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: dvico, hdtv, htpc, mce, microsoft, ota hd

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: extender, mce, media center, media pc, xbox, xbox 360

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: antenna, hdtv, radio shack