I created a nice little PHP 5 email processor and placed it on our wiki.

Have a look here: http://wiki.category5.tv/GNarly_Mailman

Hey friends!

When I come across a great piece of gear for a great price, I get a little offended when rookie reviewers who don't know how to work that gear post false reviews. And you know me, I'm not a Microsoft fanboy by any means (ha! quite the contrary), so this is legit!

The Microsoft Lifecam Studio promises to be a 1080p 30fps webcam for under $100, yet all the reviews anyone can find out there say it can only achieve 720p, if that. It's not true! The fact is, it's simply not to be considered a "basic user" camera. I mean, we're talking true HD here. You have to assume, even with the name "studio", we're talking a bit more "professional" here. You have to know a little bit about what you're doing, and you have to have appropriate hardware and software to make it happen. You have to have good "studio" lighting, and a killer system to run it.

Here, I demonstrate the Microsoft Lifecam Studio in 1080p ~30fps. Imagine being able to broadcast video live or on YouTube in exceptional 1080p for under $100. Crazy!


If you're unsure how to set the embedded player to HD and run as fullscreen, feel free to jump directly to the YouTube page here: http://youtu.be/YBrs_tDtzyM?hd=1

I mean, C'mon! You can see the veins in my eyes! That has to be a good thing!

For detailed information about our server specs, visit cat5.tv/server.

BUY THIS CAMERA HERE: cat5.tv/bh

Get a free trial of Telestream Wirecast here: cat5.tv/wirecast

This document will be a work in progress for a while. As Wirecast extends their support for the Lifecam Studio 1080p webcam, we will include information about it here. Please comment, post your experiences, and be sure to notify Telestream that you want support for the Microsoft Lifecam Studio in 1080p!

My hope is that this video will demonstrate to Telestream that Wirecast needs to support this webcam.

I bought these cameras for $48 each, so you can't tell me it's not worth supporting at this level of quality for so cheap!

Category5 Technology TV and Brother Canada would like to make your home office work for you!

The MFC-J825DW / MFC-835DW all-in-one multifunction centre from Brother combines duplex (double-sided) full-color inkjet printing, scanner, copier, fax and PC-Fax, all across an easy-to-setup wifi connection, all from its built-in 3.3" color touch screen.

To qualify, you must have a Canadian shipping address (sorry world), and must have a registered user account on Category5.TV.

Email your Category5.TV username and a brief description of your "home office" environment to us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Your username will be entered into our draw, which will take place during the live show Tuesday November 22nd. One entry per person.

If you are not able to watch live on November 22nd, you will be notified by private message on Category5.TV.

Product Information: www.brother.ca

Good luck!

What a fun couple of weeks! It's been busy, and sometimes seemed I was stuck working long hours (while trying to ward off a cold which has solidly taken hold of my respiratory system), but the end result made it all worthwhile.

Those of you who caught Episode 214, you already know I dressed as a Vulcan for Halloween, and got my son a Star Trek TOS uniform too, so we could go out trick-or-treating this Monday together, fully geeked out. :)

So, what better opportunity to produce another silly spoof music video, this time playing on Maroon5's latest hit, Moves Like Jagger, and including some pretty familiar scenes to Star Trek fans, such as the bridge of the original Enterprise, and a Spock-like Vulcan dancing the Cat Daddy while singing "I've got the moves like a Vulcan".

The chroma key (ability to put ourselves on the bridge of the Enterprise) was created using a sheet of green plastic I bought of eBay for $9, and the free GNU Image Manipulation Program to create the layers (for example, how I was able to create the effect of me dancing "behind" the railing).

What made this spoof so much fun to me, is I got to do this with my son. He's 4 years old, and while he was getting bored during the video shoot under the hot lights, the end result gets him excited every time he sees it.

At first, Zech said "I don't like that you changed the words. It's supposed to be 'Moos a jugger', not 'Moos a bock-on'.

The toughest thing when you produce something like this must be waiting. The video has been ready for a couple weeks, with final tweaks needed, but to sit on something like that without letting on that it was coming was super tough. Like when we upgraded the studio to a brick wall but had to wait until Season 5 Episode 1 to reveal it. That was tough.

So, a few days after it went to air, my son was still watching it on repeat, and when I came home Zech explained to me that he "invented new dance moves for the Vulcan", and proceeded to push play on the video and spin around, all straight faced. I clapped and smiled giddily, and posted a photo to Twitpic.

So I hope you had as much fun as my son and I with this video! Please remember to "Like" it on YouTube and feel free to comment on the video itself on its YouTube page. The video can be viewed here: cat5.tv/vulcan

Well, here we are! It's season 5.

Part of me finds it pretty unbelievable that after this much time, we're going stronger than ever at Category5 TV. I mean, sure; we're a hard working bunch, but I still find it surreal in some ways.

The fact that I can look at my crew and see four incredibly talented and unique co-hosts in Hillary, Christa, Rachel and Eric, and to know that these people have dedicated, and continue to dedicate their time in volunteering for the show, it really makes me feel special.

And then, there's the viewers. You're so incredibly dedicated. I could sense that when we had some hardship in Season 4. The fact that you stood by us, and even encouraged us with kind "keep up the great work" messages... it has meant so much.

So... season 5. We have a new broadcast server, and while it's been a lot of work to get here, we're also entering the second week of season 5 (finally) with a good Internet Connection.

What goes on behind the scenes is all the "making sure everything works"... and lately, it hasn't been working. Our DSL Internet, while promising a full Mb up, has only been giving us about 300kbps. They've been reliable for years, but something has obviously gone wrong. That's a big part of the reason we had to go back to just one Justin.TV feed the past while; we simply didn't have the bandwidth to push more than one stream.

With a few calls to my DSL provider, they assured me that what I was getting was the best they could do. Unfortunately, they piggyback off Bell for the service, and they have no control over the quality of service.

So, our best option was to call Bell directly and see about their "Fibe" service, which is (I guess) a "hip" way to say Fibre. They sold me on the service, and I was very excited that it was going to be installed before Season 5 started up. The promise? 12Mb/sec down, but an awesome 7Mb/sec up.

We really need that upstream since the show is pretty heavy going up to Justin.tv and Ustream.tv.

So, the modem arrived, I installed it, service was activated, and WOW, a whole 10Mb/sec download! But, only 300kbps up. What on earth? Another speedtest, and the download speed had dropped to 1Mb/sec and upload to even less than before, but then it spiked back up to 11 Mb/sec down and 400Kbps up. Several times, I even had to refresh my browser since it was timing out. Inconsistent results, but all poor.

So, a few more hours on the phone with Bell support, and they determined they had accidentally sent the wrong modem. No problem; they'll send me the right one, but in true Bell-fashion, they'll charge me an additional $50 for it and send a technician on Sunday to deliver and install/activate the 7Mb/sec up.

Sunday was our photo shoot for Season 5, so no problem, I'd be around the studio most of the day. After our photoshoot, I continued to wait around for the Bell technician. No technician, no call to say a technician would not be coming. Inevitably my wife had to leave with the kids for our family get together without me since I had to sit and continue waiting for the technician.

5:30pm and by now I'm a little annoyed... still getting 300kbps and no technician. So, I called Bell, waited on hold as you always do, finally got a technician and spent an hour or more on the phone with them.

The verdict? "We do not offer the 7Mb/sec service in your area."

WHAT? You sold me this service. I cancelled my DSL (who I'd been with for nearly 10 years) and now they're telling me "the best we can do is give you 512kbps up". My DSL was better than that most days!

Since it's obviously 1996, I guess Bell thinks that's acceptible.

The Bell Fibe service has been a nightmare. For one, their sales team either lied to me to make the sale, or simply were incompetant. Either way, I don't want to deal with that kind of company. The service has literally been up and down, with speeds as bad as 0.07kbps (worse than dialup), and of course we even experienced a short Internet drop-out during episode 211 (if you look at the chat logs, you know it's true).

Now, looking at the numbers, it should be obvious to anyone with even a little tech knowledge that there is something wrong with the lines. Obviously. But, Bell wanted to charge me to have them come look at it. The price keeps going up and up, I want out.

So, I called back my old ISP, and thankfully they were honest; there's nothing they can do for me since my need is for upload speed, not download. They recommended I contact Rogers Cable to see what they could do for me.

So, Thanksgiving Sunday was the first and only chance I had to try calling, and surprisingly (I've never been a Rogers fanboy), I got a very helpful sales guy on the other end (Wayne) who set us up with 2Mb/sec up, which is the best they offer. Not as nice as what Bell promised, a fair bit more expensive too, but at least this one might be based in reality instead of just a fake sales pitch.

Again, to my surprise, Wayne set the install date to the following day. So my immediate thought was that we'd have this installed in time for episode 212, only 2 episodes into Season 5.

This morning, I'm standing at the stove making bacon and eggs for Bekah and the kids, and the phone rang. It was 8am sharp, and Matt was at the door, ready to install the Rogers service.

He was in and out, and we gave it a quick speedtest. Finally some decent upstream, and the downstream is nothing short of sick.

So, a few hours testing and I've got Justin.tv streaming normally (albeit in double the bitrate of last Tuesday's show), I've got Ustream setup and running perfectly, and I also have us feeding live video to the Ustream.TV iPhone/Android app and have added a "Watch Live" feature directly to the Category5 TV Mobile Site. Beginning this Tuesday, you'll be able to watch Category5 TV live on your mobile device. (Note: use wifi if you don't want to eat into your data plan!)

So, it has quite frankly been a pretty stressful time. It was a ton of work just to get ready for Season 5 and get the new broadcast server built, but I think we are finally on the other side of all our Season 4 woes.

Thank you to everyone for all their support, and I hope you enjoy what we have for you in Season 5!

- Robbie

It seems like only a short while ago I was sitting in front of a 320x240 webcam, launching what I thought was going to be a handly little Q&A show for friends and clients to tap into to get tech help for free from a guy who was otherwise becoming too busy with running his business to be offering free support at random times throughout the day. So I started doing it at a set time, 7pm every Tuesday night, to allow people to ask their questions and get answers without having to pay.

That was 2007, and this thing (quite accidentally) has become much more than just for local friends and clients, although I have come to accept many of my viewers as friends, though most of us have never met in person.

With a rather large viewing audience—a per-episode viewership equalling the entire population of about 10 small cities—Category5 consistently reaches an audience that spans the entire world, with some areas such as Western Europe and Eastern USA having a very high cluster of regular viewers.

So, here we are... It's September 2011, and in two weeks time, Category5 TV will begin Season 5. And we're not talking about a 6-episode season as is common on the BBC (hehe), nor are we talking about a 20-30 episode season as is the case with most American shows. Category5 broadcasts (and has always broadcast) faithfully every single week without exception (so far). We've had scares. I mean, nobody could guess all three of our children would be born on a day other than Tuesday, but it has always worked out, and I've always been here. So a "season" of Category5 consists of 52 episodes.

Every time a new season starts, it begins a new chapter for Category5 TV. As we wind up Season 4, I look back at a year of struggles with failing microphones and bad sound on more occasions than I'd like. I think of how you've stuck with us as we've tried very hard to keep bringing you good broadcasting even though we lost our main broadcast server due to a power surge and have had to run things a little "lesser" than normal the past several months. But what stands out more than all the bad things that have happened are the good things: how our viewers stood by us once again and have funded the replacement of the damaged server. How they've (you've) shown me when I was feeling a little down about how everything seemed to be going wrong, that you still love the show and will stand by me and the rest of the team through our hard times.

It was also great to introduce another co-host to the mix in Christa Wells. She, like all the co-hosts you see on Category5, breathes a new dynamic into the show, and it's definitely been a highlight of the past several months having her as a part of the team.

For Season 5, I want to forget about the woes of Season 4. I want to get this new server built (most of the hardware has arrived, but not all), and move forward. We've got some exciting stuff in store for you, and we'll be progressively improving the quality of the show through the first few months of the new season, as finances allow.

Thanks for standing by us through the difficult times, and I'm really looking forward to blowing your socks off with Season 5. Or at the very least, giving you some really fun programming presented in the best possible quality, with great sound and a server that never crashes! Knock on wood, if you please. :)

Cheers,
-Robbie

Please Note: This contest is now closed. Please watch Episode 210 for the results.

Wait a second? A battery can be long-lasting and eco-friendly?

Yeah! The name to remember is Eco Alkalines. These puppies (no, they're not actually Puppies, but they could power robotic puppies if you have them, so that's a bonus) are Lead, Cadmium and Mercury free, which means they're much friendly to the earth than the traditional alkaline, and way friendlier to the earth than rechargeables, which typically leak terrible things into the soils and are also dangerous for the workers who manufacture them.

Eco Alkalines also believe in using as much recycled material as possible during manufacturing, and what little (comparitively speaking) carbon footprint they have is offset, and they are the world's first carbon neutral battery, certified by Carbonfund.

Look out! You can win a year supply of Eco Alkalines!

But wait, there must be a catch!

Yeah; you gotta "Like" Eco Alkalines on facebook so we can send you your year supply of batteries so you can official "Love" them IRL!

Here's how to qualify: Casting Your Ballots: (You must do at least one of these. The more you do, the higher your chances of winning)

• "Like" EcoAlkalines on Facebook here: www.facebook.com/pages/Eco-Alkalines/169474363107312
• "Follow" @EcoAlkalines on Twitter here: twitter.com/ecoalkalines
• Re-Tweet [this tweet] on Twitter to increase your chances of winning!

Suggestions:

1. Visit EcoAlkalines.com to learn all you need to know about why eco-friendly Eco Alkalines are something us eco-conscious people can really get excited about.
2. Optionally register a free account on the Category5.TV web site. By registering your account as part of this contest, the winner will also receive 250 bonus Viewer Points.

CONTEST CLOSES AT MIDNIGHT SEPTEMBER 26, 2011
(Local time to Category5 TV Studios)

The contest winner will be announced on Category5 Technology TV's broadcast on Tuesday September 27, 2011.

The Legal Stuff

• Eligible Entrants Contest is open to contestants “worldwide”. Both current and new ‘followers’ of @ecoalkalines on Twitter and/or people who ‘like’ Eco Alkalines on Facebook are eligible to be entered in the draw. Employees (and their families) of LEI Electronics Inc. and Category5 TV are not eligible to enter this contest. Chances of winning depend on the number of valid entries received.
• Releases/Liability Before being awarded the prize, winner will be required to sign a release form confirming compliance with the contest rules, acceptance of the prize as awarded and the waiver of any liability of Eco Alkalines™, LEI Electronics, Inc. and Category5 TV and each of their subsidiaries and affiliates, the advertising and promotional agencies affiliated with this contest, with regard to injury, accident, loss or damage of any kind, without limitation, arising out of the winning entrant’s participation in this promotion and use of the prize.
• By entering the contest, the entrant confirms that he/she has read an understood these contest rules and regulations. Eco Alkalines™, LEI Electronics, Inc., and Category5 TV shall not be responsible for a) any injury, loss or damages of any kind (compensatory, direct, incidental, consequential or otherwise) with respect to, or in any way arising from this contest, and/or the prize awarded; b)illegible, incomplete or late entries which will be void.
• Publicity By entering this contest, all participants consent to the use of their names, city of residence, likeness and photographs/images for publicity purposes without payment or compensation, worldwide in perpetuity and in any form of media including the Internet. All release forms become the property of LEI Electronics Inc. and will not be returned.
• Draw Winner will be announced online during Category5 Technology TV’s weekly broadcast on September 27, 2011. Winner will also be contacted via Facebook or Twitter.
• Other Considerations LEI Electronics, Inc. holds the right to amend contest rules or change contest rules at any time without prior notice.
• *1 Year Supply of Batteries includes 52 packages of batteries equal to 1 package of batteries for 52 weeks (1 year). Your choice of battery size: AA (4-pack), AAA (4-pack), 9V (1-pack), C (2-pack), D (2-pack).

The Fine Print

1. Eco Alkalines is part of the LEI Electronics Inc. family of products and is based in Barrie, Ontario Canada.
2. The recipient of the prize must reside on the planet earth. No space aliens will be awarded this prize due to potential intergalactic shipping costs.

You've already met drawbot... now, meet Click Race!

I am excited to announce that Category5 TV will be introducing a new, interactive way for viewers to win prizes on the show: Click Race. A live, interactive race to the finish for five lucky viewers.

Tonight we ran our first beta test, which went off without a hitch! (Remember though, it is beta... so the look and feel of it may change rather substantially before it hits the air).



The object of Click Race is to be one of the first five viewers to sign into category5.tv and join the race (as only the first five will be able to participate). Then, it's a click-click-click to the finish line, as all five viewers battle it out on their screens, and on the air.

To those who participated (or anyone for that matter), here are the questions I would like to ask you (please answer in the comments):

• Watching the above video, at what point does it get "boring"? Eg. should we cut it off at 60 seconds? 30?
• How was the end-user experience of the actual game? Was the button easy to understand? Did it run well on your system? What are your specs / browser / internet speed?
• Did you notice any bugs?
• Now that you've seen what the viewers will see on the air during a Click Race, what are your thoughts?

Remember, the winner of a Click Race will walk away with the prize! In this beta test for example, pyrosrockyourworld would be the winner, and he would receive the prize.

My hope in creating this software is that viewers who are participating in the game (the players) will have an insane amount of fun with a ton of excitement and an overall feeling of adrenaline as they literally participate in a high-intensity game during a live broadcast with a great prize at the end... and also to have it be exciting for the non-players (the viewers) who are watching the game take place.

During a live show, you'll also hear the commentary provided by myself and my co-host.

On another note, I have given 100 Category5 Viewer Points to each viewer who participated in the beta. Thanks for your help, guys!

Please comment below! Hope you love Click Race!