Review Horizon

As the number of mobile devices in our house increased, our reliance on them also increased. Both me and my wife barely touch our PCs anymore (maybe when we do a quick Age of Empires III showdown on our home network, but with two kids, those days are fewer and long in between).

Our family also cut the cable cord quite a while ago, when the Dish Network wanted to increase our bill yet again. While we don’t have a full fledged cable subscription anymore, having Internet service from Time Warner comes with some perks, most notable the free included digital local channels (clear QAM), PBS and a bunch of other free channels as well including NBC sports.As part of my TV watching setup, I am using my Windows Media Center 7 as a local DVR, a number of XBOX 360 consoles as DVR clients to access the live/recorded TV around the house and the only thing missing would be the access of the same channels live and mobile, both from around the house and during my daily 1.5 hours train commute, via my tablet/smartphone over a 3G connections. What to do?

Well, let me tell you I have long searched for a cheap/good software only streaming solution since I already have my MCE server chugging quietly 24/7. I tried ORB and several other solutions that claim to be able to stream Live TV over the internet, but all the solutions found share one major caveat – they don’t work with digital TV tuners. Why? I have no idea, but that’s the way it is. I started to look around and the only reasonable priced solution came from Sling Media (now belonging to Dish Network) and their Slingbox Pro-HD SB300-100, their only model with an embedded ATSC/NTSC/QAM tuner. I built an entire ecosystem around it, streaming to PC, notebooks, iPhone / iPad / Nook Color / HP TouchPad running Android CM7, HTC Vivid and Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket both on my home network and away, and the result of this comprehensive experience is detailed in this review.

1. Slingbox Pro-HD box content

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If you want to receive clear QAM or over the air ATSC 8VSB TV channels with your computer, the cheapest solution I could find was a small USB stick produced by MyGica (actually based on the drivers, the tuner is produced generically somewhere in China and MyGica is packaging / branding / selling it in North America). I was initially skeptical to its quality, especially considering the very low price (under $30 shipped) but I bought one anyway and I will review it so you can make an informed decision.

Unpacking:

MyGica A680 comes packaged in a small box containing the USB stick itself, an infrared remote control (compatible with Windows Media Center), a mini antenna, a mini RF to F connector converter and the software CD containing the driver and a somewhat old software, Total Media 3.5. Read More…

When you are looking to get DVR functionality for your home, you have several options: Get a cable box, a satellite box, a TIVO or build your own. If you are reading this review, you are probably thinking about building your own and we’ll gladly lend you a hand.

One of the most popular tuners for the last couple of years are coming from a company called SiliconDust. They are the manufacturer for the wildly successful line of network connected TV tuners called HDHomeRun. The main selling point compared with let’s say a PCI-E capture card is the capability to share it over the home network between several computers at the same time. Just plug-it in on your switch and it should be available to any computer on your network. What is even better, several units can be added to increase the available units pool, they are automatically allocated on demand to the computers on your network and it is fully compatible with a large number of DVR / media packages available on Windows, Linux and MAC machines and, also compatible with XBOX 360 when used as an extender to Windows Media Center.

HDHomeRun is now at Revision 3 codename HDHR3 and it is smaller, lighter and even cheaper, all while Read More…

Probably the best deal for today (and not only) is the Microsoft Windows 7 Family Pack coming back for only $150 and covering licenses for three computers. Even better, Amazon has it for only $129 which is a really good deal considering that you get three Windows 7 licenses. The version that you’ll get is Home Premium that also includes Windows Media Center for the HTPC aficionados.

Microsoft also said the offer will be available for limited time, “while supplies last”. We are not sure what that means from the company that actually makes the product, but it probably means they just plan to sell a limited number of copies at this price for business reasons.

In a move that I am sure many of you were waiting for a long time, Hauppauge finally announces native support for Windows Media Center for their flagship product, HD-PVR. You can find the newly released drivers (albeit in beta) here.(be sure to navigate to HD PVR for Windows Media Center Tab). Amazon has it available for $194 with no taxes and free shipping in most of the country.

The HD PVR support for Windows Media Center allows you to use the HD PVR to watch, pause and record high definition TV under Windows 7 Media Center from a cable TV or satellite set top box. It operates in a similar way as other Hauppauge TV tuners for Windows Media Center, but the HD PVR records in high definition using H.264 encoding.

Currently they only support the DirectTV EPG (electronic program guide) but not the Dish Network one. (watch and record still works, just the integration is not complete).

My favorite Windows Media Center plug-in is now at version 2.2.4. Among other things like bug fixing, the new release allows clearing the cache from the configuration wizard, the previously experimental SQL Lite allows now to share the play-state, allows localization and sports an increase in performance due to cache optimization. Because of that, be prepared to wait a while (depending on your media library size) until Media Browser rebuilds the cache first time it is used. As usual, I highly recommend using a SSD drive with Windows media Center in general and media browser in particular. The difference vs. a regular drive is like night and day.

Highlights:

• The Media type is now retrieved from locally stored metadata.
• Better support for using MyMovies and Media Browser side-by-side. The user can now set the preferred order of local artwork.
• Watched status indicators are working normally again. Read More…

As you might know, several days ago Microsoft released an update to their Windows Media Center, update that would enable Netflix to stream in HD (720p). On some systems the update went without any problems, on some it wasn’t triggered for some (probably Microsoft related reasons). There are two ways to force the update, a mild one and a hardcore one (in case the mild method doesn’t work). We’ll describe both of them in detail after the break.

Mild Update:

1. Open Windows Media Center, and navigate to Tasks->Settings->General

2. On the General page, navigate and select Automatic Download Options

3. On the Automatic Download Options page, enable (check) the first two settings (Retrieve CD Album Art… and Automatically Download Windows Media Center data between…) Read More…

Well, after Netflix announced several days ago the availability of HD streaming (720p) on PC, everybody expected at some point that the Windows Media Center Netflix streaming plug-in to be upgraded as well. Guess what, it already happened and there is a new client available to be updated for your streaming pleasure. The update process is fairly similar with the first one you went through to install the Netflix client for the first time, so no surprises here. If the update doesn’t start by itself, just go to Settings->General->Automatic Download Options and click Download Now. And by the way, I just did the whole process on train, while commuting back home from work tethering via my iPhone. It literally took 2 minutes. Check some screenshots after the break.

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A very good news indeed for the HTPC aficionados using Windows Media Center. Windows 7 Embedded version will soon be available and, most important, include Windows media Center functionality. Expect a flurry of devices to pop up, with vastly reduced start time for your media consuming pleasure. It is true, there are many other embedded devices available already on the market (or announced) like POPBOX, but the market is only now heating up, so I’m very sure Microsoft will find its place. Now if you can only buy a box capable of 1080p and MKV under $200, that would be a deal. Visit Microsoft’s website for more info.

I’ll never write myself tweets while watching TV, but reading the ones I follow might prove useful from time to time. I have been looking for a while for Windows Media Center plug-ins to improve my TV watching experience, and TwitterMCE from MCEZone seemed to be a rather useful one, so I went ahead and install it.

Description:

TwitterMCE will allow you to post tweets, view friends, followers, timelines, Read More…