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Sorry this took so long (been extremely busy lately), but as promised here are pictures of the media centre during the various stages of being built. Clicking on the thumbnails below, will show you a larger version of the photos.

Also given my previous experience with the MCE, the wife is always very sceptical whenever I say anything about ‘fixing’ the MCE. Moral of the story (as I learned the hard way) the MCE is a ‘production’ class machine which does not get touched without adequate planning with fall back options planned.

Of course since I build this in the summer of 2009, I don’t suppose this is “new” anymore.

Tags: .media center

I build my first MCE a few years ago and since then not looked back – despite a few of my screw ups. In our household the MCE is used a lot and it really has changed the way we watch TV. One starts taking things for granted such as the ability pause live TV or rewind when you did not quite catch the last dialogue. And this was brought more in focus when during the transition from the old MCE to the new MCE (more on that in a second).

I decided to build another MCE– mainly as the old MCE had started dying. It was not dead (yet), but had started to hobble towards its grave. There were a few things which were bugging, such as:

• Every few minutes the display card would stop for a second or two and then start working on its own – and the frequency of this occurrence was slowly increasing.
• I already had changed the memory once as it got corrupt. Also this was only 1 GB and Vista was quite slow.
• Disk space while not an issue was something to keep an eye on.
• Channels were not being changed reliably – which meant you had to remember to change the channel to whatever before say going to bed at night so it can can record that program, etc.

I wanted to buy a MCE instead of building it and had my eye on the Sony TP Series – which in my opinion is a beauty. Unfortunately, the sales guys were not sure if this can be used with Sky (that’s Satellite TV for those not familiar). I did not want to buy it and then if it did not work get in the whole hassle of returning it.

So I decide to build one again. Looks were important as this sits in the living room and cannot look like a “computer”. Also efficiency and noise both were important. Wanted this to be green and quite.

Here is the config of the new MCE:

• Case: Moneual 932 case which has a 7 inch LCD Touch Screen built in.
• Power Supply: Zalman Z500 Heat Pipe cooled PSU
• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EG45M-DS2H iG45 Socket 775 with Onboard VGA 8 channel audio mATX. I wanted a G45 chipset mobo which could do HDTV and had a fanless northbridge.
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 2.33 Ghz
• RAM: Corsair 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Kit CL5 1.9V
• HDD: 2 x Western Digital 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache – OEM Green Power
• DVD Drive – I had originally gone for a BluRay drive, but because of the layout of motherboard in the case, could not get that to fit (more on that another time) so used an existing DVD drive I had. I don’t have HDTV, so not having BluRay drive is not a deal breaker in any case.
• Graphics Card: Sapphire HD 3450 512MB DDR2 VGA DVI TV Out PCI-E Graphics Card. The mobo on board graphics card is quiet powerful (for MCEs) but it only has one VGA out and I needed two – one for the TV and one of the touch screen on that case. Hence why i got this fanless graphics card.
• TV Tuner: Hauppauge WinTV HVR1300

I got Win 7 RC1 running on it without any issues and its lovely! I have pictures I took along the way and will be uploading them here sometime soon.

Tags: .media center

You might have noticed this via your Windows Update that Microsoft has released a cumulative update for Vista MCE! It is supposed to fix a number of issues, though I have not seen any changes (but then I was not having any issues in the first place). You can get details on what this update contains.

Tags: .media center

If you recall I talked about lifeStation last year and Simon from Passive Technologies posted a comment letting me know that they have upgraded all their machines to MCE Vista from MCE XP. There is also a new lifeServer which boasts 6TB of storage and RAID 5 (though I cannot find out anywhere if this is 6TB of total storage or usable storage). On a separate note, this might be a good candidate to run Windows Home Server.

I think these are very cool machines though I don't own one and the fact I still cannot find prices on their site suggests the target market is custom installers and not poor folks like me.

Tags: .media center

I must say after getting used to viewing TV (and Movies) via a MCE – not having one is sorely missed. Recently the machine was randomly hanging and a few blue-screens and as it turns out one of my memory sticks went bad which was causing the issues.

Although I had bought the memory from Crucial, over two years ago – they have a lifetime warranty. I called them and they immediately volunteered to change both the sticks (as I was running them in dual-channel). I was running the machine fine on one stick albeit a little slow, but I decided to send in both sticks and get things back to "normal". Now I have been waiting for just over a week to get back the replacement memory. Which means for just over a week and we don't have a MCE running at home and boy I was surprised that we miss it!

Watching "Live TV" is just not done now – not to mention the fact the guide in Sky is quite irritating with the stupid music and the full-screen mode – where the whole screen switches back to the guide hiding whatever you were watching.

On a little different note, I was quite amazed with the service and professionalism of Crucial while dealing with them on the phone. Yes it has taken a little longer than I was told (although to be fair they said turn around is "quick" and I was not given any specific time – but at the same time I did not ask for a timeline). I just got off the phone with them and I have been told the memory should be shipping out today with express delivery! I just wish there were more companies who did such an excellent job of customer service! 

Tags: .media center

I don’t know if this is a Vista x64 issue, but when I am watching a DVD on the laptop the movie playback is quite jerky and as a result very irritating. I have tried both Media Player and Media Center and unfortunately get the same result. Interestingly though, a few weeks ago, between the two (Media Player and Media Center), one of them was jerky but the other was smooth (I forget which was which), but now both are the same. The movie itself plays fine, it just seems to buffer up every 2 seconds (sort of in a loop) and then quickly catch up. I tried all combination but no luck. The only thing I could think of that has changed since the last time and this was that I added the mp4 codecs. All this means is, in the end it gives you a headache. .

Tags: .media center

I recently came across this advertisement in one of the magazines. There is a company called Passive Technologies who have released a pretty cool looking MCE machine called lifeStation. It looks like an appliance and still runs MCE 2005; I would recommend to wait when they upgrade to Vista. I don’t own one, so I don’t have any first hand experience. I also don’t know how much it costs, but it is bound to be pricey.

The specs are pretty impressive, it runs a Core Duo Mobile (making it run cooler), supports HD (has both HDMI and HDCP), 750 gb of storage, and is supposed to be “near silent”. If anyone has tried it, please drop me a note here with the feedback.

Tags: .media center

Check out the soon-to-be-released Origen AE S210 which among many other features has bays for 12 HDD’s, and a 12″ touchscreen LCD! Not sure on the damage it will cause (£££), but if its reasonable, then I would need to find a business case when Vista ships to get my hands on one of these .

Tags: .media center

Seems like BBC is answering exactly the same question, and if you ask me they got too much free time on their hands.

Tags: .media center

If you are still in the market to build you MCE, ExtremeTech has an article talking about the best case, powersupply, etc. to pick for the job. You can check out my MCE configuration here.

Tags: .media center