The Alien World

Gadgets are men’s best friends, aren’t we all fond of them! We, men, always want simplicity in life. Somethings are in your hands, of which you can be proud of. Automating your home media is one way to achieve it.

Sexy and expensive home theater system are for the rich, but that should not mean that other should be deprived of it.

Here are list key requirements for home automation -

• Most likely you have tons of mp3, photos, & movies on your computer.
• You have a home theater system connected to your LCD.

Basic expectations -

• Play music on home theater (probably 5.1 channel system)
• Watch your movies & photos on your bigger LCD screen

Value add -

• Able to control your media with a remote, irrespective of source & target

The solution here is only specific to Apple products, but you can look for other alternatives if you are not an apple fan.

Prerequisites

• Tons of media
• iTunes on your computer
• Apple TV 
• LCD TV
• iPhone or iPod Touch or iPad (Optional)
• Wireless Router

Once you have all the prerequisites, all that you need is to configure them to work together.

The first thing to start with is setting up your Apple TV. AppleTV has an internal storage of up to 160 GB, so it can store your media from computer. It has ability to sync itself over the wire or wireless. I prefer wireless, after all who wants to see wires running between the system  tv. I have given the sound output of Apple Tv to my home theater and Video output to my LCD

After setting up AppleTV, you should be able to see it in iTunes. One of the very interesting thing now you will notice is that at the bottom right of iTunes you will have multiple speaker option. You can now choose which speaker you want the output to – computer or apple tv. This is how you can listen to your favorite songs on the much better home theater system. Note that you can not stream video this way. But there is a solution to that too.

Now, the catch is that AppleTV can only play MP4 videos, but the good thing is that MP4’s are better then AVI’s in quality and you even get High Definition (HD) videos.

As I said earlier, Apple TV has up to 160 GB of storage space, you can store all your media on it. But in care you have much more, then this is not the suggested approach. Instead configure your AppleTV to stream all kinds of media from your computer rather than storing it.

On Apple TV, go to Settings—> Computers, select “Add shared iTunes library’, proceed as per instructions.

Once you have done this, you shall be able to see all you media [movies & music] listing in Apple TV.

Your are now ready to play all you mp4  & mp3 on your computer on your LCD, without copying your media on a CD or USB drive.

I usually don’t write about movies but Tashan is different, it has forced me put my views on the blog. Tashan was supposed to be one of the most eagerly awaited films of 2008, but it turned out to be a biggest disappointment. Watching the movie is pain and torture. No story line and dialogs are hardly understandable. This was certainly not the kind of movie expected from Yash Raj banners. Director has done total ‘kachra’ of all the big star cast in the film. The only saving grace of the film is Akshay Kumar, whose comic timing is superb and is the only thing you can watch in the movie.

In fact, the movie is so damn painful, that our police may plan to use is for torturing the criminals. And I’m sure that all criminal will peal for mercy after watching this. Police can just increase the degree of torture by just making the criminal watch the movie repeatedly!

Songs are good. You may find it hard to believe but if you hear them on a good music system repeatedly than you will start liking them. Lyrics of ‘Dil Dance Maare’ are too funny, ‘Tashan Mein’ is catchy, and ‘Dil Haara’ has good lyrics.

Rating:

Movie: 0.5/5
Music: 3.5/5

Music is a way to reach God. India is truly an amazing country, with amazing culture. All these cultures have their own signature style of music.

Ruhaniyat is a Sufi and mystic music festival, which is been organized by Banyan Tree for last 6 years. Yesterday I got an opportunity to attend the festival. It was an experience of a lifetime listening to Qawwalis, sufi kalams, mystic songs. The experience was truly mesmerizing. Having that enchanting experience yesterday, left me wondering why the hell these music companies do not promote the rich heritage & culture. Why do we have to run after remixes?

Being from a specific part of the country sometimes we are unaware about the music from other reasons. This festival was a wonderful way of getting all the artists from across the country. The popularity of the festival is on the rise, with participants from around the world, like Danagita Stratil from Switzerland who performed the mystic chants with overtones.

One of the important aspects of this festival is that they bring artists from the rural India. Their voice is rustic and enchanting. One of the best performances was from Kachra Khan from Rajasthan. Another highlight was the finale, which was a Sufi Qawwali by Sabri Brothers.

I can only wish to have more such experiences.