Well yet another purchase, this time a Hauppauge WinTV HVR–900 TV Tuner. I really wanted to try out digital TV over the air (a regular aerial) known as DVB-T. In the Republic of Ireland (where I am at the moment) DVB-T is under trial, however my local transmitter was supposed to be working fine so I thought I’d give it a shot. Got myself some money off a customer returned HVR-900. It was returned no doubt by a user who does not understand DVB-T I would suspect. Here in Ireland the DVB-T transmissions are encoded with MPEG-4. The tuner card (or USB stick to be precise) will work fine with MPEG-4 although it only mentions MEPG-2 on the box, however the software that comes with the tuner does not work with MPEG-4, so sound and no vision. I already knew this and I also knew from reading up on the web that Windows 7 was going to save me.
The install could not have been easier.. Plug in the USB tuner, get the latest drivers (Windows 7 did this). Configure the card in media center (tell it where you are, and also get it to use the digital tuner for its scan). 5 minutes later I had the EPG up and all (just 4 TV channels here) channels up and running. Turns out one of them (TV3) is transmitting but no sound/picture (it is still a trial after all). As I knew already, windows 7 handles MPEG-4 without any installs/updates.
So now I can watch TV on my PC and record stuff.. All very nice. Better yet I can also watch live tv, set recordings or watch recordings on my Xbox 360 in another room. My Xbox 360 has gotten more useful. Now if I could easily watch MKV (H264 HD video) on it I would be set. But wait, there is a new DIVX7 player and Windows 7 addin that sorts that out. And yes after a quick install my MKV’s now play perfectly on the 360. Oh joy.
So windows 7/media center/Xbox 360 is really getting there? Yes and no.. Yes it’s all great and the media center extender UI on the 360 is just great (I hate navigating by folders on media players, I really like the media center UI).. But now the problem. I live in an older house and so connecting all my stuff in different rooms comes down to WIFI or Ethernet over power (I have many DEVOLO DLAN 80Mbps plugs). I gave up on WIFI a while ago, older house, thick walls etc. just too un-predictable. I get around 44-50Mbps with the DLAN plugs which as it turns out is fine for all things 360 related however the UI is incredibly sluggish. Once the media is playing (Video, live TV etc) all is good, but try and do anything else and it just stops responding. I am sure a wired connection between the windows 7 box and the 360 will fix it, but that is going to be a problem.
Just my thoughts for now. Will try and re-org my network and see it I can get the 360 working as i know it should.
Loads of gadgets 