So you want to be in My Living Room...

I have been working recently with Microsoft XP Media Center Edition (MCE 2005), my HDTV, my XBOX 360 and my collection of media.

This is not some casual idea I have entertained, but an ongoing frustration I have had for years.

Some of you who know me, know that I have a fairly interesting media setup and am always looking for ways to improve it without resorting to writing everything myself.

First of all let me get a couple things straight.  MCE is NOT, repeat NOT a consumer electronics grade device unless you purchase a prepackaged solution.  Even then, it won't do probably half the things you expect it to do.

Other Options:

Meedio, MythTV, Freevo, SnapStream, BeyondTV, etc. ad nauseum.  all have pluses and minuses associated with them, but NONE have hit the mark yet for real Digital Living.

Consumer grade devices such as Tivo, Pinnacle Show Center, etc. also have pluses and minuses, but these do not yet integrate well with a wide range of media, nor a user specified network of storage nor a mixed OS network.

My simple advice...

If you want the panacea of everything connected, shared and easy to use, you are just going to have to wait unless you want to commit to a VERY NARROW range of devices.

The Problem...

The net problem here is fairly simple.  Nothing works across the board with other manufacturer's items because there is no standard, there will not BE a standard anytime soon, and actually creating a standard will take YEARS just to get most of the right people in the same room together to even start to discuss one.

I want all my stuff to talk to each other.

My immediate frustration comes from the simple fact that MCE requires and Analog Tuner.  Why?  This is a rediculous assumption to make on the part of Microsoft and their excuse about has something to do with the way the (TV Program) Guide is handled.  While I can appreciate they need to set a baseline... I think this is a preposterous excuse, I just don't see the reasoning behind promoting a “digital media tool” that requires anything to be analog.  Both My ATSC cards work just fine with the 3 main guide sources.

We have had complete Digital TV (not to mention HDTV/ATSC) for years and most OTA markets have a robust set of digital stations providing content FAR, FAR superior to anything you can do with and analog signal if you live more than a few miles from the source.  Besides the fact that saving a digital signal just means saving the stream as it comes in the a hard drive instead of converting it to something a hard drive can read.

The reason this is so frustrating is that Peripheral Manufacturers can't seem to make a decent driver to save their life.  Not only can they not talk to other equipment, they can't even co-exist most of the time without serious voodoo.

Case in point.

I have an Asus S-Presso.

I bought this originally because it looked decent, was quiet (most of the time) and had what I needed in a base product.

I wanted to rip out the internal analog TV Card because I thought it was inferior to a Digital Card since I live 40 Miles from the main OTA signals in my city (and the fact that there is only 1 PCI slot in the system).  I chose to go with the DVICO Fusion 5 Gold because it does everything I want and is supposedly MCE 2005 Compliant.

Next I wanted to upgrade the anemic onboard video with something more robust, so I went for an affordable ranged device the ATI AIW 2006 (also supposedly MCE 2005 Compliant)

Frustration point 1.

Digital TV works fine out of the box on the internal VGA Card.

Analog TV works fine out of the box on the ATI device.

Both are MCE 2005 compliant

so what do I do...

I do a fresh installation of MCE2005 on my base hardware, then upgrade the video card, then add the digital card.

This should all be the proper order and it is.  The problem is that it still doesn't work in MCE2005.  Analog works, but Digital does not.  The Digital software works fine, but doesn't need the upgraded analog device, in fact, using the analog device now conflicts with the analog tuner on the digital device and we have a mess again.  Disable the Analog device on the Digital Card and the DVICO software stops working with analog channels... Disable the Analog device on the ATI card and MCE doesn't work, nor was there any point in getting an AIW in the first place.

Why do I want MCE anyway?  So I can use an XBOX 360 as a remote device... (not even close to working yet...)

So what do I think I will do now?  I don't really know, most likely go with Meedio (if I can prove it works to myself...) since it was working fairly well before I got the Fusion (to replace a MyHD device that nothing supports...)

So how do I connect my iPod into this mix... you don't...

How do I access my archive of recorded shows and music on my NAS Devices that are running Linux from my XBOX 360?  You don't...

How do I get my Pinnacle ShowCenter to read content (some it will, some it won't, but it has to run with the server software from Pinnacle)

Can ANY of this stuff see my C-Band Satellite or control it?  NO...

Bottom Line.

Stay AWAY from this stuff unless you plan to spend WEEKS working on it or pay lots of money (I have seen people pay over $100K to get all this to actually work in a very limited way...)

Just forget about “convergence“ for a while until some frustrated genius has had enough and goes off to write the “Grand Unified Device Language“ that makes everything talk to everything else and lets you store it and play it wherever you want...

More to follow... (about what I am doing about my particular frustrations with the digital life...)

posted @ Monday, January 30, 2006 11:01 AM | Feedback (1)