- 48 IDA downdraft Webers built by Inglesse
- Canton 10 qt. trap-door road racing pan and oil cooler
- Twin Howe sprintcar aluminum radiators with 2400cfm puller fans
- ZF 5 speed transaxle with 4:10 gear
- 15lb. aluminum flywheel
- MSD box and billet dist.
- Tires rear Hooiser 25.0x13.0x16 front 23.5x12.0x16 slicks
- Wheels custom BBS rim shells with hand made center sections. 12x16 rear 10x16 front
- Brakes Wilwood Suprelite 4 piston calipers and 12"x1.25" rotors.
- Exhaust handmade 180deg. 2" S.S. headers, 3.5" collectors, 12" long x 3.5" racing muffers.
- Wilwood racing pedals/master cylinders/hyd. clutch.
- Pantera shifter and linkage
- Performance untested weight 2700lbs.

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