[This post will likely become dated very quickly. At the time it was written, Vista was not yet released, HD was just getting started. If you’re reading this on 2012, you probably have more powerful hardware on your phone! For now though, this stuff’s pretty cool]
Pre-amble
It started innocently enough.
I have a ~3 yr-old desktop machine that I use for little more than an Internet radio tuner and a file server I backup important things to. So I figured I’d install Vista on that, plop in more memory and a tuner card, and presto: instant Media Center. Great idea, but… turns out this older Dell uses Rambus memory, which failed to gain market acceptance and is prohibitively expensive.
No problem, revised plan: plop in a new motherboard, tuner card, CPU, memory, and I’m done. Great idea, but… turns out the power supply wouldn’t be beefy enough for everything I wanted to do, and there were some doubts about proprietary connections and case cutouts.
So: time for a new plan. I went to Fry’s, and CompUSA, and started trying to educate myself about Media Center. Unfortunately, even though I knew nothing, I apparently knew more than the people at the stores. I resigned myself to just figuring it out for myself. I knew I needed a tuner card, so I got a list from Microsoft of currently supported tuner cards, Googled around and came across PCAlchemy, which had some OEM ATI Theater 550 cards for $50, which sure sounded like a great deal. Even better, looking at their Web site, it was obvious that these guys specialize in Media Center. When I checked out the “contact us” page, I was floored…. Turns out they’re in an industrial park just a couple of miles from my home! I called them up and we started chatting. How refreshing to find people that knew what they sold, and used the stuff themselves. After about 15 minutes on the phone, a shopping list was starting to take shape. As I was still clearly in R&D mode, Jesse suggested I create an account, add things to my cart, and then call him for feedback before I hit “checkout”. Made sense to me.
Day 1
I decided I would go to Fry’s for a hard drive, as they often have amazing deals. Sure enough, they had a 500gig drive for just over $100 (which was really cheap when this was written, but will likely be what you have in your phone in 2010). Talking to the sales guy, he told me that this ultra-DMA 7200RPM 16meg cache drive would be fine for media-intensive work. Sweet! I bought that. Somewhere between the cash register and the car, I started having doubts. A quick call to PCAlchemy from the Fry’s parking lot, and my fears were confirmed. If I wanted fast performance, I needed higher sustained throughput. I returned the drive, and instead paid more for a 400gig SATA/300 drive.
Day 2
How exciting, my shopping list was complete, and I knew what I was going to do. It contained:
- Intel Core 2 Duo processor
- Asus motherboard
- Silverstone case (so the finished product could blend into an entertainment center)
- ATI Theater 550 tuner card
- NEC DVD +-RW
- eVGA GeForce video card
- Zalman CPU cooler (and mounting bracket)
- A wireless XGene keyboard with trackball
I was buying the ultra-quiet CPU cooler now, as installation later would entail removing the motherboard, so what the heck, do it right the first time.
I went to the PCAlchemy site, put things in my basket, and called and did a sanity check with them. It was confirmed. I hit submit, waited an hour, then went to pick it all up.
A couple of hours later, I had commandeered the dining room table, and it was littered with bits and pieces of computer.
My son and I started assembling pieces, but when I go to the cooling fan bracket, things didn’t look right to me, like I had the wrong bracket or something. Fine, have some wine and try again tomorrow!
Day 3
I went to the Zalman site to see if there was something beyond the less-than-ideal printer instructions on how to mount the cooling fan. Gotta love the Internet, they had a Flash video that walked me through it. Filled with new-found confidence, I spread the thermal grease on the CPU and plunged ahead. A few hours later, I had everything assembled the way I thought it should be (could have been faster, but some things got assembled, then re-assembled, and even re-re-assembled J). I was now at the point where I has a few questions left, I made a list, called PCAlchemy. They could answer all my important questions. I got a chuckle out of one where I asked what an unused connector on the motherboard was for, and he said it was a mystery to him, and that message boards were full of people also wondering. Fine.
Questions answered, final items plugged in, the big moment had arrived: I was ready to switch on the power. I moved the computer to a temporary resting place in my office, plugged it in, then, crouching to avoid the shower of sparks and flames I feared would engulf me, I turned on the power.
The good news was: no smoke, flames, or even sparks! The bad news was: the front panel LEDs flickered, the CPU fan started, but then there was a faint click and everything shut down. Hmmmm….. A quick call back to PCAlchemy to Nathan and we found out I had missed one of the power supply cables, the one that powers the CPU. Doh. Plugged that in, and the computer actually powered up. I went into the BIOS, made sure it would try to boot from DVD, and then let it boot from the Vista RC2 DVD I had burned earlier in the day.
The Vista install was painless. There was one point where the screen was blank for a long time, with no indication of what was going on. I suspect that it was doing a low level format of the virgin hard drive. I left it alone, and the install completed.
After installation, I spent an hour or so poking around in Vista, getting used to it. I had issues with network connectivity, found out that there were Vista beta network drivers on the Asus site (released the day before J). Once I installed that, I had connectivity. The ATI tuner worked out of the box, presumably because the right drivers were included with Vista, so that was great. I launched Media Center, and started looking around.
First thing I wanted to check was how the TV aspect was handled, so I went there and saw that everything was fine and intuitive. I recorded something so I would have some recorded media on the box.
Next, I wanted to see the Xbox 360 “extender” and watch something from the Media Center on the XBox. So, I went downstairs to the Xbox and told it to search for Media Centers. It found the new machine, gave me a numeric code, and told me to go allow it access on the Media Center PC. So, I did that, using the Media Center setup. So far, everything was going perfectly smoothly. The last step in the Media Center config was to check the network performance. I asked for the graphical display, which showed a line two-thirds of the way up the graph for HD TV, and another line halfway up for ordinary TV. I would have expected to see a trace for my network, but didn’t see it. Then, I noticed a little squiggly line starting to appear, but it was waaaaay down at the bottom of the graph, far below even the conventional TV threshold. Oh oh.
I moved the Xbox so I could plug it into the network switch (as opposed to the wireless bridge/hub it normally goes through, which is fine for Xbox Live play), and then was coming in at the top of the graph, well above what was required for HD. I was able to watch the content I had previously recorded, and playback was fine, it looked like live TV. I was able to use the Xbox controller to control the remote Media Center PC, changing channels, etc. I then got the Media Center remote control and used that, through the Xbox, to control the Media Center. Very cool!
That part understood, I went back to the Media Center PC and spent more time poking around Vista. I am impressed. Very nice look, and perf seems snappy.
I spent time looking at the Media Center “Guide” (TV listings it downloads for free). I preferred it to the what I an used to on my PVR (ReplayTV), and particularly liked the “movie poster” artwork it showed for movies. I found searching for things in the Guide to be very intuitive and efficient, although I did it with a keyboard. Without a keyboard (ie: using an Xbox controller or the Media Center remote control) would mean doing numeric-keypad typing, like most cell phones. Yuck… ReplayTV had an on-screen keyboard, perhaps that’s somewhere in the Guide also, but I didn’t see it. I promptly set up a bunch of things to record.
Days Later
I’m loving Vista. Now when I use XP/Win2003, they feel “clunky” and primitive in comparison.
I replaced the 1 gig of 667mhz RAM with 2 gig of 800mhz RAM, and perf is superb. Ultimately, my Media Center could host VMWare servers while it’s recording TV (don’t laugh, my configuration reflects this eventuality!).
The Media Center PC case has been closed up and it has move into the stereo cabinet. It replaces the DVD player (both the Xbox 360 and the Media Center can do that), and the CD player (who needs CD’s when you have iTunes, Internet radio, Media Center….). Pulling out those task-specific consumer entertainment devices and replacing them with a computer was a very strange feeling, and it really drove home the realities of the world of convergence we're moving into.
Had someone told me 5 years ago I’d have a computer in my stereo cabinet, I’d have laughed. Had someone told me 10 years ago, I’d have though them insane. Yet, there it lives….
A couple of days ago, I spent about a half hour using my Media Center remote control to talk to my XBox and set up recordings on the Media Center. Absolutely bizarre. However, it's an approachable-enough way to talk to the Media Center that I think I will be able to explain it to my wife.
Days that have not happened yet
I have to fix my network. I have a mix of 802.11b and 802.11g. This will not cut it in the world of streaming HD. So: I need 802.11n, which is reportedly 5 times the speed of 802.11g, with greater range. However… the spec’s not final yet. You can buy routers now that conform to the draft spec, but it sounds like a bit of a risk to me. What if the upgrade to the final spec is more than just a firmware upgrade? So, I’m looking into it, but even for me, it seems a bit early.
Once I have that, then the second Xbox 360 will move into my bedroom, and I will have two points in the house that can stream content from the Media Center.
Postscript
So why did I do this? How did I end up in a place where I had computer parts scattered over my dinning room table? Why didn't I just buy one already built? A few reasons: It will be some 6 months or so before Vista Media Centers are available already built, this way I got to pick exactly what I wanted, and lastly, I enjoy figuring things out and building them. From complex distributed software applications to gourmet meals, my life is all about about building things.
Punchline in all this? I’m not even a hardcore TV watcher, I just enjoy pushing the limits of technology J