Random Musings: Computers and Internet

Continued frustrations with computers....

Sat, 04 Nov 2006 06:57:23 GMT

Oh, the good times continue... I just tried to do XBOX LIVE for the first time. I'm all setup and working, and having a great time exploring the MCE interface (connected to my Mac! wow!) and then went to try XBOX LIVE. Not so much. Could not connect. Hmmm, maybe my router? Nope, it's a Microsoft router (remember those?) and it's on the list of supported stuff, and I have the latest firmware. So, that shouldn't be it. I run the tests, and it gets through all the tests with flying colors until it gets to the xbox live test. It then fails. There is a "More Info" box that I'm supposed to click, so I do. Blank. Nada. Nothing in it at all. Good stuff. And so now I shall have to call tomorrow and see what the first line of support can do for me. Stand by. Tonight, no XBOX LIVE.

Installing MCE, The Joys

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 00:31:25 GMT

Okay, so not working as I had hoped. XP got all the way through the install then gave me a little blurb about not being able to find hal.dll. A lot of reading shows me that this is not an easy fix, that nobody really knows why or how it breaks, but once it does, you're fubar. I'm attempting a reinstall, but I may be failing in my quest for an easy HTPC. So close, yet so far.

BTW, to any friends of mine in Windows Installer Land: your product needs serious work. Both OSX and Linux have your ass kicked in this arena and we need to shape it up. Setting up my PC the other day took over 2 hours of installs, updates, reboots, more updates, more reboots, etc. I counted 5 by the time I was done. Unacceptable.

Quest for the Holy Grail: HTPC

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 23:59:22 GMT

One of my quests the past year is to have my "Ultimate Tivo" kind of setup. Two years ago, I tried MCE, and it was not working out for me. The box was noisy, the MPEG streams would get corrupt from time to time, and in general, I didn't want to have to recompress digital streams I already had over the wire. So I gave that quest up, and stuck with the lame DVR's supplied to me by the manufacturer. I have a DirectTivo (HD), and it's one of the coolest, yet slowest, pieces of technology around. I also have the Comcast DVR running Microsoft's software and I have to say: it sucks. As a dvr, it just drops the ball too many times.

So given I am on vacation for a few weeks, I have made it my mission to try again. I have expermimented with Macs running Front Row, but that is an incomplete solution. MCE still lacks the cablecard "don't recompress the streams" problem, but i'm going to have that no matter what. If MCE had support for unencrypted HD over the cable, I'd be happy, but alas, we lack that too. We'll have to make due.

Front Row

So I picked up a Mac Intel Mini. First of all, no PC manufacturer yet makes a great computer in a package this small. This PC is quiet, it's tiny and it connects to my HDTV and recognizes it immediately. It's an ass kicking little machine. We should make one of these. *sigh*

Okay, so Front Row does what it does reasonably well, but it absolutely blows in other ways. No VIDEO_TS support is the first such suckage. That alone makes it unusable.

MCE

Okay, so I am back to trying (for the third time now) MCE 2005 with Rollup 2. I am going to maintain a server in my office with VIDEO_TS files, and map that drive to a drive on my Mac Mini (which is currently installing MCE as we speak). I will then use the Mini to watch all of our DVD's. I won't use it for any recorded TV, which is a shame, but I'll live with it.

I'm dinking around with some other firewire based solutions for extracting streams from the motorola boxes that comcast uses, but that is going to take some time. On the Mac, of course, all you need is the firewire SDK and some examples and you are off and running. Not so much with the MCE solutions -- lots of hoops to jump through.

I imagine my ultimate system will exist in about 5 years and I'll be happy. What is my ultimate system?

Must have central DVD storage accessible to ALL TELEVISIONS.
Must have central TV recording (HD) accessible to ALL TELEVISIONS.
Must have small boxes at each TV that connects to the central hub to get the job done.
All my music, photos, etc must be grabable from each place as well.

We're almost there. Hell, I may just have to build one of these things and see how it goes The trick is the small unit for each TV.

Why is Windows so loud?

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 14:31:25 GMT

I have been experimenting lately. I have a pretty souped up PC, dual core 3GHz with all the bells and whistles. With MCE installed, the PC is loud, fan is always going, I can hear its constant hum and it makes me crazy.

I was going to sell it, so I wiped the machine and then on a lark I decided to install Linux for the first time in years. I got the ISO for Ubuntu, installed it and was on my merry way. Some observations:

Ubuntu installed flawlessly. I was quite stunned because I remember RedHat being a pain in the butt years ago. It recognized everything but the video card, and that was just a script away.
Ubuntu on the same machine is as quiet as a church mouse. I can't hear a thing.
When I went to put XP back on the same machine, it didn't recognize my ethernet card, my sound card, etc. So Linux did a better job. Insane.

So, to those of you out there who know: why would MCE keep my PC noisy and loud, and another OS on the same machine be super quiet? I thought all of that stuff was controlled by the BIOS. Does the OS interface with the BIOS to tell it when to crank the fan on?

I hate loud computers. Hate them.

UPDATE: Yeah, and why can't MCE let my screensaver activate?

Clever Thieves

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 15:06:37 GMT

I almost got scammed last night. Yesterday I listed an old film camera of mine (film, what's that?) on craigslist and was pleasantly surprised when an hour later, I was pinged by a lady who wanted to buy it for her son's birthday. So she said she would Western Union me a money order and then I could ship it. Fine, I thought, no worries.

So later last night I get the first of two confirmation mails from "BidPay" letting me know the money was being processed. I see that the woman is from the UK, but the mail looks legit. But then I notice something else: the return addresses for everything are not "@bidpay.com" which I would expect, but instead "@consultant.com." Hmmmm, says I. A few searches later, and I see that this is a common scam. Unsuspecting user gets the mail, gets told to send the goods and provide a tracking number to get their money order, and user is then screwed. The mails look amazingly real, and had I not being paying close attention, I'd be out a $500 camera.

It occurs to me that we can help our customers out more on mails like this by flagging them. As soon as we know a scam is out there, we should know how to parse the mail and flag it. I'm sure there are privacy concerns with doing so, but I think the benefits of not losing money to a thief outweigh the worry that somehow Microsoft is out there building a database of Evil Doing (which of course we are not).

So be careful out there -- these crooks are getting really, really good at this.

Got it working, sorta

Sat, 11 Dec 2004 05:07:59 GMT

Okay, well now it works, only I don't understand HOW it works. I don't know enough about the mysteries of networking to grok it, but here is the gist of the deal.

My house has a panel in the closet downstairs where all of the cable TV and ethernet goes from every room to that panel. So in that closet I have my cable modem and the wired Microsoft Router. Cable modem goes to the router, router goes to a linksys 10/100 switch, and then the rooms plug into that. With me? Good.

Upstairs in my office, I have another switch. Three computers plugged into that. In the master bedroom is a Media Extender plugged right into the wall. One of the computers in my office is our MCE station. Good stuff, everything is fine.

So I crank up the Extender and it complains that there isn't enough network bandwidth to show TV. Not enough??? I'm running at 100 MB, what more do you need?

Going back and forth and doing experimentation, I go downstairs to the switch and move the cable going to my office switch from "UPLINK" to a normal port. Bam, everything works. Only, from what I understand, to link two switches together, you HAVE to use the uplink port, so now I am woefully confused.

Any ideas?

Yet more issues with Media Center

Fri, 10 Dec 2004 19:01:10 GMT

It's times like these that make me wonder what our customers really go through. Here I am, working at this place with full access to the engineers that work on the product, and I'm STILL having issues.

Right now, it's coming down to Media Center Extender. I know this product can work as my neighbor has it working jus fine, but me -- not so much. I have a 100MB network running at home with two switches: one in the wire closet so that everyone can gain access to Mr. Cable Modem, and the other in my office to share the line with three computers. One of those computers is my MCE station. In our bedroom is the Extender.

Network glitches O Rama. So, now I get to spend time checking the switches. The normal drill: remove the one in the office first and run the line directly to the computer. If that works, I know it's the second switch. If not, then it may be that one. Then try that one. If it still doesn't work, then maybe it's the wire. If so, I'm FUBAR because I can't fix that -- it's in the wall. Or maybe it's the NIC in the machine...or, or, or.

Ridiculous.