Thanks!

Thanks to everyone who has sent me feedback on the 1.2 release; I've collated and am passing it along. It's great to hear the nearly universal enthusiasm for the product that underlies some snags in the user experience.

Update 1.2

Sorry to be slow due to the power distraction; we completed software update 1.2. This release adds Windows Vista support (satsifying some early adopters and everyone at Microsoft). You can imagine the pressure was on to get that one out...

It also fixes a lot of minor bugs and (for me) improved some of the out of box experience.

Why the power is out

Picts I took on the way in this morning. There are thousands of spots like this throughout the county.

http://dcaulton.smugmug.com/gallery/2252800

Things I need to remember to get before the next storm

• even MORE batteries (probably spare bricks from costco just for emergencies)
• even MORE coleman cannisters
• ANOTHER coleman lantern
• lots more candles
• a nicer battery powered fm radio

Things I learned this time:

• you can cook rising crust pizza in a gas barbeque
• a fridge can keep your food safe for only 24 hours
• you can light up our gas fireplace without any power
• the day after a storm, shelves in stores will be completely stripped of everything you need.
• kids go into media withdrawal for 24 hours, then get creative and have fun.

Not sold on a generator yet...we're doing ok as is.

Things I'm glad we bought and did before the storm

• bricks of batteries from Costco
• an extra propane tank for the coleman lantern
• a coleman lantern
• Gina did the laundry
• an AC converter for my car cigarrette lighter
• lots of car chargers
• candles
• a backpacking candle lantern
• several spare flashlights

What a winter!

Stopped by work for a fix of internet and lights, and to charge up my Zune. Home is dark thanks to the windstorms we had two nights ago. Still 600k homes without power. Winds at home peaked well over 75mph - possibly much higher. The local weather station blew down ;)

I slept through the worst, but yesterday went biking on some familiar trails which were obliterated in many spots by 3'-4' diameter trees. A mile on a woodsy road near home had 12 places where large trees were down over the power lines; locals had cut away enough to drive on the road, but it's going to be a while before they can light up the lines.

Thankfully we have lots of candles, Coleman Fuel, and a gas fireplace that's keeping the house tolerably warm. Food is starting to warm up in the freezer (huge fruit salads for breakfast!) and the fridge (huge buffalo burgers for lunch!). Kids are being good sports now that they realize that dad can't get Viva Pinata no matter how much they beg.

They're starting to see it as a fun adventure, although my son wants to send mail to J Allard suggesting a battery powered xbox 360.

DVR-MS explained

DVR-MS is a big topic among the enthusiast community (and in the comments on this blog), but I want to point out a number of painful misunderstandings about it.

I should say upfront; for anyone who has an MCE box with a tuner (a small but vocal group), what I'm going to say can't make them feel much better. Sorry. But it should clarify what's going on technically.

First, what *is* DVR-MS? It's basically an MPEG-2 video stream wrapped up in a Microsoft ASF container needed to enable DRM. MPEG-2 has a single overriding advantage:

• Lots of mainstream tuner cards can encode into it (using built-in mpeg-2 encoders) in their hardware, which means you will still get good video quality even if you're playing Half-Life 2 when a show comes on.

This advantage has been pretty definitive for MCE, and is the main reason for using MPEG-2 (oh, if only h.264 or wmv were in there!).

This said, there are disadvantages that become painful in a portable device:

• The files are huge (relative to mpeg-4, h.264, or WMV) for practical portable device use. So you really need to transcode.
• You might try to rely on an existing mpeg-2 decoder on the PC. But existing mpeg-2 decoders are primarily designed for real-time playback. Many fail badly if you try to do a transcode (which requires faster-than-real-time decoding).
• Adding support for them to any device or software is prohibitively expensive (you must buy an mpeg-2 decoder license for each device and copy of the software) given the small number of users that need it (only a small fraction of MCE PCs include a tuner card to date).

These are why (in general) DVR-MS is great for MCE, but why portable devices (ipod, p4s devices, Zune) have not opted to support it...yet.

All of this said, we obviously have strategic reasons to want to enable this in the long run, and our most engaged customers are demanding it. I always say nobody should buy a Zune based on future promises (but may secretly hope they do...;)), but know that you've been heard.

Talking to Paul Thurrott

Many folks will know Paul Thurrott's work. Recently I had the opportunity to spend some time chatting about Zune with him, and they turned into a couple of articles (http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/zunestory.asp) and a podcast discussion (http://www.twit.tv/ww).

Paul's a great guy who's been skeptical of our first market entry, but we'll turn him around eventually....

Zune as mass storage?

A number of sites (e.g., http://www.getusb.info/?p=374) are posting a hack to get your Zune to work as a storage device as well as a music device. That's fine, but folks should know the downside of this hack.

• First, it will mean that you can't listen to your Zune while it's connected to your PC. Out of the box you can charge your Zune while listening to music by not running the Zune client. If you use this hack, then Windows explorer grabs the device while it's connected and it stays in "sync" mode the entire time.
• Second, it will make your Zune act like any old device, and you'll have to deal with the lovely autoplay dialog box every time you plug it in.

Just fyi...

Corrections

On the Kim post, it's James, not Paul of course. I have a good friend named Paul Kim and made a typo. apologies.

the tmpgenc encoding profile is now live on the site; there's a mystery hosting problem with that extension. It's now at http://www.zunester.com/zune.zip

Kim Family found

Thankfully, the Kim family has been found alive. The search for James continues. The story is dramatic and upsetting, especially to those of us with families. I've spent a lot of time in Oregon in grad school, including time in the very area (on the very road) where they broke down. About five years ago I headed up onto that road going the opposite direction (towards the coast). The maps are deceptive and make this rough forest service road look bigger than it is, and it's nicely paved for some way in. I hit a freak snowstorm. Beautiful, but scary, wet, cold, and lonely. I headed back down the way I came and went the long way around, but it was a near thing. The alternative is really long.

There are a lot of really jaded tech journalists who've been in the biz too long and have lost their enthusiasm and sense of fun in the industry. That isn't James. I've met him a dozen times professionally, and he was always fun to meet with and a good reviewer. I hope he's ok, huddled in a tree well somewhere. My prayers go with him.

Zune video encoding tutorial!

I offered it
You wanted it!
You asked for it!
You asked for it again!
I apologized...and finally got around to it...

Now it's done (in about 15 minutes, so comments appreciated), the Zune Video Conversion tutorial - how I do it at home!

www.zunester.com/zunevideo.htm

Slow to post, ski sled...

Sorry so slow to post my video tutorial; I've been busy on another project. To now go waaaaaay off topic....

Everyone who wants to pull children or gear behind them while snowshoing or backcountry skiing should check here:

http://www.krabach.info/snow_sled/snow_sled.htm

Easy, and it really works!

Tonight I'll try to pound out that video tutorial...