I've been looking around for a PC equivalent of the Mac mini, just to see if anyone is trying to take advantage of the concept that Apple introduced with that machine. There are some options available, and one of the first that caught my eye was the Shuttle X200.
On paper this looks like a decent attempt by Shuttle, albeit at a premium cost. Reading a few reviews however, it seems that there's a lot to be desired.
This review is particularly good in evaulating this model, so if you're interested, take a look.
Friday, 13 July 2007
Sunday, 8 July 2007
Mediacenter plugin
A few posts ago I was singing the praises of DVB Web Scheduler. Although on the face of it this was a great application for recording TV via any BDA tuner, in practice there were some problems using it.
The main issue was that it seemed to get into an invalid state with the tuner and would either stutter inside the recording, or not be able to open the tuner at all. Having given it the benefit of the doubt for a few weeks, I've decided to move away from it because of its unreliability. It's quite possible that it might work better with specific BDA cards, but it certainly doesn't manage my card very well.
To get around the problem, I've written the much promised, never written plugin for Mediacentre (MCE) 2005 for my TV guide. This now allows the TV guide to talk to MCE just like it used to talk to the Web Scheduler app and to Nebula DigiTV. The benefit is that my Pinnacle tuner was designed for MCE, and at least from early tests, works with it much more reliably than with Web Scheduler.
Of course, I have therefore inherited the issue with the DVR-MS recording format, but fortunately this has already been solved for me by this toolbox. Adding the command line conversion into my automatic XVid conversion application was no problem at all, so now it all works as intended.
Thanks to the work I completed a few weeks ago, adding devices and plugins to the TV guide is now not much work at all - as long as there is some way programmatically to read existing timers, add a timer and remove a timer. Usually there's a way to do that somehow, even if it requires scraping and spoofing the web interface of the device's controlling application.
Time will tell if MCE can handle the card better than Web Scheduler did, but from the tests I can throw at it at the moment, it seems a lot more stable.
I've also just discovered WebGuide for Mediacenter, which might provide me with the LAN Live-TV streaming I've been after. I've installed the trial and will give it a go over the next few weeks. It's certainly polished, but how well it works remains be seen.
By the way, I've reworked the appearance of the TV guide application in this process, so that it has a much more contemporary look. What do you think ;-)
Next on the development list is to continue with that Mono port. I'll get there eventually!
The main issue was that it seemed to get into an invalid state with the tuner and would either stutter inside the recording, or not be able to open the tuner at all. Having given it the benefit of the doubt for a few weeks, I've decided to move away from it because of its unreliability. It's quite possible that it might work better with specific BDA cards, but it certainly doesn't manage my card very well.
To get around the problem, I've written the much promised, never written plugin for Mediacentre (MCE) 2005 for my TV guide. This now allows the TV guide to talk to MCE just like it used to talk to the Web Scheduler app and to Nebula DigiTV. The benefit is that my Pinnacle tuner was designed for MCE, and at least from early tests, works with it much more reliably than with Web Scheduler.
Of course, I have therefore inherited the issue with the DVR-MS recording format, but fortunately this has already been solved for me by this toolbox. Adding the command line conversion into my automatic XVid conversion application was no problem at all, so now it all works as intended.
Thanks to the work I completed a few weeks ago, adding devices and plugins to the TV guide is now not much work at all - as long as there is some way programmatically to read existing timers, add a timer and remove a timer. Usually there's a way to do that somehow, even if it requires scraping and spoofing the web interface of the device's controlling application.
Time will tell if MCE can handle the card better than Web Scheduler did, but from the tests I can throw at it at the moment, it seems a lot more stable.
I've also just discovered WebGuide for Mediacenter, which might provide me with the LAN Live-TV streaming I've been after. I've installed the trial and will give it a go over the next few weeks. It's certainly polished, but how well it works remains be seen.
By the way, I've reworked the appearance of the TV guide application in this process, so that it has a much more contemporary look. What do you think ;-)
Next on the development list is to continue with that Mono port. I'll get there eventually!
Wednesday, 4 July 2007
HT Guys
One of the podcasts I listen to the most is the HT guys' HD and Home Theatre Podcast. It's a fun listen, and especially at the moment because recently they've covered both a Mac mini based home network and now a Myth TV version. The detail level is not as high as I'd like, but there's more information on their website. It's definitely worth a listen if you have the time..
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