Hopefully this will work for you:

If your remote has a LiveTV button, hit it. It doesn't matter what channel it's on, the screen should now come out of sleep and start working as normal.

If you don't have a LiveTV button, try getting into the Media Center Guide using the Guide button. Then hit your OK button. Again, it doesn't matter what channel it's on. That should wake the screen up and start working normal again!

This works for me and for a few other people that I've suggested it to, hope it works for you as well.

I started thinking of using Intel’s Atom processor on a Mini ITX motherboard, but I couldn’t find a combination that had all the features I wanted.

My Specs were pretty strict:

·         MiniITX

·         Ceton InfiniTV6 CableCard Tuner - Recording on all 6 tuners (Not available yet, but it must be able to do it.)

·         Playing and Ripping BluRay disks

·         Bluetooth

·         Full HD 1080 play

·         Digital Audio S/PDIF

·         HDMI output

·         Multiple Sata

·         eSATA 6Gb/s

·         1 – PCIe 1x

·         Gb  Ethernet

·         Wireless N

·         Low power consumption. 65 – 150w max!

That 65-100w max pretty much ruled out the Atom. So, I started looking at the AMD Fusion Processors, specifically the Zacate E-350, which not only uses much less power than the Atom (18w!!) it has better performance and has the Graphics Processing Unit as part of the processor core.

The AMD Fusion E350 (Code named  Zacate) is a Dual Core 1.6Ghz processor with 1Mb of L2 cache. The GPU part of the die is an AMD Radeon HD 6310 GPU with 80 cores running at 492Mhz and DirectX-11 built in. 

Now I had to find a Motherboard with the E-350 and all the other features that I wanted. After comparing a bunch of MoBo’s I settled on the Asus E35M1-I Deluxe. Yes, almost the whole motherboard is covered by one massive heat sink!

ASUS E35M1-I DELUXE Fusion AMD E-350 APU Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo

 I also picked up:

G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Desktop Memory Model F3-8500CL7D-8GBRL More on this RAM later.

Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

LG Super-Multi Slim Blu-ray Combo Drive CT21N - Bulk

Antec ISK 300-65 Black Computer Case

And a Ceton InfiniTV4 Digital CableCard tuner (I eventually hope to be selling Ceton products direct from NEDMUG.com. That ought to tell you how I feel about the quality of their products. Since I never sell any products directly)

The installation of the motherboard into the case was dead simple the hard drive/optical drive trays come out with a thumb screw and 3 Phillips screws, giving you easy access to motherboard mountings.

After mounting the BD drive I installed the hard drive into the HDD tray, slid the tray into place and secured it to the optical tray with the thumb screw.

 Next, I installed the Ceton InfiniTV4 tuner card into the PCIe slot. This was made a little more difficult because all the front panel, SATA and audio connectors are VERY close to the PCIe slot. I had to make some awkward bends in the SATA cables to route them around the tuner card. But I got the card installed and the drives still appear to be working. ;-)

That completed the box build. Or, so I thought. I put the case cover on and screwed it down using 3 thumb screws. I then hooked up all the cables to the back. The brick power supply, Gb Ethernet, optical S/PDIF audio, HDMI and Digital CableTV cable.

I grabbed my Fios M-Card and was about to install it when I realized that the hinge piece that holds down the PCIe card was in front of the CableCard slot. It’s only by about 1/8”, but that’s enough to make the card not fit. I took a pair of needle nose pliers and bent the hinge up enough that it should have been out of the way, and then realized that the hinged cover itself is in the way now.

 I popped the case cover off and unscrewed the hinge and removed it. I used just a plain screw to hold down the tuner card. I put the cover back on and took a look at the back to see what removing the hinge did. Not much, there was a small ¼” gap at the top of the tuner card, not enough to worry about. It’s barely noticeable unless you look for it, and it shouldn’t affect air flow at all.

The size difference between this unit and the original is amazing! My old Media Center was a Full-Tower Thermaltake Armour that was originally built to house 4 tuner cards and 8 hard drives. When I built my Windows Home Server with 6 internal drive bays and the Rosewill RSV-S8 external drive bay, I took all but 2 of the drives out of the Media Center and moved them to the WHS. When I installed the Ceton InfiniTV4, I got rid of all the ATSC tuner cards that were in the Thermaltake case. Having that giant tower next to my TV was a complete waste of space and electricity.

I hooked the system up to my TV and Audio Receiver and started the Install. I’m moving the Xbox to the other side of the receiver.

I created a Windows 7 install thumb drive following my own procedure here and then installed windows and configured Media Center following this guide.

Once the Windows install is complete, you will need to install the drivers from the Asus Utilities DVD. Windows 7 will recognize most of the hardware, but the Fusion Processor is too new, you'll need to install the Video and Chipset drivers at a minimum.

After Windows was installed and Media Center configured I installed the Ceton Tuner software and drivers. I also did a firmware update on the tuner hardware, I had one of the first tuners released and had never updated the firmware. The new Ceton software makes this a simple process, just go to the update tab and hit Update Now. Once the software is installed and the firmware was updated, I started up Media Center and went into the Extras menu item and selected Digital Cable Advisor. Follow the step by step instructions.  You must do this step or Media Center will not use the cable tuner!

After the Digital Cable Advisor completes, you then go to the Tasks/Settings/Set up TV Signal menu and re-run the configuration. It should now detect 4 new Digital Cable Tuners, install the tuners and download the new guide.

 

The only additional software I installed was AnyDVD, ArcSoft Total Media Theater and MyMovies, to connect to my movie database on my home server. You can see that process here.

That’s all there is to the build.

But, I’ve been having a lot of Blue Screens and lockups with this unit. After doing a bit of research, I’ve come to find out that this motherboard is extremely picky about the type of RAM used and the speed settings of the RAM. The RAM that I used was listed on the G.Skill site as compatible, but not on the Asus HCL. The motherboard has a MemOK! button on it. If you hold the button while booting, it will go into a RAM testing mode. The system will try different speed setting to attempt to find a setting that will make the RAM compatible. I ran the tests and it did find setting that made the system more stable, but it’s still not quite there. I downloaded an updated Asus Qualified Vendor List (QVL) and ordered RAM that was on that list.

 This is the RAM I ordered. It is on the QVL:

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory

When it shows up, I’ll install it and update this post with the results.

UPDATE:

The new RAM arrived and I swapped out with the original RAM. 24hrs later and no BSOD! The system has been stable.

There's still a couple little bugs I have to work out.

When the TV monitor is turned off for several hours, the Media Center seems to sleep the video even though I have it set to "Never". To get the picture to display I hit the guide button on the remote and play a random LiveTV show, the video will wake up and be fine until the next time I turn off the TV for more than a few hours.

Here's the announcement from SlySoft:

In response to customer wishes SlySoft strikes a balance and announces
to continue lifetime subscription sales for a small additional fee.

SlySoft's year-end promotion included the announcement to discontinue
lifetime license sales in January 2011. This caused some turbulence
among our customers and even within the company. Developers wanted to
keep this option and management objected due to increased development
costs and the resulting inefficiency of lifetime licenses. Intense
discussions within the past few weeks have led to today's decision to
retain the lifetime license option for all customers, financed by an
aggressive austerity package and a small price increase affecting
only lifetime purchases, effective April 1st, 2011.

If you purchased AnyDVD HD in December because you wanted to get the lietime subscription before it ended, there's still good news for you, the price. The new price for AnyDVD HD is €119.00 or about $169.00

 Here's the full price list: U.S. Price Approximate

Price List

Products(Download Demo)	1 year	2 years	3 years	4 years	Lifetime
AnyDVD	€41.00($58.00)	€49.00($70.00)	€56.00($80.00)	€61.00($87.00)	€69.00($99.00)
AnyDVD HD	€63.00($89.50)	€79.00($112.00)	€93.00($132.00)	€103.00($146.50)	€119.00($169.00)
GameJackal	€22.60($32.00)	€29.00($41.00)	€34.60($49.00)	€38.60($55.00)	€45.00($64.00)
CloneDVD	€32.60($46.50)	€39.00($55.50)	€44.60($63.50)	€48.60($69.00)	€55.00($78.00)
CloneDVD Mobile	€32.60($46.50)	€39.00($55.50)	€44.60($63.50)	€48.60($69.00)	€55.00($78.00)
CloneCD	€32.60($46.50)	€39.00 ($55.50)	€44.60($63.50)	€48.60($69.00)	€55.00($78.00)

So, I think it’s time to go back to the basics for a new post.

Media Center is a Program.

Or rather it’s a collection of programs that are Media related. It’s a windows interface that makes watching TV, recording TV, Watching DVDs or BluRays, streaming movies direct from Netflix, playing photo slideshows or playing music from your TV or any computer or room in your home.

It’s a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) on steroids! It can do anything that the DVR you rent from your cable company can do, but it can do it faster, better, easier and CHEAPER. I’ve gotten rid of all the cable boxes in my house and replaced them with a single Media Center Computer and a couple Extenders.

Media Center has been available since 2002, where it came as a special edition called WindowsXP MediaCenter Edition. (referred to as MCE by users) MCE was available only as a complete operating system. It was usually available only on PCs built by Hewlett-Packard or Sony as an entertainment system. There were 2 major upgrades to MCE that added functionality, versions 2004 and 2005.

The next version was publicly available in Windows Vista. It came in Windows Home Premium and Windows Ultimate editions of Vista. (It was referred to as VMC by the community) Yes, it was there all along, and I bet you never even clicked on the icon, right? There was 1 major upgrade to VMC, it was called the TVPack. TVPack added a few new functions, like Internet TV and a new file format that supported HDTV.

The current version of Windows, Windows 7 also has Windows Media Center (Now called WMC) included in more editions, Ultimate, Home Premium, Professional and Enterprise. If you have one of these editions, then you HAVE Media Center.

Watching/Recording TV

The main and most popular function of Windows Media Center is its use as a DVR. You can get your live TV signal into the PC in a number of ways.

If you live close to your local TV stations, you can purchase an OTA(Over The Air) tuner and an antenna. You’ll be able to get all your local channels, that are in range, IN HIGH DEFINITION and FREE! Yes, I said FREE. There is no charge for OTA programming. OTA tuners come in 3 basic types, Internal card, Express Card or external USB. There are also 2 types of TV signal, NTSC which is no longer available in the U.S., and ATSC which is the current Digital signal type. If you are going to purchase an OTA tuner for the U.S., make sure it is ATSC. OTA tuners can receive/record 1 or 2 channels per tuner, depending on the tuner. If you want more channels, you can add more tuners. You can have up to 4 of any one type of tuner. So, you can have 4 OTA tuners AND 4 CableTV tuners, giving you a total of 8 channels you can watch/record AT THE SAME TIME! Can your Cable Company’s DVR DO THAT?

Here are a couple of tuners from Hauppauge available from Newegg.com:

Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950Q TV Tuner Stick/Hybrid Video Recorder with Remote Control 1191

Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 Dual TV Tuner / Encoder 1229

Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1500 Notebook Express Card 1195

 Once you install one of these tuners, you’ll need to run the Media Center Setup in order to use it. When the setup is complete and the guide data is downloaded, you’ll be able to watch TV or schedule it to record. Remember that the computer needs to be ON in order for the program to record.

The next most common way of getting a TV signal is CableTV and there are a couple ways of getting cableTV into the PC. If you have an OTA tuner that supports Clear QAM, you can plug your cableTV cable right into the OTA tuner and get some of the unencrypted cable channels through that tuner. But most cable companies are now encrypting almost all of the channels, so this may or may not work for you.

 Another way is to connect the Video Out from your cable box, to the Analog IN of the OTA tuner, you will also need an IR Blaster(That little red plastic piece you stick on the front) for the cable box, so that WMC will be able to change the channel. This works OK, but you can’t get HDTV this way, any programs that are HDTV from the cable box will be downscaled to standard definition.

The BEST way to get a TV signal from cableTV is to buy a PC CableCard tuner. The most popular CableCard tuner out right now is the Ceton InfinTV4, which lets you receive 4 cable channels at the same time, in HD, with full Digital Audio. The only downside to CableCard is that there is no OnDemand available for it. You’ll need to rent a CableCard from your cable company, they charge anywhere from $3-5 for the card, but since the Ceton Tuner can receive 4 channels with 1 card, that saves you the rental of 3 other cable boxes!

Did I say no OnDemand? Not entirely true. It is true that you can’t get the OnDemand from your cable company, but if you have a Netflix account, you can stream movies directly to your MediaCenter. The quality is very good too.

Playing Music

MediaCenter makes an excellent music player too. If you have MP3s, WMAs or other non-protected types of music, MediaCenter will let you play them, right from your TV with a WMC remote.

Playing Movies

MediaCenter contains a pretty good DVD player. You can just stick a DVD into your DVD drive and WMC will ask if you want to play it. If you want to create a movie library of ripped movies, you’re in luck! MediaCenter can play a ripped DVD directly from the hard drive and has a decent management application in the MovieLibrary.

If you want to play or rip BluRay movies, it’ll take a little more work, but it’s not very hard to get it to work.

See my post on Ripping, Storing and Playing BluRays here.

Pictures and slideshows

So you have hundreds of digital pictures? Put them all in the MyPictures folder on the hard drive and guess what? They show up in the Photos menu in MediaCenter. It’s that simple. If you put them in folders in MyPictures, they’ll be in separate folders in the Photos menu, so it’s easy to sort and find the right pictures.

Another cool feature in the Photos, is that you can create a playlist of music from the Music Library and use it as a soundtrack to a slideshow. How cool is that?

Using MediaCenter and TV from other locations in the house

I did say that I got rid of ALL the cable boxes in my house, didn’t I? Yep, MediaCenter can be “Extended” to other rooms by the use of devices called Extenders. There used to be single purpose Extenders available from a couple companies, but they’ve all stopped producing them. Why? Because the xBox360 has MC Extender built in, it’s cheaper and a better quality than any of the other extenders.

So, instead of putting a cable box in a room where you want to watch TV, you can put an xBox, connect it to the MediaCenter either wired or wireless and Voila! You can watch TV, Play Music, Play Slideshows and oh yeah, you can play xBox games on it! You can’t play any ripped DVDs or BluRays from the xBox without some work, but xBox also has the ability to play streaming movies direct from Netflix.

What about another computer? Can you watch TV from another PC? Well that’s been a bit of a sticking point with Microsoft, they have been avoiding making another PC an extender. But there are some things you CAN do. If you share the RecordedTV, Music, Photos and Movies folders, you can set them as search folders on another computer that has MediaCenter. So you can watch RecordedTV, play music, watch movies . . . but you can’t watch LiveTV from another PC unless you install a tuner in it. Personally, I only watch recorded TV so this wasn’t an issue for me.

So, now that you know what MediaCenter is and that you probably already HAVE IT, what’s stopping you from using it?

I will probably keep adding stuff to this post even after it's "Finished". If you want to see some topic added, leave me a note. e-mail: pstagman (at) nedmug.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/tyrstag

Table of Contents

Installing Windows

Prepping Windows for Media Center

Enabling AutoLogon

Disabling User Account Control

Creating a stripe set

Changing RecordedTV location

Install Windows Home Server Connector Client

Configuring Media Center

Checking ATSC Signal and Removing Channels

Windows Home Server / Media Center Integration

Increasing the LiveTV buffer Length

Increasing Analog Recording Quality

Enabling Concurrent Connections

Future Topics

Installing Windows

The first thing you need to do is install Windows. I installed it from a USB Thumb drive. If you don’t know how to make a USB Windows installation drive, check here.

Essentially the Windows 7 install is pretty straight forward. The only thing you may want to change is which drive you want to install to.

In my Media Center PC I have 2 – 250GB drives in a RAID1 that will be for Windows. The RAID1 is to protect the Operating System from a Hard Drive failure.

I then have 2 – 500GB drives that I’ll stripe with RAID0 to help bring up the drive speed for recording multiple HD streams.  

After Windows has installed, you will be presented with a couple configuration screens.

The first screen asks for a username. Since this is going to be a dedicated Media Center PC I just use the Username MCE (It’s from the old WindowsXP Media Center Edition name, it’s how the account was setup originally on my network, so I keep it.) That automatically creates a machine name of MCE-PC, which is how my Windows Home Server will recognize it.

The next screen is the Password Screen. Again, since this is a dedicated Media Center, so I just give it the password “password”. You need to have a password if you are going to connect to a Windows Home Server. Later I’ll show you how to use the Windows7 AutoLogon so that you won’t have to enter a password every time you start the PC.

The next screen asks you for the Installation Key. You can enter your key now. I prefer NOT to enter the key now. If I do something that I didn’t like while configuring the PC, I can rebuild it again without having to call Microsoft to enable the key again. I wait until the PC is configured the way I want and then enter the key. To bypass the key, just leave the entry blank and Un-Check the “Register automatically” check box.

The next screen asks you how you want to Protect your computer and handle Updates. I just hit “Use recommended setting”.

The next screen is the “Time and Date” Here you enter you correct Time and Date, also enter your timezone and whether you want the PC to automatically change for Daylight Savings.

If you had a network cable attached while installing, the next screen will ask you what type of network you are on. I use “Home”.

That should be all. Windows is now installed!

After install: Prepping for Media Center

The first thing I do after the install is to get the latest video driver for my video card. In my case I went to the Nvidia website and downloaded the latest driver.

If you’re using Media Center on a TV, you may need to resize the desktop so you can see the entire desktop on your TV screen. With Nvidia, you Right-Click anywhere on the desktop and select “Nvidia Control Panel” then click on the “Resize Desktop” option in the left hand pane.

This will bring up the Resize Desktop Tool. You move the sliders around to get the 4 arrows in the corners as close to the corners of the TV as you can.  

Then make sure that Windows is totally up to date. You can get to Windows Updates by clicking on the Start Marble, hover the mouse over All Programs and Windows Updates will appear in the list.

In my case there were 20 important updates and 37 optional updates.

Check the “Optional Updates” to see if there are any drivers for your hardware that you may need. Most of the Optional Updates were language packs that I don’t need. But I selected the Hauppauge drivers for my ATSC tuner cards. I didn’t select the Network Driver because I never have good luck with the network drivers from Windows Updates. I also didn’t select the Nvidia Driver because the one I manually went and downloaded is newer than the one on Windows Updates.

After the updates install, you should restart your PC. I’d recommend restarting even if the install didn’t tell you that you need to restart. Installing updates can leave some stuff in memory that can play havoc with a Media Center PC.

Now that I rebooted, Windows wanted me to enter my password. Let’s get rid of that now.

Enabling AutoLogon

To enable AutoLogin in Windows7 you click on the Start Marble and type netplwiz in the search.

That will bring up the “Advanced User Accounts” control. Un-check the “User must enter a user name and password to use this computer” check box and click apply.

A pop-up will appear asking for the current password for the user. Enter the password you use to log in to windows and hit OK. Then hit OK in the User accounts window.

You’re done! No more password prompts to log in to windows!

Disabling User Account Control 

Another thing I like to shut off on my Media Center is User Account Control (UAC). That’s the annoying Pop-Up that shows up every time you try to install something or make a change to the system. Again, I’m ONLY doing this on my dedicated Media Center PC, I keep UAC running on my other computers. (Disabling UAC makes you PC less safe! Only turn it off if you understand the risks.)

You get to UAC by clicking on the Start Marble and then selecting Control Panel.

Click on “User accounts and Family Safety”, “User Accounts”, then “User Account Control Settings”.

I move the slider to the “Never Notify” setting. You should decide how much you want Windows to notify you of changes.

Click OK, Windows will pop-up the UAC notice for the last time! X out of Control Panel.

Creating a stripe set

I said earlier that I had 2 – 500GB drives that were going to be in a stripe set for recording HD streams.

Why would you want a stripe set? Because of the performance increase that being able to write to several drives at once gives you. If you only have one Hard Drive, then all the data that you are writing to disk has to go through 1 controller and be written to 1 Hard Drive. If you are recording several High Definition TV streams at one time, that's an awful lot of data to try to cram to a single Hard Drive. You may end up with a "Bottleneck", where all your tuners are trying to send TV to the Hard Drive but the drive can't keep up, your video or audio may start to skip or freeze because the drive couldn't keep up.

With a stripe set, you have 2 or more Hard Drives acting as if they are a single drive. In the example below, I have 2 - 500GB Hard Drives acting like a single 1TB Hard Drive. When the tuners are recording the TV streams, the controllers will write the data to each drive in "Stripes". It will write a small amount to drive 1, then a small amount to drive 2, alternating back and forth between the drives. Data can be written to the drives almost twice as fast as a single drive. If you have more than 2 drives, the same striping occurs, the drives will be written to in sequence as fast as the tuners can send the data. The dis-advantage to a stripe set is that if ANY 1 drive fails, ALL the data on the stripe set is lost.

To create a stripe set, you have to add the drive to a set in Disk Management. To get to Disk Management you Right-Click on MyComputer and select “Manage”, in the Left hand Pane click on Disk Management under the Storage heading. Here you will see all the drives you have on your computer, including CD/DVD/BD and USB.

But first, I want to move around some Drive Letters. I want the new volume I’m creating to be “D”, so first I have to move the DVD an BluRay drive to different letters. Right-click on a drive you want to reassign a drive letter and select “Change Drive letter and path” Select the new drive letter. Say OK to the pop-up that asks if you’re sure about changing the drive letter.

Now we can create the stripe set

Scroll you drive list down to your first Unallocated drive, Right-Click on it and select “New Striped Volume”, that will bring up the “New Striped Volume Wizard”

Click Next, the Select Disks windows will pop-up showing you any unallocated drives that you have installed.

This screen can be a little confusing. When you add more disks, the Volume size changes, but not the “Amount of Space”. The Amount of space refers to how much OF EACH DISK should be used in creating the stripe, not of the entire volume. This is useful if you have different size disks. Say you have a 1TB disk and a 500GB disk. You want to create a strip set with these 2 drives, the MAXIMUM amount of space that can be allocated is 500GB which is the size of the smallest drive. So, the stripe will use 500GB from the 500GB drive, and 500GB from the 1TB drive. Hope that clears up that . . .

Once you have added all the drives for your stripe and set the drive space allocation, click next, here you can name the volume click next, select format options and drive letter.

Once the format is complete, you can close the disk management window.

You will probably want to create a folder on the new drive to store your RecordedTV in. Double-Click MyComputer, Double-Click the “D” drive you created. Right-Click in the Right Hand Window and select New -> Folder, Name your folder “Recorded TV”.

Done.

Changing RecordedTV location

Now that we created a stripe set, we want Media Center to actually use it. To do this you need to do a little bit of registry editing. (Be careful what you do in the registry, changing something you are not sure about can lead to VERY BAD THINGS!! And you could end up reinstalling windows again.)

To edit the registry, click on the Start Marble and type “Regedit”, hit enter. This will start up the registry editor. Now, if you’ve never been in the registry before, this gets tricky.

You will often see registry locations shorthanded as something like this:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Recording

What that means is to navigate through the registry like this:

Click on the + next to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE then SOFTWARE, then Microsoft, then Windows, then CurrentVersion, then  Media Center, then Service, then Recording.

Navigate to that Registry key using the left hand pane.

When you get there, Double-Click on “RecordPath” in the right hand pane. Enter the path to your “Recorded TV” folder. “D:\Recorded TV” and click OK.

Close out of the registry editor.

Install Windows Home Server Connector Client

If you have a Windows Home Server, now is a good time to install the connector. You can install it from a web browser, but I prefer to just install it from the “Software” folder on the server. Clcik on the Start Marble and in the search box type \\”name of your server”\software. My server is named “WHS” (original huh?) so I would type \\whs\software then double click on the “Home Server Connector Software” folder. Double-Click “Setup”. Follow the prompts for the wizard. It’s pretty easy, no screenshots here.

The Windows Home Server Connector also installs new Media Center Integration, when we start media center, we’ll be prompted to install it then.

Configuring Media Center

OK, so now we have all the preliminary stuff done. Let’s go ahead and fire up Media Center and do the basic configuration. What I have installed in the PC at the moment are 2 – Hauppauge HVR-1600s and 1 –  Hauppauge HVR-1850. I also have the Media Center IR receiver/blaster and a Harmony One remote. For a keyboard I have a Microsoft Wireless Bluetooth Entertainment Keyboard and Mouse model 7000.

The Media Center Configuration Wizard will fire up the first time you start Media Center.

I clicked on “Express”. Now I’ll click on the “Live TV Setup”

The first Screen asks for your Region. I’m going to pick United States.

Next it asks for your Postal Code. I entered mine.

Next is the Program Guide Terms of service.

Next is the Microsoft PlayReady End User license Agreement. PlayReady is the DRM engine that determines whether a program you watch has the NoCopy, CopyOnce or CopyFreely flag.

After you accept the EULA Media Center will do a few things on it’s own, like installing PlayReady, checking your tuners, finding your TV signals. This will take a while. When it’s done, it will show you the Results window. In my case it was correct, I have 3 Digital ATSC tuners enabled. So I hit Next and then Next again to confirm.

Media Center then does some magic on it’s own again, Updating PlayRead, Downloading Guide Data. When it’s done, you’re all set! Media Center is configured to use your tuners!

At this point I only have an antenna connected to the tuners, later I'll add 2 DirectTV Set Top Boxes.

That matches what I have in my system. So I'm going to check Yes and hit Next.

Checking ATSC Signal and Removing Channels

BUT! Media Center configured your tuners based on the guide, it setup all the channels that are in your area, whether or not you can actually receive them (or want that channel). So, we are going to go into the setting and see what we have for signal strength and remove any channels that are not strong enough or we don’t want.

From the main Media Center menu, go to Tasks, Settings

Then scroll down to TV

Then TV signal

Then “Digital TV Antenna Signal Strength”

Here you will see all your tuners listed. Select your first tuner and hit Next.

On this screen you will see all you guide channels and their signal strength. (Be aware that signal strength changes during the day due to weather and even the position of the Sun and Moon. No really, it does!) Try the signal test at different times of day to see for yourself. Your best signal will probably be early evening just after the Sun goes down.

Uncheck any channels that show a weak (Yellow or Red) signal. You can try to keep the channels in Yellow, the signal may get better at different times of day. Also uncheck any channels that you don’t want in your guide. Shopping channels!!! Eesh . . .

I also uncheck the “Apply changes to the remaining tuners in this group” Check box. I find that different tuner models get a different enough signal that some will receive a channel that another won’t and vice versa. So if you have a tuner that shows a weak signal on a channel you want, check your other tuners, they may have a better signal!!

Your Off-Air ATSC tuner setup is now complete!

Media Center Only Mode

If you’d like your Media Center to act more like a Set-Top-Box, there’s a couple settings you can make.

Go into Tasks, then Settings, then General, then “Startup and Windows Behavior”.

If you check the Always keep Windows Media Center on Top, then users won’t be able to get out of Media center to get to the desktop. If you need to get to the desktop, go back in and uncheck the box, then you will be able to use window like normal.

The other setting is “Start Windows Media Center when Windows starts”, which means that as soon as windows boots to the desktop, Media Center will start. If you check both of these options then Media Center will behave like a Set-Top-Box and will start up on windows boot and will not be able to get to the desktop. I usually check the start Media Center with windows option, but not the keep Media Center on top.

Windows Home Server / Media Center Integration

I missed grabbing a screenshot of the pop-up in Media Center, But it just tells you to go to Start, All Programs and find the installer. Click on the connector and it will bring up the installer wizard.

The first screen asks for your Home Server Administrator Password. Type it in and click Next. The install will take a little while to find your server and install the connector.

When the install is complete, you will be asked to restart the computer. The install makes several registry changes and also some Media Paths. Click Done to reboot or check the “Do not restart now” box to keep the installer from rebooting your PC. I let it reboot.

To see what the Media Center Connector does and how to use it, see this post.

 Increasing the LiveTV buffer Length

If you're like me, you're a busy person. You may get caught up on the phone doing family tech support or have to go run an errand for a period of time, you come back to watch tv, only to find that you can't rewind the TV back to where you first got sidetracked. The LiveTV buffer in Windows 7 Media Center is only around 30 minutes. If you're gone longer than that . . . oh well, guess you miss whatever ever happened on Lost!

But, you can do a little registry hacking to increase the LiveTV buffer!

Open the Registry Editor by clicking on the Start Marble and typing "regedit".

Navigate to the registry key:  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners

 You're going to add 3 new Values

"BackingStoreEachFileDurationSeconds" - Defines how many seconds of TV each buffer stores. Default is 300
"BackingStoreMaxExistingBackingFiles" - Defines how many files to create. Default is 8
"BackingStoreMaxNumBackingFiles" - Defines the max number of files. Default is 8

Add each of the values to the Registry key by Right-Clicking in an empty spot in the Right Hand pane, Select "New" -> Dword. Either type in the Value Name exactly as it appears above, or Copy/Paste it directly from here.

 To increase the Buffer time, you can change either the seconds for each buffer file, or the number of files. personally I like to keep the number of files down so I keep it at 8 and increase the time to 900 seconds per file. Giving me  2 hours of buffer. 900seconds * 8=7200 seconds / 60=120min

Double-Click "BackingStoreEachFileDurationSeconds", Change the "Base" to Decimal and enter 900 in the "Value Data"

Double-Click on each of the other values you created and change them to "Decimal" 8.

You need to reboot for the changes to take effect.

You're done! You now have 2 hours of LiveTV Buffer!

Increasing Analog Recording Quality

In order to make Media Center compatible with as many systems as possible, Microsoft sets the default recording bitrates a little lower than the optimum. If you want to get better quality out of your Analog recordings (S-video, Composite, Coax), you can change the default bitrates.

Open up the Registry Editor by clicking on the Start Marble and type "regedit"

Navigate to the registry key:  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Recording

That's the same key that you set the RecordedTV location. Instead of modifying the location we're going to modify the BitRates by changing the value: EncodingQuality

 The 4 values that are listed here equate to the 4 "Recording Quality" settings - "Fair", "Good", "Better", "Best". The numbers are in BPS or Bits per Second. So, when set for Best quality, you are getting a bitrate of 7.5 Megabits per Second, that's not bad, but most high quality analog streams are more in the range of 9 - 10 Megabits per Second. I like to increase the Best quality to around 9.5 Megabits per Second.

The easiest way to make this change is to Double-Click on the "EncodingQuality" value in the registry, adding 9500000 to the bottom of the list, and deleting the top value. That increases all the values by 1-2Mb a Second!

The new settings should look like this:

Close out of the registry and reboot!

 Enabling Concurrent Connections:

Enabling Concurrent Sessions allows you to Remote Desktop into a system that someone else is on, under a different user account, and access the system without kicking the user off.

This is really useful if you have Media Center running on a TV. You can use remote desktop from a laptop or another PC to remote manage your Media Center without interupting someone watching TV. Unless you do something that requires a reboot.

MissingRemote has been the leader in getting this to work and updating it whenever there's been a windows change that breaks it. So, rather than writing a whole new post, I'll link to their post.

Enabling Concurrent Connections in Media Center

Future Topics:

Adding a Set Top Box

Fake HD - Getting a 16x9 picture from an HD Set Top Box using S-Video

Adding a Media Center Extender

Install AnyDVD

Install Arcsoft TotalMedia Theater

Install MyMovies

Install HD-PVR

Enter Scottevest. They have a line of Jackets, Hoodies, Vests and even Cargo Pants and shorts with the Gadget Guru's in mind.

I just got my first Scottevest Essential Jacket. It was a gift from Microsoft at the MVP Summit back in February. I had never heard of Scottevest before. 

The sleeves of the jacket unzip to convert it into a lightweight vest.

The first thing you notice about the jacket is that there are a Gazillion pockets (ok, there's 19). The pockets are all different sizes and shapes. Each pocket has a business sized card in it telling you what the pocket was designed for. There are pockets inside the jacket on either side that use clear, touch sensitive material to hold your phone and MP3 player and won't interfere with the touch screen. I have my ZuneHD on one pocket and my iPhone in the other. The material works perfectly, the touch screens work just fine through the material. There's also a clear ID/Card pocket.

All of the pockets Zip closed and some have Magnets to hold the pocket closed in a breeze if unzipped.

The other pockets are:

• A sunglass pocket with a  "Chamois" tether. It's a cord attached to the pocket with an alligator clip at the end to store you glass cleaner cloth.
• A Key pocket with a removeable keychain holder.
• A "PubPocket".  This pockets big enough to hold a magazine or even a Kindle.
• Travel Document pocket for boarding passes, passport, bag checks . . .
• A Water Bottle elastic to hold a standard sized water bottle upright in the pocket.
• 2 Pen pockets, one on either side of the main zipper.
• Memory stick pockets.
• Hidden Side Seam pocket. It's hard to find unless you know it's there.
• Hand Warmer pockets.
• Change pocket inside the Hand Warmer pockets.
• A pocket inside a pocket. One of the handwarmer pockets can zip in the middle to turn it into 2 seperate pockets to keep you gadgets from banging into each other.

All of these pockets are placed in a way that they stay pretty flat even when full. The jacket also has a weight management system to keep heavy items from making the coat sag to either side.

The other features of this Jacket are the PAN (Personal Area Network). All of the pockets have a reinforced hole sewn into the pocket liner, that has access to the inner liner of the jacket. This is for running wires between the pockets.

There's also a wire management system for earbuds, one set for your MP3 Player and one for your phone. It's a series of clips and conduits that go from the pocket all the way to the collar. You can run the earphone wire up to the collar and then to each side of the jacket, where there are special "BudPockets" to store your earbuds where they won't just dangle and get damaged.

I've been wearing the Jacket for a few weeks now and I'm loving it. Even with all the gadgets I normally carry around, I'm not filling the pockets. I keep a set of earbuds wired into the jacket and have another set for when I'm not wearing my Scottevest. I could remove them easily enough, but again if you're like me you have 57 pairs of earbuds kicking around anyway, so I just keep my best set wired in there.

I keep a stack of business cards in the ID pocket and my FlipVideo camera in the camera pocket. I haven't found uses for some of the pockets yet, but I'm sure I will.

If you carry as much stuff as I do and always having a hard time fitting it all into your jacket, then Scottevest might just be for you too. You can buy yours direct from the Scottevest website.

What's so cool about the connector? 3 words - "Automatic RecordedTV Archiving"! I used to have lots of very large hard drives in my Media Center, I would record many TV shows and watch them when I had time. Sometimes there would be Terabytes of TV on my Media Center. If I wanted to keep the shows, I would manually move the show to my Windows Home Server. Since installing Power Pack 3, I have moved all the large drives to the Windows Home Server and only have a few 500GB drives in the Media Center. I let the TV Archive function handle the moving of the files.

 In this post I'll go through all the new menus that are added to Media Center, what they mean and what the settings are for.

Installation

If you're familiar with Windows Home Server, you know about installing the Windows Connector software. What the connector software does is configure your PC for use with Windows Home Server. It configures Backups, Security, Library and Shared Folders. After the installation of the new Power Pack 3 connector, if you start up Media Center you will be notified by a PopUp that there is also a new Media Center Connector and you have the option to Install it or Cancel.

What happens when you install it is not obvious at first. The first thing that happens is that the following folders are added to the Media Center Search folders.

• Music Library --> \\HomeServer\Music
• Pictures & Video --> \\HomeServer\Photos
• Recorded TV --> \\HomeServer\RecordedTV

Whatever is placed into those folders on the Windows Home Server will now show up in the Media Center Menus. One of the things that may not be obvious at first is that ANY Media Center that is connected to the Home Server has access to the RecordedTV folder. That means that you can have one Media Center with multiple tuners recording shows and play them from other Media Centers on the network. Other PCs, Laptops, Extenders . . .

The next thing you may or may not notice is that there is a new "Home Server" menu strip. With 2 items, "TV Archive" and "Console View"

Console View

 I'll cover the "Console View" first. There is nothing you can "DO" in any of the Console View menus. It's informational only.

The first screen is the "Storage" screen. It shows you a pie chart of your storage usage on you Windows Home Server.

The next screen is "Drives", it shows you a list of the drives that are included in the drive pool and their Health Status.

Next is "Backup Status". here you can see a list of all the PC's on your network that are configured to be backed up. Whether the last backup was successful or a warning about machines that have no recent backups. (You can see here that I have a few PC's that have no recent backups. One is my daughter, who's away in college. The other is my wife's PC that she hasn't turned on since I bought her a laptop. I keep the backups Just in case)

Next is "Shared Folders". This screeen shows you the folders that are shared on the Home Server, if they have duplication enabled and the status of the duplication if you have it enabled.

Next is "Media Counts", this screen tells you how many media files of each type you have on the server and an estimate of how many more will fit based on an average of file sizes and remaining drive pool space.

The next screen is "Health", it will show you any warnings from the Home Server. Here you see that my Dell laptop hasn't been backed up in a while.

The last screen in "Console View" is the "Windows Home Server" view. It shows you the make/model of the Motherboard of your Home Server and a serial number if supported by you MoBo.

TV Archive

This is the real brilliance of the Home Server Connector! In these menus, you can define what programs are archived to the Home Server, manually or automatically, if they will be compressed and in what format they'll be saved.

The first screen is the "Series" screen. Here you can see the various series that you have selected to be recorded from the Guide. If you check the checkmark, any shows that were previously recorded and any recorded from now on, will automatically be moved to the RecordedTV folder on the Home Server.

The next screen is the "Programs" screeen. This menu shows you TV that you have recorded, but are not part of a Series. Here you can select an individual show to be archived manually.

The last screen off the main menu is "Settings". In this screen you define how the archives are treated.

If "Archive all recordings automatically" is checked. The "Series" and "Programs" setting won't matter. All recorded shows will be moved to the Home Server.

The "Move recordings to my home server" turns the archive function off. If neither of the first 2 options are checked, no recordings will be moved.

The "Create a compressed copy for:" option creates an additional Compressed copy of the program for use on the TV, Windows Mobile or Zune. The "Save compressed copy to:" option allows you to tell the connector where to save the new compressed file. The options are "Home Server Videos" Folder or the "Local Videos" folder.

The "Activity" screeen is available from any of the other menus. This screen shows you the activity of the Connector, any shows that are currently being transferred/compressed, files that are queued and any files that failed to transfer.

That's it for the settings and menus.

 Conclusion.

These may seem like very simple enhancements, but these are things that the Media Center community has been asking for and some of them were available previously with hacks. Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 shows what can be done with integrating Home Server and Media Center. I hope this is just the start of things to come!

clubhouse, media center-windows 7, settings

I don't rip EVERY movie I own, only movies that I like to watch a lot. I rip the movies that I do because I like to be able to play them at a moments notice, without having to search through hundreds of disks on shelves and in boxes. And it's pretty cool to have friends over, talk about some movie and be able to pull it up and play it within a minute.

Also, this is not the ONLY way to rip and play Blu-Ray, it's just MY way. If you know another way and it works for you, that's great!

A little about my system:

This is probably the first in a series of posts about my system. I'm planning on doing posts on building each piece seperately. Since this article is on ripping Blu-Rays, I won't be talking about Tuners or recording TV.

My Media Center is next to my HDTV, it's connected to the TV with an HDMI Cable, audio is connected to my Onkyo TX-SR703 with a TOSLink cable. Inside the Media Center:

• Core2 Quad 2.4Ghz processor
• ASUS GeForce 9600 GT EN9600GT/DI/512MD3 Video Card
• 1 - Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 250GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive for the OS
• 3 - Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive Striped RAID 0 for RecordedTV
• LG Black BD-Combo SATA Model CH08LS10 LightScribe Support BD drive for Ripping and Playing Blu-Rays

Windows Home Server

• 1 - DANE-ELEC DA-SDM25-80G-N-T-MK 1.8" with 2.5" adapter SSD Migration Kit Solid State is the way to go for a WHS OS drive! Boots in 15 seconds.
• 6 - Seagate Barracuda LP 1.5TB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive -Bare Drive
• Rosewill RSV-S8 SATA 3G 3.5" HDD 8-Bay RAID 0/1/10/5/JBOD Storage Enclosure System 
• 4 - Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
• FYI: Ripping Blu-Ray uses LOTS of drive space!!!

 Laptop - Asus G Series ASUS G Series G51Vx-X3A Intel Core 2 Duo 15.6" NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M NoteBook 

 My Network is wired and wireless. I have a GB switch in the backroom, Cat6 running around the house. I also have a Wireless N Access Point for Laptops and guests. I rip DVDs wirelessly, it works fine. There's no BD drive in the laptop so I don't know if ripping BD disks will work well over the wireless network.

What you'll need:

• SlySoft AnyDVD-HD (Pay)
• SlySoft VirtualCloneDrive (FREE)
• CyberLink PowerDVD 9 Ultra(Download) (Pay)
• MyMovies for Windows Home Server (FREE)
• MyMovies for MediaCenter (FREE)
• MyMovies Collection Management (FREE)

Install the various software on your computers, server and/or laptop as needed. I'm not going into the installation of each software. I'll do seperate posts for those.

Windows Home Server setup:

• MyMovies for Windows Home Server
• Created a share called "Movies"

Media Center Setup:

• MyMovies for Media Center installed as "Client Only"
• AnyDVD-HD
• VirtualClone-Drive
• PowerDVD 9 Ultra

Laptop Setup:

• MyMovies "Collection Management" Only
• AnyDVD-HD

Ripping and Managing the Movies

Ok, so once you have the Software installed as shown above. You can place the BD disk you want to rip into you BD-Drive. (Sometimes PowerDVD will start and try to play the disk, even if you have gone into options and disabled autoplay. I don't know why. It just does. Just close out of it.)

If you have AnyDVD installed correctly, you should see a balloon help saying "AnyDVD is scanning the inserted disk) Once it completes, you can Right Click on the Foxhead icon on the taskbar and select "Rip to image. . ."

Select the Blu-Ray drive you want to rip from and the destination of folder to place the ISO file.

Once you have selected the drive and folders click "Copy DVD". Depending on the speed of the drive, it could take an hour or more for the image ISO to be created.

 Once the image is created, you can click the "Close" button in AnyDVD. You're done with it.

Open MyMovies Collection Management and click on "Title"/"Add Titles"

Choose the search method, you can search by Barcode, Disc ID, Title or Type in all the information yourself. I usually search by Title.

 Select the correct Movie from the search results. (Here you see that there are 2 results that look the same, I think that's because 2 different people added the same movie to the MyMovies service with slightly different data. Barcode, format, edition or something else. You might have to preview the results to decide which one.) Click the "Add Online" button to add the movie to your collection. Choose the folder that you saved the ISO file to.

After the movie has been added to your collection, you need to change the disc location from "Online Folder" to "Online File" and choose the location of the ISO.

 Once you've changed the File location click OK, and "Save Title" at te bottom of the main "Collection" screen.

There are some other settings that you can change that affect the way Media Center will display your added titles. I'll go into all those settings in an upcoming post on MyMovies.

Once you've made any changes you want to make. You can start up Media Center and navigate to the MyMovies menu strip. It can sometimes take a while to load up the MyMovies database. The more titles you have the longer it will take.

Once you've found the title that you want to play. You can either hit the "Play" button on your remote, or you can click on the title to see the Metadata.

When you hit Play, MyMovies will automatically mount the ISO file using VirtualClone-Drive. (As long as it's detected. If you haven't installed it, you'll get an error message.) After the ISO is mounted, PowerDVD will automatically start playing the movie.

When the movie is over (or you hit Stop) you'll be be back at the PowerDVD PlayMovie screen. Hit the Eject button on the left side of the screen. (If you don't eject the ISO, and you keep playing movies, MyMovies will keep mounting the ISO's using new drive letters. E:, F:, G:, H: . . .)

That's all there is to it!

I hope this post helped!

Seeya in the next post.

clubhouse, media center-windows 7, settings

But then I started Ripping my DVD movie collection and that 3TB was being used up pretty fast. So I swapped out those 6 500GB drives for 6 1.5TB drives for a 9TB drive pool! That would surely last me for a long time!

But that was not the end! Oh no, then came 2 new drive space munchers!

1. Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 with it's new ability to automatically "Archive" recorded TV shows from Media Center. Since I'm an avid MC user and DVR damn near everything, every day more and more TV was being moved to the Windows Home Server.
2. Blu-Ray! I started getting all my movies in Blu-Ray High Definition, and since I hate having to handle disks when I can just keep them stored on a server, I began Ripping all my new movies to ISO files. Each movie takes approx 40GB!

Here we go again. That 9TB of drive space is nearing the end. But my 6 Hard Drive bays are full of 1.5TB drives. I could swap them out with 2TB drives, but that would be pretty expensive to only get a 1/3 increase in drive space. So I started looking at External Enclosures.

After looking at 10 or so different enclosures I settled on the Rosewill RSV-S8.

I purchased it on Newegg.com for $309.99:
Rosewill RSV-S8 SATA 3G 3.5" HDD 8-Bay RAID 0/1/10/5/JBOD Storage Enclosure System

It's an 8 bay SATA-II enclosure. It comes with a 2-port eSATA controller card and a Port Multiplying Backplane. The controller card is a PCIe x1 card, it comes with an optional half height bracket. Included in the box:

1 - RSV-S8 (Sil3726 chipset)
1 - PCIe x1 slot card (Sil3132R5) & Optional half height bracket
2 - eSATA Cable
1 - AC cable
32 - HDD Screws
1 - Setup installation & Driver Disk
1 - Software User Manual. (No hardware setup instructions)

The unit supports RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 and JBOD. Since I was planning on using Drive Balancer, RAID didn't matter to me.

I read through the Reviews on Newegg before purchasing the unit. Most of the negative reviews dealt with:

1. Packaging - For me it came packed double boxed, with air bags all around the unit. Rosewill must have heard the complaints and redesigned the packaging.
2. Mac support - Not going in a Mac, so I didn't care.
3. RAID Management software - I wasn't going to install the software. I planned on using the Windows Home Server Drive Balancer, so, RAID wasn't important to me at all.

While unpacking, the first thing I was impressed with the unit. It was smaller than I thought it would be. It's only 13.5" High, 13.5" Deep and 6" Wide, which makes it only slightly larger than a Hewlett-Packard MediaSmart Server!

Here's a pic of an HP MediaSmart Server Next to a RSV-S8 in my Server Cabinet. (For Size comparison ONLY! You cannot add this unit to an HP MediaSmart Server! My actual WHS box is on the shelf above.) You need to be able to install a PCIe card in the server.

I pulled 4 of the trays out and put my old 500GB drives into them. There were some complaints on Newegg that the trays could be damaged by not lining them up into the tracks correctly. That was true, if you don't get the trays lined up just right, they can become wedged into the tracks and bent. I put them back in very carefully to make sure I didn't bend them.

(edit) Once I closed the drive tray lever I had to give the tray a gentle push to seat it all the way in. This seems to be a problem with all SATA drive trays, they don't seat all the way in unless you give them a gentle nudge. Thanks to whoever it was that reminded me of that!

I shut down my Windows Home Server and popped open the case. I installed the controller card with no problems.

Then I grabbed the 2 eSATA cables. They are about 3 feet long so I had no problem running them between the units. The Back of the RSV-S8 has the 2 ports marked "Port 1" & "Port 2" with Port 1 on the top. The back of the controller had no markings, so I decided to open the case back up and see if there were any markings on the card. Good thing I checked, on the card Port 1 is on the bottom.

Once I had the cables run correctly, I buttoned everything back up and turned the RSV-S8 power on. I waited a few seconds then turned the Windows Home Server on. No smoke or bright flashes so, I guess everything was hooked up right.

I popped the provided driver CD-ROM into the Windows Home Server and from my laptop I RDP'd into the Administration Console of the Windows Home Server. I cancelled the autorun since I didn't want to install the RAID Management software.

I went into device manager and found the RAID Controller listed under "Other devices". I clicked on "Update Driver" and browsed the CD to find the Driver/Windows/32bit folder. Installed the correct driver and within seconds the controller was correctly found and the 4 drives I had installed were detected.

I then opened the Windows Home Server Management Console, the 4 "New" drives were listed there as "Non-Storage Hard Drives, Not Added" I clicked on each drive and added them.

Total installation time from unpack to up and running was less than 1 hour!

Another thing to mention is how QUIET the unit is. It has a 300Watt power supply and a 120MM fan. With the 4 drives running I can barely hear it. When I first turned it on, I could hear the drives spin up, but once they were up, it was very quiet.

Since I never installed the RAID Software I can't comment on the ease of use or even whether or not it works. But the RSV-S8 worked exactly the way I hoped it would. It was easy to install, the drivers worked great and my Windows Home Server has more storage space and still some free bays for the future!

If the $309.99 price tag is too much for you, there are a couple of other Rosewill options:

The RSV-S5 5-bay unit for $199.99 :

 And the RSV-S4-X 4-bay unit for $149.99:

Please leave a message for Norm, Lindsay & Clay or Pete & Donna below the story.

I don't normally post blogs that are not Media Center or Security related. But I had to write this blog about Clay Buchholz and the great thing he and his fiancee Lindsay Clubine did for a very sick old man.

My wife is a nurse who works for a Hospice service, she travels around visiting and checking in on patients who are extremely sick. Very few live longer than a few months.

One of her patients, Norman, is a WWII veteran who fought in the "Battle of the Bulge". He has very few family and doesn't have visitors often. Norman is about 90 years old and has cancer. He's a HUGE Boston Red Sox fan and told my wife that he hasn't been to a game in many many years.

My wife wanted to do something nice for Norman. She started asking around if anyone could get a baseball with an autograph from ANY Red Sox player. It didn't matter who signed it, but she wanted something from the Red Sox to give to him. It was a couple weeks after she started looking that she finally mentioned it to me. I said, "Let me ask on Twitter if anyone I know can help out." I sent out SEVERAL messages on Twitter asking if anyone could help out. (Sorry to the people I annoyed and thanks to the people that ReTweeted and helped out!) After almost a week of getting no where, someone said to me, "Why don't you ask Lindsay?". Lindsay Clubine is a Deal or no Deal model (#26 http://www.nbc.com/Deal_or_No_Deal/models/lindsay.shtml). She is also engaged to Red Sox pitcher Clay Buchholz (http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/team/player.jsp?player_id=453329).  I "know" her from the work I have been doing with the Follow me to Bliss reality show (Http://www.followmetobliss.com) but I had never met her in person and only had very brief e-mail contact with her. I didn't want to ask her to talk to Clay for me. So, I kept looking around for another way to do this. After another week of no luck, my wife came home from work and told me that Norman's health was getting worse and he probably didn't have very long. I decided I had no choice now but to ask Lindsay for help.

 I sent a message through a few other people that know her much better than I do, to ask her if this is something she'd be willing to do. She contacted me and said, "I'm on a shoot in Puerto Rico, but I'll be talking to Clay tonight. I'll ask him".  A day or so later I got an e-mail from Lindsay, "Clay says that he would be more than happy to get Norman a signed ball and if we can wait he would even visit!". I wrote back that that would be fantastic! and to let me know when. Lindsay said, "When I get back from Puerto Rico and Clay is in Boston." I just said "OK".

A couple days later my wife came home and said that Norman is getting even worse and probably has less than a week left.

Back to the e-mail. I contacted Lindsay again and told her about Norman's condition. She replied that she would see what she can do. Later that day she e-mailed saying that Clay has the ball and he can call Norman the next morning!

I sent Lindsay the contact info so Clay could talk to Norman. Lindsay replied that she got the info but hadn't heard from Clay and didn't know whether he had the ball or where I could pick it up. The Red Sox were playing a game in Boston that night and she wouldn't be able to talk to him until after the game.

I was starting to panic a little since my wife had already made arrangements with the home where Norman was staying, to expect a call from Clay. I wrote back to Lindsay to please let me know ASAP when she heard from Clay. I had business trip the next day and wouldn't be able to pick up the ball!

I got an e-mail from Lindsay around 11:30PM after the game was over.

"He left it at will call tonight, but he was so busy at the field he didn't have a chance to text me letting me know. Anyways they are only home tomorrow and they go on the road. Can you please have someone go to Fenway and pick up the ball at will call?
Also Clay is calling Norm in the morning, but he is very nervous about it. He doesn't know what to say. I told him to just be a friendly voice. "

 Tomorrow? At Fenway? Oh Shit! I'll be in New York all day!

Again I was in a panic session trying to figure out how to pick up this ball! It was already 11:45PM and I couldn't find anyone in the Boston area still online that could pick it up. I left a Twitter Direct Message to Wil Porter (another person I met through Follow me to Bliss) to call me in the morning. He doesn't live or work far from Fenway Park.

He called me while I was on the road to NY and I told him the situation. He said he would be glad to help. WHEW! I called my wife and gave her Wil's phone number. I asked her if she was going to be with Norman when Clay called. She said, "No, I have a meeting." Oh Crap!

Later in the day (Not sure when, the day turned into a blur) I got a call from Wil, "I went to the 'Will Call' window but it's closed. It doesn't open until just before the game starts. So, I went to the ticket window and they had no idea what I was talking about. I went to the Red Sox offices and they said they don't do that. I'll try the 'Will Call' later when it's open."

I called my wife to tell her that we didn't have the ball! I also asked her if Clay had called Norman. She told me that she didn't know but, she was heading to the Home and would call me from there.

When my wife got to the Home and had a chance to talk to Norman's nurse and to Norman, she called me.

The nurse at the home said there were a lot of "Uh-huh, yeah yeah, uh-huh" from Norman, But his eyes LIT UP and he was smiling from ear to ear!
She said Clay talked to him for like 15-20 minutes! So great of him to take so much time.
 
When my wife went to talk to Norman. She asked him "Did you get a call today?"
Norman, "Yeah! It was someone from the Redsox! But I don't remember who..."
Donna, "Was it Clay Buchholz?"
Norman, "Yeah! He's a pitcher! He's pitching tonight! I'm gonna watch the game!"
Donna said he was smiling and very excited about it.

I was driving home from New York thinking that everything was going great when I got a call from Wil. "I just went to the 'Will Call', they don't have the ball and don't know anything about it! I'm heading back to the offices to see if they know anything new. Call you back"

Oh No! Not again . . .

I called my wife to tell her what Wil said. While I was telling her, Wil called again. I switched over hoping that Wil had good news. It wasn't. . . No Ball, no one knew anything about it. he was going to leave. Then suddenly "Hold On! Let me call you right back!"

Switched back to my wife to tell her there was no ball. I told her to try to get a message to Lindsay to see if she could tell us where to get the ball.

About 15 minutes after I hung up with my wife I got a call from Wil.

"I got it."

Me, "The ball? You got it?"

"Yup"

Me, "Awesome! Is it signed by Clay?"

"By Clay and a bunch more."

Me, "More? Who else signed it?"

"Dunno, Can't read a lot of them, But I think I see Youk." (Kevin Youkilis for you non Red Sox fans)

Me, "No way, that's cool!"

To make a long story short . . . I know . . . Too Late. I met up with Wil and got the ball. Donna and I went to a sports memorabilia store and bought a stand for the ball. When I got home I looked at the ball. Here's a list of the Autographs on it. (In no order, Just the way I read them)

#61 Clay Buchholz      P
#46 Jacoby Ellsbury    CF
#31 Jon Lester             P
#12 Jed Lowrie            SS
#15 Dustin Pedroia      2B
#56 Ramon Ramirez    P
#62 Hunter Jones         P
#20 Kevin Youkilis      1B/3B
#63 Justin Masterson   P

Update

We delivered "The Ball" to Norm today. I took pictures, but because we don't have permission from his healthcare proxy, I can't post them.

He looked at it and said "Oooh, that's nice."

Donna, "Norm, want me to read the names to you?"
Norm, "Ok"
Donna, "The first one is Clay Buchholz"
Norm, "Pitcher. I talked to him you know!"
Donna, "I know! Cool huh?"
Norm, "Yeah"

Donna, "Jacoby Ellsbury"
Norm, "Center"

Donna, "Jon Lester"
Norm, "Pitcher"

Donna, "Jed lowrie"
Norm, "ummmmm"
Donna, "Shortstop?"
Norm, "Yeah! Shortstop"

Donna, "Dustin Pedroia"
Norm, "Pedey, 2nd base"

Donna, "Right! Ramon Ramirez"
Norm, "Don't know"
Donna, "Pitcher"
Norm, "Oh, ok"

Donna, "Hunter Jones"
Norm, "No"
Donna, "Pitcher"
Norm, "Lot of pitchers"

Donna, "Yes, Kevin Youkilis"
Norm, "Yoouuuuuk"
Donna, "That's right! Youuuuk! Justin Masterson?
Norm, " 'Nother pitcher"
Donna, "That's right! That's all of them, pretty nice huh?
Norm, "Very nice."

Norm started falling asleep in a few minutes. So, we said our goodbyes and let him sleep.

Pictures of "The Ball"

Clay Buchholz, Jacoby Ellsbury, Jon Lester

Jed lowrie, Dustin Pedroia

Ramon Ramirez, Hunter Jones, Kevin Youkilis

Justin Masterson

I want to give extra special thanks to everyone who helped make this happen!!

To: Clay Buchholz & Lindsay Clubine, You guys are awesome to take the time to do something like this for someone you never met and make him so happy with the little time he has left.

--Pete

Leave a comment for Clay, Lindsay or Norman and I'll make sure they see it!

 FYI, All of the people involved in getting this done met on Twitter. So much for "Nothing gets done on social media!"

http://twitter.com/tyrstag - Me

http://twitter.com/wilporter - Wil Porter

http://twitter.com/Lindzy45 - Lindsay Clubine

http://twitter.com/followmetobliss - Follow me to Bliss

http://twitter.com/scottempringham - Scott Empringham - Follow me to Bliss

clubhouse, media center, windows media center, how-to, Tip

Follow Pete on Twitter! http://twitter.com/tyrstag

How to connect your new Astaro firewall to your network

So you’ve followed the directions from Part 1 and you have a working firewall with 3 network cards. But, you haven’t been able to get into the firewall to configure it. How do you connect it to your network?

Ok, the first thing you need to do is figure out which NIC is which, but until you can get connected on one of them, there’s no way to know for sure which NIC is which.

The first thing you will need to do is to make sure you are on the same network as the Astaro. In Vista, the easiest way to do this is to click on the Start Marble, Right click on “Network”, Left Click “Properties”. This will bring up the “Network and Sharing Center”. On the left side of the “Network and Sharing Center”, under “Tasks” click on “Manage Network Connections”

 You will probably have a lot less connections than I do. I’m running the Astaro Software in a Virtual Machine on the same computer that I’m writing this on.

Find the connection that shows a connection. It will probably say “Local Area Connection”. Right click on the Connection and Click “Properties”.

Double Click on “Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)”. If you accepted the default IP setting while installing the Astaro software, you should be able to use the settings in this screenshot.

You can leave the DNS server alone for now, we don’t need the setting to get the firewall running.

Next, Take a network patch cable and connect it to the PC you are doing the configuration from. Next we have to figure out which is the Internal port of the firewall. If you have 3 NICs, the Astaro has named the ports as eth0, eth1 and eth2. It named them in the order they were detected during the installation. So if you have one or two built into the motherboard, they are most likely eth0 and eth1 if you had 2 ports on your mobo and just eth0 if you had only 1.

But the easiest thing to do is “Trial and Error”. Put the cable into any of the ports and open up Internet explorer or Firefox or your browser of choice.

In the address bar enter https://192.168.2.100:4444, this is the default management address. Hopefully you got a Certificate error. If not then move the cable to another port in the Astaro and hit “Refresh” (F5). When you get the Certificate error, you have the right port.

	1st Quad	2nd Quad	3rd Quad	4th Quad
PC	192	168	1	5
Printer	192	168	1	10
Subnet Mask	255	255	255	0
Result	Match	Match	Match	Doesn’t matter

	1st Quad	2nd Quad	3rd Quad	4th Quad
PC	192	168	1	5
Printer	208	67	217	231
Subnet Mask	255	255	255	0
Result	No Match	No Match	No Match	Doesn’t matter

Building an Astaro personal firewall with spare or low end parts. Part 1

 Continue to Part 2.

“Astaro Security Gateway turns any PC into a security appliance within minutes, providing high-performance whilst reducing network administration costs.

·         Network Security - Firewall, VPN and Intrusion Prevention

·         Web Security - URL Filtering, Malware Detection, Bandwidth Management and Application Control

·         Mail Security - Antispam, Antivirus, Antiphishing and Email Encryption “

Now here’s the cool part. Astaro will let you download, install and use the Astaro Security Gateway with all the features (Except Enterprise stuff) enabled. Absolutely FREE for personal use.

This will be a multi-part blog. In this part we’ll cover: Hardware requirements, registering, downloading and installing the software, then some basic configuration.

In future parts we’ll get into more advanced configurations like using Packet Filters, Port Forwarding, Anti-Virus, Anti-Spam and VPNs for remote access.

Hardware Requirements

Minimum Hardware Recommendations

Pentium III 900 MHz or compatible CPU
512 MB RAM
10 GB SCSI/IDE HD
Bootable CD-ROM SCSI/IDE
3 NICs (Internet, Local Net, Demilitarized Zone)

My Realistic Hardware Recommendations

Pentium 4, 1+ GHz or compatible CPU – The faster the processor, the less likely the firewall is to bottleneck when handling large amount of data or downloads.
1-2 GB RAM – Same here.
60 GB SCSI/IDE HD – More storage for swap space and log files.
Bootable CD-ROM SCSI/IDE – can’t get away from this if you want to be able to install the software. You could use a USB CD-ROM drive if your system will boot from one.
3 NICs (Internet, Local Net, Demilitarized Zone) – Technically you only NEED 2 NICs unless you want to run a web or e-mail server in a DMZ that is separated from both the internal and external networks.

See the Astaro Hardware Compatibility List Here

I don’t think I need to go through all the steps of building a PC, so we’ll skip right to getting the software and installing it.

Creating a MyAstaro Account, creating a license and downloading the software.

The first step here is to go to https://www.astaro.com/user/login, if you already have an account you can just log in. If not then create an account by clicking the Join MyAstaro button.

Once you’ve created the account you will be in the License Management screen.

Click on the “Astaro Security Gateway V7 is available as a fully functional home use version and is free of charge. Download here.” Link. This will bring you to the “Create License” screen.

Read the Home User Agreement. (yeah right)

Enter a Nickname for your license. I just named it “My Firewall”, and click the “Create” button.

 Once the License is created you can click the “Download License File” button. Save the license file to a location on your hard drive, but remember where you put it, you will need it later.

Next, we’ll download the Astaro software

On the navigation links click on the “MyAstaro End User Portal” link. Under “Software Downloads”, look for Astaro Security Gateway - Software Appliance.

Choose a location near you and either HTTP or FTP. (It’s up to you which to use)

Navigate into the /ISO folder and select the latest_asg_v7_software.iso file (that will make sure you get the latest version).  Download the file to your hard drive. Make sure you have enough space, the file is just under 500MB.

Once the file has completed downloading, burn it to CD using your favorite utility.

Installing the Astaro Security Gateway software

Make sure that you understand that this is a complete operating system. It will format your hard drives and any data you had on there will be destroyed. You cannot multi-boot the software. If you want you can install the software on a VM.

Insert the CD you created into the CD-ROM drive and boot the computer. At the first screen that comes up, hit “Enter” to begin the installation.

The next screen is the first of the Astaro configuration screens.

 Press  “Enter” again to begin the install.

The next screen is the same warning I already gave you that all data on the hard drives will be lost.

 Press F8 to confirm that you understand you are about to destroy your data.

At the next screen, choose your keyboard layout. Then.

The install will scan your hardware and ask you to confirm the configuration.

The next 3 screens ask your Location, Time Zone and let you set the Time and Date.

At the next screen select the Ethernet NIC that you will use as the internal interface to your network and will also be the network you access the management interface.

At the next screen you can accept the default addresses or set a new network address for your internal network. Keeping the defaults should work fine for any home network.

Valid addresses for private networks are in the ranges of:

·         10.0.0.0 – 10.255.255.255

·         172.16.0.0 – 172.31.255.255

·         192.168.0.0 – 192.168.255.255

Depending on how many addresses you need and the NetMask you use. (We’ll get into NetMasks in a later part)

 This is the last screen you will need to enter any information. After accepting the IP settings, there will be a few more screens that you can just hit enter through.

When the install is complete you will see this screen. Write down or remember the address it shows you. i.e. here it’s https://192.168.2.100:4444 you will need this to access the management.

Hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot your new firewall! When you hear 5 beeps it will have completed booting.

Now we’ll go through the basic settings wizard

First you will need to give the PC that you will do the management from an IP address on the same network as the firewall you just installed. Remember the address I told you to write down in the last step?

Plug a network cable into the NIC you selected as your management interface. Open a web browser on your computer and type in the address you wrote down on the last screen.

If you had plugged the cable into the right NIC you will probably get a certificate error. Just click on “Continue to this website” Link. If your not in the correct nic, you will get a “Page not found” error.

After continuing, you will come to the Hostname and passwords screen.

All the fields must be filled in to continue.

·         The Hostname will be what’s shown when someone pings the firewall. I usually do something short like FW or FireWall.

·         Company name can be anything you want.

·         Type your City and select your country.

·         Create a Strong password! Remember that if someone figures out your firewall password they have complete access to your network!

·         Use your e-mail address, this is where firewall notifications will be sent, it’s important that you receive them.

Accept the license agreement and click “Perform basic system setup”

After a minute or 2 you will be back at the “Certificate error” page again. Continue to the login screen.

 The User Name is admin (All lower case)

And the password is the one you set in the previous step.

 You are offered 2 options here, either “Continue with This Wizard” or “Restore Existing Backup File”. Unless you already had an Astaro firewall you will probably choose “Continue”. Click Next.

 This is the screen you will install the license file you created way back at the beginning of this blog.

 Click on the folder next to the text box and browse to the location you saved the file. Select the file and hit “Next”.

 On this screen you can change the IP address if you don’t want to use the ones you selected earlier. You can also enable the DHCP server if you would like the firewall to give out IP addresses on your network. (We will go more in depth on DHCP in a later part). After you’ve made any changes you want, Click “Next”

 On this screen, choose the NIC that will be connected to the internet and the connection type. In most cases you will probably choose “Cable Modem”.  Click “Next”

 On this screen you select what services you want to be able to use from INSIDE. By default ALL services are blocked INCOMING and OUTGOING. By selecting these items you are allowing these things to work OUTGOING. So if you want to be able to browse the web, you need to select “Web (HTTP, HTTPS, FTP)” for RDP you will need “Terminal Services (Citrix, Apple Remote Desktop, RDP, SSH, Telnet)” and so on. Choose the services you want to be able to use. Adding any of these will NOT allow INCOMING connections. (We’ll discuss incoming connections in a later part).

Select the options you want and click “Next”.

On this screen you select the type of Intrusion Protection you want to enable. You might be tempted to just select everything and be done with it, but each item you select, adds overhead to the system and will make the system run slower. Only select the items you really need. If you don’t have Linux, a Web Server, Mail Server or Database Server, don’t select them. The system will be more efficient that way.

On this screen you select items you want to BLOCK. Anything NOT selected will be allowed. In this case you want to select items that you don’t use and will most likely never use. You can change them later if you do decide to use one that was selected.

On this screen, you can enable virus scanning of files that you download, it will also scan all web pages for Trojans and other malware.

You can also enable web filtering here. If you have children or just don’t want to accidentally hit a certain type of webpage (Porn, Terrorist, Criminal . . .) you can select them.

Here you enable your spam and virus scanner for Incoming and outgoing mail. (We’ll discuss advance options for SMTP/POP in a later part)

Congratulations!! You’ve completed the basic configuration. You now have a working firewall.

The Astaro Dashboard.

 Continue to Part 2.

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Me: Hi Doug, Thanks for giving me a minute.

Doug: No problem

Me: So, the big question I get often during user group meetings is "Will Webguide work in Windows 7 and I have to tell them 'No'"

Doug: Yup, the guide data is stored in a different data type and the new WTV format is not supported by Webguide.

Me: This is under NDA, so can you tell me if there is any work being done on a new version of Webguide?

Doug: Actually, I gave a demo of what I'm working on at PDC, so it's not really NDA.

Me: Awesome, So what can you tell me?

Doug opened up a Live Mesh session on his desktop.

Doug: I'll show you.

He opened up an app on the Mesh window titled "Webguide Mesh"

Me: Webguide Mesh? Is that what it's being called?

Doug: That's a working name. I had to come up with something for CEDIA and that was just something they would understand there. The name may change.

He showed me some guide stuff and said that it was coming from Fake Data. The interface looks like the old webguide menus.

Me: Will it have all the functionality of the original webguide?

Doug: Yup

Me: ALL the functionality?

Doug: Yup, that's the plan. Of course this is VERY early in the process and it may all change. We'll have to wait and see what the final version looks like. Right now I can open up mesh while on the road and change a cached schedule to record a program, then when you connect to the net, mesh will upload the changes and then you will get a confirmation that the program was scheduled. That's all the software does at this point in time.

Me: That's great news Doug! I know you're busy, so I'll let you go. Thanks for your time.

Doug: Welcome, seeya later.

Links only, do not redistribute! All updates and new files will be posted on this page.

I'm not the creator of the DLL or the script, I've just assembled the bits in one place and created the how-to. The authors have asked me to keep them anonymous and if you want them to keep working on this project then I'll do as they want. 

If you have a better way to get this to work. Like a better script or different steps, send them to me at (pstagman !at! htpcug.com) and I'll check it out and post it.

Remember that this is a hack. Transcoder.dll and the scripts are not from or supported by Microsoft.

Forums are fixed!!

 New Utility

Great news! Robert Chesworth has created a utility to automate the links process!

His "Media Center Links" utility will recreate the whole DVD folder structure locally, copy the folder.jpg files, create the links and then create the WVX playlist files. All in one shot!

Instead of creating all this on the remote storage, it creates it locally on the MCE PC. This was the procedure I had suggested for users who have WHS or NAS devices. So it will work in both cases.

You can Download the utility here. Media Center Links.zip Unzip the file and run setup.exe. There is documentation in the zip. The utility has been updated to the latest 1.0.0.6 version on April 29th 2009! Also included in the zip is the source code for the utility.

If you have any questions or problems, please post your question in the forums.

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How to get DVD's to play on your Media Center Extenders using DVD Library

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is required for this to work correctly.

1. Media Center Extenders can't play .vob files, so the files have to be renamed to .mpg files. But wait! If I rename all the .vob files to .mpg files then other apps may stop working right? Correct. So, the solution is symbolic links. A symbolic link is a fake file with the name you want that links back to the original file. So VTS_01_1.mpg is a symbolic link that points to VTS_01_1.VOB. That also means you do not get anything other than the main movie.

2. WARNING: Do not create symbolic links on Windows Home Server Shares! They don't work and wreak havoc on the server because of the way that the drive extender works!! If you store your movies on a WHS or NAS see this page!

   1. Create symbolic links to the .vob files:

      1. Open a command window with admin rights in the VIDEO_TS folder that contains the .vob files you want to link.

      2. Find the largest .vob files. The main movie will be in the largest .vob files, usually they will be 1GB in size.

      3. Use the command fsutil hardlink create VTS_01_1.mpeg VTS_01_1.VOB to create the links. (changing the names of the files for each file you link)

      4. You should get a response like: Hardlink created for D:\shares\DVDs\MOVIE\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_1.mpeg <<===>> D:\shares\DVDs\MOVIE\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_1.VOB

      5. If you want the cover artwork to be displayed in DVD Library, create a folder.jpg file of the artwork in the VIDEO_TS folder.

3. Next you need to create a .wvx playlist file so the extender plays the playlist and you don't have to select each file to play. You can create the file using notepad or the text editor of you choice. Here's what it needs to look like:

   1.        <ASX version = "3.0">
        <Title>My Ripped Movie</Title>
        <Entry>
          <Ref href="\\Server\DVDs\Movie\VIDEO_TS\VTS_03_0.mpeg"/>
        </Entry>
        <Entry>
          <Ref href="\\server\DVDs\Movie\VIDEO_TS\VTS_03_1.mpeg"/>
        </Entry>
        <Entry>
          <Ref href="\\Server\DVDs\Movie\VIDEO_TS\VTS_03_2.mpeg"/>
        </Entry>
        <Entry>
          <Ref href="\\server\DVDs\Movie\VIDEO_TS\VTS_03_3.mpeg"/>
        </Entry>
        <Entry>
          <Ref href="\\server\DVDs\Movie\VIDEO_TS\VTS_03_4.mpeg"/>
        </Entry>
        <Entry>
          <Ref href="\\server\DVDs\Movie\VIDEO_TS\VTS_03_5.mpeg"/>
        </Entry>
        <Entry>
          <Ref href="\\server\DVDs\Movie\VIDEO_TS\VTS_03_6.mpeg"/>
        </Entry>
      </ASX>

   2. Save the file in your VIDEO_TS folder and give it a name "My Ripped Movie.wvx"

Here's a script that will create the symbolic links and the .wvx files in one shot.  Use at your own risk!

CreateWVX.zip

Using the CreateWVX.vbs script

CreateWXV.vbs is used for DVD that have been ripped to a VIDEO_TS folder with VOBs

Copy and paste the script into notepad and save as "CreateWXV.vbs".

There are two constants (see below “strRemoteLocation” and “strWVXOutputFolder”) at the top of the script that will have to be modified first to match your environment before using this script.

Then run "cscript CreateWXV.vbs your_DVD_folders_here", from command-prompt, run as admin.

'strRemoteLocation is the path that will be used in the WVX file to reference the location of the DVDs

'This should be accessible via the machine that will play the WVX file

Const strRemoteLocation = "\\server\DVDs"

'strWVXOutputFolder should be the location the WVX files should be written

Const strWVXOutputFolder = \\Server\MywvxFiles

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

DVDs that have been ripped to a wmv format.

CreateWXV.vbs is not needed for wmv files

Make a VIDEO_TS folder add these file to the VIDEO_TS folder the wmv file and the playlist *.wvx file (see below) and a fake VIDEO_TS.ifo file using notepad (open notepad and save at it as VIDEO_TS.IFO do not save as *.txt).

Add a folder.jpeg or DVDID.xml file to the main DVD folder for the DVD cover artwork.

For dvd xml files go here http://www.dvdxml.com/search.php

No Symbolic Link needed for wmv files

(so this will work if your wmv files are on Windows Home Server)

WMVs will play,  but you have to use a small playlist   e.g.: below.

<ASX version = "3.0">

  <Title>test</Title>

  <Entry>

    <Ref href="\\Richard-mce2\dvd movies\Test\VIDEO_TS\Amazon_720.wmv"/>

  </Entry> 

</ASX>

PS  use a *.wvx extension in notepad (not a *.txt) for all playlists

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

Recorded TV Movies (DVR-MS files)

If you have recorded a movie in Media Center (it has to be a movie) it will show up automatically with the cover artwork in the DVD Library on the extender.

No Symbolic Link needed and no playlist needed for DVR-MS files.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's another script that creates links and .asx files, submitted by Ryan Hurst

HardlinkAndASX.zip

Next you have to enable DVD Library for Extenders

UPDATE: The author of transcoder.dll has added support for other media file types. If it doesn’t find a WVX file, it will now search for any video file type and play the first one it finds.

Another new Transcoder.dll version!! v0.7

Changes:

Modified the transcoder.dll to look for the mymovies.asx files so the search logic is now as follows:

 *.wvx first

mymovies.asx second

any valid video type third (note it doesn’t check for whether the extender supports or not!)

If you make any modifications to the sourcecode, please submit the new binaries to me for review. Official releases will be posted on this page only.

This is done by downloading this file: transcoder-v0.7.zip

Source code is now available. See below.

Unzip the file and copy transcoder.dll into your Media Centers \Windows\Ehome  folder. Then run the transcoder.reg file to import the dll registration.

Start an extender session and DVD library should now appear in the TV ribbon.

Add the share for your DVD folder to the DVD library and it should begin to populate your movies!

Enjoy!!!

Hopefully you'll end up with extender menu's that look like these:

ToDo:

Pictures

Screenshots

Credits

Previous dll versions. If you should want them . . .

transcoder-v0.6.zip
transcoder-v0.5.zip

Sourcecode: Transcoder-src-v0.7.zip

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