December 24th, 2009
Windows 7 has been out for a few months now so I thought it time to comment on why I choose to use it and why we use it in our media centres.
Essentially, I use it because it is more stable that Vista - crashes far less often - and has some nice eye candy to boot. I am not going to discuss the pros and cons of using Windows 7 in an every day sense - there are plenty of sites for that on the web. Rather I wiull talk about why Windows 7 is better than Vista from a Media Cenrte perspective.
As I have described to several customers, it is the small things that make 7MC better. Things like:
- being able to fast forward / skip forward avi files
- TV guide data pulled from the antenna (not internet) - known as ETIT data
- The ability to have nice station logos in the guide
- Native DVD playback
- a really cool slide show screen saver, where you can choose what folder to display images from (excellent for family photos, holiday snaps, etc…)
- Better slide show functionality
- Improved ability to control when secheduled recordings start and finish
- ability to colour code TV shows in the guide based on content (uses ETIT data)
- nice user interface
- Better 64 bit usability
As with most things there are some draw backs:
- no native bluray playback capability (ASENT uses a very good third party application)
- inability to customise the location of third party apps in start menu and sub menus
Not a long list of drawbacks, to be fair, and this highlights that Windows 7 Media Centre is a strong improvement over its predecessor.
Overall Windows 7 Media Centre is very good and ASENT is proud to use it in our media centres. Having tested Windows 7 for about a year now we are confident that it is a worthwhile contribution to any lounge room.
Tags: Windows 7
Posted in Windows 7 | No Comments »
January 23rd, 2009
With the release of Microsoft’s new operating system in beta, I thought I would give it a go and see how it performs in it’s current form.
I created a new partition on one of my drives and did a fresh install of Windows 7 Beta 1. The install process was virtually identical to Vista - no surprise there. However as the system rebooted in to the Windows 7 GUI (graphic user interface) for the first time disaster!! A black screen. The system was still running, but there was no image.
I grabbed another monitor and rebooted. No change. In the end I found that the boot loader has a setting that runs the GUI at a low resolution 800 x 600. Viola! I had a screen and could get to the desktop. From there I ran Windows update which downloaded two driver updates - ethernet card and Nvidia driver for the graphics card.
After the updates the system worked fine - I could change the resolution to my preferred setting and everything worked OK.
Onto the media centre. The first thing I notices was the changed layout. Like all things different from what we are used to I was not too sure about the new layout, but the more I use it the more I like it. Having switched between Vista and Windows 7 and can say that the Windows 7 Media Centre interface is very intuitive.
Why? The Menu titles are clearer and in a stylish, thin font. The layout of the menus is slightly different with the more common menu items easier to get at. Also the menus are left justified, rather than centred as in Vista. The only thing that I found I did not like was that you can not continuously scroll through the menus. In Windows 7 once you get to the last menu it will not continue. To get to the other end of the menus you need to scroll all the way to the other end. A small thing, but annoying. Hopefully it will be fixed before the final release.
The big thing for Windows 7 is the fact that most codecs are pre-installed. That means that DVD’s, DivX and avi’s will play straight away with out the need for a codec pack. The exceptions to this are MKV files and Blu Ray. There has been much discussion about blu ray and Windows 7 so I will not go into it here, except to say that native blu ray playback is unlikely for some time to come.
Tags: Media Centre, Windows 7
Posted in Windows 7 | 1 Comment »
January 23rd, 2009
The final piece of teh jigsaw was installed in my system the other day. To play Blu Ray I needed a dual core processor, as the single core processor was just not gutsy enough. It kept maxing out at 100% which made the movie play back with minor, but regular, jitters. This made watching movies very frustrating.
But now the equation is complete:
1 x Core 2 Duo Intel E2200 processor
1 x 8400 GS Nvidia graphics processor
2 x Gb RAM
with these pieces I have enjoyed my first Blu Ray movie - and it was great! The resolution is superb - highly recommended.
Posted in Blu Ray, Vista Media Centre | No Comments »
November 24th, 2008
If you have a large collection of music (mine is over 40Gb) then you might find the standard Media Centre Music Library interface is not meeting your requirements. Issues arise especially if your MP3 tags are not correctly filled out, as this is what Media Centre uses to sort and categorise your music collection.
A common way to over come this is to store your music collection in folders by artist name or by genre. So you would end up with a file structure like:
A –> Anthrax
Ant Farm
Aphrodite
B –> Beastie Boys
Boogie Pimps
But Media Centre can not display your music collection by folders. Luckily there is a plug in that does: Music Browser. This little application enables you to browse through your music collection by folder. And the great thing is that it uses the album images the Media Centre download, so you can still see your favourite album cover.
The plugin is easy to install and it’s free! You can get it here.
If you have a large music collection this plugin is essential!!
Tags: music browser, music collection, Plugins, Vista Media Centre
Posted in Plugins, Vista Media Centre | 1 Comment »
November 17th, 2008
Once you have started using your ASENT media centre you start to do one of two things:
1) Wish there was some other useful information/tools available
2) Wonder what there is that will help you do point 1
The most common thing that people want with their ASENT media centre is a weather plugin – a way of checking the weather without leaving your couch. There are several on the market, but the best I have found is “Big Screen Weather 2”.
You can down load it here. Subscription cost $US 20 per year. What you get for that is access to the BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) information which is used in the plugin. This includes weather info, 7 days forecasts, weather maps, satellite imagery, tide forecasts plus other really useful stuff.
The user interface is super slick and integrates beautifully with your ASENT media centre. The remote controls the plugin seamlessly – everything is accessible and nothing needs to be manually configured (as with some other plugins). You can choose any location in Australia or the US and there is forecast data for many locations around the world – very handy if you travel a lot.
All in all an excellent (essential?) plugin. And it’s Australian made!
Tags: ASENT, Big Screen Weather, Media Centre, Plugins
Posted in Plugins, Vista Media Centre | 1 Comment »
October 30th, 2008
Well it turns out I was not quite right - although upgrading the GPU to an 8400GS was a vast improvement, it is still not quite right. It seems that the CPU carries a bit of workload when paying Blu ray.The processor is running at between 60% and 100% during play back. And this is causing it to stutter slightly - enough to be annoying.
For the record the CPU is an Intel Pentium D 3066 MHz. So it seems that I DO need to upgrade my CPU
Which is a shame, becasue I really don’t want to. Although it does mean I can use the exisiting CPU in my yet-to-be-built home server….
Tags: 8400GS, Blu Ray, Pentium D, Vista Media Centre
Posted in Blu Ray, Vista Media Centre | No Comments »
October 29th, 2008
Now that the Blu Ray drive is installed, and I have gone out and bought a BR disc, I quickly discovered that my Nvidia 7 (7300GS) series graphics card was not able to handle blu ray playback. It worked but was very jittery - certainly unwatchable.
The blu ray drive comes with a piece of software that lets you know if your system is up to scratch - mine clearly wasn’t! The program said that my CPU and GPU were not able to handle playback. I suspected that the video card (GPU) ws not up to the job, but I would have thought my Celeron D processor would have been able to handle it.
So I took the cheap option and went out and bought an 8 series Nividia graphics card (8400GS), which I have just installed. And it works!! Amazing clarity on blu ray - even with my 768dpi screen (running at 600dpi).
So you need an 8 series or higher Nivida GPU and a Celeron D processor as a minimum to run Blu Ray. All we need now is for Windows Media Centre to play blu ray natively.
Hopefully this will be inplace for Windows 7….
Tags: 7300GS, 8400GS, Blu Ray, Celeron D, Nivida, Vista Media Centre
Posted in Blu Ray, Vista Media Centre | No Comments »
October 18th, 2008
I installed the Blu Ray drive last night - no problems. Just the usual, straight forward optical drive install. Vista even had a driver for it, although the bundled software did update to a newer version.
The drive installed was the highly rated LG Blu Ray / HD DVD combo - LG GGW-H20L. The drive comes with a blank RW Blu Ray disc, which is nice.
All I need now is a Blu Ray disc to play!
Unfortunately Vista does not natively support Blu Ray, but there are plugins that wil enable Blu Ray playback. This is the next thing to test. The test system has myMovies installed which tells me it can play Blu Ray discs. Which is why I need a blu ray movie - to test it!!
There is also a plug in called “Cyberlink PowerDVD Media Centre Plugin”. This plug in opens Cyberlink or Power DVD in full screen mode to play BR discs. It then closes the player and returns to VMC when done. Again, I need a Blu Ray disc to test.
I will have to get one tomorrow…
Tags: Blu Ray, HD DVD, LG GGW-H20L, Vista Media Centre
Posted in Blu Ray, Vista Media Centre | No Comments »
October 16th, 2008
I have heard that there are issues with using Blu Ray with Media Centre. So I am going to give it a go. I should pick up the drive tomorrow. If not it may be early next week. Either way I am very curious to see how it goes.
Ever since Blu Ray won the war with HD DVD I have been itching to use it, but I have had no real need to install on my personal machine - I have no Blu Ray movies and my screen only runs at 768 resolution - not ideal for Blu Ray!
From my understanding the main issues are related to the codecs. We’ll see….
Tags: Blu Ray, HD DVD, LG GGW-H20L, Vista Media Centre
Posted in Blu Ray, Vista Media Centre | No Comments »
October 12th, 2008
It has taken me a few days (have a 6 week old daughter!) I have replaced the drive and guess what??
It works beautifully!! The drive have performed flawlessly since the install, so obviously it was a problem with the drive all along.
I think that the optical drive is out of balance which is:
1. Making it very noisy;
2. Causing the intermittent read errors.
Anyway, all sorted - thank goodness for a solid testing process!!
Tags: DVD, Vista Media Centre
Posted in Vista Media Centre | No Comments »