So what’s the difference? The Insteon Hub is required to use the Insteon apps, to set and run schedules, and in some cases to configure Insteon product settings. But before you go ripping out Insteon devices around your home—particularly those that are hard to replace in kind—take a moment to evaluate your needs.

What Are Your Needs?

Do you need voice, away-from-home, or timed/scheduled control? If so, you may want to consider one of the alternative systems Insteon customers are turning to now. Universal Devices‘ ISY or Polisy, Home Assistant, Homebridge, HomeSeer, and others will all bring new life to your Insteon devices. Kevin Tofel has a good write-up summarizing your options over at Stacey on IoT.

But do you? Do you really? Or do you just need to control your fan, somehow, from inside your house? Insteon devices, by design, can be grouped or paired to work together without an app or a hub. So if you have an Insteon device you’re not using—a keypad, remote, or switches—you could pair one or more of those with your fan controller manually.

What’s on the Wall?

If you’re in the situation where you can’t control your fan at all now, that’s likely because you don’t have a wall switch for it. This should be pretty rare, though. Code in many jurisdictions requires that ceiling fans be controlled by a wall switch or at least have a wall-switch cutoff. If you have a wall switch for the fan, you can’t use it to control the speed or adjust the light of a fan using the Insteon Fan Controller. So let’s address that situation first: replacing a standard fan on/off switch.

You’ll need an Insteon Keypad. Any Insteon Keypad will work—the on/off relay and dimmer versions. Six-button keypads work best, because you’ll need buttons to dim or turn the light on and off and buttons to adjust the fan between three speeds and off. Smarthome.com even used to sell pre-programmed keypads and button sets for this very purpose. But you can program it yourself.

Setting up a Keypad

You’ll want to install the keypad in place of the fan’s original switch. For this type of installation, you’re basically using the wiring in the switch box to permanently power both the fan and the keypad. The keypad will not physically control the power to the fan. As always, turn off the power to the fan and the switch box before doing any electrical work. This diagram from Insteon’s Fan Controller FAQs shows you how to wire the keypad:

Once that’s wired up, you’ll need to pair the keypad with the Fan Controller for it to work. This is the rough part. First, make sure your electricity is back on. Next, you’ll need to gain access to the set buttons on your Fan Controller installed inside the canopy of your fan. Ensure that your fan is off before doing this.

Start with pairing the light with your keypad’s on/off buttons (or whichever keypad button you designate if you’re using an 8-button keypad). This is fairly straightforward. If you’re familiar with tap-linking Insteon devices, you’ll put your keypad button in pairing mode first, then the Fan Controller light. You can also get tricky with setting the preferred dim level and ramp rate when you’re pairing with your fan light, but we won’t go into that here. Follow these instructions from smartlabs to pair with the light:

1)  Press & hold the scene controller button until it beeps. Controller LED will blink

2)  Tap FanLinc light set button until the ceiling fan light is on. FanLinc light LED will be green

3)  Press & hold FanLinc light set button until FanLinc double-beeps. FanLinc light LED will flash once & return to green; Controller will (beep)–(beep) and its LED will stop blinking

Once you’ve done that, check that the On/Off buttons properly control your fan light. Pressing and holding the On/Off buttons should also dim the light up and down.

Now don’t move that ladder, because you’ll be going up and down quite a bit to program the keypad to control the four different fan modes (three speeds and Off). Using one keypad button for each mode, follow these instructions from Smartlabs:

1) Tap FanLinc Fan set button until FanLinc beeper & LED indicate the desired fan speed. FanLinc fan LED will be in the desired state (see table below)

2)  Press & hold the scene controller set button until it beeps. Controller LED will start blinking

3)  Press & hold FanLinc fan set button until FanLinc double-beeps. FanLinc will (beep)-(beep) and the LED will return to previous state; Controller will (beep)–(beep) and its LED will stop blinking

Once you’re clear of the fan and its blades, make sure the fan is on (with the pull chain or onboard switch, if it has one) and verify that each of your keypad’s fan control buttons works properly. If you want to use an additional switch, keypad, or remote to control the light and/or the fan, now’s the time to do it—before closing up the fan canopy.

No switch? No problem.

So what do you do if you don’t have a switch? There are two options here: Replace some other nearby switch in view of the fan with an 8-button Insteon Keypad or pair the Fan Controller with a Mini Remote (either the 4-scene or 8-scene versions).

If you decide to replace an existing Insteon or standard single-pole mechanical switch with an 8-button keypad, the top-left button (button A) will control the connected fixture. You can then pair any of the other buttons to the Fan Controller as you did above to control the fan light and fan speeds.

Pairing a Mini Remote with the Fan Controller is similar to pairing a keypad. Press and hold each lettered button you want to program, following the directions above to set that button to control either the light or one of the fan speeds. Do this for each button. If you’re using the 4-scene Mini Remote, you won’t need to program the “Off” speed for the fan. Press the left button on any of the fan speed buttons you’ve programmed to turn the fan off.

The Finishing Touch

When you use multiple buttons on a keypad for mutually exclusive options, you’ll want to do one of two things to make sure the lights behind the buttons make sense when you’re controlling your fan. There’s the hard way and an easy way. The hard way keeps all the button lights in sync, so as you press a button for the fan speed it will light up, and any other fan speed button lights will turn off. The easy way is to convert each of the fan speed buttons to “non-toggle” mode. In this mode, they will blink when you press them but won’t stay on to show which fan speed is active.

Below are Smartlabs’ instructions for keeping the button lights in sync. In these instructions, A/B/C/D refer to the buttons you’ve programmed to control fan speeds.

Start from the keypad with all LEDs off

Step 1:  Tap the A button to turn it ON, then press and hold the set button for 3 seconds.

The A button will begin to flash. 

Step 2: Next tap the set button again. (This puts the device into multi-linking mode)

The A button will start rapidly flashing in its multi scene mode.

Step 3: Next press and hold button B for 10 seconds, then button C, and finally Button D. 

As you hold them down you will hear a double beep or chirping sound letting you know they have been properly paired.

Step 4: Tap the A button when finished.

Repeat this process for  buttons B, C, and D. 

The next steps should be done with all the buttons in their OFF state.  

Step 5: Tap the A button until it is in the OFF state

Step 6: Press and hold the Set button for 3 seconds

The A button will begin to flash. 

Step 7: Tap the button again to put the keypad into multi linking mode.

The A button will start rapidly flashing.

 Step 8: Next press and hold button B for 10 seconds, then button C, and finally Button D.  

If the Buttons are backlit, simply tap them once so they turn off then press and hold for 10 seconds.

As you hold the buttons down you will hear a double beep, or chirping sound, letting you know they have been properly paired.

Step 9: Tap the A button when finished.

Repeat this process for all other buttons, starting at B, then at C, and finally at D so that all buttons will control all other buttons. This will help to make sure that the Keypad LED reflects the current fan speed.

Verify each button’s behavior after you’ve completed these steps.

The easy way is much easier. If you choose to use this approach instead, perform the following steps on each of the fan speed buttons to set them to non-toggle mode:

1) Make sure the button you want to change is currently in toggle mode. When you press and release it, the light should go on; if you press and release it again, the light should go off. If the light doesn’t stay on, you don’t need to change the button—move on to the next one.

2)  Press and hold the button you want to change until it beeps. The button’s LED will begin blinking; All illuminated LEDs on KeypadLinc will brighten to 100%

3)  Press and hold the button you want to change a 2nd time until it beeps a 2nd time. The button’s LED will continue blinking

4) Press and hold KeypadLinc’s Set button a 3rd time until it beeps a 3rd time. The button’s LED will stop blinking

When you’re done, test each button to make sure they’re behaving the way you expect. Each button should blink when you press it, and then it should turn off.

Spit and Glue

Reverting to this manual way of linking Insteon devices may feel kludgy, but if you don’t need or plan to automate your Insteon devices using one of the alternative control platforms, this will keep your fan working and give you the ability to control your fan from inside your home. The setup process is far more difficult than using Insteon’s old apps, but it works. Hopefully this will give your Insteon Ceiling Fan Controller a little more life, whether Smartlabs is around to support it or not.

The post Your Insteon Fan Controller Isn’t Dead Yet appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Device Requirements

The nature of a fireplace means this project required some extra thought around how to implement it. After all, we’re talking about fire here. A lot of gas fireplaces, including mine, have a wall switch to turn them on and off. The problem is that this wall switch is usually just opening and closing a low voltage circuit. Since typical smart home wall switches require line voltage to operate, they won’t work for a fireplace wall switch. With this in mind, I asked myself the following questions when considering a device to use:

1. What happens if the power goes out?
2. What happens if the internet goes out?
3. How is it powered?
4. What voltage can it control?
5. Can it be manually controlled?
6. How easy is it to install?
7. What is the price?

I found a couple of Z-wave devices that would work with my SmartThings hub, such as the Remotec ZFM-80 or Qubino Flush 1D Relay. While researching which device would best address these needs, I reached out to our contacts at The Smartest House. They offered to send us their new Zooz ZEN16 MultiRelay to try for this fireplace project and report.

Installing the Zooz MultiRelay

Disclaimer: If you aren’t comfortable with basic wiring principles, tracing wiring, and doing some wire stripping, you may want to hire a professional for a project like this. Also check your local laws and regulations.

The Zooz MultiRelay comes with an excellent set of instructions in the box. It includes several wiring diagrams for common applications, including a gas fireplace. While my particular gas fireplace insert is an Intermittent Pilot Ignition (IPI) system (instead of a millivolt system as noted in the included diagram) the same wiring applied. And since the Zooz MultiRelay can be powered by a USB-C cord, powering it very easy. I followed to steps below to install the Zooz unit in my fireplace insert. Your installation may vary.

1. Gather your tools. I used a flat head screwdriver, wire strippers, 1.5′ USB-C cord, and USB wall adapter
2. Take the screen off the front of the fireplace insert so you can see the wiring underneath; mine is held on with spring-loaded magnets at the bottom and lifts off
3. Unplug the IPI controller (if applicable)
4. Remove wall switch plate and pull wall switch out
5. Trace wiring from the wall switch to the fireplace
6. Cut the existing two wires for the wall switch
7. Wire in the cut wires per the included diagram and tighten down—wall switch side of the cuts wires to the switch 1 terminals and the IPI controller or millivolt valve side to the relay 1 input terminals
8. Install the SmartThings device handler (if applicable)
9. Put your Z-Wave hub into pairing mode
10. Install the USB-C cord and USB wall adapter
11. Pair to your Z-Wave hub
12. Plug fireplace back in (if applicable) and test!

Thanks to the included wiring diagram and USB-C power option, installation of the Zooz MultiRelay was a breeze.

Configuring and Automating the Zooz MultiRelay

The Zooz MultiRelay comes with many configuration settings via its Z-Wave parameters. This makes it very flexible to meet the needs of any particular application. It also enables Zooz to address most of the initial project concerns I listed at the start of this post. For this installation, I chose to have the relays turn off after a power failure. This way if the power goes out while the household is asleep, the fireplace doesn’t unexpectedly turn on in the middle of the night. I also chose to use the auto turn-off timer. That way, the fireplace will turn off even if the hub is offline or the internet is down.

Now for the fun part: Automation! Connecting the fireplace to your favorite voice assistant is the obvious first step here (and sure to be a fun party trick). It’s also a good idea to turn off the fireplace as part of your Goodbye and Goodnight scenes. This way, it will shut off when leaving the house or turning in for the night.

In my house, the fireplace is only 20 feet from our thermostat. This causes the other rooms in the house to get cold in the winter while the thermostat stays plenty warm. To address this, I added an automation to help distribute the warm air better. Whenever the fireplace is on, my HVAC fan and ceiling fan turns on to help distribute the heat better. I also added a notification here to make sure people are aware it is on. Ten minutes after the fireplace turns off, the HVAC fan returns to auto mode, and the ceiling fan turns off.

In conclusion, this project turned out very well, while addressing safety concerns. Our home’s gas fireplace can now be controlled by voice. Furthermore, now we can use it, along with our other smart home devices, to keep the house more evenly heated. If you’ve considered adding a smart control to your gas fireplace, the Zooz MultiRelay may be just what you need to complete your project!

The post Smarten up Your Gas Fireplace This Winter appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

We’ve been excited about MySmartBlinds since we first learned of the company that made them. [We’ve kind of given up on keeping track of what the company is called or what branding they’re using this year, though.] The bottom line is this: they make a great DIY retrofit kit that can control your blinds. As long as your blinds are 2 inches wide or more (so no mini-blinds, which you probably should have purged 10 years ago anyway…), MySmartBlinds can open and close the slats on schedules, based on temperature, manually, or by voice—more on that last one in a minute. Note that it doesn’t raise or lower your slatted blinds. They’re far too heavy for a battery-operated motor to manage, and people rarely do that anyway.

We Love MySmartBlinds

The MySmartBlinds Automation Kit takes about half an hour to install the first time—it can take a while to figure out how everything works. Convert enough blinds, though, and you’ll have that down to 15 minutes. The kit comes with a solar charging bar, so you don’t have to worry about replacing or recharging batteries. You’ll want to download the installation instructions from the web, because the printed copy included in the kit is clearly intended for much smaller people with x-ray vision.

Once you’ve installed the kit, you can hang the blinds back up with their original hardware. Everything conceals inside the headrail of the blinds (except the solar bar, of course). The kit fits most popular brands. We’ve tested it with blinds from nextdayblinds.com and selectblinds.com with no difficulties. Frankly, we don’t understand why this product isn’t sold in every retail outlet where you get blinds. (You can get it on Amazon through our shameless affiliate link.)

Once your installation is complete, it’s pretty easy to pair the blinds via Bluetooth to the MySmartBlinds app on your smart phone. From there, you’ll probably need to download some firmware updates [insert chuckle about downloading an update for your blinds here] then go through a quick calibration process. Assign the blinds to a room, define some schedules and defaults, and you’ve probably added another 10 minutes or so to the process.

Vocal Somersaults

Over two years ago, the company behind MySmartBlinds Kickstarted a hub. It’s actually a bridge, and they’ve since renamed it accordingly. The idea was that by integrating with other control systems around your house—HomeKit, Alexa, Google Assistant, and SmartThings—you could use voice to easily open and close your blinds or control them as part of your other home routines.

It hasn’t quite panned out that way. HomeKit has been all but expunged from the record, and we’re still waiting on SmartThings integration. But Alexa and Google Assistant support does exist—just not through their respective smart home interfaces. So you’re left tripping over cumbersome commands like

“Alexa, ask MySmartBlinds to close in the Guest Bathroom” or
“Hey Google, tell MySmartBlinds to open Master Bedroom“

If you’re the geek in the house, maybe that’s no big deal. But for normals, it’s a mouthful. And because MySmartBlinds doesn’t use either Amazon’s or Google’s smart home APIs, you couldn’t add these to groups or routines to make your family’s tech life a little easier. Until now.

Routines Bridge the Family Acceptance Gap

Luckily, Amazon and Google are constantly working to improve voice control, even if the smaller companies aren’t. As a result, you can now include MySmartBlinds in routines on the Alexa and Google Assistant platforms.

Neither provides perfect support yet, but Google goes the furthest to get this right, so let’s start there. To create a Google Assistant routine, open the Google Home app on your device. Tap Routines, then tap Manage routines at the bottom of your screen. If you want to add blind control to an existing routine (like your “Good morning” routine), then select it from the list. If you want to create your own custom commands to open or close your blinds, tap the Add (+) button.

Creating a new routine is where Google Assistant really shines. Tap Add commands, then type what you want to say. If you have blinds in just one room, it could be as simple as “open the blinds.” But you can add more than one command here to account for different ways you might make this request. So if the blinds are in the bedroom, maybe also add “open the blinds in the bedroom” and “open the bedroom blinds.” [Aside: Amazon desperately needs to add this feature to both routines and groups.]

Now whether you’re creating a new routine or adding to one already controlling your home, tap Add Action and type out the Google Assistant command your phrases should trigger. In this example, you might type, “Tell MySmartBlinds to open bedroom.” Save, and voilà! Nobody needs to remember that convoluted command structure anymore.

Alexa’s MySmartBlinds Routines Aren’t As Smart

Amazon’s support is far more limited. If MySmartBlinds exposed itself as a smart home device, you could add it to a group and just say “open” or “close” followed by the group name. That’s how Lutron implemented its shade control. But we can’t use that here. The best you can do with Alexa is to have a routine trigger the MySmartBlinds skill, but you can’t specify the parameters the skill needs—it’s going to prompt you for those when you run the routine.

In the Alexa app, tap the “left-justified” icon Amazon has inexplicably chosen to represent its hamburger menu. Then tap Routines. Tap the Add (+) button, tap When this happens, then tap Voice and enter the phrase you want to use to control MySmartBlinds. Maybe something like “control the blinds.” Then tap Next.

Now tap Add action and select Skills. Select Your Skills, then choose the MySmartBlinds skill (assuming you’ve already installed the skill). Tap Next. Finally, you need to tell it which Alexa-enabled device will respond. Usually, you just want to select The device you speak to. Tap Save. Utter your command to Alexa, and you’ll be prompted with “please say ‘open’ or ‘close’ followed by the room name.” You’ll need to respond with something like “open in the bedroom” to complete the action. Again, it’s not ideal, but it’s easier than having to remember the precise, clunky syntax.

You Need the Bridge, but Don’t Buy the Bridge

For these routines to work, you need to have the MySmartBlinds Bridge. But if you don’t already have it, don’t go out and buy it. It’s way overpriced at $90. That’s about as much as you’ll pay for the new Wyze lock that includes its own short-range to Wi-Fi bridge. It’s more expensive than your smart speaker and even more expensive than a SmartThings hub, which does a whole lot more than just bridge two radios.

Then there’s the issue with its range. It’s terrible. In our first-gen unit, we found it had to be located in the same room as the blinds it controls and couldn’t connect to blinds in a room right across the hall. The web site promotes that it now has much better coverage. That’s good to hear. But if that’s true, they should be sending out replacement units to everyone who helped fund the inferior product they originally shipped.

But that’s not the worst of it. As we discussed above, the skills don’t work with Alexa’s or Google Assistant’s smart home ecosystem—they just let you bark commands. And with HomeKit presumably off the table and SmartThings still outstanding after all this time, they’ve just never delivered on the promise of the bridge. Oh, and get this: if you also have and want to connect with their MySmartRollerShades product, you need a second bridge!

It’s Fine All Alone on This Island

The reality is that you probably don’t need the bridge at all. Sure, you won’t be able to control your blinds by voice command or integrate it with everything else in your home. But the MySmartBlinds product is great on its own. The app lets you open and close the blinds based on schedules and relative temperature. Those settings are stored locally on the shade controllers. Plus, you can easily control them “manually” by yanking on the pull cord or wand that originally controlled the slat pitch.

We don’t often recommend products that are their own “island,” disconnected from everything else in your home. But in this case, we think it’s better that way. If we gave out stars here, the MySmartBlinds Automation Kit would get 4½ stars. The bridge would get 1.

Updated 9 June 2020 to reflect changes to MySmartBlinds command syntax to use for Google Assistant routines

The post These Routines Make It Easier To Control MySmartBlinds by Voice appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

The Control Challenge

But life is usually not that easy. Many of us have a stereo receiver, or audio/video receiver (AVR), to enjoy better sound than the built-in TV speakers can offer. If the TV is more than a few years old, you likely have a separate streaming box (Apple TV, Roku, or a game console) connected so you can watch the cool stuff on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and other video services. And maybe you have a large DVD or Blu-ray movie collection on discs, so add a DVD or Blu-ray player to the equipment shelves too. This doesn’t even get into music CD changers, soundbars, separate audio pre-amps or digital signal processors, Sonos speakers, and more.

To control all this equipment—which is guaranteed to not be from a single manufacturer—you may have a collection of different remote controls on your coffee table, side table, or lost somewhere in the seat cushions of your couch. We all long for the days of yesteryear when watching TV meant simply flicking a switch to turn it on and nothing more.

Remember when your grandmother, your child’s babysitter, or a house guest could turn on the TV without a 30-minute lesson on which sequence of buttons to push on which remote? Now it typically goes something like this:

• Turn on the TV power with the TV remote
• Power up the Amplifier with the AVR remote
• Turn on the Cable box with the Cable box remote
• Set the TV to HDMI input 1 if you want to watch network TV
• Set the Amplifier to xyzzy settings (whatever it requires)
• Find the show you want to want (various controls and commands)

If something doesn’t work, you need to figure out what they did, what’s currently on, off, or set wrong, and how to fix it.

So Begins the Saga of the Universal Remote

The purpose of a universal remote is deceptively simple: It’s a single device that controls everything and makes watching a movie or tv show as simple as it used to be. Solving this problem is the holy grail of the AV equipment and installer industry.

We’ll skip most of the history of remote control technologies that led to the invention of the programmable, universal remote. But it’s worth noting that the unsung hero of this industry is Steve Wozniak. Yeah, that Steve—the guy who co-founded Apple computer and changed the world of personal computing. This issue so bothered Wozniak that he started a new company and built a product in 1987 just to scratch his own itch and fix this problem.

The CORE (controller of remote electronics) was not a commercial success. But it paved the way for others to build on what he created—a universal remote you could teach how to control other devices…even ones it had never seen or heard of before.

Remote Control Basics: The Interface

In a nutshell, a remote control sends commands to the TV (or other equipment) instructing it to do something like turn on, turn off, adjust the volume, change the channel, etc. The magic that’s needed is combining multiple commands for multiple devices into sequences so a single “Watch TV” button will fire off 5, 10, or 20 individual commands to change all the devices to the proper settings.

There are different approaches to doing this technically and for controlling things (buttons, voice, mobile phone apps), and each approach has its advantages and disadvantages. Comparing all the different schemes is a project for another day. But all remotes share one thing in common: for consumer convenience, they communicate with devices using some kind of wireless technology. Because there are so many types of equipment and manufacturers with constantly evolving technology, multiple communication methods are still in use, and no single method prevails.  

Widely Used Hardware Interfaces

IR, invisible to the eye infra-red light, was the original and is still the most common communication method for consumer remotes. The biggest drawback is that it is one-way communication with no feedback from the device. But IR is inexpensive and pervasive—just about everything nowadays will have an IR remote. Sometimes it’s unreliable, and its range is limited to a single room. But when it works, it works very well.

RS-232 serial communications is a wired connection used widely by computer and industrial equipment. The modern USB interface on our laptops, cellphones, and computers is a derivative of this rock-solid communications hardware. RS-232 can be finicky to install, but it’s incredibly flexible. It encompasses synchronous and asynchronous communications, hardware or software handshaking, and direct or modem control signals. It requires a lot of homework to get things wired up properly, but once it is, it’s reliable and dependable.

RF (radio frequency) wireless technology has become very popular. Many newer cable TV and satellite boxes have a remote that, in addition to traditional IR, will work using RF. RF does not require line-of-sight, so you don’t have to point the remote directly at the equipment. And it will work through walls, doors, and windows, and over longer distances. Both standardized and proprietary RF systems exist out there. Cable and satellite boxes use proprietary RF controls, while the Apple TV and some video game consoles use industry-standard Bluetooth. But that’s really a red herring. Almost every remote control has its own set of device codes, commands, and sequences. So even if the underlying physical radio is a standard chip, it’s still effectively proprietary.

IP (Internet Protocol) is a data communications standard used for networking. In typical home use, wired Ethernet or wireless Wi-Fi create a local area network to reach throughout the home. IP is the newest method for controlling AV equipment. It’s convenient because it’s already built into most computer equipment, cellphones, and tablets. A well-designed Wi-Fi network will have a much greater range than RF or IR. Plus, it doesn’t need the wires of an RS-232 connection.

Any Color You Want As Long As It Is Black

Unlike the original Ford Model T, there are more than aesthetic reasons for having multiple connection technologies. No one method is ideal, and no single method is always the best. Thus, the choice of control technology depends upon each installation’s needs.

The installer—that’s you if this is a DIY project—should start with a spreadsheet or chart. List out all your equipment, the capabilities of each, and the desired control method and system. Then look for the common elements amongst them.

Challenge #1: No Single Hardware Solution. Although tons of equipment have IR support, it is not on everything. Some popular devices, like Google Chromecast for example, do not support IR. The Amazon Fire TV streaming stick only has Bluetooth (some other models of the Amazon Fire devices do have IR). Entry-level stereo receivers only have IR and maybe IP but don’t offer RS-232. Only larger, more expensive models have RS-232.

TVs are a hodgepodge. Many only have IR, a few have IP, and even fewer have RS-232. A notable exception, the newest TVs from LG include a more advanced remote that functions like a mouse pointer. It uses both IR and Bluetooth radios.

Apple TV uses Bluetooth as its primary interface, but it fully supports IR for 3rd party control. And recently Apple has given select 3rd party companies access to a private IP interface too!

DVD Players and other devices will usually just have IR, but some might also have RS-232 or IP. The only way to tell is to carefully read the detailed specifications, as manufacturers don’t typically highlight this information in the marketing or advertising write-ups.

Challenge #2: Discrete Versus Toggle Codes. Turning an AV device’s power on or off is unfortunately way more complicated than it should be. Early on, devices only had a power toggle command. This command tells the equipment to switch the power—if the device is off, it will turn on; if the device is on, it will turn off. This works easily enough when a human is pressing a button on a remote, but it’s a nightmare for automated programming. It’s too easy to get out of sync. If someone manually turns the power off for the stereo, then the control system will be turning it off when it should be turning it on and vice-versa.

A simple solution was invented—adding command codes that specifically send “power on” or “power off” commands. It sounds silly, but even today there are many devices that do not yet have these discrete power control commands available.  

Challenge #3: Buggy or Incomplete Commands. Unlike cellphones and computers, most consumers don’t replace AV devices all that often, and manufacturers don’t update them enough. Many devices have terrible software bugs and problems with their programming code. They might have a command available to control it, but the command simply doesn’t work. Worse, the same command may only work via different transmission methods.

Challenge #4: Fake Power Off. Many devices now have a fake “power off” mode—they sleep or go into a low power mode, but they never actually power off. DVRs are notorious for this since they’re designed to record TV shows for you even when you’re not actively using them. It’s a sad fact that you will most likely need to fully power off (or “hard power cycle”) most of today’s modern devices at some point to properly reset them. This problem is only exacerbated when the physical button just puts the device in sleep mode and doesn’t actually turn anything off.

Instead of crawling behind cabinets or shelves, or reaching into the rat’s nest of wires on the floor to pull out the other end of the power cord, consider using a smart power plug to get around this. At least with a smart plug it’s easy to power cycle any device from an app on your phone or tablet. Satellite and cable TV boxes are some of the worst here, so avoiding the headache later is well worth the investment in a smart plug.

Challenge #5: Time-sensitive Command Sequences. Almost always with IR control, and often even with IP or RS-232, not only do you need to send the right commands, but you need to send them with the right time delay between them. Compared to our modern cellphones and laptops, the microprocessors inside most consumer electronics are woefully underpowered and sluggish. When you send multiple IR commands to a TV or amplifier without any delay, it will simply not “see” a lot of the commands.

It’s a balancing act: If you slow everything down to work reliably, it can take several minutes to turn on all the equipment and be ready to watch TV. If you shorten all the delays to a minimum, you can end up with intermittent problems where your spouse yells “Yeah, but it doesn’t work for me!” resulting in never-ending tweaking and adjusting.

Challenge #6: All Mouth No Ears. IR remotes are one-way devices. The remote transmits commands to the TV or device, but nothing gets sent back. IR remotes do not have any way to receive commands and devices do not have an IR transmitter to send them. Combined with the above-mentioned time sensitivity issue, this creates lots of opportunity for flaky or buggy operation.

When we control our TV and entertainment system manually with multiple remotes, our eyes and ears are providing silent feedback. When you press the Channel Up button three times, if you land on the wrong channel because the cable box actually received 4 Channel Up commands, you compensate silently by seeing the wrong channel and simply pressing the Channel Down button once.

But a control system does not have eyes. It has no way of knowing the command didn’t work or was “off by one.” Without any direct feedback or status from the device, control systems operate by taking a “shot in the dark” and assume it works. Most professional installers add ample delays and pauses. The automated control takes longer, but it will be reliable.

The newer technologies of IP control via Wi-Fi or Ethernet (and sometimes RS-232) can be a little bit better. Initially, many IP devices and drivers were only one-way. The engineers that designed those systems took a shortcut and just re-used the existing IR control commands by sending them over a different physical transmission…but nothing else changed. But some have added bi-directional communications that can provide status and feedback.

Generally, only well-designed devices like AVR equipment, professional gear, and some RS-232-capable products have true bi-directional communication with feedback.

Challenge #7: Model Year Differences. Often times, it’s not enough to know the brand name and model number of the product you wish to control. Even within a specific brand and model, manufacturers make subtle changes every year to the commands and features…and bug fixes.

If a command works on a specific TV, don’t assume it will work on all similar models. Oftentimes the same model manufactured a year earlier or later will work differently.

How To Choose a Programmable/Universal Remote Control System

So based on everything above, here are some tips that will help you narrow down the choices when you go shopping…

If you only have a TV and a receiver, try programming the remote that came with them. Or use the remote from your cable or satellite company. You may find it has just enough capability to do the job. Sure, you may have to look up individual model numbers and codes, but it can get the job done.

Decide If You Only Need IR Control. If IR control is reliable and suitable for your needs, you’ll save a lot of expense and complexity. Most of the independent programmable remotes you’ll find online or at retail stores only work with IR control. The difference between the cheap unknown brands and the good ones is the quality of the materials and the depth and breadth of the software and programming support.

Logitech has become the king of programmable remotes with the Harmony line. Logitech has a huge database of just about every device known, and its software and programming is very capable.  

Don’t Be Afraid To Get Help. Most manufacturers claim their products are easy to use. But you’ll need to be comfortable with multi-step setup and configuration procedures. You’ll also need to take the time to learn how to do it. These systems can be daunting to set up.

If you’re really stuck, first reach out through the remote manufacturer’s support channels. And if that doesn’t help you through it, you may want to consider hiring a home tech professional to assist.

The Real Cost Is Time Spent Programming, Debugging, and Troubleshooting. No system is perfect. From a $100 entry-level remote to a $1,500 luxury system, they all take time to install, configure, and adjust. Weigh carefully the features and capability of the equipment. It might be a better choice to not buy the cheapest hardware if you’re trying to configure complex devices.

Even if you’re setting things up yourself, your time has value. Depending on your situation, the cost of those extra hours of installation or configuration time might have been better spent on more expensive gear up front!  

Tread Carefully with the Larger Systems. Many of the prosumer or professional systems are incredibly powerful but also incredibly complex. Some of the products on the market have been around a long time. They often rely on older, Windows-style programming that requires a laptop or computer. They can be confusing at first!

The biggest systems (Control4, Savant, and Crestron) and some mid-range systems are only sold through dealers. These cannot be purchased or installed directly by consumers. These systems often require days or weeks of training to learn how to properly configure and install.

Don’t Confuse Home Automation with AV Control. This may be a lost cause. Every AV control company has jumped into home automation and smart home systems, so it can be very confusing. Are you buying an AV control system that has some smart home functions or are you buying a home automation system that has some AV functions?

This is not a rhetorical question. There can be huge differences in these systems depending upon whether they’re AV or home automation focused. If you’re spending $1,000+ on an AV or automation system, you should probably consult with an expert to guide you through the process.

What About HDMI-CEC Control? Many newer TVs, Sound-bars, and stereo receivers include a feature called HDMI-CEC. It has different names from each company, but they are all implementations of the industry-standard Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) protocol. This is a new interface standard that sends commands bi-directionally over the existing HDMI cables that connect devices. It solves the problem of avoiding additional wiring or wireless equipment. It also includes both command transmission and status reception to fix the “shot in the dark” challenges.

But HDMI-CEC is largely limited to controlling power and adjusting volume levels. Although it can be useful if you have all modern equipment that supports it, HDMI-CEC can also be problematic. Like most tech from the TV industry itself, it has a reputation of being flaky, unreliable, and not fully compatible between the different manufacturers’ equipment.

If you’re lucky enough to have the right gear and can get it working, then, by all means, try it. All the major control systems and most installers, however, will strongly recommend you turn it off, making sure you completely disable it in every piece of equipment you’re using. It often causes too many problems for too little benefit.

Does your TV mysteriously turn on in the middle of the night or when you turn off your Apple TV? That’s probably HDMI-CEC acting up, as it is prone to do!

Give It a Go! This article should arm you with the information you need to plan, purchase, and set up the programmable remote control system that’s best for you and your household. Good luck…and hopefully you will be able to “take control” of your TV and AV equipment.

Robert Spivack is a Smart Home Specialist who uses his home automation and problem solving skills to help customers create smarter homes. You can receive more information about his business and get in-depth information like in this article at www.DoItForMe.Solutions.

The post What’s the Best Way To Control Your AV Gear? appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Our minds went to work. We imagined motion sensors at the perimeter of a property to trigger pathway or security lights around the house. We imagined triggering Ring cameras based on motion that’s slightly out of range. Then we imagined something that has nothing to do with security—a problem for which there hasn’t been a good connected solution yet because of signal limitations. What if we used the sensor to detect activity at the mailbox?

When Ring sent us some Smart Lighting products to try out, the mailbox use case was the first thing we tested. And it works! Here’s how you can use Ring’s new Motion Sensor to alert you to new mail arriving:

Setting It Up

First, you’ll need the [amazon_link id=”B07KXC4PZH” target=”_blank”]Ring Motion Sensor[/amazon_link] (available in white and black for about $25). You’ll also need the [amazon_link id=”B07KXBX65F” target=”_blank”]Ring Bridge[/amazon_link], which costs about $50. The bridge connects Ring’s wireless sensors and lights into the Ring ecosystem (and, consequently, to Alexa). Note, however, that you can get the bridge for as little as a $20 add-on in Pathlight starter kits and other product bundles.

You’ll first go through Ring’s step-by-step process to set up the bridge and sensor. Be sure to place the bridge somewhere that gets a good Wi-Fi signal.

When adding your motion sensor, we recommend sitting the sensor on top of your mailbox. This will ensure that it’s at the distance you expect to have it when you use it. Don’t put it in the mailbox yet. For the scenario we tested, the sensor is about 60 meters from the location of the bridge inside the house.

You’ll need to add your sensor to a light group in Ring’s app. It doesn’t matter that there aren’t any lights in the group. Name it something obvious, like Mailbox. Once set up, you can turn on Motion Alerts if you want Ring to notify you when the sensor detects motion.

Install the Sensor

Not surprisingly, Ring’s motion sensor is designed to mount to a wall or solid surface. But, for some reason, it doesn’t come with mounting tape. Complicating matters, the back of the sensor isn’t entirely flat, so we had to jury-rig a mounting solution with multiple layers of thick, double-sided stick squares.

We recommend mounting the sensor on the door of your mailbox. This way it will be subject to significant motion when the door opens and closes, and it will be outside of the actual mailbox when the door opens, ensuring the best possible signal. The sensor, with batteries, is kind of heavy, so you may want to mount it fairly close to the mailbox door hinge to minimize the possibility of the added weight messing with the balance or closure of your mailbox door.

Add Alexa

Technically, that’s all you need to do to get mailbox notifications. But if you add Alexa into the mix, you can do so much more!

If you haven’t already installed Ring’s Alexa skill, you’ll need to do that. If you already have it installed, Alexa probably notified you immediately after you added the motion sensor.

For our test, we created a mailbox notification routine for Alexa. It does two things when the Mailbox sensor detects motion: It makes an audio announcement throughout the house, then it sets a color light strip we use for other notifications to “blue.” We added further constraints for time (so it won’t detect outbound mail we put in the box early in the morning or the night before) and suppress additional notifications for 12 hours from the time of delivery (to avoid triggering the routing when removing mail from the box).

We also created a routine to reset the indicator light to its normal state by telling Alexa to “reset mailbox.”

Final Thoughts

We’ve been looking for a way to add mailbox notifications to a smart home ecosystem for years. Products exist to trigger a dedicated buzzer from a remote sensor, but nothing that we were aware of solved the problem in an integrated fashion. The big problem is usually wireless range—most battery-operated sensors have a limited range, often less than 10 meters.

If you’re already using Ring products, this solution seems like a no-brainer. But even if you’re not, you can still install and use the motion sensor with just the bridge and nothing else. But be warned: You may get addicted and want to start buying more sensors or lighting products to solve other problems around your property.

Right now, Ring Smart Lighting only integrates with Alexa. But, despite belonging to the Amazon family, Ring already integrates its camera products with other ecosystems, including Google Home, SmartThings, and IFTTT. Hopefully we’ll see similar support for the lighting products in due time.

One final note: it doesn’t escape us that many mailboxes are made of metal. Putting a wireless device in a metal box may not yield the best results. In our use over the past few months, we’ve noticed that the device regularly goes offline when the mailbox is closed. But the time it takes to open the mailbox and insert the mail is sufficient for the sensor to come online and send the motion notification to the bridge. This may mean we’ll need to replace the batteries a little more often than usual.

Thanks to Ring for providing The Digital Media Zone with the sensors discussed in this post.

The post Put a Ring Sensor in Your Mailbox To Know When Snail-Mail Arrives appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

If you’ve used these remotes at all, you’re probably already familiar with their versatility. And if you listen to Home: On, you probably know that we love them.

But there’s a problem: Pico Remotes operate on Lutron’s proprietary ClearConnect wireless protocol, which limits their use with third-party products. Staples’ now-defunct Connect hub was one of the few devices that supported Picos in a way that let you use them to control anything in your home. Wink supports Pico remotes, but only for controlling Lutron devices.

We’ve advocated heavily, through our product contacts at Lutron, that the Pico Remote should work with HomeKit. And numerous threads on Lutron’s support forums confirm that many other customers want the same thing. Lutron hasn’t delivered on this yet, but some clever forum participant have documented a brilliant workaround. It’s a bit of a hack that requires some work and additional equipment, but we’ve tested it, and it works great!

The Basics

We found the hack we’re detailing here first discussed by SouthboHomeKitGuy and smart_home_guy in Lutron’s forums. The basic gist of it is this: By pairing one or more Pico remotes with a Lutron Lamp Dimmer module that isn’t otherwise controlling anything, you can use the remote to control that module. Based on the status of that module, you’ll use HomeKit automation rules to trigger scenes or control devices in HomeKit. Think of the lamp module as a “proxy.”

What You Need

We’re going to assume you already have some HomeKit-compatible devices that you want to control—perhaps some smart bulbs or switches. You should also be running some HomeKit Hub device like an Apple TV, HomePod, or stay-at-home iPad.

On the Lutron side, you’ll need the following products:

• a Lutron Caséta or RA2 Select bridge assigned to your HomeKit system
• a compatible Lamp Dimmer module (Caséta or RA2 Select)
• a Pico remote or scene keypad (we’ll use a standard, 5-button remote in our example)

You’ll also want a HomeKit control app with an expanded rules set. HomeKit’s rules engine is actually way more capable than Apple’s own Home app enables. We recommend Elgato’s free Eve for HomeKit app—you can use it regardless of whether you own any Eve products, and it doesn’t require a customer account.

Set the Scenes

In short, pressing a button on your Pico remote is going to trigger some HomeKit scene. On a standard 5-button Pico, you’ll want to map the On, Off, and Preset buttons to individual scenes. To make things easier, you should create those scenes up front.

For the On state, we created a scene called Border Accents On, which sets a group of Hue bulbs to a bright warm white tone. Family Room Off turns them all off. And for our preset setting, we’ll be triggering Movie Time, which is set up to dim all the border lights to 10% at an even warmer tone and turn on a color strip near the entertainment center. Use your imagination, but try to define scenes that you’ll use regularly.

Prep the Pico Proxy

If you haven’t already set up your Lamp Dimmer module and Pico remote, then do that now. Add both to HomeKit using your Lutron app, and be sure to assign them to the same room. As expected, the lamp module will appear in HomeKit, but the Pico will not.

If you’re using a 5-button Pico, you should also set up the Preset (round center) button on your remote. You’ll need to do this manually. Using an app, set the dim level of your new lamp module to a specific value. Anything between 1 and 99 should work. Once that’s set, in view of your proxy module, press and hold the Preset button for about six seconds—until the LED on the module blinks a few times.

Test out the hardware and HomeKit configuration by pressing the buttons on your Pico remote. You should see the setting of the proxy module updating appropriately in HomeKit. If not, go back and make sure you have added the devices properly and assigned them to the right room. And if other devices are going on or off in that room, check our tips in Avoid Potential Problems, below.

Automate It!

Now the fun part—tying it all together with some automation. Since we need to exercise more of HomeKit’s power than Apple’s Home app supports, you’ll need a third-party app that’s a little more powerful. Elgato’s Eve for HomeKit doesn’t necessarily offer the best experience, but it lets you access and use an extensive set of device attributes and settings. But if you already have a favorite, more powerful HomeKit app, you may be able to use that instead.

For the standard, 5-button Pico, we’ll create three automation rules—one for each of the On, Off, and Preset buttons.

Off. We’ll tackle this one first, because it’s the easiest. It’s simple enough that, technically, you could just use the Home app, but we’ll show all of our examples using Elgato’s app. In Eve for HomeKit, tap the Scenes button on the bottom tab bar, then select Rules using the sliding control at the top. Select Add Rule. For each rule, we’ll set a trigger and scene. Tap Next to begin.

In the list of triggers, select Other Value, then scroll to the bottom and select Power. Find your proxy lamp module and flip the switch next to it. Then adjust the value slider to Off and tap Add.

Tap Next twice (we’re skipping the Conditions step). Now select the scene you created for the Off button. Ours was Family Room Off. Tap Next, add a name for the rule (maybe something like “Pico Proxy Off”), and tap Done to finish.

On. Now we’ll add the rule for pressing On. When you press On, the lamp module will change to 100% brightness, so we’ll create a rule that’s triggered by that. Select Add Rule again and tap Next to begin.

In the list of triggers, select Other Value again, but this time when you scroll to the bottom, select Brightness. Find your proxy lamp module and flip the switch next to it. Then adjust the value slider to 100% and tap Add.

Tap Next twice and select the scene you created for the On button. Ours was Border Accents On. Tap Next, add a name for the rule, and tap Done to finish. There’s just one rule left, and you probably already know how this one’s going to go….

Preset. What dim level did you set the Preset button to remember above? That’s the brightness level we’re watching for. Select Add Rule again and tap Next to begin creating the last rule.

In the list of triggers, select Other Value again. Scroll to the bottom and select Brightness. Find your proxy lamp module and flip the switch next to it. Adjust the value slider to the dim level you preset earlier, then tap Add.

Tap Next twice and select the scene you created for the Preset button. Tap Next, add a name for the rule, and tap Done to finish.

All done! All three rules should appear now in any HomeKit app that supports editing automation rules. Note, though, that you’ll need to use a more powerful app, like Eve for HomeKit, if you want to make any adjustments to these rules in the future.

Test It Out

Now the moment of truth. Before you test anything, be sure that your scenes each work properly on their own. Then turn everything off.

First test the On button on your Pico, followed by the Preset button. Finally, press Off. Allow a few seconds between each button press. Did those all work properly? If not, try the same functions in Apple’s Home app. Turn the proxy module on, then adjust it to your preset value, then turn it off—all from the app. Did your scenes kick off as expected? If they didn’t, you probably need to review your automation logic (remember to use Eve or some similarly capable app for that). Are the rules all “on”? Note that rules can be enabled and disabled.

Avoid Potential Problems

• If you already have other Lutron accessories in the same room, these could conflict with your setup. This is because Lutron’s app associates Pico remotes to devices by room. To get around this, assign your proxy Lamp Dimmer module and its associated Pico(s) to some new, fake room. Be sure to do this using Lutron’s own app. HomeKit will reflect this update, but you can change it back to the correct room later in HomeKit.
• If any other scenes or controllers also adjust the lights included in your scenes, your proxy may get out of sync, causing your Pico buttons to not respond properly. To avoid this, you must include the proxy lamp module in any other scenes that might also control these lights. Your proxy module should always reflect the state of the device(s) it’s controlling. For example, if your Good Night scene turns off the lights controlled by your Pico, be sure to add your new Pico proxy lamp module to that scene, turning it off, too. Similarly, if a scene or controller turns any of the lights on that could be controlled by your Pico, make sure that scene or controller also adjusts the Pico proxy module—preferably to some dim level other than 100% or your preset level. This is a little hard to wrap your head around, but it’s so HomeKit will see that your proxy module is already on (in case you want to turn the lights off with your Pico).

Push Your Luck

We ran through one particular configuration here—one 5-button Pico—but there are infinite possibilities you can play with. The two and four-button remotes will also work, including Lutron’s Pico Scene Keypads. The setup and rules logic will be different, though.

You may want to push the limits of what you can do with your Pico. By adding conditions to your rules, you might, say, trigger different scenes based on what time of day you press the On or Preset buttons. Or try to leverage the up and down buttons on the 5-button Pico by enabling different scenes triggered at different dim ranges.

You can also pair more than one Pico with a Lamp Dimmer module using the Lutron app, so you can have multiple remotes in one room. You can even mix and match Picos. We have a 2-button Pico mounted at one room entrance, a 5-button Pico at the other, and yet another 5-button remote on a pedestal by the sofa (perfect for that Movie Time scene!).

Note that if you’re going to use this hack for multiple environments in your home, be sure you set the devices up in separate rooms in the Lutron app.

Finally, it’s worth noting that much of this is possible without using HomeKit. Most other systems, however, can’t detect specific dim levels, though, so your capabilities may be limited. For example, you could use a service like Yonomi to detect whether a proxy module is on or off and use that to trigger Yonomi routines.

Have fun with it! We believe Lutron’s Pico remote is the best physical remote solution out there. It fits multiple decors, has multiple mounting solutions, and it looks like a switch—not some randomly over-designed button slapped somewhere on a wall or surface. Until Lutron’s own solution exposes the Pico to HomeKit, this hack should let you take advantage of its power and versatility.

Now we need to get on the folks over at Insteon about those Keypad controllers….

The post Use a Lutron Pico Remote with HomeKit appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Start with Switches

We’ll assume that you can install your own smart switches. Some of these features may not be possible with your switches and system, but with some creative work-arounds, you may be able to achieve similar results.

Our suggestions here depend on two smart switches: one for an exhaust fan, and one for a light—preferably your shower light. If you’re not using fluorescent lighting, we recommend using a dimmer for the light to give you more flexibility. If nothing else, you’ll appreciate the ability to dim your shower lighting for very early morning or late night showers!

It doesn’t particularly matter what brand or technology you use for the switches. What’s important is that some mechanism exists—either through a hub, through an ecosystem like HomeKit, or through some other service or system—to automate their behavior. We’ve implemented all of these suggestions using Insteon, but Z-Wave, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or any other type of switches should work.

Add Some Logic

To automate your bathroom space, you’re going to need to add some logic. You can use HomeKit’s Automation abilities; a third-party service like IFTTT, Yonomi, or Stringify; a hub like SmartThings; or a more complex home controller such as Indigo, HomeSeer, or the ISY. You may be limited by the capabilities of your system, but even IFTTT can support some of our suggested routines.

1: Shut Off the Exhaust Fan

How many times have you turned on the bathroom exhaust fan and left it running by accident? In most cases, you want your bathroom fan to run longer than you’re actually occupying the space—either to remove odor or moisture. But you don’t want it running for hours. So this is a simple one, but it’s incredibly useful: Set it to go off 30 minutes after you turned it on. You’ll need to install a smart on/off switch—not a dimmer—for this to work. Whatever automation system you’re using, this is what you’ll want to set up:

2: Keep the Fan On

If, for some reason, you want to keep the fan on for a longer period of time, you’ll need a routine that will override the timer. Most systems don’t let you stop a timer once you’ve started it, so if you’ve already turned the fan on with the above logic, it’s probably going to turn off regardless of what you do now. Instead, you may be able to do some other tricks with the fan switch.

If your switch can detect multiple interactions (e.g., double-tap, triple-tap, or hold), these may automatically override your timer automation. But if that’s not the case, here’s a good way of handling this situation, depending on what your hardware and system allow:

3: Turn the Fan On with the Shower Light

Ever get in the shower, only to realize that you’ve failed to turn on the exhaust fan? You then get out of the shower, trying not to slip, while you stretch your wet arm over to the fan switch. This is just a bad idea for so many reasons. No more. When you turn on the shower light, turn on the exhaust fan, too—then turn it off after some time passes.

Depending on your system, you may be thinking you can just “pair” the switches to work together. Light on, fan on; light off, fan off. Don’t do that, because your fan should run for a period of time after you’re done showering. We recommend a 30 minute timer, which will help remove any lingering steam and moisture. If you’ve installed a dimmer on the shower light, you may also want to specify the light level. Here’s how to set this all up:

4: Clean your Shower in Bright Light

Remember that shower light dimmer? A bright bulb on a dimmer can also aid with cleaning. If your switch supports double-tap actions, that may override the synchronized fan routine automatically, popping your shower light to 100% brightness. Perfect for cleaning. Alternatively, you could use a routine something like this:

Bonus: Turn on a Night Light

If you have an overhead or vanity light switch at the door to your bathroom, and you’re not using fluorescent lighting, install a smart dimmer switch to control it. Then set up the following routine to enable a night light for late night bathroom visits:

Depending on both the switch and bulb you’re using, you may need to experiment with the dim level here to ensure the light actually turns on and doesn’t flicker. If you want the vanity light to always return to its dim night-light level, replace the “vanity light is already OFF” condition, above, with an “it’s night time” condition. You may also want to set up some general rules to turn the night light on at a certain time and then off in the morning. This will ensure if someone sets the light brighter at night, it will return back to its dim state, even when they turn the light off.

Who Knew Bathroom Lighting Could Be So Smart?

We often overlook bathrooms when thinking about home automation. But you can achieve quite a bit of benefit from a few smart switches and clever routines. Your needs may be different, and these suggestions only scratch the surface. Consider adding motion sensors or circadian lighting into the mix. Be creative, and let us know your favorite smart bathroom automation routines in the comments below!

The post Top 4 Smart Home Routines for Your Bathroom appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

There’s a way to make this easier, but you have to dig for it. You can change Alexa’s default music services.

Step 1: Link

First, you need to link your paid Spotify Premium account in the Alexa app. You must have a Premium account to use Spotify on your Alexa-powered devices. If you haven’t already does this, you’ll probably do it in the Music, Video, & Books section of the Alexa app. We say “probably” because that’s the easiest place to find it. It doesn’t matter which Alexa device appears in the header.

Step 2: Choose

Next, if you want Spotify to be Alexa’s first choice for music, you have to set it as your default music service. That’s possible, but it’s buried on a completely different screen.

From the side menu, select Settings. Scroll past all your Alexa devices, down to the Alexa Preferences heading, and select Music & Media.

Next, look below the music services (this is the other place where you can configure those) to Account Settings, and select Choose default music service.

Here you’ll see the default settings. Most likely, Amazon is your default music library and your default station service. If you’ve linked your Spotify account, you make it your default library. When you’ve made your changes, just select Done.

Step 3: Ask and Enjoy

From this point forward, Alexa will first check Spotify when you ask her to play music. No need to specifically tell her you want music from Spotify!

The post How to Change Alexa’s Default Music Service appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

What is video calibration, and why should I consider it?

To get the best possible picture out of your television, no matter how much you paid for it, you should consider video calibration. Video calibration is the process of adjusting the television’s picture controls (brightness, contrast, color, tint, sharpness, etc.) to bring the display output as close as possible to the specification used to produce the content you’re watching. This works for HD broadcast television, Blu-ray discs, and Ultra-HD 4k Blu-ray discs.

Content creators match their production equipment to a specification, like REC 709 for HDTV and Blu-ray. This ensures that content from different creators can be reproduced in a consistent manner—i.e., blue will be blue, green will be green, etc. When you take your new television out of the box and set it up, it is almost guaranteed not to be producing a picture to these specifications.

You may have noticed there are various picture “modes” you can select: Vivid (a.k.a. “Torch Mode”), Normal, User, Movie, and occasionally ISF Dark and ISF Bright. ISF is the Imaging Science Foundation, a professional group dedicated to ensuring video standards can be reproduced by video displays. Each of these modes produces a different-looking picture, ranging from more bluish in the first couple to a warmer tone in the last few. If your television has ISF modes, then the manufacturer has partnered with the ISF to ensure accurate reproduction of the content by the display. These will likely be the most accurate, but you can still improve them through calibration.

So why do manufacturers ship televisions without properly calibrating them? As with most everything else, the answer comes down to cost. Manufacturing tolerances are a balance between acceptable quality and cost. Due to variability in the components used to make the televisions, each one is slightly different but close enough for most people to not notice. But we notice, don’t we? And we want to make it better, right? If you’ve read this far, your answer is probably yes.

OK, you’ve convinced me. What are my options?

You have options when it comes to calibration. There’s the professional path and the DIY approach. We obviously prefer the latter!

1. Professional. A professional calibration requires you to find a local calibrator to come to your house. You can find calibrators on AVS Forum or through Best Buy’s Geek Squad. The cost for this service is usually around $250 – $300; it can be more if you have a 4K UHD television.
2. DIY Option 1. Buy a calibration disc and perform the basic calibrations easily on your own. You’ll be able to set the user controls for a better overall picture. For instance, if you have the brightness control to low, you’ll miss out on key details in the near-black parts of the picture. Set it too high and your picture will appear washed out. These discs will help you correct these common problems. The Spears & Munsil disc is a good one to get started. Just follow this LifeHacker tutorial. You can always download and burn the calibration patterns to disc or USB drive yourself. You can get these from AVS Forum, along with a ton of information to learn about calibration.
3. DIY Option 2. Buy a reasonably priced colorimeter and combining it with free software will get you to the next step beyond basic calibration and allow you to adjust the television’s grayscale (the tone of white from total black to total white produced by the television). Note that this requires a fair amount of learning, trial, and error…and it may become a new hobby for you. Here are some resources to investigate:
   • X-Rite colorimeter ($250)
   • HCFR free calibration software
   • Alternatives can be found at SpectraCal

I’ve done all this work and don’t like the picture. Now what?

There could be a couple of things going on if you don’t like the results of your calibration efforts. After calibration, most displays will usually be a bit dimmer than they originally were. When you look at a television in a store, the brightest picture often looks the best. Just know that when it’s set up that way, you are not seeing an accurate picture.

When you get it home, the store/Vivid setting will most likely be too bright, and it definitely won’t be accurate. Give the new settings some time, and see if you don’t eventually prefer the accurate picture. It could also be that you prefer a picture that “pops.” Perhaps the grass on the football field is neon green, and you like it that way. That is a philosophical issue—not a calibration issue. But if that’s the case, then return your settings back to their original state and enjoy your television. Ultimately, that’s the point of the entire effort.

I’m hooked! Where can I learn more?

AVS Forum is the best first place to go. There are tons of sub-forums for individual manufacturers’ models and even specific forums for calibration settings and procedures. Be aware that you can just copy some settings like the basic brightness, contrast, etc. with fairly good results. But the grayscale of each unit can be different, so you won’t necessarily end up with a better result by copying someone else’s calibration settings.

What about UHD 4K?

Calibrating UHD 4K is an entirely different beast. In fact, the procedures and test patterns are still under discussion. Many professional calibrators have varying opinions here, and unlike HDTV, manufacturers often implement the standards differently. The equipment required is a bit more expensive as well. For now, concentrate on the HDTV settings, which is what broadcast television and standard Blu-ray discs are using. If you really enjoy this hobby, you can dive deeper by reading more in the AVS Forum.

The post Calibrate Your Own Television to Experience the Best Picture appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Apple has continued to improve HomeKit with each iOS 11 update. In a recent update, Apple added the ability to turn off whatever a particular automation may have triggered. Some (but not all) of this ability is available right in Apple’s own Home app. But you may find you’ll need to try other vendors’ HomeKit-compatible apps for more advanced features.

Set up Your Automation

To walk through this, let’s look at the mudroom example again. First off, you’ll want to have a HomeKit-compatible motion sensor and light (bulb or light switch) in the room and set up in HomeKit. Then in Apple’s Home app, you’ll want to go to the Automation tab. Tap Add ( ) and select A Sensor Detects Something. Select the sensor in the mudroom, then make sure Detects Motion is selected. Limit when the light will go on by tapping Time and selecting At night.

On the next screen, select the light or lights in the mudroom that you want to turn on. The app now shows you the conditions that will trigger the automation and the accessories that will be affected. You can set the selected accessories’ behavior from this screen if necessary. Before you’re done, look for the Turn Off option at the bottom of the screen. You may need to scroll down to see it. Tap that and notice you can choose values between 1 and 60 minutes. Select whatever is most appropriate for your use. Now tap Done.

That’s it! Now your mudroom light will automatically go on (and then switch off again n minutes later) if you go into the room at night.

Take It to the Next Step

Other HomeKit apps may offer more advanced options. The Eve, iDevices Connected, and ConnectSense apps all allow you to define more extensive conditions when defining and editing these rules. iDevices, for example, lets you turn off the accessories with any trigger—not just sensors. We mentioned these specific apps because they’re all free, and they all let you control HomeKit devices without an account, regardless of whether you use any of their devices or not.

So give HomeKit Automation a try. And let us know in the comments if you’ve created a favorite, particularly useful or clever automation for your home. The various free HomeKit apps offer different capabilities, so try a few to experiment. You may find that you’ll use a few different apps to tune the automation to your liking.

The post How to Turn Accessories in HomeKit off after an Automation is Triggered appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Updated 9/16/18: Added information about Insteon’s extended repair policy for the Hub 2.

You can find so many different ways to connect home automation devices and control them either via voice assistant, your smartphone, or various types of switches, sensors and remotes. You might connect smart devices directly to your WiFi router, such as with Belkin WeMo and iDevices products, or you might use Bluetooth to control the device directly from your smartphone. For the majority of connect home devices though, it’s the hub or bridge that serves as the central “brain” of a smart home.

A smart home hub, or bridge, is typically a small box measuring between two to four inches square and about one inch tall. We’re not sure why this size format is so common, but a lot of hubs and bridges share these similar dimensions. It is through this central hub or bridge that devices are controlled by a translation between IP protocol, the underlying communication language of the Internet, and a number of different protocols such as Insteon, Z-Wave, Zigbee, and even Bluetooth. Hubs and bridges also serve as CPUs that run schedules independent of the Internet, turning lights on and off based on time of day and running pre-defined actions based on sensor input, time of day, or interaction with cloud services like Stringify, IFTTT, and Yonomi.

But…

What do you do when your smart home brain fails? This is a scenario that multiple The Digital Media Zone contributors have faced recently, and it has caused us to take a brief pause to re-evaluate its effect on our households, our families, and the way we now interact with lighting and other connected devices in our homes.

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Insteon around here, and the hub that some of us have had issues with earlier this year is the early production run of the Insteon Hub 2. This hasn’t weakened our high regard for Insteon (the fact that a few of our folks also work on Homeboy Control, a third-party Insteon control app, should be an obvious indicator of how much we like and trust the Insteon brand). Having said this, the limited third-party hub support for Insteon’s proprietary protocol pretty well leaves owners of a failed hub only two choices: another Insteon Hub or Universal Devices’ ISY 994i hub.

As part of this shared dilemma, we also learned that there’s no way to directly move an existing Insteon user account from one hub to another. This piqued our curiosity around how the various smart home hub manufacturers handle similar transitions.

Dis-integration

When you have managed to integrate a particular connected device manufacturer so deeply, it really hits home how reliant all the light switches, plug-in modules, and sensors are on that little box. This doesn’t even account for the time you’ve invested setting it all up or the inevitable stink-eye from your partner when you explain why things suddenly aren’t controllable from their voice assistant or smartphone. Adding insult to injury, if you’re using a cloud connection service like Stringify, IFTTT, and Yonomi, you may need to also redo that setup.

Recovery

If a smart home hub fails, is it really necessary to connect or pair every device with the replacement hub? As it turns out, yes it is. No matter how well tested they are or which prediction models were followed, devices can still fail prematurely. In general, we don’t expect our smart home hubsor bridges to fail. And we’re not judging—stuff happens! It’s the support and ease of recovery that will matter most in your time of need. What we have learned is that you can fail to prepare, and that’s immensely more disruptive.

• Map out your smart home with the locations and custom names of your smart devices. This will make it easier and faster to move from one device to the next as you reset and reconnect them to the new hub or bridge.
• Proactively collect and retain factory reset and configuration procedures for your devices, since you’ll need them in the event you have to reconnect everything.
• Take screen shots from your third-party cloud connector apps like Stringify, IFTTT, and Yonomi, just in case it’s necessary to set up your replacement hub or bridge with different user credentials. If that happens, you’ll likely need to recreate your respective flows, applets and routines on their services.

We contacted five of the most popular smart home hub manufacturers to better understand what to expect and to share with you the information you’ll need if your smart home loses its mind. We’ve added suggestions of our own, relevant to each hub, bridge, and situation, to help you prepare in the event of a failure.

Insteon

If your Insteon Hub dies, the support team at Insteon may be able to provide you with a list of your devices by name and Device ID. You can use this to re-pair all of your devices manually. Unfortunately, you can’t just migrate an existing account to a replacement hub. Since Insteon switches and dimmers do not require the hub to function, you can still operate your lights and some scenes at the physical devices if your hub becomes inoperable—you just won’t have the automation of timed events or the ability to control scenes and devices from an app.

Note that the Insteon Hub 2 is covered by a 2-year warranty from the date of purchase. Due to a known issue with the Hub 2’s power supply, however, Insteon may repair your hub at no cost, regardless of whether you’re in the warranty period or not. By getting the hub repaired, instead of replacing it, you can avoid any need to reprogram your scenes and devices. This was the case for one of our team members, and on plugging the hub back into the home network, everything just started working again—no manual recovery required. You can find further details at http://www.insteon.com/legal#warranty.

Insteon backup plan

• Record the Insteon ID number of each device connected to your hub. This can be done at install time by taking a photo of the number printed on the back of the device or under “Edit Device” in the Insteon app.
• Take screen shots of your devices pages and scene settings.
• If you’re using the HomeKit-compatible Hub Pro (2243-222), you may also want to take screen shots of your HomeKit Home app setup, so you can get it back to the way you like it with as little effort as possible.

Wink

While there is an official tool that transfers the user profile and device configuration from a working first generation Wink Hub to a Wink Hub 2, there currently isn’t a means of backing up an existing hub as a safety net, so you’ll have to start over and set everything up again on a replacement hub. Wink hubs are covered by a 1-year warranty from the date of purchase. You can find further details at https://www.wink.com/legal/.

Wink backup plan

• Take screen shots of your device page, shortcuts and robots.
• Document any custom settings for generic devices you may have added.
• Due to the diverse range of devices supported by Wink, we recommend finding and saving factory reset procedures for each device. Keep them in a folder on your computer or print them out and store them near your hub.

Philips Hue

Yes, we know that Philips Hue technically uses a bridge and doesn’t officially offer support for any non-Hue branded lights, but since it’s such a popular choice for people just getting into smart home, we wanted to include it. Like Wink, Philips Hue does have a tool for migration between first generation and second generation bridges, but there isn’t currently a way to back up a hub in the event of a failure, so your hub must be working to perform that migration. You can also transfer settings from a working Hue Bridge to another, regardless of whether it’s first or second generation, but in the event of a failure, you’ll have to set everything up from the beginning. Philips covers the Hue Bridge with a 2-year warranty from the date of purchase. You can find further details at http://www2.meethue.com/en-gb/support/warranty/.

Philips Hue backup plan

• Record scene settings and custom routines by taking screen shots in the Hue app.
• Document the serial number from each bulb before you install it. It’s a lot easier to have a list of the bulbs, locations, and corresponding serial numbers handy in case automatic discovery does not succeed. If you capture this information in advance, you won’t have to completely remove the bulbs to read the tiny serial numbers on them when you’re already under stress.
• If you’re a HomeKit user, take screen shots of your HomeKit Home app setup. This should serve as reference to get back to the way you like things with as little effort as possible.

Lutron Caséta

Caséta Wireless is another popular bridge among home builders, professional integrators, and home automation enthusiasts. Like most of these other hubs, replacing an inoperable Caséta Wireless smart bridge requires installing and re-programming a new bridge. In Lutron’s words, “given the simplicity of [the] Caséta Wireless system, this process is quick and simple and should take less than 30 minutes to complete.” Your mileage may vary if you have a large home with many connected devices. While your Caséta bridge is out of commission, your physical dimmers, switches, and Pico remotes will all still work.

Lutron offers a 1-year warranty from the date of purchase and owners may extend the warranty to 2 years by completing a Caséta Wireless Customer Feedback Survey. You can find warranty details in this document, and the Caséta Wireless Customer Feedback Survey is also available on their web site.

Lutron Caséta backup plan

• Take screen shots of your device page and scene settings in the Lutron App for Caséta Wireless. This will help serve as a reference when setting up your devices in the replacement bridge.
• If you’re a HomeKit user, take screen shots of your HomeKit Home app setup. This should serve as reference to get back to the way you like things with as little effort as possible.

Samsung SmartThings

One of the most popular hubs in recent years among early adopters and enthusiast, SmartThings had originally planned to offer a migration tool from first to second generation hubs, but the project was abandoned. In the event of a SmartThings Hub failure, all devices connected need to be manually reset and reconnected to the new hub, just as would be required when switching between first to second generation hubs. However, any account information such as custom code will be saved in Samsung’s cloud. Samsung covers the SmartThings Hub with a 1-year warranty from the date of purchase. You can find further details on Samsung’s support site.

SmartThings backup plan

• Take screen shots of your Things, Rooms, Routines and SmartApps in the SmartThings app.
• Due to the diverse range of devices supported by SmartThings, we recommend finding and saving factory reset procedures for each device. Keep them in a folder on your computer or print them out and store them near your hub.

Future Updates

It’s worth noting that many self-hosted systems that run on an always-on computer—like HomeSeer and Indigo—do offer more formal backup and recovery options. The same is true for some higher-end professionally-installed systems.

While none of the manufacturers we contacted had a way to back up your device configurations in the event of a hub failure, several of them did acknowledge the importance of such a feature, so the good news is that at least they’re acknowledging the need and exploring its feasibility. It may be technically impossible at this point in time, but it’s a subject that needs to be addressed as connected home devices become ever more interweaved in our daily lives. We’ve been able to back up our computers, tablets, and smartphones for a long time now, so we need the ability to do the same for our connected device hubs.

In the meantime, what we have learned is you can fail to prepare, and that’s immensely disruptive. Your best defense against smart home frustration and despair is to properly prepare for the possibility of hub failure. Take advantage of any support or replacement your hub manufacturer’s warranty offers, and use the device and scene information you’ve collected along the way to aid in recovering.

Do you have any suggestions or questions around what to do in the event of a hub or bridge failure? Let us hear from you in the comments.

The post Recover from a Smart Home Hub Failure appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

We love the ability to use voice with the various digital assistants available to control connected devices around the home. It changes the way you interact with your home. But one of the complaints we’ve had is how the limited domain support for Alexa, Cortana, and the Google Assistant requires you to often use very stilted, unnatural language. To trigger a scene, for example, you might say something like “…turn on ‘It’s Movie Time.'” Or you may need to name the skill in your command, like “…ask ecobee to set the temperature to 72.” Amazon’s new Alexa Routines suggests there’s finally a better way.

While not fully baked yet, this new Routines feature is rolling out to the Alexa app. The feature provides you with some limited ability to craft more logical utterances to Alexa. For example, you could create a routine called “Good morning” that triggers the Open Shades scene and starts the coffee maker. Now all you’d have to say is “Alexa, Good morning,” and you can be greeted by sunshine and the smell of fresh coffee brewing. An “It’s bedtime” routine would let you close shades, turn off lights, and more, just by saying, “Alexa, it’s bedtime.” You can imagine similar uses for routines like “Let’s party,” “It’s dark out,” or “I’m home.”

Routines can also read out information. At present, you can include any or all of your traffic report, weather update, or flash briefing—all of which might be good candidates for “Good morning” or “I’m leaving” routines.

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Alexa Routines don’t yet support all smart home devices and skills. Thermostat control doesn’t work yet, and you can’t control music playback (which would seem like a logical inclusion at some point). Also, SmartThings routines don’t show up as scenes when creating an Alexa routine, and Insteon devices and scenes all appear as devices, but cannot be added to routines.

Overall, the possibility that Routines offers is promising, but the implementation is only partially there. Many devices and services are not yet supported, and like groups, you’re defining very specific utterances. And true to the Amazon Alexa team’s historical record, the app implementation is pretty bad—it’s buggy, inconsistent, and confusing. We hope this evolves over time to include all supported smart home skills (possible all skills?) and allows for more language flexibility with multiple trigger phases or aliases and smarter article replacement (e.g., if you say “my” instead of “the”).

We’re eager to hear what you’re using routines for in your home. Leave us some of your favorite use cases in the comment below. In the meantime, “Alexa, let’s watch some TV!”

The post Create Custom, Natural Language Alexa Commands with Routines appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Home: On #055 – UK Perspectives, with Garry Whittaker

Interested in hearing more about this project? Listen to episode 55 of Home: On, the Digital Media Zone’s podcast about DIY home automation. Richard discusses this project with guest co-host Garry Whittaker, who has a garage door project of his own to share.

Did I leave the garage door open? That question haunts many people as they lie awake at night or drive away from their homes. At my house, we have multiple garage doors, so multiply that anxiety by n and sprinkle it with some OCD.

I’ve had aspirations of adding remote control and monitoring for the garage, but I’ve yet to find a solution (a) at a reasonable price that (b) seems easy enough to install myself and (c) will integrate with my existing smarthome systems. I had been waiting/betting on a HomeKit-compatible MyQ from Chamberlain, but I’m starting to doubt we’ll see one of those before I reach retirement age.

I compromised on a status-only solution, and so far I’m very happy with the results. Using a keypad, sensors, and some carefully thought-out notifications, I’ve implemented a pretty nice way of staying on top of the state of each of my garage doors. The links in this post will take you to the associated product pages at smarthome.com or Amazon if you’re interested in ordering any of these products for a project of your own.

Selecting Devices

Since my main control system in the house uses Insteon, I decided to use an Insteon keypad and sensors for this project. At the time of this writing, Insteon does not offer a tilt sensor. These are common in the Z-Wave world, but as of yet, they don’t exist for Insteon, so I chose Insteon’s wireless open/close sensors instead.

For door status indicators, I used three buttons on an 8-button Insteon keypad installed in the hall off the kitchen that leads to the back door, mudroom, and interior garage entrance. It’s a highly trafficked area, so the indicators are very noticeable. I have several of these keypads throughout my home, and I’m constantly touting their versatility on Home: On. They come in multiple colors, you can create your own button labels or order custom etched button caps, each button has its own controllable status light, and you can even customize that light with color lenses. I’ve done all of that.

I’m using Insteon’s cleverly-named 2245-222 Hub (formerly known as the Hub II), and for various reasons, I’m using Insteon’s own somewhat limited Insteon for Hub apps to manage and control the Insteon stuff in my home these days. As part of this solution, I wanted to stick with these products for any rules or notifications I created.

Mounting the Sensors

Using an open/close sensor on a garage door turns out to be trickier than you might expect. These sensors have two pieces that need to be mounted so that they’re together when the door is closed and apart when it’s open. Simple enough, right? Not so fast. It actually took me three tries to find the right mounting location. I first mounted the smaller magnet component on the side edge of the door, but it kept getting knocked off by the steel tension wires that ran along the track. Then I tried mounting it higher along the side, but I’d get too many false readings as the magnet slid into place next to the sensor.

Ultimately, I decided to take a cue from the installed security system and mount the sensor at the top of the door. With the magnet mounted on the ledge atop the door frame and the sensor on the top edge of the door itself, the sensor worked exactly as I wanted it to. There are some YouTube videos showing other homeowners’ creative solutions to solving this problem. And I’m fairly certain now that we’ve all worked so hard to retrofit these sensors for garage doors that Insteon will shortly offer an actual tilt sensor for this purpose.

Installing the Keypad

Insteon’s keypad switches are designed to replace a single switch. The keypad itself can control one local load—the same as any standard switch or dimmer. Mind you, it doesn’t have to control a load, but that’s another project for another time. The other buttons on the keypad can each be a controller for other Insteon devices and also display status.

The switch I replaced controlled a series of exterior accent lights, and I was already using other buttons on the keypad to also control decorative and security lights outside my garage. I chose three buttons—one to represent the status of each garage door, and popped off the default button caps to install red color change lenses for their status lights. And ultimately I ordered custom etched button caps to represent the three doors. It sounds expensive, but the Insteon keypad buttons are surprisingly economical measured against any comparable custom keypad solution—each button cost me a little over $6.

I followed one more step for each of the three buttons. Keypad buttons can be set to toggle something on or off (in which case the associated light can indicate the state of the controlled device(s)), or they can just trigger something to happen. By default, the buttons are set to toggle. Since I’m not yet integrating the ability to actually open and close the garage doors from the keypad, I didn’t want anyone to be able to press the button and change the indicator light—that could be confusing. So I changed the setting on each button so that if pressed it would just blink but maintain its state from before it was pressed. This is something you can set through the app when configuring the keypad or directly on the keypad through a series of taps and mystical chants.

Provisioning the Devices

Insteon gives you the ability to directly link devices to each other—no control hub or software necessary. Technically, I could have paired each of the sensors as a controller with one of the three buttons on the keypad acting as a responder (these are Insteon’s terms for devices that send signals, versus those that act on them, respectively). Don’t be tempted to do this. Like with many smarthome systems, it’s best to add the devices to the Insteon hub then link them all together through the control software.

Since I was already using the keypad, I didn’t need to add it to the system—so I just added the three new sensors. Adding Insteon sensors can be tricky, but the Insteon app does a good job of walking you through the process. Adding an Insteon device to the hub requires physically triggering the pairing process from the device itself, so it was nice that I could just use my iPhone for that while balancing on a ladder to press the set button on the sensors now mounted atop each garage door. (I probably should have considered adding the sensors to the system before I mounted them.)

Pairing the Sensors

As I mentioned above, you’ll want to use Insteon’s app to pair devices. This ensures that no matter how something happens—whether it’s initiated from your app, a sensor, a wall switch, or a controller, everything will stay in sync to know the correct status of your devices. Trust me on this.

To pair devices in the Insteon for Hub app, you simply create a Scene with the associated devices. So I created a scene for each garage door, including the appropriate sensor and button I chose to associate with that specific door, and I set the button as a Responder to the sensor.

Once complete for each garage door, I had everything I needed to monitor the door status: When a door was open, its respective button glowed bright red, and when it closed, it dimmed to a lower light level. I could quickly determine the state of the three doors just by glancing over to the keypad from the kitchen or when walking in the back door.

But I wasn’t done yet.

Setting up Alerts

Before calling it a day, I wanted to set up some alerts. I wanted to be notified any time any garage door opened, and I wanted to be notified when the garage door for my car closes (so I can drive away before it’s fully closed).

Insteon offers two types of alerts: notifications and email messages. You can set up notifications using either the iOS or Android app. While the Windows and Windows Phone apps cannot [do a lot of things including] set alerts, they can receive notifications. In fact, notifications you set up from the Android or iOS apps will ultimately get sent to all devices where you’ve installed the Insteon for Hub app, regardless of the platform (including Windows platforms).

To set up the notifications, I edited the sensor devices in the Insteon app and enabled Opened Alerts. I learned early on that even though notifications do not display the Subject for the alert, you must put something in the Subject box or Insteon will never send the alert. For my garage bay, I set the Closed Alert to send an email message to the SMS email address for my phone. Why? Because my car will display text messages, so I’ll be able to see the message when it arrives, as I’m driving away, without having to look at my watch or phone.

Now I can rest at night knowing that the garage doors are closed.

Hmmm…I wonder if I left the oven on….

The post Monitor Your Garage Doors with Insteon appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Problem

In today’s average home we are depending more and more on wireless networking. Whether you are using security cameras, media streaming devices, or simply want to surf the internet while sitting in your back yard, signal strength and bandwidth have become primary concerns. The main problem people run into today is that in many cases, you simply cannot just add an additional access point and get the results that you want. This is especially true if you are mixing brands and model numbers. Depending on your house topology, construction, and the number of competing neighbors, you may actually decrease the effectiveness of your wireless network when trying to expand it. Most of the time, when you setup your first wireless router, the default settings work perfectly fine once you set the SSID and password. Once you try and expand it however, things don’t always work the way you want. Add to the equation the different standards such as G, N, AC, etc., and the different frequencies such as 2.4/5 GHz, and things get even more interesting when you try and expand it.

Solution

So how do you get the most out of your wireless network? Most, if not all, of the issues are caused by incorrectly set channel frequencies and interference. The truth is by default many of the wireless routers and access points try to use the same channel frequencies. They do not always do a great job at detecting other devices on your network. In addition, they often conflict with each other, and rather than extend your network they actually make it worse. They are in essence fighting for the same air space especially if they are somewhat close together. In a typical scenario, you might have a 2.4 GHz wireless router operating on channel 6 on one side of the house, then you want to extend that same SSID by adding an access point so that you can get stronger coverage throughout the house. What you might end up with instead is if the access points and wireless router are on the same channel, they may fight each other resulting in a reduced signal (see the picture for an example). In other words, the signals will drown themselves out if they are on the same channels in areas where the signal collide. What you really want to do in that scenario is to put the wireless router and access points on different channels, so that they do not overlap. This way as you walk around different parts of the house with your wireless device, it will attach to strongest signal (assuming your device supports it) without being confused which device is stronger. If you look at the coverage map below, you will see that when setup correctly, each router/access point can co-exist without interfering with one another if they are broadcasting on separate channels. This extremely critical when trying to use the same SSID, though it is great practice even if they are on separate SSIDs.

Conflicting and Overlapping Signals

Correctly Setup Wireless Network with Every Point on a Different Channel

In my particular setup, I use four access points. Some of them are on different SSIDs for specific tasks such as cameras, and some are on the same SSID and are used for extending. I will be adding one or two more to extend coverage into the garage and into the back patio in the upcoming weeks. I have a particular use case that is unique to me. However, it gives you an idea of what can be accomplished (see my other post for more information) when setup correctly. I have spent some time tweaking and adjusting the channels to give me solid performance and range across all these access points with minimal interference. Obviously if you have a simpler network, the task of tuning is much easier. Just to clarify, some manufactures’ devices are aware of other devices on your network. However, when you add different manufactures and model numbers, your chances reduce significantly that you will get the maximum results.

Suggestions and Other Things to Consider

•  Let your first device, such as your wireless router, detect the best channel. Once it has done that, manually set it to that channel before setting up your additional access points.
• Whenever you want to “extend” an existing network, make sure that all settings, except the channels, are exactly the same. For example the SSID, security settings, and password need to be identical.
• Whenever possible, use a static IP address for access points to facilitate accessing your devices at a later date. This will also allow you to know which device has what channel settings.
• Write down each channel number for both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz setting for each device. This way you’ll be able to see if there is any overlap in the channels.
• Though you can set both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz SSIDs the same, it is recommend that they be set differently. Not all devices can use band steering and switch automatically between the lower and higher frequencies.
• Whenever possible, do not use the repeater mode available in some devices. Instead, have each access point go directly to a physical point in your network, such as a switch. Power Over Ethernet (POE) works great for doing this as you only have to run one cable. You can also add an inexpensive switch to a room where there is a network cable and add the access point to that switch.
• Some older devices may not automatically switch to a stronger access point, and they may have to be manually refreshed. This is not common on newer devices.
• Setting your channels manually is not just for the 2.4GHz networks. This applies equally to the 5GHz networks. You have more channels to choose from on 5GHz, but the problem remains largely the same.

Conclusion

With a little experimentation and a bit of work, you should be able to expand your network by adding an access point. You’ll gain the bandwidth and signal strength you want, and you’ll significantly increase the usability of your wireless network.

The post Extending Your Wireless Network appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

To watch live over-the-air television in the United States and Canada with your Xbox One you’ll need to purchase Hauppauge’s WinTV HVR-955Q. The process of setting up the tuner with the Xbox One isn’t incredibly complicated, but it’s also not the most intuitive to a typical Windows PC user. In addition to walking you through setting up the tuner we also setup the Xbox One to use a Windows Media Center PC through the console’s HDMI input. The idea is that you can have your live TV, but also continue to use another device, be it an HTPC, another gaming console, or streaming stick, and easily access it through the OneGuide.

We expect that Microsoft will release TV tuner support to North American users in the coming weeks, so if you’re thinking of picking a tuner up we hope this video will help you get it setup as quickly as possible.

The post How to Set up the Hauppauge WinTV-955Q with Xbox One appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Step 1 – Boot to Desktop

Forcing Windows 8.1 to boot to the desktop is actually really simple, but it’s not easy to find the option. First, go to the desktop, then right-click on the task bar and click Properties. In the Taskbar and Navigation properties dialog that appears go to the Navigation tab. From there all you need to do is click the unnecessarily verbose option “When I sign in or close all apps on a screen, go to the desktop instead of Start.” Click the OK button to close the dialog. That’s it! Your PC will now boot straight to the desktop.

Step 2 – Launch Windows Media Center on Boot

This process takes a little more effort, but it’s still very simple. Microsoft hasn’t brought back the option within Windows Media Center to automatically launch, so you’ll need to set it up on your own. The easiest way we’ve found to do it is to create a shortcut for Media Center, and place it in the Startup folder of the “Start Menu”. We know what you’re thinking, “but the Start Menu doesn’t exist anymore!” While the Start Menu may be gone, its folder structure remains! Go to your Start screen and right-click on Windows Media Center. In the app bar, at the bottom of the screen, click on the option “Open file location.” That will open a File Explorer window right to the Windows Accessories folder. Copy the shortcut for Windows Media Center. Now, you’ll notice that you’re in the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Accessories folder. Go up one folder level, and then go into the Startup folder (C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp). Paste the Windows Media Center shortcut.

That’s it! Don’t believe us? Reboot your computer and see for yourself!

The post Booting into Windows Media Center in Windows 8.1 appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Google TV may have begun rather slowly, thanks to the overpriced debut of the Logitech Revue, but since then the little set-top boxes have picked up the momentum that comes along with price drops in new technology. At $99 for such devices as the Vizio Co-Star, Google finds yet another way into your home.

Couple with Android – Google TV is actually Android-based — and you have a combination set-top box and phone/tablet that are just begging to work together. Google has not fully worked out this integration to the extent of its capability, but it has teased us with small tidbits, like a remote control for your mobile device.

This isn’t new territory – I have controlled Windows Media Center and DirecTV with my phones and tablets in the past. Still, those were carried out via third-party apps – this comes directly from the source. The app is free in the Google Play store.

Getting it paired is the trick and it was not as dead-simple as it should have been. First, start up the app, and it will immediately begin searching for Google TV devices on your network (make sure you are on WiFi). Perhaps you will have luck, though I did not.

If you find yourself in my shoes, you will need to enter in the address of your Google TV manually. To obtain this, simply take a trip to your router dashboard and check the list of connected devices. This may take trial and error – don’t be surprised if it is listed as “unknown”.

An easier method is to head to Settings on your set-top box and click “Network” and then “Network Settings” to reveal the IP.

Pay attention and be near your TV and have it turned on because a PIN will pop up on the screen, and it does not stay there long.

Once you have this four-digit sequence, simply plug it into your tablet or phone and hit “Connect”. From there, you should breeze right into the remote control app, which is not exactly the prettiest of designs.

What the app lacks in looks, though, it makes up for in functionality. Most of what you need is here, though there are notable exceptions.

Every control is present and you can access both a keyboard and mouse, but the interface is more than a bit dull and jumbled looking. However, function comes first, and the company has at least managed that.

Conclusion

This is not exactly Google’s best effort. Strange since the company has a lot riding on its effort to gain traction in the living room. While Google TV itself has improved immeasurably since launch, thanks in large part to third-parties like Amazon Prime, Plex and PlayOn, the search giant still seems to be giving this product less than full attention. The good news is, there is little room to go down and the upside is sky-high.

The post Controlling Google TV from your Android Device appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

To get started try this:

• Hit the Start button, type ‘cmd’ and hit enter
• type ‘cd C:\Windows\ehome’ to switch into the Media Center directory
• type ‘ehshell.exe’ to launch media center
• provide any of the switches below like this: ‘ehshell.exe /url:http://www.thedigitalmediazone.com/’

 Here are all the options:

ehshell.exe /entrypoint:{ application_guid }\{ entrypoint_guid }

 

This switch starts Windows Media Center and navigates directly to a registered entry point, where application_guid and entrypoint_guid are strings that contain the GUIDs of the application and entry point identifiers for the entry point to launch.

 

ehshell.exe /url: url

 

This switch starts Windows Media Center and navigates directly to a Hosted HTML application that is specified by url.

 

ehshell.exe /homepage: url

 

This switch starts Windows Media Center and navigates directly to a Windows Media Center web application that is specified by url.

 

 

ehshell.exe /addinfallbackpath: path

 

This switch starts Windows Media Center and uses the location specified in path to locate and load application assemblies. This location is only used after Windows Media Center attempts to load application assemblies from the global assembly cache (GAC) and \windows\ehome.

 

ehshell.exe /gdi

 

This switch starts Windows Media Center in Graphics Device Interface (GDI) graphics mode, which simulates a low-fidelity graphics environment that does not support DirectX graphics mode.

 

ehshell.exe /widescreen

 

This switch starts Windows Media Center with a 16:9 aspect ratio to enable testing widescreen display resolutions on systems that only have a 4:3 monitor installed. This switch works when Windows Media Center is started in windowed mode, but will not work in full-screen mode.

 

ehshell.exe /rtl
This switch starts Windows Media Center in right-to-left (RTL) display mode.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ehshell.exe /directmedia:general

 

This switch starts Windows Media Center in full-screen mode.

 

ehshell.exe /directmedia:music

 

This switch starts Windows Media Center in full-screen mode and navigates to the Music Library.

 

ehshell.exe /directmedia:video

 

This switch starts Windows Media Center in full-screen mode and navigates to the Video Library.

 

ehshell.exe /directmedia:tv

 

This switch starts Windows Media Center in full-screen mode and navigates to Recorded TV.

 

ehshell.exe /directmedia:pictures

 

This switch starts Windows Media Center in full-screen mode and navigates to the Picture Library.

 

ehshell.exe /directmedia:discplayback

 

This switch starts Windows Media Center in full-screen mode and begins playback of the disc in the drive according to AutoPlay registration.

 

ehshell.exe /nochrome

 

This switch starts Windows Media Center without the window frame (the border, caption, or toolbox) and does not display the Windows Media Center icon on the taskbar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ehshell.exe /noshutdownui

 

This switch hides the Shut Down and Close tiles under Tasks on the Windows Media Center Start menu. Note that the Close tile is only available on Extenders.

 

 

 

 

 

ehshell.exe /controlbox: buttons

 

This switch lets you specify the buttons to display on the controlbox (the toolbar at the top right of the Windows Media Center window), where buttons is a comma-delimited list of buttons.

 

The following values can be used for buttons:

 

None: Displays no buttons.

 

All: Displays all buttons.

 

Minimize: Displays the Minimize button.

 

Window: Displays the Restore Down/Maximize button.

 

Close: Displays the Close button.

 

For example, use the following switch to display the Minimize and Close buttons:

ehshell.exe /controlbox:minimize,close

 

There are a few other things to note.  For the /entrypoint switch, the application_guid and entrypoint_guid can be found in the registry.  Fire up regedit and head to this path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Extensibility\Entry Points

Lastly, the /controlbox switch didn’t seem to work on my Windows 8 machine.  It’s one of the less than useful options, so I’m not terribly upset.

Sources: Hack7MC, Microsoft

The post Windows Media Center Command Line Options appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately, it appears that Pandora has systematically and permanently blocked this from working on anything but Xbox and PlayStation device browsers. We are unaware of any further workarounds.

Unhappy about that? Let @pandora_radio know that Pandora should open the 10-foot interface at tv.pandora.com to any Chrome browser as an unsupported beta.

Pandora recently released a brand new HTML5 10-foot interface targeted at the Xbox 360.  HTML5 works everywhere, right?  Surely it it would work on any PC including Windows Media Center PCs…. Guess again.  It was massively disappointing to discover that, for whatever reason, it is not open to any browser.  If you go to https://tv.pandora.com/ like their blog post suggests, you will be met with an advertisement for how awesome Pandora is on the Xbox.  That is decidedly not awesome for the rest of us.  Luckily, there is a workaround!  At least for now, if the URL specifies a few parameters, Pandora can be fooled into thinking the browser is an Xbox.  Try this out:

https://tv.pandora.com/?mouseEnabled=true&dPadEnabled=true&vendor=microsoft&model=xbox&type=console&modelYear=2013

 

Updated:

https://tv.pandora.com/?model=xbox&audio=true&vendor=microsoft&showConsole=false&modelYear=2013&mouseEnabled=true&dPadEnabled=true&delay=true&type=console&version=4&badge=xrniqoryz3kpd46wj3kxto367senmsitdfuli3a

Oddly enough this workaround seems to only work in Chrome and Opera.  Windows Media Center and home theater PC users rejoice! Of course, integrating this with Media Center takes a little work (or a tool like Relaunch), so expect an update from us soon on that. Happy streaming.

Update: Looks like Pandora changed the parameters in the URL. Adding the new parameters to the URL appears to work the same as before. Thanks to John McGinley for pointing this out in the comments!

The post [UPDATED:] Using Pandora on an HTPC [Blocked] appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

What a lot of people don’t realize or remember is how easy it is to remove individual channels from the guide. This can be useful if your provider has recently added a few channels to your lineup or if you stumble upon a channel you’re not likely to watch

To remove an individual channel, start on the guide itself and find a channel that you want to hide.

Using the arrow keys, move to the left so the channel itself—not one of the programs—is highlighted.

Press the Info button or right-click on the channel to display the channel menu, then select Disable Channel.

The selected channel is immediately removed from your guide. That’s it! Now get pruning….

The post Media Center Quick Tip – Disabling Channels in your Guide appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Instructions

Install the iCloud Control Panel. The first thing you’ll need to do is download and install Apple’s iCloud Control Panel for Windows. The setup program installs the components required to access and synchronize your iCloud content with your PC.

Sign in to iCloud. Once the installation is complete, you’ll be prompted to sign in to iCloud with your Apple ID. Presumably, you already have an Apple ID or you wouldn’t be interested in this tip!

Configure iCloud Options. iCloud can synchronize many different types of information and media to your PC. Note that if you leave iCloud’s default options enabled, your bookmarks, contacts, and other information on your PC may be synchronized through iCloud. For the purposes of this tip, clear all the options except Photo Stream—leaving only that one selected. You can learn about how to configure iCloud’s other features from Apple.

Choose which Photo Streams to Sync. Click Options for Photo Stream and decide which streams to synchronize with your Media Center PC. You can choose your own Photo Stream and/or streams that are shared with you. Note that if you include your own stream and you have Photo Stream enabled on your iPhone or other iOS device, all photographs you take with your device will automatically appear on this PC. By default, these streams are saved in your Pictures folder. You can change this if you’d like, but leaving it set to the default folder will ensure that the photos appear in Media Center.

Once that’s all set, click OK and Apply, then click Close. Open Explorer, and you’ll notice that the Photo Stream folder has been added to your Pictures folder and it’s been set up as a Favorite.

View your Photo Stream in Media Center. Now start Windows Media Center, and select the Picture Library tile under Pictures + Videos. You’ll notice the Photo Stream appears in your Picture Library, and you can choose between My Photo Stream and Shared streams. (There’s also an Uploads folder that you can use to push photos from your PC to your Photo Stream. You might delete this folder if you don’t intend to do that.)

The post Media Center Quick Tip – View Your iCloud Photo Stream in Media Center appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

We’re happy to find in our own testing that GodMode still works in Windows 8. An enumerated list of Windows settings can be very helpful when setting up and maintaining your HTPC, so we thought this was a good one to republish and remind people about.

To set up GodMode on your Windows 7 or Windows 8 PC, all you have to do is create a folder somewhere and rename it with a specific name and GUID extension. To make this a little easier on you, just copy this name, below and paste it as the new folder name:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

One you’ve renamed the folder, the icon will change, and you’ll find it launches a window with hundreds of settings. If you use Windows 7 or any Start menu substitute in Windows 8, we’d recommend against creating the folder in your Start menu since Windows will treat it as a folder and create an unwieldy submenu for it containing hundreds of items. Instead, maybe put it in C:\Windows\Program Files. From there, you can always pin it to your Start screen or task bar.

The post Tweak Everything in Windows 8 appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

If you would like to give it a try it will require a little more work than simply downloading and running an installer. For that reason we thought it would be a good idea to write up a quick walk-through for integrating the beta release of Comskip into an already configured DvrmsToolBox setup.

First you’ll need to head over to the Comskip site and “donate” at least $10 to join the beta program. Afterwards you’ll receive an email with instructions for how to obtain the latest release. When you download it you’ll just get a standard zip file. There isn’t an installer to walk through. Unzip the file, then copy the entire contents of it to the following folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\DVRMSToolbox\Applications (if your HTPC is using the 32-bit version of Windows 7 then the first folder will just be C:\Program Files\).

Now there are only two steps left to configure it. First you have to tell Comskip to output files that DvrmsToolbox can process. To do that, open the comskip.ini (you’ll find this file in the folder you just copied all of the files to) in Notepad. Find the line that starts with “output_dvrmstb=0”. You should see a comment to the right of it telling you to set it to 1 if you’re using DvrmsToolBox. To do that, just change the first part of the line to “output_dvrmstb=1” but don’t include the double quotes.

You’re almost done! The only remaining step is to ensure that DvrmsToolBox is configured to use Comskip as it’s default commercial skipping application. Run the DVRMStoMPEGSettings application from the Start menu. On the first tab of the application you will see a drop-down box labeled “Prefered Analyzer”. Set that to Comskip, then click the Save button.

That’s it! If you give the new version of Comskip a try please let us know how it works for you.

The post Configuring Comskip with DvrmsToolBox for Windows Media Center appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

So how do you get back to the Start screen while using a remote control? Well, by default it just isn’t possible. Fortunately an enterprising user over at the Windows Experts Community who goes by the name milli260876 has found a way. The solution involves editing the Windows Registry, so you need to approach this with caution. This should be a relatively safe modification though, and the first step will be to make a backup of the key that is to be modified. Follow the steps below, and your Media Center remote’s Green Button will no longer launch Media Center. Instead it will act as the Start button.

1. Launch the Registry Editor by typing regedit from the Windows 8 Start screen.
2. Navigate to, and export the following key. This will work to restore things if you really mess this process up. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\HidIr\Remotes\745a17a0-74d3-11d0-b6fe-00a0c90f57da
3. Double-click on the binary value named ReportMappingTable to modify it.
4. Scroll to the bottom of the binary data and add the following. You don’t actually type the spaces, it will automatically input them for you: 0D 00 00 00 04 08 00
5. Reboot your computer.
6. Launch an app, then click the Green Button on your remote. If you are returned to the Windows 8 Start screen then you did everything correctly.

Source: Windows Experts Community

The post Remap Green Button as Start Button on Remote appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Earlier this year, Splashtop, Inc. released an app for the iPad, Win8 Metro Testbed, that can remotely connect to Windows 8, letting you use it from your iPad. Splashtop already sold other remote access apps and services designed to connect to your Mac or Windows PC from a vast range of mobile devices, including iPads, Android tablets, the Kindle, Nook, Playbook, and even HP’s short-lived TouchPad. They also released an Android version of Win8 Metro Testbed last month.

With an obscure name like Win8 Metro Testbed, Splashtop clearly isn’t targeting the average consumer with this product. Instead, they’re positioning this app for developers and enthusiasts. With deep pockets. At $24.99, a purportedly special introductory price before going up to $49.99, Win8 Metro Testbed is Splashtop’s most expensive consumer offering.

So here’s how this all works: You’re going to download and install the Windows 8 Release Preview on a computer or virtual machine on your home network. Then download the Splashtop Streamer and install it on your Windows 8 desktop. Using the streamer’s needlessly-skinned settings dialog, set a security code and make sure the program is set to start automatically with Windows. If you want this to work when you’re not connected to your home network, you can sign in to your Google account. Splashtop uses some magical password authentication through Google Talk that effectively allows you to access your computer from outside your firewall. I have no idea how it works—it just does.

Now it’s time to shell out some money to purchase and install the mobile app. Splashtop, Inc. provided us with a copy of the iPad app for this review. The iPad app, for iOS 3.2 and later, is available in the iTunes Store. The Android version, supporting Android 3.1 and later, is available from Google Play. You’ll need to install and configure the app on your tablet, providing the security code you created on your computer and, if applicable, your Google account credentials. For the best experience, make sure you select the “best fit” resolution option in the advanced settings for the connection. If everything is set up properly, the app should find and list your computer. Just tap it to connect and prepare to be amazed.

If you’re running a decently-spec’ed machine on a network with good bandwidth and wireless, you should have the fast and fluid experience that Steven and the team have been touting for the past year. Suddenly Windows 8’s gesture substitutions for accessing core system features make sense. Swipe or drag to scroll, flick to select, pinch to zoom or expand. Swipe in from the edges to switch between applications, expose the charms, or expose an action bar…this is the experience Microsoft was envisioning with the new Start screen, the charms, large fonts, and finger-sized targets.

Remote connections made outside your home network are far less fluid, introducing a certain amount of lag and pixelation, depending on your conditions. Nonetheless, for remote access to a computer, it’s entirely tolerable.

On a local network, music and video plays fairly well, though full-screen video can get a little choppy…it’s good enough for YouTube viewing. Some video games and, notably, Windows Media Center in full screen mode may not work at all, prompting a warning about direct video not being supported. When asked about support for Windows Media Center, Splashtop’s official answer was that they “have never supported” it, though posts on their support site suggest that it might work with the right NVIDIA card and driver on your PC.

Using the desktop is somewhat cumbersome, as it always has been with Windows on touch devices. Testbed  offers an expanded iPad keyboard with cursor and function keys, but you likely won’t need that, since Windows’ own built-in on-screen keyboard and handwriting recognition is excellent. We highly recommend using a stylus on the desktop for the best experience.

Not surprisingly, Windows won’t see or be able to use your device’s local camera or any other local resources. Similarly, there’s no feedback to Windows about the orientation of your device, so don’t expect to see (or test) your desktop or Metro applications in portrait mode. The app is smart enough to know whether your local audio is muted. When that’s the case, audio for videos will play at the PC, and audio apps won’t even allow you to play content—a very elegant way of handling things.

As for using Windows 8 in tandem with other apps on your tablet, forget it. Win8 Metro Testbed appears to have no multi-tasking or state saving capabilities. Switching between apps on an iPad severs the remote connection and switching back appears to reload the app from the start. Consequently, device notifications interrupt and sever any session in progress—a pretty significant annoyance that we hope Splashtop addresses in a future update.

Conclusions

If you use Windows 8 on Splashtop’s Win8 Metro Testbed long enough, you may just forget you’re not using an actual Windows tablet—the experience is that fluid and that convincing. This app makes it easy to see how great Windows 8 can be on a tablet, and it gives you, the developer or enthusiast, an opportunity to use Windows 8 on a tablet without having to invest in new Windows hardware.

That said, you have to really want this. At the discounted price of $24.99, the adoption cost is steep—it’s probably the most expensive app you’ll have on your tablet. Splashtop knows they’re alleviating your need to purchase a new device, and they’ve priced this product with that in mind. Call it evil, call it opportunistic…or just call it an early adopter tax.

As good as it is, it’s hard to see how Win8 Metro Testbed is anything more than an evolution of Splashtop Remote with the touch and gesture support that Windows 8 requires. Even the app name on the navigation bar itself, Splashtop Remote Win8 Edition, suggests this. So one has to imagine that these features will ultimately make their way back into that product, which currently sells at a much lower price point. The question is: how badly do you want to run Windows 8 on a tablet right now?

The post Use Windows 8 on Your iPad or Android Tablet appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

First, let’s talk about why we chose the approach that we’re presenting here. First, this is focused on getting ripped DVD movies working within Windows Media Center and effortlessly on Windows Media Center Extenders, primarily the Xbox 360. The goal here is to have a single file per movie that plays on the HTPC and Extenders, and still supports fast-forward, rewind, and resume. Another benefit to this method is that we’ll only be ripping the main movie content. Extras won’t be included. If you want extras you’ll need a different solution. This method also doesn’t compress the video, so each movie will consume anywhere from 3-6GB on your hard drive. If you’re hoping to also use these files on a Mac or an iOS device you’ll be out of luck. Sorry, Apple’s devices apparently don’t support m2ts files, which is the file format we’ll end up with at the end of this process. If you want to compress the files, and/or make them usable on Apple devices, you could replace Step 2 in this guide. Instead of turning the MKV into an m2ts file, you could use Handbrake to easily compress into an Apple-compatible format. I won’t go into details on that in this post, but it’s a pretty simple process once you’ve completed Step 1 in this guide.

Step 1 – Rip the DVD to MKV

First we’ll start by ripping the movie from the disc using one of our favorite programs, MakeMKV. The free version supports ripping DVDs forever, but it’s limited to only ripping Blu-rays for the first 30 days. MakeMKV is a very easy to application to use. In most case you won’t even need to modify any of the settings, but it’s still fun to take a look through them. Once the settings are all set, just click the big button that shows a DVD with an arrow pointing at a hard drive. It will take a couple of minutes to scan the drive and find all the different videos on the disc that makeup the movie. After that it will display all of the different “Titles” available on the disc. Typically the first one is what you’re looking for. What should make it easier to determine is that the main movie will have the most chapters and make the biggest file. If the disc has a lot of titles you can save yourself the hassle of unchecking every single option. Instead, right click on the option at the very top, DVD disc, and click on “Unselect all”. Then you’ll only need to check the main title. Again, it’s the largest one. For a DVD it should be somewhere between 3 and 7 GB. You can then expand the tree to select different audio and subtitle streams to include. Subtitles won’t work, so just select the main audio feed that you’re looking for, and then click the button with the green arrow pointing down at a hard drive. Another pointer in selecting audio tracks: typically you’re looking for the one labeled as ” DD 3/2+1 English”. That track will provide surround sound in English. Obviously if you would prefer a different language you can select that instead. After clicking the “Make MKV” buttonAbout 30 minutes later you’ll have a complete MKV. For more detailed help with MakeMKV check out their help page.

Step 2 – Convert the MKV to M2TS

The second, and final, step in this process is to convert the MKV file to an m2ts file. MKV files require extra software to get them to work with Media Center, and even more to get them to work with Media Center Extenders. On the other hand, m2ts files are completely supported by Media Center and Extenders. There is one exception. Fast Forward won’t typically work. Fortunately, the skip forward and reverse buttons on the remote still work. Also, if you’re looking to go forward or back by a specific interval you can use the shortcuts we’ve discussed in the past.

To convert the file you’ll need another free program called tsMuxer. It doesn’t even need to be installed. Just unzip it and open the tsMuxer GUI. The interface for tsMuxer looks daunting, but to be honest, there is very little that you actually need to do. Click the “add” button near the top right, and browse to the location of the MKV file you created in step one. Then just ensure that you’ve selected the “M2TS muxing” option under “Output”, and that you’ve supplied an output file name, then click the “Start muxing” button at the bottom of the screen. The conversion process should take less than five minutes as it doesn’t actually have to re-encode the audio or video. This process is simply taking the audio and video streams out of the MKV container, and putting them into an m2ts container. For more details on configuring tsMuxer, see the image gallery below.

That’s all there is to it! In an upcoming post we’ll discuss ways to bring rich metadata into Windows Media Center to improve the experience even more.

The post Ripping DVDs for Windows Media Center appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

A few weeks ago on Entertainment 2.0, we posited that the Windows 8 Release Preview might not actually include Media Center, and that is indeed the case. Remember: Media Center won’t be in the box when you first purchase Windows 8, so it makes sense that it wouldn’t be included in the installation for the Release Preview. But you can install it. Microsoft’s FAQs provide instructions for doing just that, but MVP Barb Bowman points out that these instructions may not work exactly as documented.

For better results, you may just want to launch the classic control panel and select Add Features to Windows from there (you can just search for it by typing Add in the Control Panel search box).

After that, just follow the instructions as documented: specify that you already have a product key, enter the key provide on Microsoft’s FAQs page (MBFBV-W3DP2-2MVKN-PJCQD-KKTF7), and accept the terms.

When your computer restarts, Windows Media Center will be pinned to your Start screen.

Resources

• Get the bits for the Windows 8 Release Preview
• Microsoft’s Windows 8 Release Preview FAQs
• Barb’s Connected World

The post Add Windows Media Center to Window 8 Release Preview appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

• Open notepad
• Paste this into it

@ECHO OFF

cd “%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Windows Media Player”

START /MIN wmplayer.exe

EXIT

• Save it by clicking File>Save
• Save it to C:\Users\<HTPC_USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
• Replace <HTPC_USERNAME>  with your actual username
• Under “Save as type:” select “All Files (*.*)
• Name it “mediaPlayerStart.cmd” or whatever you want as long as it ends in “.cmd”
• Click “Save”
• You don’t have to but you may want to run it once to make sure it does actually open Windows Media Player minimized
• Next time you login it will start Media Player minimized so you can use Play To on another device to play music on your Media Center

The post Media Center Quick Tip – Using Your HTPC as a Play To Target appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Here’s a quick way to find out which of your Recorded TV files are protected.

Instructions

Open Your Recorded TV library  in Windows Explorer. This library may include files from multiple locations if you’ve added folders to your TV library through Media Center. Display the files in Detail view. Right-click any column heading, and then click More on the shortcut menu.

In the pop-up window, scroll through the list of file details and select Protected. Click OK to apply the change.

You may need to scroll to the right to see the Protected flag, which appears as a column of Yes/No values. Click the column heading to sort by the Protected flag and see all your protected shows together.

With all the protected shows sorted together, it should be easy to select and copy the unprotected shows to your new HTPC. Now clear your calendar to watch all of those copy protected shows before completely retiring your old Media Center.

The post Media Center Quick Tip – Finding Protected Recorded TV Files appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Instructions

Turn on SkyDrive photo uploading. First, you’ll want to enable SkyDrive photo uploads on your Windows Phone. In the Pictures app, tap More (…), then tap Settings. Scroll down and turn on Automatically upload to SkyDrive. Note that if you don’t want location information for your pictures uploaded to SkyDrive, you can turn off Keep location info on uploaded pictures.

This SkyDrive setting will only apply to pictures you take after turning it on. Pictures already in your camera roll will not get uploaded to SkyDrive.

Install SkyDrive on Media Center. On your Windows Media Center PC, download and install SkyDrive for Windows while you’re logged in to your PC with the account you use for Media Center.

Add the Camera Roll to your Library. If the SkyDrive folder doesn’t open automatically after you complete the installation, open Windows Explorer and select the SkyDrive folder (it should be in your Favorites). Right-click the SkyDrive camera roll folder, point to Include in Library in the shortcut menu, then click Pictures.

That’s all there is to it! Take a few photographs with your phone to test it out. Then open Media Center, go to the Picture Library, and enjoy your photographs. As you take pictures on your Windows Phone, they’ll sync automatically to your Media Center PC and appear in your Picture Library.

The post Media Center Quick Tip – Syncing Windows Phone Camera Roll to Media Center appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

One benefit is obvious: it has a built in keyboard. There are many other benefits and even some drawbacks to using a TiVo Slide remote with Media Center, so we’ll cover those first.

Advantages

• Bluetooth. No need to point the remote towards the TV when pressing buttons (except power and volume, unless you blast the volume codes with an IR Blaster)
• Speed. Compared to my old Logitech Harmony 650,  the TiVo Slide is extremely fast. There is pretty much no lag between button presses unlike the Harmony’s pause between IR blasts.
• Keyboard. This one is obvious. Any time you need to type something in to either search for something or jump down the list of recordings, movies, etc., you can just start typing it in instead of pretending you are using a cell phone from the 90s.
• Reprogramming buttons is very flexible using the step-by-step guide below.
• Good Range. The range is approximately 30 feet.
• Buttons are pretty well laid out and you should be able to distinguish them without looking.
• Buttons are back-lit when it is dark and you press a button.
• Price. At the time of writing this article, the TiVo Slide remote is around [amazon_link id=”B003YKFKR6″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]$40 on Amazon[/amazon_link].

Disadvantages

The post Using a TiVo Slide Remote with Windows Media Center appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

• Remote Desktop into your WHS2011 box (mstsc in the start menu)
• Open up the server Manager
• Right click on “Network Policy and Access Services”
• Select “Add Role Services”

• Tick the “Routing and Remote Access Services” check box
• This should check both “Remote Access Service” and “Routing”

• Click “Next>”

• Confirm these settings and click “Install”

• Click “Close” to finish
• Back in Server Manager expand the Network Policy and Access Services
• Right Click on Routing and Remote Access and select “Configure and Enable Routing and Remote Access”

• Click “Next>”
• Select “Custom configuration”  Be careful here, if you select “Remote access” as one might think, you will get a conflict with NPS later in the process and it will disallow Remote Desktop once the services get started.  If that happens you can Remote Desktop into the server and disable the “Routing and Remote Access” service before it starts so you can reconfigure VPN.

• Tick the box next to “VPN access”

• Click “Finish” to finish the installation
• You may get a warning about conflicting with NPS,  That should be fine. Click “OK” to dismiss it.
• A dialog will pop up asking you to start the Routing and Remote Access service. Go ahead and click “Start service”
• The server is now set up, but it does not know what IP address to hand out to the client.  You can either point it at a DHCP server or configure a static pool of IP address to be assigned.  Here we will perform the later.
• Back at the Server manager right click on the “Routing and Remote Access” under the “Network Policy and Access” heading
• Select “Properties”
• Under the IPV4 tab and the IPv4 address assignment select “Static address pool”
• Click “Add…”

• Define an IP range with between “Start IP address” and “End IP address” that is outside of the range of your router’s DHCP

• Here is an example of my Linksys E200 DHCP range.  You will need to specify an IP address range outside of the range that the router uses otherwise you could get collisions.

• Click “OK” to save the IP address pool
• Click “OK” to save.
• Your VPN server is now set up and started!
• Not so fast.  You need to allow access to a user before you can use it.  You will need to do the following per each user you want to grant access
• Open the Computer Managment console
• Expand “Local Users and Groups” and select “Users”

• Right click on the user and click properties
• Select the “Dial-in” tab
• In the “Network Access Permission” section select “Allow access”

• Click “OK” to save these settings.
• The user should now be able to access the VPN server once you set it up on the client PC side.

Port Forwarding

• You’ll need to forward port 443 for SSTP VPN to access the VPN server.  Head over to http://portforward.com/ to get specific instructions on how to forward a port on your specific router.
• You will also need to ensure that VPN passthrough for SSTP is enabled.  On most routers it should be enabled by default.

• Open the network and sharing center and click “Set up a new connection or network”

• Select “Connect to a workplace” and click “Next”

• Select “No, create a new connection” and click “Next”

• Select “Use my Internet connection (VPN)”

• In the “Internet address:” box type the address of your homeserver, if you are using Microsofts DNS then that would be <Server_Name>.homeserver.com
• Type in anything convenient in the “Destination name:” box

• Click “Next”
• Fill in the credentials for the user you granted access to earlier

• Click “Connect”
• You should get a success message of “You are connected”

• Once this is set up, you will only have to hit connect and provide the credentials to connect
• You should now be able to use the network as if you were at home!

And with that, sound off in the comments if you have any issues with this long, overly-complex process.

The post How to Set Up VPN for Windows Home Server 2011 appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

The post Adding Missing ClearQAM Channels to Windows Media Center appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Credit goes to Entertainment 2.0 listener Mike for getting us to dust off this old hack and adapting it to the latest version of TotalMedia Theater. To eliminate the prompt screen and always use Media Center to play DVDs and TotalMedia Theatre to play Blu-ray and HD DVD media, you’ll need to use the Registry editor, regedit.exe. If contemplating that raises your blood pressure, you may want to just put up with the prompt. If, however, you feel plenty comfortable mucking around in your registry, then follow these directions. But remember: you can seriously screw up your system if you don’t know what you’re doing here. Tread cautiously. As with any system update, it’s a good idea to create a restore point before making changes like this.

First, find and delete the following registry branch:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\AutoPlayHandlers\Handlers\ArcSoftTotalMediaTheatre

Then find and delete the ArcSoftTotalMediaTheatre key in the following branch:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\AutoPlayHandlers\EventHandlers\PlayDVDMovieOnArrival

After making these changes, Media Center will no longer prompt you to select a player for DVDs—it will just play them the way it always did.

The post Remove TotalMedia Theatre DVD Prompt in Media Center appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

If you’re using your Xbox primarily as an extender, you may just want to consider having it launch Media Center automatically each time you turn it on. The attached video shows you how to Launch Media Center from the new Xbox dashboard and how to automatically launch Windows Media Center on startup.

The post Media Center Quick Tip – Starting Media Center from the Xbox Dashboard appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Instructions

Skip Through the Guide with Remote Shortcuts

Skip forward and backward by three or twelve hours at a time in Media Center’s guide by pressing the Fast Forward and Rewind or Skip and Replay buttons on your remote, respectively.

Show a Specific Network’s Programming Lineup

To see all the shows a specific network has scheduled for the coming days, use the navigation arrows on your remote to move to the left and select a specific network.

Filtering the Guide

Using navigation arrows on your remote control to move to the left in the guide to the Categories, where you can choose any category and filter your provider’s content.

Using these tips together, you’ll find that your use of Media Center’s guide will be more effective and efficient.

The post Media Center Quick Tip – Guide Shortcuts and Features appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Instructions

Select Media Only in the Tasks strip

Click Yes to confirm the change

At this point, Media Center will switch to full screen if it wasn’t already, and a lock icon in the upper-right corner will indicate that it’s in Media Only mode.

To exit Media Only mode, select Exit Media Only in the Tasks strip. Note that Media Only mode doesn’t prevent keyboard users from accessing the start menu or task switching to another running program—it just removes the window control buttons from interface, which is most useful for touchscreen applications.

The post Media Center Quick Tip – Enable Media Only Mode appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Instructions

Select Settings under Tasks

Select TV

Select Recorder

Select Recorder Storage

Set the TV Recordings Drive. Under Record on drive, use the + and – buttons to flip through the available drives and choose your new drive. You can select any internal or external drive, but not mapped network volumes.

Set the Maximum TV Limit. If you’re dedicating the new drive to Recorded TV storage, then use the + button next to the storage limit to select the highest setting. The graph at the bottom of the screen will show how many hours of standard and high definition television you can store on the new drive.

Save your changes. That’s it! Windows automatically adds the new drive to your Recorded TV library, and all new shows will be recorded on it. All of your old shows will still appear in your Recorded TV library.

The post Media Center Quick Tip – Add a New Drive to Your Recorded TV Library appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Source: Barnesian

The post Netflix HD on Atom Workaround appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Many Windows Media Center users have complained that Microsoft’s time service against which Windows’ time gets synchronized is unreliable. Whether the time itself is accurate or not, one thing is certain—syncing against the default service fails a lot! You can improve the reliability of your time service updates by changing to one of a number of different services offered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Instructions

Open the Date and Time control panel and select the Internet Time tab. One quick way to get to this is to click the clock in the notification area, and then click the Change date and time settings link.

Click Change Settings to open the Internet Time Settings window. Provide your administrator credentials, if prompted.

Open the Server list and select a NIST time server. If Synchronize with an Internet time server is not already selected, click it now.

Click Update Now. Wait for a response from the service.

Click OK to close any open windows.

It’s worth noting that changing the service may not be enough to fix your problems. Windows doesn’t update the time often enough to keep some PCs on schedule. If your PC’s clock runs a little fast or slow, you may also need to explore creating a scheduled task on your computer to trigger the synchronization more frequently. Here’s a tutorial we found on how to make Windows 7 synchronize time more frequently.

The post Media Center Quick Tip – Fix Record Start/Stop Time Problems appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

In this example, we’ll disable the Home Server menu that Media Center Connector adds to the Start menu. It’s not that we don’t want access to the Home Server plug-ins—but it may not be desirable for them to be so prominently displayed in the Start menu for your household or sitter to fiddle with.

Instructions

Select Extras Library in the Extras strip

Select Manage Extras

Navigate to the top of the Extras Library screen and select Manage Extras.

Select Start Menu

Disable Start Menu strips

• Clear the Home Server checkbox (or any other add-in’s checkbox) to exclude from the Start menu.
• When finished, select Save.
• Press Back to return to the Extras Library.

At this point, the Home Server strip is gone from your Start menu. But what if you want easy access to the add-in even though you don’t want the strip in the Start menu? You can add a tile to your Extras strip:

Add extras to the Start Menu

• Navigate to the desired add-in in your Extra Library and press Info or More.
• Select Add to Start Menu.

That’s it! When you return to your Start menu, the Extras strip will include a tile for the add-in. (In this example, we added a TV Archive tile.)

You may notice that after installing updates for your add-ins, you’ll need to go through these steps again, but this tip should help to keep your Media Center’s Start menu nice and tidy.

The post Media Center Quick Tip – Remove Start Menu Strips for Add-ins appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Instructions

Select Settings under Tasks

Select DVD

Select Remote Control Options

Set your preferred button behaviors

• Under When I press Skip and Replay, select Skip forward and backward.
• Under When I press Channel Up and Channel Down, select Skip chapters.
• Finally, select Save.

If you change your remote options as above, your skip forward and back buttons will now function for DVD playback as they do for TV viewing—as 30 second skip and instant replay. To jump between chapters, use your Channel Up and Down buttons now. If only we could get Total Media Theater on board….

The post Media Center Quick Tip – 30 Sec Skip, Replay for DVDs appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Guide Colors:

• Purple – Movies
• Green – Sports
• Light Blue – Kids & Family
• Orange – Specials
• Yellow – News

Instructions

First select Settings under Tasks

Select TV in the Settings menu

Select Guide

Select Guide Page Options

Check Apply colored backgrounds to shows, based on their category

Now look at your guide!

The post Media Center Quick Tip – Color Code the Guide appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Cheap HTPC is a Champ

Two weeks ago I decided to create a HTPC on the cheap. The goal was simple build a powerful HTPC for under $500. I put together full list of parts that you can read about in HTPC on the Cheap Part 1. The main points are 2 TV tuners, large hard drive, smoking fast AMD Athlon II X3 processor, and a motherboard with a Radeon 4250 built in. This machine should be able to play 1080p content, Netflix HD, Amazon VOD, Hulu, and just about anything else you would want from a HTPC. I have already had an Acer Aspire Revo machine as my main HTPC for just about a year now and I even created RevoHTPC.com to showcase how I completely configured it, but after just 2 weeks with this new HTPC I am basically blown away. Here is a full breakdown of everything I have gone through.

Setup

Building a computer can be a challenge if it is your first time. Luckily this was my third time putting together a computer, and all of the parts just fell into place. One issue I did have was with the power supply inside the case. It only had 1 Sata power connection, so I did have to run to my local Fry’s electronics to grab the 4pin to Sata power adapters which added an additional $6 to the configuration. If you are only going to be using 1 drive then you would be fine, however I have 1 drive as the main OS drive (80GB) and 2 1TB drives. One drive is dedicated to recorded television shows, and the other is all my music and video files until I have a home server up and running again (waiting for Vail to officially release). Loading up Windows 7 was easy and painless as usual, and I found an amazing tool online that allowed me to transfer my setting from my Revo to this new machine, which is mcBackup. This tool simply allows you to save your configuration and then reimport it. There are more features to mcBackup such as automatic backups every night, but I just uninstalled it when I was done. After setting up all of my tuners inside of Media Center I went ahead and installed Hulu Desktop and the Media Center Integrator. I also installed the Revision3 media center plugin, Media Browser, Netflix, and Internet TV.

Inside of the Bios I adjusted the UMA buffer for video to 512MB. By default this is set to auto, however we really want 512MB of RAM dedicated to the Radeon 4250 since we are using this as a main HTPC, and not a normal computer. I only ran into one little issue, which was that I couldn’t get 5.1 audio to pass through the HDMI. The Biostar A880G+ said right on the box that is supported 6 channel audio so I was extremely confused after installing the driver from the included CD and the official AMD HDMI audio driver. No matter what I did it just wouldn’t work. I talked to Josh about the issue and he pointed me over to the Realtek website where I found the ATI HDMI Audio Device R2.55. After uninstalling all of the old drivers and installing R2.55 Windows still displayed 2 channels for audio. Then I went into media center and configured the speakers and it pushed out 5.1 just fine when watching movies or television. I did attempt 5.1 with VLC, but it still only output 2.0 audio, which is a let down. I am thinking that the problem most likely has to do with my sound bar that I am using, Sony HT-CT100, which is a 3.1 system that accepts up to 7.1 audio. Perhaps when I move and get a full receiver and surround sound system I can test it out again, but that will not be for a while.

Besides these few tweaks everything fits into the case that I purchased. And it is sitting happily in my entertainment center. If you are just getting started on HTPCs check out the Beginner’s Guide to HTPCs over at the missing remote.

Normal Usage

I am inside of Windows Media Center about 99% of the time when using my HTPC, which means it needs to be snappy, responsive, and just work. I must say with this processor WMC is super fast, the menus fly, the guide works splendidly, and the movie gallery is smooth. I mean this thing is really fast and really makes you love the media center user interface. Inside of the bios there is a setting to automatically adjust the fan based on the CPU temperature and turning this on made the machine completely silent. If the CPU gets too warm 37C or higher then the fan ramps up and you can hear a quiet hum. I have only ever had this happen once when I closed the front door on my entertainment console. It was back down to normal temperature in a few minutes. When recording a show and watching a 1080p movie the core CPU temperature was only 33C.

Now as far as CPU usage it is really amazing how little is being used and how fast this machine is. My standard test was recording an HD show and watching a1080p movie CPU usage hovered at 2-8%, which is absolutely crazy. Pulling up Netflix and watching HD content only tagged the CPU at 30%. The real big test however is to see if this machine can handle a lot is to have an extender and watch television on both of them at one time. I hooked up my Xbox 360 and the first thing that I noticed is that it worked really great and was fast and responsive. CPU usage was alright averaging around 40-50%. It should be said that the extender used up an additional 200MB of RAM. It is looking like the 4GB of RAM is really helping out and is recommended. I tried to play all sorts of content to really see if I could bring down this machine, and it was basically impossible.

Playback

Basic playback of television was extremely smooth and never had any issues at all. Even if I brought up the mini guide on top of live television there was no stutter at all. Playing movies and videos was flawless as well, there is absolutely nothing to complain about here. There was nothing I could throw at this machine that it couldn’t play. Even 1080p movies inside of VLC played back great. The Radeon 4250 pairs with Athlon II X3 is just a great combination.

Streaming Services

Netflix

I decided to renew my subscription to Netflix just for 1 month to test out this new build. One big problem with my Acer Aspire Revo was that it could not handle Netflix HD. Since Silverlight is not yet GPU accelerated it really took down the CPU and would just choke. This wasn’t the reason I left Netflix, it was mostly because I ran out of interesting shows and movies to watch and there was no reason to keep paying $8 a month. However, now that I have been gone for a while from Netflix the circumstance has changed and there are a lot of new shows and movies, and Netflix HD streams absolutely perfect on this machine. Not only does it stream perfect, the user interface inside of WMC is really fast and responsive. It is a pleasure to flip through and see what I haven’t watched yet and just add it to my queue.

Internet TV

Internet TV is a feature inside of WMC that offers a lot of content from CBS and other sources. The steam is usually just standard definition video with some commercials and is all Flash based. Everything was pretty flawless as well.

Hulu

Good old Hulu Desktop has been my best friend on the Revo ever since Flash 10.1 came out. Hulu has a huge collection of television shows for free. I am not a huge fan of the entire user interface, however it was very snappy and High Quality streamed perfect.

Power Consumption

One question a lot of people asked me when I put up the first article was how much more power this new machine was going to consume. So I went out and purchased a Kill a Watt so I could monitor power usage in different circumstances. The standard use case would be that the HTPC sits idle, then you have just watching television, and then recording a television show and watching 1080p content. I figured that for around 17 hours a day the HTPC sits idle, 4 hours of normal usage, and 3 hours of heavy usage. Of course this can vary every day, but I figure this is a good estimate.  I decided to make a super crazy Excel spreadsheet to measure everything I possibly could on both my Revo and this machine and I was really surprised by the results. The Revo I had could never go above 60W, but I also had a whole bunch of other attachments including 2 hard drives and a USB hub. The new HTPC has a 420W power supply, and the CPU itself is 90W so I knew there was going to be a difference.

There are a lot of different things that I measure, but the most important are the Watts (current power being used) and KWH (Kilowatt Hour, which is how much power the machine uses after 1 hour). Most power providers simply charge you a standard rate for each Kilowatt you use. I have APS here in Arizona, and I am on an odd power plan where it cost 16 cents per kilowatt (9am-9pm weekdays) and then 5 cents all other times. If you do the calculations it looks like the Acer Aspire Revo would cost me around $35.50 for a full year while the new HTPC would cost me around $53.25. I am completely comfortable paying just $17-$18 more a year to have this HTPC. If you want a full breakdown you can download the full Excel spreadsheet here.

Conclusion

Overall I am extremely happy with this new HTPC. Everything just works and works very well. It is almost night and day from the Revo. I was always happy with my Acer Aspire Revo, however I am thrilled about this new setup and I don’t think I can go back. If anyone has any more questions please feel to leave comments and I will respond.

The post HTPC on the Cheap [Part 2] Review appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

So here is my goal:

The first things to do is to pick out the processor and motherboard. I looked around at all of the processors that AMD offers and it was a tough decision with prices of dual and triple cores ranging between $57 and $80. The Athlon II X2 240 (on Amazon) offers a 2.8GHz dual core processor and only pulls in 65W for $58, while the Athlon II X3 450 (on Amazon)is a 3.2GHz triple core processors but pulls in 95W of power. This was an extremely tough decision as I am on a tight budget, but the decision was easy once I found the motherboard, which was to go with the Athlon II X3.

The motherboard needed to support the AM3 chipset of the Athlon II chips and had to have the Radeon HD 4250 onboard. Since I want to build a small HTPC I found the BIOSTAR A880G+ (on Amazon), which features the 4250, has HDMI out, a PCI Express 2.0 x16, 2 PCI Slots, and 4 Sata ports. This little beauty was only $55, and had a $10 mail in rebate. To top it off if you bundled it with the Athlon II X3 you saved an additional $15, which brought the total of motherboard and processor to $110, which is a steal!

Since I found myself such a great deal on the motherboard and processor I decided to splurge just a little bit and get 4GB of DDR3 RAM. The choice was easy as G.SKILL has been my preferred memory of choice for some time, their
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 for only $49 will compliment the motherboard nicely.

Finding a nice computer case on a budget that has a nice design is extremely difficult to do. Finding a small form factor case adds complexity to this process as most cases are cheaply made, or just don’t look attractive. I took a long time to look through all of the MicroATX cases that Newegg had to offer, and I landed on a case by APEVIA. It features a 420W power supply, four hard drive bays, and a front LCD temperature display which is a nice touch. This little guy looked like it would look nice sitting under my television and was only $80, plus it had a $10 mail in rebate bringing it down to $70.

Let’s get the software out of the way right away, we are going to be using
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium. It has the main feature we’re looking for: Windows 7 Media Center. We need an operating system, so there is no way to get around it. This will add on $100 to the base price of your machine.

For tuners I really wanted to put an internal card, however most of the dual tuner cards are PCIe x1, however the motherboad only supports x16. You could go with 2 PCI cards which would be just fine as well, however to make everything simple I would recommend picking up a
SiliconDust HDHomeRun Network-based Dual (on Amazon). This is a network tuner, and Josh could not recommend it enough. It was on sale for $90.

You can get absolutely crazy with hard drives if you would like. I would recommend a nice SSD for your main drive, and a larger data drive, but with only $80 left in the budget I had to keep it simple. I was in luck today as I found a nice
SAMSUNG Spinpoint 1TB (on Amazon) on sale for $55. With $25 under budget you could stop here and checkout, or maybe you want to simplify your life with a nice
Media Center Remote (on Amazon) for $23. I would obviously recommend a nice Harmony remote, but that is not in the budget. If you don’t need a remote then you could always get a dedicated hard drive for Windows so the 1TB drive is dedicated to Recorded TV.

Now I maxed out the $500 limit here with everything I thought you might need, however this HTPC can be done for less. Let me break down some reductions:
1.) PCIe Dual Tuner (-$20)
2.) Cheaper Case (-$20 to $40)
3.) 2GB RAM instead of 4GB (-$20)
4.) No Media Center Remote (-$20)
5.) Smaller Hard Drive? (-$20)

With these you could easily bring it below $400, even less if you shopped around for deals on the Athlon II X2 processor. I went a bit overboard, but I think this is a solid configuration.

The question you have now is how does it perform? You will find out in Part 2, I still have to build it! I just received the parts in the mail today, so check out this sweet unboxing video below!

Update 1:
Adding video/picture blog:

Construction Gallery:
[nggallery id=3]

First Bootup:

Bios sneak peak:

Quick analysis + hard drive noise:

Windows Experience Index:

System properties:

Check out the full review here in Part 2.

The post HTPC on the Cheap, Part 1 [Update 1] appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Once you have your Windows Media Center properly setup to record TV you’ll need two additional pieces of software. One, DvrmsToolbox, is free, the other, Show Analyzer, is not. Show Analyzer will only set you back $29.98. A fair price to pay considering you won’t need to watch commercials anymore!

Summary

First you’re going to install Show Analyzer. This software scans recorded TV shows for commercials. It then saves the location of the commercials in a file. Then you will install DvrmsToolbox (DTB), and the DTB Media Center add-in. After being configured these two make the rest of the commercial skipping mgaic happen. When you start watching a recorded TV show the add-in will look to see if Show Analyzer has already scanned it for commercials. If it hasn’t, it will ask you if you would like it to. If it has, then the show will continue to play as normal, except that when you get to the beginning of a commercial break the add-in will automatically jump to the end of the break! You don’t need to hit fast-forward. You don’t even need to pick up the remote. The other really nice feature of the system being configured this way is that even if the commercial detection wasn’t perfect, you can still fast-forward, or rewind, to compensate. Follow the steps below to configure your system accordingly.

Step 1: Purchase and install Show Analyzer

Head on over to Dragon Global and purchase a copy of Show Analyzer. Once you have it, run the very simple setup utility, and for good measure, reboot your machine. The way that you will configure everything to work doesn’t require you to do any more configuration of Show Analyzer.

Step 2 : Download DvrmsToolbox and the Media Center Add-In

Go to the downloads section for DvrmsToolbox at Babgvant.com and download the item called DVRMSToolbox. The current version as of this writing is 1.2.2.2. You also need to download DTBAddin. The current version is 1.0.0.6. Install the main DvrmsToolbox first. When you get to the setup screen for Optional Components you should uncheck “Download/Install ShowAnalyzer” as you will have already installed it. Make sure to leave “Run the DTB File Watcher as a service” checked.

Once DTB is installed, you need to install the DTB Addin. The zip file contains multiple install files. There is one for 32 bit versions of Windows 7, and one for 64 bit version. If you’re not sure which version you have go to the control panel, then System and Security, then System. Under System type it will say either 32-bit or 64-bit. If you have 32-bit run W7DTBAddinSetupX86.msi, if you have 64-bit run W7DTBAddinSetupX64.msi. After installation is complete, restart your computer.

Step 3 : Configure DvrmsToolbox

DTB does a lot more than just skip commercials, so the settings application can be a little daunting. To configure DTB launch DVRMStoMPEGSettings from the DVRMSToolbox group in the Start menu. The first screen, DVRMSToolbox, only has a couple of options, you’ll want to leave the default settings.

• Default Priority – Below Normal
• Preferred Analyzer – Automatic

On the second tab, File Watcher, there are a lot of options, but you only need to verify a few of them.

• Watched Directories – Just ensure that this is where your recorded tv .wtv files are. By default they are stored in C:\Users\Public\Recorded TV. I’ve moved mine to D:\Recordd TV\ so it is modified in my screenshot.
• Watched Ext – Ensure that .wtv is in the list. It should be a default though.
• Video Types – Ensure that this list also contains .wtv
• Process Files Missing Artifacts – If you leave this checked it will automatically begin processing the files you already have recorded. If you have a lot of shows, this could take a VERY LONG time.

On the third tab, MC Addin, you will find the settings for Media Center Add-in. This is the piece that controls how to actually skip past the commercials when you’re watching tv.

• Skip Commercials – If you don’t have this checked, it wont’s skip the commercials
• Handle Keys – I would recommend unchecking this. If you leave it checked then the add-in will cause Media Center to do other things when buttons are pressed on the remote while watching tv. If you’re the only one using the Media Center then feel free to play around with this, but if you have other family members using it also you probably won’t want to give them a 45 minute lecture explaining to them all the things that are different.

There are a lot of other options, but you can just leave them as default, or as I’ve demonstrated in the screenshot.

The fourth tab, Commercial Skip, also has a couple of important settings. All of the settings at the top can be left alone, especially if you unchcked the Handle Keys option on the previous tab.

• Auto Skip – Make sure this is checked. It will then cause it to automatically skip past commercials when they are found
• Suppress Skip Dialog – Check this box. If this is not checked you might see annoying pop-up boxes while watching tv that is still scanning for commercials.
• Suppress Not Found – Leave this unchecked. If you go to watch something that hasn’t been scanned for commercials it will prompt you with a simple Yes or No dialog asking if you would like to begin scanning that show.

The last tab that should be looked at for commercial skipping is the Processing tab.There are only two settings to verify though:

• Delay Processing : FindCommercials
• Detection Profile : Find Commercials in DVR-MS

Conclusion

It may seem like a lot, but in the end it will be worth it. If there’s anything that we’ve missed, or you still have other questions, please leave a comment on the post and we’ll update the post.

FAQ

Q – Can copy-protected recordings be scanned for commercials?

A – No. ShowAnalyzer would need to purchase a PlayReady license from Microsoft to be able to scan copy-protected content. To learn more about copy-protection, check out this article we wrote.

The post How-to Setup Automatic Commercial Skipping in Windows Media Center appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Media Browser

Media Browser parental controls are relatively straight forward.  While there are two methods for achieving what you want.  Here we’ll cover the one that is easiest and allows you to maintain your current library structure if you’re already setup.

Head right on in to your Media Browser Configurator.  You’ll need to click the “Advanced” section in order for the parental control tab to appear:

Click over to your parental control tab.  This is where the magic happens.  Checking the ticbox that enables parental control will open up the other options:

The most important thing here is that you need to have proper metadata attached to your files.  No matter what application you use to get this information, rating info is what is going to be used.  Media Browser looks to the XML file to determine whether or not to apply the parental locks, so you’ll want it to be accurate.  Luckily there’s a check box that allows you to block unrated content so that can come in handy.  Below I’ve highlighted the recommended settings which will allow you as an adult to view all of your content, but should keep your younger family members from accessing the content you don’t want them to:

You’ll notice above that Media Browser also gives you the opportunity to lock entire collections using a rating.  While this is how I initially setup our collection, I decided against it as I was constantly having to enter the PIN every time I wanted to browse through the collection.  It’s much easier to simply set a global rating and allow the application to take it from there.

Below you’ll see how Media Browser changes once parental controls are active.  Each piece of content that is above the set rating (or unrated depending on settings) will show a small “lock” icon on the cover.  With the controls turned on, you’re able to enter the info screen for each item but once you hit play, you’ll be asked for the PIN number before playback will begin:

That’s it!  Setup is a breeze and you now know that little ones won’t be viewing content that you deem inappropriate.  While Media Browser doesn’t have the fine control for TV that Media Center itself does, it’s a more than adequate system that should handle all of your needs.

My Movies

(Note:  I installed My Movies specifically for this article.  As such, the library is not complete and full metadata has not been downloaded.  There is, however, enough data to follow along.)

While My Movies has a different procedure for locking down your more mature content, the concept is basically the same.  Enable controls, set a PIN and pick a rating.  As with Media Browser, you’ll want to ensure you have proper metadata, or at a minimum, give a rating to each piece of content:

After installing My Movies, creating your library and checking your metadata, you’ll want to click the “Tools” menu to access the options screen:

Once there, click “Parental Controls” and turn them on by clicking “Enable Parental Controls”.  Here you’ll be asked to enter a PIN.  Though My Movies doesn’t tell you how many digits to enter, I used four and it worked perfectly.  You’ll also be asked to confirm the PIN:

Once parental controls are enabled and your PIN is entered, you’ll be presented with the settings screen.  As with other applications, you can set rating levels for movies and TV respectively.  You also have the option of including adult titles as well as blocking unrated titles.  Again, this is good in case your metadata isn’t complete:

With your settings applied, you’re done.  Save and exit.

To check things, head into Media Center and find your My Movies tile.  One thing the application does differently is block the viewing of anything that is above your set rating unless you enter your PIN.  While this does provide total protection, I find that this could become an annoyance:

Simply hit that “parental unlock” button up top.  You’ll be asked for you PIN and once entered, you full collection will become visible:

At this point you’re set.  You can now enjoy your movie collection through a great interface without worry that your kids will find something you don’t want them viewing.

Conclusion

You’re certainly not going to pick a catalog application based on parental controls.  That said, I personally like Media Browser’s implementation a bit better.  There are multiple options as to how to handle parental controls and implementing them doesn’t hide your entire collection; it just prevents playback.  That means you don’t have to enter a code just to browse.  While some might like that, it seems cumbersome to me.  That said, while I am a Media Browser fan, the differences shouldn’t take away from My Movies.  The collection manager is superb and the application looks phenomenal in Media Center.  It’s simply a matter of personal preference.

While other factors will decide which media plugin you use, it’s good to know that the developers (and in some cases, the community behind them) have taken parental control into consideration and provided elegant, easy to use solutions for parents interested in keeping nightmares at bay.

The post Locking Your Collection from Prying Eyes (Part 2) appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

While this presents it’s own problems, such as file deletion, the main concern is making sure my seven year old doesn’t decide he should switch to Aliens and entertain himself and his brother for 2 and a half hours.  While this might prepare them for future invasions, it won’t let them sleep for the night and they’ll end up between my wife and I while I fight for six inches of space on the edge of the mattress.  Not something I’m looking forward to and other parents will tell you that yes, it does happen.

That said, let’s get right to it.  If you use native Media Center sections for TV, movies or DVD and Blu-ray playback, everything you need it built right in.

Parental Control in Media Center

The first thing to understand is that these controls only work with native Media Center applications.  Things like My Movies and Media Browser have their own content blocking which we’ll get to in Part 2.  Microsoft has done a great job making sure that everything you need is included.  Whether it’s TV (recorded and live) or movies (from TV or DVD), you’ll be able to lock out the stuff that you don’t want little ones viewing.

Head straight into settings and select “General”.  This is where we’ll find our parental control features:

Select parental controls and you’ll be asked to create a PIN number.  This is what’s going to lock down your settings as well as protect the content:

Once you’ve set your PIN number, you’ll be able to start setting your parental controls.  There are separate sections for TV and DVDs/Movies:

Since different rating systems are used for this content, you’ll have to set each.  Simply choose what level you feel is right for your family:

While DVD and Movie selection is as easy as setting your rating, TV allows for a bit more control.  Using the advance section, you can select the type of content you’ll allow at certain levels.  There’s a large difference between “fantasy violence” and “sexual content”.  The advanced section allows you to fine tune what your family sees when you’re not around.  While I don’t mind my sons watching “Star Wars:  The Clone Wars” which has that fantasy violence, I might not want them watching “The Big Bang Theory” which, while not violent, uses suggestive dialog.  If your content provider has the correct data in the stream, you can set it up so that the TV-14 content is blocked, but will be unlocked if it has a specific type of content that you’re comfortable with:

Once you’ve fine tuned your controls, simply hit save and back out of settings.  You’re done.  Now, any content rated above the level you’ve set will require the PIN to view.

Conclusion

While it’s always possible that your children might figure out what the PIN is and be able to get around it, this isn’t going to be easy and you can rest at ease knowing that you won’t catch little Johnny in the middle of a “Dexter” marathon the next time you walk into the living room.

Keep in mind that while parental controls will lock that HTPC and any connected extenders, you will have to repeat the process on each HTPC in your home if you use multiple systems.

Overall, the built in parental controls in Media Center are easy to find and use.  While they shouldn’t replace proper parenting and actually keeping an eye on your children, they can be a great tool for those of us with kids who are at an age where we want them to be experimenting with technology and using Media Center, but not quite old enough to understand why “The Walking Dead” isn’t something they should be watching.

In Part 2 of this article, we look at parental controls for third-party Media Center plugins and applications, particularly Media Browser and My Movies.

Photo courtesy icanhazcheesburger.com

Screenshots © The DMZ

The post Locking Your Collection from Prying Eyes (Part 1) appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

So here are the steps:

1. Download mkv2vob Mirror: Downlaod from DMZ
2. Install the program and then go to the Configuration Tab and setup defaults, here is what mine looks like:
3. 
4. If your file has a subtitle track you can turn it on by setting these defaults so they get encoded in the video:
5. 
6. Now go ahead to the Add File tab and select the MKV file you wish to convert
7. Go ahead and setup a Destination Directory which is where the file will be put when it is done.
8. Go ahead and hit Add File and it will start converting.
9. You can also add an entire directory as well which is nice.

UPDATE 11/23/10:

After a few comments I have gone back and discussed improvements to the settings that I have posted above. It seems although it is better to set Video Transcoding to “Automatic” and the Output File Extension to “mpg” or “m2ts”. This will drastically increase your processing time as there is no reason to transcode a H.264 to an H.264 video stream:

UPDATE 5/14/2013:
Added a download mirror. Also it is recommended to use .m2ts as the container format.

That is it you are done! Enjoy.

-By James Montemagno from RevoHTPC.com

The post UPDATED – Making MKV files play nice in WMC with mkv2vob. appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

When we moved to northern New York, we started out on Dish Network.  Being a Media Center household, this posed it’s own issues, including IR blasters, STBs, and problems that can arise from using this equipment.  It worked quite well, but once again, we found ourselves not fully utilizing the content we were paying for.  This led us to wanting to cut back even more.  Never mind that our income situation changed drastically.

The next step was standard cable.  70 channels, about 10 of which we actually watched.  After sending that bill in for several months I came to realize that I was spending more money for less content than I had with Dish.  Forget that.

For the last year, we’ve had basic cable.  This includes 12 channels.  Locals plus TBS and one or two others, mainly from Canada.  They’ve been utilized and while it chaps me that I have to pay for locals (due to location) I haven’t had much to complain about at $13 a month.  Well, make that $23 with our Netflix subscription, but I’ll get into that soon.

While I haven’t had any issues with my current setup, I’ve decided that it’s time to turn us into a fully streaming family.  The fact is that while $13 a month isn’t a huge amount of money by any stretch of the imagination,  it’s more than I want to spend considering that we currently record ONE show per day, and this ONE show can be found online with the right software and equipment.  At this point, cable is no longer needed.  What is needed is that right software and equipment.  While this new setup won’t be perfect, it’s going to get the job done and we’ll actually be expanding our content availability.  There’s some up front cost involved but after that you’re all set.  The monthlies will be lower so in the long run, you’re coming out way ahead.  About the only way this won’t work for you is if you’re a sports fan.  If you insist on watching live sports then you’re stuck with cable or satellite.

First, let’s start at the beginning and for this project, everything starts out on the Media Center HTPC.  If you’re running MC in your home then you’re half way there.  The other hardware needed is simply extenders attached to each of your televisions.  We have three and all three sets are powered by Xbox 360 extenders.  Our hardware is already in place so obviously if you’re not an HTPC user, you’ll need to start a ways back.  For the purpose of the rest of this article we’ll assume you’re a Media Center user.

The first piece of software you’ll need is PlayOn.  PlayOn basically runs on your HTPC (or other PCs in your home) and acts as a DLNA server, pushing content to other DLNA devices in your home.  It pulls it’s content from various sources around the web and when properly configured, can get you content from Hulu, Netflix, MLB.tv, and more.  Community plug-ins expand the feature set to where you get almost a full cable subscription out of the software.  These are the three listed on Playon’s own site:

• PlayOn Plugins
• PlayOn Labs
• PlayOn Scripts

Keep in mind that Playon isn’t free.  It’ll run you $39.99 up front and $19.99 per year after that.  This is a new pricing structure and I have to assume that some of this money is going to Hulu and the likes.  I can’t think of any other explanation since Hulu has been very strong on shutting down ways for people to get their content on their TV while PlayOn has maintained the ability.

Now that we have a gateway to the content, we need a way to get it into Media Center.  This isn’t quite so easy.  Trying to get flash and other various types of content to play on a MC extender is like pulling teeth.  It’s painful and more likely than not, the results won’t be pretty.  Playon’s sole purpose is to get this content to your game console and it does a fairly decent job if you want to use the Xbox 360 dashboard to watch this stuff.  The goal in our home is to have it available in Media Center though.  So we need some more software.

Lately I’ve been playing around with TubeCore.  This application pulls the content from PlayOn and makes it available within Media Center, including extenders.  There’s some transcoding involved so believe me, it isn’t perfect.  The software works and seems to do the job.  I do get annoying popups from time to time within Media Center on my extenders though.  These seem to be some weird coding thing as they say “Error-please try again” and “The operation completed successfully” all in the same window.  Figure that out.  The software still works however as you can hit play again after closing the popup and your video should run fine.  Again, the software works, but in my experience so far, it needs some polish for the $8 it’ll run you after the trial.

There are other options out there for you if you’d like to take a look.  One is vmcPlayIt, which basically does the same thing as TubeCore but in a different way.  The transcoding is still there and what it all comes down to is getting the files to play nicely with Media Center on extenders.

Conclusion

While the system I’m using isn’t perfect, so far, so good.  We’ve gone full streaming in our home and we’re not missing any of our favorite shows.  Between Hulu, Netflix, CBS and some of the plugins I run, we actually have access to more content at a lower (monthly) cost.  With PlayOn only being $19.99 a year (since I had already purchased a license the first year was only $4.99) and Netflix at $9 a month, we’re coming out ahead.  That may change if I need to spring for HuluPlus at some point but we’re not there yet.  At that point it’ll be time to re-evaluate of course.

Have you completely dumped cable?  Can you?  It’s hard cutting that cord but once you do it’s rather freeing.  Even if our overall cost ends up being the same, I just like knowing that I’m streaming everything.  If you’ve told cable and satellite where to go, leave a comment and let others know how you’re doing it!

The post Cutting the Cord or How to Live Without Cable appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Either way, there’s a fix available and it worked for me this morning so I thought it would be good to share.  All it takes is the renaming of one file and you should be all set.  Since making the change this morning, I haven’t seen one issue even though Media Center hasn’t replaced it.  Neither myself nor anyone else who has done this will guarantee that you won’t hose your Media Center however.  Working for one doesn’t mean working for all.  You can find a forum thread related to the fix here, but see below for screen shots.

Navigate to ProgramData—>Microsoft—>eHome—>Packages—>MCEClientUX—>dSM.  Within this folder there’s one file:  StartResources.dll:

Make sure that Media Center isn’t running before you do this too.  Simply rename the file to StartResources.old.dll.  That’s it.  Close up your explorer window and head into MC.

That should be it.  Once you’ve made this quick file name change you should be all set to work on getting your menus working to your liking again.  I only had to make a few adjustments to mine.  Depending on what changes you’ve made since your customizations went on walkabout you may need to do more or less playing around to get things back up to snuff.

Hopefully this fix gets you going with your customizations again.  If you’ve found another method or had trouble with this one, be sure and leave a comment for others!

The post Fixing Your Custom Menus appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

While pre-built systems offer you convenience and ease of setup, building your own PC offers a lot of benefits.  First is the fact that you built it.  There’s pride involved there, especially if it’s your first project.  Second is the ability to upgrade more easily.  Most PCs bought from companies like Dell or HP are a bit locked down.  While upgrades are certainly possible, you typically have to go back to the same company and they tend to charge a good bit of money for them.  With a self-built system, you have a choice in where you buy your parts and can shop around for the best price.

The PC I’m building isn’t going to be an HTPC and this guide isn’t specific to HTPCs anyway.  This will become my new podcasting rig as well as a video encoder for my Media Center where I’ll flip MKV to WTV.  Also, I’m working within a relatively strict budget and everything you see listed came in under $400 shipped.  That said, this machine will pretty much handle most HTPC functions and get you rolling with Media Center or another HTPC software quickly and easily.

I decided that for this build the best thing would be to pick up a barebones kit from Tiger Direct.  They offer some great kits at good prices and it seemed my best option.  One good part about doing this is that a company like TD takes the guess work out of knowing what parts work with which motherboard, CPU, RAM, etc.  It saves a bit of time on research before the build.

The kit I chose split the difference between power and price.  It’s not the fastest machine on the planet but the PC itself came in at only $250.  Not bad for what it’ll be used for.

The Case

First is the Power Up Black Corporate ATX Mid-Tower Case with 450-Watt Power Supply.  It seems to be a sturdy case that’ll serve the purpose.  Also, I like the fact that it’s a mid-tower as it allows me to easily add hard drives later on.  Something that can be difficult in smaller Micro ATX cases.  As well, the 450 watt power supply should be more than enough unless I plan on adding multiple video cards or an excessive number of peripherals which I don’t.  If you plan on building a gaming powerhouse or running a ton of drives, be sure and do some math to figure out if an included power supply will fit your needs.  (Or use a calculator like this one.)

The Motherboard

Next up is the motherboard.  This kit shipped with the MSI 785GTM-E45.  The motherboard and processor are the main things I take into consideration when I choose a kit and this one had everything I wanted.

Detailed Specs:

Processor Socket: AMD

Processor Interface: Socket AM2+

Form Factor:  M-ATX

Processors Supported:

• AMD Athlon
• AMD Sempron
• AMD Phenom
• AMD Phenom II
• AMD Athlon II

Additional Technologies:  AMD Cool ‘n’ Quiet

HyperTransport Bus:  2.6GHz

Northbridge:   AMD® 785G and SB710 Chipset

Southbridge:  SB710

Memory Type: DDR2

Maximum Memory Supported: 8 GB

Channels:  8 Channels

Audio Chipset:   Realtek® High-End Audio

LAN Type:  10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet

RAID Support:  Yes

PCI Slots:  2

PCI Express X1 Slots: 1

PCI Express X16 Slots: 1

PS/2 Keyboard Connectors: 1

PS/2 Mouse Connectors: 1

USB Ports:  4

LAN Ports:  1

Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s Headers: 6

DVI Ports: 1

HDMI Ports: 1

Length: 24.4cm

Width:  22.9cm

While the board is lacking in things such as the number of USB ports, it’s going to fill my needs perfectly.  Supporting up to 8GB of RAM means it may be worth it at some point to move to a 64-bit OS though for now I’ll be sticking with x86.  The inclusion of the ATI HD Radeon 4200 video chipset means that you should be able to push full 1080p video out of that HDMI port if you’d want to.  The 4200 also supports Hybrid CrossfireX which means if you add another compatible video card, you’ll get to take advantage of both chips.

While I’m happy that this kit came with a larger case, I’m also happy that it includes this smaller Micro ATX board if only because should I ever decide to shrink it down to a slimline or smaller HPTC case, that option will be available.  Get a detailed look below:

The Processor

I’m not a chiphead.  Knowing that processor X is better than processor Y and why isn’t something I’ve ever been able to memorize or even completely understand.  What I do know is that my current setup is a Celeron powered laptop and it’s a dog.  That said, I knew I wanted to jump to a dual core and that I wanted better than average speed.  Doing this within a tight budget isn’t easy but I think this’ll do.

The AMD Athlon 64 X2 7550 processor runs at 2.50GHz, has a 3MB cache and an 1800MHz front side bus.  It fits in a socket AM2+  and is dual core.  This should provide more than enough power for what I want to do.  As well, the motherboard with the kit supports faster processors so I can upgrade easily in the future.

The Memory

The barebones kit I picked up from TD only shipped with 2GB and for now, it’ll work.  At some point (hopefully soon) I’m going to jump up to 4GB which is more than enough for this application.  Anything more than that and you’re going to want to move to a 64-bit OS to take advantage of it.  No matter what you’re purposing the system for however, I do recommend 4GB minimum.  Again, I’m running low now but I intend to correct that as quickly as possible.

The Hard Drive

This is always and will always be up for debate.  If we’re talking about workstation PC in a small business then you shouldn’t need anything more than 250GB.  HTPC?  Yeah, the sky’s the limit.  Seriously, don’t stop until you run out of money because as you get into it you’ll probably find yourself needing more and more.  For me, the 500GB Western Digital that shipped with the kit is plenty.  I’ve got room for recording hours worth of podcasts, room for creating screencasts and even after that, I’ll have plenty left over.  Depending on your usage, you may need more or less.  Dollar for dollar, I’d be remiss if I didn’t recommend the Western Digital drives.  I have yet to have one fail on me and the ones in my HTPC have been running basically non-stop for over 2 years now.

Many people won’t think much about the hard drive in their system until they need more space or one crashes on them.  Right at the beginning is when you should be considering it though.  As I stated above, the case wit this particular kit is nice and roomy.  That means that should I decide to repurpose in the future, I have lots of room for drives.  Same thing comes when thinking about your motherboard.  How many SATA headers are you going to need?  It all ties together.

The DVD Burner/Blu-ray Drive

Buying a barebones and sticking to a tighter budget does have it’s downside.  This is one of those cases.  The kit I bought shipped with the LG GH22NS40B DVD Writer.  This again, was a compromise but one I’m willing to make at this time.  It’s a cheap little gadget at only $19.99 but so far it’s relatively quite and with as little as I’ll be using it, a fair deal.  It was important that I have some form of optical media drive that would allow me to burn data and music disks.  Eventually, Blu-ray is in the cards but that’ll come after a RAM upgrade.  If you’re seriously into burning and/or ripping disks though, just save yourself some upgrade time and bang one in there right from the start.

The Conclusion

Will this particular kit give you a top end gaming rig?  Nope.  Is it going to give you a very capable HTPC and general purpose computer?  You bet.  The additional cost I incurred during this build was tied up in a new monitor as well as a CPU fan and thermal paste.  Without the cost of the monitor I would have come in under $300 and would have another TV in my home running a dedicated Media Center.  The build is complete and so far I’m quite happy.  It’s doing everything I need it to do including podcasting, video conversions, Photoshop and myriad other tasks.

Up next is the putting together part of this little tutorial.  That’ll come in a few days.  Unfortunately due to time constraints and needing to be doing four things at once, I didn’t get a chance to take pictures.  Once this PCs tasks are done for the week however, I’ll get it cracked open and show where things go.  Until then, find the rig that’s right for you and get ready to slap it together!

The post PC Building 101: Part 1- The Parts appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

While Windows Media Center provides access to broadcast, local and internet content, sometimes it’s just not enough.  Some people, like myself, want more.  Conversely, we also want less.  Less scrolling and less clutter within our menu structure.

How to get more content?  That’s easy with the use of Boxee, Hulu Desktop and the great integration scripts provided by Teknowebworks.  With the Boxee and Hulu Desktop integration they provide, it’s easy to jump from one application to another without ever getting up from the couch.  The only issue is that it makes your main menu that much longer.  While adding two entry points and having to jump around more might not seem like that big of a deal, it can be enough to get annoying.  Especially when there are other things you don’t use within that same interface.  Why keep a “Sports” or “Movie” strip you’ll never use?

That’s where Media Center Studio comes in.  This handy application allows you to completely customize your Media Center experience.  From changing backgrounds to adding and removing entry points, this is what you need if you want to tweak your interface to your liking.  You’ll see in the screencast below how I quickly add, remove and consolidate menu items to make a much cleaner and easier to navigate experience.

Media Center Studio has a bit of learning to it but once you see how to use it, things move quickly.  Making menu changes becomes quick and easy.  Don’t have a TV tuner and just use Media Center for viewing your locally stored content?  One checkbox and that TV strip is gone.  Enjoy gaming on your HTPC but tire of having to get up to grab a mouse and keyboard just to switch applications?   Just drop in an entry point, name it as you see fit and you’re done.  There’s very little that Media Center Studio won’t allow you to do.

I hope you find the screencast below helpful.  Feel free to contact us here at The DMZ if you have more questions or if something doesn’t seem to be working for you!

The post Customizing Media Center appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Couple things to lead off with: First, this is not the only method, just the one that worked for me. Second, it’s not perfect, but I haven’t found anything yet that is, and this method produced the best results for me. Finally, I’ll be linking to some other sites where you’ll have to follow some other paths as well. Let me set the bar here, we do not condone doing this for discs that you do not own.

It looks like a lot to start out with, and honestly, the initial setup does take some time and is probably not for the novice computer user. If you have a secondary PC that you don’t use as much, it’s probably best to set this up on that machine so you can set it and forget it, and also not interrupt your main PC.

Tools:

• MakeMKV
• Media Browser
• Meta Browser
• Media Info (note there are 32 and 64-bit versions)
• DVRMS Toolbox
• ToDVRMS (1.0.0.9 and 1.0.1.0)
• Handbrake (optional for VC-1 Blu-rays)
• Edit DVR-MS Metadata (optional if you don’t want to use MediaBrowser)
• AntiPack
• Haali Matroska (MKV) Splitter (I purposely didn’t link to these last two, you’ll see why later)

What worked for me, DVD:

I’ve been able to rip DVDs to MKV (using MakeMKV) and convert them to WTV (using a couple of the other tools) and get them into Media Center using MediaBrowser and MetaBrowser.

Important notes, DVD:

DTS soundtracks are rumored to not work without changing the audio into AC-3. Ben Drawbaugh has laid out steps for this process. I have not attempted this conversion.

What worked for me, Blu-ray:

Same as above, with the catch that ONLY ToDVRMS version 1.0.1.0 worked with Blu-rays.

Important notes, Blu-ray:

The same issue exists with DTS soundtracks. Also, discs that use VC-1 for video require an additional conversion into h.264. Basically, any Blu-ray with Dolby Digital audio and AVC video should work direct from MakeMKV to ToDVRMS.

Starting out

Read this post by Adam Thursby right here on the Digital Media Zone. In it, he links to a post by Andy Van Til that lays out the proper method for installing the AntiPack and the Haali Matroska Splitter. I followed Andy’s methods very closely, be sure you do as well. Andy lays out two optional downloads in his post, it’s worth noting I installed both optional items. Even if you don’t want to install GraphStudio, MediaInfo is a very handy tool to have.

NOTE: The methods I lay out below WILL NOT WORK if you don’t follow the steps outlined in Andy’s blog, and if you don’t get familiar with the methods by reading Adam’s post. It’s also worth noting I had no problems with copyright issues, though I do have DVD Decrypter installed. I would try it without installing a decrypter program first. MakeMKV claims it handles the decryption.

Simple DVD > MKV > WTV rip (no DTS audio)

This is the simplest process of them all. In my case, I tried several discs including: The X-Files Season 1, Chicago (using the Dolby track), Finding Nemo, and The Bourne Ultimatum (HD DVD/DVD flipper disc). I was able to get all 24 episodes of The X-Files and all four movies successfully transferred, though I did have to re-do the final MKV-WTV step of Finding Nemo and a couple X-Files episodes as they wouldn’t play in MediaBrowser (Nemo buffered without ever playing, the X-Files episodes showed a error in MediaBrowser about going full screen).

1. With your disc in the drive, open MakeMKV. It’s a very simple interface, to start, click the only button on the main screen (graphic of a DVD to a hard drive).

2. After the disc is scanned you’ll see this screen:

Here is where you select what titles you want MakeMKV to convert. In this shot, I’ve selected only the main movie, and you’ll also notice you can deselect unnecessary subtitle and audio tracks as well. Once you choose the output folder, click the “Make MKV” button and that’s it. Time for completion can vary based on your computer and the disc, though most of mine took less than 30 minutes.

3. Once your MKV files is created, it’s time to open ToDVRMS. Important note, I used version 1.0.0.9 for most of my DVD conversions, though I did have success with version 1.0.1.0 for DVD as well. Version 1.0.1.3, which is the current latest version, did not work for me at all. If you want to download just 1.0.1.0 first and try that, it’s worth trying. Just note that there’s no way to know what version you have once you download it, so name the unzipped ToDVMS folder accordingly. Open todvrmsgui.exe, you’ll get this screen:

4. Double-click in the “In File” field to choose your MKV. You’ll have to change the view to “All Files” to see the MKV.

5. Double-click the  “out dvr-ms” field to choose the output path.

6. Be sure, as shown above, to select “WTV” and “Verbose” before hitting “Go” (I’ve been told “Verbose” isn’t required, but I had it checked in all my conversions). A blank DOS window will open while the conversion happens and will stay blank the whole time. When it closes, the conversion to WTV is done. See “What to Do with the WTV file” at the bottom for next steps.

Simple Blu-ray > MKV > WTV rip (no DTS or VC-1)

Assuming you have a Blu-ray drive, this process is nearly identical to the above DVD rip process. I’ll simplify the instructions, if you have questions refer to the more detailed steps above.

1. Open MakeMKV. Select the title and audio/subtitles you want.

2. Make the MKV.

3. Open ToDVRMS version 1.0.1.0 (NOTE: Blu-ray rips require 1.0.1.0, several attempts with 1.0.0.9 were unsuccessful). Select your MKV in the “in file” and set the output path in the “out dvr-ms” field. Be sure to check “WTV” and “Verbose”. Click “Go”.

4. See “What to Do with the WTV file” at the bottom for next steps.

Blu-ray > MKV > WTV rip (no DTS, with VC-1 video)

VC-1 video complicates the process for Blu-rays. If you’re not sure what format your Blu-ray is, look it up at www.blu-ray.com, it gives all the audio and video information. The first steps are the same.

1. Using MakeMKV, select your audio/subtitle options and make the MKV as described in the steps for a simple Blu-ray rip above. Before proceeding to the WTV conversion, you must change the video to h.264 using Handbrake.

2. Open Handbrake. Select the MKV file as your source. Choose your destination path, and select “MKV” as the container under the “Output settings”.

3. In Handbrake, select the “Video” tab. Choose h.264 as the video codec.

4. In Handbrake, select the “Audio” tab. Click on the track that’s listed in the main window, and choose “AC-3 passthru” as the audio codec. The screenshot below has the output settings area and video and audio tabs highlighted.

5. In Handbrake, click “Start”. Note that this process will take a LONG time. We’re talking up to a day depending on how big the MKV file is. On my laptop, I was able to get through half of a conversion for a fairly low bit-rate Blu-ray in about 8 hours. Be prepared to wait.

6. Once Handbrake has done it’s thing, open the file in MediaInfo to be sure that your audio remains AC-3 and the video no longer says VC-1. Note you can open a file in MediaInfo by right-clicking the video file and choosing “MediaInfo”.

7. From here, you have a MKV file that will work with steps three and four in the above process for a simple Blu-ray rip. Be sure to use ToDVRMS version 1.0.1.0.

What to do with the WTV file

At this point you have a WTV file that will play in Media Center. Techincally, you could name the file and stop here. However, when you go into Media Center, all that will show up is the filename, no description or any other metadata will come with it. You now have a few choices:

1. Stop, use only the filename to organize your rips, put them in your Recorded TV or Movies folder that Media Center looks at and move on.

OR

2. Use the Edit DVR-MS metadata tool from the list at the top of the article to add basic metadata that Media Center will recognize. This tool is very basic and takes some getting used to to understand how it works. Best bet is to open an existing recorded TV file that has metadata alongside the newly created WTV file so you can see how the fields work. You can open more than one instance of this program at the same time.

OR

3. Use MetaBrowser to fetch the data for the show or movie. Hacking Windows 7 Media Center has a great write-up for this. It’s titled TV show data, but the same pattern applies for movies. If you use this method, you’ll need to install and configure MediaBrowser to be able to see the metadata you download. Media Center’s standard Recorded TV and Movies areas will not read the metadata provided by MetaBrowser. Here is a great quick start guide to MediaBrowser. Hacking Windows 7 Media Center has several handy MediaBrowser articles. I went this route. If you plan to use MediaBrowser on an extender, be sure to go into the advanced settings/extender tab and uncheck the “Transcode 360” option and add .wtv to the list of files to watch. One other thing I plan to do is to put my rips into folders separate from those that Media Center looks to for Recorded TV and Movies. This will help me keep the two types of files organized. Of course this step is completely optional.

A couple tips for you in MediaBrowser. My folder structure for The X-Files is:

The X-Files/Season 01/The X-Files – s01e01 – Espisode 01.wtv. Note the filename will change for each season and episode. This is important for MediaBrowser and MetaBrowser to find the proper information. Season two would be The X-Files/Season 02/The X-Files – s02e01 – Episode 01.wtv and so on.

For movies, I went this route:

Movies/Finding Nemo/Finding Nemo.wtv.

There you have it. It’s a bit long, but this has been the route that for me has provided the best results. Feel free to ask me questions @lozenp on Twitter or in the comments below. I’ll try to help as much as I can.

[tags]blu-ray, media center, dvd, ripping, mkv[/tags]

The post DVD and Blu-ray to Media Center – One man’s journey appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Some times you just want to keep things simple or gasp keep it “Apple” like. That is the case with this nice little gem of a find. A user over at Life Hacker found out that with a simple registry edit you can use alternative IR remote controls within Media Center and even Windows Media Player.

A while back I documented on how you can have two media center PC’s in the same room by editing the IR registry settings on one of the Media Center PC’s so that you could control both Media Center PC’s at the same time without having conflicting IR issues.

Taking the same IR registry edit concept you can edit your Media Center PC registry and set it so that your PC will respond to any Microsoft IR device, whether that be a Zune IR remote, or an Xbox 360 media remote.

There are several versions of the Zune IR remote, both types are pictured here. So by simply performing the registry edit you can now have virtually any IR remote in the Microsoft family of remotes controlling your Media Center PC.

So if you want just a simple remote, directional pad, play/pause/skip pretty much any of the basic functionality this just might be what you are looking for.

Via Life Hacker & eHome Upgrade

[tags] Media Center, Remote, HTPC, 7MC, Xbox, Zune[/tags]

The post Remote Simplicity: Using a Zune Remote in Media Center appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Simply register for an account over at http://health.thedigitallifestyle.com, download the software, and you’ll be tracking the status of your Media Center to your heart’s content. The main screen will give you a list of all of the recent activity on your Media Center including recordings that were both successful and unsuccessful, deleted shows, internet connection drop-outs, and updates on the Recording Service. Just having that information within the application is nice, but where Media Center Health Monitor really shines is in all the other ways you can get this data. All of the data that is in the grid is also sent to the product’s webpage, so you can login to that website from anywhere in the world and see the recent activity on your Media Center. You can also set it up to send you emails when there are recording, or recording service problems. The feature that I like the most though is the Twitter integration. Simply plug in your Twitter username and password and it will also send updates to your Twitter account. I would highly recommend creating a separate Twitter account for this activity though so as not to bother your friends and family with information that they don’t care about. I go all-out with the Twitter integration. Within Twitter you can set it to text message you the tweets of individuals that you follow. So now, whenever a show is recorded, deleted, or fails to record I get a text message on my cell phone to let me know.

Maybe I’m a little too obsessive about my Windows Media Center, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. So if you would like to keep a close watch on what your Media Center is doing, head on over to the The Digital Lifestyle and pick up Media Center Health Monitor for free!

Media Center Health Monitor Image Gallery

The post How To: Keep a Close Eye on Your Media Center appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Streaming

Let’s first discuss remote streaming.  This app is one I’ve talked about before but I’m rediscovering just how easy it is to use.  I’m talking about Orb.  These guys have been around for a good bit of time now and it seems to just be getting better.  You’ve been able to stream content to other net connected PCs for quite some time and now they’ve developed their own iPhone app which allows you to do the same.  With Orb, unless you’re not going to be connected to the internet, there’s very little need to actually sync your music or video to your device.  The app (along with the PC installed server) grants access to your entire media library from anywhere in the world.  Music plays perfectly.  You can even look at pictures and documents.  With the former, you can download them to your iPod or iPhone and use them as wallpaper, send them to people, etc.  I use Orb mainly for video streaming.  In this area you get about what you’d expect.  Standard Def TV shows and movies stream relatively well.  Very little buffering and they start quickly.  HD MKVs are a bit of a different story.  For the most part I’ve found this has everything to do with your connection.  (I’m using a Touch so no 3G testing for me)  Most of the time, they run just fine but I have had a few which either had to buffer constantly or had audio sync issues.  Kills the experience a bit but if you have a persistent connection, it’s the easiest way to get your DVR-MS or WTV files on a portable device.

Orb will also allow you to stream live TV to your portable device but the tuner needed is pretty specific.  I have yet to have any success even with MPEG2 hardware encoding tuners, which they say should work.

Remote Control

When I wrote the article about buying a Touch, I had only tried one Media Center remote control solution.  I have two separate apps that will let me control my HTPC from the device now and while they’re both remote control programs and operate in similar ways, each has features I like.

Remotely Possible

The first app I tried was Remotely Possible.  Created by ValidBit, this app will provide you with a simple but effective remote control solution for your HTPC running Windows Media Center.  Like most, if not all, of the remote control solutions available, Remotely Possible requires you to install a server (Free) on your PC and then to purchase the app from the Apple App Store.  The program will run you $2.99.  It’s also fully customizable and has the ability to control other applications on your HTPC such as Hulu Desktop or Boxee.

Remotely Possible is a simple, clean, and efficient remote control solution.  Setup isn’t too difficult and the creator has provided everything you need right on the site.  The walkthrough on getting everything working is straight forward and from then on, as long as Media Center is running, you can use your phone or device to control menus, volume and transport.  The app works well and is extremely responsive over wi-fi.   The app and server will give you good control from within your network for skipping music tracks and changing volume as well as sitting on the couch controlling whatever video content you’re watching.

vmcMote

After using Remotely Possible for awhile I came to the conclusion that what I really wanted was an app that would provide me with some sort of two-way communication.  Being able to remote control my HTPC from anywhere in the house was great, but I wanted to be able to do so without having to run back to the living room every time I wanted to change songs or perform some other task.  Since we have two-zone audio in our home we had to be able to see what Media Center was doing and if possible, make changes to what was playing.

That’s when I found vmcMote.  Much like Remotely Possible, you get full remote control capabilities and then some.  Really, you have to look at the screenshots I’ve included to appreciate everything this application can do.  As a remote control, it’s on par, and in some ways better than Remotely Possible.  I do like the fact that the remote control portion of the application is all on one screen so I don’t have to move back and forth and try to remember where each button is.

My favorite part about vmcMote.is the two-way communication.  Using the iPod Touch/iPhone you can view coverart, browse your music collection, select artists, albums or songs to add to the queue as well as build complete playlists.  All without going back to the room where your HTPC is connected to a display.  This would allow me to sit outside during the summer and have full access to our music collection.

While the vmcMote server is free, it will run you a bit more in the app store, $7.99.  The good part is that there is “Lite” version which you can try out for free.  It is a bit feature limited but it will let you get a sense of whether the application is right for your needs.

Conclusion

When it comes to streaming, Orb is really the way to go at this point.  While it’s not perfect, it’s as close as we’re going to get until someone thinks of a better option.  It allows you to basically take all of your content with you no matter what size device you have.  With a persistent connection, you’re all set.

With remote controlling your HTPC you have a lot of options and I’ve only used two of them so far.  While you’ll typically pay for the application, it’s well worth the cost if you want to be able to control your content from somewhere beside the couch.

The post Streaming and remote control of Media Center with iPod/iPhone appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Media Center MVP Pete Stagman, who runs the NEDMUG site, has just provided the same service for Blu-rays.  The process is a bit more involved than DVDs but Pete takes you through the whole process from start to finish.  Head over and take a read if you’re ready to get started!

Neither Pete nor Josh have the only method of ripping content but these are both tried and true methods that will allow you to view your content the way you want, not the way the providers want you to.  How do you rip content to your Media Center?  Share with us in the comments or email us if you’d like to write up your own how-to and publish it here on The DMZ!

The post Ripping Blu-ray movies to a HDD appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Pros and Cons to this Approach

Pros:

• 5.1 surround sound fully supported.
• Fast forward and rewind work.
• Videos play on the Media Center PC and on Media Center Extenders.
• All of the software involved is free.

Cons:

• No menus or extras. Only the main video file is ripped.
• No compression is used, so files are usually between four and six gigabytes.

Step 1: Rip the DVD

I’m not going to go into great detail on ripping the DVD as there are numerous articles out there on how to rip a DVD. The main thing is that you want to have a single VOB file of the main movie. I have primarily used DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink. If using DVD Shrink I would avoid using compression. I haven’t actually tried compressing the VOB using DVD Shrink, but the paranoid part of me thinks it could cause problems with the conversions later.

Step 2: Convert the VOB to MPEG

Once you have created your single VOB file, which should be a few gigabytes if it’s a normal length movie, the next step is to convert it to an MPEG file. This conversion doesn’t take long, because you’re really only swapping the container. To do this you’re going to need to download a couple of things. First off you will need DVRMSToolbox (DTB.) Of course if you’ve been doing anything with your Windows Media Center at all, you already have this, right? If not, head over to Andy Van Til’s site to get it. You’ll also need to download a new DTB profile called Convert VOB to mpeg – ffmpeg. You can get his from Ben Drawbaugh’s website. Follow his instructions for copying the profile file to the correct place, and replacing the ffmpeg configuration file.

Once you have DTB setup you simply need to run the new profile against the VOB you just created. If your DVD ripping software created multiple VOB files just select the largest file for this step. After a few minutes you will have a MPEG file of the movie.

Step 3: Convert the MPEG to a Dvr-MS File

This last step is easier than step two, but you still need to download more freeware to complete it. Head back over to Andy Van Til’s site to download ToDVRMS . After unzipping it, run todvrmsgui.exe. Double-click the in file box and select the mpeg file you just created. Type the final location of your DVRMS file in the “out dvr-ms” box. Fill in the movie’s title in the next box. You can leave the rest of the boxes empty, but you should check: WM/MediaIsMovie. Then click the “go” button. A few minutes later you will have a complete dvr-ms file of your movie!

Conclusion

The results speak for themselves, but it is a little labor intensive. Anyone who is familiar with the process of creating profiles for DVRMSToolbox could probably follow these steps and create a single profile for DTB to do it all in one step, but I just haven’t gotten to that level of mastery yet.

The post Ripping Your DVDs to DVR-MS appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Now you damn near need a Ph.D. to understand what’s going on behind the scenes.  I highly doubt there’s anyone out there who knows everything and if they tell you they do, they’re lying.  Nope.  The only way to attack a field this size is through community.

That’s where HT Bananas comes in.  Based on the popular Stack Overflow application, HTB  is dedicated to getting your questions answered by people who have experience.  Since that may not always be the same person, HTB is based on the community answering questions and then either voting them up of down, depending on whether or not people agree with them.

This isn’t your typical discussion forum.  Most questions have definitive answers, not opinions and so you don’t find the bickering and flame wars that you find in community forums.  That doesn’t mean their aren’t multiple answers to the same question and that’s where the voting comes in.  You’re not just getting one persons thoughts but that of several people with some experience.

The best part of the entire setup has to be the tagging system.  When you submit your question you can tag it anyway you like.  This allows people to easily find answers to questions that may have already been asked.  Anything can be a tag so for example, if you want to know the difference between 720p and 1080p HD video, you might add “720p”,”1080p”, “HD”, “resolution” and several others making the question, and hence the answers, easy for others to find.

Head over to HTBananas when you have a chance.  Join a growing home theater and HTPC community and help out your fellow users!

Full disclosure:  Both Josh Pollard and Adam Thursby are administrators for HTBananas.

The post Get your home theater and HTPC questions answered at HTBananas appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

   If you want more than just your local channels in HD within Media Center, you either have to have a generous cable company which doesn’t encrypt their QAM channels, get an ATI CableCard tuner or wait for Ceton’s M-card tuner.  There are other ways but until David took time to write up a tutorial over at Geektonic, these things seemed a little complicated.

Well, this latest guest post has you covered.  David takes time to walk you through the entire process of getting the Hauppauge HDPVR working within Media Center using DVBLink.  With screenshots galore and step-by-step instructions, you should have no trouble getting HD satellite or cable channels into Media Center.  Take a look at the sample below:

Here are the steps I used to obtain DirecTV HD using Windows 7 MCE, but you should be able to use any Set Top Box.  The Hauppauge HDPVR will record from your set top box to an h.264 wtv file.  At the moment the Xbox 360 is the only MCE extender that can play video produced by the HDPVR.  Most of the instructions taken from the 1geek1tool wiki.

Install Windows 7

I did a clean install of Windows 7 Business.  I ran Windows Update and installed all the Important updates.

Install the latest drivers for your graphics card

Windows Update didn’t give me the latest drivers for my ATI HD 2600 XT.  Having a card that has a hardware h.264 decoder is recommended if you plan on using your HTPC to connect to your TV to cut down on CPU usage.  If you plan on using the Xbox 360 as your extender then the h.264 decoder is not needed.

If you want to read the rest, head over to Geektonic and get all the info.  Some of us are willing to wait for Ceton in 2010, but if you’re not one of those people or you have satellite service, this guide should be right up your alley.

The post Windows Media Center and DVBLink with HDPVR tutorial appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

One of the issues you come across with this method however is access to non-Media Center functions.  We all know that you can use RDP or Microsoft Live Mesh to remote into your HTPC to perform these tasks but the problem we run into is that it kicks the Media Center session that someone may be running at the time.

Missing Remote, with help from a larger community, has come up with a solution to the issue.  Just like in Windows Vista, it’s possible to enable concurrent Remote Desktop sessions in Windows 7.  This allows you to RDP into your HTPC as one user, while the main user is able to continue using Media Center or any other application they may be running.

While it’s probably a complicated process to do yourself, fellow Media Center MVP, Mike Garcen, has been able to work with the Media Center community to put together a batch file that when run will automatically turn on concurrent sessions.

When I ran the script earlier this morning, everything went off without a hitch.  I ran it through an RDP session and while it of course kicked me due to having to shut down the RDP service, the script continued to run on it’s own and after about 30 seconds I logged back in and had no troubles.  Once everything was done, I turned on my home theater, brought up Media Center on the HTPC then went back to my laptop.  I logged into the RDP session using a different user account and that was it.  I was using the remote desktop on my laptop all while Media Center continued to chug along on the TV.  Perfection.  Now I can go in and edit metadata, move files if needed, basically anything I need.

Head over to the post at Missing Remote to grab the batch file and get started!

The post Enabling Concurrent RDP sessions in Windows 7 appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Even with Netflix and Internet TV, some users might not feel that the experience is complete.  First we’ll talk about adding applications that can be used on your HTPC.  Unfortunately, neither are going to work on extenders but we’ll get to those in a minute.

First up is Hulu Desktop.  Desktop was released by Hulu not long ago to allow Hulu users to use a remote control to navigate Hulu on the PC.  That’s all well and good but if you wanted to jump from Media Center to Hulu Desktop?  It could be a mouse and keyboard issue.  Not exactly the best method when your HTPC is in the living room.

Luckily Teknowebworks has developed “Hulu Desktop Integration 1.0”, which will add a tile to your Media Center menu and create a file that will automatically close Media Center and open Hulu Desktop.  When you’re finished with Hulu Desktop and you exit, Media Center is automatically reopened and you’re ready to go.  I’ve been using the plugin for a few days and so far, it’s working without a problem.  The apps switch back and forth easily.  In fact, due to issues I’m having with my Nvidia video card, this actually works better than the Netflix integration.  Once you’ve initially used your keyboard to log into your Hulu account (optional) you have full access to your queue.  You also of course have full access to all of the other content available on Hulu.

Next up is Boxee.  The company just recently released the Windows version of their software and while it’s still in beta, it seems to work relatively well.  While I wouldn’t say there’s a whole lot of content available, what is there is of reasonable quality.  Parts of Boxee can be redundant however as access to local content can be handled through Media Center.  It will however provide more content and that can be a good thing.  To get this working with Media Center, we have to head over to Missing Remote and an article posted by Mike Garcen.  Mike worked with Andrew Cherry and developed an application that will basically do for Boxee what Hulu Desktop Integration 1.0 does for Hulu.  After getting Boxee installed, you’ll follow the instructions in the article.  At this point you should have a Boxee tile located in your “Extras” menu in Media Center.  That’s it.  Everything should flow now, somewhat.  After using this for awhile, I’m finding that my issues are with the Boxee app more than anything else.  At times it doesn’t want to close properly, can hang, etc.  As well, on several occasions it has changed Windows to the basic color scheme.  Not a huge deal except that you can see the taskbar at the bottom of the screen.  Kinda breaks the 10ft interface if you know what I mean.  Other than that, we now have access to two more content providers.

So far, we’ve talked about two applications that will only function natively on your HTPC.  Forget about getting either of these applications to run on your extenders.  You’re basically using PC applications and just adding a quick way to move between them from Media Center.  So what do we do if we want this access on our extenders?

The two options we have here in the US both involve first installing an application called PlayOn.  PlayOn is basically a server that resides on a PC in your home that will pull content from the web and serve it to DLNA compliant devices in your home.  It’s a good way to get web video on your PS3, Xbox 360 dashboard, etc.  It’ll run you $40 but if you really want to watch web content on your TV, it can be worth it.  The problem is that it doesn’t work with Media Center.  That’s where our two applications come in.  They both do approximately the same thing but in different ways.

First up is vmcPlayIt.  vmcPlayIt allows you to use the PlayOn media server to pull in content from all over the web through both official and unofficial plugins.  Since the application has the ability to transcode the video, it makes this content available through the Media Center interface on extenders.  I haven’t used vmcPlayIt in awhile so I can’t comment on how well it works.  I know that when I did use it there were some issues.  I would at times get video errors, lockups of Media Center and other issues.  The developer of the app was very interested in making everything come together and work well and hopefully at this point it’s working better.

The other application that will let you pump this content to your extenders is tubeCore.  tubeCore is developed by Carver Lab Corporation.  They’ve put together an application which again, will allow you to push PlayOn content to your Media Center extenders.  How this app differs from vmcPlayIt, I’m not sure but it will cost you $19.99 for now and has a regular price of $39.99.  That doubles the price from PlayOn and brings you to a total of $80 to watch what is right now free content on the web.  It may be worth however and again, as I haven’t used the application I won’t judge or review here.

As you can see, depending on your MCE setup, it is possible to get some great internet content into Media Center and add to what Microsoft is now providing.  If Netflix and Internet TV aren’t enough for you, you can easily add some things that will expand your content viewing options.  Let us know in the comments if you have any problems with these applications.  And don’t forget, if you really enjoy the free ones, be sure and donate to the developer.  Free is nice but updates and support are nicer.

The post Using Internet Content With Media Center appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Luckily, if you are looking for a free alternative solution to some of the bigger softwares out there, the Telematics Freedom Foundation’s “Freedom Box Project,” has put together a white paper comparing Boxee, Elisa, Entertainer, Freevo, MediaPortal, My Media System, MythTV, Neuros OSD, Plex, and XBMC.  There are also comparisons for all in one solutions such as Mythbuntu.  The paper is available in PDF format for download. For more information as well as links to download the whitepaper, please visit DeviceGuru.

Take a look at the video put together by the foundation:

The post HTPC Research Help appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

The first thing we need to do is to open Windows Media Player.  This is what you’ll use to set up sharing on your home system as well as where you’ll watch the content on your remote PC.  Once you have WMP open, you’ll see near the top on the left side a “Stream” drop down menu:

You can see right at the top, the option we’re looking for is to “Allow Internet access to my home media…”.  This is where we’ll make everything happen.  Next you’ll be required to download and install a plugin.  This is a straight forward process by where you’ll be taken to a Microsoft site, download and run the installer and then get right back into WPM to finish the process.  At this point we’re presented with the next screen.  Linking with an online ID is required.  At this point, the only online ID you can use is your Windows Live ID:

With the Windows Live ID plugin installed, the next screen is where we’ll enter and verify our credentials:

Simply click the “Link online ID” link shown above.  I point it out because you can’t just click within the highlighted area.  Something I’ll sit and do repeatedly and then wonder why nothing is happening…

Next up it’s a simple matter of entering your credentials.  The plugin will then verify said credentials and you’ll be off to the races.

At this point, you have to be sure that you go back to WMP and actually allow access to your media.  It seems like a simple thing but if you have a bunch of other windows open you might not realize there’s one more dialog still open in WMP.

Once you click this, you’re presented with the last dialog and you should be all set.   Something you should notice is that allowing access to your home media will prevent your computer from sleeping.  I’m not sure why MS has done this as if the PC is sleeping, well it’s sleeping.  Access should be cut off.  Those of us out there who are power conscious shouldn’t have to choose between access and saving the planet.  While this fact won’t stop me from using the internet sharing, it is something to keep in mind.

You’ll want to notice the note at the bottom of this screen.  Access has to be granted on both PCs, the one you want to stream from and the ones you want to stream to.  This means that if you have family members that have their own netbooks, laptops or what have you, you’ll have to go through this several times to get everyone setup.  It would be nice if it were easier than that but once the setup is complete, everything should work like a champ.  Everything basically works the same as when you’re at home access your remote library but now will be a bit slower. This of course is affected by your local connection speed, etc.  I’ve had good experiences so far though.  Music is easy and most video makes it down with little trouble.  You do lose resolution and bitrate so don’t expect a home theater experience from your net connection in your hotel.

The post Setup Internet Media Sharing in Windows 7 appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Once we get through the weekly stuff, it’s on to this week’s topic:  ripping and encoding DVDs.  You’ll find links for all of the software we discuss down below in the show notes.  Much like everything else with HTPCs and Media Center, there’s no one way to do things and certainly no single right way.  We try and give you all the info you need to get your collection viewable on your Media Center machine and your extenders.

Thanks again to everyone for writing in and calling.  We wouldn’t have a show without you.

Show Notes:

• Voicemail
• Comments and Emails
• Windows 7 In Touch Forums
• New Media Browser Community Site
• DVD Shrink
• DVD Decrypter (Sorry, you’ll have to Google this one yourself
• Make MKV (Same here!)
• VideoRedo
• DVR-MS Toolbox
• DMZ Terms and Policies

Click here to download Episode 49!

Be sure to follow The Digital Media Zone on Twitter!  You can also follow Josh and Adam individually.  If you have something to share just go ahead and make use of that contact form or leave a comment for us here and don’t forget, you can be a part of the show by calling 1-877-856-4933 and leaving us a message!

As always, Entertainment 2.0 is sponsored by Dragon Global’s Show Analyzer.  The only commercial skipping software available for Windows 7 and WTV files.  Thanks for their support!

	Entertainment 2.0 Subscriptions

The post Entertainment 2.0-Episode 49: Rippin’ It Up! appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Enjoy!

On a side note, what screencasts would you like to see?  Is there a Media Center task you’re unsure of how to do?  Let us know in the comments and we’ll put something together for you!

The post Changing and Using Guide Data in Media Center appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

In the screencast below, I walk you through the standard TV Tuner setup.  In this case, I had already added the tuner previously.  This doesn’t really change the process though.  It simply made it so that you didn’t have to watch my PC download PlayReady or guide data.  Other than that, you still have the same choices to make.

Overall it’s a straight forward process.  The only differences in the time it takes will be the tuner you install in your system.  As I’m using an older NTSC tuner it’s pretty quick.  There’s no need to scan for channels like when setting up a QAM or ATSC tuner.

If you’re setting up a tuner for the first time, sit back and enjoy the show!

The post Setting Up a TV Tuner in Media Center appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Well you’re in luck.  While perusing The Green Button this morning, I came across a link right on the front page that I hadn’t seen before.  This link will take you right to the Windows Logo’d Product List.  From here you’ll be able to filter the list to include full systems or just components.

While MS could have stopped there and I would have been happy, they took it one step further.  Not only can you filter by product category, but you can also add “Additional Qualifications” which will allow you to filter down to products that are compatible with Windows 7 Media Center.

With that you simply hit the start button at the bottom and the next page you’re shown is a list of products compatible with Windows 7 and following your filter rules.  While the search page asks you to select x86 or x64, it’s not required.  I found that there were columns for both.

While Windows 7 has worked with every piece of hardware I’ve thrown at it, if you want to be sure or if you’re interested in building a new system for your HTPC, this could be an invaluable tool.  Most people can probably find out by checking when they purchase but if you want to know before you buy, Microsoft has you covered.

The post Are you Windows 7 Compatible? appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Missing Remote

Example: 

• /nostartupanimation

–stops the startup sound and Windows Media Center logo "pebble" going off into the distance

• /noshutdownui

–removes the "shutdown" item from the tasks menu

• /mediamode

–starts in media only mode (no close/minimize/maximize options in top right corner)

This is just the short list.  For a full list of everything Andrew has found as well as how to apply this switches, head to Missing Remote and read up!

The post Hidden Startup Switches in 7MC appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Of course, once I had the issue resolved I wanted my PCs getting backed up so I needed to reinstall the Connector software on each one.  The problem is that the software wasn’t accepting my password!  Even after changing the password for the WHS to see if there was some sort of issue, I couldn’t get them to log on.  Time to search.  I headed over to trusty old Google and found this.  After using the provided answer, I was able to log on to and re-connect my PCs with no problem.

Take a look below at the solution.  I mention Windows 7 RC during the screencast but realized that the only thing that has changed since I last installed connector software is that I installed PP3 on my WHS.  Something to keep in mind if you recently added the beta to your server.

The post WHS Connector Software Password Problems and Fixes appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Below you’ll find a screencast detailing using the application.  Again, this isn’t rocket science.  Once its installed, you’ll find RadioTime under the “Extras” menu in Media Center.  If you want you can move it to the Extras slider so you don’t have to click down each time.

Once into the application, you have access to a ton of content categorized by Talk, Music, World and Local.  Under each of the main categories you’ll find a plethora of content all broken down so it’s easy to find.

While RadioTime is free, the company offers their Red Button application for a one time fee of $29.  Red Button allows you to record both internet and local radio programs basically turning your HTPC into a radio DVR…umm DRR?  Anyway, if you have certain talk radio programs or sports programming you’d like to listen to but can’t get at work, this might allow you to do just that.

The company also offers a ton of ways for you to access internet radio while on the go including an iPhone app, Windows Mobile applications and others.  There are also a lot of systems that are compatible for home use including Sonos and the Logitech Squeezebox.

Enjoy the screencast!

The post DMZ Media Center How-To: RadioTime appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Personally, I’ve become a minimalist.  As long as my HTPC can playback Media Center native files (DVR-MS, WTV) as well as AVIs and MKVs then I’m set.  What happens when you need more though?  A codec pack is fast and easy.  It’s not however, always the best solution.

Andy Van Till, author of DVRMS Toolbox, may have the answer.  Andy hates codec packs like I do and so he’s gone and created his own.  It sounds like backwards thinking but when you call your software “Antipack” it starts to make sense:

The real problem with PCs (and not just in this case) is complexity; most (understandably) want the convenience and not the hassle of dealing with containers and codecs so they turn to a pack to solve the immediate need.  I completely understand that it’s a complex topic; something that everyone that has ever tried to get mystery file X to play has struggled with.  Doing it the right way is hard, where codec packs are easy. After repeating “uninstall the codec pack” more times than I care to remember, I figured it was time to do something proactively to hopefully reduce the pain.  So it is with some hesitation (and irony) that I’ve decided to roll my own “codec pack”.

AntiPack is intended to be part guide and part installer; hopefully making it easy enough for everyone to understand what they are doing, and provide an excellent/easy end user experience at the same time.  Most important it is based on the filters I use on my system.  Most are almost completly stock (with some changes to merit to reduce the arms-race nature of many OSS filters) but some I have customized to fix issues or to make them play nice with other filters.

You can find Andy’s complete write-up along with a ton of walk-through screenshots over at Missing Remote.  Andy has taken time to spell out exactly what you need to do to get the most out of your HTPC and hopefully not cause issues that develop into WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) killing problems.  Once you’ve read up and are ready to go, be sure to take time to check out DVR-MS Toolbox as well.  This app does more than the name suggests and it has become a “must install” on my HTPC.

The post Codec Packs Giving Your Trouble? AntiPack To The Rescue! appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Ian Dixon from over at The Digital Lifestyle found a great article and PDF from over at MakeUseOf.com which walks you though the process of building a great Media Center PC.  The file from ebook writer Stefan Neagu, walks you through selecting the software solution right for you as well as hardware and extenders.

Building and running an HTPC isn’t easy, but it just got a bit easier for people new to the hobby.  Enjoy!

via TDL

The post How to Build A Great Media Center appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

The AVerTVHD Duet is compatible with Windows7 and will give your existing HTPC a “Power Boost” to higher levels of High Definition Digital Entertainment. It’s designed to receive HD Digital TV, Over-the-Air (ATSC) or Unencrypted Digital Cable (ClearQAM) signals directly to your PC. The AVerTVHD Duet is a Dual Digital tuner, with a single input, that adopts the PCI Express interface, which offers a stable and higher bandwidth transmission environment than the traditional PCI bus. One of the great features about a dual tuner is that the user can watch one program, while recording another, or record two programs simultaneously. Better yet, if you have an available PCI-E slot, you can install a second tuner and record up to four different programs simultaneously, while viewing any of the four programs, with a Quad tuner set-up.

Simply put, the AVerTVHD Duet will install without worry and runs reliably on PCs running the Windows 7 operating system.

What does it mean for the AVerTVHD Duet to be “Compatible with Windows 7” and display the Windows 7 AQ Logo? The Windows 7 AQ Logo means Superior Quality and Enhanced User Experience. Devices displaying this logo has advanced capabilities in the marketplace, have passed rigorous Microsoft designed tests, and easy installation. Just by connecting the device, it automatically downloads device driver updates using Windows Update, which are compatible with Windows 7, including 32 and 64-bit. Also, you can configure Windows Media Center and do more with your Digital media. Moreover, it’s ready to use right out of the box.

The AVerTV Duet, compatible with Windows 7 is available NOW in two SKUs and has an MSRP of $69.99 for the White Box and $79.99 for the Retail including the AVer MediaCenter application.

The post AVerMedia Technologies First to Receive Windows 7 AQ Logo for TV tuners appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Luckily there’s a solution for this and it’s located in the same place.  EncodeHD replaced Encode360, the first conversion application from Dan Cunningham.  Encode360 converts your files to wmv using ffdshow and Windows Media Encoder.  Using wmv is the (pretty much) perfect solution due to the fact that it’s fully supported in MCE and on the 360 as an extender.  Where the problem comes in is that MS is no longer developing Windows Media Encoder which is used in the conversion process.  This has rendered Encode360 a bit dated (so it seemed) and forced Dan to move forward with the replacement app, EncodeHD.

Having loved using Encode360, I decided it was time to give it a try in Windows 7 to see if the application could still work.  I use EncodeHD for converting files for my Zune since it’s quick, easy to use and and the output files play perfectly.  When it comes to my 360 and MCE however, I want my surround sound.  That’s why I was so happy to find out that Encode360, while no longer supported, is still available for download.

Installing the application is a pretty straight forward process.  There are a few things you’ll need first though.  Windows Media Player 11 is required but we’re up to 12 in Windows 7 so you shouldn’t have to worry about upgrading that.  You’ll also need Windows Media Encoder and a Hotfix that is available.  After you’ve installed these two executables, you’re ready to install Encode360.  Something to keep in mind here:  Unlike EncodeHD, Encode360 is an installer package.  When you run the installer, the package installs K-Lite codec pack on your machine (optional but codecs are required).  We all know that codecs can be absolute havoc with video playback in Media Center and other applications.  I’m lucky enough to have a laptop to use for file conversions so that nothing touched my main MCE machine.  Be sure you know what you’re doing before installing Encode360.

Once you have the app installed, it looks a lot like EncodeHD as far as layout.  You can drag and drop files for conversion and then choose your settings.  You can see at the top of the app that you can choose your resolution.  I typically try to match the input file so there’s no change.  The only time I lower it is if I happen to be converting a file for the Zune.

Before you start converting files you’ll want to be sure and head into “Advanced Settings”.  This is where you can choose your bitrate, exact wmv encoding you want along with a plethora or other settings:

As you can see from above, this screen will also provide you more details on the file you have selected for conversion including the actual input resolution so you can match it up if you want to.

While Encode360 is no longer supported, if you either know how to manage codecs on your PC or if you have a spare PC you can use for conversion, it’ll work in Windows 7 and provide you a way to get different video codecs to play nicely with Media Center and extenders.

Update:

I’ve discovered with more testing that Encode360 has issues with DTS audio streams inside of MKV files.  To resolve this, you need to add an extra step but luckily it’s quick and easy.  What we need is to extract the audio, convert it to AC3 and then place it back inside the mkv container.  Ben Drawbaugh of EngadgetHD has worked this out using DVRMSToolbox and you can find the profile and files you need on his personal blog.  Enjoy!  Thanks Ben!

The post Encode360 Still A Great Solution appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

There are a lot of video conversion suites out there.  Most of these require installation of the codecs to which you want to read and convert.  Some are simple affairs while others boast more features than you’d ever want to deal with.  EncodeHD is simple for sure, but simplicity is it’s strength.

If you can’t tell already, I’m a fan of this application.  I have been since it was Encode360 (previous application which EncodeHD replaces).  You can read my email interview with the creator, Dan Cunningham, over at the Entertainment 2.0 blog.  Dan has put a lot of work into the application and it shows.  While EncodeHD will re-encode your video files for home use on different systems, this article will focus on it’s use for PMPs.

As I stated above, EncodeHD is all about simplicity.  When you download the application, you unzip the files to a folder and that’s it.  There’s no installer.  When you run the application you double click the icon and go.  EncodeHD comes packaged with everything it needs to run so there’s no codec packs to install which (for us MCE users especially) takes the guess work out of what you need.  The interface is simple and uncluttered.  You can drag and drop the files you want to convert right into the app.  From here, simply select the device you want to play your content on and you’re ready to go!

That’s it.  Hit that start button and watch your conversions go.  The time it takes of course depends on the file size and type.  This is really one touch encoding.  The app includes batch processing so if you want to let it run over night and convert, say, an entire season of a television show, it should be done by morning.

EncodeHD has support for a good number of devices and it seems more are added with each new version.  Currently supported are:

• BlackBerry (8100) Pearl
• BlackBerry (8200) Kickstart
• BlackBerry (8300) Curve
• BlackBerry (8700) Electron
• BlackBerry (8800) Indigo
• BlackBerry (8900) Javelin
• BlackBerry (9000) Bold
• BlackBerry (9500) Storm
• iPhone
• iPod 5G
• iPod Classic
• iPod Nano
• iPod Touch
• PSP
• Zune

This is just a list of the portable devices.  EncodeHD also supports:

• Apple TV
• Playstation 3
• Western Digital TV
• X-Box 360

One thing to keep in mind is that when converting for the Xbox 360, you will lose surround sound.  I spoke to Dan about this quickly and learned that the Xbox doesn’t support AC3 audio in mp4 so it can’t be included in the stream.  This is something MS could solve I’m sure, but I won’t hold my breath.

In the end, if you’re looking for an easy to use video conversion utility, this is as far as you have to go.  With support for AVI, MKV and other popular formats, one click and batch conversion, you’ll finally be able to take them with you!

The post Using EncodeHD For Portable Devices appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

This procedure also works for installing Windows Home Server, XP, Vista, Windows Server, or just as a plain old boot disk. If you just want a boot disk, you’ll still need to put some files on the prepped USB stick.

The post Installing Windows 7 RC from a USB thumb drive appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Show Analyzer

When it comes to commercial skipping applications there have always been two good options, Comskip and Show Analyzer. Comskip is free, but Show Analyzer is considered the better utility and it will only cost you $20 after your trial period has ended. Show Analyzer is also the first and only commercial skipping application that can process the new WTV files. I should note that version 1.0 of SA is currently only available in a closed beta, but I’m sure it will be released as a public beta very soon.

The install process for Show Analyzer is very standard. Just click the next button a few times and it will be installed. If you’re going to be using DVRMSToolbox you actually don’t have to do anything else with SA. You can of course open up the SA application to manually select files to be scanned, and to change the plethora of options that are available. While scanning a file you are presented with details about the file, a progress bar, and the amount of time that has elapsed. There is also a history tab in the program that will show all of the files that have been scanned. As you can see from the screenshot it shows the length of the file being scanned, when it was analyzed, how long the process took, and a color-coded chart showing where the commercials are in the file. Upon closer inspection of the screenshot you’ll notice that SA finds the commercials very quickly. The bottom item in the list that took over an hour was because that file was being scanned while the show was still live, so the scanning process continues until the show is complete.

DVRMSToolbox

While Show Analyzer does all the heavy lifting, it is DVRMSToolbox that makes all the magic happen. Unfortunately DTB is also the more complicated application to install. I’ve done all the work to figure it out for you though, so simply follow the instructions below and you’ll be skipping commercials in no time!

On the second screen in the setup process you will be asked if you want modify file permissions. Just be safe and check the box.

On the next screen of the DTB setup you will be asked if you would like to install optional components. You don’t need to download and install Show Analyzer as you have already done that. You should keep the second box for the DVRMSFileWatcher service checked. YOU MUST UNCHECK THE ADD-IN BOX! I can’t stress that enough. You’ll be installing the add-in separately.

As usual, just to be on the safe side, select the “Everyone” option on the next screen in the setup process.

After you have completed installing DVRMSToolbox you should restart your computer. The final installation step is to install the Win7 RC1 DTB Addin which can be downloaded here. Like the Show Analyzer setup you simply need to click the “next” button a few times to complete the installation. Just for good measure I rebooted the computer after installing the addin.

There is one last thing you will want to double-check with the DTB install. To do this run the DVRMSToolbox Settings application. You will find the application in the start menut. It is titled “DVRMStoMPEGSettings.” Go to the File Watcher tab and verify that .wtv is in both the Watched Ext and Video Types text boxes.

That’s it! With the default settings the File Watcher service will tell Show Analyzer to start scanning for commercials five mintues after it has started recording. When watching the show, even on an extender, the DTB addin will read the commercial xml file that SA created and when you get to a commercial the addin will automatically skip past it. If the file has not been scanned you will be prompted to start scanning it. And unlike the other options that people have created that involve converting the WTV files to DVRMS and then removing the commercials from the file, if SA ever messes up you can simply rewind or fast-forward to the proper spot in the show without the risk of missing anything.

Really, does it get any better than this?

Closing Notes

As I mentioned earlier the beta for Show Analyzer is not publically available yet. I’m sure Jere Jones will be releasing it soon though. Also, the latest version of DVRMSToolbox, version 1.2.1.7 Release 3, and the Windows 7 addin are currently only available to Early Access members. It doesn’t usually take very long for Andy Van Til to make EA files public though. If you’re an EA member I would recommend grabbing this version and installing it even if you don’t have access to the Show Analyzer beta yet. If you have DVRMS files, and the corresponding commercial skip files, the addin will work in Windows 7.

DVRMSToolbox Downloads (currently only available to Early Access members)

DVRMSToolbox version 1.2.1.7 Release 3 (released on May 15, 2009)
Win7 RC1 DTB Addin (released on May 15, 2009)

The post True Commercial Skipping in Windows 7 appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

As most of you know, just as little as three weeks ago, Cable Card tuners would only work in OEM systems which were selected by CableLabs to provide the option.  Not so anymore.  Thanks to some of the Media Center geniuses over at The Green Button, we can now all have it and without paying OEM prices.

Ben (who credits others for helping) has put together a complete how-to on how to make this a reality in your home and be able to pull premium content into Media Center.

From the article:

Recently an ingenious member of The Green Button forum figured out how to make any BIOS appear to be OCUR compliant by modifying an old utility known as VistaLoader. Basically all it does is load Grub4Dos before Windows boots and change the memory where the BIOS information is stored with the "correct" information. The cool thing about this is that it is relatively easy to uninstall and makes no changes to the actual BIOS like a firmware update would — be warned that if you have a Dell, you’ll have to reactivate Windows after installing this utility. It also appears it would be resilient to any types of checks Microsoft or CableLabs might attempt to use to prevent this from working in the future. All you have to do is download the utility from here and unzip it. Then open up a Command Prompt as an Administrator in the directory where you extracted it and execute install sony and reboot.

Ben takes time to walk you through the whole setup.  This is great for people like myself who know how to tool around inside a PC but get lost in some of the technical jargon that’s thrown around. 

As I said on the show last week, I’m more interested in waiting for the supposed Dish Network tuners that are coming but should they never show up, it’s good to know that there are people out there willing to show us all how to get some great premium content into our HTPC software of choice.

The post DIY CableCard in Any PC: How-To appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Dale Dietrich of Dalisphere has found a great way to extend the life of your battery while still enjoying your shows.  If you can’t watch the video, turn off your screen!  If your iPhone is going to be in your pocket anyway, what’s the point of drawing your power down right?  Plus, by using Dale’s trick, you won’t take a chance of tapping the screen and stopping the show while it’s in your pocket, or wherever you might like to keep it.

Dale discovered that by starting your video cast, putting your iPhone to sleep and then using the earbud button to start playback, the screen would remain off yet the audio portion of the show would play.  For full details and some other uses for the earbud button, head over and read Dale’s full post.

The post Vodcast Watcher? Extend the Battery Life of your iPhone/Touch appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

If you watch the video posted up on the blog, you will she Barb, streaming a recorded tv show, that is located on one internet connection, behind a router/firewall, while her Asus EEEPC is located on another internet connection, behind another router/firewall. After seeing this post I decided to give this a try and see how easy it was to setup, and to my surprise it was actually very easy to get up and running.

First I loaded up my windows media player, and click on stream:

click on “Allow Internet Access to home media”

once you click on “Allow Internet Access to home media” a new pop up window will ask you to link online ID:

Click on Link an Online ID it will then ask you to install live ID software located here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=5e193cfe-f45a-4e29-b6b7-984e7802c639

once you install the software you will be asked to input your windows live credentials:

you are now linked to windows live

once you are linked to a live ID, it will then bring you back to windows media player and you will now notice a new menu in the left hand column, in my case it shows my name as well as the name of my PC “Blackmagic”

click on Music, Videos, Pictures, or Recorded TV

it will come up with a menu saying “contacting the remote media library”

and now shows videos I have stored on my HTPC. I can now stream any content I want from my HTPC to my netbook or any other PC that I have windows 7 installed (running build 7077 or 7100). It does however down sample the video so if your recorded tv shows are in HD, they won’t come across in hd, however on a netbook the video still looks fantastic and the streaming is actually pretty fast as well.

So if you are running windows 7 and want to stream your media remotely I highly recommend this. It works without having to forward ports on your firewall or any changes like that, it just works.

The post Windows 7: Stream Recorded TV Remotely appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

Today I will be going over how you can use a PC as an extender and get some of the functions you get with a stand alone, dedicated Media Center Extender. As previously mentioned you get some added benefits of having a full blown PC as an extender, however with Windows Vista and now Windows 7 you don’t get the added benefits of being able to share live tv, or share EPG’s. However with a full blown PC you can still share your recorded tv, and stream the recorded TV from the PC that holds all the tuner cards and does all the recordings to any PC on your home network as long as the TV isn’t copy protected. In my case all the TV recording I do is OTA ATSC and SD NTSC via comcast cable tv.

In Vista being able to share recorded tv, and having it show up in the recorded TV menu of Vista Media Center took some folder sharing, folder permissions, and some times never even worked right. Me personally could never get it to work right and thus I never bothered with it much at all as I never used a PC as an extender in my home. In Windows 7 Media Center (7MC) it is much easier to now share recorded tv from the main pc with all the tuner cards, that does all the DVRing. In this case I will already assume you know how to share your recorded TV folder on your main HTPC with the tuner cards. I will also assume that both your main HTPC, as well as the Extender PC that is running 7MC both have the same user name setup, as well as the same password.

In my case I am using my primary, production HTPC, which is running Vista  Ultimate, has6 ATSC tuners, and 4 NTSC tuners, and has 3 HDD’s that have recorded TV content and all 3 HDD’s have the folder sharing turned on, and ready to go.

I then logged into my 7MC test machine located in my office, loaded up 7MC, and went to the recorded TV folder:

Once in the recorded TV folder I right clicked on the window, and clicked on “Mange Libraries”

Note: if you have the MCE remote and IR receiver on your media center pc, you can also use the “i” info button to load up the same pop up menu

Click on Manage Libraries which will then pull up TV Discovery, Recorded TV Menu, click on Add Folder to Monitor and click next

Add folder for recorded tv, Now we add a folder to monitor, choose add shared folder from another computer and click next

Now you will have a list of PC’s that are discoverable via network sharing, in my case I have Homeserver and HTPC show up, I clicked on the plus symbol to reveal the list of shared folders that are available from my HTPC system. I checked off the boxes that I want to add to the TV library on my 7MC Test machine and click next.

It will then show you the list of folders that will now be added to your TV library, in my case I have already added the folders to my TV library so that is why it says no folders added, but if this is the first time you are adding folders, it will show you the new added folders, Select yes setup my library, and then click on Finish.

Now that you have added folders to your TV library, go back into your recorded TV menu on your 7MC box, and you should now see all the TV shows show up that were recorded on your other Media Center PC.

Some of your recorded TV will come over just fine, while others aren’t formatted correctly or your 7MC pc isn’t picking up the meta data correctly but they will still play just fine, and from the file names you can pretty easily tell what show it is. In my case Cold Case isn’t showing up correctly, but everything else is.

So That is how you can use a PC Extender to play back recorded TV that is located on another HTPC/Media Center machine with 7MC. If you have any questions please feel free to register and post up a comment here.

The post PC Extender: Sharing recorded tv in 7MC appeared first on The Digital Media Zone.

This is a relatively straight forward process.  PlayOn uses OPML files to grab internet content and these aren’t that difficult to create.  I haven’t taken a crack at it myself yet but again, these files have been created by the users of the community and are ready for download from the forums.

The easiest way I’ve found to add OPML files to your app is to go to the forums at PlayOn Plugins.  The first stop you should make is to this thread.  This is a general Podcast plugin and it comes not only with the plugin itself, but OPML files for some really good content.  Installation is simple:  Unzip the files and drop both the Podcast.plugin file and Podcasts folder in to /Program Files/MediaMall/Plugins folder.  Restart your PlayOn server using the settings panel and you should be all set! 

Once you have the plugin installed, if there are any netoworks you don’t want, simply delete the OPML file for that feed.  As well, if you want to add more content (like TWiT shows or PCMag.com as I did) you can simply visit the forums and look to see if what you want is there, grab the OPML file and copy it into the Podcasts folder.  Also, there are individual plugins available such as Food Network and Adult Swim.  I’ve installed both and haven’t had much a chance to test them this morning but overall this is very promising!  There are other plugins available as well so take a look around and see if someone has created something you’ll enjoy.  Alternatively, if you have the know-how, apply it and create one of your own.

The more I mess around with PlayOn and vmcPlayIt, the more I love it.  While PlayOn will run you $40 it’s well worth the cost of admission as I have a feeling that vmcPlayIt is only going to get better.

Gotta give credit where credit is due:  Thanks to Scott Kingery of TechLifeWeb for his twitter help on adding content to PlayOn and vmcPlayIt!

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1. Put the Media Center remote into learning mode by holding down the “Ok” button and the “DVD Menu” button at the same time. Once the lights have gone out, you are in learning mode.
2. Press the button the Media Center remote (TV Power or volume) that you would like to program. The light on the remote will flash once.
3. While holding the two remotes so that their IR nodes are facing each other, press the button from the other remote for which you would like the Media Center remote to learn. If the operation is successful the lights on the Media Center Remote will flash twice. If it wasn’t successful then they will flash four times.

To program the other buttons just complete all three steps again for each button. If you accidently programmed the wrong command you can clear the settings by holding the “DVD Menu” button and the Left Arrow button until the lights on the remote turn off. Once they have push the “Ok” button. The lights on the remote will flash twice to confirm that the settings have been cleared.

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