Here is a portion of this post to pique your interest
I wish I had something amazing to say....
Monday, November 23, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
The FreeVo Project
During the last several months I was formulating a plan to get rid of my monthly TV service fees by setting up our PC as a DVR. Here are the details.
Type rest of the post here
What we started with:
Channels we watched on a regular basis (besides local channels):
What we'll be giving up:
What we'll be gaining through our PC:
The Plan:
When I built a new computer, I moved our old one (which is in a half-sized case) into our entertainment center and connected it directly to our TV through the S-Video connection. I bought a media center keyboard with a built in mouse. It uses a 2.4GHz wireless signal so it has a lot longer range than a standard wireless mouse/keyboard. This lets us use it from the couch without any problems. It's not perfect, but it is so much better for the living room than a normal mouse and keyboard. I set up the PC to eliminate typing as much as possible.
Watching online content:
I installed Hulu Desktop to give us sofa and remote control access to Hulu so we don't need to bring up an internet window to watch online shows. This gives us access to NBC, CBS, ABC, USA, and Disney Channel. From there we can choose any of the recent episodes of the shows we are watching. We'll also be recording any of our shows on the national networks using our PC as a DVR, but this allows us to watch Disney and USA shows that we'll no longer be getting through DirecTV. I also made a desktop shortcuts to Netflix, and Pandora (so I won't have to type in the web addresses) and set the logins to remember me so I don't have to enter a password. Right now, I'm also trying out Zinc to give us a better way to browse Netflix watch instantly and online episodes from a TV friendly interface. It's working pretty well, but the browser window get's messed up and unreadable when the computer sleeps, then wakes up. Until this is fixed, we have to open the program from the keyboard when we want to use it. I'm looking forward to trying out Boxee on June 23rd when it's released for Windows.
Instant access to our personal movie library:
I used this handy guide to use Handbrake to rip Carter's and our favorite movies and TV shows that we have on DVD to play directly from our PC. This solves three annoyances: We don't have to look for the DVD to play it, the discs don't get scratched up from daily abuse, and we don't have to skip through the previews and menus to get to the movie. That last one is a glorious benefit. Most movies, especially kids movies, have a lot of intros, advertisements, previews, FBI warnings, etc., some of which you cannot skip through to get to the menu. Now I just start the movie and get on with my life.
Now for the disclaimer: Ripping DVD's requires decrypting the source files, which is technically illegal. Note that I do not rip movies that I don't personally own, nor do I condone ripping rented or borrowed movies or distributing ripped movies as that is, without argument, piracy. I rip them for viewing convenience in my own home and to protect the original discs I paid Hollywood good, hard-earned money for.
I am also able to use Handbrake to transcode HD recordings we make from movies that come on TV. This way I can encode them using H.264 encoding (the one used for Blu-Ray) so I get files that are half the size for about the same video quality. This makes difference since each 2 hour movie recording is about 15GB.
DVR setup:
For the TV tuner, I'm using the Hauppauge 2250. It gives me a dual tuner with a single connection so we can keep recording/watching two shows at once like we are now with DirecTV. It also comes with a remote, so I don't have to use the keyboard/mouse as often.
The caveat with using TV tuners in PCs is that there is not an elegant solution to use your PC to record cable or satellite TV. If you cannot live without the channels you can only get through paid service, this solution isn't for you. You're simply better off paying the extra $10/month for DVR service if you are already paying for cable or satellite. However, if you like $700/year more than you like the few channels you actually watch that you can't get over the air, you can free yourself from a lifetime of monthly payments.
I installed this TV antenna in my attic to pick up all of the local channels, including HD channels (no HDTV yet though). With the digital transition, our TV doesn't pick up any stations by itself without a converter box, but the TV tuner card picks up all of the stations in their digital format.
With the tuner card and antenna area set up, I set up the PVR software to pull the programming guide off of the internet to schedule recordings. If you have Vista (or Windows 7!) Premium or Ultimate, the simplest solution is to use the included Media Center software for recording TV. If you want to use Windows XP, I've heard a lot of good things about BeyondTV. It's a little pricey, but has some good features. Since the purpose of my project is to save money, and since I like to tinker with computers, I'm using the free open-source software GB-PVR. This program is not for the faint of heart, since it requires a lot of manual setup, but when all is said and done, it gives you a lot of features that you don't get with Vista Media Center or BeyondTV, including:
Music:
As I mentioned before I set up a desktop shortcut for Pandora, which made my wife very happy. Aside from that, I installed iTunes to play music from our personal library. We like the genius playlist feature.
CD's and DVD's:
We also have the option of playing CD's and DVD's from the PC rather than our DVD player, so we could get rid of our DVD player to free up space in the entertainment center. For now we're keeping it because its surround sound speakers and 5 disc changer are nice.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Upgrading my video card cooler
I recently purchased a mid range video card that I caught on a manager's special at Best Buy ($40). With the release this month of ATI's HD4800 series, my HD2600 Pro is officially two generations old, but the price was right and it's a big step up from the on board graphics my system was previously running.
I ran some benchmarks on Company of Heroes and found that I was on the borderline of being able to use the higher settings at my monitor's native 1680x1050 resolution. With my previous Dell system I was able to play this game at 1024x768 with all settings on low and thought the graphics were decent for my needs. I didn't know what I was missing until I saw the game with higher detail, anti-aliasing, shadows and reflections enabled.
Since the card didn't represent a huge investment, I decided to experiment with some overclocking. This is something I had been wanting to try if the opportunity came up. Using RivaTuner and a trusty Maximum PC article as a guide, I was able to take the core clock speed up 30% from 600MHz to 790MHz, and the memory clock up 25% from 400MHz to 500MHz. The system ran stable, but the clock speed increase took the GPU temperature up close to 60 C while idle and over 70 C under a full load. This was a lot hotter than I was comfortable with. The small fan on the card also ran at full speed all the time and was by far the loudest part of my computer. I like the idea of my system working hard, but sounding like it's not.
This prompted me to try upgrading the heat sink/fan with a quieter and cooler-running aftermarket model.
After reading a few reviews, I picked up the Zalman VF700-AlCu at Fry's based first on price and second on performance. On the one hand, it might seem impractical to spend $25 on a cooler for a $40 video card, but on the other hand I end up with a cool and quiet card that performs at nearly the level of the next model up. I also got the satisfaction of modifying the card myself to appeal to the hobbyist in me.
If you're interested in the upgrade process, read on.
- I first removed the stock cooler by taking out the four screws securing the heat sink to the circuit board. This revealed the bare GPU die and four of the eight RAM chips.
- I used ArctiClean thermal material remover and thermal surface purifier to clean the die to a mirror finish. Then I applied a very thin layer of Arctic Silver to get the best possible heat transfer from the die to the heat sink.
The difficulty came when I found out that the "Fits latest VGA cards!" claim on the new heat sink packaging involved a drill in my case. I don't know whether to blame VisionTek or Zalman for this. The video card had pre-drilled holes that matched the heatsink mounting bracket, but they were about a millimeter in size and there wasn't a prayer of getting even the small screws that came with the cooler through them. Obviously, Visiontek didn't anticipate many customers taking this route on a low end card.
- After removing the fan from the heat sink, I drilled new (and not pretty, I might add) holes in both mounting brackets to match the bigger holes in the board. It was definitely a retrofit, (or more like a "Ghettrofit"), but it worked.
- I installed the self-adhesive RAM heat sinks, then installed the cooler, alternating turns between mounting screws to get a level contact between the chip and the metal. After reinstalling the video card, I was pleased to see the GPU temps drop by around 10 C under both idle and full load conditions. The larger fan is also much quieter, even at full speed. The one side effect I hadn't considered, is that the temperatures of everything else in my system went up by a few degrees since the heat was being drawn away more effectively from the video card. The final product also took up another PCI slot as I had expected.
- With the overclocked settings, the video card was running at much more comfortable temperatures. I tested the card by playing Crysis at medium settings for a few hours at 1680x1050 resolution. After an hour or so, I did have one video display hang, followed by a blank screen. I rebooted and dropped the core clock one notch to 784 MHz and haven't had a problem since. The game play was noticeably smoother at lower resolutions, but I didn't expect much more for the price I paid on such a demanding game. Most other games should run fine at this resolution with higher settings. The final setup fit the bill.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Sheetrock and Cinder Blocks
For quite a while, I had been trying to convince Megan of the merits of a wired home network over a less reliable, albeit simpler, wireless only network. With summer fast approaching and the prospect of surviving an ascent to the attic in Phoenix looking more and more grim, I got the go ahead (and an eye roll.)
Ben committed to help out, and we picked up a bundle of cat5e cable. The attic was brutal - 30 years of caked on dust settled into the rolled fiberglass insulation, and a nearly asphyxiating heat. I attached the cable to a pulling rod and sent it down the hole with the electrical wiring to our kitchen. It was going to be easy from there on out.
To make a long story short, I punched a hole in the kitchen wall to pull the cable through and couldn't find it. Punched holes higher, to the left, to the right - nine in all before finding out that the electrical wiring was routed through the holes in the cinder block wall rather than behind the sheetrock. After punching 3 holes in the cinder block from inside, I finally found the end of the rod and pulled the cable through.
I sent the other end of the cable through the ceiling of our closet to the shelf where the modem and router would ultimately reside. Megan came home and was less than thrilled about the collateral damage from the affair. Pulling up a website on the new network and smiling did not seem to console her much. She took it amazingly well, considering most women would ship their husband to Abu Dhabi to live with Nermal under the circumstances.
She gave me the benefit of the doubt and is withholding judgment until the sheetrock repair is finished. How would you respond?
Monday, March 10, 2008
Hard Drive Crash!
Megan called me the other day to tell me she heard a clicking/chirping sound coming from the computer. The screen went black and wouldn't respond. A hard drive had died, but the question was, "which one?"
My system had two hard drives cannibalized from my old computer to save money. They were both about 2 years old. A 160GB drive housed Windows XP and applications, while the larger 200GB one served as storage for photos, videos, and documents. If the Windows drive had crashed, it meant the headache of reinstalling windows, but that all our personal media escaped unscathed. It turned out that the larger media drive had gone to the big drive bay in the sky. Fortunately, I had a Perl script backing up all our personal data nightly to the main drive.
I started grumbling and searching online for a replacement that I hadn't budgeted for. I vacillated between buying a sub $50 drive around 160GB -- smaller than I wanted, or springing for a larger 500GB drive for around $100. The larger drive was a better value, but neither option seemed to suit me. Growing up in an entitlement generation, I wanted more for less. Out of curiosity, I surfed over to the Seagate website since the remembered the drive having a five year warranty. I was surprised when I put in the serial number and it showed the drive being warrantied until 2011 -- 7 years from the time I bought it.
I filled out the online form and snickered at the option to upgrade my replacement to a 250GB model for $40 more. Nice try, Seagate, but I'll take the free replacement, thank you.
I felt a little hesitant that I couldn't erase the data on the dead drive. If it was refurbished, could our personal data be exposed to prying eyes? I decided it was a long shot, and couldn't think of anything too compromising if this did happen.
A week went by and, to my delight, I received a 250GB (refurbished) drive as a replacement. This was the upgrade they initially offered to charge me for. I snubbed my nose at "the man," and popped my free upgrade into our system. After a night of copying back the data, we were back in business. Crisis averted.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Newest Additions
For my birthday, Megan told me to order some things from my Newegg wish list -- without going too crazy. I decided on an internal card reader and a SATA DVD burner. Using a SATA optical drive will allow me to use the two larger IDE hard drives from our old computer on the single IDE motherboard connection I have to work with. I figured this was cheaper than springing a Franklin on a 500GB SATA drive, and it will give me 360GB capacity. This should be plenty, for now, until we fill it up with family videos or start using it as a PVR.
Here are the two products I chose:
Card Reader - the one from my wish list. It looks great with the black face plate, and includes a slot for microSD cards so you don't need an adapter. I ran a test downloading the same data from an Ultra II Compact Flash card using the reader and then our camera. I saw read speeds of ~9MB/s with the card reader. This is three times faster than downloading the photos using the camera itself.
DVD Burner - ASUS DRW-1814BLT - This drive is a perfect match for my system. It is the quietest drive I've ever (or never) heard. It's completely silent during DVD playback so you don't hear it during silent portions of movies. It also supports LiteScribe discs for burning your own labels on the disc face. What sealed the deal is that it included these features with a sub $30 price tag and free shipping. The only category this drive trails others at the same price point is that it burns at 18x speeds rather than 20x. But I'll trade an 11% slowdown any day to escape that constant purring that comes from those Lite-on drives that Dell stuffs in it's systems.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
The Wait is Over!
All of you that have been waiting on pins and needles to see my wish list on New Egg can now rest easy. Here it is. I've included the additions I'd like to make to my system in the long run. As far as priority of the list items, here is what I think:
1. Card Reader - cheapest item and will make a noticeable difference in the capability of my system. I'd hate to cough up 5 bucks shipping on a $15 item though, so it will probably be best to order with something else to save on overall shipping costs.
2. Hard Drive(s) - My system right now is using a 40GB hard drive just so I can use it until I can get a bigger one. Two identical drives would be great because I could use an Intel Matrix RAID setup to have a RAID 0 partition for performance and a RAID 1 partition to protect my data against hard drive failure. Three identical drives would be a dream because I could set up a RAID 5 partition, but this would fill up every possible drive slot in my case, so it probably isn't practical.
3. Memory (1GB) - The next most important item is a toss up between the graphics card and more memory, but neither is really vital at this point. I'll give memory the edge here since it is a quarter the price.
4. Video Card - The card on my list is perfect for my setup. It is the fastest card I've found that uses a passive heat sink rather than a noisy fan. Since I'm using a mobile processor, any faster card would turn my CPU into the bottleneck and would be a waste of money. This wouldn't be a high end gaming system, but it would rip the britches off of a PS3.
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