DIRECTV Multi-Room DVR Setup

We just had DIRECTV's multi-room DVR -- officially known as "Whole-Home DVR" -- installed. With a new install, I'd imagine that setup might be fairly straight-forward, but with an existing setup, for some (per the message boards), it can be challenging. After attempts by three different installers at getting it to work in our home, I ended up researching the issues and getting it to work on my own. The installers were very dedicated and really worked hard to get things working, but the technical issues and the newness of the technology seemed to be the difficult barrier. I'm documenting the issues we ran into as much for my own benefit (in case I have to do it again!) as to share this experience with others in a similar situation.

We have been a DIRECTV customer for several years, with two high definition DVRs. We bought a new 60" LED high definition TV (awesome!) and decided to replace one of the TVs on an existing DVR and add a high definition receiver for the old TV and move it to the bedroom. It seemed like a good time to add multi-room viewing to our package, allowing us to view any recordings from any of the three TVs. Now that it's working, it's very cool.

Here are some of the salient points to keep in mind when setting up multi-room DVRs:

• Multi-room requires both a coax connection for video and an Ethernet connection between all receivers/DVRs-- plugged into the Ethernet port on "older" receivers/DVRs. Note: the newest models (H24 and HR24) can piggyback Ethernet on the coax connection (see below) and do not require anything plugged into the Ethernet port.
• Video is shared on the existing coax cable that is always part of any DIRECTV setup. The new setup uses a single coax to each DVR rather than the two that was previously required.
• DIRECTV has two options for the Ethernet connection: a standard home Ethernet network or an Ethernet connection running on top of the video coax connection!
• Multi-room does not require an Internet connection, but DIRECTV provides some additional features if you do have high-speed Internet available in your home. Unfortunately, our neighborhood does not have high-speed and we have successfully networked our TV's without it.
• The hardware, of course, must be setup correctly. Multi-room requires (I believe) a "blue label" LMB in the satellite dish. DIRECTV is pretty good about the hardware, if you get it from them. They know what you have and will make sure the installer replaces the older LMB if necessary. You also seem to need a single powered SWM to amplify the video coax connection.See http://www.highdefforum.com/directv-forum/92691-what-swm-how-install-request.html for more information.
• Reboots are the bane of DIRECTV setups. It seems as though you need to reboot after almost any configuration change and you may need to do it for all of your receivers/DVRs. Reboots take several minutes. When in doubt, reboot :-(.

There are two key DIRECTV menus that you need to be familiar with when setting up multi-room. Each of these is off the Menu/Setup/System Setup screen ("Setup" has some alternate names, but you'll figure it out!).

• Whole Home. If you have a "vanilla" setup, this may where you need to make all of your changes. I'm not sure of that since my setup was not "vanilla."
• Network Setup. This is where my installation went South. I had "dabbled" in here during the DIRECTV multi-room beta program where the only option for the Ethernet connection was through the home network as opposed to the coax cable.

From the Whole Home menu page, you need to use all three menus:

• Name Location. Our three receivers are "BM," "FR," and "MBR." You must provide a name each receiver/DVR and they are blank by default.
• Share Playlist. (Only available on the DVRs).  You must set "Yes" to Share Playlist (No by default) and decide whether you Allow Deletion from "all rooms" or just the local DVR.
• Status. This is where you go to find out if you have done everything else correctly. It must say "Whole-Home DVR: Authorized" and list at least one Networked DVR. If you only have a single networked DVR (plus one or more receiver), you won't see any networked DVRs from the DVR itself because it doesn't consider itself networked.

I can't speak definitely whether or not you need to do anything with the Network Setup if you're a "vanilla" installation since mine wasn't but the following information will still be useful.

Finally, here are some web sites that might be helpful for you if you're having problems.

• http://www.weaknees.com/directv-deca-networking-mrv.php has good info on the hardware, whether you want to try this on your own or just understand what DIRECTV provides. In particular they have a very nice network diagram of how everything flows, from the dish to the receiver/DVRs.
• http://forums.directv.com/pe/action/forums/displaythread?rootPostID=10797671&channelID=1&portalPageId=1002 is DIRECTV's forum site. There's good information on the Whole-Home DVR forum.

Knee "Sprains" and Injuries

I have a torn ACL in my right knee and torn MCL in my left knee. I've spent time on the internet trying to learn more about how to manage these injuries after having "randomly" attacked the problem with limited success initially. If you're like me, hopefully, some of the information in this article will guide you in the right direction.

The odds are that if you're reading this article, like me, you're not a medical professional and are looking for some guidance as to how to treat your ailment. First and foremost, is to try to gauge how serious your injury is, and that's difficult if you haven't been treated for this particular problem before. Here are some ideas to help you put the severity of the problem in perspective.

• If you cannot put any weight on the injured leg, this is a reasonably serious injury and you should probably seek medical assistance.
• If you can walk, even though it is painful, there are a number of things you can do to promote healing. If you think you need medical assistance, do so!
• Never apply heat to a painful knee immediately after an injury -- always use ice. The regiment is (P)RICE: protect, rest, ice, compression, elevation. Reducing swelling is the main objective. Swelling limits range-of-motion and increases pain. Heat is sometimes helpful 48 hours after the injury when the swelling has subsided.
• The key to rehabilitation is to increase range-of-motion followed by strengthening. Any activity that increases pain (as opposed to discomfort) is likely to indicate that your rehab regiment is moving too quickly for your injury.
• It's difficult for an othopedist to treat a swollen knee, so if your situation is manageable, it's important to use (P)RICE immediately after the injury. A severe tear can result in swelling and blood in the knee joint and should be treated by a professional.

The knee is an amazing design. The bones of the knee, the femur and tibia, are held in place by a "matrix" of four ligaments: the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), the medial collateral ligament (MCL), the posterior cruciate ligament (PCL), and the lateral collateral ligament (LCL). The MCL/LCL hold the knee bones in place vertically while the ACL/PCL protect against lateral and front/back movement. 

The ligaments are listed above in order of most likely injury to least likely injury. The explanation behind why ACL is the most injured and the LCL is least injured is explained in the reference and is fairly interesting.

Knee "sprains" are tears to one or more of the four ligaments (typically one). Injuries have two principal causes: physical contact (usually through contact sports) and twisting injuries caused by magnified forces on the ligaments through an unfortunate jump or movement. Tears are "graded" as grade 1, 2, or 3: grade one being 10% or fewer fibers torn to grade 3 as a complete failure of the ligament. Typical injury recovery time seems to be 2-4 weeks, but can take months to heal, if at all. [It's unclear to me at least if a grade 3 tear will ever heal on its own, but it seems unlikely.]

The key to recovery after injury or surgery is understanding how to properly strengthen the knee joint and surrounding muscles. Strong quads and hamstrings will keep the bones of the knee in place under routine circumstances while weak muscles will allow the bones to move within the joint, causing further pain and injury, setting  back your recovery time. The Leslie Hall articles at http://www.kneeguru.co.uk/KNEEnotes/node/775 are very useful and include information on identification, assessment, management, and rehab.

Interestingly, if you are willing to give up certain activities as you get older, you may or may not decide to have surgical repairs of torn ACL's or MCL's (the most common ligament failures). "Severe" sports such as soccer, football, racketball, and basketball are not options with torn ligaments, but golf and tennis are with adequate knee braces. Elastic knee braces from companies like Ace have worked very well for me after recovery and to accelerate recovery from my ACL and MCL injuries. I've found the elastic "wraps" that are now self-sticking (no metal clamps) to offer a little bit more support but both types are very helpful.

I've found what I believe to be one of the best internet sites for knee problems and would highly recommend that you visit the site. The information seems to be the most accurate and complete of any that I've found: http://www.kneeguru.co.uk/KNEEnotes/ . The amount of information is extensive, so plan to spend some time there if you have a significant knee problem.

Probably the most common cause of knee pain is the knee cap or patella. The patella "glides" vertically in the grove in the bottom of the femur as you bend your knee and over time can become worn and causes inflamation and discomfort. The patella is a bony structure that rides on top of the knee and functions as a "lever" that amplifies the quadricep muscle. Search for "Chrondromalacia patella" for knee cap problems. For a complete overview of other issues involving knee pain, check out Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knee_pain .

I'm due for a complete knee replacement in my right knee at some point (and probably left knee as well) but I'm finding investigation of my recovery options to be quite interesting. Since strenthening of the knee is an important predicate for knee replacement, I'm expecting that what I'm learning now to be useful for that ultimate replacement. Replacements themselves are pretty amazing technological achievements and I want to be as prepared as possible for a fully successful surgery. There are some interesting YouTube videos on knee replacements. This animation is especially helpful http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqtOQ2WnYBM&feature=related . Here's a good overview of knee replacement surgery with some brief glimpses of the actual surgery: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gHhhwQDZQM&feature=related .

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, by Matt Ridley

Matt Ridley is a popular science writer who has written several of my favorite books. The Rational Optimist was written to counter the negativity trend that currently pervades our culture.

There are so many excellent, counter-intuitive ideas in this book that the only way to do them justice is to recommend that you read the book. Although there is considerable room for improvement in this country and around the world, we need to be a "rational optimist" if we are to view the world in an objective light.

Here are some ideas from the book to whet your appetite and to encourage you to read it. My apologies to Ridley for not having room to include the details he provides to backup these claims.

• "Life is getting better -- at an accelerating rate."
• "Since 1800, the population of the world has multiplied six times, yet average life expectancy has more than doubled and real income has risen more than nine times. Taking a shorter perspective, in 2005, compared with 1955, the average human being on Planet Earth earned nearly three times as much money (corrected for inflation), ate one-third more calories of food, buried one-third as many of her children and could expect to live one-third longer."
• "Over that half-century, real income per head ended a little lower in only six countries (Afghanistan, Haiti, Congo, Liveria, Sierra Leone, and Somalia), life expectancy in three (Russia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe), and infant survival in none. In the rest they have rocketed upward."
• Time is the key to prosperity: how long do you have to work to earn a particular good or service. "A three-minute phone call from New York to Los Angeles cost ninety hours of work at the average wage in 1910; today it costs less than two minutes."
• "Ask how much artificial light you can earn with an hour of work at the average wage. The amount has increased from twenty-four lumen hours in 1750 BC (sesame oil lamp) to 186 in 1800 (tallow candle) to 4,400 in 1880 (kerosene lamp) to 531,000 in 1950 (incandescent light bulb) to 8.4 million lumen-hours today (compact fluorescent bulb)."
• Henry Ford got rich by building cheaper cars, reducing the price of the Model-T from $825 to $575 in four years. It took 4,700 hours to afford a Model-T in 1908 and 1,000 hours today to afford a much better vehicle. The "robber baron" Cornelius Vanderbuilt reduced rail fares as he bought out his competition, never raising rates to their former level.
• The key to the abolition of slavery in the developed world was coal, which eliminated the economic incentive. Capitalism eliminated slavery.
• Women's liberation was a direct result of innovations in the home (refrigeration, vacuum cleaners, etc.) in the '50's and '60's that freed women from household drudgery, giving them time to do other things.
• What makes mankind unique in the animal kingdom: opposable thumb, social species, big brains, language, use of tools? Species like octopi, parrots, and other great apes share many of these capabilities. Except for language, none of these are unique and none truly explains mankinds' world dominance. The key is commerce and the interchange of ideas that it promotes.
• Ideas are like genes, and when ideas began to have sex, mankind began to fluorish.

I can't do justice to Ridley's treatment of the importance of energy and technology to life on this planet. Here are just a few ideas.

• Energy anxiety. In 1914, the U.S. Bureau of Mines predicted oil reserves would last 10 years. Jimmy Carter announce in the '70's that we could use up all proven oil reserves in the world by 1990. In 1970 there were 550 billion barrels of oil reserves and between 1970 and 1990, we used 600 billion barrels at which point the known reserves were 900 billion barrels. Sounds like the loaves and fishes.
• "Bad" fossil fuels. When wood was used for energy, we cut down our forests. The Amazon rainforest was being destroyed to support agriculture. Corn has been used to create biofuels. If America converted to biofuels (primarily ethanol), it would need 30 percent more farmland than it currently uses to grow food. If the U.S. converted exclusively to one of these alternative fuels , it would need solar panels the size of Spain or windfarms the size of Kazakhstan or woodland the size of India and Pakistan or hayfields the size of Russa and Canada combined or hydroelectric dams with catchments one-third larger than ALL of the continents combined. Fossil fuels and improvements in technology have allowed us to return land to nature (including stemming the destruction of the Amazon) at significant levels. "If you want to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, replant a forest on former farmland" (which is what is happening today to the tune of 2 billion acres reclaimed). The simple fact is that fossil fuels are an efficient means of storing energy and do not claim significant land mass.
• Famine and Doom. Required reading for me as a Hopkins undergrad was Limits to Growth, predicting the depletion of oil, tin, copper, and aluminum in our lifetime. Paddock in Famine predicted in 1975 that Haiti, Egypt, and India were beyond saving and should be left to starve. Paul Ehrlich earned a MacArthur genius award for arguing in The Population Bomb (1976) that the 70's and 80's would see hundreds of millions die of starvation and that world population would fall below two billion.
• Feeding 9 billion. Predictions that man would overwhelm the planet are no longer accepted. Current trends indicate that the population will reach 9 billion and begin to recede as it has already begun to do in the developed nations and China. The advent of intensive farming made possible by Borlaug dwarf wheat, nitrogen fertilisers, and fossil fuel farming made it possible to feed the world. Today we farm 38% of the earth's land area rather than the 82% that would have been needed to support current population levels. Without Borlaug and prior innovations in agriculture, we would have run out of land mass to support the current population.
• Pessimism. It's probably human nature to be pessimistic. Our ancestors stayed alive by fearing adversity in order to avoid it. But we must be rational and balance this natural inclination. In today's world, people profit from these fears -- some knowingly. Charities don't raise money by telling us how good the world is. Authors and academics sell books and make their reputation by gloomy predictions. Some politicians enhance their careers by "cleverly" exploiting human nature: "Never waste a good crisis."

These are not just a series of unjustified assertions: in a 400 page book, Ridley provides 60 pages of references for you to reach your own conclusions on his research.

Here are some of my key take-aways.

• Commerce promoted specialization. If I was good at fishing and you were good at making spear heads, I could save labor by using your spear heads in exchange for my fish. This freed up time for me to invent tools, and tool-making tools. No single person on earth today knows how to make a simple wooden pencil.
• Farming was not created to support cities -- just the opposite. Farming was responsible for the creation of capital, which made cities possible. Capital is essentially a means of storing labor.
• Mankind evolved to where it is today through a process similar to the one promoted in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" -- a largely random process where things that made sense won out over things that weren't successful. For things sufficiently complex, natural selection is smarter than we are. The role of government should be examined, not in a 100 year perspective, but in a 100,000 year perspective.

Cedar Crest

We live in the community of Cedar Crest Estates in the southern tip of Loudoun County, Virginia. Loudoun County, which likes to think of itself as the "Internet County" has not been particularly helpful at obtaining the option of high-speed internet for our 160 residents.

Google did a promotion of their initiative to "fiberize" the nation a while back and I submitted an application for our community to become a test site. You can view that application at https://sites.google.com/site/cedarcrestfiber/ .

Google was looking for creative ways of expressing interest in participating in their initiative. Our application was rather pedestrian in comparison to that of Topeka, Kansas. The Topeka city council voted to change the name of the town to Google for the month of March in support of their application. To return the gesture, if you used Google search on April 1, 2010, you saw that Google had changed its name to Topeka. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/different-kind-of-company-name.html .

Typography and Letterpress

Typography and letterpress are lifetime interests of mine. Even as a child I had a facination for the printed word. As wonderful as it is, the internet and the web have deadened our appreciation for the beauty and art of the printed word.

Here are some references that I find particularly good on typography and letterpress. Caution! If you watch the first YouTube, you may just become hooked :-).

• YouTube introduction to Letterpress. Magnificant intro -- a must view! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv69kB_e9KY .
• YouTube filmstrip on the printing industry. Like the old WWII black and white filestrips, this was created in 1947 to help young people choose a career in the printing industry. You can almost feel what it was like to live in a time just before most of us were born. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPCiWiLu-W4&feature=related .
• Wikipedia article on typography. Gets into the difference between legibility and readibility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography .
• Wikipedia article on typesetting. Tracing the history from B.C. to Gutenberg letterpress to phototypesetting to modern digital typesetting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typesetting .
• YouTube video explaining the Linotype. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRYxOs1oCRY . The Linotype is a truly amazing machine with over 10,000 moving parts.
• Wikipedia article on the Linotype machine. Typesetters could set 10 times as much type using the Linotype. Prior to the Linotype, no newspapers were more than 8 pages. Ottmar Mergenthaler created the Linotype after migrating to Baltimore where Mergenthaler high school bears his name. The Linotype and its clones were the dominant form of typesetting for half a century. Mergenthaler is known as the second Gutenberg.  This article has a good explanation of the key mechanics of the machine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine .