Yuletide Geeking
Dec. 24th, 2009 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daveonI upgraded the Media Center to Windows 7 yesterday. All in all, at least compared to some other experiences I've been reading about (Mr Stross springs to mind) the upgrade was pretty painless. Then again the media center is a simple home brewed box running on a Shuttle Chasis that I built last year.
Still, Windows 7 installed pretty much without a hitch in about 3 hours. Of course, the devil is in the detail and getting everything working properly wasn't quite as straight forward.
I use the simply excellent "My Movies" by Brian Binnerup, a Danish guy. For Windows 7 Media Center he's built not just the best movie collection manager I've found, but also a hook directly into a HP Media Server - which is just superb. It's much improved over the Vista set up and makes having an online movie collection easy to have.
It's also got the new range of IP TV hooks and plug-ins - including a direct hook to Hulu, Netflex and the new set up for IP TV from MS, which is ok, but frankly doesn't match Hulu yet.
There's also plug ins for Video-casts from a range of providers like TV-Tonic.
That was all fine.
What was not:
- The MKV codecs didn't come across in the port, so I had to re-install. They did then, so that was painless
- Less painless: the BluRay player stopped working claiming the hardware wasn't up to the job, which was incorrect as it was working perfectly prior to the shift. It turned out that the upgrade hadn't handled the Nvidia drivers properly so that was a quick fix too.
Now all I need to do is get the DVD software to recognize the ISO rips of Blu-Ray disks and I'll be done.
Oh, and I also hooked up a decent webcam with built in Microphone so I don't have the Christmas morning scramble for cables for the O'Neill and Fleuriot family satellite link ups.
Still, Windows 7 installed pretty much without a hitch in about 3 hours. Of course, the devil is in the detail and getting everything working properly wasn't quite as straight forward.
I use the simply excellent "My Movies" by Brian Binnerup, a Danish guy. For Windows 7 Media Center he's built not just the best movie collection manager I've found, but also a hook directly into a HP Media Server - which is just superb. It's much improved over the Vista set up and makes having an online movie collection easy to have.
It's also got the new range of IP TV hooks and plug-ins - including a direct hook to Hulu, Netflex and the new set up for IP TV from MS, which is ok, but frankly doesn't match Hulu yet.
There's also plug ins for Video-casts from a range of providers like TV-Tonic.
That was all fine.
What was not:
- The MKV codecs didn't come across in the port, so I had to re-install. They did then, so that was painless
- Less painless: the BluRay player stopped working claiming the hardware wasn't up to the job, which was incorrect as it was working perfectly prior to the shift. It turned out that the upgrade hadn't handled the Nvidia drivers properly so that was a quick fix too.
Now all I need to do is get the DVD software to recognize the ISO rips of Blu-Ray disks and I'll be done.
Oh, and I also hooked up a decent webcam with built in Microphone so I don't have the Christmas morning scramble for cables for the O'Neill and Fleuriot family satellite link ups.
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no subject
Date: 2009-12-24 11:23 pm (UTC)