General | Thoughts and Ramblings

Why I Cancelled Netflix

When I first subscribed to Netflix’s streaming service, it was a great way to watch movies and shows that I had missed through other sources. I started regularly visiting sites that tracked what’s been added to the service and adding items as a result. Then it changed.

Competition

It seems strange but the addition of competition in streaming service providers seems to have been a detriment for the consumer. Prior to this, the content owners had a choice of whether they wanted to get streaming royalties at a price that Netflix was wiling to pay or get none at all. Then when competing services started to arise, particularly Amazon, these content owners could play the services off of one another to get a higher royalty and offer exclusivity at a premium. With this change, the consumer must subscribe to multiple streaming services to get the equivalent content that used to be available on a single service.

Posted by Thoughts and Ramblings on Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Are Apple's Best Days Behind Us?

Have you noticed a decline in Apple’s software quality over the past few years?

I have been asking this question of users of Apple’s products among my friends, family, coworkers, and others over the past year or two and the results have been quite telling. They have all reluctantly answered YES. None of them have anything against Apple and they all are long time users of Apple’s products, but they are all tumbling to the fact that the software quality used to be better. It’s not just limited to the Mac side either; they are noticing the same decline on iOS as well.

Posted by Thoughts and Ramblings on Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Consistent 24p on OpenPHT

For quite a while, I’ve been having issues with OpenELEC (OE) based devices detecting the 24p frame rate (23.976 frames per second) on my TV. Usually when I play something in 24p and the TV doesn’t switch into this mode, I will reboot the OE player and it would resolve the problem. Then after the TV is turned off and later turned back on, about 1/4 of the time, the problem would resurface. I’ve seen this behavior with both OpenPHT (and it’s predecessor Plex Home Theater) and Plex Media Player. I finally got annoyed enough with the situation that I decided to do something about it.

Posted by Thoughts and Ramblings on Wednesday, August 23, 2017

My experience with Plex and an HD HomeRun on Suddenlink

Now that Plex supports watching LiveTV and DVR that works with the HD Homerun, I looked into what was available to me in my area. Since I don’t live in a major city, the over the air options are quite limited, as in 4 broadcasters including a PBS affiliate. Since I was already a Suddenlink customer through their internet service, I looked at their TV offerings. Essentially I can add their SL200 for ~$35 more than the internet service alone(This was a blatant lie! It’s really $50). So, I bought an HD HomeRun Prime and added the service with a CableCard.

Posted by Thoughts and Ramblings on Thursday, June 1, 2017

Docker in FreeNAS 9.10 (Part 2)

In my previous post, I outlined how to use docker within FreeNAS 9.10. While FreeNAS 10 adds docker support as a first class citizen, most of the functionality is available in FreeNAS 9.10. The primary piece that is missing from FreeNAS 9.10 is the 9pfs (virtFS) support in bhyve. I mentioned that I share media and other pieces via CIFS to the VM and that databases should be local. Now I’ll describe how exactly I deal with the configuration.

Posted by Thoughts and Ramblings on Tuesday, January 17, 2017