Cleaning Off Some Blood

My regular readers (why are you looking at me like that) will recall that about four months ago I tried out KDE4.  To sum that up very, very briefly: I hated it.  A couple weeks ago though, KDE4.2 entered the testing branch of Gentoo, and what I'd seen elsewhere in the internet suggested that people who were nothuge fans of previous iterations should try it again.  As this is in testing/unstable branch for Gentoo, I'm dealing with a final release version from upstream, so just in terms of stability I knew it was pretty likely to come out ahead, but how usable is it?  Well, let's compare and contrast with last time.

The only thing I was particularly happy with last time was the move to a 3D composited desktop like OSX's, Windows Aero, and Compiz.  Well, now more than just being 3D compositied, it has basically every useful effect from them too, and now has my favorite implementation of a few of them.  In OSX, you can trigger some of the effects like Exposé and showing the desktop by hitting the corners of the screen.  Compiz-Fusion had a similar effect, but it was slightly more finnicky.  KDE4 is more stable than both of them, by requiring you to push against the corner rather than just getting near it.  Sure it's slightly more effort, but it removes false positives in the process.  All the rest of the features are basically clones of Compiz ones, with a few trivial omissions; there isn't an alternate window switcher key command set for using multiple effects active at once, and the features that map desktops to polyhedrons are slow, but worthless anyway.  Additionally, I can't seem to drag windows across borders to other desktops, but it's still easy to get them over there via the context menu.

When I was complaining about keyboard shortcuts last time, I primarily was referring to mapping Meta+Space to launch KRunner, as it's much better than Katapult (though worse than Gnome-Do, which looks like ass in KDE4 sadly, though under KDE3.5 it's glorious) and that sort of functionality was welcomed.  Well, I'm happy to report that it works exactly as expected now.

My next complaints were directed at Phonon and Amarok2.  I can't really speak to Phonon this time since I don't have any audio notifications running for any apps, and I'm not running Amarok2.  Sadly, the majority of my complaints with Amarok2 were intended features of it, or else low priority omissions, so there isn't much reason to try it again.  It's probably never going to be the music player I want, though it may become a music player I can live with eventually, in case the 1.x series dies out too badly.

I had two specific complaints with KTorrent: lack of RSS plugin and the UPnP plugin blocking all other UPnP use.  Both of these are remedied with the current release, though the RSS plugin is not as good as I'd hope.  It fetches fine, but I can't override how often (the one stream I use a lot of often runs out of new spots faster than it defines the update, so letting it auto update at its own pace misses things), and the filters are still appallingly bad.  The regexp support is simply broken, as valid regexp completely fail to match things they really should.  This isn't exactly a regression though, as the KDE3 branch was no better about this.  I can live without automated downloading, I just wish I didn't have to.

Akregator is a bit of an interesting experience.  The issue I had last time was back again, but I'm no longer convinced it was a broken app so much as it was ridiculously buggy rendering.  You see, I did eventually find a handle that allowed the resizing of the Articles pane, it was just closed all the way.  Maybe it was there last time too and I just missed it.  I can't tell, and don't feel like installing an old version just to find out.  This is definitely a bug, but it's hard to tell exactly how big of one so I'll just leave it at the fact that it works now, and is slightly more readable due to using Qt4 widgets and color themes throughout, and after my last foray I actually switched my KDE3 apps over to it with mixed success.

I wouldn't suggest everything is perfect though.  K3b is still a non-starter, but it's not in testing in portage yet either, so I don't have to care.  Plasmoids are now called widgets, and most of the old issues apply, though there are sort of replacements.  OSX widgets still fail miserably with the Alpha channel for whatever reason (why even bother with the feature if it's this bad?) but there is a servicable if finnicky weather widget that's supplying me with outdoor data without going outdoors.  Also, I do definitely still need kdelibs-3.5.10 around for Amarok and a couple other old apps, as well as Qt 3.3.8b since Qt4-Qt3support still does not allow use of Qt3 itself, as that's not its goal.  Apps like Konversation still seem to not even be attempting to update and with K3b and Amarok still in KDE3 varieties there's not a whole lot of option but to keep around the old subsystems.

In order to keep the article in the same path as last time I wound up skipping over a rather obnoxious little bug that I hit immediately upon launching X for the first time after the update, and one that would probably be a bit of a game ender for people who aren't used to weirdness; upon finishing the load process, there was nothing but a wallpaper on the screen.  My first guess was that the desktop program didn't actually load, but it turns out that they just spawned it with no panels whatsoever, so adding a panel and adding a task manager, clock, and system tray to that quickly made the place livable.  It's just a little scary to see nothing after launching, even if there isn't really anything wrong.

So, the upgrade to KDE4 is not going perfectly for me, but it's good enough.  Not relying on compiz to make my system not ugly as sin is a blessing all on its own since its development has stagnated and my build was glitchy at best.  I prefer the look of Oxygen widgets to Plastik, but there was probably an easier way to get nicer widgets for my apps than this if that mattered too much.  The positives, all in all, outweigh the negatives for me, so I'll stick around as everything starts coming together completely.  If I'm perfectly honest, this should have been KDE4.0, as 4.0 was intentionally beta and 4.1 simply wasn't very good, but the real deal is finally here, and it's good... -ish.

Tales of Abject Failure - Part 2

My last post was optimistic.  We were assured that the people in charge for CableCARD scheduling would contact us within 24-48 hours of the last call, which was a couple hours before the post went out.  Around 18:30 yesterday, which is around the 49.5 hour mark, we called up again to see what was up.  To the credit of the girl from Wednesday (she doesn't deserve a lot after suggesting that CableCARDs are basically garbage, suggesting that we'd be better off sticking with the box I'd returned hours before), she did in fact email the relevant people and logged the whole thing in the notes for our account.  Tonight's gentleman saw very explicitly that we were supposed to be contacted within 48 hours and that it had already been more than that.

Don't get me wrong here, I knew this was Comcast.  I was not expecting installation within this window.  I wasn't even expecting an appointment within this window.  Returning a phone call within two business days to say anything does not seem to be too much to ask, especially since we didn't demand the window in some sort of huff.  This is just common courtesy to your paying customers.

Of course, the people involved with this whole business only work M-F 8-17, so there was no chance of anything happening tonight, meaning the weekend is lost too.  The CSR tonight sent yet another email to the people responsible for CableCARDs mentioning specifically that they missed the window they were supposed to  meet, but this time he claims to have sent it to their supervisors too.  No idea whether that will help or just irritate them, but we'll see.

Sadly, tonight was the season finale for Psych, which I had to watch in SD despite paying for HD service.  I know, it's not exactly world ending, but come on guys, this entire process is vastly more painful than it should be, so any inconvenience as a result of their stupid policies designed solely to nickel and dime is too much.  Nothing needs to be recorded over the weekend, and the box is set up like a VCR to record the Monday evening shows in HD.  There's obviously no chance of installation before then.  Odds are, the next post in the series will be after the first truck roll, which will end in still more abject failure, but at least it will be failure post-college try.  FiOS cannot get in this area of town fast enough.

Tales of Abject Failure - Part 1

HDTV is nice. HD DVRs are nice things to have. Cable company provided DVRs, however, are the unholy spawn of Satan himself, and that's when they're working. Some time ago, our 56" DLP was finally given the loving embrace of HD cable content via one of these things. Immediately, I hated the interface on the bugger, and the horrible workarounds required to get the box working as well as it should. Namely, in this case, I had to run the video over component directly to the TV, and set up overrides in the hidden service menu to make sure SD content was not upscaled in order to use my TV's regular aspect correction tools, instead of directly into my AVR which has a higher quality scaler than my TV or the DVR itself, because it can't do any aspect correction despite clearly having its own scaler.

This is crap, and I hate it.

That was all back when the damn thing was working. That box decided one night during House to reboot about 5 times during the first 40 minutes of the show. Obviously, this is sub-optimal, so we called for service. Initially, they gave no guarantees about when they would be able to fix their faulty equipment, suggesting that it might take over a week to get someone out here, but some mild complaining later yielded a service appointment by Wednesday (House airs Mondays this year, in case you are not aware). The technician, upon arriving, was carrying a new box, which suggested he had no interest in diagnosing problems and wanted to jump straight to replacing it. He noted a high current running through the cable itself, which is odd, and promised to look into it before leaving. If he did, he never reported his results, because shortly after walking out to do that, he got into his van and drove off. There were unwatched shows on the first box, but what the hell the internet can fix those problems (though with the bandwidth capping it gets a little hairy). At least we had a working DVR now, right?

The answer to that question depends on what you consider a working DVR. I could watch any digital and/or high def channels with the box, which is exactly what you expect. Pausing live broadcasts however, was problematic, as resuming typically inserted 10-15 second pauses at various times followed by jumping ahead. After a few such pauses, the screen would turn black and all transport controls (fast forward, pause, rewind, stop, play) would return an error on the screen that those only work while viewing a video. Well shit. Changing channels or forcing to LiveTV "fixed" that, so it was not a stream breakdown. Scheduled recordings followed the same pattern of recording fine, but not playing back at all. I'm pretty sure playing back recorded content is the major point of having a DVR in the first place, so I was not particularly amused by this.

It's around this point that I realized TiVo's service, if paid for yearly or 3-years in advance, is cheaper than Comcast's total charge for the DVR. The interface is less irritating, there are more features (though we lose access to Comcast's own anemic VOD service), and the hardware is much less likely to fail spectacularly. Of course, the catch is that you need a CableCARD to access everything, but how hard can that be to get?

For those not in the know, CableCARD is a standard device to let unofficial boxes decode cable signals, unscrambling like a cable box but without the box. If you've ever seen an expansion card for a laptop (PCMCIA form factor) you know exactly what they look like. The TiVo has slots up front behind a little door that you just slide one of these cards into, and you're more than half way there. The remaining part of the process is calling a phone number and giving them the serial number of the card, and occasionally a number that is displayed on your screen shortly after the device recognizes that a card is put in. That is it for the home-side installation process of CableCARDs. I am not in any way exaggerating the ease of installation here. Well let's check Comcast's FAQ on the subject. Confusingly, they have two different spots where they talk about the devices, one for just general use and one for TiVos on the series 3 platform. Let's look at what they say, starting with the general one:

Can I install a CableCARD myself or does a technician need to come to my home?

At this time, professional installation by a Comcast technician is required.

Well okay, though I'm not sure what about the process honestly requires some sort of professional. Now for the TiVo specific answer:

Can I install the CableCARD into my TiVo Series 3 HD by myself?

To ensure that your installation is performed accurately, a technician is required to install and activate the CableCARDs. Please call 1-800-COMCAST (2662278) to set up an installation appointment.

Oh. Okay. To ensure that it's performed accurately. I may only have implied it thus far, but I now own a TiVo, I didn't wait to cut through this stupid red tape or try and get a third box before purchasing the object. Before you even get to the installation instructions in the package, you come across a sheet that you are supposed to give to your CableCARD installer. Typically they will claim that they do not need such a thing, but the general experience of the internet is that their complaints are pure hubris and not indicative of their capability in the least. That I now understand how easy it is too is just a side effect of learning that even TiVo themselves do not trust these idiots to slide a card in properly and call a phone number without shitting their pants or licking nearby windows. They even have a hotline for installers to call in case they fail miserably.

Well, that's the official Comcast policy there, but it doesn't take a whole lot of searching the internet to find people who were able to pick up the cards in their local offices, so I attempted exactly this today, while dumping their pile of worthless slag on them to get it off our bill. They told me that they really did not have any there, that they were all with the technicians. Well, that's one way to ensure that you need a tech to install something this braindead simple to install, since you need the tech to even touch the hardware in the first place. Fine. Well, they also claimed to have a wait list for whatever reason, despite the entire lack of actual shortage for these things. A second phone call (the first one basically just gave us the company line and mentioned the wait list the first time) including complaints of the lunacy of how difficult it is to get these damn things, and a drop of the F-bomb got them scrambling about a bit to see about getting this shit done for real. We should be getting contacted within 48 hours about this.

Of course, this CSR drone let slip the standard complaint that CableCARDs don't really work. This is sort of true, but only due to massive statistics altering caused by further intentional stupidity. Comcast techs have a habit of installing a card, and if it doesn't work they don't throw it out or destroy it, they just return it to the pile. Typically, if your card is not new directly from the packaging, it will not work because it has already been proven not to work or they wouldn't even have it on hand. This is common sense stuff here, but Comcast does not work on such principles. Whenever they finally get out here I'll update as to whether they continued their failures.

On the plus side, I get all local HD on my TiVo without the card, though no guide data for those channels. Also, until the CableCARD comes and starts doing QAM mapping of digital channels, NBC is channel 4 and NBCHD is 4-1, which is much easier to remember than 160. All of the HD channels are on subchannel -1 of their SD equivalent, which is pretty sweet. The lack of guide data for these channels means I can't program recordings in a sane manner, but the TiVo software is too nice to let you flounder there; you can set up recordings like on a VCR giving it the time and channel. Sure if something happens to the broadcast time it will record anyway, but it's better than nothing. Hell, it's even better than the Comcast Motorola box that would record but not play. Also, the TiVo does aspect correction itself, so it is hooked up to my AVR via HDMI directly, no more splitting the inputs and just generally complicating my setup. I've read enough online to know that part 2 isn't likely to be a happy ending so look forward to that.