Digital Entertainment Center Part 2

About a week ago I installed Windows XP MCE on my new HP debranded digital entertainment center. It definitely was the right call. The remote control started working instantly with no fuss. Once you get that remote in your hand, you want to avoid the trackball at all costs. It prompted me to do some things I hadn't originally planned on doing like tweaking MCE to support OGM and AAC files.

Drivers

Again I was clueless. I thought all the device drivers would somehow be included with the OEM version of MCE that I had purchased. I'm an unrealistic optimist I guess. Again none of the custom devices, except for the remote and the wireless keyboard, worked. But fortunately since I had a legitimate copy of MCE installed, I was able to go to HP, and get pretty much everything I needed. This of course was after I got the network card working. It was nice to see the led display tell me something other than the default welcome message. In addition to the drivers at the HP site, I went ahead and got the latest Catalyst driver from ATI.

DVD decoder

Yep. I needed on of these. Couldn't play DVD's or watch TV without it. I got the bronze level NVIDIA PureVideo Decoder for $19.99. That did the trick. I also got a coax splitter to take advantage of the dual tuners.

Windows Media Center

Dang! The green button rocks. I was so impressed with this interface, I wanted to be able to access all my video, music, and pictures using it. Like I mentioned earlier, it's all about the remote control. For those of you with TiVo's and the like, you know the feeling. You get big friendly menus browseable from your couch with the click of a remote. It's like the DVD menu of your life. And underneath it all, I still have a PC that does everything a PC does. I don't have to be stuck in the world of big menus. I can run uTorrent while I'm recording Oprah and flipping through pictures of my vacation and listening to ABBA.

Do you need MCE? No. But the interface is worth the extra bucks in my opinion. Running the latest Nero or Beyond TV are viable alternatives. I've tried Nero, and it does the trick. Its friendly interface is even skinnable. MCE probably has both alternatives beat on website integration though. A lot of sites have content accessible through MCE. Through the MTV and VH1 links, I can click through a treasure trove of videos new and old. This was an unexpected surprise.

I could've saved a little money using Linux and some open source Linux media center app. (Google "Linux media center." There's a lot out there.) But I really wanted to replicate what you get with the HP branded z552. I'm borderline OCD and 100% lazy.

File formats

A while ago when I got my iPod, I ended up ripping my entire cd collection into AAC files. AAC is handled perfectly by iTunes. WMP needs a little tweaking to properly deal with AAC. If WMP can't see them, than MCE can't see them. So I grabbed an AAC codec here and a WMP plugin to display AAC tags here. It took forever for the tags to populate in WMP with my paltry 6,387 songs. The plugin crashed WMP more than once. But I had to have all my music in MCE. I just had to. The only ones that don't show up now are the ones with DRM from the iTunes store. I got a $50 iTunes gift card last Xmas, and I've gotten codes from a few bottle and box tops. I have yet to free these files. But it will happen.

So you already know I have an iPod and a Windows Media Center machine. I might as well spill everything and tell you I'm a fan of mecha anime. A lot of video procured online, especially anime, is encoded as OGM. With the right codec, OGM files play just fine in WMP. But you can't add them to the library. Subsequently, MCE doesn't recognize them. Well, some hotshot at this forum created a .reg file that solves this problem. Thanks guy.

The Future

I still have to test a surround sound DVD. You'd think this would be one of the first things I'd check. But I have a nice DVD player already, so it's not a priority.

I haven't tried to burn a CD or DVD yet.

If I go HD with my cable company, I'll have to upgrade the tuner card and employ the IR blaster, which I'm currently not using, to switch channels on the converter box. HD would mean bigger files. Bigger files would need to be stored on a bigger hard drive. I can't predict who's going to win between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. So I'm hoping online delivery will be perfected sooner rather than later.

Conclusion

I'd have a hard time finding a new HP z552 for under $1,000. This is essentially what I have. I got half off. That's rad.