DIY Media Centre PC

Do it yourself (DIY) Media Centre Computer

Introduction

There are many advantages to a Media Center computer such as viewing slideshows of your digital camera pictures, playing home movies (recorded or downloaded) and all from the comfort of your sofa with the familiar remote control. Microsoft calls this the 10 foot experience where interacting with your computer (usually via the largest display in your house) is simple and easy for non-techies.

The media center really comes into its own however when you use it to receive your TV signal. You can then pause live TV (to answer the phone) and un-pause and pickup where you left off, fast forward through TV ads and record TV shows with ease using the Electronic programming guide (EPG) (similar to the TV listings guide that Sky Digibox customers have been used to for some time).

To get an interactive idea of how Microsoft’s XP Media center edition works there is a demo at XP MCE Flash Demo of the interface. For a good review see Paul Thurott's excellent review on WinSuperSite.
This guide attempts to document how I built my XP media centre pc using a standard PC by adding the required additional hardware. I had to do this because although dell and other manufacturers are shipping custom built media centre pc’s in the USA they are not currently available here in Ireland (but probably will be soon). This guide could also be used for someone that has an existing PC that they want to turn into a media centre pc.

There are some good community sites around XP MCE such as:The Green Button which is run my Microsoft, the domain name alluding to the button on the remote control that brings up the media center user interfaceAnother one is XPMCE.com for news, reviews, etc.From a Developers point of view there is a hour long MSDN TV show MSDN TV Show on Media Center and a Channel9 show (with the same guys talking a bit more informally) at MSDN Channel 9 Show on Media Center which illustrates how you could build .Net add-ins or modify your websites HTML to be displayed on the "Online Spotlight" section of the Media Centre interface and navigate via the remote control, Nifty.

Hardware & Software

• Dell Dimension 9100, 1GB RAM, 320GB Raid 0 Stripe, Dual-Core Pentium D Processor 2.8 Ghz


• Hauppauge WinTV PVR-500, Dual TV Tuner PCI card €135


• http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=305161&cks=SER


• Windows XP Media Centre Edition CD


• Media centre remote control and Infrared Receiver €38


• http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=309575&cks=ACC

Building Steps

• Boot up the shiny new Dimension 9100 and ignore the pre-installed Windows XP Home edition, use a PC monitor for setup and configuration, we will connect to a standard TV later


• Put in the XP Media center CD 1, reboot and run setup


• Problem 1:

Because the 2 160 GB hard drives are connected to the onboard RAID controller the standard XP install program (text based, blue screen installer) has no idea how to access the hard drives. There is an option to “Press F6 to install RAID or SCSI drivers” but this will only load drivers from a floppy drive A: which seems a bit outdated. My new dell has no floppy drive. I looked into mounting USB keychain devices are a virtual floppy but eventually cheated and borrowed a USB floppy drive which the BIOS picked up correctly and assigned to drive A: So off to the Dell site to get the correct RAID drivers and tada, windows then copies the drivers for the onboard RAID controller, recognises the drives and starts the installation

• Connect to home network (using wireless 802.11g USB NIC) and activate windows


• Go to Microsoft Update and get Media Centre Rollup 2 which is bundled with SP2 for XP.  You can find more information on the rollup at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/upgrade/rollup2.mspx




• Reboot and check install is ok. Install the latest ATI card catalyst drivers for X600 Graphics card.


• Install PCI Hauppauge PVR 500 TV tuner card into PCI slot in the PC.


• TV Tuner top 5 which recommends Hauppage WinTV PVR-250 and ATI's TV Wonder Elite as the top 2, approx $150 each. The PVR 500 is basically a dual tuner version of the PVR-250 that can record one channel while watching another.


• Go to Hauppauge UK site and download the latest drivers for the TV Card (PAL version, NTSC is the US standard)

Problem 2:
Media Centre does not recognise the DVD drive. This was a strange one that you may not encounter. I installed Nero 6 on the PC to enable backups so this could be a result of it. XP MCE has a facility to burn recorded content directly to DVD so it can be played on any DVD player. When I tried to do this however I got an error message “CD/DVD required”. After much searching I found that you have to install the Sonic software that may not be bundled with the OEM version of XP mce. Search google for SonicEncoders.msi and you will find any number of download links. Install this and it allows you to burn DVD’s directly from the MCE interface using your remote. Because I had Nero installed however it still did not work for me. I found the fix on the US gateway site (Gateway make Media Center PCs), a batch file called MyDVDFix.bat with the following lines

%windir%\ehome\CreateDisc\PxShare.exe /I
%windir%\ehome\CreateDisc\pxhpinst.exe
%windir%\ehome\CreateDisc\SBEServer.exe /regserver

Apparently this sets the sonic software as the default burning software so MCE can use it. Works a dream now but approx 1 hour of TV fills a DVD so I am looking to convert the dvr-ms files into DivX format for later viewing.

Next step:

• Get MPEG Decoder Codec (I recommend NVidia PureVideo decoder),

The requirements for DVD decoder (MPEG 2 decoder) integration with Windows Media Player (WMP) can be complex, so Microsoft released the "Windows XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility," which you can download at
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=de1491ac-0ab6-4990-943d-627e6ade9fcb&displaylang=en

The utility lets you view installed decoders and their compatibility and set the preferred decoder for the system.
   After you download the tool, execute the file and follow the onscreen instructions to install the utility. Once installed, start the utility by clicking the shortcut "Windows XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility," which you'll find in the Windows Media group in the Programs Start menu group.
   You can view the decoder status and set the best decoder for the system as the default by selecting it and clicking "Set as Preferred,"

• Drop resolution of desktop to 800x600 otherwise you get “desktop panning” where the image being sent out of the graphics card is too large to display on the TV screen because standard PAL TV’s are MUCH LOWER resolution than your standard computer monitor.

So connecting to the TV goes as follows:

• Plug TV co-axial cable into Hauppauge TV card


• Plug SVIDEO cable from back of X600 graphics card in the pc to a scart or SVIDEO in port on the TV


• Take audio from the onboard 3.5mm headphone jack on the back of the pc and plug into composite Left and Right channel of the same scart connection adapter that the SVIDEO cable was plugged into.


• Turn on the TV and change to the channel that displays the signal corresponding to the scart plug. I have 4 scart connections on the back of my Phillips 32” widescreen TV. They are then numbered Ext1, Ext2, Ext3 and Ext4. My DVD player is on Ext1, VHS video on Ext2 and Media Centre on Ext3.

Basic rundown of operation is as follows:

Signal comes in from cable provider (NTL Ireland in my case) and the Hauppauge TV card decodes this into digital format, MCE stores these files as filename.dvr-ms files on the hard disk. When you playback a recorded file or live TV stream directly from the TV card it uses the graphics card to render the signal onto the TV, the sound card provides the sound but as its also the sound card for every other windows event MCE disables all other sounds that windows produces so you don’t have interruptions when playing back.


Post Installation Issues

Display Calibration
After getting a picture on screen there are a number of display calibration tools that allow you to adjust the contrast, brightness etc. of the TV to the best settings. This is a series of videos that play repeatedly (people playing a pool game and other cheesy scenarios) and so that you can adjust the settings. One such video shows a black(ish) X on a black background and you simply adjust the brightness of the TV until the black X is no longer visible. This is similar to the video that the ISF in the USA produce for HDTV display calibrations but is simple to use for non-technical people.
Removing Ads and editing DVR-MS files
There is a program called DVREdit.exe that is available from the www.thegreenbutton.com site. This program allows you to “mark in” and “mark out” segments of video that contains ads you can then remove them from the video.
Xbox 360 Compatibility
The Xbox 360 has Windows Media Extender technology built-in, which means it can read music, pictures, video and even television from your Windows Media Center 2005 PC or music and pictures from a regular XP (Professional Edition or Home Edition) Service Pack 2 (SP2) or later machine.
Regular XP SP2 users need to install the Windows Media Connect 2.0 software, which is available at the Windows Update site under Optional Software or you can download it at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=e93a0ba1-1206-4df5-a3e7-f076691261ef&displaylang=en

   Xbox 360 owners can go to http://www.xbox.com/en-US/pcsetup/ for an Xbox-focused setup routine, which provides a front end and additional logic for the standard Windows Media Connect (wmcsetup.exe) installation and performs additional configuration for Windows Media Center 2005 machines. After you install Windows Media Connect, you configure it via the Windows Media Connect Control Panel as the figure at http://list.windowsitpro.com/t?ctl=1EA1D:24E45 shows.
   On the Xbox 360, you manage connections to computers via its System main menu as the figure at
http://list.windowsitpro.com/t?ctl=1EA1E:24E45 shows.
You then can play music and images by selecting the Computer as the source.
   If you connect the Xbox 360 to a Windows Media Center 2005 PC, you get a richer environment, including video streaming and album information as the figure at
http://list.windowsitpro.com/t?ctl=1EA20:24E45 shows.
   The Windows Firewall software will open the required ports during the installation of the Windows Media Connect software. However, if you use a different firewall be sure to open these ports:
TCP - 2869, 10243
UDP - 1900, 10280, 10281, 10282, 10283, 10284

Windows Media Connect can communicate with other Digital Media Receivers in your environment--not just the Xbox 360. You can find more information about Windows Media Connect at
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/devices/wmconnect/default.aspx
Online Spotlight
Tip: To change the sites you see in the “online spotlight” menu option of media center simply open Internet Explorer then choose “Tools” + “Options” + “Languages” and add in “English (United Kingdom) [en-gb]” for UK/Ireland providers or to see the US providers “English (United States) [en-us]”.

IR Remote Control death
I know remote controls get a lot of punishment, falling off sofas, into cups of tea etc. but for some reason my one after about 2 months of use just stopped working, the green backlight behind the buttons was not even turning on. I replaced the batteries but to no avail. I got in contact with Komplett support to return it and they asked me to remove the batteries overnight. I did this and the next morning hey presto, working again. Looks like even Microsoft remote controls need the occasional reboot.