Vista RC2 / 5744 - Reinstall went well

previously this week....

- RC1 / 5728 installed
- streaming live HDTV to xbox 360 would affect recording in background
- CPU spiked between 60-90% while streaming HDTV
- CPU 5-10% while streaming HD WMV
- USB external drive where recordings are made is using 50% CPU while active itself (!)

seems like my external USB2 drive is causing spikes in CPU while transferring, causing glitches in a recording while navigating in a different video during playback.


Vista RC2 / 5744:

Cleaned off Mono's hard drive, repartioned to 10GB(sys)/2GB(swp)/16(storage), and did a clean install. 35 min later, I'm at the Windows login screen. Very smooth install, more 'billboards' to look at while installing. I then checked for updates, and for my USB Fusion HDTV I followed DViCO's advice on installing their Vista drivers and installed their 3.5obeta app from their ftp site, then stopped the automatic driver install, and installed the downloaded vista driver.

The HDTV app that comes with the product crashed after finding a bunch of channels, kinda to be expected, I think the laptop isn't fast enough for live HDTV decoding, but only to serve as a backend server/recorder. The heavy lifting of decoding and displaying content is done by my XBox 360, or so the idea goes.

Vista is smoother, snapper than previous 2 builds. My CPU is still spiking between 70-90% while streaming live HDTV to xbox360, but not the wild swings it was doing before, between 30-90% every 2 secs. Live TV playback seems smoother now, seems to have a higher priority than previous builds, or just my disk access isn't choking the system anymore.

Having learned from previous weeks, adding my channels and guide listings was fairly straightforward. I still had to pretend to be from Lewiston NY, since the DVICO tuner doesn't like Canada as selection in MCE. Added back missing local channels, adding missing listings, updated guide, and wow, they were all there.

I'm not sure what kind of Vista/MCE minions are hard at work at MS, but everytime I start my xbox360, more album covers appear. Although the rescan at the beginning is a bit annoying, I'm somehow up to about 95% Covers found. The remaining ones are mostly rare or homemade compliations, so pretty happy about the number it found sucessfully.



I still need to look into an antenna solution before it gets too cold outside...

Todo, Vista MC, Xbox 360 Multimedia Remote

TODO:

• Better antenna to pull in Buffalo stations reliably, maybe CM4221 or CM4228
• Work out some sort of permanent cabling solution from antenna on balcony
• Slim down Vista to make it more efficient on older laptop
  

My current digital cable and internet come in through an existing cable and hole from my balcony. During my tests so far, I would open my balcony door, and run a coax from the antenna to my USB tuner. If I go completely OTA (Over-the-Air), and give up my digital cable subscription, I could reuse that existing cable for my antenna; except it's supplying my internet as well, d'ohh!

I'm really trying to stick to using my older laptop as my backend server, based on the challenge, and its more power friendly to leave on, so I'm going to need to slim down Vista as much as possible, turning off unneeded services, etc. Stay tuned...

Vista Media Center:

The new interface is VERY nice, smooth, although I didn't use MC2005 very much, so I'm not sure if there's any downgrades in the Vista version. The new interface is much like a certain handheld's interface, sliding efficiently left-right, top-bottom. The navigation can be slow at times, mostly when my PC 'Mono' gets bogged down, but does seem much better in #5728.

After transferring my music collection to Mono's external 40GB drive, I ran Album Art Fixer to correct the missing cover art, and got about 80% fixed, but the remaining ones stand out like missing teeth in MC. I think MC relies on the AlbumArt_{XXX}.jpg format, whereas Media Player will use it or 'folder.jpg'.

Xbox 360 Universal Media Remote:

I bought it due to the fact that using the gamepad was a pain. While watching DVD's it was always powered down when needed, and with the addition of Live TV and Media Center, I thought it was worth the convience. It's pretty nice, backlit keys, but only supports operating a TV and the Xbox360; no receivers, dvd players, etc. Being able to hit the green MC button, and have the XBox360 power up, and go directly into Media Center is very nice.

Vista RC1 5728 Released into the wild

Microsoft released another version of Vista, 5728, to the public preview.

Install goes well, faster by about 10 mins, and more polished. I start by doing an upgrade, but then reconsider and do a full reinstall. Installer makes a backup copy of Windows in Windows.old, and then does install.

After install complete, system seems snappier, more responsive than RC1. Mem footprint after login at keyboard is around 350MB/40 processes, without x360 connected.

With x360 jacked in via Media Center, resources jumps to about 500MB, with eShell.dll eating up about 80% CPU while streaming live HDTV from USB tuner. 80%? All the laptop has to do is forward the stream to the x360, so why the jumping between 60-80% ?

I'll have to try streaming a WMV and see what the CPU usage is like then.

Vista RC1 MCE + USB Tuner + Canada = Eventual Success

Time to configure the TV options within Vista RC1 Media Center.

I start Media Center on 'Mono', and go to Tasks/TV. It recognizes my DVICO USB Tuner, but when asked what country, and answer 'Canada', the next screen tells me that the video format isn't supported in my country. huh?

I go back, and answer USA instead, and the install continues. The tricky part came when it was time to configure the Guide listings. It asked for a zip code. I got on the 'net, and located a city on the other side of the border, that might get both my local Toronto stations, and Buffalo listings. I settled on 'Lewiston, NY' zipcode 14092. I'm not sure if this actually made a difference, since I still had a lot of problems configuring my local Canadian stations, but through adding channels manually in MC, and 'Edit Listings', and several 'Update Listings', I was able to get all my channel listings. Success!

Summary of past events

... in previous episodes:

4 months ago:

• 'HAL', server in closet (3ghz, 1 GB, 2x320(640)GB sata raid0)
• running Server 2003
• running MCE 2005 within VMWare Workstation instance
• streaming content to x360 from MCE2005 instance
  
• limited success with streaming non-native x360 formats using Transcode 360
• pain in the butt trying to use Xbox 360 gamepad for DVD and MCE navigation

1 month ago until present:

• Bought DViCO Fusion HDTV5 USB Gold, from Sensuz, great local (Toronto, ON CA) store specializing in HTPC, HDTV, fast service
  
• RCA ant706, $50, Active Surplus
• Xbox 360 Premium remote $29(sale)

Vista RC1 comes with the new version of Media Center, which no longer needs to have an analog tuner present, so I install it on 'Mono', my older laptop. Install goes well, I grabbed the Vista driver from DVICO's ftp site and the supplied TV app runs well, recording TV.

MCE within Vista was another story.

Adventures in Convergence

In the spirit of the pioneers, I ventured forth into uncharted territory, placing my faith in the unproven technology called 'Vista', and a device call the 'Xbox 360'.

Hardware:

• Acer Centrino 1.3ghz, 768MB, 30GB internal hard drive, (laptop circa 2004)
• DVICO Fusion 5 HDTV USB ATSC Tuner
• RCA ant706 indoor/outdoor antenna
  
• External 40GB 2.5" USB2 drive (music)
• External 80GB 3.5" USB2 drive (video)(todo: replace when running stable)
• Xbox 360, 20GB HD
• assorted cat 6 and rf6 cabling

The theory is that I will use my x360 as a 'frontend' to a media server running Vista Rc1 5728.

Originally, from previous adventures, the thought was that I would store everything if a main, high powered, multi drive pc, running in my closet. After having fun times running Linux + ctorrent on my original softmodded xbox (which, by the way, makes a great, low watt torrent machine, better than leaving on 400+ watts all day), the plan is to try to be as low powered as reasonable; enter my recently replaced Acer 1.3ghz laptop. We'll see it if can hold its own, running Vista, and streaming video to the x360. Early tests are very promising, but not perfect.