WholeHome

Another great combination – and for those of you with a Media Center, using it on one TV is great, but having access to it all over my home and NOT having to put a computer under every TV is most definitely the way to go.

So, I thought I’d share some great things I’ve learned as well as a few common problems I’ve noticed people have with Windows Media Centers… Me, I’m straddling the line as I have Media Center, TiVos, and an HDX1000… This is my home setup

Davids home setup

Yeah – a little messy, but that is OK since it is all socked away in a corner of my office and not out in the main living room where appearance matters.

On the right is my “primary” BOCS – the slim set top box with the Red/Green/Blue lights on the front

• Red = Windows Media Center – you can see it on the left – the HP box with the two door open – it has 1TB internal, and as you can see another 4 TB of external shared storage. It holds my entire repository of movies, music, pictures, and also serves as my home server for software, as well as having two tuners – so this provides two recording options – but it is not hooked up to a cable box, so it primarily records network programming off Comcast cable
• Green = “Adult Tivo” – that would be the series 1 Philips tivo on the bottom right stack – Again, no cable box – so my wife and I record CSI and other things that we tend to watch together – it has a big hard drive so any time there is a movie we want to keep, we record it there as well
• Blue = “Kids Tivo” – the Humax (Silver) box in the right stack. It is unique in that it controls the Comcast (Motorola) set top box on top of it using a serial cable connection – AND it has a bilt in DVD burner. When a kid wants to watch a movie, this is where they run and put the DVD in so they can go to any other TV and watch it.
• (Just for reference, the other two devices on top of the right stack is a gigabit switch and on top of that the USB-ethernet adapter for the Humax Tivo)

On the Left is my “Secondary BOCS” – I have more than three sources so I put a second BOCS unit in my home – on a remote I get to the first three channels just by pushing the Red, Green, or Blue BOCS buttons. To access the secondary unit I use shift-Red, Shift-Green, or Shift-Blue. So, Hooked up to that is

• Shift-Red = HDX1000 – It can access via ethernet all the same movies/music/pitcures that are on the Media Center, but this provides me a low cost way to have another source – in case the kids are using the media center, I can still get to all that content on Shift-Red. Plus it has internet connectivity for other online sources – very nice.
• Shift-Green = I usually leave this one open – with a little A/V switch, I can switch it to my home security system (See the 12 cameras I have up), switch to an open input in case I want to plug in my video camera and watch a kids soccer game, etc.
• Shift-Blue = Sony DVD changer – This is a 400 disc DVD changer… Yes, I tend to rip all my movies, compress to 1.5GB and store on the media center, but you know how it is… That takes time and there are always a lot of DVDs “waiting in the queue”. So they all go there. It does a mediocre job of self-labeling but hooking up a keyboard makes it simple to add a title to a new disc.

Why the 2X4 s ? The Media center gets pretty warm – but the weird thing is that if it gets hot, it kicks its fans on high and it makes a lot of noise. The two 2X4s keep enough circulation that it rarely goes to high – ugly but functional.

And you might notice the sling box peeking out – This is one of the first generation ones – two inputs – so I can watch the media center or the Humax Tivo remotely – frankly I used it a lot at first from overseas, but not sure it has been activated in about 6 months.

So – the biggest issue with Media Center and BOCS? Getting the video out right. Depending on the PC you have, which video cards, and how you have it set up, it could support only one monitor, or one analog one digital, or be more flexible than that. This particular setup can support one digital and one analog. It is important to note that BOCS takes a composite input – analog. And VGA is ANALOG – so while you can hook up HDMI, or DVI, you have to unplug the VGA before you boot so the composite gets activated. Just a little tip.

Can anyone beat this setup??