Dan’s Space on the Web

A week after I first finished setting up the EPG, I noticed that it wasn’t working properly. I’ve been busy since then, but finally got the time to do some maintenance this weekend. I found out that the problem was that my discSvc registry value had changed back to the default value, reason being the disableUpdateDiscSvc entry was missing. After adding the missing DWORD entry and setting it to 1, everything is back to working condition. Tested it a few times by manually asking Media Center to grab the latest guide data, no problems.

Now, over the past few weeks my dad has been following the NBA and recording whatever matches were being broadcast. This ate up disk space, fast. Fortunately, I had already foreseen this problem back when we first put the HTPC to use, and had prepared a nice 1TB NAS (for general backup and archiving, including recorded TV). Trouble is, Media Center doesn’t like letting you add network folders to the More TV Locations list. Initially I tried using the registry hack method, but that didn’t do anything. Then I found this, which involves creating a symbolic link to the network folder and thereby tricking Media Center. Worked like a charm. Only problem now is I still have Media Center recording new shows to the cramp local drive, and I have to manually move recordings over to the NAS. I guess I could try the symbolic link trick, but because my HTPC is a little far from my router, the WiFi connection isn’t the best. I’ve also noticed that sometimes the WiFi doesn’t work at all after resuming from sleep, but I’ve yet to confirm and look into this. Anyway, since the WiFi isn’t stable, I don’t want to risk the recorded TV being lost or corrupted, so I’m leaving it to first record to the local drive.

I’m considering writing a simple add-in that would automatically watch for disk space and move files when needed, or simply provide an interface for the user to manually “move recording to network drive”. Unfortunately, I don’t have time for that right now. Another option I came across is to use Belvedere to automatically monitor the folder and move files once they pop up, but each recorded TV file is usually huge and so takes awhile to move over to the NAS. If I were to let Belvedere do this automatically in the background, there’s the possibility of my dad (or whoever’s using the HTPC) switching it off before the move can complete. And if this keeps occurring then well, the files would never get moved over. I could schedule it to run during the night, but again I have no idea how long it’ll take. Plus we don’t record stuff every day, so on those nights the computer would wake up and sit there for a few hours for nothing. Ideally it should only automatically wake up and do the moving only if there are files and limited space left, and go back to sleep once it is done. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a tool that does this.

Finally got around to finish setting up TVxb with BladeRunner Pro to get EPG data. Seems to work fine, but I will have to continue monitoring it to make sure it automatically stays up to date (depends on whether or not the scheduled task was created with the correct settings). Also, missing some channels – namely the free-to-air ones like channel 5 (including 5HD). Problem is the Starhub portal doesn’t provide guide info for that, so will probably have to try getting from elsewhere.

On the channel changing side, site visitor Paul came across some useful information. This did help get past the remote learning phase, but instead the results were worse – media center was unable to change the channels at all. The IR blaster seems to be sending signals, but the STB is not responding.

Switched to using Composite input from the Starhub HD box. No significant improvements, unfortunately.

The poor quality can be primarily described as having a lot of significant scanlines. I’ll try to upload a screenshot/sample video. Perhaps something to do with the NTSC/PAL settings? I don’t know if Media Center has such settings, though.

Deciding to stay with the current setup, so that we can record other Starhub channels as well. After discussing with my dad, we decided that it’s not as important to be able to watch and record at the same time, as the likelihood of that being required is very low – usually we record stuff only when we’re not around. The chances of there being two programs we really want to watch being shown simultaneously is low. However, this gives rise to a new problem: I can’t get the IR blaster to work reliably.

First off, Vista Media Center is unable to recognize the Starhub HD box remote, and I can’t seem to get it to learn – it keeps telling me to press-hold-release button ‘1’, and never moves on. I decided to work around this by telling VMC that the box doesn’t have a remote, but it doesn’t change the channels properly 100% of the time. What happens is that the numbers being sent gets recognized extra times. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered it sending the recognizing numbers altogether. I’ve noticed that this seems to happen more (if not only) with certain numbers. In my case, the number 6 (ie. if I try to change to channel 6, about 40% of the time it changes to 66 instead). This of course is unacceptable because that means we may end up recording the wrong channel, so more investigation is required here.

Settings I’m using: Cable, comes with Set-top Box, No Remote, requires to press “Enter” or “OK” before changing channels, StarHub, code: (the first one) I think it is C19…something, speed: slow.

Come to think of it, when testing the speed, Fast/Medium may have worked. They worked sometimes, and other times I had the “duplicate numbers” problem. I forgot to notice whether or not that happened for all channels, or only certain numbers. If it was only certain numbers, perhaps the IR blaster is sending the wrong signal for those numbers, and the problem has nothing to do with the speed.

HTPC Quick Specs:
Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.80GHz
2×512MB PC3200 DDR RAM
Microsoft Windows Vista (6.0) Ultimate Edition Service Pack 1 (Build 6001)
Shuttle FB71x

[Full Specs]

Tested sleeping with hybrid sleep enabled and Media Center running. No problems. Not sure what happened the last time.

Waited 5 minutes after recording ended, did not go back to sleep.

Switched BIOS settings to S1&S3, works fine.

Noticed that when there’s a scheduled recording, it sometimes either doesn’t go to proper S3 sleep, or maybe it just takes a long time. so far 2 out of 3 times it didn’t go to S3 even after a couple of minutes (but display was turned off), and once it went to S3 after about a minute. Will have to test this further. On further thoughts, those 2/3 times were when I had a scheduled recording to start in about 5 minutes. Perhaps this forced the PC into Away Mode instead of sleep. Should check what the timing is for “wake computer x minutes before” (is there such an option?).

Seems to be working fine now. Did two scheduled recording tests. Went to S3 sleep, automatically woke up, recorded, and went back to sleep. The main problem was the “when sharing media, allow computer to go to Away Mode” power option. Changed it to “allow computer to sleep”.

Parents came home and they usually use the TV for the rest of the night, so I can’t work on improving the TV input quality.

Instead, am remoting in from my laptop and setting other stuff up: WebGuide and EPG.

WebGuide installed successfully, and I’m able to access the web interface fine. Can play recordings from there, but it’s a little slower than simply opening the files directly. This is probably since I have my recordings stored on a NAS, and so it’s clearly less efficient to do NAS –> ShuttleBox (my Media PC) – WebGuide –> WafflesSeven (my Laptop), as opposed to NAS –> WafflesSeven.

Since EPG for Singapore is not available through VMC, I have to use TVxb instead, in conjunction with BladeRunner Pro . Halfway through this – currently have both installed, am TVxb seems to have successfully downloaded EPG data for Starhub channels.

Next up:

1. Improve Live/Recorded TV Quality (from yesterday)
   • Check if it’s signal quality issue (including analog vs. digital) by switching to composite video input from STB (ie. see how cable channels look like)
2. Continue setting up EPG
   • am on the step of “Granting permission to write into the BladeRunner GuideData, Native, and QuickGuide folders.”
3. Ensure EPG works with WebGuide
4. Continue testing WebGuide, figure out how to watch Live TV (so far I can’t find the option for this. Suspecting that I need to have EPG data)

[Click Here HTPC Specs]

I’ve been using Windows Live Writer to manage my posts. It’s great.

Lightweight enough for me to launch at will, and plays well with Wordpress (and many other CMS/blogs, apparently). It’s so much faster than having to log in to the usual web interface, especially when just updating a draft (which can be saved locally or on the web).

Also, the editor is sweet. It’s able to mimic what the post will look like, so you don’t have to keep hitting Preview. It’s also a lot more robust, providing easier hyperlinking, adding images (which can do minor image edditing too), text formatting etc.

You can also set post metadata such as categories (syncs up with what you have on the server), tags, date right from here. and when you’re all done just hit Publish. Like I’m going to do now.

(Quick Specs: an old shuttle PC running Vista. ok, I can’t remember the specs. will update later)

Attempting to get S3 sleep state to work.

Had to change power settings in BIOS – ACPI Standby State set to S3. I think setting it to S1&S3 didn’t seem to work, will elaborate more on this later.

Initially, I followed the instructions as linked above but it made things worse – the PC didn’t seem to power down at all, with the “On” indicator light not going off. It turned off the TV display but that’s about it.

Then I found out that the problem was having created based off the High Performance plan. When using High Performance, the computer doesn’t sleep much, only as above. Switching to Power Saver fixed this, and my shuttle went off nice and quiet (previously you could still hear a fan spinning), as if it was completely off. Cool.

Minor problem at this point – had to push power button to wake it up, keyboard/remote control didn’t work. Fixed this by enabling wake by USB keyboard in BIOS.

Quick elaboration on setting BIOS ACPI Standby State to S1&S3 – when I had done so earlier, I think I was still using the High Performance plan. Don’t remember testing after I switched to Power Saver.

Next attempted to schedule a recording and put computer to sleep. However PC seemed to just turn off the display again. Suspecting Windows (Vista) Media Center to be preventing proper S3 sleep, closed VMC and tried going to sleep. Success. It came on as scheduled to record, but it didn’t go back to sleep after that.

End of this for today.

Noticed that watching TV through the PC (tuner card) was significantly worse than watching from Starhub HD STB. Understandable since what I’m getting is probably the analog free-to-air and signal strength is not as good as cable’s (and it’s analog vs. digital). Currently I’m using the TV OUT from the Starhub STB to connect to PC (via coax cable). Rerouted this TV OUT to TV to test signal quality. TV looks better than PC, but still worse than cable STB (over HDMI). Makes sense, but notes that the PC is indeed degrading quality. I need to figure out if it’s due to the TV card, or a VMC problem. Perhaps VMC is enconding the video badly before displaying? Or is the video encoding handled by the TV tuner card? The “bad” quality looks like it may be a compression issue. Will have to look into this.

Next up…

1. Fix S3 Sleep
   • Run another scheduled recording test, see if it goes back to sleep
   • Verify scheduled recording behaviour by reverting to regular sleep
     • Find out if this uses the Windows Task Scheduler. If so, might be able to get info from that.
   • Verify inability to sleep when hybrid sleep enabled and VMC running
2. Improve Live/Recorded TV Quality
   • Check if it’s signal quality issue (including analog vs. digital) by switching to composite video input from STB (ie. see how cable channels look like)

[Click Here HTPC Specs]

Today we’re trying to get to the official Windows 7 page (hosted off microsoft.com).

The results are so abysmal there’s no point taking screenshots. What’s that? You want proof? Fine.

Live Search, keywords: windows 7

not on any of the first 5 result pages, couldn’t be bothered to find out where it is. The closest I found was on page 5 with a hit for the EULA page.

Google search, keywords: windows 7

first hit.

Come on, Live Search, I really would like to do a post where you gave the better result. I really really do.

This 3rd post on Live Search vs. Google probably makes me look like I have something against Microsoft. That is no where near true, and to make it up to them I’ll soon be posting a rather positive one about their Windows Live Messenger.

Dropbox doesn’t allow you to sync folders outside of the “My Dropbox” folder, so here’s a workaround to have your Documents folder (and any other user folder) automatically synced using Dropbox.

(This guide written for Vista, but it works the same in XP)

Motivation/Background: I first did this a few months back when my Macbook Pro had to be sent in for repair (the video card broke. again.) Not having my main work machine with me, I was working off my old PC instead. I wanted a way to easily transfer all my documents back to my macbook when I get it back, and in addition at the time I had a 2nd laptop (on loan to me for our Senior Design class) which I was using occasionally. Syncing files using Dropbox was the solution, but it was troublesome to always remember to specifically save files in the My Dropbox folder. I then explored and found out that I can change the location of my Documents folder. As a bonus, I was also able to sync easily sync files with the Documents folder on my OSX side, and more recently I was able to quickly format my computer without worrying about manually backing up my documents. It’s also giving me a peace of mind while I operate out of Win 7! OK, enough banter.

1. Right Click on Documents folder > Properties

2. Location Tab

3. Click on Move…

4. Browse to ”My Dropbox” folder.

5. Create a Documents folder there, if you don’t already have one.

6. Select this Documents folder. You’ll see that the path back on the Location tab has changed to reflect this (for example mine is, C:\Users\Serenity\My Dropbox\Documents)

7. Click OK

8. It’ll prompt you asking “Do you want to move…” Select Yes.

Done!

Notice the Dropbox sync status icon overlayed on your Documents folder.

Now the Documents folder is no longer at C:\Users\<you>\Documents, but as far as navigating to it through tabs, shortcuts, start menu, it’ll automatically jump you to the correct folder in Dropbox (and for the most part this appears seamless! you don’t see that you are in the My Dropbox folder). Applications that use the Documents folder (eg. some video games) would also automatically be directed to the correct folder. So far, I’ve not come across anything that was hardcoded to go to the old Documents folder.

You can do this for almost any other user folder (ie. any folder in C:\Users\<you>\), but Dropbox only gives you 2GB (unless you go premium) so I would stay away from syncing Videos, Pictures, Music, and Downloads, unless you are careful how much you put in there.

from the search box in Vista’s start menu, hit ctrl+shift+enter to run your selection as Adminstrator.

Ok, seriously?

Live Search, keywords: Live Messenger
 

Google Search, keywords: Live Messenger

Goal: to download Windows Live Messenger.

With minimal keywords, Live Search failed to give me satisfactory results: the first result is almost completely off, second result is satisfactory although the displayed url throws things off with ‘addyahoo’ at the end, and the remaining top hits are rubbish.

With the same keywords, Google got it right on the first hit. It even provided sub-results for it, including a direct link to the Download page. The following top hits are also close if not correct.

Seriously, Microsoft? Is this the search engine you are trying to use to take back the web? Sure, I could have searched for “Windows Live Messenger” instead, but shouldn’t your search engine recognize your own product even if I miss the “Windows” in it? Google not only found the product, it guessed correctly that I was trying to download it. Sometimes I wonder if Google reads my mind, but then I realize that that’s sillytalk.

Sometimes I wonder if Microsoft is even using their own products to test their search engine.