Thursday, November 23, 2006

Dash Startup/Shutdown sounds

The T-Mobile Dash has an obnoxious startup and shutdown sound. To disable it, browse to the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\HTC\Shutdown and Startup and delete the value WAV. You'll still have the T-Mobile animation, but at least it won't make any noise.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

DIY T-Mobile Dash headphone adapter

Step-by-step photos of my little project to make a headphone adapter for my new phone (it has a custom headphone plug).

Sunday, November 12, 2006

T-Mobile Dash and Media Center goodness

Ok, this is cool. Really, really cool. Long story short: I can automatically synchronize TV shows recorded on my Media Center box to my Windows Mobile smartphone. Read on.

Friday I picked up a T-Mobile Dash. If you're not familiar with this device, it is the Windows Mobile device to have right now. It's slim, sleek, usable and downright sexy to hold in your hand.

The first thing I did was hack the registry to restore the JOGGR functionality that T-Mo deprecated. Then I plugged it into my PC and synced up an album through Media Player 11. It worked as expected, copied album art and everything. Cool.

Then I tried syncing up a TV show I had recorded. It worked, except the resolution of the transcoded file was 160x120, which dumbfounded me because the device has a 320x240 display. After some searching, I finally found a newsgroup post linking to this answer. In summary, the device reports is capabilities to Media Center through a protocol called MTP. These capabilities are stored on the device in an easily-edited XML document (\Windows\WMSyncCaps.xml). Once I changed that, deleted and recreated the partnership in Media Player, everything started working great. The right resolution, good bitrate. Bonita! A half-hour show ends up being about 30 MB.

Back in Media Player, I created an auto playlist that holds the two most recent episodes of The Daily Show. When I plug in my Dash, the file gets transcoded and transferred to the phone's media library. (I have a 1GB micro-SD card, which might not suffice now that I see how capable of a media player this is.)

If I continue doing this, I'll plug my phone in at night, it will sync that night's Daily Show automatically while I sleep. Then on the train ride to the office, I'll be able to (have the option to) watch last night's Daily Show on my commute. How cool is that? Now I just need to pick up the headphone adapter...but it's out of stock right now.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Progress

I went to Ikea today and got a few things for the condo. A bookshelf, four stackable chairs (to save space), and a set of big wine glasses (great for reds that need to breathe). The bookshelf is key: it will let me unpack a few more boxes and finally get the last of my stuff put away and unpacked. At last. Pictures will come after that.

Saturday, November 04, 2006

I'm back

I got my cable modem installed today and just updated my DNS entry to the new IP. This new place is starting to feel like home :)