Eventhough i have written “providers”, i’ll be writing only for those located in Turkey.

I am a long-time customer of one of these providers. Recently, they said that there is a problem with the digital receivers and these receivers should be replaced with the newer ones. (for free)

I learned that the problem they are talking about, is not a hardware problem, in fact, not a real problem. This is just to make people quickly change their digital receivers with the newer ones.

Why do they want to change these boxes?

The problem they are talking about is “exchanging crypto cards/digital provider cards between different receivers”. New receivers are configured to run only with their own card. So, new scenario will be exchanging receivers instead of cards. This was not planned to prevent card exchanges in a house of a family, but for commercial purposes outside of the house. (It’s said so)

In fact, this change doesn’t really prevent that usage. It is obvious that, this provider wants their customers to buy more than one premium package instead of switching economy package with premium package according to where they watch their TV; people will get bored switching the entire device from room to room and they will buy another premium package. That may be a marketing strategy, to push the limits of the profit. I can not comment on that but i can comment on “there is problem in your digital receiver and you have to get it replaced as soon as possible!”, Oh my! It’s going to blow! I have to replace it as soon as possible! Ok, name it yourself. How do you call it?

There is a real problem with the new boxes, in fact, not directly with the boxes but with the procedure they follow while changing these devices. When you bring your old receiver to local provider store to get it replaced, they will request the SCART cable. In fact this is not a request, you must bring your scart cable or you have to purchase a new scart cable and give it to them. They will give you a brand new (bad quality) HDMI cable. Yes! HDMI is superior than SCART cable! Right! NO!

Even i don’t have any subscriptions for HD broadcasts, they want to give me HDMI and they have to get my SCART cable… When i ask this to them, they said that this will help us enable HD broadcasts. When i say them i don’t have any of HD subscriptions, they said me, “maybe one day”. You may think that exchanging HDMI cable for SCART can not be bad. In fact it is really not bad for some of the customers. Here is why:

Even you purchase HD broadcasts, most of the stations may be broadcasting in SD not HD. (HD broadcasts are generally widescreen as there is a standard for it). When you use HDMI cable, your TV will loose it’s ability to automatically change it’s aspect ratio according to the broadcast. If you think it’s not, you are probably wrong. TV manufacturers will not be inventing new features to prevent this problem, because standard is not going to be SD in future. So you are tied to watch people in the broadcast with large faces, huge heads and legs, as your TV will stretch it.

Digital box has a feature in its menu to configure aspect ratio and it still does not help you, because it’s a static change and you continuously have to change it according to the station or the broadcast you are watching. It’s ability is also limited when compared with the similar feature located in the TV itself. The only acceptable situation would be a aspect ratio button put on the digital receiver’s remote. But there is not! There is a quality button to switch between 720p, 1080i and 576. Why?! I would never touch that button; i never need it. No one really need it. There has to be an aspect ratio button on that remote instead of hdmi resolution button.

(I have to note that, this problem only occurs on receivers with limited abilities or bad software. For example, this problem does not occur on DreamBox receivers, as a friend of mine told me. I have tested it with more than one TV and receiver of the provider. This, at least, seems to be a bad software.)

You need your old SCART cable to make it work again. When you connect your receiver to your TV with SCART cable, aspect ratio conversion, detection, correction,.. features of your TV will automatically start working again! BUT NO! They have taken your SCART cable, since in future you may pay for the HD package to watch %5 of the station catalog in HD.

This is the one way thinking of digital broadcast providers. This is not for the sake of helping people move forward to push the limits of the quality standards. This is just “I did, and it happened”. These providers have many responsibilities of that country’s future technology and standards. These includes the perception of the visual image broadcasted into the house of the citizens. It shouldn’t have forced to watch the image stretched, cut from up and down-seeing noses of the actors not eyes of them- to earn more money to make more profit over the customers. You can not exchange the future with the money while have the responsibility.

Whenever there are no or small competition or lack of knowledge in any area in a country, people will be exploited more and more.

What could have been done?
- A better explanation for the box change.
- Letting customers keep their existing SCART cable, while giving them an HDMI cable.
- Putting aspect ratio button on the remote. (instead of or in addition to video format button)
- Updating device software to match the abilities or features of other digital receivers. (As we can not choose our own device with digital broadcast providers. They give their own device with related crypto keys synchronized)

I wrote this post to track the changes in future. To see how long it will take them to make these changes or find better solutions or just to see them thinking about their responsibility.

Let’s see..

Radyo reached to the top of the App Store in the day it was published. It stayed as the number one in all paid applications list for 30 days and stayed in top 100 in some other countries. It’s still moving up and down in Top 10. Now the next BIG version of Radyo is coming. With the version 2.0, Radyo is not only for Turkish people and it doesn’t only include Turkey for the radio region. New interface languages including English and Deutsch ( expect more languages ) and selectable radio regions include United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden and more!

For those who can’t (don’t want to) pay for the application and who are curious about the new version, we have a demo video:

You can watch it from

• youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfVmBT1oJzI
• vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/6989961
• facebook: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=152809412409

Recently, there has been found a bug in iPhone’s camera roll display system. It’s related to the number of images taken with iPhone; if you take at least 10000 photos, you’ll face with this problem. Before returning to this topic, i want to tell about some similar problems:

When i was working for Nokta Inc. (www.nokta.com) and creating a clustering system for uploaded images, i wanted to extend possibilities and push the limits for image and user counts. Any technic might work, but according to your solution, there might be so many works that you can not handle in necessary time; not feasible. So this could ruin the project’s evolving process and project plans. You might have to re-write many codes, redesign the whole system, maybe shut the sytem for a while… Because of this, i thought “what if every person in this world uses this system with more than one account”, people laughed at me in Nokta. But i designed it in my way ( in the same time duration ). Currently i’m not working in Nokta, but if they don’t rewrite the whole code, they won’t be facing with problems related to uploaded images system for a really long time. (However.. trying to seperate images and putting them into UN-real cdn systems would break and make developers to rewrite the whole code for image system).

(Kızılay, ANKARA)

I’m living in Turkey. Ankara is the capital city of Turkey as you know and KIZILAY is one of the most crowded and central parts of Ankara. In the past, when there were only a few cars, the first president of the republic of Turkey, Ataturk ( Mustafa Kemal Ataturk ), has said that, in future “KIZILAY” might have been important for Ankara and number of cars might have been huge, so roads must be very wide and for both ways to handle those in future. At that time, people didn’t understood it and didn’t liked the idea. Today, traffic is a problem in Kızılay (however not a very big problem for now), it’s hard to imagine what could happen if those roads were built smaller..

Recently, there has been found a bug in iPhone’s camera roll display system. It’s related to the number of images taken with iPhone; if you take at least 10000 photos, you’ll face with this problem. ( Fix iPhone’s Camera Roll display bug ) According to my experiences, at the first glance, i can tell that this problem is related to foreseeing or lack of energy and desire of development team in Apple. Maybe coders of that part were not happy about their jobs, they were just coding to get money and only thing to get it is finishing what was given to you.. Yes it’s finished and we purchased and started to use those devices and applications and this is what happens if you don’t think about the thing you make for future.

If you have time and if it’s feasible, why not do it in a way so it’ll help you in the future? And also, people won’t talk behind of you! Maybe coders of this bugs had told to their team that “system works but it can not handle more than 10000 photos, i want to change the way, would you let me?” and maybe they’ve told him/her “No, we have no time”. That’s an excuse for the developer but not for the team, project leader and Apple. It should have been fixed until now!

- Hey, but what happens if you take more than 10000 photos?
– What? Hahahaha, you are funny.
– No i’m serious.
– Ok i have to work, let’s chat later.
– But no, i…. ok nevermind..

- I’ve planned the system so it can support billions of user uploaded photos.
– What?! Why did you do that?! Are you for real?!
– Well.. yeah?
– But why? How does your brain work… only Turkey will use this system and not all of it.. But you are saying that you made it to work for the world. Hahahahhah..
– Yes.
– We have no time, why did you do that?!?!
– I’ve used the same duration for doing it.
– Ok, but will it work for now?
– ……
( after some time, another project leader of another project )
– Hey, hahahahah come and optimize this for billions of people, you are good at it, hahahahhaha.
– ……….

They’ll keep monkeying around, extending their duration for being a monkey; harmless future optimizations for xillions should really not harm anyone or anything.