Asus RT-N16 -- my new home Wifi router

This is a long pending post. I had bought this router for my home a month back and never got to write about it.

Picture first:


I had been looking for a Wifi router at my home before I could narrow down on this. Here were my requirements:

1. Good range: The current wifi router that came with my Internet connection can barely cover 25% of my house. I needed something that can cover every corner of my duplex flat. Otherwise the exercise is of little use.
2. Thirdparty-firmware: I was mainly eying at dd-wrt for the firmware. It *has* to be dd-wrt compatible so I can play around with the firmware and add services to it. dd-wrt has multiple versions of the firmware based on the flash size available. Most routers these days have <=4MB flash (some of them only 2MB). Those will need to run mini or micro versions of dd-wrt which have limited capabilities and extensions. I was looking at a router with at least 8MB flash, so the mega version of dd-wrt fits.
3. 802.11n: I wanted 802.11n draft support. I was actually more inclined towards simultaneous dual-band vs just dual-band. Also, I was fine with 2.4GHz 'n' if 5.8GHz 'n' isn't available.
4. USB mass storage: I wanted the router to also be my NAS. So I can just attach a USB HDD to the router and can access it anywhere else in the house. Currently my EEEBox does this for me, but that's one more device to run.

Selecting a good range was the difficult task because there is no benchmark that fits all for this. When some one says *good* it is relative and not absolute. That doesn't help me in anyways to select mine. As it was an important factor me, I had to overshoot my expectation and get a really good one.

Eventually, I narrowed down on 2 routers:

1. Cisco Linksys WRT610N
2. Asus RT-N16

Both seem to claim very good range. WRT610N has 3 internal antennas, whereas the RT-N16 has 3 external antennas. Anytime, the external ones are more powerful. The Cisco one looks really cool though. No, but range was more important. Both are of similar price range (~10K INR). Both have USB support. Both are supported by dd-wrt. The biggest differentiating factor between these two that helped me decide, is the hardware. RT-N16 has an awesome processor at 533MHz, 128MB of RAM and more importantly 32MB of flash. The Cisco one has just 8MB flash. 32MB flash is too good that I don't have to worry about space while enhancing the router for other tasks. The powerful processor should also come in handy to support multiple operations in parallel. There are more comparisons on the specifications, but that's too much to be here.

Went ahead and bought RT-N16. Even though I didn't intend to use the official firmware, the Asus official firmware for RT-N16 is pretty good (except for the NAS part). In fact the official firmware supports 1TB disks and NTFS file system. Even the dd-wrt doesn't have proper support for NTFS (yes, ntfs-3g driver is available, but is still error-prone on large partitions, that I had to move to ext3 for my NAS). Any time a journal'ed file system like ext3 is better for NAS. Anyways, in 2 days, I upgraded the firmware to the unofficial dd-wrt. It's very handy, specially as it exposes the whole Linux underneath. The extra flash memory can be mounted via JFFS2 file system and that's the place to make wonders.

This router has served all my purposes. It has terrific range that my earlier mobile (ASUS P320) which is the weakest Wifi client I have, connects from the farthest point within the house. Before I could wink, I already have 8 wifi devices at home -- enjoying the n/w all around my house. It's an useful luxury!

WDTV Live - HD Media Player

WDTV Live! is the new entry into my home.

It is a full-HD (High-definition, 1080p) Media Player that can play most Video/Audio formats and codecs available today. My EEEBox was in this place earlier to me but EEEBox (B202) struggles to play anything more than 720p video (some frames in even 720p video also stutter if there is too much of a change from the previous frame). I really couldn't enjoy the half/full-HD videos using that. Also, I had to control my EEEBox from my mobile phone via VNC -- this did the job, but wasn't as comfortable as a TV remote. So decided to buy this player.

The choice was between XStreamer and WDTV Live! but I was convinced that I should go with WDTV Live for my needs (Why? is a different topic altogether, that I'm not touching right now).

This is how it looks:

Although small, this is a real monster. I did realize its power only after I played the full-HD (high data rate) version of Avatar (11 GB for 2 hours of video with DTS audio). It flawlessly played the full-HD movie without any glitch, while my EEEBox would hardly render a frame of it. It is connected to my home-theatre receiver via the optical digital audio connectivity (S/PDIF). It transmits the digital audio via the optical interface and the home theatre plays it well (Dolby-digital or DTS). Watching Avatar full-HD with DTS sound was a new experience at home! For those who don't have a home theatre or that doesn't support Dolby Digital or DTS, WDTV Live has a down-mixing support that converts high-end audio to Stereo.

WDTV Live uses the Sigma 8655 chipset, which gives it all its power. Btw, the most interesting thing is that it runs on Linux, but for you to enjoy a Linux node, you need to mod it to the unofficial firmware that exposes telnet. From then on, it's a whole linux box that one can play around with.

It can play media from a USB storage attached to it (no, it doesn't have built-in storage) or from a network. It supports Wired Ethernet and some fixed set of Wifi adaptors. I currently have a Linksys Wifi-adaptor, but that's not supported :(. Due to the lack of Wifi, I had to do some network-bridging to transparently connect my WDTV to my home network, so other devices also can access my WDTV and vice-versa (eg., I can remote-login into my WDTV's linux from my laptop). Media via network was the key thing to me. However, it supports only SMB (samba) based network shares (the unofficial firmwares do support other types; I'm already playing via a FTP share from my NAS).

The remote looks a bit less responsive to me. The UI looks really cool. A cold boot takes around 20-25 seconds (official firmware) and a warm boot takes less than 5 seconds (actually only the UI goes down when the device is powered off via remote).

This device has redefined my TV experience at home! Although I had Dolby Digital/DTS setup earlier, lack of full-HD was definitely a setback. Ah, that's past :)

Logitech Harmony 525

I bought this cool gadget last week. It should ideally be part of every household that has more than 2 remotes -- but due to the technical complexities involved in configuring it for their devices, it is not actually meant for every one. But for those with little techy background, this is a bliss.

This is how it looks



This is basically an universal remote, which can be used as a single replacement for all the remotes in your drawing room. What is unique about this product is that it can be configured for an activity instead of a device. To be more clear, the functionality of the remote is not based on which device you choose to operate on; instead it is based on which activity that you want to operate on. For example, in a typical home with a TV, home theatre (HT) and a set top box (STB) for digital TV, when you watch TV, you need to change volume on the HT, change channel on the STB, program guide on the STB etc., etc., Basically there are a number of actions that you would perform while watching TV and each belong to its own appliance.

After proper configuration, this is what my remote does when I say 'Watch TV' (on a single button press)
1. Powers on my TV, Home Theatre (HT), Tata Sky Plus - SetTopBox (STB)
2. Waits for 3 seconds (for the devices to load)
3. Sets the TV's input to Component1
4. Sets the HT's input to AUX
5. Changes the channel in the STB to 'NatGeo' (to avoid the irritating ad-channel at the start on tata sky).

all at a single click. Now when I change volume, it sends out the volume up/down to the HT and when I change channels it sends out the channel up/down to the STB. This is what I called 'activity-based' against 'device-based'. Pretty useful and cool.

There are few things that I don't like about it: I hate their configuration mode. It should have been better. You need to have internet connection to configure your remote at home (horrible). Every page in the configuration wizard sends out HTTP requests via the internet to their servers (even worse) -- this makes it too slow. And the justification they provide is: the remote configuration is available at any place at all times!! WTH!!

For configuration, the remote needs to be connected to your comp via USB..Hmmm, soon a wall clock might have a USB port to sync with your outlook calendar! I hate the fact that there is no way to alter any configuration of the remote, without a comp (and yuck, an internet connection too). Some times this makes me postpone a configuration that I would love to have then. Also, the remote's LCD display is always ON; that makes me feel the power is wasted all the time -- I'm surprised why isn't there a power button for the remote itself! No wonder it runs on 4 AAA batteries. Not sure how long it runs.

Anyways, while configuring the devices it controls, they have a huge collection of devices for you to choose from. The software identifies the correct device for you based on various inputs (make/model/type etc); sometimes it asks you to press one or more keys from the original remote and compares it against their database to disambiguate. This was impressive to watch. I had to get used to 'thinking in harmony' before I got comfortable. I should say it wasn't a easy thing to get started immediately -- but given the task, not sure if this could have been any simpler.

But once configured, it rocks! I'm starting to forget that there are 3 devices involved while I watch TV -- there it wins, silently!

Cisco (linksys) wifi client

I recommend reading my earlier post on my home network before reading this one.

I need to agree that my use case was a bit uncommon, but the impact was a bit too much. The first thing that I had to do after installing the Cisco Wireless Client (called CWC from now on) was to uninstall it. This is why:

I bought a USB wifi dongle from Cisco (was a linksys product) to use it on my EEEBox.

As explained in my earlier post, the idea was to use this wifi dongle as an end-point for internet/intranet access in my home. I connected from my laptop to my EEEBox via VNC over the existing wifi connection. The dongle's box insists on installing the software first before I plug in the hardware into the comp -- possibly for simplicity and to avoid user errors. I remotely mounted the CD (remember? EEEBox doesn't have a CD drive) and started the install. As I started, I was starting to think about how this software is going to handle an existing wifi card which doesn't belong to Cisco. The software didn't show any sign of detecting such a card. At this point, I was calling that as 'seamless' integration!! but that thought didn't last so long. The installation proceeds and reaches the end and my VNC viewer closes!! I was a bit shocked with this behavior, but was hoping that the new wifi client will initialize and get back, and I should soon see my EEEBox back on my wifi network -- but it never happened. As I have static mapping (MAC->IP) on my DHCP server, I knew the IP that it would get every time. Clearly it had gone for a toss!! Then I rebooted the EEEBox using the hardware button on the case and watch the display on my TV. I realized there was an issue (Note: I haven't plugged in my cisco wifi dongle yet). The CWC started up but it was not able to connect to the network -- and the reason: authentication failure. CWC had only picked up my SSID from Windows but not any other credentials (WEP key in my case). This is half-baked migration. If it was not possible to read such credentials from Windows client, it should have at least warned me that it couldn't do so or have asked me for the credentials again! Ok, I forgave and reconfigured the settings on CWC and got it connected to my network. As I thought, I was all done but just plug in the USB dongle, I had a surprise waiting. The moment I connected the USB dongle, the CWC detects the new interface, installs the required drivers and brings it active. BUT, disables the old wireless connection!!! This sucks! defeats my whole purpose. I later realized that CWC doesn't allow two wifi connections (for that matter, any two network connections) at the same time -- at least that software that I got with this dongle didn't! Simplicity at the cost of functionality? I didn't have to think again, just uninstalled CWC instantly. Thankfully, this time, the software did what I expected. It didn't uninstall my wifi dongle drivers, but only the client software. So, one reboot, the Windows wireless client takes over, with both my wifi network interfaces active! Sigh!! Windows resurrected me from something else, for the first time ;)

Asus EEEBox B202

I have to blog about this awesome machine. There are a bunch of factors that together add glory to this box. There is nothing extra-ordinary about this configuration, but the key factors are the form-factor, power consumption and the price (now).

Any web search would get you this configuration, but still here it is:

* CPU Intel Atom N270 with Hyperthreading
* Memory 1GB
* 160 GB SATA 2.5" HDD
* Integrated graphics with DVI output
* LAN 10/100/1000 Mbps
* Wireless WLAN: 802.11 b/g/n
* Card Reader SD/SDHC/MS/MS Pro/MMC
* Audio chip Realtek ALC662 Azalia CODEC
* Front I/O port USB x 2, Card Reader x 1, Headphone-out jack (WO/SPDIF) x 1, MIC x 1
* Rear I/O port USB x 2, GigaLan x 1, Line-Out (L/R) with S/PDIF x 1

Doesn't sound great? Read more:

Now, all this with a maximum power consumption of just 20W (did you read maximum?). This is awesome, and fits very well for a dedicated server that doesn't need a terminal. It consumes only around 1 unit (kwh) per 2 days while running for 24 hours at full load. And it's ultra silent.

Next, is the form-factor. Its sleek, neatly finished and its dimension is 22.2 * 17.8 * 2.69 cm and weighs just a kg. You just need to see it to believe it, so see it:



Now the price!! I should mention that B202 isn't a recent invention from Asus, but has been here in India for more than a year now. But the prices weren't attractive then (I guess the launch price was around 18K!!). Now one can buy B202 for as low as 10K on ebay India (I bought for 9K with a 10% discount paypal gift voucher). I believe the reason for this price reduction is likely that Asus is clearing off its inventory and is all ramped up for the next models; B206 etc., B206 has HDMI support, but I couldn't get it online in India. I originally wanted to assemble a low end machine with Atom N270 but when saw B202's price, I didn't think again.

If you are gamer, this isn't for you!! The graphics controller is the integrated graphics controller and is not that powerful. But it is more than decent for normal desktop applications at full HD resolution and video usage at half HD. It drives my LG 32" LCD TV at full HD resolution (1920x1080) without issues via DVI (mind you, I'm NOT talking about full HD "videos"). I was told that this struggles playing full HD videos -- I haven't tried. But it plays half-HD without issues, I'm ok with this. Getting a full HD video itself is a bigger pain, so I don't bother. Look at the full HD resolution on my TV:



One funny thing worth mentioning: Asus distributes the drivers in a CD for a comp that doesn't have a CD drive :) Not to blame them, there is no such cheap media available. So, you might have to do some initial gimmicks before you can start using it (yes, the BIOS does support boot from USB).

So all setup, eeebox is running, I see the desktop; what do you do now? There are bunch of things for which I use my eeebox. It's worth discussing how technology helps. Stay tuned...

Avatar 3D @ Fame Lido

I watched Avatar 3D at Fame Lido, Ulsoor, Bangalore. I took enough time before I went ahead to watch this film, so that I can get enough feedback on the 3D experience from the people who have already watched it. This was essential in Bangalore, because this is the first 3D film screened in commercial screens. Someone had reported bad experience on INOX, Jayanagar; There were lots of negative criticism on Fame Lido Shankarnag (MG Road, Bangalore) -- these were useful and I avoided these two. If not positive review on Fame Lido, at least I didn't read any negative comment on this one - so went ahead.

At the end of the movie, I realized there were various factors involved that affected my movie experience yesterday. So I would have to rate in three different ways:

Avatar 3D:

It was an awesome experience. This is first time I saw a full length 3D movie with 3D effects. The creativity on the various creatures, plants, trees, sceneries was jaw-dropping!! The concept slightly reminded me of The Matrix though. I believe, James Cameroon has consciously stayed away from making funny 3D effects, but concentrated more on making a real 3D film. 3D has been utilized as a tool to make the audience perceive the depth and details of the frame than anything else. I liked that. At some point, we get so involved in that 3D mode; removing the 3D glasses would show you how dumb the movie looks otherwise!

Fame Lido:

The theatre is located in Lido Mall, Ulsoor, Bangalore (near Trinity Circle). Due to the rail bridge construction for namma-metro, finding the mall and getting into the parking entrance is not easy for the first time. What's more? The Box office is on the ground floor and the screens are in 2nd and 4th floors. No indication or whatsoever. I went to the 4th floor directly (thanks to those notices inside the lift), just to learn that I had to collect the tickets at the ground floor. The automatic ticket kiosk was the only rescue. There are just 2 lifts of medium size, no escalator. If you reach the theatre just on time, you are going to be in soup. Parking is very very limited and a big mess. Specially if you reach there on a time when a previous show ends (which is usually the case), you may or may not get a lot. I was fortunate to reach there for the first show. But, it took me at least 20 mins to get out of the parking space. The ticket cost, snacks were all costly to the standards of other high class theatres in Bangalore, but I'm not convinced on the quality front. There was always a long queue in the snacks counter; the restrooms were like caves (albeit clean). The mall is still not complete and there is almost nothing other than the Fame Cinemas and a Coffee Day. I would never go there again, unless there is a compelling reason. There is a fundamental problem with the space and infrastructure, which I'm worried they can't resolve.

Avatar 3D @ Fame Lido:

The experience of watching a 3D movie, definitely changes based on the theatre. I've not watched Avatar 3D in any other theatre, so can't really compare against anything. But overall the experience was not disappointing. I could sense the 3rd D; the sound quality was good. The 3D glasses weren't of great quality, bit heavy; my nose bone was paining for a while after the film. The biggest issue in Fame Lido (Screen 3) was that the screen was small. When you look at the screen, it does not cover your complete view. This definitely makes a negative impact on a 3D movie -- lacking a complete 3D effect. That said, the quality of projection was good (unlike Fame Lido Shankarnag -- as per comments on the net). Ignoring everything outside the movie hall, the overall movie experience was not bad; but not a first choice theatre for Avatar 3D!

Tata Sky Plus -- Television redefined

Tata Sky Plus (TSP) isn't anything new that I'm trying to introduce to the crowd, but its extra-ordinary power pushed me to write about it. Even, I knew about Tata Sky Plus right from the time it was launched; knew about the features and felt amazed. But believe me, you need to experience it to appreciate it even further. The flexibility it offers is a real big leap in the realm of television broadcasts.

My USB TV tuner card had somewhat similar features (along with my TVProgramGuide application), but TSP is even better.

The crown of TSP is the ability to pause, rewind, record "live" TV. I know, some might feel that these are unnecessary features or luxury, but I've used it already many times in these 2 days (not because I have it, but because I needed it). It turns out that it is pretty common that we miss some critical scenes while we watch a TV, and ignore an inner urge to rewind it (because there is no way). We just live with it; but we don't have to, if 'we've TSP. I knew earlier that TSP allows the viewers to record one channel, while watching the other channel (yes, it has dual tuners built-in), but I didn't know that it would even allow you to record 2 different channels simultaneously while you watch one of the earlier recorded programmes - this is awesome. It requires a good amount of processing power. With a 160GB hard disk built into the DVR STB, TSP has all its space and power to do wonders -- it's a real multi-processing machine!!

There are many other good features in TSP too that are common across all DTH providers. I've only blogged about what's so special.

With their easy to use UI (I believe so), they have integrated all the features very well. Their user guide was a simple 15 page guide, with cool guidance. That said, the features it offers is a little beyond the understanding of a common man. e.g., a non-techy person "may" not be able to understand and enjoy all the features.

Fronttech TV tuner

After contemplating on this for quite sometime, I finally decided to buy a TV tuner. I don't intend (or I should say don't want) to spend too much time on TV. I was fairly confident that I was not going to buy a TV for sure; and if at all I go for something that would be a TV tuner card for my existing LCD monitor.

Then, the question was whether to go for a internal TV tuner, USB TV tuner or an external TV tuner. For those who aren't aware, there are 2 types of external TV tuner -- one that drives a CRT and the other that drives a LCD. So be sure to buy the correct one incase you have a LCD monitor. However, I didn't choose this because: I don't want to keep changing the cables to the monitor everytime I need to switch between TV and comp (my monitor does not have dual input); and I might want to parallely work while watching TV (or atleast check my stock prices, email, orkut). These being the problems on external ones, I was firmly confident that the internal/USB ones will have lot more "features" than the external ones like recording, PiP (Picture in Picture), scheduler etc., and given that it was software controlled, I was hopeful to try my hands on it by writing some code for it (I had no idea about what to do with it, but just felt an opportunity).

After throwing out the external solution, I had to choose between the internal one or the USB one -- both satisfy my criteria of software control. I chose USB as it looks safer to me anytime than a PCI interface -- I'm hopeful that a heavy spike on my cable wire, would cause less damage to my comp over the USB port. It also provides the convinience of moving the TV between my comp and laptop. Also, the internal ones might have difficulty with remote due to line-of-sight issues (not sure, if they even provide a remote for internal ones).

Anyways, after all this I finally zeroed on Fronttech USB TV Tuner (to be frank, I didn't really spend time on analyzing the brand to buy; Fronttech was easily available in the nearby shops and so I just went for it). I had bought it a month back and believe me, I have no regrets today. I think Fronttech is anyway just selling it as its own brand but it is not. The hardware driver identifies itself as 'Trident Analog Video' to Windows and the TV tuner software is from Honestech. Possibly, Fronttech takes care of marketting, sales, service/support.

It is so handy, fits in your palm. This is how it looks (Photo from Fronttech).


It comes with the following key features:
1. Real-time recording (at a click of a button on remote)
2. Recording scheduler (I can just schedule a recording and forget about it; watch it later).
3. Time-shifting (as they call it -- more later)
4. Supports NTSC and PAL

Unfortunately, PiP is not available, and I later learned that it is not available in any TV tuners (at least in the ones available here in India). As it requires support from the hardware level (tuning in, two frequencies at the same time), I cannot do any magic with software to emulate PiP. Ok forget it.

Recording is awesome, with no lag in the TV playback in real-time. There are options to select the resolution of recording along with the video encoding that is to be used.

I should definitely mention about the time-shifting. An easier way to describe the time-shifting is 'pause your live TV' slogan that many digital TV ads boast about. Yes, this feature allows you to pause a live TV and continue from there. This is technically feasible (just like anyother digital TV solution) by continuously recording the TV channel in the background. One very good thing about this TV tuner is (IMHO), I can enable time-shifting only when I need it; this prevents the application from continuously thrashing my hard disk when I really don't need to pause/playback (I believe Tata Sky Plus does continuous recording).

Another "strange" thing I discovered was (at least I didn't know this earlier): The auto-scan option for channel tuning is not as smart as the ones in the real TV. ie., it does not scan the complete set of frequency (at every possible increments) and infer if a clear signal is available at that signal. Apparently, on hooking to their application, I figured out that they have a constant pre-defined set of frequencies to be tuned for a given country (I even remember a function in one of their DLLs, GetFreqencyTableForCountryName). Ok how does it matter to me? It does. They have some 360 channel frequencies pre-defined for Indian Cable TV networks, but not all of them have a clear signal or channel transmitted. The tuner application is not smart enough to discover the absence of the channel and skip bookmarking the channel. So at the end of an auto-scan you will have 360 channels bookmarked, with only around 100 having meaningful video output and scattered all over. Grrr.. There is also no way to tune a single channel. ie., you cannot say, switch to channel 1 and start tuning the band to associate a different channel to channel 1 -- because the channel number by itself defines the frequency to be used, and channel no. 1 will always be pointing to the same frequency. Thankfully, they have the option to name the channels and associate channel shifting to work only on the favored channels instead of just blindly going through all channels. I was a bit uncomfortable here, but after a month, now I'm used to it.

Important: Do remember to backup your "channel.she" file from their installation folder once you configure your TV tuner and named all those channels etc., It is useful to restore the channel list in case you need to reinstall the application or you lose it (I lost it once -- how, is a different lengthy story!!).

Except for these few glitches, over all I'm very satisfied with the quality of its work with some stunning features.

Car wash in Bangalore

It is actually surprising that there are (almost) no car wash centers readily available in Bangalore. I searched the net and enquired with my friends and colleagues -- but the answer is just the same. It would actually be a good business to start a professional car wash center in Bangalore.

The only one decent car wash center (as of this writing) is the SLV Car wash center, South End road (Old Kanakapura road), Basavanagudi, Bangalore (near Caritor office). If you drive from South-end circle on the south-end road, at the first intersection, on your right is this place. There is a huge board saying 'Car bath' :)

I've been using their service for quite sometime and am reasonably happy with them. The charges are little on the higher side though. They charge Rs. 225 (earlier Rs.200) for small sized cars (like Indica, zen, alto, swift etc.,) and Rs. 300 for SUV sized cars (like scorpio, safari etc.,) The wash includes exterior and interior cleaning.

The sequence of cleaning goes like this:

1. While the car is in queue for the body wash, they would bring a mobile vacuum cleaner and clean the interiors; the floor mats will be taken out for washing separately.
2. Before the car reaches the body wash place, the interiors will be all set.
3. Then they wash the car with pressurized water (they have provision to even wash under the chassis of the car).
4. They clean the tyres (no they don't remove them) with soap water.
5. Now the car is driven into the automatic wash drive bay. The auto-wash first sprays pressurized water all over the car; then a lot of soap oil; then under heavy pressure water cleans it off. For the first time, it's fun to watch the machine doing it.
6. As the car is driven out of the auto wash area, there is a blower which blows hot air to dry up the car faster; with its aid, the workers manually wipe out the water from the car's body.
7. Meanwhile, the glass, side-view mirrors are cleaned and the floor mats are put back in place and the car is all set for delivery.

All in all I like their work. If there is heavy crowd, they tend to mess-up (like, this time they had put back the floor mats of another car; fortunately I figured out before delivery). Overall the wash is semi-automatic. Even if the interiors are not so neatly done by chance (you can stand with them while they do it if you need it perfectly done), the exterior wash is really good. Nothing can escape from their near 4 times wash with pressurized water. Weekends are usually crowded. They spend around 20-25 mins per car. On an average be ready to spend at least an hour there (including the waiting time). Weekday's early morning might be a better slot.