Category Archives: Smart Home

In depth MCE 2005 article on AnandTech

October 13, 2004
Coding, Smart Home, Uncategorized
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AnandTech has a very deep article on Windows Media Center Edition 2005. They didn’t think much of the earlier versions of MCE. Some quotes: “Media Center Edition continues to be the coolest looking highest performance PVR/DVR (with a fast enough system) out there on the market today. The interface continues to be clearly ahead of the competition…”“In the end, MCE continues to be a niche product, but if you have the means, then its definitely one …Continue reading →

Media Center SDK on MSDN

October 13, 2004
Smart Home
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Via Ethan Zoller, the Media Center 2005 SDK is now on MSDN. http://msdn.microsoft.com/mce. Via this I also discoved Michael Creasy’s blog which focuses on MCE. Cool.

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 – gamepc.com review

October 7, 2004
Smart Home
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GamePC – Symphony Arrives : Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 GamePC.com reviews MCE 2005 and loves it. “…MCE is still (in our opinion) the best home theater product currently on the market by a very large margin.” Another “version 3 success” by Microsoft? I certainly think so, but then I’m highly biased.

Windows Media Center Extenders

October 5, 2004
Smart Home
7 Comments

Buy.com is now taking pre-orders for the Linksys WMCE54AG “Wireless A/G Media Center Extender”…aka Bobsled. I am so incredibly proud of this device. Way back in 2000 I sat down with Don Gray and Bob Atkinson to brainstorm the concept of using RDP to remote UI and AV from a media server. This concept has finally been released as a full product. Of course you can’t actually use one of these until Windows Media Center …Continue reading →

Dilbert’s Home Server

October 5, 2004
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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According to the press release, “…Dilbert’s Ultimate House”(DUH). DUH is a virtual web-based home that the famous icon of the workplace Dilbert, his fans, tech geeks, the environmentally conscious, and those who just plain love the comfort of a good sofa, will covet.”He’s got a pretty clean looking wiring closet, but what kind of home server is that? And why does he still have all those magnetic tapes (or are they CD’s…not that it matters)? If he …Continue reading →

Time to RAID PVRs, says Silicon Image

October 5, 2004
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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In Time to RAID PVRs, says Silicon Image The Register reports that Silicon Image has a new RAID chip that they think they can sell to PVR vendors. Not sure how this differs from their existing SATA/IDE RAID chips. But they seem to agree with me that those hard drives are fragile and redundancy schemes are a Good thing.

Helmet Home Server

October 5, 2004
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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news.com reports on a new PC form factor: Helmet PC aims to score with football fans. This thing would make a fantastic home server (see my mini-ITX post)…as long as you used a Seattle Seahawks helmet and not a nasty Raiders helmet.

Windows Server is listening…

October 4, 2004
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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Billie Jo Murray, who runs the Windows Server Customer Experience Group, is now blogging. If you have feedback about Windows Server’s documentation and customer programs head over to her blog and let her know.

mini-ITX Windows Server 2003 Home Server

October 3, 2004
Smart Home, Uncategorized
4 Comments

I recently built a really small and quiet home server that ran Windows Server 2003 based on a mini-ITX motherboard. It turns out you can build a great system in a very small package. The only down-side is that the really nice cases are pretty expensive compared to larger cases driving the total cost up. The system I bought was a Casetronic C134 based system from LOGIC SUPPLY. With no OS, a 20gb hard drive and 512MB …Continue reading →

Storage at Home – How to store that precious data – Part 1

October 3, 2004
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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Many, many enthusiast/geeks like myself have huge storage needs. I currently have the following data on my home network: 200GB of WMA 9 Lossless music (“backups“ of my CD collection). 30GB of WMA 9 128kpbs music (re-encoded of above for access by my portable players). 1TB of home video captured from Hi8 tape to DV format (still trying to find a reliable way of batch encoding this to WMV 9; should be able to get …Continue reading →

Storage at Home – How to store that precious data – Part 2

October 3, 2004
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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Use High Quality Drives “Enterprise” class drives, typically with SCSI or Fibre channel interfaces, are tested more thoroughly at the factory (and have longer warranties to prove it). The problem is these drives are significantly more expensive than consumer drives, use interfaces most home users don’t have (SCSI or FC), and typically have much lower capacities (I don’t think anyone even makes an enterprise class drive greater than 160GB). Better enclosures, with built-in fans are …Continue reading →

Great article on Personal Storage

September 29, 2004
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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ExtremeTech has a great new article titled New Strategies for Personal Mass Storage. I’ve been working on a longish post/article on personal storage that I hope to have done in a week or so. This ExtremeTech article is great background material. While you’re waiting for me to post my diatribe on storage consider this: Some time after our daughter was born I accidentally recorded over two (yes, I made the mistake twice!) VHS tapes that …Continue reading →

MCE Controller doc ommission

August 10, 2004
Coding, Smart Home, Uncategorized
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I forgot to mention a key (pun intended) command that MCE Controller supports in the 1.0.3 documentation. The “key:” command allows you to simulate any alphanumeric keyboard key press. For example “key:3” is the same thing as pressing the 3 key on the keyboard. This command is implemented internally in MCE Controller rather than via the MCEControl.commands configuration file; which is why I forgot to document it. I will update the readme file next time …Continue reading →

New MCE Controller sample available

July 29, 2004
Coding, Smart Home, Uncategorized
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Multiple people have asked me for a sample that illustrates how to talk to MCE Controller from Crestron using SIMPL Windows. Ask no more: On the MCE Controller site, I’ve added a SIMPL Windows sample program that illustrates using MCE Controller with a Crestron processor. This sample illustrates using MCE Controller in client mode with a CP2E processor (which is the way that I use it).

Live Security Camera Feeds with Windows Media Services 9

July 27, 2004
Smart Home, Uncategorized
11 Comments

When I built my house a few years ago I installed several video cameras for security monitoring. Until recently I was only capturing still images from these. I archived the still images and published the most recent via a URL on my website allowing me to see “the latest” while away from home. I’ve been using a very nice shareware program to accomplish all of this called SupervisionCam by Peter Kirst. I originally used SupervisionCam …Continue reading →

Wireless Woes

June 10, 2004
Smart Home
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My 802.11b wireless network drives me nuts. I bought a new Linksys G AP because I was experiencing drop-outs with my 4 (that’s right 4) other APs. I set the new AP up (in B mode only) is less than 10’ from my notebook, with no other access points or wireless devices enabled (except my neighbor who gives me a single bar on the XP signal strength thing). Using the built-in adapter in my Acer C110 Tablet PC (Intel Centrino …Continue reading →

Distributed File System (DFS)

April 21, 2004
Smart Home
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If you have a network with lots of storage that includes a Windows 2000 or W2K3 Server the Distributed File System (DFS) is your friend. This very cool technology makes it easy to move around where you store stuff physically while retaining a consistent namespace for your clients. For example, on my network at home I have several servers, each with many hundreds of GB of strorage. As my data needs grow (and they are …Continue reading →

Thin Media Clients and Home Servers

April 16, 2004
Smart Home
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Ravi posted an article on www.hageeks.com on the topic of “thin media clients vs. thick media clients“. He’s got the right general idea but fails to talk about the other end of the equation: The thing that is providing the content to these clients. The server. He says thin client is used to gain access to content locked away on your computers or even the Internet via the home network. First, I want to mention …Continue reading →

Premise and .NET

April 16, 2004
Coding, Smart Home
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Premise Systems has been sold (to an unannounced, but apparently BIG, buyer) and they have released preview versions of both thier Hardware and Services Development Kit (HSDK) and MiniBroker that are .NET based. I’ve spent some time playing with both the new HSDK.NET and Minibroker.NET and the productivity difference is stunning. It took me weeks to implement my Cestron to Premise bridge driver using the old HSDK. If I were to re-write it using the …Continue reading →

The Green Button

April 10, 2004
Coding, Smart Home
1 Comment

Wow. I’m impressed. It was just a week or so ago that The Green Button had issues with the hoster and now they have the site up and running on a new host. New look & feel. Most content appears to have moved over. Great work folks! The Green Button is a community website for Windows Media Center Edition (MCE). MCE is the coolest version of Windows you can get for home use. It includes …Continue reading →