My Setup

• TV – LG 42LH7000
• Surround System – Logitech Z5500
• PC – Windows 7 Media Center PC

A few common problems and solutions

Problem: Loss of signal when changing inputs on the TV or when PC goes to sleep.

First thing first – With everything off, connect the Media Center to the TV with an HDMI lead. This is important because Windows 7 has old drivers for the nVidia GeForce 8200 and has problems with HDCP so your TV needs to be on and set to the correct HDMI input before you turn your PC on. This is known as the ‘HDCP handshake issue’ and is quite common. It results in a loss of signal when changing TV inputs or when the PC goes to sleep.

If, like me, you have an nVidia card then fear not as they have fixed this problem with a driver update. Go to nvidia.com and select ‘Automatically find drivers for my NVIDIA products’ and download the latest version. Mine was 130MB. Install this and reboot.

Unfortunately if you are using an ATI card there is no driver fix. The only thing you can do is download an application that disables and re-enables the HDMI connection fooling the device to re-initiate the handshake. This can be mapped to a keyboard shortcut.

Problem: No sound through S/PDIF

There are many reasons for this to happen. If you are using the Asus V3M28 motherboard then you have to switch the default audio output to be S/PDIF.

Remember to look in the sound setting to make sure that ‘allow programs to take control of this device’ is checked.

If you use VLC and can’t get S/PDIF to work or it’s stuttering, in the options set the sound output to Wave32.

There is also a problem with the S/PDIF VIA audio when the computer goes into sleep mode as when it resumes, the connections seems to be ‘dead’. A work around for this is to write a small bat file and have it run on resume which disables and enables the sound device. I think this may have been fixed in a recent Windows Update.

Getting the best experience

Media Broswer

To make the best of your Windows Media Center experience, download Media Browser. It’s a plugin for Media Center that provides you with cover art for Films and TV series, meta data for all the IMDB ratings and synopsis as well as having it’s own plugins such as themes and more information about the actual files themselves (such as 1080p or 720p or DTS audio or AC-3). It uses http://thetvdb.com/ and http://www.themoviedb.org/ to get all the information. It also provides user generated backdrops that fill the screen with scenes from whatever is selected.

You can also add multiple locations for media. For example I have films stored on my local machine and on an external hard drive. Add both locations and they show up under one category listing that I can name. So I have HD, DVD & TV. One of the plugins allows you to add film trailers to the menu.

Shark007 Codec Pack

Couple this with the Windows 7 Shark007 codec pack, you can watch any format of video on your Media Center. This is pretty straight forward to install as it uninstalls any other codec pack you might have on your system. Check the ;use Shark’s recommended settings’ to get the best setup.

NOTE: If you are using S/PDIF then in the audio tab you will need to check ‘Use pass-through (Dolby Digital)’ in the section titled ‘FFDShow S/PDIF pass-through’.

Once you have installed the codec pack and set it up, you can use Media Browser on your Media Center Extender device to stream all your content to it – this includes .mkv files. The way you do this is by opening the Media Browser configuration utility, clicking ‘advanced’ and selecting the tab mentioning extenders. Now all you have to do is add ‘.mkv’ to the list on the left as well as ‘.avi’ and any other format you want to play on your extender or just untick ‘use Transcode 360′.

NOTE: Because the Media Center had the codec to play it, you can even stream HD content to your Xbox 360!

Media Center Studio

Now you have Media Browser set up, you don’t really need the video section of the Media Center menu. It’s kinda annoying having something that you no longer need there and so Media Center Studio comes to the rescue. This provides a WYSIWYG interface for manipulating the Media Center menu to your heart’s content. I went minimal and just have tasks, TV, Music & Media Browser.

The remote

Most people tend to forget about this part of the setup which is strange as it possibly the most important. It is your point of contact with the system so you want it to feel as natural as possible and to be effortless. I recommend one of the Logitech Harmony remotes – they are learning universal remotes and much more. You can program button configurations so you use the up, down, left & right buttons for the Media Center but still use the volume up & down for the TV without having to select various inputs. It also has macros so with the press of one button you can turn all of your devices on and set them to the correct inputs! Excellent! I have the Harmony 550.

Other useful things

There are many more things that can be customised in Media Center and a great resource for find them out is http://www.hack7mc.com/

Firstly I bought the limited edition because it gives you some extras not included in the standard game pack such as a code for a golden lancer (the standard machine gun) and the ‘flashback map pack’ which is 6 multiplayer maps from the original Gears of War.

Enough ranting, lets talk Locust killing!

Single player campaign is great and still has the ability to completed co-operatively. Graphics are improved as you would expect and the game plays very much the same as the original with much more visceral scenery and enemies. The battle sequences are larger by several orders of magnitude and the frame-rate is unaffected. I have yet to encounter an element of the game that the console struggles to handle.

Unfortunately the multiplayer aspect that made Gears one so entertaining has been ‘improved’ and while some of the features seem like a good idea on paper, in reality they are horrible. The most annoying of all is the TrueSkill matchmaking which analyses your skills based on certain criteria such as XP points, games played, achievements obtained etc. etc. but it takes such a long time to find anyone that starting a game is no longer a quick and easy affair.

To put this into perspective, while waiting for it to find players (just to be in my own team I might add) I had time to search the internet to try and find out why it was taking so long, join a forum, write a post, comment on another post, take pictures of the screen for this blog entry, write the magority of this blog entry and cook my self two bacon sandwiches for lunch. I think that takes too long. Even now I am waiting to join another game and using the time to write the rest of this post. I imagine there will be more than a few people who agree. It is very much like waiting for a game in Halo 3′s mutiplayer only worse.

The game is good. It is a fine successor to the original but I can’t help feeling “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” with regard to the multiplayer.

If you would like to play me my gamertag is ‘Dark Individual’.

Click here for the HD version

Gears of War 2 will be using the updated Unreal 3 engine and the following video shows what that can do when applied to Gears of War 1 levels, characters and objects. It looks INCREDIBLE! I am really looking forward to this release… but I think Call of Duty 4 and Grand Theft Auto IV should tide me over until it comes out.

An industry ‘watcher’ has stated that if this is indeed the case, Microsoft would have to sell the upgraded Xbox 360 at a loss. The reason being the current DVD drive costing $20 per unit to Microsoft and the new Blu-Ray drive would cost $100. People would be unwilling to pay more just for the ability to play HD films and may instead turn to their competitors, the PS3, for a better deal.

I hope there is some truth to these rumours. There were also rumours about Microsoft talking to Sony about licensing their Blu-Ray technology for use in their console but they deny this as well.

With the current state of broadband connections it is naive of Microsoft to believe that consumers will be happy with a download only service for HD content. I would turn to the PS3 and play all my existing Blu-Ray movies and have another HD games console.

I think people will always want ‘dedicated consoles’ as otherwise the units would get cluttered up with unrelated ‘junk’ (like my laptop) which would inhibit the performance. I’ll always want the ‘switch on and play’ console with performance that never dwindles. Otherwise it would be like playing games on my laptop… ok but not top.

Steam already release all their games via the internet as well as in stores and because a digital download costs less to distribute than a disc with loads of unnecessary (but costly) packaging, you get a great deal on the game. The downloads can be a bit slow sometimes, even if you have a big connection. I have a 20Mb connection and it still took too long. Using a peer 2 peer system might be more effective in the future and also might drive down the price as they won’t have large bandwidth and server bills.

While I agree that we will see physical distribution shrink in favour of ‘anywhere’ delivery systems over the web, the speeds needed to download entire HD films and games in an acceptable time will need to be much higher than they are at the moment. This is obviously going to happen as the speeds have been increasing steadily for years. The only way people are going to save on bandwidth however is to use a Peer2Peer style network. Not in the way that we see it today but it will definitely spawn a new generation of network for fast, easy global distribution with the emphasis on sharing ANY kind of media.

The use of peer 2 peer technologies is already seeping into the mainstream with this set-top box having a built in bitTorrent client as well as being able to play 1080i HD content – something which the Xbox 360 lacks (when playing from an external device).

To accommodate the new style of network sharing we will see the end to the traditional supplier/consumer financial model. With the high availability of ‘free’ music and films on the internet already using peer 2 peer networks I believe the answer lies in the death of the fixed price per media – rather a fixed price for access to unlimited media. Like with the internet, we started with a ‘pay for what you use’ but now we pay a fixed fee for unlimited access each month. Why couldn’t a service like this be implemented for media?

All it takes is someone to try and succeed, then others will follow. If you build it, they will come!

The legal Napster was doing this years ago but their selection of music was poor and their fees were still too high. Plus it cost extra to transfer the files to an external device such as an MP3 player or CD. I’m not sure what they’re doing now. Worth a look though.

This proves that it can be done people! Sit up and take notice!

No idea how long it would take to get used to but it would be interesting to see what people who need it think of it, or even people who don’t. I’d try it, to try and see how long it would take to get used to it.

Great idea. More people should be looking at things like this.

Personally I think this is ridiculous. There were always rumors during the HD format war that Microsoft had deliberately invested in a failing format to draw out the battle so it could develop its online push for HD content. The news that this is now the ONLY way for Xbox 360 owners to watch HD content comes as no surprise to me. While I love the 360 I was (naively) hoping that Microsoft would be consumer focused for a change and release a Blu-Ray add on for it. They were even in talks with Sony about licensing their technology but nothing has come of it. Would be nice to see an instructable with a Blu-Ray PC drive connected to the 360. Even a 3rd party add-on would do VERY well. I know I’d buy it.

So love the 360, hate Microsoft.