Gaffer-Tape Engineering : Windows Media Center

Windows Home Server and Live Mesh

Jason Neave — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:46:00 GMT

Regular readers of my blog will know I've been a fan of Foldershare on Home Server for a while now. The main reason for this is a simplified version of "Offline Files" that works across the internet. It also works as a nice backup when remote access fails and I cannot connect normally for some reason, usually on those days when I forget my iPod and have nothing to listen to...

Enter Live Mesh.

I received an invite from a friend and decided to give it a go, as is my want. To say I was a impressed is an understatement, Mesh does a lot that Foldershare does, namely sharing folders, but it also has online backup of folders to the tune of 5GB and remote desktop capabilities as well! Apparently a Mac and Windows Mobile client will be coming soon which will be interesting, I assume the Mac client will offer the same functionalities as the PC client though how it will work on Windows Mobile has me truely intrigued.

I think my favourite feature is similar to Foldershare insofar as it works as a backup for those occastions where remote access fails. Using Mesh on my Home Server I can still get to the server console and my files now rather than just my files.

Mesh will also be exstensible though the SDK is not yet available, apparently it will allow you to add an application to your mesh though which is promising indeed. I'm thinking that media sharing across clients, remote Home Server notifications and a better remote control guide for MC would be a few likely candidates. Lets hope someone reads this and gets a few ideas!

Jason

Vista Media Centre and Freeview

Jason Neave — Tue, 20 May 2008 00:08:00 GMT

So, I ordered a dual tuner (http://shop.blackgold.tv/product/3550.html) and plugged it in to the aerial feed from my roof. So far I am incredibly impressed. After installing the drivers for the USB stick MC picked it up straight away and started the setup process. After tapping in my postcode and choosing which transmitter I was pointed towards it started scanning for channels. A good churn later all the usual suspects showed up.

Timeshifting rocks, rewinding TV kicks ass and series link is something I am certainly looking forward to. Currently reading up on something called the DVRMS Toolbox (http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/archive/2006/08/10/107296.aspx) which includes automated comercial skipping on recorded tv shows. Definately looking forward to that!

As always an update will be forthcoming when I've had more time to play around but so far I am very impressed.

My New Toy: Windows Media Centre

Jason Neave — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:43:00 GMT

I've had an old warhorse of a machine serving my media needs for some years and now I am moving house and will be moving back to Freeview so I thought I would build a new Media Centre machine based around Vista Ultimate. To that end I've sourced and thrown together the following parts;

Silverstone ML02 Micro-ATX case
Gigabyte 780G Series Motherboard
AMD 4600 AM2+ Processor
2GB DDR2 RAM
500GB Seagate HDD
Slimline DVD-ROM

The ultimate aim of this system is to view HD content, the motherboard I am using has HDMI onboard and those onboard graphics are capable of DX10 which is nice. The HDMI port also supports HDCP which will allow me to upgrade the DVD-ROM drive to a Blu-ray drive at some point in the future, an easy choice now the format debate is over. The motherboard also supports PCI-E which I will be filling with the Blackgold 6-in-1 Tuner card, on a sinle card you get dual analogue, digital terestrial and digital sattelite and as Freesat (www.freesat.co.uk) has just been released in the UK with the promise of free HD content from the BBC, ITV, ~~Channel 4~~ and a few others this choice is a no brainer.
Update: Channel 4 HD will be BSkyB only, no news on Freesat yet though likely it will move over at some point.

So far I've only played some HD content freely available online, a few trailers for example and a program released under Creative Commons whose name eludes me but the picture quality is astounding, definetly the way forward! It has to be said, with the new interface and improved hardware spec the addition I am most happy with is the remote. Until now I have been using a wireless keyboard, somewhat unwieldy to say the least, and being able to use a remote is a blessing. It also plays ball quite happily with my Home Server.

The last thing to note is the power requirements of this new machine. The board and processor I chose are based on mobile technology, to that end they are quite efficient devices. I borrowed a power meter from a friend of mine to test the power usage and while watching HD content from the hard disc it used a mere 60 Watts. Considering that most standard lightbulbs in the UK are of a similar rating and a less entertaining to watch I would say this is a hell of a result. The tuner card should add around 9 Watts to this however I will be replacing the hard disk with a WD Green Power disk that runs at 7 Watts so that should even things out quite nicely.

More news as I play around with it more.
Jason