Nothing is Easy

So, everything showed up yesterday. I had just enough time to slap the mobo in the case drop the RAM and hte processor in, then it was off to the Canes' game. I wish I would have stayed home! Jesus-tap-dancing-Christ they are horrible! Oh well, the Stanley Cup belongs to them for another 2 months or so, I guess I can live with that.
Anyway, after the game, I got home and resumed the build. In went the video card, DVD burner and hard drive. Booted up with the MCE CD and it started looking good. However, then it all went to pieces. The hard drive was recognized, and it even said it formatted it, but it won't boot from it at all! I don't understand this! After screwing with it till 4:30 AM this morning (yes, literally!) I got some sleep. This morning, made the trip to Best Buy to snag a new SATA hard drive as the old one was IDE. I'm thinking that there is some kind of problem with the IDE controller, having the DVD drive and the HD on the same controller. It's the only option I have though, as there is only one IDE controller on this guy.
So, after plunking down a few more bucks for a 320GB SATA drive, I got home and slapped it in the box. It's formatting right now, so we'll see how it goes.
On anothr note, it's not even close to looking like rain out there! At some point, I'm going to have to drop this project for a few hours today and get outside and do some yardwork. Damn!

The OS Debate

Well, it looks like everything is on track for getting here this afternoon, according to UPS.com. Additionally, things are looking up on the weather side as there is now a 30% chance of rain tomorrow! Woohooo! Come on baby, rain!

Initially, it was a no brainer for me regarding the OS. I was going to go with Vista Premium, and that's that. However, we all know that when one has time to ponder a decision, one tends to think of variables that were not readily apparent initially. I've weighing out the pros/cons of Vista Premium vs. XP Media Center Edition 2005, update rollup 2 and am very much on the fence at this point.

Vista MCE:
Pros

1. It's the current OS. MS is only doing maintenence on XP from now on, so any new feature/functions are Vista only.
2. Cooler interface plugins. If you've seen Fox Sports Plugin for Vista, you know what I'm talking about. A single screen, displaying the current scores to all sporting events on at that moment. You see a close game, you just select that game and you're brought right to it. It sounds small, but it's huge once you get used to it.
3. HD-DVD support. We're porobably going to buy a 360 HD-DVD drive soon. I love the facvt that I can just connect that puppy to Vista and bam, I'm in business.
4. Cooler UI. The wife really likes the Vista UI. WAF is critical. She liked MCE, but thinks Vista is better.
5. Improved 360 extender performance. MCE 2k5 was a bit sluggish when it came to 360 extender support. This has been greatly improved.
6. Better multi-tuner support with fewer manual hacks required.

Cons

1. No XBox V1 Extender support. This is enormous for me. I have 2 TVs ustairs with XBoxes on them, and if I go 100% Vista, those are toast! I read somewhere that someone was working on a hack for this, but I don't know anything about it.
2. Shakey NVidia video driver support. NVidia has been working on the Vista drivers for a while now. They're OK...not quite perfected yet, though. Of course, video is the critical part of any HTPC implementation.
3. Resource pig. It's no secret that Vista is a hog when it comes to system resources. Fortunately, there are options to speed things up a bit, such as disabling Aero and such. However, XP is still a bit more efficient.
4. See numer 1 again.

XP MCE 2005

Pros

1. Stable drivers. Let's face it, a solid, established platform generally results in greater stability.
2. XBox V1 extender support. Critical in my world. Of course, I could just take my current computer, drop MCE2k5 on it and slap it in the attic to drive the XBox V1s. I could easily access all the recorded TV and everything else on the Vista box, giving access to everything from every TV...but man, maintaining 2 setups sounds like a bit of a headache.
3. Less resources required. Granted, with the beast I'm building, I'm not certain how much of an issue that's going to be, but it's still a consideration.

Cons

1. No HD-DVD support. Oh, I'm sure someone's going to come up with a way, but I'd rather not have to rely on a hack.
2. Application sunsetting. Most developers are sunsetting XP apps in favor of new Vista versions. So basically, what we have is all we'll get.
3. UI issues. Granted, the 10' interface in MCE2k5 is pretty sweet, however, now that the LW (little woman) has had exposure to Vista, I'm not sure MCE will stack up.
4. It's old. OK, that's relative...I mean it is only 2 years old, but from a technology standpoint, that's OLD! I mean can I really hold my head up high around my friends when I know that they know that I'm running a 2 year old OS! Oh the shame!

Any input is appreciated!

There's a box in Edison NJ

OK, looks like New Egg is on the ball, as always. There's a 10 pound box in Edison NJ that's ggoing to find its way to me on Friday, 3/30. This is an issue, however. On Friday, I have my usual watering hole stop for a quick beer, then I'm heading to the Hurricanes' game. although, given how shitty they played tonight, I doubt that Friday is going to be anything memorable.

So, I'll be sitting at the game gettin gpissed off while this box, containing:
My CPU
My Motherboard
My Video Card
And my RAM
Is sitting here in the living room, with my wife putting her feet up on it.

This is going to make me NUTS! Now I know how Cartman felt when he froze himself so that he would not have to wait for the Wii to be released.

History and plan

In early 2004, I was first exposed to Windows XP Media Center Edition, such as it was. It was an interesting concept. Take the power of a PC and integrate common home media applications such as television viewing/recording, picture storage and viewing, videos and music all within a nice, simple interface that could be easily controlled via a remote control from the couch. This became known as the Ten Foot Interface. From my first experience with MCE, I knew I was onto something special. Even though this iteration of MCE was far from stable, not very feature rich and very limited in its capabilities, the potential was obvious. Three years later, 3 personal MCE builds later and 4 different flavors of Windows MCE later, I'm hooked. Not just on using this, but on "tinkering" with it. Each and every day, I've found myself surfing The Green Button looking for either new ideas, new posts from people looking for help, or just news about this incredibly addictive hobby. As I've recently explained to a friend of mine who is just now getting into a different home media computing solution, it's not a destination, it's a journey. The initial trail blazing is already complete on ths hobby and right now we're moving slowly into the mainstream, particularly with the advent of Windows Vista Premium, which includes Media Center as a part of the native OS. This mass marketization of this emerging technology does not come without a price. Once Hollywood caught wind of this, it immediately stepped in a slapped some ridulous restrictions regarding Digital Rights Managament upon us, pretty much making all MCE computers capable of receiving, decoding and recording premium content locked down to the point where they are not much more than a Tivo Series 3, that can also play your music. If you want the details behind this, just Google for DRM and CableCARD. I don't have the inclination nor energy to go into a soap box tirade, suffice to say, it really sucks. However, not everyone who wants to record 24 in high definition is a YouTube sharing pirate. Some of us are just looking to exercise the "Fair Use" resctrictions placed upon media recording back in the VCR era. Again, look it up yourself if you're interested. I digress. My box. Having built a couple frankenstein MCE creations to drive my home media, as well as completely taxing this poor Sony PC currently under my desk to the point where it not only regularly emits smoke, but I can actually hear audible sighs and grunts as it tries to record a HD program, while we're watching a hockey game on the Extender, and writing on web forums all at the same time. 512 MB of RAM has never been so unappreciated. Due to circumstances that are far beyond the scope of this writing, and frankly, are none of your damn business, I've had to endure the past 4 months in Media Center Geek hell. Running a full Vista Mecia Center implementation on an under powered machine, tying to make due while reading about my forum buddies' super computing masterpieces that could calculate Pi to the 10^235th digit before my computer could grunt "Pi? Oh THAT...yeah, gimme a minute.."... ..."Uhhh....How about if we just spell check something in Word instead?" I'm not complaining, mind you. I consider this machine to be the 12 year old family labrador. It won't go fetch as far, fast or often as the yappy little thing nipping at its heels, but it's reliable, loyal and part of the family. However, I'm about toi relieve this faithful sidekick of its burden and let it just be a regular computer again. I'm beginning a full blown, bad-ass Media Center computer, beginning right now.

It all began today with the arrival of The Case. I was thinking about ordering a different case that looks more like a piece of media equipment, such as a receiver or DVD player, but in the end, I want this to look like a computer. It's what it is. However, I love the sleek lines, understated appearance of this guy. Don't let the demure appearance fool you, though, This thing is serious. The two biggest enemies of any computer, especially a MCE box, are heat and noise. Heat is the enemy of any computer, and media intensive computing generate quit4e a bit of it, as the entire subsystem of the computer is taxed to its fullest. The Antec P180 addresses this enemy with a vicious cruelty. Two chambers within the housing separate the "surface-of-the-sun-hot" power supply from the motherboard which contains some serious heat generating components, such as video cards and TV tuners. By putting these items in different chambers, with each chamber cooled by some pretty hefty 120mm fans, heat is dissapated rather efficiently, keeping all the parts happy and running smoothly.
Noise is the next enemy. This case is constructed with a triple layer something-or-other (again, look it up yourself) that dampens all sound within it. Additiannly, each drive housing is padded with rubber grommets that deaden any vibration noise. It sounds just engineerish enough to actually work!
Additionally, no good computer is worth anything without a power supply. 400 watts of power should do the trick nicely, so in comes the Coolmax 400W ATX power supply.
Both of these guys showed up today. I've mounted the power supply in the case for now. It's sitting on the floor, all assembled, chuckling at my struggling Sony with a youthful arrogance, but without a motherboard or any components. Hmmm, sounds just like a teenager...all the potential to do somethng amazing, but none of the parts or smarts to figure out exactly what! Again, I digress.
The motherboard, video card, processor, RAM and everything else has been ordered this afternoon. If all goes right, I'll be able to write up the entire assembly and installation process as I go. But for now, the Sonly needs a nap.