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[kitz]

Just watched a program on bbc4 which anyone who enjoys tinkering with mechanical parts or even electronics may enjoy


I found it fascinating what they were able to do in the 18th century, the more I watched it the more I got into it.
The beauty of the silver mechanical swan, the Turkish chess player and despite how being a fake it was that which inspired industry to make mechanical looms..  then we had the one which drew a dog which the workings of to me looked extraordinary similar to a prelude to the disk-drive.

Its not yet available on i-player because its only just been aired, but it says 'soon'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0229pbp/Mechanical_Marvels_Clockwork_Dreams/

Documentary presented by Professor Simon Schaffer which charts the amazing and untold story of automata - extraordinary clockwork machines designed hundreds of years ago to mimic and recreate life.

The film brings the past to life in vivid detail as we see how and why these masterpieces were built. Travelling around Europe, Simon uncovers the history of these machines and shows us some of the most spectacular examples, from an entire working automaton city to a small boy who can be programmed to write and even a device that can play chess. All the machines Simon visits show a level of technical sophistication and ambition that still amazes today.

As well as the automata, Simon explains in great detail the world in which they were made - the hardship of the workers who built them, their role in global trade and the industrial revolution and the eccentric designers who dreamt them up. Finally, Simon reveals that to us that these long-forgotten marriages of art and engineering are actually the ancestors of many of our most loved modern technologies, from recorded music to the cinema and much of the digital world.

[burakkucat]

That you for the link and synopsis of the program. I've added it to 'my list'. 

[sheddyian]

Yes, it was an excellent programme - that sort of thing fascinates me.

There is (was? seems to be out of print) a book about the Mechanical Turk, which I enjoyed at the time, probably due to it being Book of the week on Radio 4
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Mechanical-Turk-Chess-playing-Machine/dp/014029919X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1382317303&sr=8-2&keywords=mechanical+turk

and I think there are echoes of those machines, albeit in a more clunky and amusing fashion, in Tim Hunkin's Under The Pier Show at Southwold : http://www.underthepier.com/ which is worth a visit.

One of his early machines is a mechanical doctor that writes an illegible prescription for you, for example.

Ian

[sevenlayermuddle]

Sounds interesting but I failed to spot it and despite all my exotic distributed MythTVs don't have a useable iPlayer environment.   

No sign of a scheduled repeat either, though I have instructed Myth to 'record at any time on any channel'.  So sooner or later I hope, I'll find it magically appearing in my 'recorded programs list'. 

Talking of mechanical marvels, in in the context of poultry (iron chickens), I see they're bringing back The Clangers?   I just hope they don't ruin it by using CGI instead of puppets.

[kitz]

I notice its now up on i-player and available for the next 6 days.

>>  all my exotic distributed MythTVs don't have a useable iPlayer environment.

Thats a shame can you not watch it from the ipad...    not sure if iplayer mirrors to the TV though without atv, not tried it.

[kitz]

Yes, it was an excellent programme - that sort of thing fascinates me.

There is (was? seems to be out of print) a book about the Mechanical Turk, which I enjoyed at the time, probably due to it being Book of the week on Radio 4
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Mechanical-Turk-Chess-playing-Machine/dp/014029919X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1382317303&sr=8-2&keywords=mechanical+turk

and I think there are echoes of those machines, albeit in a more clunky and amusing fashion, in Tim Hunkin's Under The Pier Show at Southwold : http://www.underthepier.com/ which is worth a visit.

One of his early machines is a mechanical doctor that writes an illegible prescription for you, for example.

Ian

The program certainly sparked my interest in them

[sevenlayermuddle]

I notice its now up on i-player and available for the next 6 days.

>>  all my exotic distributed MythTVs don't have a useable iPlayer environment.

Thats a shame can you not watch it from the ipad...    not sure if iplayer mirrors to the TV though without atv, not tried it.

Actually I believe Myth can do that too, streaming from an iOS device with airplay?   

I've never tried to set it up, mind.   With my 3 to 3.5 IP profile, even watching directly on the PC (or the Mac), iPlayer is a pretty unpleasant ordeal, blurry pictures that keep freezing.

I'm sure it'll be repeated one day though, so I'll see it in due course. 

[kitz]

haha sorry didnt know Myth could do Airplay. 

For i-player, I sent it straight out over airplay to the ATV
.. which is why Ive never tried mirroring with i-player & wasnt sure if that would work that way.  Ive successfully used mirroring for other things.

With my 3 to 3.5 IP profile, even watching directly on the PC (or the Mac), iPlayer is a pretty unpleasant ordeal, blurry pictures that keep freezing

Thats a shame


I did some testing a while ago to see how much bandwidth is use whilst streaming various quality streams via i-player.   
Stream to the ipad was about 1500 kbps
SDTV over airplay to the ATV was average 2000kbps
HDTV was 3.5 Mbps.

You can see the results here.  Obviously they arent conclusive... because theres no exact way of measuring to the APTV & ipad..  so I turned it on its head, let the stream have what it needed and then let the PC soak up the rest of my bandwidth.

[The idea behind the following tests are to stream content to various devices whilst simultaneously downloading the 1GB file.  If we subtract the average download speed during the tests from the available bandwidth then we should have a rough idea of how much bandwidth is being used by the streaming media content.

[sevenlayermuddle]

I did some testing a while ago to see how much bandwidth is use whilst streaming various quality streams via i-player.   
Stream to the ipad was about 1500 kbps
SDTV over airplay to the ATV was average 2000kbps
HDTV was 3.5 Mbps.

You can see the results here.  Obviously they arent conclusive... because theres no exact way of measuring to the APTV & ipad..  so I turned it on its head, let the stream have what it needed and then let the PC soak up the rest of my bandwidth.

Hey, I missed that page when you posted in that first thread, even though I must have read your reply.

Very interesting and, better late than never, thanks!   

[kitz]

It does give a small insight as to why you may at times struggle on a 3Mb profile, despite the stream supposedly being say 2Mb due to the buffering process and how it doesnt come down in one nice steady 2Mb stream.

Just a thought,  can you not download from iplayer to device and then play..  rather than watching the actual stream.

[roseway]

I've been watching a bit of it today, and it suffers from buffering here, even though my internet speed is way over the official requirement. I'm going to check later if it's available on Sky Catchup, which downloads the whole thing to local storage.

[sevenlayermuddle]

It does give a small insight as to why you may at times struggle on a 3Mb profile, despite the stream supposedly being say 2Mb due to the buffering process and how it doesnt come down in one nice steady 2Mb stream.

Just a thought,  can you not download from iplayer to device and then play..  rather than watching the actual stream.

I suspect I could, but just have never found the time to figure it all out.   I did try to make that work with Myth but it didn't work as my frontends have only low power CPUs.  The graphics cores handle full HD mpeg video with ease, but Flash video depends on CPU (at least on linux), and it all looks terrible.

I think my mistake was to quit paid employment ('retirement' they call it).   Ever since, there's been no time left for figuring out things like this.   Biggest problem is things that used to get done at weekends, and days off, as they don't exist any more.

[kitz]

used to get done at weekends, and days off, as they don't exist any more

Yep.  Know that feeling