Mike Garcen

[Mike Garcen]

doesn’t have a mouse, but the Boxee remote is small and has a keyboard at least. But if you have to have a mouse, the Dinovo Mini will do the job but definitely isn’t a remote form factor…as long as you can live without the mouse, Harmony is the way to go. The Harmony 900 and 890 both support RF devices I believe.

[Mike Garcen]

echo what everyone else said, wired is the way to go unless you can’t physically do it due to the house or whatever. But it sounds like you can, so make your life easier 🙂

[Mike Garcen]

there’s definitely more than a few MythTV users here, i know George is about to become one.

Check out this poll if you want a better idea of the percentage split of the members here, it’s definitely more than just 7MC.

That being said, I am a 7MC user and have been a Media Center MVP for 5+ years 🙂 So thank goodness i’m not the only person here!

[Mike Garcen]

interesting your guys view on it and GoogleTV, when i first read the title I thought about how google would merge hulu and YouTube, but as i think more i agree with you guys. Boy, with SageTV and if they got Hulu, guess they’re taking this GoogleTV thing serious.

[Mike Garcen]

[quote=Ganjagadget]You may want to look at this for $100: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/1109097/%5B/quote%5D

I remember when that came out, got some pretty awful reviews…but man, at $100 it’s tough to beat

Here’s the direct link to Newegg

[Mike Garcen]

first, i agree with Aaron. If all this is for the simplicity of a single remote, buy a cheap Harmony (probably $30-40), it will cost WAY less than any speaker setup.

I was about to say even computer speakers wouldn’t be able to connect SPDIF, but then I realized that my speakers are extremely old and that technology evolves 🙂 Looks like Logitech’s higher end speakers have digital coax

[Mike Garcen]

i think he’s looking for a solution sans AVR.

Some older TV’s actually use to have speaker connection jacks on the back of tv that allowed you to connect standard stereo speakers to them.

New TV’s however have the analog Red/White composite connections, which bring up a problem for you because then you need an amplifier. What I did to solve this was I used a set of computer stereo speakers (Klipsch THX ProMedia :-P) which have their own amplifier and work just great with an easy mini->rca adapter

To your last question, NO, you cannot use your TV’s volume control for the second scenario i described above. This is the part that’s annoying, and all the more reason to use an AVR. Unless you’re using an HTPC, in which case the Mute/volume buttons for the system (not the TV) will work on your speakers.

[Mike Garcen]

You are not alone

Netflix is working on a fix

[Mike Garcen]

ya know, that’s a great question I never even thought about…not a clue personally..but now you’ve got me curious!

[Mike Garcen]

i believe it was Verizon FiOS in some areas that didn’t copy protect at all. Unless someone is in your particular region with experience however, it’s all just assumptions since the MSOs are not standard–what Comcast in the Bay Area does is different than Comcast in Atlanta. Only other way to test is to get it and find out.

And yes, the copy-once flag would prevent you from compressing and sending to a tablet unless you used something similar to a slingbox…but then it’s not exactly seemless.

[Mike Garcen]

it 100% depends on your MSO (Cable company) on how they protect their content. Very very few will leave all the channels copy-freely. I’ve heard the majority will Copy-Once the premium channels, but leave the basics open. Where are you based? Who’s your cable company?

As you state, you want TV everywhere, so the fool-proof way of doing this will be extenders–you mentioned your displeasure in the performance of the Linksys, the XBox360 is a bit faster, but still not as fast as a client, and then it draws a lot more power than the Linksys as well. is that acceptable?

[Mike Garcen]

ok, so your WHS isn’t that power consuming, you’re correct that minimizing the number of drives is probably the best thing you can do to save some power.

Now, onto your configuration…I agree with you that the Extender’s just suck. However, if you do decide to go CableCARD, then you have as much concern about copy protection than system resources. If anything you record on your main HTPC via CableCARD is flagged Copy Once, then you will NOT be able to play that program on any other HTPC–only an MCX Extender connected to it would work.

Now, what you could do is go with something like the CETON or SiliconDust PRIME and then use the Network Sharing Tuner to associate a specific tuner to each system, but then that gets messy as each system would have to individually record the program.

So for starters, you need to decide if you’re going to be able to live with only watching some (if not all) of your TV recordings from only one system?

Btw, have you thought about boxes like the Roku or Boxee Box? Those are optimized video players that wouldn’t be able to play your recorded TV, BUT, they draw SIGNIFICANTLY LESS power than any HTPC you could build.

[Mike Garcen]

have you tried deleting the WMP database file for Windows Media Player? have you tried manually deleting them in WMP and then re-adding?

[Mike Garcen]

since you have them, i’m curious why you want to drop the Linksys extenders? I ask because they’ll probably consume significantly less power than the XBox360’s would. Those also would draw way less power than any HTPC you could build.

you don’t mention if you’re going with the HDHomeRun PRIME CableCARD or just the standard one. That will impact what i say next, depending on whether you need to worry about copy protection or not for the higher channels.

The Core i3-2100t should be able to record that many programs fine, but where you’ll definitely hit the bottleneck is going to be on driving extenders if you’re maxing out your recordings. How much RAM do you have?

Also, you don’t say what your WHS is built on, but in addition to your hard drives the platform is something else to look into.

[Mike Garcen]

Mikinho’s actually working on a review of this as we speak, and so far he’s told me nothing but positive things about it! and at this price, sheesh, good deal

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