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Digital transition causing grief for Windows Media Center users
You know we really thought Microsoft learned its lesson back in February when the first wave of the analog channels went dark, but we were wrong. A quick trip to The Green Button shows that the hottest topic this weekend is the fact that any ATSC channel that changed frequencies on Friday, doesn't work anymore. The exact cause isn't known, but what is, is that while anyone who has a $50 digital converter box can just rescan to find the channels at their new home, Media Center users have to go well beyond anything your mom could do to get all the channels back. Our guess is that instead of looking at the PSIP data of discovered channels, Media Center uses guide data to map the frequencies to the channel and this data wasn't updated on Friday. On Vista you'll want to first manually delete the channels in your atscchannels.xml file, then you can add the missing channels via a menu (Settings>TV>Guide>Add Missing Channel) -- Windows 7 users don't need to edit the file first. You will need to know the new frequency when doing this, which you can find on Antennaweb.org. Or you can just wait a few days until Microsoft gets its act together, it isn't like there's anything on TV in the Summer anyways.
New utility makes any computer's BIOS CableCARD ready
After learning that some were having success adding ATI Digital Cable Tuners to HTPC they built themselves, we knew it was only a matter of time before it would be possible to make it work on any computer, but we have to admit we never thought it would happen this fast. The Green Button forum member DanITman posted some directions and links to everything you need to make ANY Vista or Windows 7 computer support digital cable. The hack is very simple actually, it just uses a modified version of VistaLoader to emulate a Sony OCUR compliant computer's BIOS. The real beauty is that it can easily be installed or uninstalled and if Microsoft were to black list the Sony BIOS, emulating a different BIOS would be trivial. The only potentially unworkable caveat at this point is if you are using an Dell OEM Windows PC using the OEM key, this will break your activation, but hopefully a solution for that will be discovered shortly as well.
DIY'ers successfully build their own CableCARD equipped HTPC
HTPC fans were devastated when it was revealed that only OEM PC builders would have the privilege of building Vista Media Center PCs with CableCARD support, but hope is here: it looks like a few members of The Green Button forum have figured out how to build their own CableCARD ready HTPC. There's two barriers to overcome, which unfortunately still make it more difficult than just picking up an internal or external ATI Digital Cable Tuner, but they're not terrible: would-be system builders just need to score an OCUR tuner product ID number and use a BIOS contains the correct OSFR table. No one's figured out how to tweak just any BIOS yet, but apparently most ASUS P5Q motherboards work fine -- so really you just need to score some used CableCARD tuners off eBay and ask the seller for the PID from their computer. Or you could throw caution to the wind and plug in the generic PID of 263DJ-2Y9YT-6X9G6-W28DB-697TF, which may or may not work. Anyone feeling brave enough to grab a new mobo and CableCARD tuner and give this a shot?
Microsoft gets official with the Vista Media Center TV Pack
Although we've known all about the TV Pack (code named Fiji) for some time, Microsoft's Ben Reed posted the official details about it today over at The Green Button. As expected, most of the new stuff is for other international markets, but the few new features for the US have been long awaited. Unfortunately the one detail about the TV Pack that we most wanted to be wrong about is true, the it'll only be available on new PCs from OEMs -- lucky for us you can find it elsewhere. Ben says the OEM requirement was necessary because of the complexity of supporting the new features, but as an enthusiast, we still can't help but feel a little slighted by our friends at Redmond. The most interesting quote in the announcement is the words that were chosen to explain that the TV Pack is indeed missing native DirecTV tuner support which describes it as "subscription-based satellite tuners." This of course make us all the more confident that both DirecTV and Dish support are on their radar -- but who knows, maybe that's just wishful thinking. %Gallery-29109%
Is DVD streaming finally coming to Media Center?
Media Center extenders are one of the coolest features of Windows Media Center. Having access to your content on any HDTV in the house is beyond cool, but unfortunately not every feature of Media Center is currently available on the extenders and the biggest missing feature is the ability to stream DVDs to each TV in the house. Currently MS expects you to walk your DVDs around the house and load them for each TV. Well that might change soon as Jerold from The Green Button was tipped from Jessica at CES this year that she's actually seen this feature in action, but didn't say when we'd actually be able to enjoy it in the comfort of our own home, so stayed tuned.[Via Chris Lanier's Blog]
