Velocity Micro MCE - Page 11

That would be a nice addition to that lineup,however the new Sideshow app in VMC
holds some very interesting uses. I think (for me anyway) this would be better than having to get up off the couch or wherever you are to control a touchscreen,probably cheaper too.


http://www.ricavision.net/brochure_p...how_remote.pdf

Agreed, I'm also waiting for that remote!

I have my tracking number with a delivery of tomorrow.

I have an appointment for Thursday for cablecard install. They have agreed to make me the beta test site for Brighthouse cable and DCT/Vista. This was very difficult to arrange.

I'll keep you posted.

Why was this difficult to arrange? I've had my DCT running for 3 weeks in Central Florida with Brighthouse. Beware of the Scientific Atlanta CableCARD lockup issue when switching from a analog to digital. Stick to the digital stuff while the installer is there and confirm all of your premium and HD content is working before switching to analog.

[edit] I just re-read your posts about Brighthouse. Yeah when I called Brighthouse I just told them it was for a TV. Don't even bother trying to explain it over the phone because you'll get directed to people to install NIC cards. Just deal with the installer when he gets there. Hopefully you get lucky and get a decent tech, otherwise prepare to do everything yourself.

I've got Comcast where I live.

I was able to just stop by their local office and pickup 2 Motorola cable cards with no hassles. They are sitting on front of me eagerly awaiting my new media center PC, which is now in production.

I'm jealous. It seems everyday for the last few weeks I've been hoping to see that my unit has shipped. But not yet.....When did you place your order? Mine was on 1/31/07 for a Grand Cinema. I'm looking forward to hearing how your install goes.

I am curious as to how you have had a DCT for 3 weeks? I thought VM was the first company to ship and they sent out their first units within the past few days?

Also, on Brighthouse, I mentioned Tivo seriers 3 as a comparable system and they indicated in Tampa, they will not even support those at the moment. They said that Orlando has been way ahead of them in this type of support.

Of all of the AVSForum orders I forwarded to Production, his must have just gotten pulled off ahead of yours...I have notes in your order to guarantee delivery by Friday, if not before, because of your install schedule.

There are all sorts of seed units, alpha units, etc that have been out there for a while...

My install is scheduled for Weds, not Friday.

Woops! Got your handle confused with your name which was quoted by someone ELSE who had an install of Saturday and I was working with to make sure they got their system on time.

My bad - your notes say must leave tomorrow. I will be going in with Production tomorrow morning and will be supervising your build personally.

I can't imagine how you might confuse us all....! Kidding of course. In all honesty, I don't know how you manage to juggle all it is you're doing. Thanks,

Bob

Are there any media adapters that will let you stream content recorded by one of these Vista Media Centers with OCUR over the network. I know you cant play it back on another machine, but another box should be able to "authenticate" to it and stream it over the network.
Does anyone know if such a product has been announced yet?
Thanks

I have an early DCT unit for testing.

In my experience, Brighthouse (Orlando) is pretty clueless with CableCARDs and has absolutely no experience with Media Center. Everytime I called to have them send the signal to the card (I had some programming issues that took a week to resolve) I just told them it was a TV to avoid getting any run around from them. The techs that came to the house didn't seem to care that it wasn't a TV when they got there. Other then sending the programming to the card, Brighthouse doesn't do anything more. Luckily you have the benefit of VM's support as well as the nuggets of info in this thread.

Xbox360 is the only device I know of that can do this.

Does Sling Media work with cablecard recorded media?

I am assuming it will downgrade resolution before streaming.


Another random question - does anyone think that an all in one is a good idea. I've owned several htpcs before and no matter how much I off load material - the hard drives get murdered cycling through so much data - No matter what I do - the computer always ends up becoming unbearably slow over time....

Here's my point (and a couple of people have brought this up in different contexts) - should one have a dedicated recording unit - one that has enough juice to handle multiple hd and sd recording streams and BR/HD DVD playback and then also have a dedicated multi-terabit NAS server that is built specifically for streaming/playback....

My usage model may be diffferent from yours: I record lots of movies to HDD and then just keep them. I never record to my C drive though..for safety. I put all the content on seperate drives and they only hold content. When they get full I add another disc. I have something like 6 disks in the system and 1 external now. They keep getting bigger of course I have defragged a couple, but basically the smaller ones (80GB and 120GB) just sit there now and play back.
For 2 yrs now, I have never had a problem with this machine slowing down. In fact, its been amazingly stable.
Recently, I have started recording and deleting more prime time but I haven't noticed any changes.
I also dont have a HTPC...its more of a basement machine that is a DVR.

Chris,

I'm looking into the VM cable-card media center systems and have a few questions:

1. I already have 1TB of storage with lots of home videos, pictures, music, etc already in place. How many drives (SATA) do your Intel-platform media center boxes allow for?

2. I access all of my media center content (including live TV) XBox 360 media center extenders. Do I really need an HDCP video card when the box isn't directly driving the video of my HDTV? Just looking for options.

3. Have you done any measurements on the sound levels produced by either Intel-platform media center boxes you offer? This will help me determine whether the living room or a server closet is the place the box should reside.

Thanks in advance!

If you are thinking about placing the box in a server closet, you may want to look at the VM S85 instead of the Grand Theater. It has the same motherboard in a standard computer case with more room for expendability.

The motherboard has connections for eight SATA devices. The S85 case has room for five internal disk drives and the Grand Theater has room for four. Also, the S85 case has room for two optical drives vs. one for the Grand Theater.

I don't know whether VM provides an external SATA connector - Chris would need to answer (or I could answer after next Friday when my S85 is scheduled to arrive by UPS). If not, you can probably add connectors directly to the motherboard to use the additional drives.

It looks to me like the motherboard used in the systems with digital cable tuner option (Intel D975XBX2LKR) use the security TPM module. I know the recorded content is tied to the machine, but is the TPM actually isntalled and used for this purpose. Is this what cablelabs requires?
Someone "in the know" about this?
Thanks

Since I don't have a TPM module in my PC then I think it's safe to say no.

I just got a call from Jay at VM saying that separate from the issues regarding the Digital tuner cards that have held up shipping these units , they are now also having issues with the combination of the motherboard in my Grand Cinema, with Vista, and the 4 GB of RAM that I requested be installed. It apparently causes the sound to not work properly. They now have no estimated ship date, as it doesn't seem as though they know how to fix it as this point. Has anyone else experienced or heard of this sort of configuration problem? Thanks.

4GB of RAM is the full address space of a 32-bit processor. There are parts of the address space (just like back in the old 16-bit days in the area between 640K and 1MB) which are used for hardware registers. That is why a PC with 4GB of RAM, will not show the full 4GB as part of the address space is reserved for other purposes.

Check out this article:
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/ar...14/699521.aspx

I thought this was not the case in Vista, and that it would recognize the full 4 GB. Is this not so?

There are 2 kinds of Vista's. 32 bit and 64 bit. The 64 bit version should have no issues with seeing all of the 4GB of RAM. However, you REALLY don't want to run 64 bit, because it requires signed device drivers, and half the good stuff in HTPC's these days don't have signed drivers. So everyone uses 32 bit...

Thanks,
Mike

Windows Vista (x86 and x64) will have the exact same problems that Windows XP does with 4GB of RAM (depending on the hardware used).

Even with x64, if you have using hardware with 32 address bits, you will be limited on part by the hardware, not Windows. Doesn't matter if you have running x86 or x64, you will still be limited in terms of physical memory.

Get yourself hardware with a true 64-bit chipset, then the problem will go away (IIRC).

Chris

On top of frying 4 Bad Axe II boards due to what is most likely a bad thumb drive. I just found out about this issue but am travelling (unexpectedly). I will be back Friday but will monitor this from the road. Very sorry about this! I'm sure we already have a fix for it since we have run into this before. We should have you up and running soon.