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.