My Computer Works! So Why Am I Irked?

Right now, I’m happy. And a bit embarrassed, though I shouldn’t be. And perplexed. And frustrated. Welcome to my world.

As I’ve regularly mentioned in past posts, a Dell XPS M1330 laptop computer running Windows Vista Ultimate is my high-def ‘TiVo’ (or for fellow veterans of ‘that other PVR’, ReplayTV), recording incoming ATSC transmissions that I subsequently stream to several Xbox 360s scattered throughout the house. I’ve installed WebGuide on the laptop, thereby giving me web browser-based access (both from intra-LAN and Internet) to the recordings as well as live TV streams coming from Windows Media Center, along with my program guide and my mostly NAS-housed library of music, photos and videos:

The setup mostly works great. However, until today I’ve never been able to get the streaming bit working. I can download files. And as long as I’m on the LAN and accessing WebGuide from another Windows system, I can ‘play’ the files. But streaming them (which among other things potentially involves transcoding them, bitrate-converting them, and aspect ratio-transforming them on the Dell prior to sending them out) has been a no-go. I either see messages indicating that the WebGuide media server program running on the Dell was unable to connect with my client, or obscure references to "Failed to connect to an IPC Port: The system cannot find the file specified" and "Failed to write to an IPC Port: The pipe is being closed."

Perusing the WebGuide and Green Button forums provided suggestions that I might not have the necessary audio and video codecs installed on my system, and that I should try installing a trial version of CyberLink’s PowerDVD in order to rectify the situation. But the laptop already has a Dell-branded ("MediaDirect") version of CyberLink’s sofware, complete with the requisite codecs. Other firewall-centric suggestions were equally unhelpful; I’ve got the requisite TCP ports open both in the laptop’s Windows Firewall and in my Apple router (the latter necessary only for Internet streaming).

That’s not the only issue that’s cropped up with this machine. At some unknown point in the past, either Windows Update or I unknowingly did something that subsequently caused Windows Media Player to refuse to play back WMA (Windows Media Audio) and WMV (Video) files. Every time I attempted to do so, a pop-up message would appear referencing a protected media path error, and an incremental iteration of a program called "mfpmp.exe" would appear in my system’s Task Manager process list.

The protected media path technologies included for the first time with Windows Vista are intended to implement digital rights management support, blocking invalid accesses to DRM-inclusive material. Yet I was even getting the error with DRM-free WMAs and WMVs. Other file formats such as MP3 played back fine in Windows Media Player. And the supposedly offensive WMAs and WMVs would play back fine in other programs, such as my Zune Software. Maddening.

So earlier today, after a lengthy back-and-forth setup process with Microsoft’s PR agency, I got on the phone with three senior MS representatives. I’d earlier provided the Internet access URL for my WebGuide setup to the Windows Media Center developer, and his initial attempts to stream content from my computer over the weekend and earlier this week were also unsuccessful (thankfully proving that I wasn’t crazy). But he reported that when he’d tried streaming again a few minutes before the call, all was well. And I subsequently confirmed his findings. Next, I fired up Windows Media Player…and the WMAs and WMVs all played fine this time. Ahem.

The Windows Media Player representative consoled me by pointing out that mine was a fairly common situation that’s often ‘magically’ fixed by audio and graphics driver upgrades…but I’d done no such upgrades. All I can think is that some other Windows Update that’s been pushed to my system in recent weeks either fixed bugs or un-did some obscure Registry settings that were causing my problems. The WebGuide streaming situation is especially bizarre, because the only thing that got installed between yesterday (when the system definitely wasn’t working as it should) and today was a Windows Defender database update. This sort of situation must drive tech support folks nuts.

By the way, if you’d like to stream WebGuide-sourced material directly to a Mac running OS X (i.e. not to Windows running either virtualized or native via Boot Camp on the Mac hardware), or for that matter I suppose a Linux-powered box, here’s what you do:

• Download, install and launch a copy of VLC Media Player.
• Click on ‘Stream Program’ within WebGuide
• In the streaming profile window that pops up, after selecting your desired bitrate and aspect ratio, make sure you’ve also checked the box next to the words ‘Open directly in Windows Media Player’ (see below). Don’t click ‘Start Stream’ yet.
• In VLC Media Player, go to to File -> Open Network Stream, and enter the URL of WebGuide’s streaming server. Make sure you’ve entered the video streaming port number, not the web port number. Don’t click ‘ok’ yet.
• Go back to the web browser-based WebGuide Profile page. Click on ‘Start Stream’
• Now, quickly toggle back to VLC Media Player and click ‘ok’. You need to do this within 15 seconds (ideally 5 or so seconds) or the WebGuide server will time out, give up trying, and terminate the stream.

Enjoy! A conceptually same techique works with just-released Revision 9 of MPlayer OSX Extended. I haven’t tried this yet with the now-obsolete Windows Media Player for OS X or Telestream’s free Flip4Mac add-on for Quicktime Player…either or both may also work.