Brian's Brain

To begin, I’d like to commend you all on your self-restraint in response to my two-weeks-back generally pro-Windows Vista post. Although the comments were numerous, they were generally quite polite and informative…and a number of you even had the audacity to agree with me! ;-) The asbestos underwear wasn't necessary after all, it seems…

Considering that my former primary PC is now dead, you might think that I'd be rapidly pressing my new Windows Vista laptop into work service. Actually, I'm not…tomorrow, I'll tell you what I'm instead using (specifically, typing this particular writeup on, in fact). The Windows Vista Ultimate-based Dell XPS M1330 is keeping busy, but at least for the next two weeks it's restricted to being tethered to my over-the-air antenna's coax cable feed. After all, the Olympics are underway!

Let me tell you a bit about my setup, to begin. I've got Xbox 360s (which, among other things, act as Media Center Extenders) both upstairs in the bedroom and downstairs in the living room. The bedroom-based system was formerly Wi-Fi-tethered to my Linksys WRT54GC 802.11g router, whereas the living room-located console has always employed a HomePlug AV powerline networking spur. The XPS M1330 was also originally connected to the LAN via 802.11g.

When I ran a network calibration test (one of Windows Vista's Media Center built-in features) between the laptop and HomePlug AV-connected Xbox 360, the program reported that I'd be fine streaming standard-def material but might have problems with high-def content. And between the two 802.11g-tethered peripherals (i.e. laptop PC and bedroom console) not even standard-def material was guaranteed to reliably stream. So I migrated the bedroom setup to HomePlug AV. And, at least until I upgrade to an 802.11n-based router, the laptop is now also powerline-connected.

Back at CES, Xceive had provided me with a review sample of HP's ExpressCard Digital/Analog TV Tuner For Windows Vista, and now I finally had an ExpressCard-based system to try it on. The software installation CD that came with the unit was unfortunately unreadable, but a bit of Google searching informed me that HP's unit was actually an OEM relabel of Hauppauge's WinTV-HVR-1500. Installing drivers off the company's support site got me up and running in no time, though for some unknown reason Windows Vista thinks that the HP/Hauppauge device has an ATSC-only tuner. No biggie, though; digital streams are what I'd prefer to record (and after February 17^th of next year, will have to record).

Windows XP Media Center Edition veterans may snicker at my newbie enthusiasm, but I'm quite impressed with the capabilities and user interface. IMHO, the MCE 'experience' ranks right up there with the v2 Zune software as some of the best Microsoft-authored code I've ever had the pleasure of running. It is so cool, for example, to be able to watch a pre-recorded multi-hour Olympics broadcast in the living room, stop it partway through, go up to the bedroom, fire up the Xbox 360 there, and continue watching right where I left off as I fade off to sleep. My laptop's got enough horsepower to simultaneously stream a pre-recorded show to a game console while it's recording (and, in the process, transcoding…keep reading) the same or another. And menu navigation through the consoles-as-Extenders has miniscule lag, at least over my high-bandwidth HomePlug AV links. Given my recent-past scathing critique of the product category, it's a pleasant relief to find an exception to the overall rule.

I've even figured out how to access the Media Center material from conventional Windows XP clients (and many other web browser-inclusive systems, to boot), thought it wasn't without hiccups. After installing Orb on the XPS M1330, I headed to the My Orb website and was able to 'see' the audio, video (included both live and pre-recorded TV, plus my laptop's built-in webcam) and still image content available on the system. However, although I was able to live-stream (ASF) webcam-captured visages to another laptop, attempts to stream television material resulted in a "Windows Media Player cannot connect to the server hosting the content that you want to play" error message in the viewing laptop, and none of the 'top 10' suggestions seemed to apply to my particular suggestion.

Continue reading with Part 2, 'Windows Vista Media Center: Olympics Glitches And Solutions, And A HDHomeRun Alternative'…