CableCARD view on Vista?

Now that we're getting down to 6 months on the VISTA schedule it might be good to look at what is on the horizon for Media Center.  Specifically, CableCARD capabilities.

http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/2199/more_concrete_details – this is a good start.

So it looks like we'll be getting CableCARD support in Vista just when the cable companies are abandoning Cable Card 1.0.  Great.  So now we're stuck in a grey area of support – CableCARD 2.0 should be out, but no guarantees.

And they won't allow home-built or older Media Centers to be upgraded to CableCard with any kind of support.  Even better.

HD Beat has a great set of articles – looks at CableCARD 2.0, Vista features and other HD information.  http://www.hdbeat.com/search/?q=cablecard

Well, I for one am fed up with the horrid software that cable companies and the set top box makers force on us.  My DCT6412 is very bad – I won't detail everything, but I'm glad it at least can record shows and we finally got ESPN2 HD – woot! – that only took about 3 years too long.  

Let's hope that CableCARD 2.0 is actually good – something CableCARD 1.0 was NOT.

ps – sorry about the links, I'll try to address that in future posts.

Until next time! 

Xbox 360 and MCE update

Quick update – I noticed that several people have been reading the site – especially on the Xbox 360, even with the long delay in posts, so I thought I would post an update on the performance so far.

The WAF(Wife Acceptance Factor) is HUGE! The 360 is housed inside a totally enclosed cabinet, connected with optical cables to my Yamaha reciever and through Component to a Sharp LCD flat panel hanging above the fireplace. In order to keep everything hidden I got a Logitech Harmony 890 – it uses RF to transmit to an IR repeater and so I can control everything with one remote while keeping everything hidden. The 890 is working well even though I had read some reviews saying others had problems – I must have lucked out and gotten updated firmware that stopped lockups and other issues.

I love having '24' in all it's HD glory recorded and being able to be displayed in either room. Not to mention the fact that all of our music and photos are fun to have on during parties – people always ask how they can do the same thing.

Well, off to hang out with the wife..

Shopping with the boy

So, I took my son, seven months old, on his first trip to the computer store – Micro Center to be exact.

We were returning the Linksys High Gain antenna I bought as a last-ditch effort since it doesn’t work with their 802.11a routers.

So, after all the wireless and powerline networking devices tried in an attempt to connect the Xbox 360 to the Media Center without running wire, I finally gave up and bought a Cat 6 line and ran it through the house – thank goodness for cold air returns.

After spending a day with the boy watching ol’ dad pull fish tape through the walls and saying “ear muffs” often, I finally got the coveted HD-compatible full set of signal bars.

On to the next project. And now I can say, bring on the need for Gbe. Wireless – Bah, humbug…

XE104 a bust

Well, the Powerline product connected as advertised – no hassles there. It transferred data and connected to Xbox Live at a much higher rate than the 802.11a Linksys WRT55AG I have(which is getting RMA’d, so we’ll see what happens with that).

Then, I tried to connect to Media Center. Nothing, nada, zero. Apparently they can’t see SSDP broadcast packets or delay them enough that the MCE and Xbox 360 never get connected. It’s unfortunate, because these are otherwise great devices – the speed isn’t as much as advertised and signal drops off FAST – go more than 30 feet and you’ll be down in the 30-40MBps range. Any more distance than that and you’ll be hitting the 20s.

So, if they fixed the problem with the broadcast packets, all would be well – very impressive speed and performance – but back they are going to Amazon today.

So, be WARNED! – I have tested these with Xbox 360 and they DO NOT work with Media Center Extender functionality. But, if you are just connecting to Xbox Live, you should be OK.

XE104, I hardly knew ya…

Netgear XE104

Well, now that the Cisco has been working well for 2 weeks – no lost Vonage calls and the wireless router seems to be able to keep up, it’s time to optimize the network infrastructure for HD transmission between the Media Center and Xbox 360.

 Wireless is working great for songs from MCE to Xbox 360, but HD content isn’t getting the required 22MBps from my 802.11a router(Linksys WRT55AG).  I investigated several items – wiring the house is not an option with the current setup – it would be a total nightmare and not worth the expense if I can figure a way out around it. 

 Enter the new Netgear XE104, based on HomePlug Turbo (85MBps spec, probably 25MBps sustained throughput from what I’ve read). http://www.netgear.com/products/details/XE104.php

I have two on the way and they will hopefully help me avoid re-wiring the house.  HomePlug will become relevant, IMHO, to a lot more people when HomePlug AV products come out – 200MBps spec, no wireless style issues of dropouts or deadspots. 

Since I only have one MC Extender, that’s what I’ll test first and post how my experience goes.

Happy New Year!

Well, Happy New Year all!

The wife and I are hosting a New Year’s Eve party tonight – pomegranate martinis are the featured drink until 8 or 9PM, then it’s off to the next door neighbor’s house. If you’re going to attend, the secret drink is out now, but shhh – don’t let Melissa know I told you.

What a great year this should be – moving on from Microsoft and heading to a small start-up, Compellent Technology.

However, Microsoft technology will be with me for a long time and I do hope they get out of their ‘funk’. Tonight the main entertainment will be the Xbox 360 running Media Center photos with song lists playing in the background – photos from the year, including some from Microsoft events and parties with friends. We didn’t travel a lot this year, so there won’t be a lot of photos – Melissa had Rowan in July, so certainly nothing wild and crazy.

Here’s to all of you out there – Have a Happy New Year and see you in 2006! May your road go ever on and no doors block your way…

Media Center and Xbox 360

I was involved in a lot of Media Center Beta activity while at Microsoft and one of the coolest things that we did during that time was add HDTV tuners to the system. While I think Media Center has a long way to go in terms of ease of use and stability – changing a video driver on a consumer device? Not a good idea for Joe User – I do think that the Xbox 360 and Rollup 2 update for Media Center 2005 is one of the coolest things ever done.

I’ve got an Xbox 360 that I got on December 10th and it’s running my main floor living room’s media activities. We can watch recorded High-Def content, listen to iPod and WMA device music, watch movies, play games, listen to the radio, view thousands of photos and listen to all the MP3s I’ve ripped over the years and put on the Media Center through it. While it’s not the quietest machine in the world when playing games, it drops the fan noise significantly when playing movies or running the Media Center Extender that’s built-in. I’ve got in connected over an 802.11a wireless network and it works flawlessly with some very rare wireless interference. I also have it located in a totally enclosed cabinet that was originally designed for the Media Center PC itself so it completely blocks the noise. The cabinat has built-in slots for ventilation so while the noise is stifled, the heat isn’t stifling. I believe the Media Center was about 30-40 degrees hotter than the 360, so it has plenty of cooling room in the cabinet and the wireless controllers make it un-necessary to expose the IR port(now if someone would just make an RF wireless media remote).

I’m surprised that we have been using the 360 about 70% of the time for media of some kind and 30% for games – it works so well and is so quiet that the wife hasn’t even complained about having to use the controller for media viewing.