Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

Duane,

Thanks. I had figured it out, but went and looked at the Wiki. I like the new icons you have added. I think it really helps.

It might be nice to have a new forum or sub forum for this device on the site. After playing with it I think it's going to generate a lot of buzz and traffic.

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

Bought mine this morning. Now a four chumby device home (two real chumby's, a dash and this).
Since the Sony Dash is awful at streaming radio, I like the fact that Shoutcast comes with.

Only issue - it is supposed to be able to play MP4 files. I tried several that work on every other device that I have (including a watch), but the Insignia says that they are in an unsupported format. I was able to get one working somewhat from the USB, but it was VERY choppy. Does anyone know the exact encoding parameters that it can handle for MP4 video?

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

Hi all, I'm looking for some help, please. I just bought the insignia infocast today but I'm missing a very important feature for me. Isn't possible to set as alarm pandora or the shoutcast? I can't believe there's no option for that.

Thank you!

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

tigudh wrote:

Hi all, I'm looking for some help, please. I just bought the insignia infocast today but I'm missing a very important feature for me. Isn't possible to set as alarm pandora or the shoutcast? I can't believe there's no option for that.

Thank you!


I am guessing you didn't read post #2 of this very thread.

Tar, feathers, congress. Some assembly required.

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

I'm not sure why people are assuming that the Infocast is an alarm clock- there's even a new Engadget article that makes that association.

For the record - the Infocast is *not* an alarm clock.

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

Perhaps we can make it one though? It looks to have an RTC and it can make noise. Let the hacking begin smile

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

Maybe because that's exactly where Best Buy is placing them, with the clocks, not with the Dash or the picture frames.  Took the guy helping me 15 minutes to find them yesterday.

So, I'm new to Chumby devices and I'm trying to decide if this one will do what I'm looking to do.  Basically, I want to see photos stored on the device, with the time and weather overlaid on them.  Or even better have my Facebook news feeds scrolling at the bottom.  Is there a way to do this?

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

BoloMKXXVIII wrote:
tigudh wrote:

Hi all, I'm looking for some help, please. I just bought the insignia infocast today but I'm missing a very important feature for me. Isn't possible to set as alarm pandora or the shoutcast? I can't believe there's no option for that.

Thank you!


I am guessing you didn't read post #2 of this very thread.

Hello BoloMKXXVIII, thanks for your answer. I indeed read that post but it didn't solve my question, it just says "The alarm subsystem is very primitive compared to conventional chumby devices (only one alarm similar to the "quick" alarm). " I don't even know the original chumby device, or the quick alarm option, and I don't think that it directly means that neither I can't set as alarm pandora nor it's impossible to do it..

Thanks

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

Different Best Buy stores appear to place them in different places.  One of our local stores has it next to the dash, others have it with DPFs, others seem to have it in random places.

The device can certainly be hacked to do what you want - with the current software you could place all three in a channel and it would automatically switch between them, but they would not all appear at the same time.

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

That's how I have it now (all 3 in a channel) and it's certainly less than ideal.  When you say "hack" the device is there already a hack for this, or do I have to write one myself.

36 (edited by burkhardi 2010-06-21 14:01:24)

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

Just picked up one, there were two at my local BB, but the sales guy said they were not for sale and to come back next week and that the two they had were in the warehouse.

He did start at the Sony Dash display area lookiing for it though. So he said sorry and I explained "the situation" and not I have one. Should not be so hard to spend $160 you would think...LOL
Anyway, it's updating thesoftware right now. I could not access my local pictures, so I hope this update solves that.

So far I am very impressed!

Hey, what do ya know the update is done and I still can't access my pictures. I even enabled the device on my XP box via the UPnP "Media Sharing" in WMP11 and still no joy. Strange, the device is seen as "unknown device" and the only way I knew it was the Infocast was the MAC address.

Duane, is there a strange port that I need to unblock on my PC and Netbook for the IC (infocast) to see it?

EDIT: Too stange, I had to reboot the PC and the Netbook for the IC to be able to access them.

37 (edited by abarron 2010-06-21 20:53:17)

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

I just bought the Insignia today and in many respects I like it better than the Dash except for one biggie, I can't find any way for the alarm to trigger Pandora to play or any music for that matter. What a pity, the Dash's shortcoming on the alarm is that it has a backup alarm beep that sounds over the Pandora stream after two minutes and can't be stopped without killing the music too. Sony said it was a "feature and it can't be disabled".

thanks Andy

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

I can hear Duane's teeth clenching smile

He's thinking to himself "It's not a bloody alarm clock!!".

This is coming up enough that I think it's going to be inevitable that it get built into a future release. People just want it.

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

Duane,
Is there a Insignia Engineer that monitors this forum (or am I talking to him now?) or a Infocast forum that we can leave feedback at?
I am still very impressed with this device (Infocast/Silvermoon) but am finding some bugs since I am a power user.

Also, what should we call this on these forums? I hate typing out all the letters.
Infocast
IC [infocast]
Insignia Infocast
Silvermoon
SM [silvermoon]
BBC [Best Buy Chumby]
NS-DP8CH [Best Buy's skew number]
BR459

Anyone have a shorter name we can use for this like we do for the Chumby One [C1] and Chumby Classsic [CC]?

Thanks, Matt

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

Not to be too oblique, but I'll suggest

BB8

As in short for "Best Buy 8 inch" as the tag for reference to this specific instance of the silvermoon platform.

Silvermoon/SM is a troublesome tag for specific bugs to BB8 because SM is a platform; you can have many different brands that license their own version of the SM platform.

IC is a troublesome tag because our next gen platform codename is Icecrown, so it has the same initials.

BB alone is a troublesome tag because it assumes there will be only one Infocast or Best Buy product ever.

Thus, I propose BB8 as it is short, sweet, and should be reasonably specific and futureproof.

7BAA 2E53 01C1 DCFF 497B  E7F0 9699 A303 78F0 D9B9

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

Hear, hear...

BB8 it is!

I like it (not that carries any weight..LOL) , and it kinda rolls off the tongue and keyboard.

Thanks for the input!

bunnie wrote:

Not to be too oblique, but I'll suggest

BB8

As in short for "Best Buy 8 inch" as the tag for reference to this specific instance of the silvermoon platform.

Silvermoon/SM is a troublesome tag for specific bugs to BB8 because SM is a platform; you can have many different brands that license their own version of the SM platform.

IC is a troublesome tag because our next gen platform codename is Icecrown, so it has the same initials.

BB alone is a troublesome tag because it assumes there will be only one Infocast or Best Buy product ever.

Thus, I propose BB8 as it is short, sweet, and should be reasonably specific and futureproof.

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

The problem with BB8 is no new members will ever "get it" and we will be forever explaining what it means. Something like Infocast8 is more descriptive, if not as short. Just my $0.02

Tar, feathers, congress. Some assembly required.

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

By the way, bunnie has recently posted a blog entry that discusses some of the hacking potential of this device.

44 (edited by BoloMKXXVIII 2010-06-22 14:49:15)

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

I just picked up my Infocast. I haven't had much time to play with it but found some interesting things already. The touch screen is not as sensitive as my C1. It was a major pain to set it up. I have set up many laptops, a Roku and my Chumby 1 with my wireless and the Infocast is by far the biggest pain in the a__. The Infocast locked up solid half way through the wireless setup. I was in the process of doing a manual setup due to my wireless configuration. Had to go to the manual to see how to do a factory reset (hold finger on screen while turning on unit). It takes quite a while before reset happens. I was beginning to think the reset had frozen. Once it completed I went through the process again with the SSID on my router turned on. The manual setup of wireless went smooth the second time and it maintained connection once the SSID was turned back off. I have to say I really like the infocast. I have a lot of exploring to do and it should be fun. I know a lot of people have complained about the looks of it, but I think it looks fine.

Tar, feathers, congress. Some assembly required.

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

Hmmm, I think we'd like to look into that issue with the wifi config - please email me a summary of how your network was set up (model of AP, WEP/WPA etc, SSID enables/disable, etc), and at what point in the process it appeared to fail.  Thanks!

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

FWIW my SSID is hidden and I did not experience this problem. DLink running WPA. Set up fast without issue.

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

The BB8 actually does a lot of what I've been waiting for!

1. It displays a picture slideshow with movable and resizable clock and calendar displays.

2. The Pandora radio interface is great, with big album covers and easy station editing.

3. It has much better WiFi reception (46% vs 24% in the same location).

4. It looks great sitting on top of my Griffin iPod dock.

I'll wait patiently (not too patiently) for Insignia to get the message about enhancing the alarm functions.

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

Yea, the BB8 does a lot of what I want too, the main being a picture frame that can access my network w/o having to run some bloated and buggy application on the server (a la Kodak).
I am toying with hacking this one up and making it a wall mounted Chumby/picture frame.

However, I am having issue with my large picture collection at home.
At work with WMC2.0 (Windows Media Connect) the BB8 plays fine with it and sees the pictures and can access them, but at home it crashes and lockes up, but I have an insane amount of pictures and have been too busy today to change settins in the embedded WMC version in WMP11 on my PC to try a samll folder of pictures.

Does anyone know the file and fodler size limit of the BB8?

I am using the New York Times pod cast for the first time too, I like it.
I think this device will open more doors for Chumby Inc.

Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

Duane wrote:

Hmmm, I think we'd like to look into that issue with the wifi config - please email me a summary of how your network was set up (model of AP, WEP/WPA etc, SSID enables/disable, etc), and at what point in the process it appeared to fail.  Thanks!


Message sent.

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Re: The Insignia/BestBuy branded Chumby

I have only spent a few minutes with the Infocast8 so far and I am really liking it. The 8" screen and faster processor make a huge difference (photobucket/failblog/Pandora/videos). The OS is much more advanced too. I like the pop-up menu when you plug in a flash drive or SD card. As mentioned above, the wifi reception is much better. I played the first few minutes of a 900 MB AVI file and it was very watchable (but not perfect). It just seems more polished than my C1. It is very much worth the price.

It is not perfect though. The resistive touch screen is not very sensitive nor accurate. Typing on the touch screen is not fun. The sound is clean but quite tinny. I expected better mid-range. A nice pair of computer speakers will be added real soon. That is about all the negatives I have found so far. The setup issue I ran into is probably just my unusual wireless situation. It has been rock solid since I got it set up. I have read some people say it is ugly. I don't think so. Sure it is not the most fashionable piece of tech I own, but it isn't ugly like the boxee box.

I do have one thing I don't understand about the Infocast8; the "home" screen. I see no need for it. The drop down menu on the left side of the screen is simple and effective. The "Home" screen duplicates only a few of the drop down menu's functions and is space wasteful and just plain ugly. It does not look anything like the rest of the GUI. It seems like Insignia just stuck that on at the last minute. Glad I don't have to see it often and do not have to use it.

Tar, feathers, congress. Some assembly required.