All Apple All Day

Spotify is pretty great. But, if you're like me, you probably prefer to stream your music to somewhere other than your computer - such as a stereo, or a whole home intercom. Spotify has built-in AirPlay compatibility - IF you have a premium subscription. I don't. I DO, however, stream every other kind of music from my iMac or iPad using AirPlay - Sirius XM works great in that regard, and obviously iTunes was built for it. But not Spotify.... Until I learned this simple trick. Hold down the Mac option key, and click the volume control icon at the top of your Mac's screen. Now, you can see a list of output devices, and can see your AirPlay speakers. Click on one of them. Then just fire up Spotify, and AirPlay your music wherever you choose! NOTE: You'll be streaming EVERY sound that your Mac makes, so close the rest of your programs - if your kid has some Nick Jr. Flash game running in Safari, you'll hear that alongside your music, too. 

A few months ago, we moved to DirecTV, which has been fantastic. the HR34 DVR (now called the "Genie" in marketing material) is, two months in, still essentially perfect. We're finally finishing with WOW, switching our phone to AT&T - WOW never managed to make the VOIP work with our security system - and switching our net to Comcast for the time being. I recently purchased an Arris cable modem for $40 on eBay, which will pay for itself in about 5.5 months now that I'm not paying the $7 modem rental fees. WOW is currently charging us about $80 monthly for unlimited phone and 20 Mbps Internet. Under the new plan, we'll pay AT&T about $35 (plus, granted, 7 cents/min for long distance) and Comcast $30 (at first- they'll raise the price after 6 months or so). We'll get 30 Mbps instead of 20, and the combined price will be 65-70-ish, at least at the outset. But really, trying to save a little money is secondary. We just want a system that wo

In my last post, I raved about the DirecTV HR34 media center box. You have to pay $99 for it, but it's more or less a perfect set-top box. (UPDATE 1/14/12: The HR34 has been re-named the "Genie", and is has been free to new customers for a couple of months. Get it immediately.) When it's paired with an iPad and the DirecTV app.... well, you kind of have to see it to believe it.

There's been quite a bit of chatter about the HR34's growing pains. Sluggish menus, old SD interface, missed recordings. Many of those issues have been addressed and fixed throughout 2012. I was still a bit nervous as our tech left after yesterday's install. Well, consider me impressed. This is, without a doubt, the best set-top box I have ever used. It's a leap forward, in the way that the TiVo Series 3 was a leap forward in its day. It can record 5 HD channels while playing a sixth - with no limitations. Whole home DVR. Beautiful on-screen GUI, with snappy scrolling. Massive (expandable?) storage. It has YouTube, Pandora, and a slew of DirecTV-centric presentation goodies (All MLB games + a scoreboard? Sure. Weather? Twitter? No problem.) For $99, this is money very well spent. For DirecTV, this is an all-too-rare move by a market leader to not only stay ahead of the competition, but to exponentially outpace them. (UPDATE: And now, the HR34 "Ge

After two and a half months of WOW UltraTV, we finally gave up. The internet service has been rock-solid, but the phone service won't connect to our ADT system, and the TV service just isn't ready for prime time. (Literally. We are constantly losing all high-def channels at the worst possible times, including yesterday during Breaking Bad.) When you factor in that our WOW bundle cost in excess of $160/month, making the decision to unbundle was pretty easy. We're going with DirecTV, AT&T for their barebones landline, and - for the moment - keeping WOW for internet. More on that later. With DirecTV, we'll be going with the Choice Xtra bundle. At the outset, we're going to be saving an absolute ton of money - TV is going to be about $50/month to start - meaning our "unbundle" will be about $40 cheaper than our bundle.

Last year, I upgraded our AV Receiver, because I came to understand that an ARC (Audio Return Channel) HDMI connection was absolutely necessary. It still is, and the stereo wasn't that expensive, especially considering that I was able to sell the old one for a decent amount. But now Sony has gone and done it - AirPlay directly integrated into a reciever . It would seem that if I'm building an Apple-enabled home, this would be required, right? Well, I'll look into it. Right now, the stereo system DOES have AirPlay access, in that it has an AppleTV attached. And that isn't going anywhere - the AppleTV works so well with the iPad that it should be considered a required accessory. Would adding AirPlay to the stereo help out? Or would it be overkill/redundant? If, for instance, the stereo input would automatically change to AirPlay the moment I select the stereo on my iPhone, it might eliminate the step of having to change the TV/Stereo input to the AppleTV. Knowing

It's been SLOW going at the AAAD homestead. The home theatre project remains in a state of almost total inertia, despite Mrs. AAAD's insistence that the HDMI wires get buried and the LED gets wall-mounted immediately. I have an HDMI wire running from my TV, in front of the fireplace, and into the component rack. An HDMI wire that is being shared among multiple components . How did it come to this?! The reason? The former homestead (a Bucktown duplex up/down) has sprung a leak. Well, more accurately, the former homestead has sprung thousands of leaks and now needs a full roof & truss replacement. Which has turned a quick 3-day, $13K project into a 10-day, just-under-$30K project. Which is a bill that - even split between two owners - puts a damper on my enthusiasm for buying things like $600 in light switches. Of course - completely necessary. Those trusses looked awful, and literally crumbled when I touched them. I'm glad our upstairs neighbors didn't get a

Well, this just isn't working. We are having an incredibly difficult time with our WOW UltraTV setup - the security system doesn't like the phone, the TV menus are sluggish and unintuitive, and the internet... well, the internet is rock solid, so never mind that. But really, it's time to look into a different solution. Especially given that I'm spending $160 for a suboptimal bundle, and that there are no contracts. Over the weekend, we finished the most recent season of "Mad Men", which had been stored on our old TiVo Series 3. The difference between TiVo's interface and WOW's interface was night and day.... and it's not as though we're newbies with WOW. We've had it for 40 days now. And it's still every bit as tricky as it was on Day 3. You hit right-left-right to move deeper into menus? If you want to start a recorded program, you can't select the title and see shows.... you have to WAIT a bit, or else you're looking at

All projects were on hold as of Sunday afternoon - the brief but powerful storm that tore through Chicago's west suburbs uprooted trees and downed power lines all over our village, and it's taken a full 48 hours plus to restore power. As of 15 minutes ago, we were back in business! Now, time to spend my 4th of July holiday getting this DLNA server running!

As I mentioned in my last post, it has been a bit of a trick to get our Brinks security system working with our WOW UltraTV VOIP phone system. We only have one "phone jack" in the house, and that's the primary UltraTV box. So for now, we have a bit of a jerry-rigged situation with a phone line running through the house connecting the Brinks box to the UltraTV system. It also seems that, in recent years, there has been some serious consolidation in the home security world - Brinks installed this system when our home was built in 2008, and since then, they've been purchased at least once. Now, the only game in town is ADT. ADT can make our system work over a regular phone line for $29.99 - or they can make it work over a cell signal, for the cost of a new system ($99.99) plus a monthly charge of $44.99. I'm going with option 1. Option 2 does have its advantages, though - a newer security system could be armed and monitored via iOS, which is kind of o

I've got the opposite of the usual "home theater wife" - I've now received an ultimatum that the TV needs to be mounted on the wall, the wires buried and the TV audio running through the AV system, ASAP. Which is great news. On the other hand, we're still having a heck of a time getting our WOW Ultra TV system lined up properly. The first issue arose when our ADT security installer arrived - the phone jacks in the house, obviously, are not active. And without that, monitoring can't work. I was in NYC for work when the installer arrived, but my wife handled the situation at least as capably as I would have. His solution was to run phone cable along the basement ceiling, from the ADT box to the phone jack nearest the UltraTV box in our den. Then, add a splitter of some sort, and voila - the ADT box and the phone are both connected to UltraTV's one active phone jack. Except, now the phone doesn't work. And I'm not sure if the ADT line is worki

Well, not yet. But maybe soon. We have an AV specialist coming over to the house to give us an estimate on re-wiring the living room for HDMI and for in-wall speakers, and a security guy coming over to reconnect that system... and while I'm at it, a fence guy to get that backyard enclosed, and a yard guy to get the backyard less brown. So for the next few days, at least, no real updates on the projects.... at least until the estimates come in too high and I start attacking the drywall and floors with a punch saw, spade bit, and fish tape. In the meantime, we're expecting the 2 new sets of 3D glasses today. That gives us 4, which should be enough to accommodate most movie-watching groups at our house.  Off to Monoprice to get the TV mount and lots and lots of HDMI - and off to Best Buy to get a 40" LED for the master bedroom!

Apologies for being AWOL the last couple of days. We were back in the city over the weekend - Cubs v. Red Sox on Saturday night, and The Hold Steady at the Taste of Randolph last night.  That was fun, but exhausting. Back to work. In the meantime, I have an uninterrupted week in the suburbs - it's time to take a look behind the entertainment center/fireplace mantle wall and figure out how we're going to run HDMI wires.  The "before" image. We're picturing built-ins on both sides. In other news, I managed to pick up 2 additional pairs of Sony 3D glasses on eBay for about $33 each. Still expensive, but having 4 glasses will make 3D something that we can occasionally actually do, instead of 2 of us watching a movie while the third gets a seizure from the flickering TV.

I'm not going to get too much into yesterday's WWDC keynote - obviously, Tim Cook did an incredible job and the biggest unveiled product - the new Retina Macbook Pro - is, essentially, the perfect notebook computer. But this website isn't about new notebooks. Or even, really, about Mountain Lion or iOS 6. It's about seamlessly incorporating everything that Apple does into my home. And some of the things that were discussed yesterday do affect our projects.  1. The new Airport Express.  IMPACT: Minimal. It's about the size of an AppleTV - the new Airport Express adds dual-band, and an extra ethernet port. But I'm not using my Expresses as the primary router - they're wi-fi extenders, and more importantly, music streaming devices.  I'm hoping that the A1264 Expresses I've been buying get a little cheaper on the secondary market - but that's unlikely.  2. Siri 1.0. IMPACT: Potentially, major.  I still have an iPhone 4, w

Who says we can't multitask? On to Project 3!  We made a return trip to Best Buy, and learned the prices had essentially doubled on most of their SmartHome Insteon products. ( I must have happened across a huge sale last time - and I have before/after photos of the pricing to prove I wasn't imagining things !) Anyway, I'm sure we'll be picking up most of this stuff at BBY, but in the meantime, it's off to eBay, where I picked up a 2414 SmartLinc central controller (retail $99) for $22. This will allow us to control all connected Insteon switches with an iOS device - which was the entire point of this enterprise from the start. The dimmer switches will be a bit more expensive, at $40-50 each, retail - and our home theater room alone is going to require 4. And a couple of LampLincs to make sure our table lamps get with the program. Back to eBay! We're also going to need (want) a KeyPadLinc in order to control "scenes" - i.e., "all

Tomorrow, all of the Apple and general tech blogs (engadget, gizmodo, tuaw) will be covering Apple's new products. We've already seen that iOS 6.0 will be discussed, if not demonstrated. Obviously, all of this newness may have some effect on my remodel/projects. But probably not too much. In the meantime, I'm off to Radiohead with a couple of friends, one of whom is a fantastic architect, responsible for designing most of the Wrigley rooftop clubs, and a handful of Chicago's most talked-about restaurant interiors (Nellcote, Sunda). I've been picking his brain about the home theater project, and he's had some great cost-saving ideas. So, off to Tinley Park. I'll have more tomorrow.

Well... that's no good. I mean, it's not that far off from what I expected, but it's up there. I knew that we were likely to see a number of costs and fees on the WOW UltraTV package, but I'm a little surprised at how quickly the costs added up. Our UltraTV-Internet-Phone package is $130... plus $17 for HBO (higher than Comcast's HBO cost, IIRC), plus another $12 and change for taxes and fees, and a $4 fee for "phone connectivity", which the bill takes great pains to explain is not a tax. If it's not a tax, and goes directly to WOW, why not build it into the advertised cost of the phone line? Maybe I'm missing something here, but this seems like a classic case of misdirection and undisclosed fees, just trying to get an extra $50/year from each subscriber. Even though DirecTV requires a 2-year commitment, I think I'm likely to give them a shot at this point. Right now, we're paying more for our first month at WOW than we did for Co

(Post title courtesy of Craig Finn of The Hold Steady - playing next week at the Taste of Randolph street festival!) In one of my first posts on this blog, I noted that we wanted "AirPlay Everywhere", including the patio. I wasn't exactly sure how do to that on a permanent basis, however - I didn't want the "solution" to be dragging an outdoor speaker around with me. Well, our house has a feature that has made this issue moot. AirPlay project - partially completed! When the previous owners built this house, they had an infant and a toddler. So, they had the entire place outfitted with a whole-home monitor-speaker system. The "monitor" aspect is not particularly useful for us with our 5-year old, but the "speaker" aspect comes in handy. Primary Monitor/Speaker control panel We noted right away that the main control box for the system has an AM/FM radio and a CD changer. Even more promising, the system has an AUX input, which is

Ultra TV Grid Guide It took a couple of days and a half-dozen false starts, but after getting the primary box replaced, we have a fully operational Ultra TV setup. We are going to keep it for at least a few months. Here is the rundown: 1. Install was a bit of a trial. We have a very new home, so this shouldn't have been a wiring issue... But for the first couple of days, WOW simply could get high definition to work. They'd reset the box remotely (or I'd unplug it), HD would work for a couple minutes, and then a black screen and a "Signal Loss Detected" error message. We got a box replacement, and a $10 statement credit. Fair enough! 2. The channel lineup is a bit on the slight side . It's not bad, mind you - but there's no way to get NFL/NHL/NBA networks, no Bravo HD (SD only, which is just odd...) and a number of channels I'd expect to see in "basic" are on the "signature" tier, which I don't get. We also woul

Well, that wasn't easy. But the move is (mostly) done. We'll be unpacking our boxes for some time, but our house is starting to feel like our house . Except that home theater. It's barely even started. (I'll add pictures later tonight.) After a weekend of false starts, WOW! Ultra TV is now up and running, and I'll have a full review ASAP. In the meantime, we're dealing with a few Project 1 issues that are going to take some problem-solving. 1. There's no easy way to get HDMI cabling to the TV . The living room features a fantastic fireplace, with built-in shelves on either side, pre-wired for a TV to be placed on (or hang above) the mantel over the fireplace. But that wiring is part of the problem. We have a power outlet, and a coax connection - this would have been ideal even 10 years ago, but it's completely inadequate for what we're planning - I need a minimum of 4 HDMI cables between the TV and my various components. (We could attempt ONE H

It probably goes without saying, but Apple's naming conventions don't follow much of a pattern. For the iPhone, we had the original iPhone (#1), iPhone 3G (#2, but with a "3" in the name), iPhone 3GS (#3), iPhone 4 (#4, makes sense!), iPhone 4S (#5, with a "4" in the name), and so on. iPods were generally just called "iPod", with new names for the different lines (i.e. "Mini", "Nano", "Shuffle"). Different lines - and different generations within each line, looked so different that they could be easily differentiated, and were often referred to by nicknames. (i.e., "Nano Fat"). Then we had the iPad, the iPad 2, and the.... iPad. Obviously, Apple doesn't want to get stuck in the "X+1 Integer" naming convention for succeeding generations of the same product. Eventually you have the "iPad 17", and it gets difficult to follow. But when it comes to the used market Apple's netw

We don't own a videogame system. We do, however, own a 6-year-old who WISHES we owned a videogame system. So, every so often, he and I go to Best Buy to try out some games on Kinect or Move, and to look at electronics. Tonight, the little guy needed a break from his packed-away house, so inbetween Star Wars Kinect sessions at BBY, we noticed a large in-store display for home automation products, among which were Smarthome's Insteon line, which were running full "Lutron RadioRA2" style lighting control (granted, with a little less style ) from an iPad. With a central controller costing $99, keypads at $49, and dimmer switches at $29. I don't think I could have been more sold. It was, essentially, what I'd been looking for in a pro-install system, but designed to be added to existing homes, and controllable via iOS. And keypads, for full "scene" control! This is absolutely essential to Project 1 - overhead lights fade out, front-wall sconce

We close tomorrow afternoon, and we'll be furiously packing today, and furiously unpacking on Friday. I'll probably be occupied with moving through the weekend.  Starting Friday, Project 1 kicks into gear. While it will be a series of "good-enough" half-measures at the start, we should be able to review WOW Ultra TV by Saturday, and (if I get the coding right) have a static page for Project 1 (Home Theater) started shortly thereafter, which will have photos of the space and a mockup of what the final design will look like, a checklist of items to be completed, and links to the various posts detailing each stage of the project.  In other news: The Apple Store is now selling the Nest Thermostat .  I love the look of this thing, but it's the functionality that sets it apart. It's iOS controllable, and completely self-learning and programming. Plus, it looks like a Star Trek control panel for your house.  Sony sells their 3D glasses on the

Back from the long weekend, and sprinting to the finish line. Only three more days to get our condo ready for the tenants - today, sadly, the TV comes down from the wall mount. I will update this post throughout the day with step-by-step photos of the takedown and drywall rebuild. Today also brought a ton of rumors from Cupertino- iOS 6 with a non-google Maps app, a new taller iPhone with a metal back, and news that the keynote for WWDC will be at 10 AM pacific on June 11. I assume that the aforementioned iOS 6 and iPhone (and potentially Mountain Lion) will be the primary focus - but I'll be watching at Engadget and Gizmodo, just in case Apple unveils something new and wonderful that will alter my project plans! UPDATE: TV and mount removal went as well as could be expected. The wall repair will be the primary issue. Seriously, this was a great-looking TV wall mount. It had to be preserved for posterity. Our living room was at the end of a hallway, and the TV woul

Hope you had a good Memorial Day weekend. As I mentioned in my last post, we've opted to go with WOW for TV in the new house, while we figure out where we'll be able to mount a DirecTV satellite. And when we do switch to DirecTV - probably in the next 2-3 months - we'll be getting the HR34 Home Media Center, despite the fact that it costs an extra $100 at signup, and the fact that message boards around the internet are calling it a "work in progress". First off, it's (generally) only available to new customers at the present time, and I don't want to miss the boat on a 5-tuner whole-home DVR. Second... well... the original HD DVR from DirecTV was once a work in progress, too, and these days it's an absolutely rock-solid experience, with the absolutely gorgeous new DirecTV HD UI. (The new DirecTV HD UI is everything I'd always imagined TiVo would eventually achieve... but these days they seem to spend more time and energy on patent litigation t

After some deliberation, we went with WOW for all three services - cable/internet/phone. At least at the outset. I'm eventually going to go with DirecTV - probably this summer - but I don't want it installed until we have a better understanding of where the dish would go. (Potentially, on the pergola we're going to be building off the back of the house.) Despite the odd holes in the channel lineup, UltraTV does have some serious advantages, and I'm looking forward to providing a full write-up after it's installed next week. Now, it's time to start looking at how all this stuff is going to work together. At the outset, we won't have our built-in shelving to the left and right of the fireplace. That's going to come later. For now, we're working with the same AV cabinet we've used for the last few years, which will sit to the left of the fireplace. The space above the fireplace has a power outlet, and a cable connection. No HDMI. Off to M

At the moment, I'm strongly leaning towards WOW for all services, at least initially. Primarily because I'd like to see the new house in person for a few days, and plan out how a DirecTV dish could (or should not) be attached, prior to having an installer show up. Were it not for the installation issue, I'd be going with DirecTV and WOW in an unbundled group. Regardless, WOW works without contracts, so I should be able to make that change if/when we choose - (have to confirm that the $70 phone/internet is available to current customers as well as new customers, however... or it's back to Comcast as a "new" customer.)  With one week to go, our energies are strongly focused on fixing up the city condo - got to make it nice for our tenants. Painting all the walls, filling nail holes, that sort of thing.  However, it's also time to talk about TV mounting and installation .  We have a Sony gorilla glass 55" LED TV. It basically looks like

Its about time! Comcast showed off its new user interface and iOS app , which really, really looks fantastic. As good as DirecTV, even. No idea when this goes national - apparently, Boston gets it "in the coming weeks", with other markets to follow. I'm going to have to discuss it with Comcast, but considering Comcast's statement that this UI will be made available to *new* customers at no added charge, this news actually makes me MORE likely to ditch Comcast now, so that I can be a new customer again when this eventually comes to Chicago.

As a satellite television provider, DirecTV is more or less unable to provide broadband to its customers directly. Sure, they occasionally advertise bundles with AT&T, but that would be for DSL - a workable solution, but still, an internet solution which  advertises speeds that are between 1/10 and 1/5 as fast as what we can get from the cable internet providers. (DirecTV's website has other internet-providing partners listed, but they aren't in the Chicago area.)  When I called DirecTV about the AT&T bundles I'd seen online, they had absolutely no idea what the bundle pricing would be and told me I'd have to work with AT&T directly. And, a quick look around the net indicates that this "bundle" isn't much more than 2 companies working in complete separation. I can build that kind of bundle myself! In yesterday's post, I weighed WOW's UltraTV offering against Comcast XFinity's Triple Play. Similar offerings, similar pri

I mentioned in the first post that I was going to track several Apple-related projects at the new house. For starters, we'll have the primary entertainment center. Upcoming projects will include (subject to reordering): 1. Primary Home Theater . This will require mounting the 55" TV above the fireplace, running at least 4 HDMI cables to it. We'll design and install built-in wall units on either side of the fireplace, incorporating in-wall speakers, and (after selecting a cable/internet/phone provider) run a wired network to the entire system. I also need a bunch more active shutter 3D glasses, which we never use and which are kind of ludicrously expensive, but which is still a neat effect. 2. Wired Internet . Tired of waiting for movies to start after downloading them... And tired of living in fear of buffering when watching a streaming video. We'll need to run CAT5 through the walls, and spec out switches and routers. I currently have a Time Capsule and an Airport

9 days until our move, and we'd like to hit the ground running. I can't imagine the family will be too excited about going without TV or internet or phone for a few days while I sort things out, so I suppose it's time to make one of the most important decisions a new homeowner will face. Who will be our cable provider? We've been Comcast customers for years. Here in Chicago, they've had good service offerings, and have usually managed to keep us around by sweetening their deal just enough to make switching seem like a chore. But when you're moving, everything is a chore! May as well weigh our options. We need to cover three services here: TV, Internet, and Phone. I'm currently paying Comcast about $150 for a single TV, with HBO (I bring my own TiVo so I'm not currently paying for DVR service), 20 Mbps internet (which seems to top out around 14 Mbps in the city over wifi), and unlimited nationwide home phone. In the suburbs, we'd li