The main use of the Media Center in our household is as a source of live TV and as a DVR. The Media Center is intended to replace the Time Warner provided DVR set-top box, not to compliment it. The thoughts below are in the context of experiences in the new Media Center ecosystem vs the previous single set-top box ecosystem. I have also broken up my observations into categories that affect me in my regular everyday use of Media Center.
Another caveat I want to add is that I still use the Media Center PC in my office as a PC. I have been able to surf the net, download files and perform other activities all while both extenders are in use across the house and no performance hit anywhere on the network. Media Center just runs as a background process. I made sure to max out my memory to be able to do this.
Live TV
The Live TV implementation in Media Center follows the majority of the set top box paradigms that have come before it while at the same time taking advantage of the capabilities of the PC platform.
Start-Up: One of the biggest differences between our old TV viewing experience and our new TV experience is the start-up time and the start-up experience. With the Time Warner DVR, or TW-DVR, the start-up was very quick. The TW-DVR never actually turned off. It went into a sleep state so it could be ready to act upon our recorded TV scheduling. From an "off" state, it would take as long as turning on the TV and pressing power on the TW-DVR remote control. The first thing you would see would be the last channel that was watched.
Now with Media Center I have two different start-up experiences due to the two different Media Center Extenders that I am using. In the living room the Xbox 360 has an average start time of 25-28 seconds from a cold state to completely on and connected to the Media Center PC. In the master bedroom we have an average start time of 0 seconds with the Linksys extender. Since the extender runs quiet and cool it affords us the opportunity to leave it on and connected to the Media Center PC at all times.
I have thought about replacing the Xbox 360 as an extender with another Linksys but the performance of the 360 out weighs the noise/heat/start-up issues for me. We have grown accustomed to the start-up time and it has not made a huge difference at the end of the day.
Interface: I really like the Media Center interface. I know a number of people do not. I think it is clean and intuitive in most cases. I has nice transition effects, animations and menu transparencies. The quarter screen version of the main menu layered over the active video program currently being watched is a nice touch. The pop-up sub menus are easy to use but not always easy to find. Sometimes I still discover new things that the info button can do depending on where I am when I press the button. I do wish I had more control over how it's laid out without the need of a 3rd party application, but it works great for the most part.
Since Media Center is now our main source of TV and entertainment on an everyday basis I wondered if the media center interface was easy and intuitive to the rest of my family as it is for me. To answer this question I ran a few experiments with my mother-in-law. My wife has already lived with the system for two months now and she is also very tech savvy so she did not qualify as a test subject.
Live TV Buffer Length: The default Live TV buffer length is 30 minutes. With a simple registry hack (made even simpler with this tool ) you can extend the Live TV buffer up to 2 hrs. I currently have the live TV buffer set to 1 1/2 hrs which has been long enough.
The only negative that I can give the Live TV buffer is that you cannot record from it. This was a big step back from the TW-DVR (and most DVR's in general). The way most DVR's work is that if you are watching an hour long show live and are 30 minutes into the show you have 30 minutes in your buffer and can rewind back to the point that you started watching it. Now if you decide to record the show at that point the DVR converts the live tv buffer stream into an active recorded show stream. You capture the 30 minutes you have watched and the remainder of the show as it is broadcast.
Unfortunately Media Center implemented this differently. When you press record while watching a TV show live, it will record from that point forward and ignore anything already in the Live TV buffer. A number of Media Center users have complained about this to Microsoft and I think this will be changed in the next Media Center update (codename: Fiji).
Shared Buffer: One of the Media Center features that I just happen to stumble upon is what I call "Shared Buffers". I don't know if there is a proper feature name but I think the name works. This feature is only going to benefit those with a multiple location setup (i.e. 1 PC and extenders).
If I am watching a channel live in the living room and I have a buffer built up I can share that buffer with any other of my Media Center locations (i.e. Master Bedroom or Office). The way to do this though is to turn on another extender or launch Media Center on the PC without turning off the first extender. Tune in the same channel you are watching in the first location. Press the info button and you will see an icon like in the screen shot below. I now have the same buffer as the first location and I can rewind back to the point that I started watching it in the last location. Now if I go back to the first extender and turn it off I keep the buffer in the second location.
I'm not sure how often I would use it, but I could envision a scenario in which my wife and I are watching TV in multiple locations and I want her to tune in to the channel I am watching, rewind and check out what I just saw. Definitely a feature that can only be accomplished by having everything run through one central hub.
Multiple Tuners: The ability to have more than 2 tuners was one of the biggest reasons I moved to Media Center. Most people would want to know why you need more than two tuners and I can give you two scenarios in which it affected my family that are now a distant memory.
The first was the never ending network battle for Thursday night. I think NBC started this with the Cosby Show and then Must See TV. We had a 4-way conflict at one point on Thursday nights with Survivor on CBS, The Office & My Name is Earl on NBC, Smallville on theWB and The OC on Fox. We ended up giving up Survivor and the Office and Earl. I hated giving up the Office and Earl but I thought I could just watch it online. Never happened and I fell out of the loop with those shows. Now we have 4 tuners and that will not happen again.
The second scenario that happened more often is that we would come home and two shows would already be recording which prohibited us from watching anything else live such as the news, a sporting event or another new show. It would give us a reason to catch up on recorded shows, but it made us feel constrained. We didn't like having to give up a show just to watch regular live TV.
I only have one caveat in my multiple tuner setup. The first two primary tuners that I bought are Cable Card digital cable tuners. These tuners are the ones that replaced the tuners in my TW-DVR. I was planning on buying and adding other Cable Card tuners but went with the cheaper HDHomeRun Network tuner. The drawback with this tuner is that I only added two more tuners for Network HD channels (ABC HD, NBC HD, CBS HD, FOX HD, CW HD, PBS HD) because it only tunes in open unencrypted QAM channels. I do not get any of the standard cable channels that most tuners give you. Since 70% of the shows we record are network shows this was actually a pretty good option. The HDHomeRun tuners also record without DRM so I can do more with the shows I record through them. So far it has been a great combination.
We normally do not have Live TV being watched in multiple locations but this would allow for all three locations to be watching Live TV while leaving a 4th tuner available to record.
Stability: Stability is where Media Center gets a few knocks but at the end of the day not many. In the first few weeks as I configured the cable card tuners and the system I had a number of signal drop issues and restricted content issues. After switching out the cable cards with Time Warner, upgrading the firmware on the Cable Card tuners and adding in the HDHomeRun network tuners the system had really stabilized. All calls for the return of the TW-DVR have subsided for the most part.
The only unstable part of the setup now is the Xbox 360. For some reason after doing the last round of updates to my system the Xbox 360 now drops the Media Center connection at least once every viewing session. After doing anything for about 30 minutes the Xbox 360 drops the connection. Once you reconnect you are good to go for as long as you want without another drop. Very strange and I have not been able to track this new issue down yet. I do not have this issue with the Linksys extender.
The Guide
Microsoft provides guide data free of charge via its partner Zap2It.com. Media Center gives you two weeks worth of guide data at time versus the standard one week that most set top boxes allow for. This has really been good for being able to set shows or specials to record as soon as you hear about it. With the TW-DVR we would have to wait until the following week when it shows up on the guide to set it to record. Here are a few thoughts on some specific topics related to the guide.
Guide UI: The guide uses the majority of the screen and does a cool overlay effect on top of any video that may be playing. It has multiple options that are not easily noticeable at first.
On the left hand side of the guide is the "Categories" bar. This is one option that we find ourselves using a lot. It filters the guide down based on the category chosen. The available categories are Most Viewed, Movies, HDTV, Sports, Kids, and News. So when we select HDTV the only channels in the guide are channels that are currently showing something in HD.
The other option in the guide the comes in handy is the option to view listings for a single channel. Selecting the channel number and call sign in the guide will show you the listings for a single channel. You can scroll down as far as you have data which is usually two weeks worth of listings.
That's all for now. Next post will cover recording.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Living With Media Center: Introduction
Introduction
I have been a technology and video game addict for the majority of my life. Through the many cycles of gaming consoles I eventually landed as an avid Xbox fan and so in 2005 I eagerly awaited the first details of the next generation Xbox. During the E3 Press Conference in which the Xbox 360 was officially unveiled, Microsoft's J. Allard demoed a piece of functionality that I was not even expecting: connectivity to Windows Media Center. He showed a clip of the 2004 Superbowl in HD being served from a Windows XP PC with Media Center running through the Xbox 360. It was at that point that I became a Media Center fan.
I liked the philosophy of having one central location for all of your media. Most solutions at that point were centered around sharing music, photos and videos but did not have live TV as a component. I started to investigate the Media Center solution deeper and found a few reservations that prevented me from jumping into it with full force.
The introduction of the Xbox 360 solved my first reservation of not wanting a PC in the living room, but my second reservation was a deal breaker. I wanted to be able to get all of the same channels that I was currently receiving via my cable box through my Media Center PC. I found out that it would not be possible until Media Center supported cable card which was not going to be anytime soon. The idea of Media Center was put on the shelf.
Fast forward to 2007. Two years later the first Media Center supported Digital Cable Tuners with Cable Card support had been announced by ATI and were on their way. Engadget's article had renewed my interest. I was ready to move to Media Center after living with the short comings of my Time Warner supplied HD DVR. For the past two years we had wrestled with limited storage, unexpected lockups, the limitation of content location and the limitation of 2 tuners on the network battleground that is Thursday night.
I started to make plans for the Media Center and soon realized that it was close but still a ways off. First the tuners had to actually hit the market. Second, due to Cable Labs restrictions for Cable Card support I would need to buy a new pre-built PC. Once I had an idea of the cost I started to develop a timeline so that I can save money and buy the PC after the technology had matured. The new targeted date at that point became early 2008.
In January 2008 I began laying the ground work by installing CAT5e network cable around my house. I also began to prepare all of my collected media (music, photos and videos) for movement over to a new Vista Media Center PC. The new PC was ordered on February 15, 2008, almost a full 3 years after the initial seed had been planted. After another month of configuration and test trials I officially removed the Time Warner DVR from the living room and moved the family onto the Media Center as our primary DVR on March 15, 2008.
Two months later to the day I thought it was time to reflect back on life with the Media Center and answer the basic question that non-techies will ask me: "Was it worth it?". Over the next 9-10 posts I will cover my opinions and my family's experience with Media Center as the hub of home entertainment and eventually answer that question.
Here is the what I will cover over the next few days:
- Live TV & DVR
- Music
- Photos
- Videos
- Streaming Content
- Plugins / Add On's
- Extenders
- Hardware
- Wrap-Up
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy one person's perspective.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Living with Media Center
So I have had my Media Center now for a few months. The posts on here have slowed down since I am not currently doing as much active tinkering with the system. What I want to do now is create a series of posts with screen shots on living with Media Center as my main hub of entertainment.
Here are the topics I will cover (not necessarily in this order):
- Live TV & DVR (or Old DVR vs New Media Center)
- Plugins
- Music
- Photos
- Videos
- Streaming Content
- Extenders and hardware
- What's missing for me
I will be back later tonight for my first post.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Restricted Content Bug Diagnosed
I am almost 100% convinced that I know why I am getting the Restricted Content "bug". I put bug in quotes because I am no longer convinced that it is a Media Center issue. I think Media Center is doing exactly what it is supposed to do which is why I can still record a show that mere seconds earlier was restricted by the content provider.
The root of my Media Center angst is the cable card itself. I am 100% convinced that the cable card I have is bad. Case in point is The Daily Show from last night.
I have a lot of problems recording the Daily Show. This and the Colbert Report give me the Restricted Content error more than anything I try to record. Not because the shows are restricted but because of the channel they are on. My cable cards sometimes loose permission to the channels that are in the same tier as Comedy Central. In order to fix this all I need to do is try and tune is a few channels in the same tier and then Comedy Central will tune in. Once I do that, like magic, I can record what was once restricted.
Since the cable card is loosing permission to these channels, when I tried to record Media Center sees it as restricted content. As soon as I get it to tune, Media Center can now see the channels as normal and records without fail.
The other issue I was able to resolve was around my Series Settings. For both the Daily Show and The Colbert Report I have the series set to only keep 4 recordings of the show (since it only comes on 4 times a week). When I get the Restricted Content issue and then set it to record after resolving the tuning problem, the recording is seen as outside of my regular series recording. Because of that Media Center will not clean it up and I will end up with more than 4 episodes.
To resolve the issue you can go into the guide and find the show that is recording. You will see that it has 1 red dot instead of the 3 red dots. Press the info button and set the series to record. Media Center will recognize that you already have the series set to record and will ask if you would like to make the one time recording part of the series recording. Select "yes" and now you are back in order.
Time Warner should be here soon to give me a new cable card. We'll see if it works. In the meantime, the HDHomeRun should also be here today. The new dual tuner box will actually be the primary tuners for about 70% of my HD recordings. After evaluating my series recordings I found out that 70% exist on network HD channels that are broadcast in the clear (QAM). The HDHomeRun will only tune those channels so it will record all my network TV which then frees up my main tuners for watching live TV or more recording. The other bonus is that everything coming through the HDHomeRun's will be DRM free!!!
Monday, April 21, 2008
My total media center package
I have been asked a few times about what I have in my Media Center setup. I have sent information via email, but I thought it might be nice to build a concise list on the blog. So here it is.
Hardware
| Component | Cost | Source | Comments |
| DELL XPS 420 |
| Dell.com |
|
| Western Digital 750GB SATA HD | $139.99 | NewEgg.com | Supplemented the 500GB HD that came with the PC. This is a "Green" drive and has multiple speeds to conserve energy. |
| HITACHI Deskstar 1TB SATA HD | $281.12 | NewEgg.com | I started run out of space quickly so I added this drive. |
| LINKSYS WRT160N Wireless Router | $79.99 | NewEgg.com | Didn't really need it, but I wanted to upgrade my router to an N router. |
| LINKSYS DMA2100 Media Center Extender | $149.98 | Amazon.com | I was not plannning on getting this now, but Amazon had an amazing deal on it and I am very glad that I did get it. |
| HD Homerun | $168.99 | DVRUpgrade.com | This adds 2 more tuners to the setup for a total of 4, but it will only tune the HD Local channels (which is about 75% of my recordings). It also records with NO DRM, unlike the CableCard recordings. |
| 1700 ft Cat5 Network Cable | $50 | Craigslist | I still can't believe the deal I got on this! |
| Xbox 360 (w/ 20GB HD) | $0.00 ($280-$400) | Best Buy | I put a cost of zero because I did not buy the Xbox specifically as a Media Center extender. I have had it for almost 3 years now. |
| Logitech Harmony Advanced Universal Remote for Xbox 360 | $107.24 | BestBuy | Great programmable remote. It hooks up to the PC. |
| Total | $2,499.92 | Not sure if I wanted to know this or not! | |
Software
| Name | Cost | Source | Comments |
| TapiRex w/ Media Center Plugin | $26.90 | Scendix Software | Try getting the Trial Version working first. |
| WebGuide | $0.00 | Asciiexpress.com | Allows for remote access of Media Center via a web browser or mobile device. It gives you remote scheduling, access to music & pictures and streaming non-DRM Recorded and Live TV content. |
| MyMovies | $0.00 | mymovies.dk | Great collection management interface for ripped DVD's |
| myTV | $19.99 | senseitweb.com | Similar to MyMovies but for TV shows. |
| Total | $26.90 | I am still using the beta of myTV. | |
So my grand total at the end of the day was $2,526.82. So what did I get for that money?? Well first I got a kick-ass new PC. My computer was on it's last leg and rebooted by itself every 2-3 days.
I also got a great home media experience. We have one central hub with lots of storage and easy access to our media. It's still expandable and I can't wait to see what Microsoft has coming (hopefully) later this year.
More on the Restricted Content bug
I think I am narrowing in on the true issue with my "Restricted Content" bug. I have narrowed it down to the Series Recording setup and one of my Cable Cards.
I think the main culprit for this problem right now is one of my Cable Cards. It has been displaying errors and losing signal. Since I switched the priority order on recording I have been getting less "Restricted Content Errors", or RCE. I am going to call Time Warner and try to get the card replace to see if that will hopefully solve the issue all together.
The other thing that I have noticed is that the "RCE" may be corrupting my Series Recordings. For example, this morning I received the error on my daily recording of Good Morning America. To quickly resolve the issue, I deleted the series recording and then set the series to record again. Just like that it is recording with no problems again.
So my hopes are that the new Cable Card will bring these occurrences down to almost zero and that the next release of Media Center will eliminate it all together.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Restricted Content bug is hanging around
Two weeks later and the issue has not gotten any better. It seemed like my attempt at a fixed helped, but alas I am right back where I started from. Even posting at the Green Button out of shear frustration because of this issue.
I am really hoping that the updated release to Media Center, rumored to be code named "Fiji", will be released soon. Now that Service Pack 1 is out maybe the Media Center update will soon follow.
In the meantime, this bug is holding me back from making Media Center my default TV/Media System. There is no way I can commit to this 100% if I cannot rely on it to record my shows with the same consistency as the Scientific Atlanta DVR from Time Warner that I was renting for $6.95 a month. That is not saying much since my box would have to be rebooted a few times a week to allow me to use the HDMI connection.
The frustrating part is that other than this bug, it's a great system. I know it's a PC and there are a million things that could go wrong. Because of that I have really tried to minimize the use to be a Media Center PC specifically. I have no problems if all I have to do is reboot my PC once a week. I can live with that. I just want it to record TV consistently. Is that too much to ask? I hope not, because if it is I wasted my money.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Restricted Content Bug
So everything has been humming along since I bought the Linksys extender, or so I thought. I noticed that last week's American Idol results show had not recorded. When I check the history I was given a message about Copyright and Restricted Content (I can't remember the exact message off the top of my head). I remembered seeing this issue on the forums over at the Green Button so I jumped over there.
The discussion thread was long (about 30 pages) and old (going back to March 2007). I thought I was experiencing the exact same issue but after some further research I am not so sure.
The first thing I found in my research was that the problem was only showing up on one Tuner - Tuner A. Now that may be because it always tried to record on A and never tried B, so that did not rule out Tuner B from having the problem. I unplugged Tuner A and ran with one tuner and it worked great.
So after my first test I was more confident that it was Tuner A and not a system wide problem. My first thought was a Cable Card issue. I kept a close eye on things and tried to ensure that Tuner B was doing all the recording. As I did this, I noticed something else. I was able to watch TV on the tuner but not record.
To research my new symptom, I jumped into the web page for each tuner. I noticed that the tuner was somehow dropping out of Digital into Analog on the DRM page. Well, according to how Cable Card is supposed to work this would be my problem. It has to stay digital to apply the appropriate DRM or it does not work.
It may be that my signal is not strong enough do to the split or it may be that something is wrong with the cable card. I will be doing some more monitoring tonight and report back soon.
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