Beginner's Guide

Sep 08 2011

Guide - CableCARD Tuner Essentials

By Mike Garcen

Technology of CableCARD; How long it’s been around? Why’s it important?
For the full nitty gritty details of CableCARD check out the Wikipedia entry which is fairly thorough. At a higher level, the technology was developed to protect consumers from being forced into having to rent set top boxes (STB) at increasing fees from cable companies (or MSOs) without an alternative. From a home theater PC (HTPC) perspective, it meant the ability to natively tune high definition programming from a cable provider (previously the options were only analog cable, or digital over the air broadcasts).

Originally, the exposure for HTPCs was minimal as there was a single tuner from ATI which required special Windows Vista activation from only a few OEM PC manufacturers; so if you wanted to have CableCARD it required purchasing an entire PC, leaving DIYers out. When Windows 7 was introduced, this requirement was removed and any customers were allowed to purchase ATI tuners and activate them.  Until recently, CableCARD recordings were subject to fairly restrictive DRM, so even after the OEM requirements were relaxed, the technology was not viable for enthusiasts who wanted to placeshift the recordings.

Aug 18 2011

Guide - Using the Native 7MC Movie Library

By Zach Christiansen
 While there are certainly a number of options when it comes to movie management within Microsoft Windows 7 Media Center (7MC) such as My Movies, Media Browser, etc., one of the simplest is the included native movie library. This guide will cover the following:
  1. What types of files can be added to the library
  2. How to add files to the library.
  3. Ways to get metadata for your movies.
What types of files can be added
 
Out of the box, the 7MC Movie Library will display the default file types that it can play. (Link to microsoft article about default file types) In addition to the files on the this list, the movie library will also display movies that are ripped from DVDs and stored in video_ts and audio_ts folders. In order to have other file types displayed (such as MKV and .iso) which are not natively supported by 7MC, you will need to enable this file type via a “hack” or workaround. For example, with .mkv files this type is enabled when a splitter such as Haali media splitter is installed. Head to the forums if you are having issues with a specific file type being displayed in Media Center. Below is a list of common formats and their native (out of the box) support within 7MC.

Aug 04 2011

Guide - Beginners Guide to installing Windows 7

By Kyle Button

Have you wanted to upgrade to Microsoft Windows 7 or just do a fresh install and don't know where to start? Running Windows 7 can be a huge time saver, and, in many cases, will run much faster on the computer you already own, with not much required. Maybe a memory upgrade to give your computer a little more speed. The computer may not be the fastest one on the block, for more speed you need at least two GB of RAM for basic computing.

What is needed before beginning:
* At least 1GB of RAM (Recommended 2GB or more)
* 32-bit or 64-bit machine and your choice of version of Windows 7 (microsoft link), all disc come with 64 or 32 versions (FYI OEM are specific to one type)
* 7GB of hard drive space just for the Operating System (80GB or more recommended)

An external video card is not required, but you will most likely not get the cool Windows Aero effects if you don’t have anything besides on-board graphics processing unit (GPU) on older machines. Any newer on-board or integrated GPUs can handle Aero as well as discrete GPUs.

Microsoft offers a Windows 7 Update Advisor which can be run on a Windows XP SP2 or Vista machine to help identify your PC’s compatibility with drivers or software and Windows 7. This will help you to determine what might not work when you do the upgrade or what new piece of hardware you are going to need before you do the install.

I always recommend you back up all of your data before you do a custom install. There are ways around this, but lets just keep it simple for now.

Lets get started with the actual installation!

There are two options to install Microsoft Windows 7:

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