The Media Center Blog

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UPDATE: Dell has another deal on these drives. Check out this post to get one for $79.99!

UPDATE: OFFER EXPIRED

WON’T LAST LONG!

Dell Home has the Seagate ST31500341AS 1.5TB hard drive for only $82.99 plus tax with free shipping. Just add it to your cart and enter coupon code HNP1LLLS?ZKS48 at checkout.

I currently have two of these drives – one in my XPS 420 that is my main recorded TV drive and the other in my Windows Home Server. I know they’ve had a bit of a bad rap for some firmware issues but I have yet to have any issues with either of my drives (knock on wood). So if you’re looking for a new drive to store your recorded TV or other media, this should work out just fine and can be had for a great price!

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It appears as though this deal is no longer available.

Mwave.com has the SAMSUNG 1TB HD103UI SATA 5400RPM 32MB Eco-friendly hard drive for only $59.90 plus shipping. Shipping for me was $8.22 so my total cost was only $68.12. This is the cheapest I have seen a 1TB hard drive so if you’re in the market for one you might want to act fast. This probably won’t last long!

Apparently as of today you can no longer purchase a brand new Dell PC with CableCARD blesupport. A look at their listing of available XPS machines no longer shows the XPS 420, nor any other PC that currently supports CableCARD. This could be interpreted a few different ways. Maybe they are preparing to launch a new model with CableCARD support and it just hasn’t shown up on the site yet. Personally, I’m afraid they are getting out of the CableCARD business altogether.

I started to think that Dell was preparing to exit when they didn’t bother to put digital cable support on any of the new XPS 430 models, or even the XPS 420 models with 64 Bit operating systems. Now this just puts even that much more doubt in my mind that they are done with the technology.

It appears as though the only ways to get an XPS 420 with digital cable support now is to try and find one on Ebay (or other similar sites) or on the Dell Outlet. This seems to be getting more difficult as well with all of the 64 Bit systems with no digital cable support slowly creeping their way into the Outlet inventory but if you want to take a stab at it, be sure to review my post on how to find one by going through the Outlet.

There will soon be a new addition to my family - of Dell computers. That’s right, I ordered yet another PC from the Dell Outlet. If you can’t tell, I’m a fan! Dell is currently offering up some coupons for 20% off Outlet Studio and Inspiron desktops and laptops. The coupon code for desktops is JHVPVHZZ6PKR92 and the code for laptops is 75K5$$WL2Z1FWS and I believe they expire on 1/28/2009.

I’ve really been looking hard into getting a Windows Home Server set up but I just didn’t want to spend the money on an HP MediaSmart Home Server even though I’ve heard good things. So I decided to look into other ways I could get one setup. Newegg currently offers Windows Home Server with Power Pack 1 for only $94.99 so I started looking into ways I could build a home server.

I found a nice post over at Home Server Hacks that entailed building a compact home server using the Shuttle KPC K45 barebones kit. I already have a 500GB hard drive that I’m not using right now so I didn’t need to buy the hard drive he suggested and therefore, my price was about $272 shipped for all the parts that I would need. Even though I felt this was a pretty good price, the idea that I could only have 2 internal hard drives in the KPC K45 was a setback for me so I decided to look at other options. That was when I discovered the coupons above for the Dell Outlet.

I ended up finding a pretty nice machine for a really good price. It’s an Inspiron 530 with a Pentium E2220 Pentium dual-core processor and 4GB of 800MHz RAM. It also comes with the 64BIT version of Vista Home Premium although I will be installing Windows 7 on it. Since this is a more powerful machine than my Dimension E521, I will be using it as my backup/test machine and retiring the E521 from being a PC and making it into a Windows Home Server.

Since I can go a few days without a backup/test machine I decided to go ahead and install Windows Home Server on the E521. I don’t have an actual copy of WHS yet so I downloaded the trial version off of the Windows Home Server website. The install was pretty painless and I didn’t have any problems along the way. After the WHS install completed, I installed the drivers for the E521 from the Dell Support site and was on my way to adding the WHS to the network.

The next step was to install the client software on my other PCs. The software is located in a shared folder on WHS aptly named “Software.” My two PCs, the XPS 420 and my Acer Aspire One Netbook (with Windows 7 installed), had no problems installing the client software and I was able to configure the daily backups very easily on both. Next, I started the process of moving my files off of the XPS 420 and onto the WHS. So far I’ve moved over my photos and music and my documents will soon be placed on the WHS as well.

In the meantime I happened to stop by a local Best Buy store because I was planning on getting the 1TB Seagate hard drive they had on sale for $99.99. While this isn’t the greatest price for this drive I had some gift cards that I’ve been wanting to use so I decided that would be the purchase I would make. While I was there I was surprised to find the 1.5TB Seagate ST315005N1A1AS-RK internal Serial ATA drive retail kit on sale for $127.99 (this drive is currently not even available Best Buy’s). This was the first I had seen of a retail version of the ST31500341AS OEM drive that I had purchased from Newegg not too long ago so I decided to shell out an additional $28 to get 50% more space. I installed the drive in my E521 and went to the WHS Console and was very pleased when it added the drive to WHS in under a minute. The OEM drive took at least 7 hours to format when I added it to my XPS 420!

Next I promptly went out and enabled the “Duplication” feature of WHS on the shares that I didn’t want to lose in case one of the drives failed. I also set up some user accounts for some of my friends so we could easily share files using the WHS remote access. I think I got at least one of them on board with giving WHS a test drive as well!

My next task was to enable WHS to share Recorded TV with my XPS 420. This proved to be a little difficult but thanks to a great write-up by Richard Miller on The Green Button I was able to get this working properly. I have a lot of movies that I recorded on my premium HD channels that I want to keep so I decided to go ahead and move them over to the home server.

That’s where I’m at so far after a few days of working with Windows Home Server. So far I’m very impressed and will be purchasing the software shortly. I love the fact that WHS pools all of your hard drive storage so you don’t have to have separate drives and I also love the ability to duplicate your files across the multiple hard drives in your home server. Also, being able to have nightly backups performed without any intervention from me is nice. I no longer have to worry about remembering to schedule my XPS 420 backups with the built-in Windows backup program.

If you’re currently running, or thinking about running, the Windows 7 Beta, you might want to think about installing some of these items.

First, The Windows Blog details some anti-virus programs that will work with Windows 7. This was very helpful for me since Windows Live OneCare isn’t compatible with Windows 7 yet (I found this a bit odd).

The Windows Blog also provides a link to a Windows 7 hotkey cheat sheet so if you’re a big fan of hotkeys then this list should be right up your alley.

Charlie Owen has posted a download link for the new Media Center Diagnostic Tools. This will be very helpful for submitting bugs and such to Microsoft and should help to provide a solution for problems quicker.

After installing Windows 7 on my test PC, I decided to test it out on my recently purchased Acer Aspire One Netbook. In case you’re not familiar with Netbooks, they are meant to be very small and ultra portable but are also underpowered. It works fine for my needs for a laptop as all I really do on it is surf the Internet, blog, and a few other basic tasks.

I didn’t dare attempt to install Vista on it because I had heard some horror stories so I kept Windows XP installed (even though I’m a fan of Vista). With Windows 7 already running better than Vista (or so I’ve heard), I decided to go ahead and give it a try.

In order to install Windows 7, I hooked my Acer up to my Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive that gets very little use these days. It works great for use as an external optical drive and installs very quickly on it’s own even in Windows XP. I rebooted and started the install and everything went pretty smoothly. I went ahead an installed this on a separate partition so I could still boot into the Windows XP install when needed.

Below is a screenshot of the Windows Experience Index. I should note that I have the Aspire One with a 120GB hard disk drive, not the one of the models with a solid state drive so I had plenty of hard drive space for the install.

The first thing I noticed after the install was that my XP drivers would not work with Windows 7. I installed my Wi-Fi driver and it worked initially but after a restart, it stopped working. I quickly discovered the program compatibility method to installing drivers. If you right-click on setup.exe for whatever driver or program you’re trying to install and click on “Troubleshoot Compatibility” you should be able to install the driver successfully on Windows 7. With my drivers successfully installed, it was time to get to the good stuff.

After installing all of the necessary drivers, I just had to see how Media Center would run on this underpowered machine. To my pleasant surprise, it runs pretty well. I ran into some issues along the way, but for the most part it exceeded my expectations.

I don’t have a USB tuner yet so I wasn’t able to test out live TV but I was able to access some of my recorded TV from my other computers in the house. Once again I was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting it to play standard definition content but I wasn’t expecting to be able to play any high definition content and that’s just what it was able to do. While it played the SD content perfectly, there were a few hick-ups with the HD content. Overall though, it played pretty well and it was definitely watchable.

My next task was to test out the new music wall and try to play some music. This is where it turned south. Apparently, the music wall uses a lot of resources. When I first started playing some music, I noticed a pretty instant slow-down in everything. The music was playing but the wall was very slow and not smooth at all. I went on to do something else and then came back to play some more music and once I hit play, it crashed my netbook. I had to hold down the power button to get it to do anything! Upon rebooting, I got a notification stating that I needed to run chkdsk because there was some corruption. So I rebooted and booted into my XP partition and ran chkdsk and all was well again. So, I guess you could say that the music part of Media Center didn’t go so well with my netbook.

All in all I was still pleased with the performance of Windows 7 on my underpowered netbook. I wasn’t expecting a whole lot and even though Media Center managed to crash on me, it was still quite functional. My next step is to try and get a USB tuner so I can test out the live TV functionality of Media Center. I’ll be sure to update you when that time comes so stay tuned!

I decided to install the official Windows 7 beta that is available at the Windows 7 website. The primary reason I decided to do so was because I was so excited about taking a look at the changes that were made to Media Center. I wasn’t brave enough to try it on my main PC, the XPS 420 with CableCARD tuners but I did install it on what I call my “test PC,” a Dell Dimension E521. Here’s the Window’s Experience Index for my E521:

I have an Avermedia M780 Combo tuner that supports NTSC, ATSC, and ClearQAM signals. With the latest drivers from AverMedia, it worked perfectly throughout the setup process and I was able to get the tuner working with my analog and ClearQAM channels without any problems. I am quite please with the fact that I didn’t have any issues during the TV signal setup part with a beta operating system. I have only used Windows 7 for about a day but Media Center seems to be very stable so far.

I decided to go ahead and include some screenshots of my favorite changes that I’ve come across so far. I also included some of my not so favorite changes, but the good definitely outnumbers the bad by a long shot.

Zune Style Menu

The first thing I noticed when opening Media Center was the new Zune style menu. I don’t personally have a Zune because I use my Windows Mobile-based HTC Touch Pro for all my on-the-go music needs but I’ve always loved the simplistic menu design on them. I think this is a great design for the Media Center interface as well and it should be well received by Media Center enthusiasts.

Sharing Recorded TV Finally Built-in

This is one of those long overdue features that should have been in Media Center a long time ago. Many people own more than one Media Center PC and have had to perform hacks to get one computer to see another computer’s recorded TV. Props to Microsoft for finally getting this one in there!

Ability to Choose the Sports Info You Care About

I’ve always been a big fan of the Sports section that was added to Vista Media Center. It’s been somewhat of an annoyance that I’ve had to scroll through some sports that I don’t really care about to get to the ones that I do, but I will no longer have to worry about that once Windows 7 makes it’s way onto my XPS 420. You will be able to choose what sports information you would like to see in your Sports section. FYI, these options are available when you click on “Leagues” in the Sports section of the main Media Center menu.

More Guide Improvements

I loved the guide improvements that came along with TV Pack 2008 and it just gets better with Windows 7. Not only has color-coding been added so it’s easier to distinguish between the types of programs that are currently on but thumbnails from many shows also show up in the info area of the guide.

A new Internet TV section was also added to the guide. I’ve always liked the Internet TV section but I find that sometimes I just forget that it’s there. Now with it being in right there in the guide, I’m sure I will get more use out of it. Hopefully even more great content will get added once Windows 7 is released!

Mini-guide Gets Even Better

Ever since the release of Vista, I’ve loved the mini-guide. Whenever I’m watching live TV it tends to get more use than the full guide. I was pleasantly surprised when I was watching live TV and hit the down button on my remote and saw the new mini-guide. It now shows two rows of info and two hours of info for each row. I also love how everything is made even more transparent in the Windows 7 Media Center interface.

On-Screen Info Gets Transparency Treatment

It’s nice having on-screen info show up every time you change the channel but it’s even better when it doesn’t cover up your programming. The new on-screen info adds transparency while still being completely readable.

One-Click Program Info

I’m a heavy user of the “Info” button on my remote so I was very excited when I discovered that it only took one press of the button to bring up the program info for what I was watching. After that, a click to the right takes you to the “Details” section and other options.

Pop-up Info Panels

This is a change that was implemented throughout Media Center but I highlighted the recorded TV section because that’s the one I will probably get the most use out of. When you click on a program that’s been recorded, rather than being taken to a new page within Media Center, a panel pops up over the top of the Recorded TV section and you can easily click left or right to view all the info that previously showed up on that new page. This is another one of those additions that makes Windows 7 Media Center look so much cooler than it’s predecessors.

Music Cover Art Wall

I stumbled across this cool music wall feature when I installed the Zune software on my PC and I absolutely loved it. Adding this to Media Center only made sense and what a great addition it is.

After a brief moment of inactivity the menu on the left disappears and the current playing track is highlighted even more screen.

Those are the new additions that I like most with Windows 7 Media Center. But you had to know there were going to be some changes that make you scratch your head. So far, I’ve only found two.

Recordings Being Deleted When Changing Recorder Storage

I’m not even quite sure what this one means. It states that there will be an “immediate deletion of some of your recordings” but it doesn’t say why that’s necessary. I’m guessing this will happen to recordings that were on the drive you are changing from but I didn’t have any on my C: drive when I changed it so I’m not quite sure. For the record, I did have some recordings on the drive I changed it to and they didn’t appear to be affected. Anyone have any ideas as to why this change was implemented and what exactly it does?

“Shutdown” Option Moves Again

I’m still trying to figure out why Microsoft feels the need to move the “Shutdown” option in Media Center with every new release. Media Center users everywhere had to get used to it being moved with the upgrade from Media Center 2005 to Vista and now it’s being changed again. I personally liked clicking down a few times and then clicking “OK” to get out of Media Center and now I’m going to have to click down a few times and then click left and finally “OK” to close Media Center. In my opinion you’re going to need to close Media Center far more often than you are going to need to go into the settings so this change puzzles me…especially considering that Microsoft has made it a point to require less button clicks in Windows 7 Media Center.

As you can probably tell right now I’m pretty excited about what Windows 7 Media Center has to offer. I knew there were going to be things that I didn’t like but they were kept to a minimum and there are far more positive additions than negative ones. Are there any additions or subtractions that you’ve noticed in Windows 7 that I’ve left out? If so, please leave a comment below.

Also, if you are going to test out the beta for yourself, be sure to install the updates I pointed out in the post titled “Planning on installing the Windows 7 beta? Install this update!” first and foremost.