Odds and Ends: AirPort Vs. wireless LCD projectors; Fixes for EyeHome issues; more

CNET staff

Sept. 2, 2009 10:00 a.m. PT

3 min read

AirPort Vs. wireless LCD projectors MacFixIt reader Tres Thompson reports problems using a wireless LCD projector with AirPort Extreme:

"My 15" G4 Powerbook has built-in Airport Extreme (802.11g) networking. Works and plays well with other vendors wireless products, as well as Apple's.

"My Toshiba TLP-T720 LCD projector has a wireless (802.11b) networking card, which was advertised to allow a wireless setup to project via it without cables. Sounded great--reality is it won't project from my Mac.

"My Mac's Airport recognizes the presence of the projector (id'd as DPJ, the default name for the projector), but insists I provide a password to connect, even though the wireless card in the projector is set for "No password", is NOT using WEP or anything else security-wise at the moment (although it can). There are no options in the drop-down menu to turn WEP off for my airport card, and the provided setup assistant for Airport is so brain-dead it is of no use either.

"Toshiba tech. support on the web is apparently outsourced, so the level of comprehension of the product or the problem is minimal. Toshiba makes Intel laptops etc., so their Mac support is next to non-existent."

If you are experiencing a similar issue, please drop us a line at late-breakers@macfixit.com.

Fixes for EyeHome issues Yesterday we reported a host of issues with El Gato's EyeHome 1.5 software, including dropped video frames and other issues. MacFixIt reader Zach has since conferred with the company's technical support team, who offers explanations for a number of the issues:

"In terms of fast forward performance and general video glitching, the latest version of the EyeHome software is a bit more processor intensive than the last. The cause of this is improved on-the-fly conversion of MPEG Transport Streams (that come from say, an EyeTV recording) to the MPEG Program Streams that the EyeHome plays back. This provides more robust performance, but also results in a processor hit (if I am understanding Elgato correctly). Making sure your processor isn't too heavily loaded with other tasks should take care of these issues, as it did in my case.

"The other major issue was lack of audio playback. This will occur for any MPEG streams with AC3 encoded audio when you have your EyeHome connected to your TV using the analog (composite) RCA jacks. AC3 playback is now only supported through the digital TOSLink audio connector. Apparently this is due to Dolby's licensing rules. In any case, I have not yet found a utility to convert the audio of my files to a format EyeHome can handle (e.g. mp2 or mp3). I played with various programs (ffmpegx, MPEG StreamClip, and the various command line tools they are based on) with no luck. I can successfully transcode the audio to mp2, which plays back fine on my Mac, but it refuses to playback on the EyeHome. So for the moment, I've gone ahead and rolled back my EyeHome firmware and software as described last time in order to restore full audio functionality.

"So, be careful how you master your movies in Toast with Jam, Final Cut, DVD Studio Pro, etc. - you may not be able to hear them if you use AC3 encoding!"

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