DVR

The Ultimate Media Center

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Do you know what the Ultimate Media Center setup is? Please tell me! I thought I found it a few years ago with Tivo, but then I wanted more so I had my Tivo hacked (Yes I didn’t want to deal with it myself so I had it done). Then I went out and built my own DVR with Beyond TV and thought that was perfect. Then I wanted more. I know I am demanding and all, but I keep upgrading and changing my DVR/TV setup.

Now I am on the fence between trying out Myth TV or just getting a dam DVR cable box from my provider and not bother anymore with the endless tinkering.

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Sleepy Sunday

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I was going to goto the Beer Garden today but felt like I was getting a migraine so I passed on the opportunity. Glad that I did. I crashed around 4PM and slept for a few hours. I felt like crap when I woke up so I did what I normally don’t do when I am home and getting a head ache. I medicated. I feel better now but I know it is only the prescription talking. I am hoping to be sleepy enough to goto bed soon and get a good night sleep.

The rest of the weekend I did some DVD and DVR watching. This week I was into The Wire. I watched season 2 and now I am on clearing out season 3 from my DVR. Man that is a good show.

Reminds me of Homicide Life on the Street. Back to the work grind tomorrow!

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Computer Rebuild, Again

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Today I am wiping my Presario desktop. I am moving all my DVR hardware onto it and re-installing the OS. My little DVR machine is fine, but it does not have enough inputs (internal or external). That made it difficult to add extra drive capacity or another TV tuner. Since I am not really using my more powerful Presario desktop for anything other than remoting into it to use VMWare I figured I would combine the two. The hardware should be able to handle both tasks without any problems. It is after all an AMD Athlon XP 3200+ with 1.5gig of ram and 2 250gig SATA hard drives.

I am in the process of installing Windows XP now. hopefully the Beyond TV & Beyond Media install’s go well, and I have no problems with the video capture cards. More news later

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RAM & a DVR

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I ordered a 1 Gig RAM upgrade for my new iMac. It finally arrived and I installed it today. It was actually pretty easy to do. I was happy about that. The machine is noticeably faster now. Especially when I have several apps open. With the original 512megs on board I noticed the system would freeze up when I was doing some intensive stuff this weekend. The added memory is a nice solution to my problem. Now all I need is more apps that are run on the intel chips natively.

I also got a new USB DVR adapter for my DVR machine. The goal is to have 2 tuners running on the same computer. Snapstream says it will work. The problem I have is that I have 2 different revisions of the same USB DVR hardware. One driver version works with one unit but not the other. When I get the second one to work the first one decides to stop working. I gave up after several hours of messing with the system. I am RMA’ing the unit and will probably just go out and buy a PCI tuner card. I didn’t want to do that, but in order to do what I want I will need one. I may also just move the DVR setup to my HP desktop since it is not doing much right now. Still pondering my options.

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Home Entertainment System Update

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In an about face I returned (by the time this posts I hope to have returned) the EyeTV 200. It was not as good as the Snapstream setup I have on my PC. It wouldn’t go full screen correctly on my 40″ LCD TV. It also didn’t have the ability to schedule season passes. I will go with the substantially cheaper option of getting another Hauppauge USB2 PVR off of ebay. There are not many of them but the price is right. I will plug it into my existing setup as a second tuner. If Apple comes out with a better DVR solution I will take a look at switching over, until then the last remaining Windows box that I rely on is my DVR box.

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Video Redux

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I finally took the time to look at an article that shows how to convert video from my DVR program to a format that works with my video iPod. Turns out it is a free video extractor (windows only) that will convert almost any video file (i am using a generic mpeg-2 file that worked flawlessly) into a compatible format for use on the video iPod. I ran a test this morning and it worked flawlessly. I programed my DVR computer to convert a bunch of other shows I have. I also programed my desktop to convert a bunch of misc video’s (a lot of them) to the same format. The conversions take allot of time so I am going to let them run overnight. While I sleep they will perform.

I also broke down and bought an Elgato EyeTV 200 for my Mini. it is not as elegant a system as my Beyond TV, but I wanted to use my Mini as part of the home entertainment center. Since my DVD player was going I removed it and now I have my Mini & my Media Center PC as my only components of my home entertainment center. The Tivo is now in the bedroom, and it will be gone as soon as I watch whats left on it. Tomorrow I hope to go through video’s I have and encode what I want to keep for use on the iPod and get rid of the rest. The other advantage of this conversion is the space savings. An hour long video in MPEG-2 is about 2 gigs, in the H.264 codec it is less than 500 meg. Not a bad savings.

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Home Entertainment System

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I have been using Snapstream’s Beyond TV for over a year now. I am hooked. I like the free aspect of the system (aka no monthly recurring charges). But lets be honest I paid a bunch for all the gear to make the system work. That is not a complaint, just an observation. Part of the cost was getting certain pieces of hardware and then replaceing them over time after I slowly learned I didn’t like them. Now a year later, 2 revisions of beyond tv later, & two comptuer setups later I am finally able to truly use my computer as a DVR. Right now I have it working so well (not trying to jinx myself) that I am about to cancel Tivo. Not because tivo is bad or anything (except for their evil policy of requiring a 1 year contract for new service), but because I can do everything I want to and sometimes more on my computer without a monthly fee.

The latest version of Beyond Media solved my DVD playback issues on my computer. Now I have a fully functioning Media Center PC. My DVR computer is hooked up to my TV. It plugs directly into the TV via a VGA connector. I have my firefly remote, Beyond TV, Beyond Media doing everything that a Windows Media Center PC would do for me. I have Beyond TV for my Tivo like DVR, and Beyond Media is finally working properly as a Media Center replacement. That means I can watch DVD’s on my computer with ease. I can also browse videos, photos and music right from my TV. personally I use my Mac for iTunes so I wont use the music function, but the photo album function is cool. Having the DVD player work is fantastic.

My next project is to get the entire setup to work in HD with my HDTV.

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Fall Cleaning

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Today I decided to do some Spring Fall cleaning. I did both physical and virtual cleaning. I moved around some components and moved a piece of furniture. I am trying to move my computer gear into a place where I have easy access to it, but it doesn’t make my living room look like crap. I pulled out a huge pile of wires that I don’t need anymore. or I hope I don’t need them, but everything seems to be working without them so far.

What started the whole day of cleanup was my powerbook not performing as well as it used to. I have put allot of crap on it, and tried some stuff out that I probably should not have put on my main computer, but I did anyway. I had been pondering wiping it and reinstalling everything for over a month. I was going to do it over the long weekend next week, but I woke up this morning and felt daring. I backed everything up and took the plunge. The majority of the rebuild didn’t take anywhere near as long as I thought. In under like 2 hours I had most of the main software I use on the computer, and I was well on my way to getting all my custom settings back. I know I will be customizing everything for a few weeks but the majority of what I use is back up.

While the powerbook was rebuilding I rearranged the furniture and pulled the cable. I also went to best buy and bought myself a wireless mouse & keyboard for my DVR computer. I also got a 4 port USB PCI card for the machine since I ran out of ports. I put that together (in 15 min thankfully) and my TV setup is basically done.

Feeling even more daring now that I moved the DVR functions to a dedicated computer I decided to wipe my Presario desktop and put a fresh copy of Windows XP on it. I am in the middle of the updateathon of windows patches now.

Once I am done with getting Windows on the Presario I won’t be putting any programs on it except for VMWare Workstation. My goal is to put all applications in a virtual machine. that way I can easily remove or revert back to old setups. I am trying that at the office also. In theory it is a sound idea. I will let you know how it goes in a month or so.

Freevo Version 4.0

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I have been using Snapstream’s Beyond TV 3 for almost a year now. I have spoken before of how great a product it is. They just announced Beyond TV 4.0. Having no need for over the air HDTV tuning I bought the upgrade anyway. Truth be told I wanted to check out the Divix encoding option on the new version.

For a few months I have been pondering turning my custom built celeron pc into a media center box. I have been using Beyond TV as a PVR on my good HP box. I had been too lazy to reconfigure the setup. The announcement of the new version of Beyond TV got me thinking, upgrade. I did some research on decent PCI video cards that are compatible with my TV Tuner USB device. The computer I was going to use as the DVR has a built in video card that is not compatible, and since it is such a small PC it didn’t have an AGP slot. I found a good PNY card at Compusa for the unit. I also upgraded the 160gig drive in the computer to a bigger 250gig. I performed the hardware upgrade and checked that the gear worked. then I installed windows from scratch. All I put on the machine the latest windows updates, the USB IR drivers, the video capture card drivers, remote, and Beyond TV. I did some heavy rearranging of my living room and moved the computer to my entertainment center. I rigged it up to my computer using the computers built in VGA port (nice).

There were a few minor issues, but all in all the upgrade went well. I am running some test recordings now to verify the system works correctly, but so far it looks good. This setup actually fixed an issue I had with my old computer not working with the resolution of the HDTV I have. The new video card plugged into the VGA slot (vs the RCA slot on the old setup) fits the screen perfectly. What is weird is the resolution the computer is at is not the native resolution of the TV but it works, so I won’t complain.

Once I am happy with my new setup I can blow away the HP computer and rebuild it to use as a general workstation. I use my Powerbook as my main computer but I always need a Windows box around for something.

Now I am off to clean up all the dust and dirt I created and unearthed with all my moving of stuff around my living room.

Tivo Needs The Boot

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I keep talking about it, but I think I am finally going to pull the trigger on getting rid of my Tivo. With an extra capture card I can get 2 tuners on my PC, for no cost per month. I almost exclusively use Beyond TV now and only goto Tivo for things that I forget to capture on my PC. With a second capture card I could get everything on the PC in nice transportable MPEG files. I think this month is the month.

For me it is either Beyond TV or EyeTV on my mac that will replace the Tivo. Still debating that. it is not that I don’t like the Tivo. Mine is almost like a pet. It is great, but why pay a monthly fee for something I can get for free?