Decent extenders are the Holy Grail of a Windows based system in the home. Not everyone wants a full-blown PC in every room where they want to watch TV, nor do they want to go the cost of adding a Home Server, so an Extender is the ideal option. Unfortunately, only Xbox360s are the most viable option, but they also have their own drawbacks. So, with Windows7 taking the PC market by storm, what is the future for Media Center Extenders? Read this engadget article for some good options.
Archive for the ‘Windows 7’ Category
Windows Media Center Extenders
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010Samsung X120 (JA01UK) netbook
Friday, February 12th, 2010I decided last week that my ageing Fujitsu Siemens Amilo SI 1520 was in need of an update, so looking around for a 12″ replacement laptop I came across the Samsung X120 for £480. There’s enough out there on the web to cover reviews, videos, photos etc, so I’ll add my opinion solely on using it for the last 2 weeks.
In terms of hardware spec, there’s nothing missing from it that I could need. It has Bluetooth, WLAN, Webcam, HDMI, Memory Card slot (SD), 250Gb HDD, 3Gb RAM and a very, very bright well contrasted LED screen. Its touchpad is multitouch enabled (which is a software thing more than a hardware thing ‘cos my last laptop also had a capacitive pad, but no multitouch), and this means you can zoom, rotate etc all with certain finger movements which is quite handy for zooming in on web-browsers etc.
The CPU is a Dual Core SU4100 which from the PassMark site is quite a bit better than the T2400 on my old Amilo. I run Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Office, PowerDVD, IE, Chrome, Spotify, Filezilla, all without any problem at all. It also just about runs a Blu-ray ISO off an external drive, I wouldn’t class it as watchable though, just an indication of it’s power. The keyboard is a good large size (it couldn’t get any bigger), and the the overall design is clamshell like that closes tight with no rattles or any sign of dodging build quality. The charger port is even on the side which is a vast improvement over my old Amilo which at the back always got in the way when using during charging. The heat sink vents are also side mounted meaning it shouldn’t overheat when the bottom is covered (by being on your lap or carpet etc).
It comes with Windows7 as well which is much better than staring at the decade old XP interface, and from out the box it takes about 2 hours for it to whir through the process of installing/configuring itself with all the bloated/crap software that PCs come with. 30 minutes of uninstalling later and a quick run of CCleaner to rid the registry of all the rubbish and it’s firing on all cylinders. Windows7 Home Premium also means Media Center is included, which believe it or not is of no real benefit to me, but still nice to have should the need arise.
The only thing that sucks on it is the battery. It lasts the same as my old Amilo, 2hrs, from a full charge, and given it’s branded as a Netbook means it’s up against rivals with 9hr battery lives. All can be forgiven though due to it wiping the floor with the others in terms of power. For such a lightweight, well spec’d machine, battery life must be a sacrifice and one that I’m happy to allow, and anyway, apparently there is a 6-cell battery on the horizon (currently 4-cell) that will no doubt make this the sub £500 12″ Netbook/Laptop of choice.
Windows7 Home Premium release
Friday, October 30th, 2009Well my retail copies of Windows7 arrived last week and so far I’ve only gotten around to installing one of them on the lounge system. Nothing to note really: it looks and feels the same as the RC I’ve been using for the last few months. However it is nice to finally get the release version installed, and if it’s as stable as the RC (which hasn’t crashed once in a combined total of 12months use across 3 PCs) then Microsoft have won back my favour after Vista. BTW, the retail package comes with both 32 and 64 bit discs so you can hold off deciding which one to install right up to the last minute!
Sky Player for Media Center
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009Apart from waiting for my copies of Windows7 to arrive in the post today (three for the bargain pre-order price of £150), I read about the the new Sky Player integration but I didn’t think I come home to see it automatically added in my Media Centers.
They certainly didn’t hang about, but it all looks quite intersting and certainly adds another layer of function to the Media Center interface. Once up and running I’ll post some more shots.
Windows 7 on an 64Gb Samsung SSD
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009Well I bit the bullet and upgraded the main OS drive on the lounge PC to an SSD. To keep things relatively cheap I went for a standard Samsung model (SSD64M), which although not giving the best SSD performance out there is still better than my aging platter drive.
Overall the response of the PC has been greatly enhanced, especially in Media Center; the guide instantly pops up when called rather than the 4-5sec delay I sometimes had with my old drive. Boot time has dropped from about 65secs to around 45sec, so no major improvement there but the Samsung isn’t the fastest SSD (an Intel would wipe the floor with it, but than again it would also cost a heap more as well). Overall everything just feels a bit more responsive.
Installing Windows 7 on it went without a problem and required no other input from me on setting it up. I also downloaded the SSD Tweak utility to change a few things in Windows that should hopefully extend the life of the drive.
Cross platform TV Guide
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009Another amendment to Windows 7 Media Center is the intelligence of recording a program across the guide on another tuner if all current-type tuners are in use, i.e. to record something automatically on satellite if the freeview tuners are in use.
I normally just use the two Freeview (DVB-T) tuners for day-to-day use of Media Center and leave the satellite channels (DVB-S) at the bottom of the guide only to venture down there once in a while for random satellite viewing. But take this example below where I’ve tried to record three programs on Freeview; both DVB-T tuners are in use recording several programs during the hour that Supernatural is on but Media Center tells me in small print at the bottom that the conflicting program, Supernatural on channel 6, will be recorded on 118 (satellite channel number) instead.
This feature didn’t immediately make itself known as the conflicting program doesn’t appear as a recorded item in the above list (and obviously only works on channels that appear on both DVB-T and DVB-S), however returning to the guide and jumping down to channel 118 shows it as scheduled to record. It was only after seeing programs that I thought I couldn’t record appear in the RecordedTV list that I realised what it was doing. Nice touch.
Bedroom / Bathroom HTPC sorted…
Friday, June 5th, 2009Well in my last post I said that Windows 7 had left me a bit deflated this week with crashes and bugs, but it turns out it was just a few bad days in the world of the microchip rather than any real software issues.
The crashing and downright appalling instability of the bedroom / bathroom Media Center PC turned out to be a knackered hard drive. The reason I figured this out? Well apart from a BSOD from a SATA port driver, I could hear the knocking the drive was making from 3 rooms away so clearly it wasn’t happy (in terms of frequency of hard disk failure, this is my third in as many years from currently owning 12 or so, but the drive was about 4 years old and had many thousand hours of use). With this problem solved it was a case of swapping out an unused 250Gb drive from the lounge PC and this time installing the 64bit version using the same disc that I had in the lounge. Surprisingly this time around it installed perfectly without any need for having to manually installing any drivers; everything was detected and installed first time and I haven’t downloaded a single driver. Both the bedroom and bathroom displays are working as they should in clone mode and the sound is spot-on without any distortion that I had from the previous generic driver on the first install a few weeks ago. It seems the driver availability for Windows 7 is getting better by the day.
This made the whole install incredibly quick and it ended up only taking an hour from running the install disc to finishing a full channel scan and watching TV. Microsoft have come a long way from the marathon 2.5hr install of XP MCE on my office PC!
From the Hauppauge Nova-T driver being automatically installed this time I would put the issue of losing the card downstairs in the lounge PC this week as a potential failed driver update, hence the need for me to run the Hauppauge driver install.exe file again.
So the new and revised bedroom / bathroom PC is now finished and running stable with…
Maybe it’s time to add some some RAM…
Windows 7 bugs (updated 29june)
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009****** UPDATE – June 3rd. Well prior to previous reports about Windows 7 missing its release this year, it seems that it’s now scheduled for a full public release on October 22nd, and a 50% offer is in the pipeline. So hopefully this bug list will stay as short as possible! ******
Thought that as I have both my Media Center systems running the Windows 7 RC I should keep a tab of bugs that are annoying the f**k out of me.
So far we have:
Overall I’m still very pleased with Windows 7, but if I keep getting issues coming at me over the next few weeks I may start to think otherwise…
I guess that for all the Pros there are with networked PC systems running your entertainment, this week I’m starting to experience some of the Cons.
UPDATE 29June: Both systems are flawless in operation and I rarely (if ever) have any problems. Sometimes I manage to get Media Center to restart itself but this is always when I’m minimising it and quickly trying to do something else at the same time, so a little patience from me would stop this from happening.
Playing buffered Recorded TV across network
Monday, June 1st, 2009Lying in bed watching TV this weekend I found yet another perk to Windows 7; the ability to watch currently recording material from another PC across the network without waiting for it to finish recording.
Take this screenshot from the bedroom TV showing the availability of a BBC HD recording from the lounge PC halfway through broadcast, and even though it lacks any proper metadata from the guide about program length etc (which I guess is written once the file is closed)…
…it plays as if it’s a local recording. Brilliant.
I have already recently found through installing the Windows 7 Release Candidate on both my Media Center PCs at home that sharing Recorded TV across the network not only displays it in the main Media Center menu but also brings up thumbnails (a feature always missing from previous versions of Windows, unless you hacked it), and now that a program halfway through recording on another PC can also be played as well it adds another great feature to the system.
Windows 7 – 64bit version
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009I’ve been really impressed by the 32bit version of the Windows 7 RC, and as it’s a free download I thought I should try the 64bit version as well. So I spent this past Saturday morning re-installing Windows and is it an improvement worth making over the 32bit version? er, no; certainly not for standard Media Center purposes.
Due to the difference in memory allocation between the two versions I now get my full 4Gb of supported RAM, but with it also comes bloated system files and the increased potential of unsupported drivers (for the near future at least, but this is something that will improve with time).
However, the install did automatically install all my drivers (except Hauppauge which needed a manual download of the drivers from their website – same for the 32bit version) and overall it runs just as seamlessly as the 32bit version.
But more importantly, is there a noticeable difference when using the Media Center interface? No. Apart from the ‘x86 Program Files’ folder on C:/ drive there’s nothing to distinguish the two systems. But technology is always about progression, and as the PC hardware is 64bit capable then I may as well make the most of it with the OS, so for now it’s 64bits for me.
How does my main system rank? Intel Quad Q6600, 4Gb 800Mhz RAM, 320Mb nVidia 8800GTS, Samsung 400Gb HDD…
