The Howerter Blog » media center

Media Center Extender

Jay Howerter — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 01:37:39 +0000

I purchased one Media Center Extender for our bedroom that we use quite a bit. I am wanting to put one in the living room so that I don’t have to connect the Media Center directly to the TV. While researching this I realized that I couldn’t add my music or pictures to the extender upstairs because they are on my file server. The extender creates a user account on the Media Center and logs in to have access to all the content. Since my music and pictures weren’t on the Media Center, I had a problem. Luckly, someone else has a not-so-simple network configuration like mine. It turns out that if you create a login script for the extender user mapping the drives you need with other credentials, the extender will allow you to add those folders to the library. It works very nicely. I believe I will be purchasing at least one other Media Center Extender. Here is the link to the original article.

Linksys Media Center Extender DMA2100

Jay Howerter — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:58:17 +0000

I just purchased and installed a DMA2100. I must say I am impressed. I was a little nervous since I shelled out $230 for this thing. The playback is smooth and it is very cool to be able to watch recorded TV and my movies in our bedroom. I had to disable the Vista firewall to get it to work. I haven’t had the time to figure out the ports that need to be open. I hope that they release another extender that is a little cheaper.

More fun with Media Center

Jay Howerter — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:09:23 +0000

When I first started my Media Center project I had setup a Windows dynamic volume to store all the movies. As I have previously posted, I purchased a 500GB MyBook to expand my space. After the USB/eSATA debacle, I discovered that Western Digital had designed the MyBook to spin down after 10 minutes of inactivity. This is a feature that you cannot disable. I wrote a couple of programs to try and mitigate this, but with no success. I made the decision to remove the dynamic volume and use separate disks. Because of this, I lost about half of my ripped movies. When you remove a disk from a spanned dynamic volume, you lose the whole volume. I have been in the process of re-ripping my movies. Unfortunately, when using separate disks it is difficult to have a video library that is uniform. I didn’t want to have to choose the drive letter and then find the movies or shows from there. I wanted to have all the movies in one “directory”. I decided to use play lists to accomplish this. I wrote service to watch the drives that I store movies on and when a new MPEG is created, create a play list and store it in a directory that Media Center Monitors. This makes one unified “directory” of files.

The difference between SATA II and eSATA

Jay Howerter — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:09:09 +0000

Recently I needed to add more storage to my movie drive on my Media Center. I purchased a MyBook Home edition instead of an internal drive. I first tried to connect the drive via USB. I then discovered that Windows doesn’t let USB drives be converted to dynamic disks which are necessary for a spanned volume. Fortunately, the MyBook has an eSATA port. So, I went to Computer Deli to get an eSATA cable. I purchased one, hooked it up and the drive wasn’t recognized. After some further research and a replacement drive, I discovered that the cable I bought, which was labeled eSATA, was in fact a SATA II “I” style. They are electrically identical, but physically different. The eSATA cable has “wings” on both sides as shown below.

I informed Computer Deli of the incorrect marking, but they did not seem to mind. As usual, nothing I purchase works like it should the first time around.

Picture provided by www.satacables.com.