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/

I love it. I really do. People were saying that the phone would be ungainly because it has an 8.1 megapixel camera on board but in fact it is only a few millimeters thicker than the phone I was upgrading from – the Sony Ericsson K810i.

It’s my first slider phone so I have no experience with consistent slider usage but the motion seems solid. The only problem with the slider is that is doesn’t slide the keypad out far enough so there is very little space between the main phone and the first row of keys leading to pressing the ’1′ and ’4′ keys at the same time but I have no doubt I will get use to it.

The features list is quite extensive even though it isn’t a smartphone.

• 8.1 MP Camera
• Xenon Flash
• AF Assist Light (Which doubles as a torch when recording video in low light)
• Face Detection
• WI-FI
• GPS (Real not pseudo)
• HSDPA
• 3G
• GPRS
• WAP
• Accellerometer
• M2 Memory Card Slot (2GB Supplied)

The most important change in this phone for me is the inclusion of a ‘D-pad’ instead of the dreaded joystick that Sony Ericsson seem so fond of. They seem to randomly include either so I am glad this phone has been chosen for the ‘D-pad’.

All in all I am very impressed with the amount of technology that has been packed into this phone considering that 18 months ago my previous phone was the pinnacle of mobile camera technology. Imagine what will be available in another 18 months. Samsung have already hinted at a 12MP camera phone in 2009 that occupies less space than their existing 8MP sensor.

Here are some pictures taken from my window. The first with my old Sony Ericsson K810i and the second with my new Sony Ericsson C905. Click to see the full size images.

I don’t know if it will be iTunes compatible as many other new players a becoming, and probably contains it’s own unique take on music management software. iTunes is the most user friendly music management / mp3 player syncing software I have used so I hope that it would.

No idea on pricing or availability, the site is not all in English so who knows. Nice though.

So start with, nobody was really ‘using them’. I sat down with a few other people at one of the tables, they were trying to communicate with the table next to us. On the screen was a CCTV feed from all the other active tables. It seemed as though you had to drag and drop words from the sides to the screen and the message would send. This didn’t happen, to the point where we were running backwards and forwards between the tables defeating the point of the casual flirty comment between tables.

Another thing was that nobody was putting their drinks on the actual screen, even though cool effects happen when you do, nobody seemed to have noticed this. The problem was that there was a rim round the edge that was a different colour to the screen so people put their glasses on the edge as they didn’t want to break the screen.

I’m sure there were many more features that these tables have (like ordering drinks and playing games etc) but after the initial frustration with the technology nobody seemed interested in exploring further. The average usage time from what I observed was less than 10 minutes.

The more you drink, the more you want it to work but the less it does.

All in all, it was a gimmick for the bar and for Microsoft.

So when I came across this little gadget wonder I did as described above.

It’s a box from ASUS (good start) which will convert ANY signal into HD and beyond! Actually it goes up to 1,920×1,200 and can even take signals from RF… if you have something thats decade old. It allows you to connect anything to an HD monitor and use it as a universal HD display. Even comes with it’s own remote and has features like Picture-in-Picture. It claims to have better picture quality than anything else because of superior picture processing and some kind of ‘anti-blocking’ system.

Cool… if I needed it… which I don’t… but I want it anyway!