The Hobbit

I am sure that there are individuals out there who think that the Hobbit is a masterpiece. However, I am not one of them. Vastly too long - it took an hour to get out of Bag End, crikey after 20 minutes I was thinking that if this was on television I would have switched over by now.

Too many far too long lingering shots, notably of Thorin, clearly designed to display his changing nose or to highlight how sometimes he'd be thin and the actor's normal size and other times be stocky like a dwarf should be pictured.

New features added, those rock giants were all very nice but had no place in the film.

Radagast, I had heard that Sylvester Mccoy upstaged everyone else, well to be fair that wasn't too hard.

Silly clothing for ponies, tick.

Bad perspective changes, children on Shetland ponies, tick.

Inconsistent sizing of characters compared to others, especially Gandalf, tick.

I went into the film sceptical and not at all enamoured with the 3 part nature and expected to come out impressed and eager for the next instalment.

We'll that didn't happen.

The only way I will go to the cinema to see the second film is if news trickles through that the producers have learned to edit their output and that there will not be a third film.

Adrian will love this film undoubtedly.

I think I should summaries a plus & a minus point to end on :

Con : given the title of this site the big con (other than having paid to attend) is that listening to others as we exited the cinema I was no in a minority being unimpressed.

Pro : the next Star Trek film had a trailer and that looks awesome (Adrian will hate that I'm sure).

YAMM, Media Browser and Media Center

After much trial and error I have finally become annoyed with the habit of Media Browser of updating my movie folders, literally one day I can have a folder showing one name and the next the content is presented differently. For instance, The Adventures of a Teenage Dragonslayer used to have a cover image saying just than then one day it changed to a French language version.

As I have Media Browser running via Media Centre on my main PC and the HTPC I don't even end up with a consistent view.

The final straw has come in that I also have XBMC installed in both locations and that updates too and has added a healthy does of random.

I'm trying to get used to XBMC because MediaCentre is on the way out - I believe it is a pay for option on Windows 8 and that will kill it off, the downside is that the other products are just too complicated - yes they can do a lot of things but I just want my media presented in a simple interface with not too much messing about but having spent an extended period with MediaPortal and a couple of other products XBMC strikes me as the only viable alternative out there (and I'll try it again on my Rasperry Pi eventually, I love the Party Mode in the music library).

Anyway, I'm a long term user of Yamm, Yet Another Media Manager, which works pretty well but it too can have a randomisation effect - clearly they all pick up standard files from common sources and it is those sources that are changing. I've now stopped Yamm monitoring my entire collection and today I have been through and removed all automated updating from Media Browser and Yamm on both machines and manually visited every movie and corrected the content; it seems the best way to do this is to individually add the movies folder to the Yamm config and then wait for it to update (I've frequently resorted to adding

[imdb=ttxxxxxxx]

to the end of the foldername (where ttxxxxxx is the id from the imdb.com site) to force Yamm to use the correct film information.

Now all of my Movies have the correct information and look great in Media Browser and XBMC.

Synology DS213Air update

I've now been living with the DS213Air for a few months and am pleased overall.

It turns out that the media server doesn't work when in Wireless Router mode - which I'd only changed to from the default Hotspot mode because of poor performance (like unconnectable between floors).

A bit of time spent with my Google Nexus and the free WiEye wi-fi scanner tool has revealed a massive overlap on a number of channels, it also shows just how much wifi on one channel spills into others. Having identified a pretty quiet channel the hotspot mode is now usable on the diskstation which means that media server is working perfectly now.

I've used the Download Station and have just started downloading RSS feeds to keep bandwidth out of chargeable hours which is a nice automation benefit.

I am also hosting all of my music and movies on the device which means less data stored on each PC in the house.

I have installed the DS Photo/ File/ Audio apps on the Google Nexus, they work fine locally but my ADSL router is to old to handle automated configuration for remote access (pretty sure it could be done manually if necessary), besides which DS Audio which is my main interest is too simplistic (missing Album Artist view for starters) to be of much use so I have been using Bubble upnp to connect to the Mediaserver product and that covers photos, audio and video, matched with MX Player on the Nexus and most of my films play pretty well.

I have Cloud Station installed on my PC and it works fine but is limited to 3 shares each (so no good for synchronising my home folder, music, videos and photos, 4 things), it also requires that the Disk station share is configured first which means copying everything to the Synology first and then synchronising it back to an empty folder on the PC, which was bad enough with 146Gb of music, 1.5 TB of movies is a non starter, it also plays havoc with genie backup as all of that data is a change so gets backed up a 2nd time. I'm now using it just for individual items I want to synchronise, eventually I'd like to do my entire Documents folder but a little more confidence is needed first, time will tell. The software is also clearly still in development as it has a basic error in that every time I login it tells me that 17 files have been updated, it's the same 17 everytime because they were the last to change.

Data replicator has been deleted as it's a back tool not a synchronisation tool so not much use for me at this point.

Nexus 7 update

As time progresses I am increasingly impressed with this device, it is not as plug and play as an iPad but the convenience (not having to boot a PC for small tasks) and flexibility is excellent.

I have purchased screen protectors and discovered that in five days of light use there are tiny scratches on the glass already so  durability is a concern.

I have also purchased a Poetic leather case which is a good looking, well made item with working sleep mode magnets (that don't cause problems when the cover is folded right back), £10 we'll spent there.

synology...lack of response

Three days and still no response from synology regards the failure of media share over wireless or indeed regards the disappointing wireless performance - the only reason I have not given up on it is the money spent.