King of the Media Center Hill? Maybe Soon.

Posted on January 11, 2010 by Tom Long

I want to watch anything I want to watch on my big screen (instantly) or iPhone (easily).  Believe it or not, I am almost there.  Today I’ll focus on the big screen.  After building a Windows 7 HTPC with HDMI networked to 1TB NAS drive via LAN, I am nearly there.  While waiting for the tuner manufacturers to sort out their CableCard or alternate means of replacing the set top box (slated for this year), I have scaled back my cable subscription so that no box is required.  I then subscribed to Netflix, which I use to watch movies seamlessly from Windows Media Center (WMC).  All that I am missing is live ESPN sports in HD.

How so?  I get network TV (HD over clear QAM and analog SD) with a Hauppauge 950Q hybrid tuner.  I watch or record shows using this through Windows 7.  The WMC wizard detected the tuner and walked me through setting it up.  Works great.

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I've Started Digging Myself Into a Hole

Posted on December 8, 2009 by Tom Long

TV Guide DVRNot content with turning my laptop into a home media center, I made the foolish decision to build my own video|music streamer for fun. Not being the brightest bulb, I thought I would just use an old hard drive I had left over from my Ubuntu Server experiment. I wanted to hedge my bets and have a computer with guts to do video editing and transcoding if it proved awkward as an htpc. So instead of the ubiquitous ion nvidia approach, I went with a Phenom II x3 on an Asus motherboard with GPU. The ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO AM3 AMD 785G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard has the 785G chipset for easy jujitsu on any high definition graphics. I plan to stuff this into a hecCompucase HTPC case.

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TV Guide – A Streaming DVR

Posted on November 12, 2009 by Tom Long

TV Guide DVRI love Hulu.  Sadly it doesn’t carry about five of the shows I watch on TV.com.  TV.com has it over Hulu in that it includes a viewing schedule with just the shows I’ve picked, but unlike Hulu it doesn’t notify me when there is something new or provide direct links to the fullest full episode.  TV Guide now is offering a “DVR” service.  Really it is a virtual DVR.  The service appears to be offering an easy means of accessing media through their viewer as a portal to Hulu and other actual hosts.  TV.Guide notifies you when a new episode of your shows is available and their access to shows is immediate.  Unlike TV.com, one isn’t require to click the show in the schedule and then hunt down the latest full episode available.

The menu is easy to navigate and attractive.  What could be better?  Well, it would be better if the view offered high definition.  In a random look at two shows I normally view in HD, only SD was offered.  I expect they’ll do a better job of preventing people from using backdoor techniques to download the source video very soon.  The good news is that now I receive notification when full episodes of all my shows are available for streaming.  If you are an early adopter, let me know your experience in the comments.  Will this be enough to wean you from the cable/satellite?

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Windmill Prodigy

Posted on October 5, 2009 by Tom Long

Thanks to Wired Science, I learned of a 14 year old boy in a remote African village who should be an inspiration for all of us.  William Kamkwamba noted the wind in Malawi and thought he could rig something up to power a light to read by.  This boy, who had been forced to drop out of school for lack of the $80 tuition, went to the public library and checked out some books on windmills.  What happened after that will surely give everyone a lift. Watch this video and share it. What a great young man.

This story has ties into so many of my values: overcoming adversity, ingenuity, generosity, bootstrap economics, and, of course, environmentalism. (Not to mention my love of the public library system.) Go William!

You can buy his book from Amazon, which also posts some related videos.

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Watch TV on XBMC

Posted on October 4, 2009 by Tom Long

Cable customers are seeing red.Today we’ll look at how to capture TV shows and watch them using XBMC. In my second XBMC tutorial I covered how to name and organize directories and files for movies and included a peek at how to organize your media for TV Shows as well. Today we’ll start with getting TV shows onto your computer and then how to set them up for viewing in XBMC.

I have loved Tivo for oh so long. That cute little character has wheedled a small fortune out of my pocket. I was so pleased I purchased a lifetime subscription. Maybe it is the fault of the FCC, maybe of Tivo, and definitely of the cable companies, but with my Tivo HD came the dreaded red dot of “you can’t watch this on your computer.” DRM encryption has been added to our cable broadcasts and most shows can no longer be transferred to you computer using Tivo Desktop. One must now pony up a hideous amount of money for a bigger hard drive on one’s Tivo, buy an external hard drive from the one company Tivo allows, or hack one’s Tivo to archive one’s shows until they can be watched (after having paid both Tivo and the cable company to watch the show!). Click on the picture for details on this issue from Dave Zatz.

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