MN Maven

So now that Comcast has implemented the 250gig a month limit I have been trying to come up with a solution to monitor my bandwidth usage and track it from month to month. Currently I am running a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 router with third party firmware from DD-WRT. DD-WRT has it’s own built in traffic monitoring, however with the event of a power loss, the monthly tracking is lost, so because of this I wanted to come up with a solution to utilize my WHS box that runs 24/7, is on a UPS, and has basically an unlimited HDD space so log files won’t be an issue. Because I am running DD-WRT it allows me to capture SNMP packets and use that to monitor my traffic. In the past I’ve used simple tools like SNMP Traffic Grapher (STG). I soon found out that STG wouldn’t cut it for what I needed and started looking around for something more robust and something that would save my data month to month.

One of my past jobs, working for a small Dialup, DSL, and fixed wireless ISP we were in the habit of taking advantage of free and open source tools to monitor our network. Two of the tools I used on a regular basis were NAGIOS and MRTG. Both were and probably still are great tools for what we needed to monitor the network, however the people I worked with were big into Linux and understood it inside and out. I am and windows gui, give me a gui any day of the week. So I started looking around for something that would install on windows server 2003 (IE my WHS box) and found Cacti. After digging around some more I found a .exe self installer that someone put together on the Cacti forums and from there it was simple as double clicking, following a few instructions and I was up and running with Cacti on my WHS box.

Here is the Windows stand alone installer for Cacti: http://forums.cacti.net/about14946.html

The installer does everything you need to get it up and running, all you need to do, is download it, transfer it to your WHS box, then RDP into your WHS box and double click and install. The installer finds out that you already have IIS installed and up and running on your WHS box, so its a really easy, straight forward install.

Once you have Cacti installed, you then need to enable SNMP on your router, in my case I am running the buffalo router with DD-WRT which makes it extremely easy to do. Next follow the Cacti documentation to setup cacti and traffic monitoring. Once you have that done that you are now good to go and you are now monitoring you incoming and outgoing bandwidth. I now just wish I had a way to send me a notification if I were getting close to the 250gig a month cap. Like have it alert me via email if I were to get within 90% of the 250gig cap, but for now I have at least got it monitoring my traffic and logging it, which was half the battle.

As always you can register here and comment on the blog, or follow me on Twitter.

- Josh

How i use my HTPC

As Brent I didn’t start using my HTPC for TV, but instead for movies and music. I first got into HTPC’s for DVD upscaling, and post processing. When I bought my first HDTV and realized how crappy DVD’s looked on the tv, I started looking into what it would cost to upscale and post process dvd’s to give me a near HD video quality. I looked at what it cost for higher end upscaling dvd players, which at that time (fall of 2004) weren’t highly available. The players that were around were upwards of $500 and didn’t offer that great of an improvement. There were also high end video processors but those cost more than the tv itself, so that was also out. At that time I had hooked up one of my hold PC’s to the TV and I was using that to play back downloaded tv shows and downloaded movies but I had never thought of playing back DVD’s through the pc. I then discovered AVS Forum and saw what others were doing with PC’s and how they were using direct show filters like FFDshow and using that to upscale and post process dvd’s to drastically improve the video quality of dvd playback. I was soon hooked. Some people would say, and some times still do, say that PC’s with FFdshow and other filters were as good if not better at upscaling and de-interlacing dvd’s than what you could find in higher end video processors.

 

While playing around with FFdshow settings, I stumbled upon people also using their PC’s as DVR’s by adding tuner cards and recording cable tv and OTA ATSC HDTV. I then found myself looking for software that would allow me to turn my HTPC into a DVR. I started using BeyondTV, then SageTV, also tried GB PVR but at the time (again fall of 2004) nothing caught my eye, nothing was easy to use, or easy to setup. I soon found out about Media Center 2005 and from then on I was hooked. I ended up buying a new pc from Dell which came with a tuner card and Media Center 2005 which got me to the point where I am today. Since that PC I have built damn near 4 more HTPC’s or upgraded hardware to the point where I am today. Once I started getting really into Media Center and tuner cards I have never looked back and have never stopped. I went from having a single ATSC and a single NTSC tuner in my first HTPC to now having 6 ATSC and 4 NTSC tuners in my main HTPC and having 2 NTSC, 2 ATSC and 2 QAM tuners in my “test” HTPC that I am currently using to test out Windows 7. Right now I just re-installed my test pc with 7068 release of Windows 7 which so far has been running great for me and is slowly looking more and more like I will definitely be upgrading to windows 7 full time on my “production” HTPC once it goes RTM.

 

Most of the time my wife still refuses to use Media Center full time. The only time she’ll use it, is if I am sitting down to watch tv and she is there with me, basically if I am there to man the controls, or if I am on my computer in our room and she’s watching tv at the same time she’ll ask me to set it up and start playing a tv show. My goal once I get the home automation system up and running fully is that she’ll be able to fully use media center and control everything without me being there. That is one of the main driving forces for me looking into home automation is so that she can use it without having to worry she’ll break something. However even though she refuses to use it by her self in most cases, she’ll bitch and complain if it isn’t working correctly. If she can’t consume her media when she wants that is when the HTPC takes the brunt of it and she wants it out of the house. As of lately though, other than my guide data issues, we’ve been living a trouble free life with media center and the extenders and with Windows 7 it keeps looking like it’ll only get better.

 

My HTPC setup in my home is a Client/Server configuration. The main HTPC which is located in my comm closet which is adjacent to my Home Theater room is where the central hub of everything “connected” in my home is located. Main cable tv feed, cable modem, router, switches, patch panel, AV distribution, you name it, it is located in the comm closet. The comm closet also serves as an AV rack for my home theater, where I located my AV receiver, my xbox 360, hd dvd player, 5 disk dvd changer, cable box, monster power center and more. The closet allows me to access the AV rack from the rear so I can easily disconnect, add or change equipment with ease and not have to worry about wires all over the place. My HTPC is the same way, I have it located in this closet as I have 10 tuner cards, so that mean I have 10 RG6 coax feeds that go into this PC. Having 10 RG6 coax feeds at times can make a real mess. But having a closet of this nature allows me to have everything connected, and hidden out of plain sight, which keeps the WAF high, and keeps the system out of reach and means that it can be up and running with no potential of some one turning it off or messing with it.

 

With the HTPC located in the Home Theater and directly connected to my projector, the HTPC feeds my home theater movies, music, tv (Live and Recorded), and any other media content from pictures, and other home videos. From there I use media center extenders located in my family room which consists of a 32” plasma 720p HDTV. The second media center extender is located in my bedroom where I have it connected to a 32” LCD 720p HDTV. Also in my bedroom I have my “test” HTPC in a small form factor desktop HTPC case that I use in conjunction with the media center extender to consume movies and other content I can’t get with an extender. With Windows 7 on the test pc I have it setup to load all recorded tv from my main “production” HTPC so that I can watch recorded tv on the test pc just like I would if I were using the pc if it had tuner cards doing the DVRing. With windows 7 and the advent of home groups that were added it now makes it much easier to share recorded tv from pc to pc and have it show up in the recorded tv section of media center, it just adds that additional ease of use to the whole setup.

 

Over all the way I use my HTPC is to tie in all my digital entertainment needs into a single, easy to use, great looking interface, and without Windows Media Center I would not be able to accomplish this the way I do now. Yes I could use other solutions like SageTV but we all know what I think of SageTV, and I will just leave it at that.

 

- Josh

Recently I upgraded my HTPC case for my spare/test HTPC so that I could set it up in my bedroom and play around with windows 7 media center, and get more hands on use with it. Since there isn’t a softsled solution for media center I still require a Linksys Media Center Extender in the room as well. Since both are media center devices they share the same IR codes which caused problems trying to use one or the other.

 

Today I had remembered that VMC supported 9 IR codes, so that you could effectively run 8 (since code 0 and 1 share the same codes) different media center HTPC’s and IR blasters all at the same time, in the same room, and not interfere with each other. So while thinking about that I set off trying to find any information on how to change the control ID’s for media center. Not being able to find anything on Google, I went to the “HTPC Collective” on Twitter, and within minutes Ian Dixon, Mike Brown and Richard Miller answered the call.

 

Ian with this link. Mike with this, and Richard with this. Follow the instructions located on each page, I went into the registry, changed the “Set Remote Control ID” to 2, deleted the other remote control ID’s as instructed, then programmed my MCE remote also as instructed. These same instructions, originally set out for vista media center, also work for windows 7 media center (7MC).

 

Enable Universal Remote Control – If you have a universal remote control you may need to enable it. A reboot is required for this setting to take effect.

• Registry key – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HidIr\Remotes\745a17a0-74d3-11d0-b6fe-00a0c90f57da
• Registry value – EnableDebounce
• Registry value data type – REG_DWORD
• Registry value data – 1 = enable universal remote control; 0 = disable universal remote control

Set Remote Control ID – To enable your Media Center to respond to a specific remote control ID do the following; 1. Press and hold the DVD Menu key on the remote then press a number button (1-8) for 5 seconds. Remotes with visible LED signal indicators will blink twice to confirm the change.  2. Enter that same number below. 3. Save. 4. Restart the Media Center PC.  Note: To enable Media Center to respond to all remotes use the number 0. A reboot is required for this setting to take effect.

• Registry key – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HidIr\Remotes\745a17a0-74d3-11d0-b6fe-00a0c90f57da
• Registry value – CodeSetNum0
• Registry value data type – REG_DWORD

This setting also requires deleting the following registry values:

• Registry key – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HidIr\Remotes\745a17a0-74d3-11d0-b6fe-00a0c90f57da
• Registry value – CodeSetNum1
• Registry value – CodeSetNum2
• Registry value – CodeSetNum3

 

I then took my newly configured setup, and went one step further. I programmed my Logitech Harmony 550 to control the new remote control ID, and added a new activity so that I can now use and control my Linksys Media Center Extender, my 7MC HTPC, and my TV all with one single remote. In order to program my Harmony remote with the new remote ID I had to manually configure the harmony remote, one button at a time, which with the Logitech software it actually makes it a breeze to configure.

 

So if you are like me, have more than one media center pc, extender, 360, ect… this solution will work for you.

 

- Josh

Last week I finally had a chance to order up a new HTPC case for my test HTPC. Previously I was running a a Q Pack cube case, which served its purpose while I had it, but it just wasn’t what I needed or what I wanted for a real HTPC. I had recently returned some items to newegg and couldn’t get my money returned, all I could do was get “in store credit” for the items. So with that extra money that I needed to spend I set out looking for the cheapest HTPC case, that still looked decent and got decent reviews. I eventually found this case.

 

 

 HEC 7K09

 

Some of the requirements for the HTPC that I was looking for when searching for a new case where:

• Cost – had to be cheap enough, and not break the bank
• Looks – had to look half way decent, and not stick out like a sore thumb
• Power – had to have a PSU
• Color – had to come in black
• Size – had to fit a micro ATX motherboard, and be low profile, and small form factor

 

So with that in mind I started searching AVS Forums and newegg to see what was out there, and what others where getting. The HEC case kept coming up over and over again, however with mixed reviews. Some folks loved the case for its “bang for the buck” which is what I was looking for, while others said the case was too restrictive and didn’t work out all that well. For me I was willing to forgo the down sides to the case from the reviews that I read it seemed to be what I was looking for.

 

Last week the case came in and I started to swap out the motherboard, DVD drive, and all of that into the new case. One of the first things I did notice was that this definitely is a tight fitting case. Getting the motherboard and ram to fit in was a chore in of itself.

 

 

I had to remove the PSU to access the hard drive carriage bay which wasn’t all that bad however with the limited space, trying to figure out some form of wire organization/management at the same time, was beginning to be more tasking than I had imagine. I even had to swap out the ram sticks I was using with the ram I had in my office pc. I was using Corsair XMS2 with the extra tall heat sinks which caused a fitment problem with my DVD drive bay. So I put the XMS2 ram into my office desktop pc, and took the normal height ram and installed it into the test pc here so I could mount my DVD drive.

 

 

Once I figured out the intricacies and quirks of the case, things finally started to get put together and was able to complete the install. I have this test HTPC located in my bedroom which I share duties with a linksys DMA 2100. I have the test HTPC to use for testing out the new builds of windows 7, as well as test out new third party plug-ins and applications. I also use it as a DVD juke box as currently I can’t get DVD streaming on my extenders unless I re-encode all of my ripped dvd’s, which at this point in time I am not willing to do. This also allows me to have a better upscaling dvd player in my bedroom which until now I haven’t had before. 

 

Over all I wouldn’t call this a case for beginners or noobs. You will easily get frustrated and not want to use this case if you try and use this case as your first PC build let alone a HTPC build. I would say that if you are accustom to building pc’s and understand how small form factor cases work and understand the limitations of how they work, then this might just be a choice for a good looking, budget minded HTPC case. For me the case works well. Its a solid build, looks great, and works well with the AMD 780G mobo and cpu setup I installed in this case. The PSU is a little on the weaker side, but I am running a low power 4850e 45watt cpu and a 640gig WD “green” drive so I wasn’t worried at all about the PSU.  So again after everything it still is a pretty good choice for a budget HTPC case.

 

If you have any questions or comments register and post them up.

- Josh

Tonight while working on transferring my “test” HTPC internals into a new SFF HTPC style case (look for a review of if soon) I was participating in the live stream of the Entertainment 2.0 podcast in which Adam Thursby and Josh Pollard had Jere Jones the developer of Show Analyzer on. Josh and Adam were interviewing Jere about Show Analyzer and the the background behind it and all that but towards the end Jere came out and said that Show Analyzer will, some time in May, support .WTV file extensions for windows 7.

 

What does this mean? Well this means we can now get commercial skipping to work within Windows 7 Media Center. I for one can not wait for this to get release. So keep and eye out over at Jere’s website and the forums to find out when .WTV extensions will be supported.

 

- Josh