Apart 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.
Not a lot’s been happening the last few weeks; too many other things going on to unfortunately do anything about the house or this site. But a Media Center House wouldn’t be complete without an IP phone so I do now have a new gadget in the shape of a SIP phone (internet telephony). I’ve gone for a dual-handset Siemens S685IP (£140 for 2 handsets). At its most basic it’s a landline DECT phone, but there is also a LAN port on the base unit and plugging that into my router gives me the option to add a further 6 SIP lines with the abilty of calling out over 3 lines simultaneously (1 landline & 2 SIP lines with upto a maximum of 6 handsets in total).
The landline feature needs no brains whatsoever to set up; just plug it in and start dialling. Setting up the SIP account though requires quite a few more setttings but rather than do this through the small screen on one of the handsets (small but at least colourful and clear), it can be done through the base units default IP address in a web browser (192.168.0.2 for mine until I gave it a static address; important if you go down the route of using QoS settings on you router (Quality of Service – so calls are treated with the highest priority by the router to avoid data drop-outs during high bandwidth usage)).
There are quite a lot of settings for setting up a SIP account that had me scratching my head for a few minutes but thankfully my SIP provider (sipgate.co.uk) also sells the S685IP and provides idiot-proof instructions on their site with all your account details filled in and within 2 minutes my extra SIP line was up and taking calls on the handsets.
As for a SIP provider there are loads out there, but I went for the one that’s been most prevalent to me in the last few weeks; sipgate.co.uk, a German based company with a good range of tariffs. The account is free to set up and you get to select a landline number with area code that closest matches your geographical location. For incoming calls it is completely gratis, and once you’ve credited your account (min £10) you can then make out-going calls. The account information online displays instant updates to what numbers have been received/called and what the call costs (if any) were. Other features include setting up voicemail and the option to email you a recording (wav file) of any voicemail. I however currently prefer to use the voicemail on the Siemens phone system which is very good and all handled through the handset; a feature important to me includes the option to manually divert an incoming call to voicemail and the handset then screens the callers message through its speaker with the option of picking up the call if need be (silence being the other option). Transferring calls between handsets is very easy and is as simple as it should be; just ring another handset then hangup. The call quality of SIP has also impressed me, just as good as any decent landline; nothing like the dodgy internet calling (Skype) that I’ve had before, although I have read you can get a beta version of Skype for SIP if that’s your poison.
I’ve tried many DECT handsets over the last few years trying to get dual-line capabilities without a PBX (phone exchange) but this S685IP landline/SIP phone from Siemens is without doubt the best one. There is an even nicer looking model with vibrate function, but at an extra £50 not quite worth the money for me.
Alternatively you can ignore landline capabilities altogether and go down the completely free IP/PBX route of telephones using free software from the likes of 3CX. I declined this option though as no doubt my sever running the system would fail the first second I go away and not be able to fix it. The Siemens system offers a great balance of standard landline features with an almost no-fuss approach to IP calling.
To stop you thinking this blog had died, this is a post to say that I haven’t forgoten about this site, I’ve just been too busy to do anything on it recently. There’s a few things I’ll be posting about in the next few weeks including running a network drive as storage for Recorded TV for the house as well as a new SIP phone (internet telephony).
Nothing too exciting today, just an update to the wiring layout of the house to incorporate the kitchen. Hopefully it helps make a bit more sense of the whole thing. Extension still to be added 
The kitchen Media Center install is now complete. I have updated the kitchen page so head there if you want to read about it.
Well I’m almost there with the kitchen install. I spent last weekend finishing the breakfast bar and the next 2 days picking sawdust out of my hair from the router. It’s all but done bar a few small things like some silicone where it meets the wall and running more LED lights underneath. My camera’s currently knackered so it’s camera-phone shots for now, but once I get another camera I’ll sort out some proper finished photos.
However the wife also dropped the standard MCE remote in the kitchen sink so today I’ve a new one from Compro, a K100. Quite large in the hand but it’s only £12 and it has the coloured buttons for digital text etc so it’s quite a bargain.
Well 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.
Last weekend finally saw the start of installing the new kitchen HTPC after moving the original wall mounted media player about 10 months ago, I’ve updated the kitchen page to where I’m currently up to.
I mistakenly flashed the bios of the bedroom Media Center recently for no other reason than why not, and what happened? Checksum errors every time I tried to change the settings within the bios – typical.
It would boot OK with the default settings, but that’s hardly ideal. It’s a Gigabyte P31 ES3G and I jumped from bios F6 to F13 which may have been a leap too far in one upgrade. To fix it I double checked everything, from checking and replacing the battery to reseting the bios a dozen times by shorting the jumpers, each time trying a different technique read from the internet, but no matter what it just wouldn’t boot with anything other than it’s default settings; any changes would bring up a checksum error.
The solution was rather simple and unexpected; unplug the PC from the mains for an extended period even with the battery still in.
It came about being unplugged for a couple of days while I tested the new kitchen Media Center PC in its place (yes, another HTPC, and ironically made up of the aBit AM2 motherboard that use to run in the bedroom but was too unstable booting to be relied upon but since rebuilt has now shown great stability) and when put back in place after moving the new kitchen PC downstairs, it cleared itself; result!
Now as for the kitchen HTPC, it’s a micro ATX board squeezed into a micro ATX case given to me by a friend as a dumped PC (recycling at its best), and along with a spare HDD from the lounge PC (cos’ the lounge is now SSD), some new 4Gb of RAM, a cheap DVB-S card (a Compro VideoMate S350), and swappping out the decent PSU from the ancient office PC (a P4 that now works with the PSU from the friends dumped PC), it’s a PC from the ashes, a phoenix.
Even though my other systems currently reside in the attic I wanted this one to live local in the kitchen so it would become a hub-of-the-house more easily, so it was a challenge of getting some co-ax for the DVB-S card, and a network cable down into the top of the kitchen cupboards. But armed with 43cm of 19mm flat wood bit, I took some very careful measurements, aimed at the kitchen ceiling and started drilling, checking every few inches for electrics or unexpected plumbing and luckily enough to come out exactly where I wanted it to, at the bottom of the bedroom wardrobe where I could then simply run the wiring up through a hole in the ceiling over to the rest of the systems. Phew.
I’ll sort some photos out of this new work in the upcoming days.
Another 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.
