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The HT Guys HDTV and Home Theater Podcast #290 - John Griffin from Dolby Labs and Google MediaServer
By The HT Guys
Braden Russell and Ara Derderian
Posted on July 4, 2008
Category: General Interest
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Today's Show:
Happy Fourth of July! If you have the day off, we hope you're enjoying it; if you have to work, we hope you get a day off real soon. We didn't take the day off but instead interviewed John Griffin from Dolby Laboratories and tested out Google's new MediaServer gadget.

Dolby Laboratories recently put together a guide to high definition called HD Essentials: Get in the Middle of the HD Action. We talked to Marketing Director John Griffin all about what's in it and why Dolby decided to put it together.

Google MediaServer
Google just announced the availability of the MediaServer gadget for theGoogle Desktop application. The new gadget is still in Beta, but we decided to test it out anyways to see how it performed. Currently it only runs on Windows systems, but Google Desktop supports Mac and Linux as well, so you can image the MediaServer will move in that direction. If you already have Google Desktop installed, adding a new gadget is a piece of cake. So how did it perform?

  • Installation was very easy.
  • It took MediaServer about 15 minutes to index approximately 60 GB worth of music, photos and videos, not bad.
  • The sharing isn't ideal. You can either share all folders, or individual folders. We couldn't find an option to select a parent folder and share everything below it. Trying to share each individual album or movie folder could take days. There's also no option to exclude folders or change access permissions based on what player is connected. Those would be great features.
  • MediaServer is a DLNA/UPnP Server, so you can connect any compatible player and listen to, look at or watch everything on the computer.
  • We tried it with the PS3 but couldn't get it to work. It kept reporting a 2114 error. We'll keep working on it and report back on how it does.


Overall it's a great idea, but it's still in beta. There are some kinks to work out, and some "nice to have" features to implement, but it promises to be a very easy way for average users to share multimedia content on their network.

Posted by The HT Guys, July 4, 2008 12:12 AM

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About The HT Guys

The HT Guys, Ara Derderian and Braden Russell, are Engineers who formerly worked for the Advanced Digital Systems Group (ADSG) of Sony Pictures Entertainment. ADSG was the R&D unit of the sound department producing products for movie theaters and movie studios.

Two of the products they worked on include the DCP-1000 and DADR-5000. The DCP is a digital cinema processor used in movie theaters around the world. The DADR-5000 is a disk-based audio dubber used on Hollywood sound stages.

ADSG was awarded a Technical Academy Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2000 for the development of the DADR-5000. Ara holds three patents for his development work in Digital Cinema and Digital Audio Recording.

Every week they put together a podcast about High Definition TV and Home Theater. Each episode brings news from the A/V world, helpful product reviews and insights and help in demystifying and simplifying HDTV and home theater.