Pintmaster

The system has continued to stall even after replacing the video card and sound card. I thought it was the HDTV tuner card and removed that. This fixed the problem for a while, but then I experienced the system freezing again. So now the question is - what is causing the system to freeze?

The things that popped into my head were:

• Processor is dying
• My motherboard is incompatible with c-media sound processors (like the ones found in the turtle beach montego and Auzentech X-plosion)
• The 380w powersupply is either underpowered or failing

Well, I decided to try a few things today to figure out what was wrong. I removed both TV tuners and watched a DVD. The system worked fine. I added in the Analog tv tuner - the system worked fine. I added in the Digital Tuner - the system crashed while playing a DVD.

Then, I removed the analog tuner and booted with the Digital Tuner. The system booted fine and was stable. I loaded the ATI TV software and played an HD stream. The ATI card fixed the problem of choppy playback, however it seems that the HD signal is stronger directly on my TV, but that is another issue.

So, prior to realizing it could be a PSU issue, I ordered a new motherboard, processor, ram and video card.

Those are coming on Tuesday or Wednesday and I am debating buying a PSU just in case the system still crashes. I also decided to purchase a DVICO FusionHDTV5 RT Lite to replace the ATI HDTV Wonder that I thought was giving me a bunch of problems.

Building a HTPC is not quite as easy as I thought it would be, even with the extensive experience I have in building PCs.

I wish apple had come out with their HTPC a few weeks ago when I decided to do this project. According to reports from the shareholders meeting, Steve Jobs’ comments “We hear you loud and clear” may indicate that apple is working on something. It certainly wouldnt take much to take the Mac Mini to the next level.

This is just a minor update to Part 1. I ran into some problems and wanted to document them.

First, let me give you my relevant system specs as these may be partially responsible for some of the problems Im having.

Case: Antec Sonata
Motherboard: Asus A7V8X
Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2600+
Video Card: EVGA e-GeForce FX 5500 (256mb Ram)
HDTV Tuner: ATI HDTV Wonder
TV Tuner: Hauppage DVR150 MCE
Sound Card: Turtle Beach Montego DDL
Problems

• HDTV decoding is choppy, both when transcoding and recording
• Changing channels on the HDTV tuner is very slow (approximately 20 seconds before a new picture comes up)
• Turtle Beach Montego DDL crashes the system - freezes the cursor on screen requiring reboot

• Tried to use the drivers for c-media 8768 as recommended elsewhere on the net

Possible Remedies

• Purchased Auzentech HDA X-Plosion to replace the Turtle Beach Montego

• Provides Dolby Digital Live
• Provides DTS Connect
• Much more expensive than the Montego

• Claims to provide Hardware decoding of HDTV signals when combined with ATI HDTV Wonder - so it could solve the issues of choppiness and slow channel changing.

Stay tuned! I should have my final system by the end of this weekend.

I want to cancel cable.

My girlfriend and I watch very few shows that dont air on the regular over the air (OTA) broadcasts. Luckily, we are pretty central in houston and have pretty good HDTV reception for all the major networks. So, why do we pay > $50 a month to Time Warner Cable for our TV? Ah, thats right - the DVR - our Scientific Atlanta 8300HD. The functionality of being able to record our shows and watch them whenever keeps us hooked. So, why not build my own PVR! If I try and keep the cost down, it will pay for itself in the money we save not paying Time Warner Cable.

Minimum Requirements

• Old PC - I would recommend something in the past couple of years. The processor I am using is an Athlon XP 2600+ with 1 gb of ram and a 300 gb Harddrive
• ATI HDTV Wonder (comes with an antenna and remote)
• Other TV tuner card (Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 requires you have a regular tuner to use an HDTV tuner)
• Video Card - Im going to recommend a Radeon 9600 or newer. These have a built in hardware decoder for HDTV (h.264) which will reduce the strain on the processor and will probably give you a better HDTV experience (especially if your computer is old). Make sure you buy the right kind though - older systems likely have an AGP slot and not PCIe. Check on this before buying.
• Windows XP Media Center Edition - if you can find it, buy the one that includes the Microsoft Remote

Optional Extras
This is where you can get carried away and really raise the price. Find a few things that you want and stick with them. Unless of course you want to go all out!

• ATI All in Wonder (combine the regular tv tuner and the video card into one)
• Outdoor HDTV antenna (get a better signal)
• Microsoft’s Media Center Remote (has better buttons for working with Media Center than ATI’s remote)
• Wireless Keyboard
• Big harddrive - check whether you have SATA (small cable) or Parallel ATA (usually a wide, thin grey cable)
• Home Theater Case
• ¬µTorrent
• Sound card with Optical Out (to connect to your home theater receiver). This one, Turtle Beach TBS-3300 has Dolby Digital Live which can convert any stream into Dolby Digital. Nice bonus.
• DVI to HDMI cable (to connect to your HDTV)
• HDTV

So, while you’re busy buying all of that stuff, I am going to wait for my packages to arrive so I can put it all together and give you the next article about getting it all set up!

I was recently playing around with ¬µTorrent and I ran across the following information on problems with the WRT54G. Luckily, I am using DD-WRT on all 3 of the WRT54Gs that blanket my house. This is one of ¬µTorrent’s recommended firmwares and there is a fix!

It seems that the WRT54G keeps logs of all connections for 5 Days which very quickly brings down the router when you have a ton of connections opening up through bittorrent, or any other P2P application. This little trick saved me a ton of time!

I decided to return the Mac Mini. It’s a cool device and really nice and small, but unfortunately there are a few things holding it back being the “killer media box” that I envisioned it to be:

In OS X (intel)

1. AC3 only supports stereo - AC3 5.1 crashes front row
2. Azureus is a resource hog and not as easy to configure as uTorrent - no other alternative
3. Bluetooth range is very poor (not sure if it was my Microsoft Keyboard & Mouse, or the mini

In Windows

1. Everything was fantastic except it doesnt do DVI to HDMI. This killed the deal. The screen goes black when I try and boot Win XP on my TV and the OS doesnt find a screen and fails to boot.
2. Internal speaker is always on - this is not a big deal, just a minor annoyance
3. IR receiver doesnt work in Windows - no drivers

I just received my Remote Control and Receiver for Media Center today, but it looks like I have to return my Mac Mini and go another route to my Media Center Bliss. It’s a shame because the Mini has such a small form factor. If only the DVI to HDMI worked!! Damn video drivers.

I tried installing Fedora Core 5 on a Dell Poweredge 1850 with Perc 4e/si raid at work today. Unfortunately the driver (megaraid) seems to have a bug that causes the system to crash. Im not alone in the problem and it seems others have had the same thing happen.

Im going to give Ubuntu a try to see if I can avoid switching back to Debian. Not that I dont like Debian, but it is just a big pain to get things set up.

Update: I got Ubuntu installed and it works like a dream. I expected this since it is built on debian. It is much easier to manage and is better documented. The community is a lot less 1337 than the Debian community. It makes it a lot easier to get help when linux is not your full time job / life.

I am really frustrated that my Mac Mini Core Duo running Windows wont display an image on my HDTV using a DVI to HDMI connector. It works perfectly in OS X but someone forgot to add that functionality into the windows driver. Thanks ATI! I would love to see an update to the driver that fixes this. What an annoyance. Almost as annoying as the problems I am having with the Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse.

I got my Optical Desktop Elite for Bluetooth® today and hooked it up to my Mac Mini. The bluetooth doesnt even reach to my couch! What gives! The total distance from the mac mini to my couch is about 8 feet. The advertisement says the bluetooth mouse and keyboard stretches 30 ft. If I use the mouse any further than 4 feet, it gets jerky. If I use the keyboard further than 5 feet, it drops strokes. This is a terrible product - something is wrong - either the bluetooth in the Mac Mini has no range, or the Optical Desktop Elite has no range. Either way I am really disappointed. I will be trying the apple mouse and keyboard for comparison.

Im trying to build a media center for my HDTV based around a Mac Mini and RSS feeds for downloadable content. I’ve tried two methods and I am stuck somewhere in between.

Windows
I installed Windows XP Media Center Edition as well as uTorrent to connect up to my TV feeds. I purchased a remote and IR receiver since there is no driver for the mac mini yet as well as a bluetooth mouse and keyboard. When trying to connect it up to my Panasonic TH42PX50U, it showed a blank screen. I fiddled around with the configuration settings but couldnt get it to display. I then did some research and found that it doesnt work yet - driver issues

So, I tried OS X

OS X
Contrary to what I had read, OS X will play all of my content. I made a symbolic link from my movies folder to my external harddrive where all my content is and it showed up in Front Row. The playback is really good, and I have no complaints. It seems like one of the few pieces of software to download content from RSS feeds on the mac is Democracy Player. However, it isnt in Universal Binary yet and hogs bandwidth like no tomorrow. So, I cant leave it running all the time.

Neither of these solutions is great right now.

Some of the things I will try:

Windows
If I can get alternate drivers that support DVI to HDMI, then I am set.

OS X
Maybe I can install Windows XP in Parallels and use uTorrent like that. Seems kinda convoluted but it might just work! Alternatively, I can give a lot of money to Democracy Player and ask them nicely for a universal binary.

Wish me luck! Your solutions are always welcome.

I am trying to find a VOIP phone system to replace our current PBX. This is really confusing. There are so many options and not a good rundown of what the top 10 are. I havent even seen a concise breakdown of what the differences are between cisco and the other big boys and all these small voip companies. Im going to try and set this straight. Hope I can do it. I would love to see any resources that do a good job of this.

It seems that one of our business partners is infected with a virus that tries to spread itself through Yahoo Instant Messenger by sending the following message to all those on the persons list.

Gai xinh ne , gai xinh ne : http://xrobots.net/Gift/?file=Gaixinh.jpg

If you click on the link it is an exectuable Gaixinh.jpg.exe which I assume will perpetuate itself.