Media Center
Ever since Comcast switched away from the MS Enhanced DVR software to the crappier (although more stable) TV Guide software, I've been thinking about going to Media Center. Luckily Dell offered a nicely equipped CableCard Media Center for a good price. With my employee discount and instance savings, I ended up with a Q6600 2.4Ghz, 3 Gig ram, 320 Gig HD, 2 x ATI OCUR for ~$1300 (after tax). Previously, a dual core single OCUR would have cost that much (and less ram).
I've read some horror stories in regard to setting up cable cards, but I drove to my local Comcast and picked up two cable cards. Plugged everything together, put in the cable cards, called Comcast to activate. And like magic, everything worked. So far, I only have the X360 as an extender, so I'm not replacing my Comcast DVR just yet. As soon as the v2 Extenders from Linksys and DLink come out, I'll probably end up with two (one for the family room replacing the DVR and another in the master bedroom).
I copied all of my photos to the Media Center and I've already started copying all of my CDs and DVDs to the Media Center, however, it'll take awhile since I'm encoding my DVDs with DivX and the encoder is single threaded. However, after playing with Media Center using the 360 as an extender, I'm very happy with the solution. Adding WebGuide (free software), I'm able to schedule shows from my laptop which is very convenient.
posted by Steve @ Tuesday, December 18, 2007
4 comments
4 Comments:
sounds like a nice rig, though, how long with 320Gigs last you?
knowing you, I'm guessing you have the DivX encoder engine settings turned up pretty high - what are the file sizes for DVDs?
oh, any way for the MCE OS to stream content outside of the home - could you listen to music on your home MCE box at work?
I have an extra 500 Gig ordered. Should be sufficient for now :)
For DivX, I'm using the default "Home Theater" settings, so a single DVD movie ends up about 1.5 Gigs.
Using Webguide, you can stream to the internet (music and video). Of course for video, you can stream DRM restricted stuff (TV shows recorded via cable card). I'm actually trying to set this up now as a way to share photos and videos with family and friends, but I need a dynamic dns service.
www.dyndns.org is ol' reliable right? you could always go with them. I know dlink offers one for those who have dlink routers (we just got 802.11n with the DIR-655 and I saw that option offered).
500 gigs - excellent. what is really nice too is that those 500 gig drives are becoming so darn cheap.
I have an app for the Mac called VisualHub that I've been using for conversions for M4V/MP4/DV -> FLV though, it has an option for DivX AVI. I may started encoding Sydney's DVD in that format to save a little space :)
dyndns.org is working pretty good. In fact, I'm likely to retire this blog since I'm going to host my photos on my server. I'll make a final post here when it's ready and create individual user accounts.
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