Video podcasters on youtube, please start using blip.tv

I have a simple request to all video podcasters who upload their videos exclusively to youtube: upload 'em to blip.tv as well. I'm asking you to do this so I can subscribe to your feed outside of the youtube domain using whatever viewing mechanism pleases me. I happen to have a Windows media center rig plugged into my TV with TV Tonic installed, but I'm sure my request applies to owners of the new iTV thing as well since one can use iTunes to subscribe to podcasts. Thanks.

Oh, and youtube, I realize you like to keep people hanging out on your site, but I bet I'm not the only one who would really dig it if you offered RSS feeds for your channels. Millions read my blog, and by tomorrow, every serial video poster will abandon your site in favor of blip.tv unless you do something now. (blip.tv, get ready for the huge bandwidth increase.)

Digital Entertainment Center Part 3

I got an Xbox 360 for Christmas. I'm always a little late to the party. In addition to being a powerful gaming platform, the Xbox 360 can also perform as a Windows Media Center extender. After updating my OS, and getting a unique code from the Xbox, I was able to install the media center extender interface on my recently acquired 255z. It's pretty amazing. Once you fire up the media center on the Xbox, it's nearly indiscernible from the original media center interface. I could watch TV live or recorded, watch video, listen to music, and look at pictures just like on my media center. I'm not sure how well the live TV thing will work over wi-fi though. This is a great option for folks with multiple big-ass TV's. I only have one big-ass TV though, so it's kinda pointless for me. But I'm loving the Xbox no less. I held my own against some pre-pubes in a Call of Duty deathmatch. And I'm racking up the points in Need for Speed. Pretty soon, with those points, I'll be renting some high-def movies from the Xbox marketplace. Or I could get that episode of South Park I've always wanted. I'll have to take the 360 with me if I want to watch it on the go. With those points I could finally get past the second level of Frogger and pay for the full version.

A little update on the media center itself: dvd surround sound audio does indeed work and cd/dvd burning works. I was enjoying the Beatles/Gearge Martin's Love in 5.1 just the other day. And a little movie I edited in Windows Movie Maker and then authored into a dvd with Nero turned out great. My masterpiece has been likened to watching ice melt by more than one person.

Another media center update: for the paranoid and the packrats, the 255z (z552) comes with a slot for an HP personal media drive. I got one of these to back up my valuables. It's pretty handy-- slides right in. I'm using Allway Sync to automatically back stuff up. Thanks again for the idea, Dan. As always, you are the tech man.

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.

My digital entertainment center adventure -- Part 1

I snagged probably the last HP Debranded P4 3.0GHz 200GB Digital Entertainment Center TS-255z from the ComputerGeeks the other day. Just take a look at the specs and then marvel at the $435.50 price. My buddy knew I was in the market for some sort of computer-plugged-into-my-TV thing. It took a while for the awesomeness of this to sink in after he shared the link.

The Mac mini was pretty high on my list once Boot Camp entered the picture. (My lady can't handle the OS X for some reason; she fears change.) But the mini's lack of video capture sort of bothered me. I'm not much for recording, but rewinding makes me feel like God.

The 255z is the HP z552 without the OS, instruction booklet, and support from HP. It's the same exact hardware. I figured I'd just install the XP Home that came with my laptop and be done with it. Yes, laugh at my naivete. I haven't put a system together since I've been on laptops. A hardcore gamer I am not. So I plugged in the serial number to activate Windows-- no dice. I called the 800 number and got an education on the Windows world today. Apparently the Windows installed on my laptop (included in the price of my laptop) is only good for that laptop. "If the laptop dies, the Windows dies with it." Yes, he said that. According to the MS customer service rep, OEM versions are tied to the hardware they're installed on. He mentioned that if I had purchased a standalone version, they could've given me another license. I didn't want to mess around with some workaround, so I started shopping for an OS I already had. I thought about Linux for second, and then moved on. The going rate around town for the full version of XP Home seemed to be around $200. I settled on an OEM version of Windows XP Media Center Edition for $109. The Home OEM was cheaper, but I figured I could exploit the hardware more with the OS it was designed around. The little platter is in transit now. I'll document the post-MCE experience in part 2.

In the meantime, I still had an OS that would work for 30 days, so I started tinkering. The remote keyboard worked immediately. The remote control didn't. The network card driver didn't install automatically, so I was a little stuck. My friend, who lives and breathes the internet, found the Marvell network card driver and sent me the link. I performed a thumb drive transfer and began rocking cyberspace in no time. I found the obvious video and sound drivers from ATI and Realtek. Using a digital coax connection to my surround system, I was able to get stereo sound to work but not 5.1. :(. I'm pretty sure the two video capture devices are from Hauppauge, but exactly which driver to use I wasn't sure about. I'm hoping the XP MCE install will solve these issues. If it has all the plug-and-play drivers, I should be golden.

Am I happy? Considering I was plugging my laptop into my HDTV via a VGA cable to watch HD files surrounded by black bars, and I was listening to music through an Apple AirPort, I'm more than stoked. I have a powerful computer that is always hooked up to my TV, sound system, and the interweb for a little over $500. I can take advantage of the TV's full resolution. Once I get the DVR cards working, I can rewind again (the Moxi box from Adelphia and all that came with it was getting ridiculously expensive, so we cancelled). I even installed Call of Cthulhu to see how a game would work on the new system. This game used to freeze on my weak laptop at the lowest settings. I used to see floating eyeballs where heads should be. Now on my bigass TV, this game can be enjoyed in all its macabre glory. It was nightmare-inducing.