Video Server and Distribution

I do that.

Extenders can only do SDTV, not HDTV. This means that they're only good for regular old analog TVs.

If I were you, I'd use 1 PC to render the video for the 85", another for the

35" LCD, and use the cheap extenders for the analog TVs in your house.

Do you store DVDs on HDD? What format are you using?

That's too bad. DLink has a HD network media player for around the same price as a media center extender. I'd go that route, but I rather like the idea of having access to my MCE playlists, plugins, etc.

You said it yourself on your website: Low cost! I'd rather find a $250 solution than be building more MCE machines. That would put me up to 3 MCE PCs - kitchen touchscreen, living room, bedroom.

DLink should take their HD media player hardware and get with the MCE program.

Fact of the matter is, until bluray comes out, I don't have any HD content aside from over the air broadcasts. I don't mind watching TV in SD. I just want those sharp movies!

I think I'm going to go with MCE extenders for now, and see what products come on the market for HD in the coming years of high definition discs.

I rip my DVDs to IFO/VOB format.

As long as you connect via s-video or composite, which is what I *think* all those extenders can do, it won't look that much sharper than regular TV. There's only so much you can do with that type of connection.

Who said anything about MCE? Go get a $300 dell, heck an older one used off craigslist would probably do the trick. Slap xLobby on there and you're good to go, complete with an infinitely better PQ for your LCD tv.

I use a Windows XP file server with about 7 TB of storage. All my DVDs are stored there in the original format (VOB/VTS.) I have three "cheapo" PCs running XP PRO with just enough hard disk storage for the OS and Nero. I used a display adapter with HDMI in the cheapo PCs, and a 54 MB wireless connection back to the file server (which has a dedicated connection to the wireless access point. My 40" Sony uses the HDMI for video only, as I run the audio (optical) through my receiver. The other TVs are SDTV and I used the S-video out for them, with normal stereo output. I've successfully run 3 different movies to 3 TVs simultaneously. This is not the cheapest solution, but it sure works for me. The cheapo PC is tiny, about the size of a large shoe box and generates so little heat that it fits in my media center cabinet with little ventilation. The NERO HOME program constantly scans the Media Server PC for new titles, and the ATI remote has hooks into the NERO HOME program for RF remote control. Since my cable box also has HDMI output, I use a 4x1 HDMI switch with an IR remote.

When I switch receiver inputs with its IR remote, the IRXP in Stargate senses the change and sends all the correct IR commands to all the components to correctly setup the playback environment.... sets the correct input on the Sony TV, selects the correct audio setup in the receiver, sets the HDMI switch to the correct input, etc. There are also keypads (SmartHome) by all the entryways which allow me to shut off the AV systems when I leave the house.

Hope this helps.

Clark Hensley

Clark,

What did you use to rip your files to hdd? I've tried DVD Shrink, My Movies, and a few others. All are crash city.

Drag/drop? :)

Thanks,

:Lee

What version of DVDShrink's giving you problems? I've seen it run on lots of different machines without incident. Same for DVDDecrypter. What kind of PC are you using?

-- Bobby G.

I just used Magic DVD Ripper, and that worked, but terrible quality in every codec I tried, including "original MP2". I'll play with shrink some more. That's one of the ones we use at the studio I sometimes work in, so I'm pretty familiar. Doubt it's a PC problem... I edit video and 3d on this computer all the time. 2,4ghz, 1gig ram, etc.

Maybe something with my DVD drive. I'll play with it some more when I get back from my event today and report again.

By the way, you all need to try out Orb.

-- yesterday I sat in my back yard watching live TV on my laptop, streamed wirelessly from my Media Center pc over my cell phone's internet connection. Also being able to watch or listen to ANY of my media on my phone's screen is pretty cool.

3.2 -- It hangs as soon as I click "re-author." I don't care to keep all the various audio tracks, extras, etc.

If you've got Nero on your system, I've seen DVDShrink lockup until you fiddled with the default settings governing the interacion of the two. I use 3.18 as later versions got hinkier -I'll have to check to be sure, though. Another issue that threw me for a while were lockups that occurred because I installed a new DVD burner but had NOT selected a region. IIRC, I didn't figure that out until I went to play a DVD on that new drive on a viewer program and saw the message about selecting a region. That region code crap is so bogus anyway.

-- Bobby G.

Microsoft Media Center Edition (MCE) is IMO a broken superset of XP Pro -- broken because support for the %$!# extenders is the 'feature' that precludes using MCE in a domain-based network. I do hope they fix that in the next release. The wireless video gizmo feature may actually become useful when

802.11n comes of age assuming that there aren't significant security issues with it (too).

{I'm still grumpy about the way the license key for the OEM version of MCE is provided -- on a small non-descript sticker on the throw-away cellophane wrapper of the software package -- and nowhere else -- that a certain helpful person threw away while tidying up ...)

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

"E. Lee Dickinson" wrote

Here's what I ended up doing, and it's working a treat.

On the day I went to buy some Media Center extenders, they all of a sudden were pulled from the shelves, everywhere. Apparently there's a version 2 rolling out "someday," I imagine on a simliar time schedule to Windows Vista.

For about three days, I planned on waiting for them to come out. The problem is, if you wait for the next announced technology, you're always waiting.

I ended up buying some $150 D-Link DSM-320 network media players. I don't have access to my MCE plugins like weather and email on every screen, but I DO have access to my entire video library.

DVDs are ripped to HDD as one VOB per chapter. This allows me to create a playlist of files for each movie, and skip forward and back through chapters at the media players. FF/RW doesn't work, and these things don't read .ifo files to know where the chapters are.

Splitting into individual files has a negative side effect -- about a .75 second lag between chapters. Time will tell if it would be more annoying to me to live with that lag, or to not be able to skip through chapters. Typically I sit and watch a movie, start to finish. So it may prove that I prefer one single large VOB.

The server software that came with the DSM-320 is, by all accounts, useless. I didn't even install it, opting for the free TVersity media server. This thing is maybe the best app out there for media serving. It does a nice job of creating libraries, deals with simple playlist files and, most importantly, will transcode anything on the fly to a format your chosen media renderer can play. I've got some TV shows recorded in DVR-MS format on my media center machine. TVersity transcodes them perfectly. The quality of the transcode is, I'd say, just under VHS quality. Fine for me with recorded shows.

Movie quality is excellent. I haven't tried it on one of the HD screens yet... there is actually an HD version of the DSM out, I think I'll order one of those, even though I don't have any HD content to display.

Anyway, long story short: A GUI in each room which gives me access to all of my media files, including DVDS ripped to hard drive. It works, it works well, and it's awesome.

Wireless video gizmos don't cut it.

90% of all the complaints I've seen about network media players come from people using them on wireless networks. When I do installs in houses, my clients often look at the estimate, "Oh, we don't need network cable, we have one of those wireless routers." I then show them the 10/T and 100/T labels on the sticker, explain their meaning, and put wire in the walls.

Maybe 802.11n will make up for the speed difference moreso than G did. But so far, cable in the wall has been dependable, cheap, and fast.

Moral of the story: All my network media players are wired.

"E. Lee Dickinson" wrote in

It seems to be a good idea to use wired whenever you can for a number of reasons. Speed and security are foremost, but it's probably a good idea to limit the RF saturation in the house as much as possible. There hasn't been a single RF device that I've added lately that hasn't caused an issue with some other RF device already in place.

-- Bobby G.