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Roadkill on the Convergence Highway
Duke Weber writes "Microsoft sometimes gets it right after three tries. Not so with Windows Media Center 2005. You do get a dancing Scooby Doo. You don't get much Media." From the article: "As a DVR, one tuner was just OK, with a second tuner working, it was still OK, provided you weren't too picky about mouths moving at the same time words came out. Out with the snazzy Realtek integrated sound on the ASUS-A8V motherboard. In with an Audigy 2ZS to lessen the load on the AMD 64 3000+ processor. More gadgets. That cured the synch. The picture still was no where close to a vintage Tivo. But it does keep track of the programs, important with a terabyte of disc."
The biggest issue with media centers is a very practical one: tuning. How do you tune channels from cable or satellite providers when a set top box provided by cable or satellite provider is essentially required? The "IR blaster" solution is inelegant at best, and gets even more inelegant if you want more than one tuner. That was Microsoft's biggest miscalculation in the media center strategy.
Conversely, the cable and satellite providers themselves will be able to provide one device that can record all of your digital content, AND acts as your set top box, AND has multiple tuners AND handles SD, HD, digital, and analog, AND doesn't require a large initial expenditure: most providers will give you all of this for under $10/month, in a turnkey solution that "just works". Granted, it's not as flexible and capable as your own box, but most will accept this tradeoff. Most won't even know there *was* a tradeoff.
But what of all your other media? Your music, your movies, your videos? Indeed, Apple's media center strategy is a novel one: it includes all traditional media center functions except perhaps the primary one: television recording. Instead, it's taken the bold next step: bypass the tuning issue and the recording issue entirely by bypassing the cable and satellite operators entirely, and delivering the content directly to you. The cable operators will still provide a service: it will just be bandwidth, and not content.
...as long as it's easier than MythTV to set up and cheaper than Tivo over 5-10 years, I'll do it.
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Try myth tv maybe? http://mythtv.org/ Nice free alternitive for the people that hate windows media center (...ahem...)
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
the only roadkill I see on the convergence highway will be the consumers.
Replay TV for me, all the way...
I like auto-skipping commercials, which is something I haven't seen in other DVRs.
That is the final curse of Media Center. Even if it worked, it would still be Windows .
I've never used Windows Media Center, but almost all of the problems he's complaining about sound like hardware problems, driver issues, or he chose the wrong hardware to begin with.
I have a feeling that if he had chosen his equipment better, or done a little more research before buying everything, he wouldn't have had the problems.
Besides, he's complaining about things like a broken S Video connector in his review, that is hardly Microsoft's fault.
Primal cravings make people do strange and stupid things. They made me build a Windows Media Center PC. ... snip ...
The first secret is that you need to scam your way into getting a copy of Windows XP Media Edition 2005, which is only sold to OEMs.
I bet if this guy tried to build a real TiVo, it might suck as well.
Perhaps windows media center is sold to OEMs only because they are the ones that know how the machines have to be built to work properly?
Reviews like this are why Apple will never license MacOS X for PCs.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
For me the big issue here is that the aim of a central server that controls all of your media means that people will have to all become system adminstrators. This is hardly likely, the idea of my Wife worrying about menus to record programmes off the TV is not the sort of thing I look forwards to. Something like a TiVo is perfect as its a TV device that intends to record programmes and nothing else. My wife's iPod is perfect to listen to music on even if there is the irritant of having to connect it to the PC (and this is an irritant for her) and finally actually having paper photos to hand around is what her and her friends like doing. We could have a digital home with me as the sys admin... but my wife would hate it.
The alternative of lots of seperate devices that do their jobs pretty well and have to communicate together clearly requires too much collaboration and innovation for those companies pushing the "Digital Home" vision around a central server.
Media Centre is a great example of a company trying to force an idea it think SHOULD make it billions down the throats of people who don't want it. Give us loosely coupled devices that work together seemlessly not videos that chase us around the house or a central server that needs constant administration and updating.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The media-center can't play back real time video w/ audio with a Athon64 3000+ with a top of the line mobo? Wow, Tivo could only dream of those specs.
Eventually I broke a nail and had to abandon the project before any more damage was sustained.
Abstinence is a government conspiracy. www.SafeSexZone.co
and this article illustrates why. Hacking together a MCE box from parts is a masochistic enterprise. MS only sells MCE to OEMs who are willing to QA their setup (acronym overload!). This writer just got a taste of what QA at Dell and HP must feel like.
You clearly need a dual processor. One processor for each tuner. Throw enough horsepower against Microsoft and even MSWord has a decent framerate.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Why is this fact? Isn't this the troll. So you troll on /. and it becomes a fact.
One mans -1 Troll is another mans +1 Funny.
One man's sig-line is another man's glaring, offensive typo.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Which reminds me, where's our A La Carte Cable/Satellite?
I don't foot the bill for Cable or Satellite as they rarely offer me what I want. I'm not going to pay $50/mo or more for content I won't sit still for. Give me a half dozen channels and all the football (soccer) I can watch and I'll be happy. So far it's not an offering so the providers are effectively roadkill to me.
I've had no problems with a single tuner on a A7V with an Athlon 2600+ (tuned down to 1800 MHz) and onboard audio.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I have been keeping track of WMC as it has evolved. I am a longtime TIVO owner (fantastic usability, excellent reliability) and last year I also built my own homebrew PVR to try and get out from under the TIVO monthly fee. So far the homebrew is working out very well -- I used Snapstream Beyond TV software, a Hippauge tuner card in an ASUS motherboard with an Athlon 2400XP CPU, 512MB of memory and a 200GB IDE drive (no RAID). Snapstream provides program data over the internet, bundled with the purchase of the software. I used an ATI remote that came with an older All-In-Wonder board that I no longer use. Bottom line, it works really well. Usability is excellent (almost as good as TIVO) and picture quality (and sound sync) also are as good as TIVO (actually I can dial up better picture quality if I want to trade off space). Anyhow, I have been waiting to see when Microsoft eclipses both TIVO and Snapstream. It seems inevitable, but from what I read they aren't there yet.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
No its just that old axiom rearing its ugly head:
"Windows users have to defend their OS, everyone else can praise theirs."
He lost my interest when I found the pic of the destroyed s-video cable.
I've been in video since the 80's and I've seen that ONCE.
You have to be a complete idiot to break an s-video cable off like that, so I can't take anything else in the article seriously. I guess he breaks keyboard and mouse connectors off too?
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
I just wish Apple would produce a media center, because you know it would be refined and more then halfway decent. Doing what it does, and doing it well. Where as Bill Gates is notorious for making a wide range of products that just work poorly. Microsoft, the product name synonymous with mediocre. Want a phone OS, Desktop OS, or Media Center right now!? Then they'll have your $$$, because MediocreSoft (aka Microsoft) is there, doing what they do not well, but darn right OK enough to get your cash and nothing more.
But it seems that companies are doing it backwards, where they they want to be in a single spot and they're sending arrows out everywhere.
This doesn't seem like convergence to me...more like...diffusion.
After long years of being a Mac-only guy, I broke down and bought an Intel box this year. And guess what? It was a Media Center 2005 PC. And you know what else? It was painless to set up and it works exactly as advertised. This guy seems to be complaining about things like broken S-Video cables ... I can hardly see how that should be Microsoft's fault.
On the other hand, he does bring up some important points. With Media Center and the hardware that came in my box, picture quality is not all that great. (I hear the Hauppauge cards offer the best quality; I might try one of those out.) You also can't time-shift FM radio. But then, like many TV tuner cards, mine didn't come with FM radio support, so it's a non-issue anyway.
Also, for a "convergence" device, recording from a video source is exactly as painful as he describes. I could find NO software on my system that would let me record from VHS tape, except for one program that required me to insert DVD media. Unlike his case, it worked for me. But the point remains that this is totally stupid. What if I don't want to burn it to a DVD? What if I'd like to, um, you know ... check to see that I was getting a signal from my VCR first? Sorry, no way to do that. Your best option is to set it for a five-minute trial run and check to see if it worked after the program burns the results to a DVD.
Another semi-retarded thing about Windows Media Center is that it records TV in a proprietary Microsoft format, DVR-MS. I am told that this is MPEG internally, but you need to export it with a different piece of software (NeroVision Express works) if you want to get a usable file that you could convert to XviD, for example.
What's more, every video format you play in Windows Media Center is handled with a DirectShow filter. That's good, in the sense that when you install new codecs in XP they are automatically picked up by Media Center, so you can play your DivX, XviD, etc. There is one caveat, however, and that is that you can't stream these formats to another system via a Media Center Connector or whatever you call it, like your Xbox 360. I think only Windows Media and MPEG formats are supported.
And another glitch with the DirectShow involves timing, which inevitably means you get these stutters in your video every few minutes when you're watching them on a TV. The guy who invented ReClock explains it all in great length. The downside is that ReClock doesn't seem to work so well with Media Center yet.
So, yeah, this "review" is dumb, and you shouldn't expect to be able to bash together a Media Center PC in a weekend and expect it to work. In fact, you may just want to spend $1,400 and buy one, like I did. But even if it works, Media Center is pretty far of from being a "TiVo killer" just yet. If all you want is a DVR, you should buy one of those. I bought the Media Center PC primarily because I wanted an x86 PC, and in that dual capacity it works fine for me.
Breakfast served all day!
This guy's problem is not Windows Media Center, it is because he built the machine himself. If he did any research, he would have learned that hardware compatibility is key to having a smooth running MCE. Using built in sound chip? PUHLEEZE! Unless you have Intel chipset, you are going to have some major problems (VIA boards SUCK!!!) You could have gotten a $20 Chaintech AV-710 and he would never have had to deal with his sound problems. And poor picture? I am guessing he purchased some cheap 1st generation tuners. If you would have gotten ATI 550 based tuners, the picture quality would surpass that of any Tivo. And did you even try HDTV??? IT ROCKS!!! It is VERY important that you test out hardware compatibility before building an MCE yourself (unless you want to do a LOT of experimentation). Which is WHY MS DOES NOT SELL MCE by itself!!! If you have the right hardware setup, MCE is a pleasure. I have over 500GB recorded TV and another 100GB of music and picture. I also have about 50 DVD's ripped on the hard drive that I can watch without ever getting up from the couch. There is no other device (including APPLE) that will allow you to do that as easily as MCE.
Let's hear it from the Microsoft fans: "he's just bashing Microsoft!"
--
make install -not war
CableCard will fix this problem when it becomes mandatory and ubiquitous.
This is the one good thing about the FCC overstepping its bounds and mandating hardware support (unlike the broadcast flag).
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I'll try to put asside the apparent anti-M$ bias in the article and read it for what it is; a complaint based on poor hardware choices and a lack of understanding for what a media center should be.
Its pretty universal amongst geeks that computers belong in the living room controlling everything from lights to music to tv to door alarms...or maybe that's just me. No one, and I do mean no one, has managed to put it all together in one EASY TO USE AND REASONABLY PRICED package. You've gotta go in knowing that's the case, and you've gotta go in with a clear sense of what you want to accomplish in your price point.
I've been running MCE 2005 for about 6 months now and its doing everything I want it to do with only one major issue, HD, and that's not Microsoft's fault...its a mix of congress and cable companies. With a moderately priced 3ghz box and 1gb of ram, and a paultry 120gb of storage, I can record/watch tv, burn shows to DVD, play my music, do a funky slide-show of my pictures...and then do all of those things upstairs in a room with only a tv and an MCE extender. Add to that a wireless keyboard/mouse, and I'm editing pictures and video on my 50" HDTV. All of that is accessible by the average joe non-geek, and I think that is the whole point.
Throw in some geeky tweaks and hacks, and we're talking about streaming HD content to the box with firewire (stupid content flags), ripping and streaming DVDs and playing Age of Empires III the way it was intended...50" of pure glory.
Back to the gripes of the article, I'm having a hard time feeling sympathy. Leave the AMD thing out of it, I'm sure they make a fine product.
-However, think AUDIO IN A MEDIA PC. What did you come up with, 16 bit Sound Blaster? One would assume that you'd want something phat like an Audigy or better.
-Then there is this idea that "As a DVR, one tuner was just OK[...]", sorry, but TiVo and all similar devices have 2 tuners as well, that's why you can record one show and watch another, that gripe doesn't hold water.
-I'm missing the problems recording VHS, never had any problems.
-ATI and HDTVs as monitors is the bane of all media pc's from what I understand. Yeah, ok, I'll buy into that being a valid gripe, but I tossed my X300 in the garbage where it belonged and went nVidia and all is well. S-Video for HD...err...the guy needs to smoke another one.
-The truly valid gripe is with music. The thing is that this is supposed to be accessible to non-geekers, so the default settings try to pull in all your music and catalog it for you. I've tried all sorts of auto-catalog software, and none have worked 100% on my collection. It's pretty darn easy to go into the settings for Media Player and UNCHECK A SINGLE BOX that says "Let Media Player Catalog My Music". After that, it will just use the standard tags, not try to rename andything, and refer to folder.jpg as the album cover. Easy easy easy.
I'm not saying its perfect, but when I think it needs to be said that this is the first OS/HW combo that has gone semi-mainstream in this realm, and pleanty have tried. Combine that with the fact the MS originally was INSISTING on OEM only so they could be sure the hardware could handle the load...but people complained...and now there are gripes that the hardware can't handle the load in non-OEM machines...err...
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate
I have used MCE 2005 for about a year now. I have two HDTV tuners and a single standard definition cable tuner in the machine, and it has always handled them beautifully. This on a modest Athlon XP 2400+ mobile chip, using the onboard sound on an Asus board. The largest headache with rolling your own HTPC is getting the right blend of hardware and drivers, but if you do a little research and plan your purchases accordingly, the DVR software packages that are out there right now provide a great television experience, including MCE. The picture quality will depend on the MPEG decoders that you use, and properly configuring your graphics card for the type of display you are driving. Building your own HTPC is not for the technophobic, and for this reason you can buy OEM Media Center PC's from several vendors, but the software and hardware ARE there TODAY that are stable and easy to use IF you have the right skillset and are willing to put some time into overcoming the initial learning curve. If you don't like Microsoft products on principle, there are plenty of alternatives: MediaPortal (open source), MythTV (open source, linux), BeyondTV, SageTV, GotAllMedia (free), GB-PVR (free), MeedioTV, etc. I have played with about half of these, and they all worked fine, ONCE I got my hardware rock solid. Having said all this, if you don't need the extra functionality of an HTPC (music, movies, games,...), you probably aren't into tweaking anyway, and should just buy a tivo.
The future will be downloading your movies and shows to your computer, putting them on your iPod, and just docking your iPod where you want to view the media. Dock the iPod in your bedroom stereo for music, dock the iPod in your bigscreen TV to watch a movie.
The second medium will be just wirelessly streaming it from your computer with no iPod required. And I suspect Apple will pioneer both.
My small company is an OEM System Builder, even though we don't want to build and sell computers (we'd rather fix them).
Microsoft invited us to an event, gave us a for-resale copy of MCE 2005, and sold us $1200 worth of hardware that they selected to work with MCE for $399: mobo, Athlon 64 3000+, RAM, video card, tuner card, everything but a case and power supply.
So, I brought it all home, built a Media Center, and invited it into our lives.
It did what we asked of it, although it did so rather poorly.
The sound and video were synched OK, and the TV listing and recording features were easy to use. The remote control and IR blaster worked our Comcast digital box with about 95% reliability (and that 5% is a HUGE pain in the ass, let me tell you). All in all, it did most of what a TiVo (or Comcast's own DVR) could manage, in a much larger and louder package.
(Note: You can install more than one tuner card, but you must use the same tuning method on all cards... to do this on our setup, we would have needed to use two rented digital cable boxes).
Here's the best part: the build was only stable for about a month, after which it would BSOD and reboot itself about once a day. Rebuilding the OS would solve the problem for another month, so it was NOT hardware-related.
God forbid I had actually sold one of these things!
Happy ending: the parts made a smoking fast desktop, which is stable (as stable as any Windows box, at least).
Three letters QAM: I presently get my Cable TV without a Cablebox. It wasn't really an intentional decision on my part (I hate to admit this, so maybe I will delete that bit when I finish). I was rebuilding the familyroom and the new Samsung HL-R6168W was delivered too early:). I am paying my Cable company for "Basic" and "Family" and was able to receive them in Analog. So I had to test the new TV within 30 days (30 day return no questions) so I just plugged it into the Coaxial and set it to "find" all the channels. So so it did, for ALL my analog channels and then surprise it kept going and going... In all seriousness it found the "digital" (480P)equivalent of the Basic + Family set I am paying for, well at least when those channels have a digital signal. Then it found all the Broadcast channels in "HD"! Surprise!!!! I asked around a few questions of senior people on forums, from the Cable company I use (helpful and honest people) and they "admitted" that TVs with "QAM" tuners can decode all the digital and HD signals NOT encrypted. So that means that I still don't get HBO either analog, or HD, or ESPN HD, or SHowtime HD. NONE of the chanels I don't pay for can I receive. Fair enough isn't it? Please note if you have a QAM enabled tuner you MUST check that the Cable signal is compatible, mostly the answer is yes...but do check first. SO to summarize I get: o All the original channels I pay for: in analog o The equivalent: in digital 480P 0 The equivalent broadcast type channels: in HD 720P/1080i o I even pick up at least one PBS HD channel It all depends what you want. If you want a decent service thru HD w/o Premium channel content, you don't need a Cablebox of any kind. And a PC with a QAM based HD Tuner, like the Fusion, would also be able to record ALL the above and replay in the same quality received. If you want Premium Channels and especially if you want them in HD, then you have not only to pay for the extra service, but also the digital HD decoding Cablebox and remote.
A year ago, I built a media center PC using components off Microsoft's MCE hardware list and went with the components mentioned in various places as "most stable". I have an HD tuner and an analog tuner and I don't have any problems with my MCE. It's been reliable enough that I got rid of my Tivo. Of course, I'm not the typical user because I'm getting HD exclusively over the air (not via cable). I have my entire CD collection ripped to a second hard drive, I have over 2 gigs of family photos, I use the music subscription services, and my only complaint is that there's no automatic way to put it into suspend at night.
;-)
I suspect that most problems are caused by poor hardware choices and unnecessary messing with the software and OS. If you want something to work as reliably as a CE device, you can't use sketchy hardware or use applications that were not meant to work together.
Just one man's opinion
The deal killer was I already had a Tivo. The reason I wanted a Media PC was ease of burning stuff to DVD to archive, and by the time I was done I had an extremely convoluted method to do what should have been simple. Most of all however, the $1500 or so that I sunk into it ended up wtih a really shitty picture quality, far inferior to the $100 Tivo I already had.
My final compromise was to use the Media pc I'd built for music and DVD copyi...uh...I mean "archiving", and bought a new Tivo with a built in DVD burner.
I honestly have no idea why TV tuner picture quality in a $400 tuner card sucks so badly compared to the tuner in a $50 (now) Tivo, but that is a MAJOR sticking point for this whole idea.
I'd like to perform a one act play I call, "Creative screwed me like a bitch"
:: later ::
booradley: (audigy) Buy me! I'm ever so sexy
booradley: (to audigy) ok. come home with me and we'll play among the stars
booradley: (audigy) tee hee! I love you, boo!
booradley: I love you too, audigy
booradley: (to audigy) there, you're all installed. how do you feel?
audigy: LET JESUS FUCK YOU! VRAAAGH!
* audience gasps.
booradley: * audigy is putting noise across your PCI channels!
booradley: (hard drive) Mein leben!
booradley: * hard drive has died
booradley: (audigy) Blaaah! blaaaugh! your mother sucks cocks in hell!
booradley: (modem) aaieee!!
booradley: *modem has died
booradley: and the new modem I got connects at 32k tops
Shendal: By far, that's the best one-act IRC play I've read this season. Do I smell a Tony award?
AMD64, Audigy, hardcore mobo? I've had a dual tuner (PVR-250) PVR, with a miniATX Athlon 2000+, nVidia 5200 and a Fortissimo III (for the optical output) running without a hitch with SageTV for years. It not only records two shows at once but will replay a third without breaking a sweat!
I have recently attempted to put together a PVR type solution for my home. I tried several different methods ranging from Linux to Windows. In Linux I tried MythTV which seemed difficult to setup and didn't handle my dual tuner well. I tried Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition and found the interface to be rather nice, however it seemed difficult to get some applications and drivers to work. I also tried Snapstream's Beyond TV which worked rather well, but seemed to be a bit of a loose jumble of a few pieces of software. This made BeyondTV sort of annoying to navigate through. Finally I gave up and decided to get a DVR from Comcast. This actually solved my problem rather well. I was able to record my shows and watch them when I wanted to, and still use the computer for games and movies. For some people it may be annoying to have both a computer and the DVR, but it saves on purchasing a TV tuner card and PVR software. A downside to this is that you can't easily transfer the recorded content to your computer, but for a good chunk of people, this isn't an important feature.
-- My Mother was a Saint! -- Cisox
What? I can only watch 4 lousy ABC shows? What? Only 320 by 200 resolution???
You fail to think of the future, when there could be a lot more TV shows there. Possibly even in better resolution though the current one is more than good enough to convey the subtle nuances TV has to offer (I can tell you've not tried watching any of them). It's definatley a far cry better than VCR or over the air quality.
The basic principle is sound. Why bother with all the UI and technical architecture issues you have with recording when the whole point of a PVR is to get a file into a random access digital file anyway? Aren't you simply better off starting with a whole digital file and working from there? Why does there need to ever be a time component involved other than when content is initially put up for aquisition?
TV viewers are like someone waiting at an airport luggage carosel, waiting until just the right interval of time arrives to get what they want. Why should TV viewing be that unpleasant now when there is no need. Why doesn't your video luggage just arrive and wait right in front of you for you to get it, now that it can.
I can also watch HD football on the Mac BTW - either with an HD tuner or downloading a torrent of same. In the future I should just be able to come home any time and start a football stream from scratch if I like.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why does anyone want to take things that work fine, like TV (cable or Sat) or Stereo and hook them up to something that has never worked right in history? A Windows PC. This just makes no sense at all, and I thought geeks used logic. A Tivo has always been a better choice, and it's much cheaper.
My boss (white box store) wanted to build one of these in Feb. and I through the same argument at him, we still don't have a media center PC in the showroom. The TV he bought is now upstairs in the weekend party room hooked to a Tivo.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Having run XP MCE 2005 since it came out, I have to believe that this "review" is useless and the "reviewer" is clueless. There's several things in the article which, just one of them, could be a mistake, but all of them together make it seem like the reviewer is not qualified to review XP MCE.
First of all, the author thinks that the IR Blaster is a receiver. Secondly, the reviewer resorted to using S-Video over HDMI...then managed to break an S-Video cable. Not that PowerStrip is easy to use, but it seems that the author was incapable of using it.
As to adding music, I'm not sure what's wrong with the author's network, but I have about 100GB of music and MCE adds it relatively quickly - certainly in minutes, not days as the reviewer indicated.
I'm not sure what the reviewer's problem is with the radio - did he not realize you could manually select a station with the seek function?
As to the general problems relating to him implying it was sluggish on his PC (Audio Sync Problems, slow importing time, etc) something is clearly wrong with how he configured his PC - I have MCE 2005 running on a machine less than 1/2 the speed (P4 1.6GHz) and it runs great with two tuners. Is XP MCE perfect? No. But I've used TiVo, ReplayTV, MythTV and XP MCE and so far MCE is my favorite.
Anyway, I conclude that the reviewer is unqualified to offer a review on a product like this - especially because he blamed MCE for his faults/problems he took on by building his own box, rather than buying a prebuilt one. It's certainly not hard, as I did it, but clearly he had problems.
"My Videos, My Pictures, My TV, My Music." My God, it makes me want to kill My Self.
Many cable operators, such as Charter, encrypt all digital channels. Including non-premium channels.
So while this may work for you, it doesn't work for most people (and probably won't work for you in the future).
If I thought this, or even CableCard, was a solution, I would have mentioned it.
Clippit
Dance style: The Twist
This annoying 8-year-old piece of animated office equipment was once the scurge of Office users the world over. A most tragic character, he was brought up to be helpful but only ever amounted to an annoying pisstard that was funny for five minutes until the user found the dog with the oxyacetylene torch. Ever since his termination from the Office project, Clippit has been offering his services to all and sundry. This time around, he's a dancer for hire, and he's changed his tune to: "Hello! It looks like you're trying to watch a television show. Would you like me to:
Clippit has performed at numerous clubs around the world, working most famously along the south coast of England until he was displaced by that break-dancing dog with the l33t w3ld0r ski11z.
People always assume you need to spend a great deal of money for Tivo box. I recently bought a Tivo 40 hour for $50AR. I bought a 300gig HD for $100. I spent $299 for the lifetime subscription. So, for $449 I now have a 300 hour Tivo box.
You might say,"But you modified it, lost your warranty, etc". That is true, I threw away my 90-day warranty on a device that you can easily get spare parts for almost like a computer (check out www.weaknees.com). I also gained 300 hours worth of Tivo time that took me an hour to install using free software.
Now, on the value of Tivo versus Myth.TV and the variety of other vendors. It will cost you well more than $800 for the hardware to properly run a computer that is setup similar to a Tivo box. If you make it a Media Center computer, you're talking easily $1500-2000 for something that isn't much cheaper than Tivo. Cost wise, I spent $449 dollars over a 5-10 year period on something that will work. No messy fixes, no glitches because a built-in soundcard doesn't have a linux driver, it just works.
Tivo is to media devices what Apple is to computers, they build things that work intuitively. Take the dive, spend the money up front, and enjoy Tivo. The work-arounds for a "free" DVR aren't there, and probably never will be.
I've been considering getting or making some sort of PVR solution. I keep wavering between building one for myself or getting one pre-built that will hook into my home network. The real issue for me has not been hardware though, but software. So far it seems that a pre-built, specialized box gives you better features and the content can be moved off to my network anyway. Is there really any advantage to building it yourself?
I stole this sig from a more creative user.
...and another thing...
Perhaps the "builder" did not realize that Google Provides All. There is a site called The Green Button (I think its UK based), that is currently the best MCE forum around. There were a couple of instances where I wanted to do something the MCE didn't natively do and TGB provided me with solutions.
I'd say anyone who wants a more balanced oppinion of what MCE IS and what MCE IS NOT, should spend 20 minutes flipping through that forum and seeing what people are praising, griping about, and generally doing with MCE. Either that, or believe the (oh my god, I'm going to use this horrible term, I swore I never would, omg...) FUD.
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate
In twenty years my brain will be floating in the center of a nanobot cloud performing my every desire with infinite speed.
You do realize these are the same people who tried to kill VCR, DVD, HDTV, etc. What makes you believe that they will make their HD content available on-line any time soon?
But that aside, "these same people" matter not since I can get just about any HD content I like via torrent.
When Disney starts making money from the ITMS video sales, far more content will follow. It's kind of like releasing a ball in mid-air and wondering if it will fall. Money is the gravity of business; a sure pull that draws everyone to the densest grouping. And since ITMS is the only game in town giving content providers SOME money instead of NONE for online content offerings, content will flock just as night follows day.
Also as an aside I can watch HD content on my Mac as well right now as well with my HD tuner. I'm really hadn't thought the MCE was anny worse at it, but you sure seem awfully defensive. Not having glitches you don't wish to admit to are you?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And if you really want to channel surf, you can just have the normal (unbuffered) cable going into your TV's second input.
And pay extra to rent a second set-top box to decode the channels on that second input.
You forgot the ending to that sentence:
"...because only the sixty people using the OSs know the reasons they suck."
Maybe some of you guys already saw this guy get (politely but firmly) put in his place in the forum over there.
Hey,
Sorry you had so many problems trying to build your own Media Center.
So the reason you can't burn DVDs through the Media Center interface is because you need the Sonic encoders for the Sonic burn engine which is what is used by Media Center to burn DVDs. Unfortunately, the Sonic encoders are only available to OEMs and are not available to system builders.
This is just one of the many reasons (you ran into several others) why Media Center is not available as a standalone OS (unless you go through Newegg).
Matt
Program Manager
Windows Media Center.
The cable operators will still provide a service: it will just be bandwidth, and not content.
Trouble is that in many geographic areas, the local cable monopoly won't sell you bandwidth (for your computer) unless you're also buying access to content (for your TV), especially in those areas where the local telephone monopoly doesn't offer a competitive solution. Cable companies and phone companies get around anti-tying laws by claiming a high price (e.g. $100/mo) for high-speed Internet and then adding a discount nearly equal to the monthly price for basic cable TV or basic voice service respectively.
First you make it so my business cannot use my office software of choice, then you screw up my e-mail and make it a nightmare of security issues. Then you make it so my wife has to use a Windows PC to do her government work at home, she has to use a '(windows only secure shell client)' an oxymoron if their ever was one!. This makes it so me, a simpleton Slackware user has to trouble shoot Windows security issues all the time!
Windows and Microsoft will never see my living room which is blessedly free from the infernal 'PC' or as I prefer to call it (P)iece of (C)rap. No doubt Gates and company will make it there eventually but I hope I am long dead and gone by that time.
I run a MCE 2005 box with two tuners. The tuners are AverMedia M150s, about as cheap as you can get for a tuner with MPEG-2 encoding (about $60 each).
Here's what you need for a good 2-tuner media center experience:
- Decent drives. A 7200rpm SATA drive is best, I use a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB. If possible, have a separate drive for storing shows than the one you use to boot off of.
- A GOOD GPU. I found that a 64-bit GeForce FX 5200 just didn't cut it. I use a NV44A GeForce 6200 now.
- A good DVD decoder. I use NVIDIA PureVideo decoder because it has hardware acceleration. PowerDVD also works pretty well.
That's about it. No audio sync issues with my Realtek ALC850 built in audio. No problems driving both a standard-def tv and an HDTV (component) with my NVIDIA card.
Complaining that your HD projector doesn't like PC resolutions (duh) or that S-Video cables break easily (again, duh) is really bone-headed. These things are not problems with Media Center, they are problems with you not understanding that driving an HD projector using a DVI-HDMI adaptor and a standard graphics card is a HACK. Expecting it to work perfectly is stupid.
Compared with Myth and other Windows DVR solutions, Media Center is easier to configure and easier to use. It's not TiVo, but it's not supposed to be TiVo.
I have four computers in my home running media center edition 2004 and now 2005. They use both internal and external USB 2.0 tuners.
I have NEVER seen the voice and audio not sync on ANY of the systems. And the picture quality is at the control of the tuner, but is outstanding in comparison to the old TiVo and Cable DVR units I have used, especailly when pushing the images to a LARGE 8' HD Display.
These articles are insane, and you give them credibility by even posting them here?
What if I wrote one on how all TV Tuners look crappy on Linux (Which is NOT true), would you just post it here as well?
What the hell has happened to Slashdot. This once use to be a respected Tech and Open Source news site, and now even in places you wouldn't expect, to make fun of something, I hear and see techs calling it a 'Slashdot Article'. And here you are, once again proving them right.
BTW, Even one of My Media Center systems is a freaking Laptop I use on the Road, and I tell it what city I am in, give it a cable feed, and my shows are STILL recorded perfectly, no matter where I am on the road, in fact, it wakes itself up using ACPI and records the shows if I hibernate or turn the computer off... It don't get anymore convienient than this...
You want audio and video and install issues - go try Beyond TV, it works great sometimes, but there are times it is plain crap on a system. It won't even recognize a Wave Input audio source... (Just to let you know Media Center is not my first DVR or PC based solution - And I still own a Beyond TV current Licnse, just in case it ever does work better.)
Argh...
I have the same rig as he does almost. Abit AV8 with an Athlon 64 3000. I think his problem might be he got an older revision AV8 board and is running a 90nm process CPU. I had problems until the vendor I bought the parts from got a solution from Abit. The older revision boards didn't support the 90nm process CPU's, just the 130nm ones. Had to flash the bios with an updated version.
This was an interesting topic that was completely ruined by the author's seemingly amatuer integration skills.
Windows Media Center looks attractive, but it's missing a must-have for me: I watch HDTV, and I get it though my cable company. I can't find any Media Center PCs that will hook up to the cable, and record and play HDTV.
Do they do 1080i out on the VGA output? For those of us with older HDTVs, it's kinda necessary.
Yes, I managed to get my MCPC doing the "right" thing (first, using the Omage ATI drivers + PowerStrip, when updated ATI drivers finally came out with decent 1080i support, with those).
Now, we can talk about why the WMCE DVD playing software is so pathetic on upsampling and doesn't do the right thing for 1080i out (PowerDVD does) or why the optical out is so hard to get to stick to 5.1. Now, on the Mac, if the built-in DVD player didn't to the right thing, I think I'd be stuck. It's a pain to have to use other software on MCE, but at least it's available.
Or why good video capture is so frigging hard; on-the-fly is glitchy and only Windows Media Encoder manages to keep up with dumping uncompressed frames (and only to the internal drive) - not helped by the fact that the HP's tuner card is a POS Hauppage that doesn't spit out a standard stream but a stupid proprietary one (HCW2). I know the Macs do better at this.
Is it all software? No. The HP z540 I have has horrid front panel buttons, no FireWire input on the front, and an atrocious remote. It also has real bad heat issues (for a device that belongs in an electronics stack, to require 20" of space out the back... ugh...).
On the other hand, it is really cool to be able to torrent down the TV episodes that the HD TiVo misses.
> cat ~/.signature | grep -v bullshit
>
When your Mac HDTV works as smoothly as Tivo/MCE, you let me know. (rest of member comparison deleted)
Did you miss the part where I said I'm sure your MCE works very well? Did I even hint my solution was better? No I said that mine can indeed record HD feeds. Frankly I pity you for caring enough about TV to want to record five different feeds at once, but that's another matter. As mine plays them perfectly smoothing I have no cause for complaint as in the end that is all that matters.
Me, I have one thing I want to record here and another there. So in fact my solution is perfect for me, just as yours is for you. Congratulations to us both for attaining Nirvana.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
320x240 is 1/4 the detail of 720x480
Actually with video you are incorrect; The true amount of detail lost depends more on bitrate than on raw resolution. You could theoretically have 720x480 video that looked worse than 320x240.
I will say that the video downloaded from the Apple store does look better than some of the more heavily compressed shows I have seen on a Dish system over satellite. I definitely would not want to watch a movie at such resolution, but for TV shows it is more than fine. Like I said I am downloading an episode to evaluate buying the DVD set which is going to look better anyway. For most other TV that are not really that special visually that res is perfectly fine.
But really arguing over resolution is stupid as eventually we'll see higher rez stuff. The real mystery to me is why the Pixar shorts were not released in higher res; I might have bought a few of those. But in time it will come.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Links to MCE 2005 systems(their e-stores) ;-)
I know this takes all the fun out of it, but sometimes it really is just too much work
to get a computer to do stuff that should be easy(i.e. Suse vs. Gentoo; i use both).
Consider these a few points of reference for your plans for World Domination
("...What are we going to do tonight Brain?..."
Shuttle: Shuttle m1000
which looks like a 'normal' audio/video component, and a variety of SFF-based systems from 899$US.
the advantage of the SFF-based systems would be customizability(video cards up to 6800gt, HDDs to 400GB
(three drives in a P-series chassis=1.2TB),
HP(Hewlett-Packard): HP z500 series
also a 'component' style chassis, five models of varying performance and capacity, also customizable.
Gateway: Gateway FX400
sadly, all towers, but customizable(dual-core!)
Sony's newest vaio system: Sony VGX-XL1
a bit pricey at 2300$US but totally full featured with a dual-core P-D 820, and a 200-disk optical jukebox
NOT customizable.
(why can't i get the HP link to NOT be green? OR, better yet, why can't i get the other links to BE green? bah.)
"...that's as white as it gets; all the bits are on..."
... you get a dancing Scooby Doo? Awesome. Everything else is just details.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
Actually, Microsoft have (inadvertently) given Apple that very idea.
Xbox Media Center, which will run on a modded £100 Xbox, allows you to watch pretty much any media file you like, from DVD hard drive, network share, or network stream.
It also supports Shoutcast and other streaming methods.
All for £100 (or $100 I'd guess?) plus a £10 chip.
Microsoft *REALLY* dropped the ball with the Xbox 360, locking it into their own formats and all.
Tivo is to media devices what Apple is to computers
No, Tivo is the Microsoft of DVRs. ReplayTV is Apple.
Da Blog
Tivo is extremely touchy with the networks and studios
I saw a corporate presentation by the Tivo CEO to a bunch of industry types. It was all about how much Tivo can do for them (the industry), and how it could capture and hold audiences and then deliver content packaged according to whatever DRM the industry specified. It was eye opening. Tivo is not about users, as witnessed by its rather mediocre featureset and closed system. It is customer focussed, but its customers are the studios, not the consumers.
Da Blog
Oh, thy Media Overlords, what am I missing?
Here's my chance to blab about the PVR I built myself. It's not pretty, but it runs great.
Here are the specs: Leadtek WinFast PVR 2000 TV/FM tuner card; P4 2.8E / ASUS P4P800; onboard sound; 512MB RAM; 80GB + 120GB HD; WinXP Pro.
The software I built uses: Windows Media Encoder SDK; Visual Basic 6; PHP; FireBird; Apache.
Using VB, I wrote code that goes to Zap2It and downloads 12 days worth of TV show programming and parses it into my FireBird DB. From there I have a web front end that lets you search/sort though shows. You can choose to record one show or create a rule that would record a certain show every time it's on. It also handles scheduling conflicts by prioritizing rules and doesn't record a show if it's been previously recorded.
The back end is a VB app that runs all the time and checks the FireBird DB for the next show to be recorded. When it finds one and it's time to start recording it issues a command line request to the Windows Media Encoder to start recording on channel x for x number of seconds. The size and audio/video bitrate are set using the encoder's profile editor.
The profile settings I use consist of: Windows Media Audio 9.1/Video 9; VBR quality base of 90 (usually has a video bitrate of just over 1000kbps); Video size 320 x 240. At these settings the CPU uses about 20% and 1hr worth of video is about half a GB.
I play the shows by streaming them to the Xbox running xbmc.
I also have a command line script that runs every night and deletes any shows that are older than 15 days. If I haven't watched it by then, it's not worth watching.
This setup has worked great for me for the last year. The next step would be to replace the whole setup with MythTV. I'd have the back end on my computer and the front end on the Xbox.
My other sig is a Porsche.
This isn't a "Review" of MCE 2005... It's meant to be more commentary and cautionary tale than strict HOWTO or review... it's meant to be entertaining!
;) Obviously the author didn't do everything right and had some trials and things could have been approached differently to make it a little easier on himself, BUT regardless the man thesis of the article is that this MCE 2005 PC in the living room is way too hard/clunky/painful than it needed to be.
If everything went right it wouldn't make for much of an article... you don't see
"Man Succesfully installed Office 2003" articles much
If Duke's up to it, I'd like to have him try a 3rd party application and see if he fairs better (like beyondtv4 or SageTV 3).
If you're thinking "hey that review sucked", the "reviewer is an idiot", or "nuh-uh MCE 2005 is the roxors"...you missed the point.
My whole contention was that if Duke had been a member/participant of byopvr and the byopvr forums we could have saved him a lot of pain and suffering... but then we wouldn't have had an entertaining article come out of it.
Besides with the dearth of sycophant "review" (and again this wasn't even a review) out there on the web... having a little bashing and teeth gnashing can't be a bad thing, can it?
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
>>
>> One mans -1 Troll is another mans +1 Funny.
>>
>One man's sig-line is another man's glaring, offensive typo.
>
Well, _two_ glaring, offensive typographical errors really, if you count each missing apostrophe. (Lord knows I did.) And if anyone scoring at home wants to give extra credit for missing quotation marks around the moderation tags, feel free to count each one of those separately, too.
One man's sig-line is another man's glaring, offensive typo.
And the Parent is currently scored 70% Funny, 30% Troll, which is the funniest part of all!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
you can use a regular pvr250 (generally) with XP MCE 2005 but you'll need to get the MCE specific drivers
Part of the issue here is... if you have and HDTV why are you running svideo to it? SHould you be running DVI or component to it?
With that card and gbpvr you probably should have switched your video rendering mode from VMR9 to overlay. Also what video decoder you have installed has a big effect on PQ and smoothness...
I think if you went with even a slightly higher card (like a 5200 fx)you'd be in much better shape... If you could swing a nvidia 6x00 and a pure video decoder (and connect your pc to your tv via an HDTV connection method) you'll be able to upscale/deinterlace the content much better imho. *shrug*
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Theres that many good shows on TV to even require a 2nd tuner?
One person in the house likes to watch football while another likes to watch baseball, or perhaps the hit drama show comes on during the game. In order to watch live TV while recording another program, you need two tuners, and with the currently prevalent approach to cable television in the United States (that is, proprietary set-top tuners rather than compatibility with a CableCard tuner in each TV), that costs extra per month.
Your actually offended by typos? May I suggest getting laid as a cure? Or at least some a joint, do something.
Yes I'm offended by typos. Shows sloppy thinking. Especially yours above. :^)
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
the hard drive upgradeability is what brought me to TiVo
For me, the built-in autoconfig ethernet of ReplayTV is what attracted me. I could, it is true, upgrade the hard drive inside the box. But it's probably easier just to hang another RAID-1 500GB box on the network, couple it to a DVArchive JVM, and let the ReplayTVs use that. Oh, that and the automatic commercial skip and internet show sharing.
Da Blog
Microsoft is soooooooooooo in bed with Intel on some of this media center stuff. I'm surprised it booted at all.
Your points are good; However we are talking about compressed video. My contnetion is only that the video is quite watcahable, which it is... and is not to the viewer 1/4 as good as a 720p signal. To a casual watcher it's almost as good.
Also as you indirectly pointed out don't forget that the Apple video is non-interlaced which helps the quality as well when compared directly with a plain NTSC signal.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley