Well folks, I'm bowing out of blogging on TGB.  Granted, I have not exactly been what you would consider an active blogger (last entry, 7 months ago!) but that is not the only reason.  I have spent the last week and a half setting up SageTV in the lobster abode, and to be perfectly frank, I'm not sure I'll be moving back to VMC.  Streaming DVDs, support of nearly every format under the sun, a true PC based client, HD-PVR support, and several other features are really pulling me in that direction.  Yes, the interface is certainly its weak point, but after installing some decent add-ons and a bit of training for the rest of the household, I'm kinda liking it.  Now, I have not completely committed to Sage yet (have not plunked down the $$$) and I'm not 100% converted yet, but man, it's tough not to keep moving in that direction.

If I decide to complete the transition, there will be a DMA2100 up for sale soon.  Regardless of which direction I go, though, this is certainly my final blog entry.  Thanks everyone!

<rant>

I've been pretty inactive for a while.  My system has been running smoothly, there have been no major advances in the technology that drives this hobby (unless you count over-priced extenders) and I've been a little busy.

However, this thread on TGB has fuled my dormant anger and disappointment regarding CableCARD.  MS is asking us "What our wives want" to see in the next MC implementation.  The overwhelming majority of the responses contain some reference to the limitations/restrictions/insane-policies surrounding the CableCARD fiasco.  Now, to be fair, not many non-hobby practicing spouses are standing there saying to us "I'd really like you to put a CableCARD tuner on our existing box."  No, the conversation goes something like this:

Her:
"Oh, look what's on Discovery HD tonight!  I can't wait to record it and watch it later on the upstairs TV!"

Me:
"Uhhh, did you really want to watch it in HD?  I mean, it looks pretty good in  standard def, right?"

Her:
"Oh no, I wanna watch it in HD.  Afterall, you spent all that time and money setting up these 2 computers and worked to centralize everything so that all our stuff is accessible all over the house!" as she presses the button, then looks at my expression with that knowing glare... "Ok, what's the problem with this crap now!?"

Me:
"Well, we can't watch or record Discovery HD in real HD.  I mean, you can record it off that channel, but the quality will kinda...well...suck.  But, hey, just so you don't call me out on conspiracy charges, I have the same problem with ESPN HD, ESPN 2 HD, The Golf Channel HD, TNT HD, and every non-broadcast network channel."

Her:
"Wonderful, I feel so much better!  So there's no way to get these HD channels in our setup?  That's assinine"

Me:
"Well, we could, if we had a CableCARD PC."

Her:
grumbles..."So that's different that that QAM thing you have, right?  How much is this going to cost us?"

Me:
"Well, we can't really just buy one and connect it to our computer.  You see, Microsoft wanted to be the first out of the gate to claim 'CableCARD' support, so they let the technophobes in Hollywood dictate to CableLabs the terms under which Microsoft would be allowed to give us CableCARD.  Now, these idiots in Hollywood saw what happened with Napster and the MPAA a few years back and went into total panic mode!  Rather than embracing new technology and exploring creative ways to leverage it for new revenue, they decided to shun what they do not understand and saddle any agreement with Nazi-esque restrictions.  Because, as everyone knows, anyone who would record something on their computer is obviously a You-Tube-file-sharing-revenue-stealing-pirating-punk who probably skateboards right down the middle of the sidewalk...without a helmet and with his jeans hanging nearly off his ass!  And the last thing society needs is for someone like that to be able to record Discovery HD in HD!
"So, in order to record Discovery HD in HD, we need to drop about $2500 on a new CableCARD ready PC"

Her:
"So if we get one of these CableCARD PCs, we'll be able to record Discovery HD in HD?  I'll be able to watch these shows on the existing computer upstairs as well?  The commercial skip will work?  I'll be able to burn it onto DVD to hold onto if I really like it?"

Me:
"Uhhh....ok, the answers are:
Yes
No
No
No
<ducking>

So...the point here is to ask the question again...Why!??  OK, MS, I know that CableLABS/Hollywood held a gun to your head and said that this is the only way they'll allow it, but come on!  You've got the firepower to strike back at these technology challenged entities, educate them and give your customers what they are asking for.  The people who want to pirate content are going to find a way, no matter what.  The energy should be spent going after them and not restricting those of us who understand what a license agreement is and only want to exercise our "Fair Use" permissions granted to us by the FCC back during the VCR scare of the early 80s!  Find a way!

<rant/>

I've been an advocate at nVidia cards for as long as I can remember...ever since I finally removed my VooDoo 2 from my P2 450Mhz rig!

Now, however, I'm honestly struggling with this loyalty.  When I initially put my Vista MC rig together, I had some issues with my 7600GT, requiring me to RMA it.  So, when it was in transit, I went out and grabbed an ATI 1900 card, which was OK, until I tried to watch HD on it.  The picture quality was terrible!  It immediately went back and I vowed never to stray from trusty nVidia again.  Well...'The best laid plans....' and all that!

My 7600 GT is OK.  Nothing outstanding but it does the job.  I get some jerkyness across the top of my display during fast motion HD programs, such as sports, but it's nothing I can't live with.  HD-DVDs are OK as well.  I'm outputting in 1080i using a component connection to an older 47" Panasonic RPTV and it looks OK.  However, I'm not totally wow'ed by it.  It gets a touch jerky now and then, and the overall picture is good.  If I'm honest with myself about this, connecting a HD cable box to my trusty old Panny produces a better picture than my really expensive tweaked out Media Center rig!  But, I'm not about to tell the Mrs that, so let's just keep that between ourselves here, ok? 

The huge problem with nVidia is the drivers.  Period.  They have not found a way to implement true hardware acceleration within their drivers for Vista HTPCs.  I've found a version of their drivers that do not result in the dreaded "HD Stutter" for me, thanknfulkly, but each of their drivers since have had a lifespan of exactly 30 minutes before I performed a system restore back to the old ones.  Every time I put new nVidia drivers on my rig, I get the stutter.  An this is on a dual core AMD 4600+, 2gb RAM, decent 500W power supply, a pretty beefy setup! 

So, what's up with ATI these days?  I've read that they have implemented true hardware acceleration on their 2k series cards, and the price points are ridiculously low.  Am I just looking at a grass-is-greener situaiton here, or is there something to the fact that nVidia appears to be more content being a gamers solution, while ATI is taking the lead in the Home Theater PC market?  I'm interested in opinions here...let me know.

One of the things we all strive for is for our hobby to be accepted in the home.  Not just as a hobby we tinker with in the corner, but something our entire family can use, appreciate and come to rely on.  The Wife Acceptence Factor.  Balancing this delicate, completely arbitrary measurement against completely utilizing the technology we have at our fingertips is not always easy, and can be frustrating.  Over the course of the past 3+ years, enough tinkering has been done under my roof to get me to the point where I've nearly reached WAF nirvana in an environment that includes one Vista box, one MCE2k5 box, one XBox 360 extender and 2 XBox V1 extenders.  Here's how.

The remote control.  Do not skimp on this.  This device is the significant other's interface into this world, and if it's not up to snuff, the rest of the implementation will suffer accordingly.  Get your hands on a Harmony.  Period!

Utilize the 3rd party apps that are available.  The most essential one I've found is Andy's DVRMSToolbox.  This app enables the magic of Commercial Skip while watchng recorded TV.  I can not stress the importance of this.  Having Mrs. Lobster sit down to watch her programs, and the MCE box magically skips over the commercials is one of the single greatest gifts a husband can give to his better half (well...at least among those that do not come in a small, flip top box.)  Additionally, things like MyWeather, MyNetflix, and oher little add-ins go a long way.

Centralize everything.  This is the point of the solution.  Pervasive access to your stuff.  In my environment, this was not easy.  I'm going across 2 diferent platforms with 2 different flavors of extenders.  It's possible, but it's tricky.  Here's how I did it:

I shared my Vista recorded TV folder (Thanks Mike!) across my network.  I've seen all kinds of posts regarding people having problems with this.  If you follow those steps it will work.  If it does not, then try 1 of 2 things:  Move your Recorded TV folder out of your Public file system on your vista box and share that folder.  There's something screwy with the way that the Public folder shares it's child folders.   Or, ensure that the user name and password on your MCE 2k5 box are identical to those on your Vista box.  Either of those fixes will resolve any problems you're having with Mike's instructions.

OK, so I've now got my recorded TV shared with my 2k5 box.  What about Commercial Skip?  The 2k5 box is not on all the time, so it would not be processing the recorded TV while it's off.  Makes sense.  The main Vista box is always on, and it processes shows immediately, so why not leverage the work that's already been done.  I've shared the Commercials.xml folder on my Vista box.  Back at the 2k5 box, I've disabled the FileWatcher service, and changed the Commercial Skip configuration to point to the Vista Commercials.xml share, and viola!  Commercial Skip on the MCE2k5 box now uses the files generated by the main Vista box, and does not miss a beat.  So, now all my commercial skipping is centralized.

Now, onto a more interesting task.  One of the issues we had was the fact that the items recorded on the Vista box were available on the 2k5 box, but, the stuff recorded on the 2k5 box was not available on the Vista box.  So much for centralization!  Yes, I know, I could change the recorded TV path to the Vista share, but that's kind of clunky.  Enter Andy/babgvant with another amazing app.  Recording Broker.  This little beauty takes scheduled recordings and sends them to whatever box you designate.  The latest version has a great option to send all recordings to one machine.  Exactly what the centralized home needs!  Now, anytime a recording is scheduled on my MCE2k5 box, the recording request is sent via the broker to my Vista box, where it records using that machine's tuner and hardware.  Now, DVRMSToolbox will happily process it for commercials and serve it up to everything on my network.  Once again, centralization!

Extender time.  The 360 extender speaks for itself.  It's a great device for what it does.  The older XBox V1 extenders required a bit more work.  I've got them connecting to my MCE2k5 box, so theoretically, they should have access to the recorded TV back on the Vista box, completing the centralization.  This was initially not the case.  While using my V1 extender, I could see the recorded TV listed, but I received a video error any time I tried to play anythng residing back on the Vista box.  The problem was the user IDs that were being used.  The Vista box has a user called MCX1, created by the 360 Extender.  The V1 extnder created a user called MCX1 on the 2k5 box.  Obviously these passwords did not match, and it would fail anytime I tried playing somethng recorded back on the Vista box.  My 2nd XBox V1 extender registered with the 2k5 box as MCX2, a user that did not exist on the Vista box.  As I have the recorded TV share wide open to everyone, this user was allowed to play, delete and otherwise access everythng on that share.  So, I changed the password to the MCX1 user on the 2k5 box, reconnected the first Xbox V1 extender, it registered as MCX3, and everything worked perfectly.  Again, all recorded TV, music and movies living back at the one centralized location.

This completely centralized implementation has made it so that my Media Center solution is currently living up to what I promised the wife.  She's hooked and is an avid MCE fan now.  Thius is the type of centralization I was hoping to see out of windows Home Server.  However, that product has completely missed the mark in my opinion.

How are you set up across your home?  What creative solutions are you using that others would find helpful?

Well, Vista's been officially out for a good 3 months now.  Add another 2-3 months to that number for the beta testers who qualified for a free copy of it, and we're about 1/2 a year into its lifecycle.  So, is XP Media Center 2005 dead and burried for practical purposes?  Absolutely not!  In late March, I built my main Media Center rig from some sweet components and slapped Vista on there.  After a few weeks of tinkering and tweaking, I finally got it to the point where it became living room worthy and is now proudly chugging along next to the TV doing its thing.  As a matter of fact, it's performing so well, Mrs. Lobster asked me why we didn't have one like it connected to our bedroom TV!  Being the accomidating husband I am, not wanting to disappoint my beter half, I took this as an opportunity to get some points around the house and have a good time on another project.  However, building another monstrosity like the one in the living room was out of the question.  My plan was to use some older hardware slap it in a nice new (quiet) case and see how it performs.  I have an old socket 478 mobo kicking around, a 2Ghz P4 processor, 768MB of PC133 RAM, 80GB IDE hard drive, AverMedia 1500 MCE tuner, and an nVidia 5700LE (AGP.) 

There was no way I was going to ask this to run Vista.  I know better, plus, I have no intention of shelling out another $140 for a Vista Premium license.  Sorry, not happening!  I have a perfectly good copy of MCE 2k5 kicking around, and this hardware seems to be up to the task on that platform.  Well, it is more than up to the task.  The new case has not shown up yet so I'm running it in an older case right now with only a 280w PS, however, the install was done in under an hour.  Then, another hour or so of updates (87 of 'em, followed by another 15!) then driver installation, custom apps (can not have an MCE implementation without DVRMSToolbox, TweakUI, and Share Recorded TV) tweaking the OS including My DVDs pointing back to my shared ripped DVDs, pointing the watched recorded TV variable back to the main box, configurng the S3 power settings and things like that, and the next thing you know, I've got a perfectly stable, functional, cheap Media Center box!  For now, it's still chugging in an older underpowered case, so I can't put my nVidia 6600 in there yet, but once the new case shows up, I'll have enough power to put that in there, allowing for HDTV content.  I'll just feed this TV off of one of the HDHomeRun's tuners and our HDTV in the bedroom will be incredibly happy, as will the Mrs.  An in the end, isn't that what it's all about?  Better living through technology?

So, I've shelled out a total of $114.98 (including shipping) and using the parts that most of us who have been in this hobby for a few years probably have in our attic, spare room, basement, wherever, I've been able to put together an incredibly serviceable MCE solution.  MCE 2k5 is much easier to configue, much less hardware hungry, much more stable from a driver perspective and functions pretty well as a Media Center front end.  Hmmm, who'da thunk!?

Just like most other Media Center hounds, the primary key to being able to slap my creation into the family room for daily use was gaining spousal approval.  The Wife Acceptence Factor is something that can not be measured in terms of a "score" rather just an overall usability gut feeling.  The one piece of the puzzle that did more than any other was my Harmony remote.  While I went with a basic 360 model, there are several others that provide a lot more "Wow!" factor, including the (drool) 1000.  However, I love my 360 and it provides all the functionality for the LW (little woman) to be happy.

Now..the issue.  I hate needing to have the keyboard and mouse kicking around as well.  Even with the RDC hack in place to provide remote desktop functionality without interrupting the current viewing, every now and then I need the keyboard and/or mouse.  So, we have to have the remote, as well asn the keyboard/mouse handy, creating clutter and spousal frowning.  Initially, I liked the idea of MS' original MCE keyboard, however, the lack of universal controls steered me away from it.  Now, MS has the 8000 model out and, while it's incredibly slick looking and provides some cool features, it's missing several key ingrediants.  Experience in talking with other MC users tells me that a lot of us are pumping everything through our surround amp, so we'd need access to the volume control on the amp.  Additionally, we need to turn everything on and off...again, we'd need access to those features as well.  Although my Vista MC provides me with TV, movie, music, and pretty much all of my media related functions, I still have other devices I'd like to use with a single remote, such as my XBox 360.   This keyboard provides none of these functions.

After that frustration, I went over to look at the specs for the Harmony creator's alternative solution to this issue, the DiNovo Edge keyboard. Sweet product, no doubt, and this being another Logitech product, surely they gave it some of the same smarts as the Harmony, no?  Uhhh, no.  Again, the basic remote key assignment and macro programming are just not there.  I find it hard to believe that no one has decided to come up with a keyboard that would perform the same functions as my Harmony, and still give me the option to use it as a keyboard.  Granted, I'm not certain that the LW would approave of a keyboard as the primary controlling device, but how about giving me the option.  Perhaps a full keyboard, with a side-car detachable remote.  Oh well, for now I'll be content with what I've got, but a full feature Media Center keyboard would be incredibly sweet.