Twist: on Tech » media center

Quick Update

George Roberts — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:08:06 +0000

First, let me say I’m disappointed in myself for not posting before now. Life’s been kind of crazy for the last couple of weeks and I just have not had the opportunity. I’ll be posting photos and some of my thoughts on CES in the next few days.

Right now, I’m in the middle of changing my media center PC over to Windows 7. It’s interesting, running into some compatibility issues here and there with some of the third party software I use, but so far pretty good! I already made the switch to Windows 7 on my desktop PC, and I’m loving it! I’ll write up a post about that and my new hardware goodie that I bought when I did the upgrade in the next few days as well.

Looking forward to Media Center in Windows 7

George Roberts — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:50:08 +0000

I’ve been reading through some of the threads on The Green Button about the Windows Media Center included in the forthcoming Windows 7 and it’s starting to get me really excited. From what I understand, they’ve done some really cool things with the interface to really polish it up. The interface on Vista Media Center was already pretty cool, but it sounds like they’ve done some “fit and finish” type upgrades to it for Windows 7.

There are some screenshots of the interface on The Media Center Blog. They’re kind of small but they give you an idea of what the interface looks like.

I admit that some of the features I’m looking forward to are already available in the TV Pack. However, I haven’t taken the time to figure out how to install the TV Pack, as it doesn’t seem like it’s really a straightforward process. The biggest feature I’m looking forward to is guide favorites so that I can set up a “Kids” favorites, etc. to make it easier to find groups of channels.

I’m attending an MSDN Developer Conference in January and we’re supposed to be receiving a DVD with the beta copy of Windows 7 on it. In fact, as far as I can tell we’ll be the first group of people to to get it, as I’m attending the first conference that it will be available at. I’ll report back once I get my hands on it.

An overview of my media setup

George Roberts — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:15:39 +0000

I mentioned in a previous post that I would tell you some more about my media setup in our house, so I thought I’d take a few minutes and do that now.

In my living room, I have a Dell XPS 420 PC running Windows Vista Home Premium. The 420 has two ATI Digital Cable tuners attached to it, in which I have cablecards to receive HDTV through Comcast, and a Blu-ray drive as well. The 420 is connected to a Bose Lifestyle V20 home theater system. I also have an Xbox 360 Elite connected to the Bose system. The Bose outputs to a Samsung LN46A650 46″ 1080p LCD TV.

Upstairs I have two more Xbox 360s attached to LCD TVs in two of the bedrooms. Each of these Xbox 360s have Linksys WGA600N Dual-band Wireless-N Gaming Adapters connected to them, allowing them to connect to my 5Ghz 802.11n network. This allows me to not have to connect the TVs to a coaxial cable jack and place them where it is most convenient in the rooms.

The Xbox 360s in the bedrooms act as Media Center Extenders and are set to boot directly into the Media Center interface. We can stream live HD TV, recorded programs, music and any other content stored on the network to each TV in the bedroom, even simultaneously.

As I’ve already stated on the site, I have a Drobo attached to the media center PC in the living room, providing a little over 4TB of storage for media. The great thing about this system is that all of our media can be accessed from any TV in the house, whenever we want. As soon as I manage to get all my DVDs ripped to the Drobo, that is. It’s a time consuming process, but well worth it for the convenience it offers down the road.

I’ll be talking about Windows Media Center more as time goes on, including some of the plugins I’m using and some I wish existed.