Still searching for an all-inclusive family media centre? Maybe it’s time to look at the latest offering from Microsoft.

I’ve never had a PVR in the lounge room. Everyone has their own personal preference, and for me, it makes sense to have a PC as a fundamental lounge room component, alongside the television, the DVD player, the BluRay disc player and the surround sound system. In addition to recording programmes off-air, you can use a networked PC-based media centre to view movies and listen to music on networked file shares, surf the web, and watch YouTube and Twitterfall on your big-arse television.

And sometimes, it’s just good to have “PC functionality” on a big screen in your lounge room.

An old-fashioned version of Microsft’s Windows XP operating system was the Windows XP Media Center (sic) Edition. The last version was released about 5 or 6 years ago, and was intended for the lounge room PC to consolidate your audio and video libraries, TV recordings and provide a friendly user interface with large fonts and nice colours which could be operated with a remote control, or wireless keyboard and mouse.

Unfortunately, the reality was quite different. Windows XP-MCE was the buggiest, flakiest, most God-forsaken application, and just completely failed to do anything useful whatsoever. It wouldn’t recognize many standard tuner cards (despite them being recognized and operating faultlessly in the same PC outside of XP-MCE), and it wouldn’t play many movie formats (again, despite them being playable by Windows Media Player in the same PC).

After wrangling with XP-MCE for several weeks, I gave it up as a bad joke. I used my PC media centre with the AVerTV software that was supplied with the tuner card (which worked fine ’standalone’, for recording free-to-air), and I simply used Windows Explorer to connect to network shares and play movies with Windows Media Player or VLC.

This worked well for many years.

Recently, Microsoft released Windows 7, and bundled the latest version of its media centre software with the Home Edition. Ho hum, I thought, the product probably hasn’t changed much, I’ll have a quick look but I can’t imagine using it as an all-in-one media centre.

Oohhh, but how wrong I was!

Microsoft, to its credit, has done an enormous amount of work on Win 7 MCE, compared with its XP ancestor. The user interface has been completely overhauled, and is fast, smooth and intuitive. The installation wizard recognised my tuner and set it up straight away. It seeks-out and finds audio and video media on the network, and adds files to its catalogue. It creates a new “Recorded TV” library where it stores all off-air recordings, and builds its own sensible filenames, thumbnails, and even saves a programme synopsis which it sources from the off-air TV  guide.

Hot-searching makes it very fast and simple to find pre-recorded programmes, indexed movies and other media.

The Main Menu is divided into a number of sub-menus:

• TV
• Movies
• Music
• Pictures + Videos
• Extras

Windows Media Center

TV

Recorded TV displays thumbnails of pre-recorded programmes off-air which are saved in a new “Recorded TV” library. You can see a brief synopsis of each, as well as recorded date/time, duration and other information. It’s simple, and it’s quick to launch recorded programmes.

One of the *best* features  is the recorded TV playback interface. When you move the mouse during playback, Win 7 MCE superimposes a slider control / timeline across the bottom of the display.  When you click-and-drag to jump forward or backward, Win 7 MCE displays a small thumbnail above the timeline, with a frame-grab of the programme at that point.  This makes ad-skipping an absolute breeze and sets Win 7 MCE ahead of many PVRs and internet TV services with this feature.

Ad-skipping is a breeze with Win 7 MCE's thumbnail preview

The Guide displays a conventional table that shows which programmes are currently being put to air by the “FreeView” stations, and which are scheduled in the near future. Simply right-click on these entries to see additional programme details, or to start recording, schedule recording, mark the series for recording (works very well), and a raft of other functions.

Live TV lets you watch television live. You can pause live TV, rewind live TV, view subtitles… all the usual features you’d expect from a modern PVR. What’s more, you can leave Live TV running while you click “back” or “menu”, and Win 7 MCE superimposes  the menu on top of the picture with an impressive “blend” effect.

Movies

The Movie Library functions search for and catalogue media on your network, as well as scheduled programmes in the FreeView Electronic Program Guide, which meet your search criteria.

For example, by selecting Movie Guide / Genres / Science Fiction – Fantasy, I can see in the next few days that “All Dogs Go To Heaven 2″ is on 7TWO, “Species” is on 7 HD Digital, and so on and so forth.  Of course as you’d expect you can right-click any of these results to record or see a brief synopsis.

Music

Win 7 MCE is great for organising your music.  Already got everything ripped to a network drive or external disk?  Simply add tracks to your Music Library by selecting Tasks / Settings / Media Libraries and selecting tracks or folders.

Search by albums, artists, genres, songs, and create your own playlists.  The album artwork is used nicely so you know what’s playing, what’s coming up and what’s available.  Microsoft even has native “visualization” effects, in case you like your TV / monitor to look like an animated tie-dye T-shirt.

The new Media Center also supports digital radio, if you have a digital radio tuner installed in the machine.

Creating Media Libraries in Win 7 MCE is a trivial task

Pictures & Videos

As with music, Win 7 MCE makes it easy to manage pictures and video files on your network.  You can search for local media, as well as network file shares  and external devices.

It’s easy to add individual files to “Favorites”, and create playlists and slideshows.

By the way, all these functions operate independently. You can start listening to a music playlist for example, then click “Back” to the Main Menu, select Pictures and start a slideshow of your favourite happy-snaps.  You can show-case photos from your recent trip to Bali while you’re rocking out to Nirvana.  Or something.

Extras

There’s heaps under the hood: built-in support for BigPond Movies, media extender support for the Xbox 360, CD and DVD burning, syncing of content between Media Center and portable devices, and much, much more.

My Setup

None of this is running on the world’s fastest machine. I’m running Windows 7 Home 0n an Intel Core 2 Duo 3 GHz machine, with 2 GB of RAM and a 1 TB hard disk. This machine has a Windows Experience Index of 5.5.

I use the digital video output of my media centre’s video card, which connects directly to an HDMI port on the television. I have a lovely new Sony Bravia LCD television, and the picture simply sparkles.

Audio runs from the soundcard output of the media centre into an auxiliary input of a surround-sound audio amplifier.  The next project is to get digital audio out of the PC and into the same amplifier.

I did have a wireless card in my earlier Windows XP Media Center.  It did the job okay, but video buffering and network speeds were always a problem.  Eventually I got sick of the stop/start wireless networking and cabled a 100 Mbps port to the rear of the machine.  I’d strongly recommend cabling a network connection to your media centre instead of relying on wireless.  Trust me, you’ll notice a massive improvement in network access speeds and reliability.

The Verdict?

Windows 7 MCE is streets ahead of its predecessor, Windows XP Media Center Edition. Microsoft has done a lot of work to keep the product competitive against big names like TiVo, the Foxtel iQ, the Boxee and others.

Playing devil’s advocate for a moment, I can think of three four things where Win 7 MCE falls short of a digital PVR:

1. the proprietary Microsoft recorded TV file format, which can’t be used by other applications without first being converted to something standard;

2. the system startup time, i.e. if you see something on live TV and want to start recording straight away, when your media centre PC is turned off;

3. the mechanical noise of a physical PC in your lounge room; and

4. unwieldy wireless keyboards and mouses lying around the lounge room.

For me, these are not show-stoppers.  Windows 7 MCE is a real contender in the digital lounge room.  If you’ve got a spare PC lying around, and a VGA port or spare HDMI input on the television that needs to be put to good use, you could do a lot worse than loading Windows 7 Media Center and connecting it to your digital living room.

Unlike its predecessor, you won’t be disappointed.

digital living room · digital lounge room · Media Center · media centre · Microsoft · PVR · Windows · windows 7

In October 2005 I churned from Telstra to Three.

Telstra was no longer competitive.  At the time, Telstra wouldn’t sell me a SIM card for my brand new HTC JasJar.  They wanted passports, driver licences and credit cards to set up a new mobile account (even though I was already a Telstra customer), and everything was just too hard.  ”Customer service” just wasn’t in their dictionary.

The new Three network, on the other hand, was eager to build its customer base and go the “extra mile” to make and keep people happy.  Three offered free calls to other Three subscribers, and they offered the latest 3G handsets with progressive data packs that left Telstra for dead.

Telstra launched its NextG network in October 2006, which uses the 850 MHz radio spectrum, but customer satisfaction rated poorly for a long time despite Telstra’s technically superior radio network.

Things were going swimmingly for Three.  Sales were booming, they were shoring-up their own coverage through a roaming agreement with Telstra, and they were leaving the incumbent behind in a cloud of smoke.

It’s taken five years for Telstra to wake up, but slowly it’s coming around.  The Australian telecommunications behemoth has been listening to customers, critics, journalists and industry.  The announcement of recent data plans shows that they’re starting to get serious, as well as the introduction of competitive capped plans and slashed broadband prices.

The winner?  You and me.   With the end of my Three contract fast approaching, I took a look at these new Telstra plans.  On Three, I was paying $69/month for a $650 cap limit, plus $30/month for a “Blackberry internet service”.  I also had to pay to access voicemail, and I had a paltry 200 MB data included each month.

(The “Blackberry internet service” was a handset repayment charge.  Three thinks I was using a Blackberry on its network, but I wasn’t.  I sold the Blakberry early-on and used the proceeds to fund a new HTC Dream, which was the first Android-powered handset released by HTC.)

Now I’m on a new Telstra plan.  This means:

• I’m $20 /month better off on a NextG $79 Cap Plan which includes a $750 cap limit and no handset repayment fees;
• I’ve got a nice shiny new HTC Desire; and
• I’ve got a whopping 2GB /month included.

The only down-side is that I don’t have free untimed calls to other Three subscribers.  However,  I think this is a small price to pay, especially since most people I know on Three are churning anyway.

It also means I’m on a technically superior phone network, and after nearly a week I’m yet to experience a call dropout (except yesterday afternoon when I was talking to a Three subscriber.)  I was really getting sick of hitting redial eight times in one half-hour period, trying to maintain a voice call on the Three network.  Since Three did a deal with Hutchison and formed the VHA conglomerate, and then announced in October that they were dissolving their roaming partnership with Telstra, Three’s network coverage has been on the down-and-down.  I’ve noticed a significant degradation in service on the Three network over the past few months.

For me, the decision was a no-brainer.  As the helpful Sales Rep in the T-Store said to me, “Welcome back to Telstra.”  The days of Sol Trujillo are gone, and David Thodey is now in the hot seat.  There’s no doubt that David Thodey is anxious to repair the image of a telco with a mobile network in this country second-to-none.  The decision to use Telstra should always have been a no-brainer.

android · churn · HSDPA · HTC · HTC Desire · HTC Dream · NextG · telstra · Three · VHA

And they said it’d never happen!

After much speculation, rumour and conjecture, it all become a reality on Monday the 6th of December.  The first Tech Talk Radio Outside Broadcast took place at Sofia Family Restaurant in Burwood East.

We were all blown away by the massive turnout.  It was a lot of work, but heaps of fun.  For the first time we could put faces to names, and had a chance to meet “the regulars” who lurk in the chat, post on the forum and send email contributions on a weekly basis.

View from The Panel. OMG... who *are* all these people?!

Importantly, the O.B. was a successful proof-of-concept for us, from a technical standpoint.  We were using traditional audio equipment (a mixing desk, headset microphones, wireless microphones, effects microphones, speakers, amplifiers, compressors and limiters) as well as new linking equipment that we tested for the first time on the 22nd of November in Episode 47.  We used professional STL software called AudioTX Communicator.  This software provides bi-directional high quality audio over any IP-based network.  A laptop in Sofia was our “transmitter” and this connected to a computer in the radio studio at 3WBC via the Telstra NextG network.  The entire 2-hour programme used about 200 MB of data each way.

Graeme's mixing desk, microphone switch and CD players

Long-time friend of Tech Talk radio, and US correspondent Lidija Davis was hooked-up via Skype on Andrew’s laptop.

We even installed some impromptu lighting to brighten-up The Panel:

DIY studio lighting, the Tech Talk Radio way!

Thankyou

There are many people that need to be thanked, and without whose help the O.B. would not have been the success that it was:

• Stephanie Stewart, at NetComm Australia, for donating the magnificent MyZone Hot Spot door prize, as well as truck-loads of pens and jelly beans;
• Microsoft’s Michael Kordahi, from popular technology podcast Frankly Speaking, for donating a copy of Microsoft Office 2010; and
• 2K Games for the massive swag including copies of Mafia 2, as well as keyrings, pens, matching cufflinks;  Bioshock; copies of The Bigs 2 Baseball; copies of Carnival Games; Sid Meier’s Pirates; Super Game Day; Civilization V; NBA 2K11; and much, much more!

The Swag - thankyou to all our sponsors for their support and generosity

Thankyou also to Phil at the 3WBC studio, for pushing faders and pressing buttons, and making sure the programme went live-to-air.

And, of course, everyone that rolled-up to make the evening what it was.  Without you, there would be no programme.

We’ll be back in 2011.  In the meantime, enjoy the Summer Series, which showcases highlights from this year’s episodes.

OB · Outside Broadcast · Social Networking · Sofia · Sponsors · Tech Talk Radio · TTR

It’s horrible.

In Episode 47, which went to air on Monday this week, we were testing some new audio equipment and linking software.  We’ll be using this equipment for the Outside Broadcast at Sofia Family Restaurant on the 6th of December.

There were two main issues.

(1) To-air: the quality of Graeme’s microphone audio.  Graeme was trialling a new headset-microphone, using a portable pre-amplifier.  The Panelists will be using a very similar model of headset at the OB.  It sounded a bit hissy, but we’re confident we can fix this with some diligent EQ’ing on the night.

(2) Recording / podcast version:  we always record two independent outputs from the studio’s mixing desk.  One is a recording of the programme that goes to-air (the “A” bus), while the other is a clean recording of panelists’ microphones (the “B” bus).  We use M-Audio MicroTrack II recorders, which write to compact flash cards, to record the show each week. Graeme then edits these recordings to make the podcast and syndication versions of the shows.

Unfortunately, because I was pre-occupied with setting up the new linking equipment, I made the cardinal error of not checking input levels to the recorders.  As a result the input settings for the “A” bus recorder were just completely wrong, and the “B” bus recorders were horribly clipped and over-driven.

Graeme did an excellent job of recovering what he could, but the audio quality is not up to our usual high standard.  This is extremely frustrating for all of us, because we pride ourselves on Tech Talk’s production quality.

Ironically, the actual linking equipment worked very well indeed.  This was the main reason that Graeme started the show from Sofia on Monday night: to test the new link hardware and software.

Next week’s Tech Talk will be back to our usual high standard; and the OB on the 6th of December will be even better!

audio · awkward moments · podcast · production · Tech Talk Radio · TTR

It would appear, prima facie, that we’ve all lost our minds.

Notwithstanding:-

We will attempt to broadcast the final Tech Talk Radio for 2010 LIVE from Sofia’s Family Restaurant, in the leafy Melbourne suburb of Burwood East.

Everyone’s invited! Join us for Sofia’s world-famous pizza/pasta; meet the panelists; heckle the panelists; meet like-minded listeners; and be part of the final Tech Talk Radio for 2010.

You can point and laugh at our attempts to run a 2-hour radio programme, built on nothing but a few extension leads, a Sony Walkman, a Bluetooth headset and a pile of pizza boxes.

BOOK NOW! by calling Sofia on (03) 9803 5299 and asking to reserve a place for the Tech Talk Christmas Special on Monday the 6th of December 2010. Get there around 7:00 P.M. and we’ll aim to start the show at 8:00 P.M..

It’s okay, we told Sofia that we’re lobbing on the front doorstep.  They were pretty good about it, actually. (Just wait until they find out we’re turning their restaurant into a radio studio for a few hours.)

Cost is just $17.50 per person for the set menu. Entertainment, as always, will be courtesy of The Panel.

Andrew has put the details on the website here.

See you at the Christmas bash!

awkward moments · Christmas Special · Outside Broadcast · Tech Talk Radio · TTR

Dear Microsoft,

Please don’t send ninjas to Adam Turner’s house, to abduct and torture him in some secret facility.

On Tech Talk Radio tonight I said something akin to, “Adam was in here a few weeks back, and had Windows Phone 7 and it was really cool.”

What I meant to say was, “My brain is switched off, and I’m talking on live radio, and what Adam actually had was a WinMo 6.5 device running HTC’s Sense UI.”

These are the show notes for the episode I was thinking of, which went to air on 2nd August 2010.

And this is a photo of Adam’s menagerie, taken by me on the night:

See… no Phone 7!!

Apologies to Microsoft, and to Adam. I’ve rechecked my medication, it’s all good.

As you were.  Carry on.

adam turner · awkward moments · conspiracy · Google Phone · HTC · Microsoft · Phone 7 · Tech Talk Radio · TTR · WinMo 6.5

Over the course of last week, long-time Tech Talk Radio contributor Adam Turner found himself in the middle of an “election-night social networking scandal” because of comments he posted on the popular micro-blogging service Twitter.

Or so the ABC’s Media Watch would have you believe.

In Episode 30, which broadcast on Monday the 30th of August, Adam received a lambasting from the programme’s host, Paul Barry, for making personal remarks about the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.  In the context of the Opposition Leader saying this:

“There should be no premature triumphalism tonight, there should simply be an appreciation that this has been a great night for the Australian people…”

…Adam duly described Tony Abbott as a “cocksucker”, and an “arsehole”.

Here’s the Media Watch segment in question.

Put simply, Adam made some comments which he now regrets.

Unfortunately for everyone, a Liberal Party supporter saw the comments.  The same supporter also complained to Media Watch.  Someone then complained to Fairfax, who Adam writes for.

The very same Liberal Party supporter then posted this on Twitter:

Hahahaha – I reported @adam_turner to media watch, and they’re playing it! #mediawatch

I think there are a number of issues at stake here:

• A journalist’s right to express a personal opinion;
• The issue of Media Watch running a story, driven by somebody’s political agenda;
• The issue of what is, and isn’t, newsworthy; and
• The hypocrisy of someone complaining to Media Watch about two offensive tweets, then gloating/tweeting like a child because they got someone in trouble.

It’s impossible for me to make an independent, objective comment about the situation, because I know Adam well, and he writes weekly for Tech Talk Radio.  So anything I say won’t be independent, and probably won’t be objective.

What I will say is that it must have been a slow news week.

Also; that mainstream media clearly still doesn’t understand the function of social media, and its place in our lives. Just because someone writes independent product reviews, or publishes objective commentary for a living, doesn’t mean that they don’t have, or can’t have, personal opinions.

Here, then, are some independent websites and blogs which offer opinions about (what I think is) a storm-in-a-teacup:

• Woolly Days blog, by Derek Barry, blogger and journalist working for Queensland’s The Western Star;
• IT Wire blog: Twitter becomes the new oracle of the media by Stan Beer;
• Wolfcat’s Random Rants: when does a freelance tech journo’s point of view on politics matter;
• Machine Gun Keyboard: Portrait of a douchebag: how Media Watch got used to grind an axe;

…and I’m sure you’ll find more yourself, with some judicious Googling.

Yes, of course Adam will continue to contribute to Tech Talk Radio.  His weekly opinions and insight are highly valued, by our audience and the rest of The Panel.  He is an important member of the team.

I think a popular Melbourne Twitterer summed it up well with this 140-character insight:

One day mainstream news will understand the context of social media. That day is not today.

abc · adam turner · Media Watch · Paul Barry · Robert Candelori · social media · Social Networking · Tech Talk Radio · Twitter · View from the Couch

apple · giveaway · iPad

awkward moments · funny · motivational

Recently I was building a new Windows 7 Home Edition system, when I encountered a hurdle I hadn’t faced before.

I booted from the Windows 7 installation disc, and started ‘nexting’ through the install wizard. I only got a few screens in, when I hit a snag. A dialogue asked, Where do you want to install Windows? – but – no devices were listed in the table.

Strange, I thought.  This screen should list my brand-new SATA disc. I should have 1 terrabyte of disk space ready to partition, format and install Windows.

I rebooted, checked that the BIOS could see the disc (it could), and rebooted.

Needless to say, I hit the same snag. Repeatedly.

After hours of rebooting, refreshing, trying to install updated drivers, fiddling with BIOS settings and re-seating all the SATA connections inside the machine, I found this little pearler in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Symptoms: When you try to install Windows Vista, the hard disk on which you want to install Windows Vista does not appear in the Where do you want to install Windows? disk configuration window.

Yes! Yes! That’s me! Just substitute the number ‘7′ for the word ‘Vista’.

Cause: This issue occurs if the hard disk partition contains an invalid byte offset value. For example, this issue occurs if the partition has a byte offset of zero (0).

Okay. Suddenly I’m thinking that my brand-new SATA disk might not be so brand-new after all. Anyway…

Resolution:

1. Use the Windows Vista DVD to start the computer.
2. At the Windows Vista installation screen, click Next, and then click Install Now.
3. Press SHIFT+F10 to start a command prompt.
4. At the command prompt, type diskpart, and then press ENTER.
5. Type select disk number, and then press ENTER. In this command, replace numberwith the number of the hard disk that you want to modify. For example, if you want to install Windows Vista on the first available hard disk, type select disk 0, and then press ENTER.
6. Type clean, and then press ENTER. You receive the following message: “DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.”
7. Type exit, and then press ENTER to exit the DiskPart tool.
8. Type exit, and then press ENTER to exit the command prompt.
9. Restart the computer, and then start the Windows Vista installation.

Problem solved! I got to the same screen, which this time listed the previously-missing storage device:

Of course, it’s easy when you know how.

diskpart · install windows · installation problem · windows 7