Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

If you aren’t familiar with Hidden Radio & BlueTooth Speaker by John VDN + Vitor Santa Maria, it is one of the more popular Kickstarter projects, having $938,771 on a $125,000 goal. Their plan was to create “the simplest, most powerful radio and wireless speaker for iPhone + iPad ever.” In this review, we’ll see if the bluetooth behemoth lives up to the hype!

Unboxing

The packing for HiddenRadio is immaculate, iPhone style, with a certain simplicity that seems to be directly ripped off from an old-school iPod box. There’s no Microsoft-esque list of system requirements or tacky stickers. You’d feel proud wrapping one of the Hidden Radios up for a gift. There is a subtle panel of use-cases on the back, while the other three sides are product shots:

I opened it up; inside you get a few accessories:

• A USB mini cable for charging
• An audio mini-jack FM radio antenna cable
• An audio mini-jack cable to connect to your Sony Walkman or … whatever
• A microfiber drawstring dust pouch

Also, there’s the unit itself. A rounded grey (hey dude, I order silver!) cylinder, it looks sleek and is shorter than a beer bottle, and slightly smaller than your palm in diameter. They’re cute looking little devices, and it’s the design concept rather than the sound engineering, I believe, which got them their first million dollars in Kickstarter sales:

Build & Sound Quality

So how does it sound? I received two units, and they are slightly different. Both units exhibit a mediocre range with very little bass when placed on a flat surface. Treble is also attenuated, so you end up having to set EQ on your iPhone to “Rock” or a similar setting to get a response that sounds similar to the song you’re trying to listen to. When held in the air, the speaker sounds quite a lot better. Also, the volume control doesn’t work terribly well. If you set your iPhone to 100% output (no eq), the Hidden Radio will actually distort. So instead of using the beautiful twist feature to control volume, you’ll most likely leave your HiddenRadio 80% open and control volume from your iPhone. More than 80% and the sound quality again degrades.

Another sound quality issue I encountered was a constant buzzing from the unit–but only one of them. The other HiddenRadio didn’t have the same poor circuitry causing the buzz. Fortunately, it seems to be worst only when turned on, or in front of a monitor, and not playing sound. Once it locks onto a bluetooth signal, the buzz amplitude is reduced or eliminated–but you might notice it on a quiet song!

As for the build quality, it’s not good enough. I’m not sure why you twist the device left to open, which is an awkward motion for right-handers. The device feels plastic, and doesn’t have enough weight in the base to stick to the surfaces you place it on, so actually turning it on usually takes two hands: one to stabilize it, the other to twist it open. This defaults the main point of Hidden Radio: the gorgeous twits-to-open feature. Both of my units suffer from superficial defects: the first has paint already chipping off the plastic around the base ring, while the second one’s grille has a permanent dimple. See if you can spot it:

Hidden Radio definitely needs to improve their quality assurance process before selling to the mainstream customer. Another example–one unit came with some charge, while the other (better) unit was entirely uncharged:

The base also needs a few more pounds of weight so that it sticks. Right now, I either need to apply more downwards force than it would take to fire an NYPD glock, or pick the thing up in two hands to turn it on.

Ports

The Hidden Radio has all of its input ports on the bottom–you charge it through a mini-USB cable that plugs in on the base. You can also either give it direct audio input or FM antenna through a minijack on the base. There’s also a bluetooth/direct input/FM radio switch and channel picker to control the modes there:

Other Reviews

You can check out their KickStarter comments page which includes mostly negative feedback. The founders appear to be removing anything but positive comments from their Facebook page. Here are a few comments from Kickstarter:

• I bought a five pack to give as gifts, unfortunately, the one I opened to try (only after hearing all the negative reviews) it sounds TERRIBLE. At low volume it is so distorted that I cannot bear to listen.
• I received two units, both look very nice. But the first one has a lot of white noise in the background while charging via USB, the second one’s volume control is out of order.
• Well add one more backer with the frustrating automatic shut-off between two and three minutes. This only happens in wireless and wired mode though. In FM mode the HR stays on.
• Everything worked flawlessly out of the box. Simple, easy to use, well made and it really does sound good.
• Frankly I have to say that the sound quality is horrible yet especially at the max volume. Voice being distorted and sound stage is bad.
• First of all, this thing is solid. It’s surprisingly heavy, which is nice because with the “no movement” pad on the bottom it has no problem staying in place on a variety of surfaces (I tested glass, wood, and laminate). Secondly, the range is amazing. I have a small 3/2 house and I can sit it in one corner of the house and play music in the other corner. That’s going through 3 walls, one of which is insulated. Finally, the volume is loud, surprisingly loud.

TechHive also gave it a big “meh” review.

My Take?

This is HiddenRadio v1, which for $115/unit, you get a gorgeous bluetooth speaker you can plug into your bedroom and kitchen and rock out while you read, cook, do chores, etc. The sound quality is acceptable, if you know how to goose the settings, and hopefully the Hidden Radios will survive the test of time. I’d give it a 3/5, for now, until they improve the frequency response of the units. Bluetooth is also a bit gimmicky, and quite static-prone.

I don’t care about direct minijack access or FM radio; just give me an amazing bluetooth speaker with great batter life, a bigger speaker or more speakers for better sound, and a twist-to-the-right to open, and I’d happily give you 5/5!

My calves burned with a low throb, incomparable to the pain on the track, as I watched the muddy water–brown–spiral down the bathtub drain. Washing the mud off after Tough Mudder Tri-State 2011, 12 miles of mud, obstacles, and freezing water, was the real end of the race, the delineating point at which I could return to my regular home, body, and life.

The weather in Jersey when we ran was in the mid-50s, with a cold wind blowing hard. We kicked off around 11:30 and crossed the finish line at 3:15, after stopping for 30 minutes to drop of two injured teammates at the first-aid station at mile 6. Volunteers told us that at least four ankles had been broken already at the monkeybars obstacle, and we saw others who fell wrong mid course or fell to hypothermia being carted away by ambulances that were standing by. Signs along the way taunted our determination with “you signed your death waiver already” and “you just completed a Warrior Dash” (at mile 4).

The Course

The course map tells part of the story, but running the track is another experience entirely. After running and climbing through a rope obstacle (easy!) you are asked to take the Chernobyl Plunge a dive into a pool of icey water with food colouring added (you get a choice of green/red/purple), submersion under barbed wire, and them up the other side of the pool where you clamber out. The water is chest-deep, refrigerated, and has ice cubes literally floating in it:

See that ice? SEE IT?

This sets the stage for your upcoming hypothermia. After shimmying across ropes strung across a lake, then climbing over 9 foot walls–teamwork required–you hit another obstacle, a 20 drop into the cold lakewater, followed by a couple hundred foot swim to the other side. You get out cold, wet, with the sharp winding blowing through you. But what’s coming is why you joined Tough Mudder–THE MUD!!!

I haven’t ever jumped from this high before

They call it “the mile of mud”, where you slog through waist/chest high slippery mud. After that, there’s crawling under barbed wire through mud, crawling through muddy pipes, crawling under a heavy net in mud, slogging up and down a dirtbike track, then sliding down a mud mountain!

Some of my favourite obstacles were the hay piles you climbed over (reminds me of Alberta’s rural landscape), and the balance beam over frigid water. I was warm and dry from the sun by this time and was extremely motivated to avoid falling in. My teammate did, but I made it across without an unnecessary dousing! The fire obstacle was running between two sets of fires, and through the smoke, but not actually overtop of any fire, so I thought that was a bit lame. I also didn’t get electric shocked!

Tough Mudder Tips

• Dress for the event. Running leggings (like these CW-Xs) help immensely with the cold and sliding through mud. Wear a long sleeved shirt that doesn’t soak up moisture–not cotton. Bare skin is a no-no.
• It wouldn’t hurt to wear a swimming cap, but goggles are useless in mud
• Take the obstacles slowly and carefully, as your shoes are heavy with mud and slippery. You don’t want a nasty fall or scrape.
• Help others on course! They will help you too!

Cameraderie

One thing that struck me was the team spirit present. While people are there to push themselves hard, it’s not an individual event, it’s more of a team sport. At every obstacle, other racers are there helping people up the high walls, pulling them up the halfpipe, or lending a hand at the end of the inclined submerged tunnels:

I enjoyed helping others through some of the harder obstacles as much as I enjoyed completing the race on my own. The feeling is completely different than running a competitive pure-running race, for time, where everyone is only out for themselves. Tough Mudder brings out humanity’s cooperative and compassionate nature. I heard nothing but encourgement shouted out to myself and others the whole track, tips and muscle freely given.

Tough Mudder and Beyond

Tough Mudder will mark you for life. Even after you’ve washed off the superficial mud, cleaned and healed your scrapes and bruises, warmed up and changed into new clothes, even running other races, you won’t be able to forget that you once ran 12 miles on a cold windy day fearing the worst and made it. Now that I’ve run Tough Mudder, I’m no longer afraid to take the next challenge. I can do anything!

This post is a followup to the quite dated tutorial I wrote in 2005, called How to rip a DVD: A Tutorial. At that time, DVD decrypter and AutoGK were the tools of choice, but they’ve been supplanted as technology has improved by more user-friendly, automatic programs.

As of 2011, I would recommend using Handbrake, an open-source multithreaded and cross-platform ripper which works on Windows and Apple Mac OS both!

Step 1: Download & Install

Please download and install Handbrake to get started. At about 6MB, it shouldn’t take more than a minute.

Step 2: Launch the DVD Ripper

Put in your DVD and launch Handbrake. You should be greeted with an informative screen similar to the following:

By default, nothing is selected yet. There are a few options you can set, such as your preferred subtitle capture language and dubbing language preferences. I prefer the movies in original audio with English subs.

Step 3: Select the Source

I just popped in a Coen Brothers DVD, so when I click on the “Source” dropdown, it shows up there right away. Unfortunately, you can’t directly rip a commercial DVD this way. You need to dump it to disk with DVD Decrypter, after which you can select a DVD rip saved to a folder on your harddrive:

After some time (“Processing Title: 1 of 15…”) you will see the main screen populated with information. If you get stuck on the “processing title” bit, remember you need to open a folder you saved from DVD Decrypter (the decryption will take 20-30 minutes for a feature film).

Step 4: Choose a Title

Titles are like the chapters of a DVD. Usually there will be a single long title that contains the movie, like the 1 hr, 56 minute “Title 1″ I am selecting:

Step 5: Choose Output Settings

You have a lot to choose from. You can pick one of the Handbrake presets for iPod/iTouch/iPad, or customize one of your own. I’m going to use the “High Profile” setting to watch on my PC, but override the target file size to 2 CDs, or 1400 MB:

Step 6: Encode the video

Just click the “Start” button to kick things off, or “preview” to make sure you’re OK with the quality:

It’s going to take me about 52 minutes to encode this; on my i7 with 4 cores x2 hyperthreading, CPU usage is at 100%.

Finally…

If anything goes wrong, there’s an entire Handbrake community who can help you out. Why don’t you start by looking at their How To Request Support for HandBrake thread?