Asus WL-500W router bad capacitors

My WL-500W wireless router recently became unstable. It was still perfectly fine for web browsing, but any large data transfers over wireless caused reboots. At first, I only noticed this with copies over the LAN, but a few days ago even a fast download from the Internet caused a reboot. At first I thought this was a bug with the firmware I use, but going back to a version that used to be perfectly stable did not help.

I found some info online about bad capacitors in Asus routers, so I decided to investigate. I chose to first look at the router, because it is easier to open. That just involves removing the glued on rubber feet, unscrewing the Phillips screws that were hidden by the feet, and lifting off the top. I immediately noticed a bulging capacitor near the toroidal inductor near the power input. It's used for filtering 3.3V power, so it's quite important.

This made me also wonder about the power supply wall wart. People were reporting bad capacitors there also. Since looking inside requires violent disassembly, I first measured the voltage to see if there might be a problem. Open circuit voltage was okay, but when the router was connected, the voltage drooped below 4V, which is obviously bad.

I opened up the wall wart by hammering a blade into the seam at various locations. This was much quicker and easier than sawing it apart. Then I had to yank out the circuit board, which was glued with silicone. The 1200µF 10V output filtering capacitor was bulging and leaking. After replacing it, the, voltage droop under load became much more reasonable.

After replacing both of these capacitors, the router was stable. As long as it's stable and the other capacitors don't look obviously bad, I don't feel like replacing them. This does however make me hesitant to glue the wall wart back together. For now I'm using a rubber band, and I guess I'll replace that with cable ties.

This wasn't too hard, but I shouldn't have to deal with bad capacitors in a product manufactured in 2008. I'm disappointed with Asus. By 2008 they should have learned how to avoid this problem. I guess the capacitor plague continues. Wikipedia even has an "after 2007" section in the article.

Finally, here are photos of markings on the two bad capacitors. The obscured number at the top is 8011D.

When buying optical media, choose wisely

Yesterday I got a 50 pack of Memorex DVD+R discs at the Superstore. The first disc burned without any problems, but two different drives failed to read it. After that I checked the reviews on Amazon. The pack I got has only 3 stars, and it looks even worse if you examine the distribution of reviews. The Verbatim brand which I used before has much better reviews. The lesson here is that even though this is a small purchase, it's still necessary to check reviews and choose wisely, instead of picking up whatever is convenient.

The Memorex discs had a MID of "RITEK F16 001 (01h)". After returning those to the Superstore, I got a Verbatim 50-pack at Staples with a MID of "MCC 004 000 (00h)". My first Verbatim burn turned out great:

Deconstructing Christianity, good and evil

Usually, when someone tries to control people via mass killings, collective punishment and torture, we call them evil. If one considers the Bible literally, as a true story, one finds that God is doing a lot of it. Here's an estimate of the number of people killed by God and on God's orders.

If one looks at the Bible without the bias that simply asserts that God is good, it seems like good and evil may be backwards there. It seems that Gnosticism has a more reasonable interpretation. The Bible makes a lot more sense if it is talking about a flawed and crazy Demiurge (creator), and not some ultimate supreme and good being.

However, even following Gnosticism does not seem right, because it's still just mythology without any proof. All of this makes the most sense if just thought of as mythology, instead of information about the nature of reality.

Even good and evil is mythology, and not something real. It is a particularly dangerous mythology because the idea that some group is evil has been used to justify some of the worst things people did to other people. Belief in good and evil is probably the root cause of why some religions have caused harm.

It's possible that if one digs even deeper, the root problem is the idea of absolutes. It leads people to not think or question, and instead stick with assumptions. That is why I do not like the idea of there being some absolute deity.

Playing AAC audio from FLV video in Rockbox

I wanted to have the audio from a guided meditation Flash video on my portable device running Rockbox. After downloading the video to an FLV file, I first tried using FLVExtract. This created an AAC file which was playable in Winamp, but Rockbox didn't recognize it. I had to put the file into an MPEG4 container. For that I used FFmpeg from the command line:

ffmpeg -i audio_from_flvextract.aac -absf aac_adtstoasc -acodec copy final_audio_file.m4a

It's also possible to skip the FLVExtract step:

ffmpeg -i video_file.flv -vn -absf aac_adtstoasc -acodec copy audio_file.m4a

For some reason, this M4A file was slightly larger.

Fixing a flash drive by reprogramming the controller

I recently started having problems with the Kingston DataTraveller 102 16GB flash drive (DT102/16GB) which I use on my Asus WL-500W router. It would disconnect as /dev/discs/disca and reconnect as /dev/discs/discb, and so on, making /opt inaccessible. I don't know if it was due to newer versions of the firmware I use or the drive itself. I first started having problems with r3702, and they continued with r4051. I wondered if the USB contacts got dirty, so I quickly plugged it in and unplugged it a bunch of times to try to clean them. That made the drive totally inaccessible. I now think I should only do something like that when power is off, although I'm not sure if it's responsible for the problem. The drive still registered as a USB device, but it couldn't be read or written. Both Windows and Linux reported it as a generic device (not Kingston as before) and Linux couldn't read the capacity.

There's a web site which shows which shows what controllers are used by various drives, and provides tools for reprogramming the controller. According to the site, the DT102 uses the SSS6990 controller, and the proper tool is SSS6690 USB Flash Sorting Ver 4.010. Other versions are available elsewhere, for example at this Russian site. I chose to use 4.010. The program immediately discovered the flash drive:

When I clicked start, it did some programming and then a large amount of testing. Eventually it failed, claiming there are too many bad blocks. I then changed some options via the setup button. Changing from "Downgrade Flash" to "Normal Flash" made the procedure work quickly, without any extended testing. However, the drive was ridiculously slow. I then changed the access time to 50ns, because the flash part number ended with 48 and I think that probably means 48ns. This gave good speed, I think like before. I also changed the LED, so it is normally off and on while the drive is accessed, like before. Here's the configuration dialog with the settings I changed:

The drive works now. I could fill it with data, read the data and verify hashes without any errors. It's also working fine so far with my router and firmware r3497. I wouldn't trust it for something very important though.

Better TV show naming for Plex Media Server

Files added to Plex Media Server need to be named a certain way so that Plex can find the right information online. The naming convention is documented online. Movies should be named "Movie name (year).ext", which is perfectly appropriate. However, the TV show "Show name\Season #\Show - s##e## - Optional episode name.ext" naming isn't the best choice. Some shows only have one season, making the "Season 1" directory and "s01" in the filename pointless. Also, the "Show name - " is pointless at the start of the filename, because the file is already under the "Show name" directory. When viewing the folder via DLNA or other means, a long show name can make it harder to view the episode number and name, which is what really matters. Fortunately, it is possible to simply use "Show name\E## - Episode name.ext". When there are multiple seasons, it's also possible to not use the "Season #" directories, but I do not recommend this. The season number can be a single digit, but episode numbers must be two digits. The " - Episode name" part is ignored by Plex. However, it is useful when viewing the files via other means, so I recommend including it. If you have a show with no online metadata, you can use a Perl script to import episode names from the file name into Plex.

I automatically renamed all my shows to this more sensible naming convention, and Plex Media Server automatically picked up the changes without any problems. Here are the commands I used. They create a shell script which does renaming. You can just add | sh to the end but it's better to look through the output a bit first, to make sure that it's sensible.

find . -type f -iname "*[Ee][0-9][0-9] - *" | sed -n 's|^\(.*/\)\([^/]*\)\(/Season [0-9]*/\)\2 - \(.*\)$|mv "&" "\1\2\3\4"|p'
find . -type f -iname "*[Ee][0-9][0-9] - *" | sed -n 's|^\(.*/\)\([^/]*\)/\2 - \(.*\)$|mv "&" "\1\2/\3"|p'

Cogeco clear QAM list for Windsor, Ontario

Here is a list of clear QAM channels I could receive via Cogeco cable in Windsor on April 21st, 2012. It is based on an old list I found, but a lot has changed since then. Clear QAM is not an official offering from Cogeco, and channels can be moved, removed or added at any time without any notification. It's a good idea to re-do auto tuning regularly to pick up any new channels. Almost all channels are SD and there are channels which cannot be received via analog or clear QAM. As a result, clear QAM is not a good alternative to a Cogeco receiver. Note that in some cases, the second number of the channel corresponds to the channel number in the official Cogeco lineup.

[ Updated January 10th 2013 ]

Note: It seems channels which are available for free preview for the month are available via clear QAM. For example, the four channels from the High Fidelity HDTV network are listed here.

QAM	Number	Call sign	Long name	HD
46-774	774	OASHD	OasisHD	HD
47-275	741	SCRHD	The Score HD	HD
65-117	950	BET	BET - Canada
65-710	710	TVO	TVO (TV Ontario) HD	HD
65-803	803	CTV2L	CTV Two Windsor, ON HD	HD
91-17	14	MM	Much Music
91-36	68	SCORE	The Score
91-57	26	SLICE	Slice
91-70	21	CTVNN	CTV News Channel
92-12	12	CBLFT	SRC (CBLFT) Toronto
92-28	17	CBCNN	CBC News Network
92-40	58	SHOP	Shopping Channel
92-60	13	CKCO	CTV (CKCO) Kitchener, ON
92-66	20	TFO	TFO - Chaine Francaise
92-73	23	TREE	Treehouse
92-105	49	SPEED	Speed Channel Canada
92-924	924	TSN	TSN
92-951	9	HOMES	Real Estate Channel
93-2	2	TVO	TVO (TV Ontario)
93-56	70	CPAC	CPAC Ottawa
93-58	19	VISIO	Vision TV
93-86	25	TV5	TV5 International
93-123	123	BITE	Bite TV
94-27	16	YTV	YTV (Youth Television) - East
94-68	57	CFTM	TVA (CFTM) Montréal
94-71	69	OLA	Ontario Legislature
94-74	76	APTN	APTN - East
94-91	64	OWN	Oprah Winfrey Network Canada
94-93	111	BNN	BNN - Business News Network
94-145	145	ACTN	Action
102-380	45	TOON	Teletoon - East
104-524	911	TVC	Cogeco Windsor	HD
105-306	134	GOLD	Comedy Gold
124-3	3	CIII	Global (CIII) Ontario
124-7	61	CITY	CITY TV Toronto, ON
124-10	59	CHCH	CHCH Hamilton, ON
124-939	18	TWN	Weather Network
124-941	6	CTV2L	CTV Two Windsor, ON
124-948	62	WMYD	MNT (WMYD) Detroit, MI
124-979	979	TVLIS	TV Listings
125-4	63	OMNI	OMNI Television
125-78	3	CIII	Global (CIII) Ontario
125-79
125-80			Global
125-81	67	WTVS	PBS (WTVS) Detroit, MI
125-103	53	GOLF	Golf Channel Canada
125-927	11	TVC	Cogeco Windsor
125-945	7	WJBK	FOX (WJBK) Detroit, MI
125-946			CBC
125-947	60	WKBD	CW (WKBD) Detroit, MI
126-67	22	RDI	RDI (News)
126-97	70	CPAC	CPAC Ottawa
126-118	118	GTV	Game TV
126-151	151	RSE	Sportsnet (East) - Satellite/Digital
126-152	152	SNW	Sportsnet (West) - Satellite/Digital
126-153	153	RSN-P	Sportsnet (Pacific) - Satellite/Digital
126-184	184	EWTN	EWTN Canada
126-185	185	SALT&	Salt & Light
126-555	555	AMI-t	AMI-tv East
127-108	48	FOOD	Food Network Canada
127-110	42	STAR!	E! Canada
127-112	32	MMM	Much More Music
127-114	114	MTV	MTV Canada
127-156	156	TSN2	TSN2
128-1	1	VODP	VOD Preview
128-149	149	WMOV	W Movies
128-151	151	RSE	Sportsnet (East) - Satellite/Digital
130-775	775	RadXH	RadXHD	HD
130-776	776	EQHD	eqhd	HD
131-764	764	FOOD	Food Network Canada	HD
137-777	777	HIFI	HIFI	HD

LG Smart TVs are kind of stupid

Here are some stupid things about the 47LW5600, a 2011 LG "Smart TV":

• In SmartShare (USB and DLNA mode) only a short bit of the file name is initially visible. When episode file names start with the show name (like Plex recommends), I only see the show name. My photo folders start with the date, and there I only see the date. To see more, it's necessary to highlight one item and wait for text to slowly scroll.
• When switching between photos in SmartShare, the screen abruptly goes black and stays black until the next photo appears. Loading of 4MP photos takes over a second. That's ridiculously slow! They could have made it instant by pre-loading the next photo. It's a lot better in LG Media Link. There, only very large photos display a loading animation, and the slide show has fades.
• High bitrate spikes will cause playback interruptions when streaming over the network via SmartShare or LG Media Link. The TV can peak at around 86% network utilization, but it can't sustain that and there is very little buffer space to accommodate peaks. Sustained H.264 bandwidth exceeding 50 MBps is sufficient to cause video interruptions. These problems don't happen when playing from USB.
• The lack of DTS support is stupid because the format is popular. It can be transcoded while streaming, but that doesn't work correctly. When using Serviio, seeking becomes impossible. This seems to be because the TV can only seek based on file offsets, but those are not known while transcoding. When using Plex Media Server, video gets transcoded. Even when that is fixed, there are pauses, apparently due to excessive CPU usage and inefficient multithreading in the server. The only good solution is transcoding audio beforehand. When using MKV files, that's easy to do via MKV2AC3. It kind of makes sense because AC3 offers almost the same quality at less than half the bitrate, but I don't like transcoding from one lossless format to another. The best solution is encoding the DTS-HD lossless track to AC3 when ripping, but I'm not sure how to do that.
• The TV mysteriously rejects some AVI files. Fortunately, that's easy to fix by converting to MKV using mkvmerge. As a bonus, that decreases file size a bit without losing anything.
• When playing files, it's not possible to switch audio tracks or use MKV chapters. Subtitles embedded in MKV files are only supported when playing from USB. When a file of sufficient length is played from USB, the red remote button can be used to switch chapters, but those are just the file divided into 10 equal sized parts; they have nothing to do with MKV chapters.
• No idx/sub subtitle support. (The "*.sub (MicroDVD, SubViewer 1.0/2.0)" mentioned in the manual is not the same thing.) You must use OCR to convert graphical subtitles to text-based subtitles such as .srt.
• The web browser is slow and it lacks Flash support. You can't stream any video using it, and so you're forced to rely on what's available via apps and LG Media Link. If you just want to look up some basic information, it's certainly usable. However, getting up, waking a computer from standby and looking it up on the computer is faster.
• The YouTube app does not show much information about videos, so it's hard to choose which video to play. Again, LG Media Link does it better. There is one good thing about the built-in YouTube app: it will play YouTube 3D content in 3D.
• SmartShare seems to occasionally drop frames even when playing 30fps SD content and not experiencing any buffering issues. It's not a big deal; I just think it ought to be perfect. I wonder if it's just an AVI issue. It's possible to play 640x480 H.264 at 60 fields per second interlaced in an AVI in both SmartShare and LG Media Link, but both result in horrible frame dropping. If I simply remux it to MKV, it's super smooth. (The TV also seems to deinterlace really well. The image is so good that I'm very happy with my decision to encode NTSC video to interlaced H.264.)
• Some settings are not remembered properly. Audio can become un-muted when switching between modes. In LG Media Link, all files start playing stretched to the whole screen, requiring a few clicks to get the proper aspect ratio.
• The interface is inconsistent. Different modes have different looks and different ways of changing settings. Most notably, SmartShare and LG Media Link have two different video playback screens (overlays). That's understandable because they're two different applications. However, they're built in applications in the same product. The user interface should be consistent. (I'm not complaining about how the file browsing screens are different. That's part of the fundamental nature of the applications.) 
• There is no support for common Bluetooth or USB devices like headphones or keyboards. The TV does have Bluetooth for the Magic Motion Remote. It would be nice to be able to use Bluetooth headphones or wireless keyboards. That would be truly smart.
• It's not possible to zoom 4:3 content while preserving the aspect ratio. This means if you encounter 16:9 content that has been letterboxed to 4:3, you can't expand the content to fill the screen. (No, it's not really a Smart TV issue, but it is definitely a software issue.)

The only really impressive part that deserves to be called smart is LG Media Link and Plex Media Server. It can present beautiful indexes of content, with covers, other artwork, and various information. Plex also provides a gateway to many sources of online streaming video. Even in Canada, many full TV shows can be streamed from TV channels via Plex. However, there are various bugs and issues. Also, Plex isn't very nice when it can't find online data about a show, making SmartShare better in those cases.

I like the picture quality. The higher black level of the IPS panel can seem a bit disappointing in bars around the image, but the image is vivid and not washed out. It's so good it can feel like actually being there.

The LG passive 3D is great too. The glasses feel like cheap crap that would deserve a bad review on DealExtreme, but they're light and very comfortable. If they break, they would be inexpensive to replace. As long as you're within the very limited vertical viewing angle, there is no crosstalk. The horizontal viewing angle is wide.

Overall, it's a nice TV, except for the "Smart" features. They feel more like an alpha or maybe beta, and definitely not like a final release. While they are usable, they can't fully replace the direct connection of a computer to the TV. The hardware is certainly capable of much more, but I don't think any TV manufacturer is going to spend much effort on improving firmware once a model isn't sold anymore.