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Author: Alan

Media PC

Media PC

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I received my Dell Media PC this week.  I’m looking forward to using it as a DVR.  The computer came with what seemed like an abundant 9 USB ports, 5 in back, 2 in front, 2 on LCD Monitor, though I’m quickly using them up:

  1. Keyboard
  2. Mouse
  3. Infrared receiver for Media Center Remote
  4. Extender from monitor to enable the USB ports on the monitor (1 for 2 swap)
  5. Digital camera docking station
  6. PC Video Camera
  7. [Unused]
  8. [Unused]
  9. [Unused]

There was lots to plug but it was all straight forward.  Setting up the OS, I only had one criticism and that was how they tried to lead you to sign up for one of the Internet access trials from various 3rd party providers that were pre-installed.  I read that the Media Center edition of Windows was closely protected against pre-installed crapware but I didn’t find that to be the case.   The choice for Internet access made it seem like you didn’t have a "bring my own" choice but I canceled the screen and the next one allowed me to use my existing Cable connection.

My TV Tuner didn’t work the first time, but after I ran through the setup wizard a second time and selecting manual setup, it worked.  I selected all the same options that the automatic-setup asked me to confirm.

Update 05/03/06:

Played with the Media PC Guide to view TV.  I really like it.  Selecting shows to watch and record is very easy and intuitive.  When you select a show to record you can record a single instance or the entire series.   Probably my favorite feature of a DVR is for each recorded show to be saved independent of each other and to be able to quickly locate and playback a recorded show.

Pausing live tv is cool.  I had some problems where the program did not play back properly after pausing it.  I never had expectations that a PC based DVR would be BETTER than a dedicated DVR (i.e. TIVO) device so it didn’t bug me too much.  It works pretty well, just not perfect.

Links

Burning DVR-MS files to DVD

Misc Links

Supporting other video formats

RSS and Email

RSS and Email

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Squeet allows you to receive RSS feeds via email [via Scoble]

How many  more readers  do you think would  subscribe   to your syndicated feed if they could receive your content  via email? Certainly, more than otherwise. Give your readers the  Squeet option.

 

DotNetNuke

DotNetNuke

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I’m hosting my www.neighborhoodswap.net domain at GoDaddy.  They offer the DotNetNuke content management software.  I installed it and was getting into it. Then I reached a point where I wanted to customize it and add my own module.  Turns out you can’t do that unless YOU install DotNetNuke yourself.  Don’t understand why but looks like I’ll have to start over.

HowTo Manually Install DotNetNuke on GoDaddy.com derived from this thread

DNN Designer – a DNN Control Panel Replacement

Locked up Application on the Mac

Locked up Application on the Mac

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Jane experienced her first locked up Mac application.  The mail program was  "continously beachballing" as they say.  She asked what the equivalent of

<Ctrl><Alt><Delete> was and I didn’t know.  Now I do:

A mini-guide to Mac OS X for new Mini owners.

If you have an unresponsive application (e.g., continuous beachballing), you can kill it with the combination of Command-Option-Escape. That will bring up a list of running programs from which you will be able to select the offending applications and force-quit it. You can also kill an application from the Dock, by clicking, holding down the mouse key, and selecting Force Quit. On rare occasions, neither of those methods will work, but you can still kill it by opening up Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities), running top to find its process ID, and then typing kill -9 .