Progress at last

Did a lot of research around the magicweb, it seems that there is a lot of expertise and experience out there re WMC. What I observe is that there is an awful lot of searching but not much finding on the web and the Microsoft MVP's don't seem to be much help in many cases.  Anyway I tried a lot of options with the diffent packages and I had an extensive look at the Intel Graphics HD4000 control GUI. It is not fantastic by any means and Intels own support forums reveals a lot of frustration with users of the product. I tried a number of options and solved the SD distortion by moving to custom scaling.

There seem to be issues with DVB-T2 HD transmission in the UK and the ability of PC graphics to cope with it. There is mention of a"29/59" frame rate issue where the transmitted stream carries with it data about the frame rate and should there be a problem with this then the PC graphics will not respond quickly enough resulting in glitching of one form or another. I went back to the settings and disabled all of the bells and whistle settings and this seemed to do the trick. The HD channels have played OK ever since, but lets wait and see.

The final task was to load up the final photos, videos etc. What a nightmare this turned into. It started because some of the  photos were oriented wrongly and I need to rotate them. Tried this WMC but without much success. WMC said it was unable to do this, muttering about unable to save the file.

I looked using trusty Picasa and could rotate but not save. Windows explorer offers the facilty to rotate under right mouse click, but said no joy the file is read only or in use with some other idiot program. This little benign statement started a war with  Windows security systems - whata tangled web that weaves?

Checked read only - yup folder had a little blue button on read only. Selected this to switch off "read only" applied to all file folders sub folders etc. Went back and tried to rotate - no joy. Went back to folder - read only still in force. Tried again with no more success. Looked at the files themselves, all looked to be not read only! Still could not rotate - same message. Now looked at share and security settings - mind numbing Looke at the users including system accounts - gave full permissions. I had already moved away from Windows 7 inbuilt system and moved to what I was more familiar with since NT days. None of this gave any greater success. Re-booted to clear any lingering program holds on the files. Still no better. Back to the interweb. Some opinion was to resort to the old DOS style commands (CMD) and use the attrib command. Well, after sorting out the syntax - do you know what to do with spaces in the folder names? - that run OK, but still no rotation. I tried various thing on a photo file and I finally got a hint that UAC was tangling with me. It wasn't popping up any you need Admin approval type boxes. User Account Control is the system that seeks permission to change things. Well I switched UAC off and all the problems went away. I don't really understand why I had the problem, my laptop has Win 7 and I have never experienced this sort of problem before. I am not the only one suffering if you have a look at the web.

All sorted now and handed over to DB to test.

Trial Failure - Uhhhhhhh

The trial started with DB. She liked the features, the easy recording and the pause, go back features of the TV. The remote on the smartphone couldn't be tried as it needed the HTPC to be connected to the LAN. Only Wifi is available in the living room, no wifi on the HTPC. Godda cable it or fit a wifi dongle.

The biggest problem is that the TV and Video play is distorted in SD (DVB-T) but OK in HD (DVB-T2). Distortion is at the edges like it is overstretched. If you have a circle in the middle of the picture, at the edge it will be egg shaped. This shows up particularly badly when the picture is panning. I have tried a few settings in WMC itself and also in the Intel Video driver without any success. The HD picture is fine, not distorted but flickers every second or so - not good.

I have download VLC a free opensource media player with a good reputation. This plays the SD with no distortion and the HD with no flicker. So what do you conclude from that? Driver, surely both packages will use the same Video driver on the hdmi port!  Codec's, could be using different codecs thats for sure. Some other WMC issue?

Tomorrow, I will try and see if I can try some other options to find where the setting/problem is. I will try

1. Running over VGA instead of hdmi
2. Trying Windows Media Player, which may use the same codec and drivers as WMC.
3. Trying WMC playing from my laptop to the same TV, both hdmi and VGA

Lets see what that reveals.

The graphics is Intel HD4000 running onboard the Asus P8Z77 MoBo

The 10 Foot Problem

The beast is up and running, a set of data is downladed, movies, photos, music, videos, TV recordings and its time to try it out. The first thing is how do you control it from the sofa in the living room? (the 10 foot reference in the title) I really wanted is to have a facsimile of what is on the TV screen, so I can see all of the control screens of WMC and browser, not 10 feet away, cos the peepers are not great, but on a tablet 10 inches away. Is it possible? It seems so at first look.

I looked at several options  - standard windows features like Remote Desk Top, Remote Assistance, -  the office type features like Net Meeting or Linq as it now know or the equivalent proprietary stuff like Teamviewer, Join Me, Quick Screen Share. Then there are the commercial Android Apps like the specific WMC controllers or the more general purpose Android PC Mouse and Keyboard simulations. Finally there are the real wireless PC Mouse and Keyboards.

I could not really get the windows features to work well enough. RDT works, but it normally works in a single user mode, so logs off the TV PC before you can control anything. I didn't pursue the multiple session hacks that are around.  RA also works and of course keeps both screens working once control is delegated to the remote controlling PC. It is not great though, very jittery and it doesn't seem to work once you go full screen on the TV PC, the local controlling screen goes totally black and you cant see to control anything further. I tried Quick Screen Share, which is a nice piece of freeware, but I had the same sort of problems as I had with RA.

I next tried one of the Android Apps, Unified Remote. I installed this on my smartphone. It can use both Bluetooth and Wifi. I used Wifi and it was perfectly functional. It comes with specific menus, like WMC, Window Start Button as well as a touchpad mouse and keyboards.

My next task is to actually set it all up in the living room and let DB loose on it for testing.

Data Load

You recall I mentioned the nightmare of data tidy up, well its time to load data to the new machine. The twin freeview tuner card turned up today and it installed no problem at all - very sweet. It integrated nicely with Windows Media Center with no problem The EPG is quite good and you can do the usual recoeding via the right button, series link etc etc. The tuner is HD as well.

I have now loaded all my music, movies, videos and photos.

This is the tuner card, it is PCI express, quite a small card, as you can see.

I expect to get the Blu Ray player tomorrow, which will finish the build, at least for phase 1. Once that it is up and running I will install in the living room to let DB trial it. Then I am going to try various ways of controlling it from the armchair. I ahve no firm plans as yet but I am thinking abount using a smartphone or tablet running android - lets see what apps are out their. Alternatively perhaps via the laptop. Would remote assist work or remote desktop with multiple sessions?

More Buying and - SCAMs

I have been researching media drives and the TV tuner card. I wanted some capability to use DVD's Blu Ray - to play and burn. It needs to be quietish, remember I am a bit mutt but other younger folks will need to use it as well. I am a little confused about speeds and what impact that has on the playing, recording experience. I narrowed the search down to a couple of contenders Pioneer BDR 208DBX and the LG BH16LS38. They both seem roughly equivalent in price and performance around £65. It seems the Pioneer has the edge on quietness - the proof will be in the spinning.

I looked at TBS, Blackgold and Hauppg..., Huapge...,  Hauppauge. The TBS and Blackgold seem broadly equivalent offering DVB-T2  (HD) in single twin and quad in the over air freeview. The Haupp, other one doesn't offer HD yet and I can't spell it so I discounted it. Looking at the blogs and comments I opted for the TBS PCI-E DVB-T2 Dual TV Tuner. I went for the twin tuner over the quad as I also considering a Freesat card option and I think there is a limit of tuners that the hardware/software can handle. Four is the limit number, I have in my mind.

I never pass through a stage without problems. This time it is web buying. I ordered the Blu ray drive from DABs and the Twin Tuner card from Amazon but sold by ARC UK. Sound reputable to you? I placed the orders and all seemed fine. Later that evening I started to get SMS txt's on my mobile. They were saying your order is ready for delivery, Text1 for this, 2 for that and 3, for something else. I wasn't expecting any deliveries just yet so I looked more closely. None of the txts has a correct reference number of any sort. My guess is that one or both of these companies is selling off your mobile number, the buyers try to get you "active" on texting which make their sale list more valuable. That may be a charitable interpretation, it could be you text the numbers and get stuck in some malicious virus, big phone bill or phishing scam. I am going to pursue the sellers and see what they have to say. I saw recently that two Birmingham got a £400K fine doing just this sort of thing with phone lists.

Anyway I am off to eat jellied eels, drink beer and watch the 6 nations, well someone has to do it!

Breakdown & Build Up

After sorting out the existing HDD data, I started to breakdown the old machine, HP Vectra VL800. This was fairly straight forward, most of the unscrewing, unclipping and hammering is pretty self evident. It seems a reasonable quality case.

 

This is the guts - you see the IDE parallel ribbon cables to the old ATA drives.  The ATA drives are in a sideways mounted cassette.

 

 

The ATA drives are not directly compatible with new ATX/SATA drives. They have different power connectors and serial interfaces with different connectors. You can buy IDE-SATA and SATA-IDE converter interfaces that handle both power and signal if you want to transfer your existing data. If you want speed, then you should really upgrade to SATA at 6G speed and not use the old ATA.

 

This is the connecting cable between the MoBo and the front panel LED's and on/off switch.

 

Needless to say it is not comapatible with the pin header on the ASUS MoBo. Searching that stupid interweb didn't yield any easy answers either from blogs or online stores. Apparently it is called 10-1 pin panel in the ASUS handbook. That didn't help either! Anyway I wandered down to my local Maplins this morning and found some simple single wires terminated with male/femail pins that seem to do the conversion job.

 

I have now re-assembled the new MoBo, new PSU and new HDD and connected them all together, along with the fan wires. The chassis has an old 3 pin cable fan which I have plugged into the PWR FAN socket. There is also a CHA FAN socket which I assume is for a chassis fan. It is 4 pin and may well be speed configurable by the MoBo to keep noise down. The CPU fan also seems controllable. I will crash into these hurdles at BIOS & setup time. lets wait until then.