PLEX Coming to LG TVs and Blu-Ray Players

On 09.03.10, In Movies, TV, Technology, By AC Slater

Plex on LG TVs and Blu-Ray Players

If you're a fan of the PLEX media center then this news may interest you. It was just announced that the guys behind PLEX have struck a deal with LG in bringing the PLEX interface to LG TVs and Blu-Ray Players early next year. What this means is you no longer need a Mac hooked up to your TV to stream your content to a beautiful interface. Essentially you'll be able to run the PLEX Media Server/Manager on any computer in the house and the LG device will automatically find those servers and allow you to stream that media directly to the TV/Blu-Ray Player.

I've actually been trying to think of a cheap way to get PLEX into my bedroom without buying another Mac Mini for $350+ (my used one cost $350 a few months ago). I thought the new AppleTV would have been my answer, but it appears that it cannot play all types of media and the streaming only works with stuff that you are sharing via iTunes... no thank you. My other thought was a Roku box, but from everything I've read you can't stream media over the network to the Roku easily or with as nice of an interface as PLEX. So that really only left me with another Mac in the bedroom, which wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but I really don't want to spend the money. I guess I could always just hook my laptop up in the bedroom before going to sleep if I wanted to watch a movie/TV show, but I'd like something more permanent so these LG options may work.

Of course the only problem is I'm not in the market for a TV or a Blu-Ray player at the moment and I don't normally spend large amounts of money on the bedroom electronics. I mean, I'm rockin a 32" Olevia LCD 720p TV in the bedroom and an Insignia Blu-Ray player. Total cost (when units were brand new) $650... although the more I think about it, I could probably get a similar package deal these days for the same price, maybe cheaper or with a larger TV considering how much lower LCD TVs are these days, but either way I'm not in the market to spend $600+ on a TV/Blu-Ray Player. And I know they don't really want to do this, but I would love for a small set top box, similar to the new Apple TV, that ran the PLEX front end. I would buy that in a heart beat, but it doesn't seem like that's the direction they want to take it, but maybe LG will jump in on that and put something together...

Either way, if you haven't checked out the new PLEX/NINE I suggest you do and if you want to read more about PLEX on LG devices check out the PLEX Blog.

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Netflix for iPhone/iPod Touch Officially Released

On 08.26.10, In Movies, TV, Technology, By AC Slater

Instead of wasting your time going through the hassle of hacking up the iPad version of the Netflix app to work on the iPhone/iPod Touch you can now just head over to the Netflix and download the app yourself. Netflix has officially released the Netflix app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. This will allow you to stream TV Shows and Movies over both Wifi and 3G! It obviously requires a Netflix account, but it doesn't cost any extra money to stream to your iOS device.

Netflix

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Netflix Streaming on Your Jailbroken iPhone

On 08.09.10, In Movies, TV, Technology, By AC Slater

By now I'm sure most of you know that there is a pretty sweet Netflix app out for the iPad, but currently there is no option for the iPhone. Sure, the official app is supposed to come out at the "end of the summer" (or something like that) according to Netflix, but I'm impatient and couldn't wait. So if you're like me and you can't wait and you've got a jailbroken iPhone, here's what you can do to get in on the fun a bit early, and yes you still need a Netflix account for this to work.

*Note: If you haven't jailbroken your phone, simply open safari (on the phone of course) and go to www.jailbreakme.com, then slide to jailbreak... that's it.

I can't take credit for these instructions as they have been posted a million places by now, but I figured one more place can't hurt. Plus I did it all last night it about 10 minutes and it works great.

  1. Jailbreak your phone (if you haven't already done so) jailbreakme.com
  2. Open Cydia and install OpenSSH (may have to reboot  your phone after it's done, I did)
  3. Download the Netflix iPad app from the iTunes Store (on a computer, not your phone)
  4. In your iTunes Library find the Netflix app and right click (option click if you don't have 2 buttons) and click Show in Finder (or Show in Windows Explorer if you're on a PC)
  5. Rename the Netflix 1.0.4.ipa to Netflix 1.0.4.zip, then extract the zip file.
  6. Open the folder that was extracted and then open the Payload folder within there, you should see Netflix.app (or just Netflix if you're not showing extensions. There should only be 1 file in the Payload folder)
  7. On the computer you now need to SSH into your phone (must be on wifi). I used Cyberduck (mac ftp client), but you can use terminal or any other ftp client that supports SFTP. To get the IP address for your phone you need to open Settings>Wifi, then click the little blue arrow on the wifi you are connected to, you should then see the IP address. Plug the IP address into your ftp client (make sure you're set to SFTP), using the username: root and the password: alpine (these are the defaults). This should get you a directory listing of your iPhone. If you can't figure this step out, Google is your friend.
  8. Within the FTP client you need to browse to /private/var/stash/Applications (or /Applications will get you to the same place.) and upload the Netflix.app from the iPad app we downloaded before, into that folder.
  9. Now you need to change the permissions of Netflix.app to 755 recursive. Mine was already set to 755, but not recursive. This step is going to be different for each FTP client, but if you're using a terminal client you can type: chmod -r 755 Netflx.app (if it gives you an error try typing: su root and if it prompts for a password, us alpine again, then try the "chmod" command again). We're now done with the computer.
  10. On the iPhone open Cydia again and download User Agent Faker. This will allow us to trick the Netflix app to think we're using an iPad.
  11. Open safari on your iPhone and browse to this article and copy the following: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B334b Safari/531.21.10
  12. Go back to the home screen and open settings and find User Agent Faker, open it. Make sure it's enabled and then click on User Agent, then custom. Press back on the top left if it didn't go back to the main User Agent Faker screen, you should now see a place below "User Agent" where you can enter a custom string, paste that stuff we copied in step 11 into that box. And lastly click Applications at the bottom and turn safari on, then exit the app.
  13. Reboot Your Phone (full reboot, not respring)
  14. Once the phone has been rebooted open Safari and browse to Netflix.com, login to your account and find a movie you want to stream. Now when you select it, after a few seconds it will launch the Netflix app and begin streaming.

It's not the most glamorous method, but it works and despite there being 14 steps they are pretty simple and I tried to make them as easy to understand as I could. I know I ran into some vague instructions last night when doing it myself so I wanted to make sure other people weren't having the same issues. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to help if I can.

Update: For those of you that are curious as to how much data this is going to eat up I just ran a test and it looks like 5 minutes of streaming equates to about 17 megs. I believe this is one of the movies that is in HD as well, so it may be slightly less for a normal SD movie, but this should give you a rough idea of how much data you're looking at. So for a 90 minute movie you're looking at roughly 300 megs, so watch your data usage if you plan on using this over 3G without an unlimited plan.

Update (8/26/10): The Netflix App has been officially released in the App Store for iPhone/iPod Touch! Read More Here

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America’s Best Dance Crew Season 4 Week 3

On 08.23.09, In TV, By AC Slater

Wow, talk about a little bit shocking. Another two groups in the bottom and another group sent home, but was it who you thought it was going to be? It's definitely not who I pegged to be the next one gone. This weeks challenge was martial arts and each group had to incorporate a different style of martial arts into their routines. These challenge episodes are always a little difficult for some of the groups. Last week with the Beyonce challenge the guys in most groups couldn't really pull off some of the moves and this week those groups that aren't quite as acrobatic had a little bit of trouble with the moves. But that's not to say that even the group known for its acrobatic moves was able to pull off the challenge flawlessly. So with that said lets get to the performances.

Click through for my thoughts on all the performances for martial arts week.

(more...)

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The Office: Moroccan Christmas (12/11/08)

On 12.11.08, In TV, By AC Slater

The Office: Moroccan Christmas (12/11/08)

The staffers jingle all the way at a Moraccan-themed holiday bash, but tensions flare when Meredith's hair catches fire. Dwight's fired up as well: He becomes consumed with the hottest toy of the holiday season.

You should be able to stream this episode here or at Hulu.com starting tomorrow

You can now stream this full episode after the jump.

(more...)

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