Ok, so I have not posted here as much as I would like, but I have been doing a little work getting the OTA HDTV going utilizing the 2 USB DViCO HDTV tuners that I purchased a few months back.  I built an array of HD antennas using the included Philips HD antennas that came with the DViCO tuners as well as another I had from the POS ATI HDTV Wonder that I have sitting around.  That worked here in San Francisco a little bit, but the reception was not good enough for Windows MCE to tune them in consistently.

Enter the best HDTV antenna that I have come across. The Radio Shack HD antenna works like a champ.  At this point, I am able to get 95%+ signal on most of the local HD channels but am not able to tune in the KQED channels for some reason (even though they are supposedly located on Sutro Tower as most of the others are). I read the reviews on the Radio Shack site and was impressed. Then I spent a week waiting for one of the stores here in San Francisco to get one in stock. As soon as I plugged it into a one-to-two splitter, and then fed the outputs into the two tuners, I had 100% signal on most of the local HD channels and many other channels that did not have enough signal for MCE to tune in, now had plenty.  Now, if I can just figure out how to get kQED tuned in…better yet, why the hell doesn’t Microsoft make it so that we can use a cable card already to tune in cable supplied HD channels?

[tags]HDTV, MCE, HTPC, Microsoft, DViCO, OTA HD[/tags]

The xBox 360 could be the best thing that Microsoft has ever built.  I don’t want to be one of those Windoze, M$ guys, but sometimes they make it too easy to be that way.  Danielle made herself the best wife ever by purchasing an xBox 360 for her husband this year.  However, things are not like they were in the good ‘ole days of bachelordom and restraint is needed when playing games.  Once I realized that, I decided to hook up the 360 as an MCE Extender on our living room television.  I had built a stand-alone MCE box (P4 Shuttle barebones system) with some good parts (aside from the crappy Shuttle board), but things were just not working out. I simply don’t think the Shuttle’s mobo is up to the task of working as a high-performance video serving system.  So, I decided to give the xBox a try.

Well, it worked like a champ right out of the gates. The 360 is fast, stable and my only complaint (like many others) is that there is no ability to play DVDs from the remote MCE system. I am not sure who the genius behind this was, but it is something that should really be changed ASAP by Microsoft.  It plays live television (ala Tivo) via one of the tuners installed in the mothership MCE box, videos, recorded tv, etc. The only thing it doesn’t do is the DVD action.  The kicker was that the MCE remote I bought for my stand-alone MCE box works on the xBox 360 without doing a thing.

My only advice to Microsoft would be to make some open forums that MCE users and project managers actively participate in on their website. One where users can get honest answers to what will and will not be included in upcoming releases. I know this sounds silly to suggest that MS should tell everyone including their competition what they are planning on doing in the future, but they should not be afraid.  If anything, it will put everyone on notice how serious they are about this home media / home integration stuff.  Plus it will allow them to build the systems as the end-user really wants them to be…that is what this is all about, right?

[tags]xBox, xBox 360, MCE, Extender, Media PC, Media Center[/tags]

Okay, I knew I should have done this BEFORE I drove to the Radio Shack store on Polk. See, there is a store on Lombard that is very close to my crib, but the online deal said that the Polk store was the only one that had the best reviewed HDTV antenna. So, I drive down there, get the splitters, cable, connectors and such and then ask the girl that works there if she can find the model I was looking for. I was good enough to write down all of the model numbers for the items I wanted on a sticky note. Of course, she said, I don’t think we have that, but let me check. She goes downstairs, comes back a minute later and says, “Yeah, we are out of that one right now. But, one is on order and we should have it on Friday.”

My bad.

This just proves, that no matter how much homework you do online, you still have to call to make sure that a store actually has what their online deal says they have on hand. Something about the computer not updating every day was muttered by the girl that worked there.  I didn’t even respond.

[tags]HDTV, Antenna, Radio Shack[/tags]

Stay tuned boys and girls for a review of my two new DViCO Fusion HDTV5 USB HDTV tuners that arrived last night.  I don’t have much time today to mess with these and the machines that they will be installed on, but I did have time to get one setup on my main Media Center Edition box. All I can say is, THANK GOD, someone has put some time and effort into software and drivers. Per the full-color glossy manual that comes with the HDTV5 USB tuners, I went to the DViCO website to download the latest software pack for the USB Gold tuners.  I installed the software first, was prompted to reboot and plugged in the tuner when windows came back up. The computer recognized the new software and two times I told Windows where to find the drivers, per the manual.  Done. I fired up the software and it autoscanned 44 channels (~32 DTV/HDTV channels here in San Francisco).  When it was done with the auto-scan it tuned in channel 2 in HD. I can honestly say, none of the ATI based NTSC or HD tuners I have went that smoothly when I installed them.  I have not fired up MCE yet as I want to get the antenna situation addressed BEFORE I let MCE know I have the HD tuners installed. I will use the DViCO software to do that as it is quite nice.  BTW, the OG “stick” antenna that comes with it outperforms the ATI/Philips HDTV antenna that came with my ATI HDTV Wonder and these tuners (Snapstream.com included them as a “freebie”)…funny.

[tags]HDTV, DViCO, ATI, MCE, Media Center, Tuner[/tags]

If you live in San Francisco, you know that there is a big ass tower on Twin Peaks that must have some kind of television channel transmissions coming from it. Well, you are correct. I have an OTA (Over the Air) HDTV tuner coming for my new Microsoft Media Center Edition 2005 box that I am building and I wanted to see what HDTV channels I could expect to receive over the air for free.  I did notice last night that there are about 5 or 6 local channels that Comcast cable throws you for free with your basic cable package. That is kinda cool, but I want more.

According to this Digital Television list for the bay area, I can expect to receive the following channels VERY clearly with just about any UHF antenna:

19.1    KBWB    – -    HDTV
19.2    KBWB    – -
24.1    KGO    ABC    HDTV
24.2    KGO    ABC-r
24.3    KGO    ABC-AccuWx
29.1    KPIX    CBS    HDTV
30.1    KQED    PBS-HD    HDTV
30.2    KQED    PBS-r
30.3    KQED    World
30.4    KQED    Life
30.5    KQED    Kids
33.1    KMTP    OneLife
33.2    KMTP    KBS-World
33.3    KMTP    5-DayNews
33.4    KMTP    WTV
33.5    KMTP    NTDTV
33.6    KMTP    Education
34.1    KFSF    TeleFutura
34.2    KDTV    Univision
39.1    KCNS    Shop@Home
43.1    KCSM    PBS
43.2    KCSM    MHzWorldview
43.3    KCSM    KCSM-FM
45.1    KBCW    CW    HDTV
56.1    KTVU    FOX    HDTV
56.2    KTVU    FOX
57.1    KRON    MyNetTV
57.2    KRON    MyNetTV

That is pretty sweet. Now I am going to have to figure out how to get all of these channels supported in MCE because I am not sure it is going to want to add it to my list of channels off-the-bat.

[tags]HDTV, Channels, San Francisco, Bay Area, UHF, List[/tags]