We plod on. No one tells you when you set off on this type of project, the nightmare that is sorting out your life on hard drives that have existed for over 10 years. Four HDD's 1 USB terrabyte backup all to be re-sorted and integrated in a way that a media machine can sort handle and present nicely.
Hardware. You see lots of stuff on the interweb extolling the cheap and cheerful media approach, you know - "get yourself a supa HTMC for under $500" Well, I don't want to do this too many times, so I am looking for a machine that will be running in ten years time, - with all the increases in download and speed that will occur over that period. My last Windows 2000 machine is coming to the end of its tether now, but has survived over ten years and runs OK even now. It is only Microsoft and the banks that has curtailed its life.
In the end, the choice based on "webexpert" advice has been between Asus and Asrock for motherboards (MoBo), a 1 terrabyte SATA disk and a TSB Twin Tuner. All my PC's have had Intel Inside (dong, don dooonng) and have run pretty well, so after looking at the performance charts I opted for an Ivy Bridge i5 3570K 3.4GHz CPU.
For MoBo, I thought that the ASUS P8Z77-V LE looked a good mid performance board. When I went to look to buy one of these, they didn't seem readily available although everyone seemed to have the more basic LX version on sale. I finally went for the ASUS P8Z77-V LX & 8GB DDR3 1600. Lets see if that combo can handle what I want. I added to that a Segate Barracuda 1 TByte SATA HDD.
Tomorrow should see me stripping the old PC tower and with any luck starting build.
Thursday, January 31
Wednesday, January 30
Shopping Time
Well after thinking about the specification I have been looking around the various web and high street stores to see what is available and to also learn more about what I am trying to do.
Media Software - I have been looking at other experts blogs who are supporters of both Linux and Windows. You sometimes have to read between the lines of what various proponents are saying, but given that I want to try and integrate all of my media and I do not want to do much "under the hood" stuff in the programs, plus it has to work with DB, who lives with me and controls me for the most part, I have decided to go the Windows route with Windows Media Center(or one of its offshoots) I have WMC on my Win 7 laptop, so I have been trying to see what it can do.
I have come up against various obstacles but generally it seems to be reasonably integrated. I set up folders called My Photos, My Videos, My Movies, My Music in the Win 7 Libraries. I copied in 8 standard movies in the DVD environment, VOB's and IFO's, mainly jpg photos, MP3 music and .MOV videos taken on my camera.
WMC did handle this all right although there are plenty of little niggles to overcome.
Music has a fair number of meta tag problems and WMPlayer or Center can't really sort them out. Get some variation in the meta tag and WMP/C will insist in filing all the variations separately, so you get multiple Album entries with one or two songs under each. WMP allows you to change tags BUT in some circumstances it is unable to actually change the tag at all. I use MP3Tag and a WMP addon called Tag Editor Plus which lets you manage the tags by right clicking individual or multiples of MP3's in WMP. Despite all this the only route to salvation in the toughest cases was to use MP3Tag to delete all the tags and re-populate. That has always done the trick for me.
Movie art was also a little bit sticky. DVD's carry their own art, but it is not accessible on a hard drive, so all of the entries in WMC were pretty blank with no synopsis art or anything. The solution for me was to use a free product called DVD Library Manager. Once you set this up it produces a list of your Movies on the hard drive and lets you select standard sites, Amazon, IMDB to download all the info and store it for you in a dvdid.xml and as long as you kept this in a flat folder with the art and movie, then it all looks great in WMC.
Music and Photos seemed to go without hitch, just a matter of folder organisation that suits you best.
I have discovered that Microsoft have abandoned internet TV streaming support on WMC, so I had a look at XBMC. People have been using XBox for streaming and TV for some while so it may be an avenue to follow. I downloaded it and it runs OK and you can see it is related to to WMC. At first sight it looks to me that I would have to do more work to integrate all the things that I want in term of searching for suitable addons to make it do what I want. I will look at it further and some of the other options that are available as I get building.
WMC seems to be a nightmare if you let it search and source all over your network, I had to stop it doing that sharing stuff it does.
Anyway I am just off to donate blood and then down to the Emirates to see what Suarez & Liverpool can do to us.
Media Software - I have been looking at other experts blogs who are supporters of both Linux and Windows. You sometimes have to read between the lines of what various proponents are saying, but given that I want to try and integrate all of my media and I do not want to do much "under the hood" stuff in the programs, plus it has to work with DB, who lives with me and controls me for the most part, I have decided to go the Windows route with Windows Media Center(or one of its offshoots) I have WMC on my Win 7 laptop, so I have been trying to see what it can do.
I have come up against various obstacles but generally it seems to be reasonably integrated. I set up folders called My Photos, My Videos, My Movies, My Music in the Win 7 Libraries. I copied in 8 standard movies in the DVD environment, VOB's and IFO's, mainly jpg photos, MP3 music and .MOV videos taken on my camera.
WMC did handle this all right although there are plenty of little niggles to overcome.
Music has a fair number of meta tag problems and WMPlayer or Center can't really sort them out. Get some variation in the meta tag and WMP/C will insist in filing all the variations separately, so you get multiple Album entries with one or two songs under each. WMP allows you to change tags BUT in some circumstances it is unable to actually change the tag at all. I use MP3Tag and a WMP addon called Tag Editor Plus which lets you manage the tags by right clicking individual or multiples of MP3's in WMP. Despite all this the only route to salvation in the toughest cases was to use MP3Tag to delete all the tags and re-populate. That has always done the trick for me.
Movie art was also a little bit sticky. DVD's carry their own art, but it is not accessible on a hard drive, so all of the entries in WMC were pretty blank with no synopsis art or anything. The solution for me was to use a free product called DVD Library Manager. Once you set this up it produces a list of your Movies on the hard drive and lets you select standard sites, Amazon, IMDB to download all the info and store it for you in a dvdid.xml and as long as you kept this in a flat folder with the art and movie, then it all looks great in WMC.
Music and Photos seemed to go without hitch, just a matter of folder organisation that suits you best.
I have discovered that Microsoft have abandoned internet TV streaming support on WMC, so I had a look at XBMC. People have been using XBox for streaming and TV for some while so it may be an avenue to follow. I downloaded it and it runs OK and you can see it is related to to WMC. At first sight it looks to me that I would have to do more work to integrate all the things that I want in term of searching for suitable addons to make it do what I want. I will look at it further and some of the other options that are available as I get building.
WMC seems to be a nightmare if you let it search and source all over your network, I had to stop it doing that sharing stuff it does.
Anyway I am just off to donate blood and then down to the Emirates to see what Suarez & Liverpool can do to us.
Saturday, January 26
The Project!
Its January in the UK, the days are short, the nights(and days) are dark. Too cold for fishing, can break the ice but my butt freezes too easily these days. So.... what to do? A project what else. My PC is getting long in the tooth - Win2K, 256K RAM, it all spells frustration. Go out and buy a PC( or MAC) in the sales. No way Jose, much too simple. I have decided to have a bash at building a machine using the remains of the old Win2K beast. I have seen "experts" saying this is possible, even a good idea, so lets see.
I started by the usual anal research using my thoughts on a functional requirements list.
1. Play TV off air, freeview or freesat. Record same - must have a decent EPG. Watch while recording. HD if poss.
2. Has to sit in the living room., noise issues, control issues, eyes not too bright these days.
3. Play photos - decent organisation, must be able to set up a reasonable structure.
4. Play my music, decent quality sound, not the best but not squeaky rubbish. I'm a bit mutt as well as dodgy sight.
5. Play catchup TV in the UK, same EPG to cope with both
6. Must be able to link with other PC's upstairs, Window 7 and XP at the mo.
7. Thinking to do the office type things on the PC's upstairs, and download what ever's to the living room PC.
8. Play disk media - DVD's CD's
9. Play stick media, USB
Anyway I am off and running, I will post on my thoughts and progress with piccies from time to time. Any thoughts from like-minded people out there always welcome.
I started by the usual anal research using my thoughts on a functional requirements list.
1. Play TV off air, freeview or freesat. Record same - must have a decent EPG. Watch while recording. HD if poss.
2. Has to sit in the living room., noise issues, control issues, eyes not too bright these days.
3. Play photos - decent organisation, must be able to set up a reasonable structure.
4. Play my music, decent quality sound, not the best but not squeaky rubbish. I'm a bit mutt as well as dodgy sight.
5. Play catchup TV in the UK, same EPG to cope with both
6. Must be able to link with other PC's upstairs, Window 7 and XP at the mo.
7. Thinking to do the office type things on the PC's upstairs, and download what ever's to the living room PC.
8. Play disk media - DVD's CD's
9. Play stick media, USB
Anyway I am off and running, I will post on my thoughts and progress with piccies from time to time. Any thoughts from like-minded people out there always welcome.
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