This is the second part of the article on designing an HTPC. In part one, I described the hardware components and assembly steps that I used to build the device. Without the proper software and media, however, all you have is a pretty box that consumes power. In this part, I will revisit some of the design requirements that were discussed in part one and review the software that will make the magic happen. Although many of the tools listed are available for both Windows and Linux systems, I will describe the Windows editions (simply because getting the drives setup for all the hardware selected in part one can be a pain under Linux). Also, while the built in Windows Media Center may have some of the desired functionality it is often not the best choice available. (more…)
I was hoping that 2010 would be the year of “Internet TV.” That, with the aid of set-top boxes. consumers would be able to integrate the functionality and content of a home office into the home theater. Several vendors proposed promising products including Google TV, Apple TV, Boxee Box, and Roku that would make this paradigm shift both easy and affordable. Unfortunately, the year is almost over and the promise was not to be. The promised products were released in time for the holiday season but are all plagued with limited functionality, lack of expandability, and proprietary content. For example, while the Boxee Box is great at streaming free Internet content from sites like YouTube, it has very limited functionality for organizing your personal media library and no storage space to keep it. Another daunting problem is that TV networks and on-line content providers like Hulu have blocked the devices’ access to their sites in anticipation of forming contracts similar to those that they have with Cable Networks. Ultimately it is the consumers that loose out on these long overdue features. This is why I decided to take matters into my own hands and build a Home Theater PC (HTPC) that would overcome the problems of the products available on the market today. (more…)
One of the goals that I had for my media center was to have the ability to directly play music and movies from my Linux Server. The PS3 provided half of this functionality by supporting wireless streaming and connections to UPnP A/V servers. MediaTomb filled the gap by enabling my Linux Server to stream my entire media library. Below are the details of my configuration and solutions to some of the issues that I encountered. (more…)
Designing an entertainment center from scratch can be a daunting tasks, especially if you care about quality and aren’t looking to spend more than 5K. Here are some of the considerations that I’ve made when designing the media center in my new home.
Display
The TV is the heart of the entertainment center. There are many specifications that you can consider when choosing the display but the most important one is whether you like the image quality. At this point, most LCD’s look very similar on paper (1080p HDTV, HDMI, 120Hz etc…) and posted specifications such as contrast ratios can be questionable at best (especially when comparing different manufacturers). New technologies such as OLED displays exist but I don’t think they have matured yet for mass market consumption. Besides, being on the cutting edge can quickly put you over budget. I went with a Sharp Aquos LCD TV. Getting a projector was another consideration but the image quality just isn’t the same.
Mounting a flat screen on the wall is nice convenience. When choosing a wall mount, make sure that it can support the size/weight of your TV and that it has a solid construction (especially if it pivots). The mounts with dual-arm constructions tend to feel much more rigid so I think they are worth the extra price.
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Recently, I was forced to relocate my Linux server so I decided to try out 1&1′s Shared Web Hosting package. This option was a lot cheaper then paying collocation fees at a server farm and provided a solution that is a bit easier to maintain. The challenge was setting up the environment to have the same functionality that I used to have on the LAMP server in 1&1′s restricted environment. I’ll describe some of the challenges and solutions bellow. This is a follow-up to an earlier guide that I wrote on Configuring a 1&1 Shared Host. (more…)
Recently, the power supply on my server failed damaging the motherboard and all attached hard drives. I used many precautionary measures to protect the data on the server but they were not enough to avoid going through data recovery. The data was on a journaling file system (ReiserFS v.3) but that doesn’t help when the disks are fried and un-readable. The data was also mirrored across two 250GB drives which, as luck would have it, were both unusable. Sure there were several server backups as well but none were recent or complete enough to be usable.
My data recovery quest started with some anecdotal attempts to get the drives to work. The USB SATA adaptors did not work nor did the trick of putting the disks in the freezer (as silly as that sounds some have had luck with this approach so I figured is was worth a shot). It was time to enlist professional help so I contacted CBL Data Recovery who have had a long history recovering data from various disasters.
Pros:
- CBL performs an assessment of the damage and only charges you if they are able to recover the data.
- The prices are reasonable compared to other services that I have seen that change 10K and above.
- Friendly service
Cons:
- The recovery process took over a week. Apparently, the disk platters got damaged as well as the disk circuit board.
- The customer service representatives were not very helpful and did not appear technically inclined. The CBL engineers that I talked to were much more aware of the situation.
- Many of recovered text files had some binary data after the EOF flag which caused some Linux programs to crash when opening the files. This was fixable but time consuming.
Ultimately, CBL was able to recover all the data from the drives. Time to rebuild my server and think of a better backup strategy.
I just returned from a two week trip to New Zealand with my friend, Eugene. (5/19/07-6/1/07). We toured the country from Christchurch to Auckland by car. The pictures from the trip are available in my photo gallery.
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Decided to play with WordPress to create a blog. I had written my own content management system in PHP a few years ago but it wasn’t quite as nice.
Let’s see how this goes….
