Dilemma of an Indian iTunes Store Fan

Posted: December 8, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Apple, Multimedia | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Apple quietly made available Music and Movies on India iTunes Store.  India users didn’t have any clue until the Apple Device users started receiving  mail notifications from Apple.

Music collection on the store is not bad. Only problem,  user has to dig thru or try a search on his favourites. Surprised to see recent releases on regional music also on the store. But the default categories on the Music Section doesn’t help the user , unless he is looking for main stream music from Bollywood. Anybody of a different taste may rule out the store with a “minimal collection”, if he doesn’t dig deep into the store. International releases also seems to be exhaustive.

Video section seems skinny as of now. Not much from Bollywood and international titles. Hope this will improve over a period of time.

What’s really tempting for an Apple Device owner and movie enthusiast is the price. An HD version of a Hollywood title is around Rs 490, which is somewhere around one-third the price of its Blu-ray version. Quality ,  you cannot compare as the iTunes version is a  compressed version, but watchable.  Bollywood titles also seems to be reasonably priced.

The real problem is the closed ecosystem. Music is not of an issue as Apple is releasing non-DRM versions. But Movies are really pain-full.

For a person who likes to enjoy movies on his HDTV or Home Theatre, the current restriction is a real let down. On one side the tempting price and on the other side the lack of flexibility or choice in playing back your purchased movies.

Only options available for a user to enjoy his Movies purchased from iTunes are

  • Playback on the iDevices
  • Playing on your PC or Macs

If you want to enjoy them on your Home theatre, the options left are

  • Stream the Video and Audio from iDevices to Home theatre or TV thru Apple’s Digital AV Adaptor(Approx Rs 2300 + HDMI cable )
  • Utilize the HDMI / DVI connectors on your PC or Mac and feed the signal to your TV / Home Theatre thru HDMI or DVI cable

Some of the limitations on the above options are

  • iPad 2 and iPhone 4 outputs only 720p resolution
  • If you recently adopted iPhone 5 or iPad 4th generation then, currently no option to feed the HD Video/Audio to your HDTV / Home theatre, as Apple is yet to release Lightning compatible AV Digital adaptor.  Current version of Digital AV Adaptor with Lightning to 30-pin adaptor will not work.
  • PCs / Macs should have HDCP support to watch HD versions. If your current setup doesn’t support then choose SD versions for purchase or rent.

Another last option which again is not a standalone solution is Apple TV. This device is not yet available in India. Apple should be launching this in India soon as with the availability of Music and Movies , the usability  has improved from the device’s point of view.

But these again is quite restrictive. To enjoy your movies thru Apple TV

  • You need to enable Home Sharing on iTunes running on your PC  or Mac. That means to enjoy movies your PC should be running
  • Stream thru Airplay from iDevices to Apple TV. The restriction on iPad 2 and iPhone 4 may apply in this scenario also. Not confirmed.
  • The device doesn’t allow to playback your personal media on a hard disk, unless the same is imported to iTunes Library and shared thru Home Sharing.

XBMC has Airplay support, but I was not successful in Streaming Movies. Music was fine.

The current limitations in enjoying the purchased Movies on your HDTV or Home Theatre is a real roadblock.

I think, I’ll finally end up adding an Apple TV, as the temptation on the Pricing and convenience of Purchasing / Renting weighs out over any other route available now.

Windows 8 – Usage log

Posted: November 7, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Microsoft, Windows 8 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Note : Any noted issues are prefixed by [ Issue ] tag. A tip is prefixed by [ Tip ] tag.

5/Nov : Migrated from current Windows 8 Enterprise Evaluation to Windows 8 Pro. Have to struggle a bit to put a 64-bit version on my 64-bit capable Desktop which was running 32-bit Evaluation version. Installation was smooth with no surprises. But the installation time was bit longer compared to Windows 8 Enterprise Evaluation Installation. Close to 15 mins with 3 reboots. Install had to be a clean install. OS pretty much the same.

Started adding software for day-to-day use. iTunes installation went fine, 64-bit version for Windows 7 installed without any issues. So was messengers. Office 2013 Preview went fine.

Built in Mail App had no issues in adding popular mail accounts. [ Issue ] But the first account to be added needs to be a Microsoft Account.

People app immediately synced contacts from the Connected Social Accounts. Calendar was refreshed in short time.

Music app doesn’t seems to be insisting on adding a Microsoft Account unlike in earlier version. App currently recognizes only Music from Local Hard disks. [ Issue ] Network based Music repositories are currently not supported.

Enabled File History aka Backup , to back up to external Hard Drive. Configuration took minimal steps. The utility can be configured to back up from every 10 mins to once in a day.

App Store seems to have some new additions. Skype insisted to add a Microsoft Account to start using.

On the Hardware side, not so known USB Web Cam is not recognized. Driver installation also didn’t help. [ Issue ] Seems the Driver written for XP/Vista was a 32-bit version and having issues with 64-bit Windows 8 Pro, since this has worked on Windows 8 Enterprise Evaluation(32-bit). Rest of the hardware(Printer, On-board Audio and Video chips on 4-year-old motherboard) was recognized and ready to use. No extra drivers needed.

7/Nov :

[ Tip ] Discovered a workaround to get a minimalistic Start Menu on the Windows 8 Desktop

8/Nov : Updated versions of Built-in Apps available on the Windows Store. Mail, Calendar, People, Maps and News app were updated to latest version. No noticeable changes compared to earlier. Mail App supports Conversations by default.

Visual Changes to News app. Articles presentation seems to have improved. So is the Navigation menus when you right-click with in the app. Earlier when you right-click, the top menu bar, which appears had additional items available as drop downs. Now the same is presented as tiles. Microsoft seems to be bringing consistency across the apps build for Windows 8

Windows 8 IE(Not the Desktop IE Version) seems to be a hit or miss. [ Issue ] Page rendering has issues during dynamic rendering.

You can post to your Facebook wall or tweet from the People App. [ Issue ] For Facebook postings you do not have control over your audience.

[ Tip ] If the posting should always go to one target audience, then you can change this behaviour by visiting your Facebook page on the browser. Go to “Account Settings” ->; “Apps”, Click on “Edit” for “Microsoft” App. Select the appropriate Audience against “Posts on your behalf” option.

11/Nov : Noticed that an Active Application closes, When a background installation of an App from Windows Store concludes. This doesn’t happen during the download, but during the end of installation after the download.

12/Nov : As mentioned earlier, the built-in Music App has some serious limitations. There is currently no solution to have music on a Network Folder to appear with in the app. You can play the files by navigating to the folder, that is it. The app, not really Windows 8 currently doesn’t have support in extracting meta data from media on network. But Windows Media Center very well compensates for that. You may be missing the Modern UI and the Social Media Sharing. So it was worth while to enable the add-on available thru Microsoft’s promotional offer.

Mail App is lacking a single shot command for emptying the “Trash” or “Deleted Items Folder”. You need to select all the mails in the folder and delete the mails. Ctl+A keystrokes are not working as usual. So you end up selecting the first message and Shift+Click on the last message.

[Tip] Found a trick for selecting the messages without scrolling to the last message. Right Click/Single Click the first message, again right-click the second message, then a Ctl+A selects all messages in the current mail folder.

27/Nov : Skype upgraded.  Windows Messaging will be discontinued from 2013. In preparation for that, Microsoft has built the messaging support for Windows Messenger Contacts into Skype. The new version insists to have a Microsoft Account set up for using Skype. Once this is done, it allows you to merge old Skype account and the Microsoft Account.

30/Nov : Upgrade to iTunes 11 went fine. No issues so far. Windows 8 seems to be Disk space hungry. With Office 2013 Preview and few apps only 30% space left on 50GB partition. It seems for each user the OS is installing  separate version of the Default built in Programs. When an update is available for an App, the install needs to be done for each user, hence the doubt.

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