Not much new, so here...

Stumbled upon this today, nothing really to do with HTPC, but more to do with my obsession for music videos...

http://thru-you.com/

A rather creative (and most certainly time-consuming) way to take sampling to the next level!

The WAF

Browsing the SageTV forums today made me think of one of the biggest hurdles to overcome in justifying the HTPC (well, moreover the COST of the HTPC), in most likely 90% of all cases, is the WAF. Yes, gentlemen, the Wife Acceptance Factor. Initially, convincing the wife to spend a good chunk of hard-earned dough (~$1200) on a computer that lets you watch TV isn't an easy task. Unfortunately, there's no "Try Before You Buy" option on the HTPC, since each one is a custom-built unit; not something you can pick up at Future Shop and bring back in 30 days if you're not happy with it. On the contrary, I ended up buying parts from all across North America to build the dream machine, since at the time very little was available locally. So after a month of acquiring items, and a week or two installing and setting up, the HTPC was born. The geek factor for me was Uber. The wife's reaction was "Uh, that's cool I guess". Well, 2 generations of SageTV later, a few new hard drives, and the addition of the 46" widescreen and HD cable box, the wife (and myself as well) are semi-reliant on the HTPC. It's far easier and enjoyable to record a show and watch it later (even easier with Eastern channel feeds), and have the program skip the commercials automatically. Easily browsing through upcoming movies on the Program Guide, selecting them to record, then watching them whenever it's convenient is where it's at. One top feature I like is scheduling the evening news to record every day at 6 PM, allowing me to get home, unwind, then watch the news from the start, even if I'm home a little late. Whoa, I've gone on a bit of a tangent there. Ah yes, the WAF. Initial approval was probably around 20% - today I would easily peg the WAF at 100%. True, it is a luxury, but in today's digital / entertainment age, I'd say it's no less needed than a big-screen TV. Oh, and men - be prepared to adjust your HAF to your new spring bedspread accordingly.

Testing...Testing... Sibilance...

Well, it won't test your system for audio, but if you want to see how your HDTV is interpreting an HD signal, HDNet offers an HD Test Pattern for your viewing pleasure. Simply, it will determine your set's resolution and overscan, which can be pretty interesting to find out and compare. There's a detailed writeup about how it all works here. If you're feeling really REALLY geeky, check out a ton of HD test images and files here. Since I don't have the full surround sound setup just yet, I don't have any good links to sound calibration- feel free to leave a comment with a good link or two if you've got one!

Smooth runnings

Well, the excitement of Christmas is over, it's been back to regular scheduled programming (at work, that is). The HTPC has been running flawlessly, which I'm glad to report, as many people using the Firewire capture method of getting digital video out of their HD tuner box have had mixed results (likely a cause of not being able to decipher the nearly non-existant, outdated installation instructions difficult to find on the internet). We've amassed over a dozen movies we have yet to catch up on watching since the beginning of the month. I've found it much more enjoyable to watch my fave shows in HD over their SD counterpart - House and 24 top the list. I'm eagerly awaiting the return of Rescue Me, hopefully in HD, as this is probably my top must see TV show, and I've been awaiting a new season for 2 years!

Here's a video of the current setup in action:

In other semi-related news, I've upgraded to Telus High Speed Extreme (7Mb down, 1Mb upstream), after realizing that it was cheaper to upgrade from 2.5Mb - likely due to being on an old price protection plan. Nice of them to tell me! I'm eager to try SageTV Placeshifter outside my lan now, as before I only could get about 400k upstream, which gave watchable TV, but a bit blocky. 1Mb should be quite a noticeable difference!

Get back to work!

Well, it's time once again to finish off the last of the eggnog, get a short sleep, and head back to work. I'm pleased to announce my HTPC is running great, watching and recording HD is working flawlessly after finally finding a setting that made the HD tuning work 100% of the time, compared to 75% of the time. I've recorded and watched about half a dozen movies in the last week, thanks partly to the movie channels, but the ones that aren't and have commercials (Showtime, Bravo, etc), the Comskip program works flawlessly and simply skips over the commercial breaks on all the recorded shows... The only challenge left is to figure out why decoding 1080p encoded (Quicktime, etc) material I've downloaded (trailers, etc) is a bit glitchy still. I'm holding out for a Blu-ray drive until they drop to $100 (not much longer - http://www.xpresscanada.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=019903&cid=CR.405 ). Ah well, I've cued up a bunch of HD shows to record and watch back sometime in the future.

Christmas cookies...

Time once again to clean up all the wrapping paper and pine needles, take the tree out, and return presents (who does that?)... Looking at all the leftover cookies, I thought I'd take the opportunity to remind everyone to clean up your cookies! Not the ones for Santa, the ones on your computer. CCleaner [ http://www.ccleaner.com/] does more than just clean up your cookies, it cleans temp files, history, registry entries, and a bunch of useless crap that just takes up space on your computer. Definitely worth a download, and best of all, it's free!

Holiday quiet time

Not a whole lot exciting to say, just been on Holidays, out of town and watching TV over the internet from home with SageTV's Placeshifter, which allows me to log in and record/watch recorded or live TV anywhere there's a high speed connection. I haven't been able to watch HD through Placeshifter, mostly due to the limited upstream bandwidth from home, and the (lack of) processing power on my 900 MHz EEE PC 701. Ah well, SDTV streams pretty well, and not like I'm missing any important shows or anything!

Side project

The last couple of days at work I got to put together a heating and hot water control system for a house we're working on. Since nobody really reads this, I'm not going to go into any details other than pictures and brief descriptions!



Top row circuits for Hot Water, Pool Heat, and Dry-o-Tron pool ventilation. Center row for radiant heat thermostat backlighting circuit. Bottom row for radiant heat thermostat control circuits.



Power Distribution and pump control box: Splits 120vAC to transformers, boilers, and pump relays. Two transformers power radiant heat zone control vavles (16 total), one powers hot water/pool control valves.



Shot of the work.
























2 boilers in action!

What the...

I can't believe nobody wants the fame and glamour of being the first blog follower!

S is for Super!

Martin put a bug in my ear today about the 3 different LCD panels in the Samsung TV's, the A, C, and S panels [referring to the manufacturer]. S is the ideal one, being made by Samsung, the other from somewhat less desireable manufacturers. See here: [http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=15293915#post15293915]. Luckily, upon pulling out the TV to check the sticker on the back, I'm a proud owner of an S panel!

Quote Of The Day

"This is sex in a paper cup!" -Martin

Pictures

[Above] Here's the setup, watching Sportsnet HD live through the PC. From top:
Samsung 46" LCD
USB-UIRT / Wii
Shaw Box / CPU

The brains of the operation, with LCD display rotating between time/date and CPU usage.

Setup again, showing SaveTV program guide with HD channel lineup.

Control #1 - The Logitech Dinovo Mini. Damn cool - backlit with trackpad. Control of Sage is alternately available with TV remote, which can be much faster to just scan through menus and control media.

A big warm hug

After wondering what the heck to blog about, a thorough discussion at work decided it - geek crap. I think the main focus for now will be what I've been farting around with for a few years now - HTPC [Home Theater PC]. Only recently have I purchased a nice new HDTV to expand my tech and entertainment horizons, so there will be plenty of discussion regarding HD as well. I've dubbed my HTPC box G Unit 2.0 - version 1.0's motherboard fried due to a bad video card, and the components were too obsolete to replace, so an upgrade was imminent, and thus an opportunity to plan for future HDTV capabilities.

SageTV is my media center software of choice - they offer excellent tech support, third party plugin and themes, placeshifting and client/server licencing, and ongoing (monthly) development. An excellent piece of software, and at US$80, well worth the price.

So here's my specs:
Gigabyte GA-MA78GPM-DS2H motherboard
Athlon 64 x2 5200+ Dual Core 65W processor
Zalman ZM600HP power supply
Buffalo Firestix FSX1066 2GB dual channel RAM
Seagate SATA2 500GB HD (media)
Seagate SATA2 250GB HD (software)
ATI Theatre 550 SD tuner
ATI Theatre 650 SD/OTA HD tuner
Crystalfontz 632 backlit LCD display
Logitech DiNovo Mini bluetooth keyboard
USB-UIRT Infrared Receiver/Transmitter

Shaw DCT6200 HD Tuner cable box

Samsung LN46A550 1080p LCD TV

That's about it, stay tuned for pics and more details, including recording HD from the Shaw box!

One day...

One day, I might actually start posting something useful...