From the User Manual:

Start!

1.       On the “smart phone” type of remote control:  Be sure to turn it on using the switch on the bottom.  You can tell it is on when there is a blue light at top (and, although it hold a charge for a long time, it’s a good idea to turn it off when not using it to save battery life).  SF = Shift and BS = Back Space.

2.       On the wireless keyboard, the best way to use it is to hold the ends in both hands, use your left thumb for the mouse click keys in the upper-left corner, and use your right thumb to operate the trackball to move the mouse.  Note that, if you see numbers when you press keys on the right-hand half of the keyboard, the Num Lock mode is on and can be turned off by pressing the Num Lock key in the upper right area of the keyboard.  Also, the keyboard should work fine from the beginning without doing this, but you can synchronize it with it’s USB receiver by pressing the little button on the USB stick for one second using a pen or other pointed device, and then press the upper left round button on the keyboard which is next to the mouse click keys and looks like an antenna transmitting.  If the keyboard is missing key presses, either this can be the problem, or the batteries are getting weak.

3.       Simply choose anything on The Wave’s screen and click on it.

4.       If the Date and Time are not correct in the menu bar, to update them right click on the date and time in the lower right of the screen, Prefernce, and Time Settings.

5.       Some TV’s have a “Zoom” feature that you can make The Wave’s screen even larger to fit the TV screen.  Also, if your TV has picture-in-picture or split-screen capabilities, you can view The Wave’s screen and “do Internet or PC things” in it’s window while you are watching TV, a DVD, a VCR, or a DVR in another TV screen window.

6.       If the sound is not working, go to waveuser, System Settings (or Applications, System Tools, System Settings), click on Sound, click on the Hardware tab, and choose form the drop-down arrow list “Digital Stereo (HDMI) Output” if you are using the HDMI connector, or “Analog Stereo Output” if you are using the VGA/PC video connector and separate audio cable.  And then you can “Test Speakers”.  

Go To The Internet!

7.       To access the Internet, click on the Internet, or on Applications, Internet, Firefox Web Browser.  It will take you to www.InternetButtons.org, which has buttons that will take you to over 1,500 of the most popular and useful web sites on the Internet!  You can return to this home site anytime by clicking on the icon of the house at the top.  Also, if a website seems to be slow or frozen, click on the refresh icon (a curved arrow).

8.       On The Wave, you can do anything on the Internet!  Access any websites!  Watch videos, TV shows, and movies.  Check out music, games, humor, kid’s websites, maps, financial, medical, travel, shopping, social websites, and search for any information!

9.       Parental Controls or Filtering Inappropriate Content:  When you click on Internet, in the Firefox Web Browser, click on Tools, Add-ons, and you will see a program called ProCon Latte.  Click on Enable, Restart now, and then Preferences to set your password and modify any settings as desired.

10.   Privacy:  In the Firefox web browser, Edit, Preferences, you can check “Tell websites I do not want to be tracked” (although honoring this setting is voluntary – websites are not currently required to respect it).  Also, here is where you can have it “Remember history” or “Never remember history”, or “clear your recent history” (and also “remove individual cookies”).

It’s A Digital Picture Frame!  

11.   When you haven’t use The Wave for 3 minutes, and if you are not viewing video, it is set up to have your TV become a “digital picture frame” and have a slide show of the pictures in the Pictures directory.  You can change this feature by clicking on System, Preferences, and going down the list to Screensaver.  Note also that you may need to exit the Internet for the digital picture frame feature to come on (in case any small videos were running on a web page).

Transferring pictures to The Wave from your camera, a memory Card or USB stick:

Insert or plug the device into The Wave (into the memory card slot on the side or one of the USB ports).  Please don’t force the devices in because they might be upside-down.

A window will open with “Ask what to do”.  You can click on the down arrow and choose the “Shotwell Photo Manager”, then click ok.  You can click and drag pictures shown in the middle from the portable device into folders in The Wave shown at the left such as Pictures.  You can choose all of the pictures by clicking on Edit, Select All, and then click & drag them all to the folder desired on the left (such as Pictures), or you can choose pictures by Ctrl-clicking on each one desired to highlight them, and then either drag them to the folder or click on Edit, Copy, then click on the folder you want them in, and then click on Edit, Paste.

Also, while you are in Shotwell (or if you go to Pictures, or Places - Pictures), you can delete pictures, or create folders and move pictures into them.

 You can go back into Shotwell anytime by clicking on Applications, Graphics, Shotwell Photo Manager.  

Play Music!

12.   You can play music with The Wave by clicking on Music Player, or Applications, Sound & Video, Banshee Music Player; or clicking on a song file in your Music folder, and then either double-clicking on the song or clicking on “Play”.  To adjust the volume, you can always click on the little speaker icon on the bottom left side of the bottom control panel.  You can minimize the Music Player screen (or any screen) by clicking on the second (-) icon in the upper right of the window’s title bar (it will keep running).

You can transfer songs to The Wave by plugging your music player into one of the USB ports (except for Apple products – help us by getting them to adapt their products to Linux operating systems).  A Music Player program window will appear.  All songs on your music player will be highlighted so just click on “Copy” and they will all be copied into your Music directory on The Wave.

XMBC (another way to view Pictures, Music, Videos, and more)!

13.   XBMC is “an award-winning software media player and entertainment hub for digital media”.  It is especially designed and works well for the “10-foot” interface of TV’s.  You can access it by clicking on Applications, XBMC Media Center .  

Play Games!

14.   The Wave has a large selection of games by clicking on Games or Applications, Games.  You can add more games (or any programs) by going to Applications, Ubuntu Software Center .  With some games, you need to use the arrow keys, the Enter key, the spacebar, and sometimes the left Ctrl key or other keys (and sometimes Esc to go up levels or quit, or Q to quit).  And some games have a square icon in the top left corner (to the right of the “x”/exit and “-“ minimize icons) that will make it full size.  

Do E-Mail!  

15.   You can of course easily access your Internet e-mail accounts such as aolmail, gmail, or hotmail.  But you can also set-up to access your e-mail account with a service provider by having the service provider’s e-mail account & server addresses and passwords handy:  Click on Applications, Internet, Thunderbird Mail; enter your name, e-mail address, and click Continue; on Mail Account Setup page, choose the Incoming server type from the drop-down menu (it is probably POP3) and enter the receiving Server hostname/address from your service provider; for the Outgoing, enter the Outgoing Server hostname/address (usually the same as the Incoming).

Chat/IM (Instant Message) on almost any system (Jabber, Google Talk, AIM, ICQ, MSN, myspace, Yahoo, etc.)!

16.   Click on Applications, Internet Empathy Instant Messaging and enter your account information for any of the IM services you are signed up for.  

Do A Document!  

17.   To access word processing or spreadsheets, click on Word Processor, or, to open an existing document, click on Documents (or Places, Documents) and double-click on the document.  

Print!  

18.   You can plug a printer into a USB port.

 Control The Wave With An iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, or Android device!

19.   Note that you can use an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad to operate The Wave (do keyboarding and mousing) by searching and getting the free HippoRemoteLTE app on your iPhone or IPod Touch (it is already installed on The Wave).  It will recognize The Wave and any other computing devices in your network, list them, and then you click on the one you want to control.
If you ever need it, you can get The Wave’s “IP address” (it’s computer network location) by right-clicking on the wireless signal bar icon in the bottom right of The Wave’s screen, clicking on “Connection Information”, and noting the IP Address that you need to put into your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad so that it knows what to control. 
On your iPhone, etc., if you are asked for a password, enter “password”.  Then, on The  WAVE, you will need to click on “Allow” when a window pops up.
Finally, you can change the mouse acceleration as desired by going to System, Preferences, Mouse, and moving the Acceleration control to the left/slower or to the right/faster (middle to right-of-middle is probably best).

Not only control, but view The Wave’s screen on your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad by installing the app Mocha VNC Lite or VLC Remote (both free at the time of this writing)!  You access and do anything on The Wave, even if your TV is on another input (to set up the next thing you want to watch, or to just do things on The Wave that your iDevices don’t do, without disturbing the viewing of others).
And view and control it from anywhere in the world with NTRConnect (which means you can see and control anything that The Wave displays or can control, which could include an attached USB camera, X10 devices that turn things on and off in your home, etc.).  NTRConnect is not pre-installed on The Wave:  You need to go to NTRConnect.com and sign-up, then install it, which is all easy!  At the time of this writing, it is free for the basic version, with the Pro version free for 30 days.

Android devices:  Perhaps the best apps to see and control The Wave are RemoteDroid and VNC Viewer, which have apps that you download to your Android device.  To use RemoteDroid, click on Applications, Accessories, RemoteDroidServer.  If you need The Wave WAVE’s IP address to enter into the app so that it knows what to control, right-click on the wireless signal bar icon in the bottom left of The WAVE’s screen, click on “Connection Information”, and note the IP Address that you need to put into your Android device app. 

Gmote provides a mouse, a multi-media remote control, and allows you to browse and select music or picture files from The Wave.  To start Gmote on The Wave, click on Applications, Accessories, Gmote.  On your Android device (after installing Gmote from the app store), touch Gmote, and a multi-media remote control screen will be shown, which may control programs on The Wave.  Press the applications button on your Android device and you will see the choices for “Browse” and “Touchpad”.  Touch “Touchpad” and you will be able to move the mouse on The Wave and tap to click.  Touch “Browse” than touch “Play on: Phone”, then touch the C: drive that is on The Wave and you can choose any files to display or play (Users, The Wave, and then go down to Music or Pictures).  

Get Help!  

20.   For more help and tips, click on Accessories, Help, or go to www.CatchTheWaveTV.com.

21.   Tip:  Remember on that clicking on something with the right-hand mouse button will usually give you the choices you are looking for.  

Add New Programs!  

22.   Have some fun and explore new things!  You can add more free programs by going to Applications, Ubuntu Software Center .  You can search for something using the Search box, or you can click on the categories to the left to see what is available.  When you find something you want to try, click on the checkmark box, and then click on “Apply Changes” to install the program, which will be on your “Applications” list.  If you want to delete a program, click on the checkmark box to delete the checkmark, and then click on “Apply Changes” and the program will be removed.

For more advanced searching and updating of programs, click on Applications, Other, Synaptic Package Manger (use “password” as the password for all Wave functions).  

Add New Peripherals To Do Other Things!  

23.   Add a webcam via the USB port to do Internet phone or videophone calls using Skype (which is free & pre-installed, calls to other Skype people are free worldwide, and it’s cheap to have the ability to call real telephones).  Note that the camera must be the standard “UVC” compatible, which most recent ones are.  Most webcams will automatically work.  If not, to use the camera microphone, click on Applications, System Tools, System Settings (or waveuser, System Settings), Sound, Input tab, and choose the Webcam’s microphone (usually the second choice such as “0802 Analog Mono”).  You might need to do this anytime you unplug and plug the webcam in.
To find people on Skype, click on the little green “+” sign in the lower left corner, and search.
To call the person, click on the green phone icon.  While you are talking with them, you can click on the light blue icon and “Start My Video” to turn on your camera so they can see you.

24.   Add a hard drive of any size via a USB port to increase the storage beyond The Wave’s hard drive.

25.   Note: If you need more USB ports, an inexpensive USB port expander is available at computer stores.  

Update, Reset, or Adjust The Screen Of The Wave!  

26.   The Wave automatically updates itself in the background.  If you do see “Update Manager” in the bottom panel, it’s a good idea, when you don’t need to use The Wave for a few minutes, to click on it and then click on “Install Updates” to get the updates for the programs that are installed on The Wave.  You may need to provide your password “password”.  

27.   In the worst case (and a good idea to do once and a while to clear out The Wave’s memory), if you get lost or The Wave freezes up for some reason, just restart the  The Wave by clicking on waveuser, Shut Down, and Restart.  If the mouse is not working, press and hold the power button down for a couple of seconds, which will shut it down.  Then, after a minute, press this button again to restart The Wave.  

28.   Changing the display resolution The most common resolutions that The Wave finds when it is connected to a display are x768 (768 lines, which is DVD-quality), or x1080 (HD).  You can try different resolution settings by clicking on Applications, System Tools, System Settings (or waveuser, System Settings), Displays.  Then you can click on the pull-down menu, and then try other screen resolutions to provide you with the largest screen that will fit on your TV (the highest resolution that your TV will recognize, which may be different on the PC and HDMI inputs depending on your TV.

When you click Apply, it will temporarily show you the new resolution.  If you like it (make sure that you can see the bottom tray on The Wave’s screen), click on “Keep This Configuration”.  If you don’t like the appearance, either click on “Restore Previous Configuration”, or wait 30 seconds and the screen will go back to it.

29.   Changing the mouse sensitivity/acceleration - You can change the mouse acceleration as desired by going to waveuser, System Settings, Mouse and Touchpad, and moving the Acceleration control to the left/slower or to the right/faster.  In the middle to right-of-middle is probably best for the wireless remote and other touch pad devices.  Clear to the left is probably best for the keyboard with trackball mouse.  

Additional tips for viewing things on the Internet:  

1.       Make the picture larger - You can zoom in on anything by click on the “+” (Zoom In) button or the “-“ (Zoom Out) button in the lower tray (or pressing Ctrl and +, or Ctrl and -).  And of course you can center the picture with the sliders down the right side or across the bottom of the screen.  You can also get rid of the menu across the top by going to Full Screen (and then to see the menu you push the mouse to the top edge of the screen – and to bring the menu back you can click on the window icon in the upper right corner next to the “x”/Exit icon).

2.        Watching video – Depending on the speed of your Internet connection, the quality of the video, and processing speed of your TV, a video might not be smooth (and sometimes advertisements are worse because they come from remotely located computer servers on the Internet).  The things that you can do to help are: 
a) If you have a PC, you could first check to see how the video is playing on it to see if there is any difference with The Wave.
b) Make sure that you have at least three bars on the wireless/Wi-Fi strength icon on The Wave (if needed, position The Wave so that it’s antenna sticks up or out more and away from the TV or other electronics).  
c) Make sure that you have a higher-speed Internet connection (you can check your download speed at bandwidthplace.com or speedtest.net - For video streaming, it should be at minimum 256 to 384 Kbps (Kilo-bits-per-second), which is all less than 1 Mbps = 1 Mega-bits-per second = 1,000 Kbps.  DSL phone line connections range from 128 kbps to 3 Mbps and cable connections range from 512 Kbps to over 20 Mbps. 
d) Make sure you have a fairly new wireless router.  Wireless networks using 802.11a/g go up to 54 Mbps.

Notes about video web sites:

To watch TV shows on a website, click on “Full Episodes” or “Video”.

Clicker.com, Sidereel.com, and TVGuide.com (http://video.tvguide.com/episodes.aspx) have the most access to TV shows, because they have links to wherever the TV shows are located (the network websites, Hulu, TV.com, etc.).  Clicker.com is the best because it keeps a queue list of your favorite shows (a “virtual DVR”), and will e-mail you when shows are available.  Sidereel has a very good queue and will e-mail you a reminder.  TVGuide.com also has an option called “My TVGuide.com DVR”, but unfortunately it only shows your favorites and doesn’t keep a queue or watchlist. 

Boxee (pre-installed on The Wave), Hulu.com (www.hulu.com, owned by NBC, Fox, and ABC), and TV.com (www.tv.com, owned by CBS) have arrangements with TV companies to show many of their episodes (or they have links to the websites to watch them), and they have options to create “queues” or “watchlists” to notify you of new show episodes and keep a list of shows you haven’t watched yet.  Hulu can even e-mail you a link to watch a new episode (but the queues only works for NBC, Fox, and ABC shows).

Boxee is an interesting program with more features than Hulu.com or TV.com.  Tip:  A mouse doesn’t work (it was designed for a remote, so use the cursor keys and Enter), pressing Esc will always get you back to a higher level menu (and eventually to the Home menu), and press the backslash key to exit (then right-click on the top of the window and Close).  Additional Boxee keyboard functions are at the end of this manual, and you can also use an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad to control Boxee by using the Boxee remote app at http://itunes.apple.com/app/boxee-remote/id305171838?mt=8 .

All TV network websites work well!

At InternetButtons.com, click on “TV Shows” to see links to all TV shows, click on “More TV” to see other TV channels (complain to them if they don’t have their full episodes available), click on “Internet TV” to access other TV show websites, or click on “More Video Sites” to use other websites that have TV shows and movies. 

We think that all TV and movie websites should provide you with the option of watching the show with advertising “for free” (like “old-fashioned TV”), or paying a subscription or by view to watch it without any advertising.  Provide your input to the companies.

We also think that all TV stations and channels should be available on the Internet!  They get a larger audience to watch their advertisements!  Complain to the local TV stations and your government representatives!  Why shouldn’t TV stations broadcast over the new public medium – the Internet – instead of over-the-air?

One trend we like when you watch TV shows and videos on-line is that the website will continue to automatically play additional related TV shows and videos after the one you chose is done.  This is good for the website of course, but it also gives the viewer that “TV experience” of constantly showing something.


Boxee Keyboard Shortcuts:

In Menus

back slash = Full Screen (Enter, Exit)
S = Exit, Suspend
A = Library Status
H = Home
Home = Top of list
End = Bottom of list
Esc = Back
Enter = Enter
Arrows = Up, Down, Left, Right

In Playback

I = Toggle info
Y = Toggle info
O = Toggle info
R = Rewind: 2X > 4X > 8X > Play (Space = Play)
P = Pause
[ = Skip back 10 mins
] = Skip Forward 10 mins
A = Library Status
S = Exit, Suspend
F = Foward: 2X > 4X > 8X > 16X > 32X > Play (Space = Play)
Space = Play, Pause

TV Time Keyboard Shortcuts:  

Note:  Information in this manual is subject to change without notice.

Trademarks:  Product names used are for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective companies.

 Safety and Care Instructions:  Regardless of your level of experience with electronic products, please make sure that you read the safety and care instructions at http://www.CatchTheWaveTV/safety.  This information can help protect you and your product from possible harm.

Revised:  2012/03/09

[ Home ] [ Up ] [ User Guide ] [ Safety Notes ] [ Warranty ]

  Send mail to info@CatchTheWaveTV.com with questions or comments.
  Copyright © 2010 The Wave
  Last modified: March 21, 2012

Tags: The Wave, TV PC, PC TV, PC's for TV, TV, Internet TV, iTV, video, videos, view videos, watch videos, online video, PC, PC's, desktop PC, desktop PC's, nettop, net-top, net-top PC, nettop PC, net-top PC, mini PC, mini-PC, mini desktop PC, set-top box, set top box, Apple TV, Google TV, Wii, Xbox, Nintendo, PlayStation, Play Station, watching online, watching TV online, cut the cord, cut the cords, cut cable, cut cable TV, cutting cable, cutting cable TV, dump cable, dump cable TV, dumping cable, dumping cable TV, Skype, XMBC, Boxee, Amazon