Boeing 777-style CPDLC/ACARS chime

I couldn't find any clean Boeing 777-style CPDLC/ACARS chime on the web, so I tried making one with Matlab.  What I made is a 0.49-s 1150-Hz sinusoide followed by a 0.60-s 580-Hz sinusoid with some amplitude modulation.  This is pretty much a D-D with one octave separation.  I am not sure about the fidelity of the sound but it shouldn't be too bad.

acars.wav

For iPhone email notification:
new-mail.caf

A = 0.25;

T1 = 0.49;
T2 = 0.60;

Tr1 = 0.04;
Tr2 = 0.04;

f1 = 1150;
f2 = 580;

fs = 44100;

t1 = 0:1/fs:T1;
t2 = 0:1/fs:T2;

% base
y1 = A * sin(2*pi*f1*t1);
y2 = A * sin(2*pi*f2*t2);

% Envelope
k1 = 1:round(fs*Tr1);
k2 = round(fs*Tr1)+1:round(fs*T1);

y1(k1) = y1(k1) .* fliplr(sqrt(1-(k1/k1(end)).^2));
y1(k2) = y1(k2).* fliplr(k2-k2(1))/length(k2);

k1 = 1:round(fs*Tr2);
k2 = round(fs*Tr2)+1:round(fs*T2);

y2(k1) = y2(k1) .* fliplr(sqrt(1-(k1/k1(end)).^2));
y2(k2) = y2(k2).* fliplr(k2-k2(1))/length(k2);

% Concatenate
y = [y1 y2];

sound(y, fs);

DELL U3011 gamma correction curve

AdobeRGB mode

sRGB mode

These were measured with Cormunki.  Both look quite off.  Is it the monitor or Colormunki that's off?  Either way, this monitor is a lot better than the 7-year old Benq PVA monitor I have been using both in size and quality. Now I can watch TV from my armchair and bed.

Toshiba D-TR1 now supported by Sling Media

Sling Media has added loads of remotes for the new Japanese market.  Now Toshiba D-TR1 is officially supported but the skin is a generic one with a lot of tiny unused buttons and some buttons are missing.  I will keep using my skin.

Sling Media's Toshiba remote skin (left), my D-TR1 skin (middle), my shorter D-TR1 skin (right)

The skin I made is a bit too big, but shrinking the size takes a quite a bit of work so I rather live with this one.

WebSlingPlayer picture quality in regular SlingPlayer

WebSlingPlayer renders much smoother pictures than the regular SlingPlayer.  The difference is particularly apparent for sharp features as shown below (click on the image to see the pixel-by-pixel image).

I tried copying some files from the WebSlingPlayer program directory to the SlingPlayer directory to see if it is possible to have the WebSlingPlayer picture quality in the regular SlingPlayer since I do not like the WebSlingPlayer.  It turned out that copying SBDS.ax and H264DecoderDLL.ax works.  Here are the versions of the players I tried:

SlingPlayer: 2.0.4.522
WebSlingPlayer (IE8): 1.4.0.111
OS: Windows 7 Professional

I tried the same with my netbook running Windows XP, but the method above didn't work for some reasons.

Toshiba D-TR1 bin & skin for Slingbox

I use Slingbox PRO-HD to watch TV from Japan.  The Toshiba D-TR1 digital terrestrial+satellite TV tuner is connected to it and provides a constant 2Mbps+ clean HDTV feed over the Pacific.  The nice thing about this tuner is that it can record video to an external USB hard drive.  This feature is particularly useful for those who watch Japanese TV from a different time zone.

Unfortunately, Sling Media doesn't support this tuner.  So I created a .bin file and skin, and uploaded them as a package to the JP1 forum.

The remote data package is available at http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload.php?action=file&file_id=9158 .  (It has been there for a couple of months, but I updated it with the shortcuts today)