Digital media from a Windows point of view

Jason Tsang goes to the MVP Summit and teases us with this tidbit:

V2 Extenders should be out sometime this year (2007). … Unfortunately, the exact dates/timeframes are under NDA …

It wouldn’t surprise me or Jason if the new extenders arrive at the same time as a Media Center update. I will now return to practicing patience.

Oh, and if you have any Media Center questions, ask Charlie.

Jake Ludington zeroes in on one of my pet peeves in this recent post, where he winds up and lets it fly at the big consumer electronics retail chains for selling overpriced cables to gullible consumers. I ran into this a couple years ago when I was looking for an  digital optical audio cable (TOSLINK) and thought I’d pick one up at my local Best Buy. They had 10 varieties in stock. But the lowest price was nearly $40, and they actually wanted over $100 for a single audio cable. (Their prices are still crazy. See for yourself.)

As Jake notes, this is nonsense: 

Both HDMI and DVI cables deliver a digital signal, similar to the way USB or FireWire cables deliver digital signals. These are signals that can’t be degraded by environmental interference because they are made up of binary data that’s transmitted from the source (PC, PlayStation 3, HD-DVD player, etc) and displayed on the other end (the screen). The only scenario where the cable ceases to work is if it’s damaged in some way.

There’s really no excuse for a basic audio patch cable to cost more than about 10 bucks. Sure, go ahead and pay a premium for a well-made cable with high-quality connecters. That’s the difference between a $3 product and one that costs $5 or maybe just a little more.

I think I wound up buying three cables for $5.99 apiece including shipping. And I don’t even bother going into Best Buy anymore except to see how cheap flat-screen TVs are these days.

In the comments to a previous post, Mart asks a good question:

Any more news on the availability of these extenders?, the Pika 8622L kit from Sigma looks like it’s ready to go - just needs a box and some marketing 8-)… we dont want anything fancy you know, just something that looks … er… a bit like Apple TV.. How soon is that likely???

Good question. I didn’t see a single next-generation extender on the show floor at CES. Sigma Designs was apparently showing off its reference design in a suite at the Hilton, but I didn’t get an invite for that and didn’t find out about the intro till after I got home. (Details in this PDF file, although there doesn’t appear to be anything that wasn’t in Chris Lanier’s write-up from last June.)

Microsoft’s Pika page hasn’t been updated in a while.

Maybe consumer electronics companies looked at the dismal experiences of HP and Linksys with first-generation extenders and decided to sit on their hands until they see whether there’s any demand.

I’m hoping that a slew of new devices will be introduced next week, along with the launch of Windows Vista. But I’m not holding my breath.

For nearly a month, I’ve been experiencing problems with my DirecTV TiVo HR10-250. Last month it simply stopped recording all season passes. After a week of turning on the TV and seeing nothing new, I checked the To-Do List and found that every season pass was listed as “None scheduled,” even though the guide was up to date and there were indeed shows that should have been recorded.

I’m not the only one. A post over at DVR playground reports:

Apparently there are quite a few people having issues with DirecTV’s new HD DVR and DirecTV’s TiVo DVRs (such as the HR10-250) where people say the DVRs fail to record shows and mysteriously delete programs previously recorded.

In mid-December, I called DirecTV support, where I was advised to use the “clear” option to wipe out and reenter all season passes. (I asked the support tech if this was a recommended cure or if he was just guessing. To his credit, he said it was an educated guess, based on the experience of some of the more knowledgeable techs on the line that day.)

So, that seemed to cure the problem for a while, but last week the problem cropped up again. This time, in fact, it affected the search capabilities as well. Although the guide was fully populated, searching for anything returned only three items from the guide. Looks to me like the index was corrupted.

I called DirecTV, and was told they would be happy to replace my TiVo with their new HR20-700. Only it would be a lease (I paid $749 for the TiVo and own it), and it would require a two-year programming commitment, which could not be waived.

I’ve read the reviews of the HR20-700 and am not thrilled about the prospect of swapping a TiVo, whose interface I generally like, despite some frustrations, for a new box that inspires comments like this one, posted here three days ago:

I got my DirecTV HD-DVR in October, about 2 weeks after it came out. I live near Seattle so get local HD over satellite. Everything was pretty hunky-dory for a couple of weeks, and then I began having problems with the local HD programs. One recorded only 18 minutes. Many recorded fine. Some said they recorded but I only got the Black Screen of Death. Some didn’t record at all. Lots of them truncated either at the betinning or the end.

Doesn’t sound like a new box is going to fix the problem for me.

I’m not happy that DirecTV sold me a rather expensive product less than two years ago and today refuses to support it. It sure sounds like owners of TiVo-designed DirecTV PVRs are being caught in the crossfire of the nastiness between the two companies. It’s almost as if DirecTV wants the TiVo boxes to fail, so they can scoop them off the network and replace them with their own boxes.

I’m meeting with executives from both TiVo and DirecTV at CES, so hopefully I’ll have an opportunity to ask some questions about this. Stay tuned.

Ex-Softie Matt Goyer is trying to set up a Media Center Extender and can’t find the software for it. (Presumably, this is one of the older Linksys or HP models that works with Media Center 2005.)

The Linksys and HP boxes come with software on a CD, which requires a product key. But here’s a little secret I discovered sometime back: The free, unrestricted Xbox 360 download works just fine, enabling extender capabilities for all generations of extenders.

Get it here (requires Update Rollup 2):

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/pcsetup/mce05lite.htm

Updated to add: This software is already included with Windows Vista. Unfortunately, it doesn’t enable those first-generation extenders to work with Vista. There is no hack or workaround to make your old extender work with Windows Vista Media Center. An Xbox 360 will work with either XP Media Center Edition or Windows Vista, and a new generation of extenders, code-named Pika, is due out in 2007 and will offer extender capabilities with Vista using hardware that presumably costs less and does more (Media Center-wise) than an Xbox 360.

Andy has a detailed description of the process he went through in selecting components for his new built-from-scratch MCE PC:

I evangelize MCE to pretty much anyone who will listen.  Once they’re sold on the concept most ask how much it costs, I tell them that the cost of an entry level system is pretty minimal $300-$500 but the sky is the limit depending on what you want to put in it.  Here’s my system and the reasoning behind it.  In most cases the link goes to the manufacture’s page, but in some cases (OEM or I couldn’t find it on their site) I link to where you can buy it.

I could quibble over a few bits (for example, I would recommend the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500MCE, which is identical to the 150 but has two tuners on board, with a daughterboard that adds S-Video and component connections for the second tuner). Still, excellent advice. I’ll be building a new Media Center PC early next year and this will really help.

This is bad news: 

Blockbuster Inc. said Wednesday that it had reached a deal for exclusive United States rental rights to movies from the Weinstein Company, whose founders created the Miramax studio and sold it to Disney.

The deal will keep all movies from Bob and Harvey Weinstein’s new production company out of the hands of Netflix, the online service that competes with Blockbuster, the nation’s largest movie-rental chain.

I’m really not sure I understand how this is possible. Doesn’t the First Sale doctrine make it possible for Netflix to buy DVDs through any legal channel and rent them to anyone it wants without having to get permission from the copyright holder?

(via Ezra Klein)

Over at ZDNet, I’ve just posted Part 1 in a three-part series comparing the leading digital media solutions for the living room. If you’re curious what you get with different DVRs, PC-based software like Beyond TV and Sage TV, and Windows Media Center, check out the feature table and the accompanying post.

Through the years, I have tried just about every imaginable all-in-one remote control. The Logitech Harmony 680 finally won me over last year. Its combination of downloadable codes and an easy-to-customize activity-based interface is a usability winner.

The 680 is specifically designed for use with Windows Media Center, and it’s also perfect for use with an Xbox 360 as an extender. So would I consider trading it in for the new Logitech Harmony 1000 Advanced Universal Remote?

On the plus side, I like the bright, oversized display. One complaint about any handheld all-in-one remote is that the buttons are hard to see, especially in a dimly lit room.

On the downside, I’ve had some bad experiences with touchscreen displays, especially on the Philips Pronto. But I have to believe that Logitech wouldn’t have released this product if the touchscreen wasn’t up their usual stellar level of quality.

Ultimately, it comes down to price. $499 is a lot of money for a remote. If I were a Rockefeller or a Gates, I wouldn’t think twice. But I’m not, so I do. And given all the other things that money can buy, the trusty old Harmony 680 looks like it has several more years of life in it.

(via Digital Trends by way of Digital Media Thoughts)

Mike Cullison has been playing with DIRECTV’s New HD DVR. His report is not encouraging: 

The box works, but I’m not sure it’s really ready for prime time. Last night, for instance, I had to do a hard reboot two times because it locked up and would not respond to the remote. It did a terrible job recording Ugly Betty (on ABC) last night. The video was really mangled, almost to the point that it was not watchable.

The recordings also seem to stall during playback, almost like a bad DVD. When it stalls, no amount of button pushing — fast forward, reverse, play — seems to make it go. It just sits there for a while and then starts over again from the beginning of the recording.

Earlier in the week, the box lost its mind somehow, and would no longer receive my local HD channels. Just all of a sudden they weren’t there when it was time to start recording prime time shows. I called on that one and they sent some data to my receiver and then had be reboot and they came back.

Ugh. I’ve been hoping that this new DVR (with an updated antenna dish) would finally replace my slowpoke DirecTiVo and allow me to get local channels in HD. Looks like this one isn’t ready for primetime.

Meanwhile, DirecTV pushed a setup message to me over the weekend informing me that the long-awaited 6.3 software update will arrive “soon.”

And no, I won’t fork over a grand (including the cost of a lifetime subscription) to TiVo for its new Series 3 box. For one thing, that price tag is ridiculous. For another, it would mean switching to Comcast. Shudder.