Saturday, April 21, 2007
Moving the Blog
I've decided to take my blogging over to MSN Spaces. Much slicker interface over there!
Thursday, April 19, 2007
HD DVD in my Media Center rig
One more addition was just made to the beast. I just grabbed an XBox 360 HD-DVD player from someone, brand new for $155.00! So? What good does that do your MCE rig? I'm certain you're asking. Well...ask away! This puppy is just a USB 2.0 Toshiba HD DVD drive. Simply plug it into the Vista box, it recognizes new hardware, goes online, grabs drivers for the XBox 360 HD-DVD ROM drive and installs everything absolutely perfectly! The hardware installation was the easy part. The tough part is the MC integration. As of right now, Vista does not support HD-DVD integration natively. I'm certain that will change at some point soon, but right now, you need to run a 3rd party application. Well, that's a bitch! You mean I gotta close out MCE, grab my mouse or keyboard, launch another app, etc? That totally defeats the purpose of having this sweet 10 foot interface. So, as with everything else, there's always a way around this.
Cyberlink's Power DVD supports HD-DVD playback beautifully within vista. So, all that's required is to register the application with Media Center, and tell it that when a HD-DVD is inserted, launch PowerDVD in full screen mode. Easy! Just follow the documentation written up by Mike right here
I love when people figure out the tough stuff for me!
Cyberlink's Power DVD supports HD-DVD playback beautifully within vista. So, all that's required is to register the application with Media Center, and tell it that when a HD-DVD is inserted, launch PowerDVD in full screen mode. Easy! Just follow the documentation written up by Mike right here
I love when people figure out the tough stuff for me!
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Softsled?
For the past 3 years, the MCE community has been chattering about a scrapped MS project called Softsled. The premise of this project was to have a "Software extender" for Media Center functions. Basically, you would be able to connect to your main MCE box from another machine, have access to all the media and resources, including TV Tuners on that box remotely. Great concept, however, for unknown reasons, MS scrapped this project. As it stands right now, we have 2 options for extending Media Center functionality:
1 - Hardware Extenders. The XBox 360 is the only hardware MC extender for Vista right now. This is just not practical, however. It's loud, hot, and expensive. There is no way you could put this in, say, a bedroom as a secondary viewing station for your media center solution.
2 - Web based apps such as WebGuide4 and Orb. These work..however, the quality is pretty lame. These are not solutions for in home viewing.
Rick Drasch has decided that it is high time that the open source community pick up the ball where MS has decided to drop it. He is trying to drum up developer support for an open source Softsled implementation. As an avid MC user, I applaud his resolve and will certainly be following his progress on this one. If I were a developer, I would most certainly be looking into ways to help out, however, my development skills were on display the one time I tried writing a 'Hello World!' app, which instead returned 'Goodbye, Asshole!' Since then, I've been a bit gunshy when it comes to writing code.
Good luck with this one, Rick!
1 - Hardware Extenders. The XBox 360 is the only hardware MC extender for Vista right now. This is just not practical, however. It's loud, hot, and expensive. There is no way you could put this in, say, a bedroom as a secondary viewing station for your media center solution.
2 - Web based apps such as WebGuide4 and Orb. These work..however, the quality is pretty lame. These are not solutions for in home viewing.
Rick Drasch has decided that it is high time that the open source community pick up the ball where MS has decided to drop it. He is trying to drum up developer support for an open source Softsled implementation. As an avid MC user, I applaud his resolve and will certainly be following his progress on this one. If I were a developer, I would most certainly be looking into ways to help out, however, my development skills were on display the one time I tried writing a 'Hello World!' app, which instead returned 'Goodbye, Asshole!' Since then, I've been a bit gunshy when it comes to writing code.
Good luck with this one, Rick!
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Everything's in Place
After getting in 18 holes this morning, I came home and pulled everything together. The STBs are hidden in the cabinet, the cable DVR is disconnected, and the PC is sitting in its probable home right next to te cabinets. I'm sitting here, watching gof in Hd and it's flawless on my replacement 7600GT. I'll be bringing the 'rental' back to Circuit City tomorrow.
About 3 weeks worth of tinkering, 2 different sets of RAM, and a grand total of 4 video cards later, my Vista Media Center PC is exactly what I was hoping it would be. Fast, smooth, quiet and cool (literally and figuratively.) I've got it loaded up with about a week's worth of the LW's programs, 10 movies ripped onto it, all of our music and pictures, 2 standard def tuners, 2 high def tuners, and the option to go to Firewire recording as well, if I want to. i put the cables in place, but have not connected them yet.
So, when Jen gets home from visiting her family tomorrow evening, she's not going to have the cable DVR in place, and is just going to be looking at the PC and the surround sound receiver.
Of course, these projects are never "done" but this is finally in a condition in which it's stable and ready for every day use.
About 3 weeks worth of tinkering, 2 different sets of RAM, and a grand total of 4 video cards later, my Vista Media Center PC is exactly what I was hoping it would be. Fast, smooth, quiet and cool (literally and figuratively.) I've got it loaded up with about a week's worth of the LW's programs, 10 movies ripped onto it, all of our music and pictures, 2 standard def tuners, 2 high def tuners, and the option to go to Firewire recording as well, if I want to. i put the cables in place, but have not connected them yet.
So, when Jen gets home from visiting her family tomorrow evening, she's not going to have the cable DVR in place, and is just going to be looking at the PC and the surround sound receiver.
Of course, these projects are never "done" but this is finally in a condition in which it's stable and ready for every day use.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Possible New Remote?
Wow! I can't believe this has been out for over a month and I missed it:
http://www.remoteshoppe.com/index.php?itemid=360
Excuse me while I wipe the drool off my keyboard here. This is a GORGEOUS device and given how much I adore my current Harmony, this would be an easy leap to make. The biggest selling pont I see so far would be the following:
Select the Watch TV (or PVR) Activity Settings you’ll see an option to program favorite channel macros with images like channel logos.
One of the LW's biggest complaints about MCE/VMC is the lack of her Favorites button. A simple button on the remote that let's her move on to the next station on her favorite channels list. Sure, I've heard all kinds of recommended workarounds, such as just go into the guide and select Most Viewed from the catagories, but none of these are Wife Friendly at all.
< /soap box >
Rather than pointing out how we, the end users, should change our habbits to accomidate limitations, someone needs to step up and change the technology to match our habbits.
< soap box/ >
Well, this baby just might do the trick.
Additionally, this guy knows what he's talking about, and what the single most important item of any device is per the following line:
This streamlined design will significantly increase the spouse-acceptance-factor
Ahhh...the WAF goes mainstream! We all knew it was a matter of time.
The hurdle on this one would certainly be the price tag. It's $499, with $150 off at HighDef Lifestyle if you use the promo code H1000C. That's still a bit steep, but I'm certainly going to keep my eye on this thing and see how low the price goes over time.
http://www.remoteshoppe.com/index.php?itemid=360
Excuse me while I wipe the drool off my keyboard here. This is a GORGEOUS device and given how much I adore my current Harmony, this would be an easy leap to make. The biggest selling pont I see so far would be the following:
Select the Watch TV (or PVR) Activity Settings you’ll see an option to program favorite channel macros with images like channel logos.
One of the LW's biggest complaints about MCE/VMC is the lack of her Favorites button. A simple button on the remote that let's her move on to the next station on her favorite channels list. Sure, I've heard all kinds of recommended workarounds, such as just go into the guide and select Most Viewed from the catagories, but none of these are Wife Friendly at all.
< /soap box >
Rather than pointing out how we, the end users, should change our habbits to accomidate limitations, someone needs to step up and change the technology to match our habbits.
< soap box/ >
Well, this baby just might do the trick.
Additionally, this guy knows what he's talking about, and what the single most important item of any device is per the following line:
This streamlined design will significantly increase the spouse-acceptance-factor
Ahhh...the WAF goes mainstream! We all knew it was a matter of time.
The hurdle on this one would certainly be the price tag. It's $499, with $150 off at HighDef Lifestyle if you use the promo code H1000C. That's still a bit steep, but I'm certainly going to keep my eye on this thing and see how low the price goes over time.
This Weekend's Plans
The replacement 7600GT from NewEgg will be on my doorstep when I get home from work today. It's just going to be a matter of slapping that bad boy in the case, removing the one from Circuit City and then bringing it back...although...hmm...SLI? Nahh, I could not get away with that. I'm already over budget and need to cut it right here, but it's a thought.
Once the card is in, it's time to begin the cleanup work. Hide cables, complete UI items, and finalize this project. Although the project will never be truly finalized as I'll always be tinkering with it, I am relatively certain it's living room worth and will pass all WAF tests. As the LW is away this weekend, it's the perfect opportunity for me to get everything completed and pull the Time Warner DVR out of the equation. When she gets home, there will just be a sleek Antec P180 looking at her. The only thing I'm concerned about right now is the length of the IR Blaster cables. I'm not certain they are long enough for me to put the STBs where I want them (hidden and out of the way) so I may have to alter my plans. Of course, I could just splice the wires and run longer ones, but I really don't feel like getting into that. I'm terrible with electrical tape!
Once this project is done, then I'm moving over to my old Sony PC. I slapped a Avermedia 1500MCE TV tuner card in there and am thinking about putting MCE 2k5 on it. This would allow me to utilize the 2 legacy XBox extenders we have upstairs. We'd only have access to live channels less than 100 but that'll be OK. Oh crap, that reminds me...I've got to set up the network share and permissions for sharing recorded TV with a MCE 2k5 box. It's a bit of a painstaking process and I've seen some reports of it not actually working. Oh well, it'll be interesting to see how it goes.
I'm considering setting up the Firewire solution on this box for HD shows that are not available over QAM. The problem is that Tim Moore (the developer) has discontinued development on it, and it was in a bit of a flakey state. His tunertracker.dll was quirky as it seemed to have difficulty remembering which tuner was which. I would go to record something, and it would say it was recording one item on, say, channel 51, however, it was really recording what was on the other tuner, which was usually my wife channel surfing! It made for interesting watching later! However, if I do implement firewire, it'll be for recording only, and only a couple channels, such as ESPN HD, Discovery HD, etc. Yes, Paul, I'll sacrifice a toaster to the cause if I have to!
So, in short, we're nearly at the clean up phase here. I'm going to pull the plug on the cable DVR before Jen lands on Sunday night so, we'll be committed to the cause!
Once the card is in, it's time to begin the cleanup work. Hide cables, complete UI items, and finalize this project. Although the project will never be truly finalized as I'll always be tinkering with it, I am relatively certain it's living room worth and will pass all WAF tests. As the LW is away this weekend, it's the perfect opportunity for me to get everything completed and pull the Time Warner DVR out of the equation. When she gets home, there will just be a sleek Antec P180 looking at her. The only thing I'm concerned about right now is the length of the IR Blaster cables. I'm not certain they are long enough for me to put the STBs where I want them (hidden and out of the way) so I may have to alter my plans. Of course, I could just splice the wires and run longer ones, but I really don't feel like getting into that. I'm terrible with electrical tape!
Once this project is done, then I'm moving over to my old Sony PC. I slapped a Avermedia 1500MCE TV tuner card in there and am thinking about putting MCE 2k5 on it. This would allow me to utilize the 2 legacy XBox extenders we have upstairs. We'd only have access to live channels less than 100 but that'll be OK. Oh crap, that reminds me...I've got to set up the network share and permissions for sharing recorded TV with a MCE 2k5 box. It's a bit of a painstaking process and I've seen some reports of it not actually working. Oh well, it'll be interesting to see how it goes.
I'm considering setting up the Firewire solution on this box for HD shows that are not available over QAM. The problem is that Tim Moore (the developer) has discontinued development on it, and it was in a bit of a flakey state. His tunertracker.dll was quirky as it seemed to have difficulty remembering which tuner was which. I would go to record something, and it would say it was recording one item on, say, channel 51, however, it was really recording what was on the other tuner, which was usually my wife channel surfing! It made for interesting watching later! However, if I do implement firewire, it'll be for recording only, and only a couple channels, such as ESPN HD, Discovery HD, etc. Yes, Paul, I'll sacrifice a toaster to the cause if I have to!
So, in short, we're nearly at the clean up phase here. I'm going to pull the plug on the cable DVR before Jen lands on Sunday night so, we'll be committed to the cause!
Thursday, April 12, 2007
NVidia 7600GT Looks Good so far
Well, after over 2 days of working with the 7600GT, I'm pretty sure we've got a winner here. It's performing as expected and I have yet to run into any crashes. HD looks sweet, standard def content is good, ripped movies look good...so far, no complaints.
I've begun populating the Recorded TV folder with a bunch of the LW's programs, so when the 100% committed switch somes up, it'll go as smoothly as possible and she'll have everything she needs right there. After making adjustments to the TV's display properties, she's been very happy with the TV quality. If she's happy, then Im happy!
I've begun populating the Recorded TV folder with a bunch of the LW's programs, so when the 100% committed switch somes up, it'll go as smoothly as possible and she'll have everything she needs right there. After making adjustments to the TV's display properties, she's been very happy with the TV quality. If she's happy, then Im happy!
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