Core Dump

Well, it’s been over a month since I set up my new Windows Media Center Extender, so now I can talk about how it works over the long term.

Keeping in mind that I bought my extender on sale for a measly $99, and that normal models can go for a lot more (I’ve seen models in stores with HDD-based DVR-capabilities running upwards of almost $500), I can’t say that I’m disappointed with it… but I can’t exactly say I’m pleased with it, either.

That’s not to say I have buyer’s remorse or anything, though. I like having it – it is handy to be able to pull up some music while I’m cleaning, for example, or to sit down and watch some movies I’ve got on my computer out in the living room (on the big – well, bigger screen) – but I guess the bottom line with Windows Media Center Extenders is that they are “not bad, but not perfect.”

For example, it goes without saying that music purchased from iTunes isn’t going to play via a Media Center Extender (unless it’s the DRM-free kind). The Linksys extender comes with a software program to “import” your iTunes playlists into Media Center, which it does… but as for playing iTunes music, well, it sort of “hacks” it. The software uses a feature of many sound cards which is often called “what you hear” – basically, it’s a way of recording exactly what is playing through your sound card (without using a loopback cable or anything). And, yeah, it works… but while it’s working, your computer is playing music too!

What the software does is when you choose an iTunes DRM-protected song from the Media Center Extender, it opens up iTunes on your computer and starts playing the song – using the “what you hear” recorder to effectively “re-record” or “transcode” the music and stream it back out to the extender. As I said, it’s a bit of a hack. (And it’s kind of annoying if someone is using the computer while the extender is in use, too.)

iTunes aside, there are also a few other niggling issues which make the experience of the Media Center Extender “just OK” rather than “really nice.”

• It’s slow – dog slow. The UI feels like it’s made of cold molasses.
• It doesn’t play nearly as many video formats as your computer can.
• Managing playlists (for music) is more than a bit of a pain in the neck – sometimes playlists that you can see on your computer in Media Center don’t show up on the Extender until much, much later (as in, the next day).

Now, I know there are very valid technical reasons for some of these things – the slow UI comes from the fact that it’s sort of a hybrid of a remote desktop client, and although it’s slow, it’s at least bearable. The video format problem comes from the fact that video is not streamed in raw format across the network (it’d take up too much bandwidth, I suppose), but instead the video file is streamed, and then decoded on the extender device itself (and since the extender doesn’t have a very powerful CPU, it doesn’t have the muscle for certain video formats/codecs).

The playlist thing I really don’t understand – I know that there’s a “Media Center Maintenance” task that runs every night, and after that runs my playlists will show up on the extender – but I don’t know why that is. It’s incredibly frustrating sometimes – I’ll make a new playlist on my computer (where the UI is faster), but it won’t show up on my extender right away.

As for the video format limits – there are ways around that, of course, but they are all generally video versions of the same method used by the iTunes software – something called “transcoding.” Basically, when you choose to play a file, your computer will transform it from whatever format it’s in to a format that the extender can understand – on the fly, as you’re playing it. Sounds like it’d work pretty well, if your computer has a bit of CPU power to spare (re-encoding video on-the-fly is very CPU intensive). Unfortunately, it doesn’t work very well. I’ve tried several methods to do it, and they’ve all failed, horribly. Some people claim to have much better luck with it – I guess I’m just not one of those people.

In the end, I just seem to come back to my original conclusion – Windows Media Center Extenders are “just OK” or “not bad.” They certainly do what they are supposed to… if slowly and within some rather draconian technical limitations. You’d think with competition from things like Apple’s Mac TV thing that Media Center Extenders would raise the bar or something – but sadly they do not. (And if you own a Media Center Extender, stay away from anyone with an Apple computer hooked up to their TV – you’ll become insanely jealous. As always, the Mac does things so much better, cleaner, and more elegantly.)

So if you can get a good price on an extender (as I did), and you want that kind of functionality (and you’re a Windows household, of course), I’d say go for it. It won’t be great, but you’ll still be able to do things you couldn’t before. But if you paid a lot of money for an extender… well, you have my sympathy.

I’ve kind of been interested in the whole “Media Center Extender” idea, ever since XP Media Center Edition came out oh so long ago. The idea of being able to play the music, movies, and pictures on my computer way over in the livingroom was really interesting to me – it’s such a logical idea, once you think about it.

Sadly, however, during the days of Windows XP’s Media Center’s life, the number of Extenders was very small – and those that existed were rather expensive. And the whole “play movies from the computer on the TV” idea, although cool, was never a necessity – so it was never “in the budget,” so to speak.

When Vista came out, there were a whole slew of new Windows Media Center Extenders – because, of course, the interface between them had changed. So, in a way, I was glad I hadn’t bought an extender yet!

On the other hand, the new Extenders were rather advanced – and likewise, rather pricey. As in $300+ pricey. So my hopes seemed dashed yet again.

However, just about a week and a half ago, Dell had a one-day sale on a particular Extender model for just $99 – what a steal! So, I bought it – and it just arrived yesterday. So now it’s time to talk about it!

The Extender I bought is a Linksys DMA2200. Interestingly, this particular model also includes a DVD player – a good idea in theory (one less device to clutter up the space around your TV), but usless to me, since half my  DVD collection comes from Amanda – and is thus Australian – and is thus Region 4 coded – which means I need a region-free DVD player. So, I won’t be replacing my existing DVD player with this Extender, but I guess it’s kind of a cool feature to have.

Setting the thing up is as simple as could be. Just choose how (component, S-Video, HDMI, etc.) and turn it on. Then, follow a few steps (like choosing what video output you’re using, and what kind of network you have) and it gives you a number. Go to your computer and type in the number when prompted by Windows Media Center and you’re done.

Well, sort of.

I had originally thought that an Extender was basically a fancy “Remote Desktop” client, and that it simply used the Windows Remote Desktop protocol to “log on” to the host Media Center computer – using the same interface as on the host computer, just “streamed” across the network to the device, which displayed it on the TV. Sort of like using your TV as a second monitor, as it were.

As it turns out, this is not entirely the case. When you add an Extender to Media Center, it adds a new user account for the extender, and the Extender uses this account to connect to your computer and read the media. But, because it’s a separate user account, it seems to have to read the media independently of what you may have already set up in Media Center yourself. And when you first turn on the device and see the Media Center screen – get ready to wait a while. Because the device has to “scan” or “find” your media.

At first, I thought it wasn’t working, because I didn’t see my media, but then I let it do it’s thing (took a while, but I’ve got LOTS of stuff), and it showed up. So, it was a little different than I expected, but once you let it find your media, you’re pretty much set.

As for using the Extender itself – well, it’s exactly like using Media Center on the host computer, only slower.

I had read reviews about this particular Extender – some positive, some rather negative – but really, aside from the slight sluggishness it’s not bad. And you’d have to expect the sluggishness – this is, after all, a tiny little device, not a full-fledged computer.

Furthermore, you really shouldn’t be playing with the interface much at all – generally, I expect the way these were meant to be used was for you to just browse to music, put some music on, and then play a picture slideshow of some sort – or maybe just go in and start watching a movie. Generally, you wouldn’t be spending a lot of time in the UI, so the slowness isn’t a huge issue.

My pictures show up just fine – can’t complain about that. And my music library is all in there, too. There’s even an app that came with the device (on a CD of course) that tries to import your iTunes library into Media Center so it can be viewed with the extender – very cool. Of course, for iTunes music that’s protected with DRM, you’ll need a sound card that is capable of doing loopback recording – which mine was not, so although my iTunes music shows up in Media Center, only unprotected songs can be played. Oh well, at least it tried!

Videos are a bit more problematic, mostly because the Extender doesn’t just play anything that can be played by the host computer – it has its own codecs that it supports. So I guess that means that the video files are streamed to the device, which then decodes and plays them – rather than the host computer doing the decoding and just streaming the decoded output video to the Extender, as I had originally thought.

So if you have lots of movies with oddball codecs (or even some rather common codecs, like DivX), you won’t be able to play these on the Extender – which is, admittedly, rather annoying. But enough of my library does play that I’m not troubled – and I know for the future what codecs to use if I am making a video and want to make sure it can play on the Extender.

So all in all, I’m quite happy with the little device. It’s remote control is awful, but all Media Center remotes are interchangable, so I can use the one that I have for my PC in it’s place if I prefer.

Time, of course, will tell how well this little device sits with me in the long run, but for now, I’m quite happy with it. I just hope that when Windows 7 comes out, it doesn’t break backwards compatibility with existing Extenders!

UPDATE: My follow-up article after over a month of living with this device is available here.

Lately I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s time to upgrade my computer a little bit and make the jump to a newer CPU – specifically a 64-bit Dual or Quad core CPU. My venerable old Pentium 4 (with HyperThreading!) is still working just fine – but it is starting to show its age. And of course there’s that whole 64-bit thing I’m dying to try out (4 gigs of memory just isn’t enough anymore!).

So, I started to look around – but keep in mind it’s been quite a while since I last built my own computer. My computers tend to last for many, many years, so I don’t build them often – and as you’ll recall my current computer was pre-built.

Suffice to say, I was a little bit lost. The last time I built a computer from scratch (nearly 10 years ago now), the CPU choices were basically either Intel (Pentium III) or AMD (Athlon or Duron). There was a socket/slot for the Intel (socket 370 or Slot 1), and a socket for the AMD (socket A). Your motherboard was made for one or the other – and that was it.

Things are far more complicated these days.

We’ve still got sockets, of course – but a bewildering array of them, and some of them even have multiple names!

And if the number of sockets wasn’t confusing enough, now you have to pay far more attention to the particular chipset which accompanies your socket. To get an idea of what I’m talking about, just look at this list of Intel chipsets.

When I started looking around, I made the initial mistake of not paying attention to chipsets. I thought that since my current CPU socket was a LGA 775 (or “Socket T”) – the same one that was used for Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors – I could just take out my old CPU out and pop in a new one.

Sadly, this is not the case. My current chipset is the Intel 945P, which sadly does not support any of the new Core 2 processors. The best it can do for multi-core is the Pentium D, which in my experience is not that great. (The Pentium D runs much hotter and has less on-board cache.)

Since chipsets are not a replaceable component, the only option is a new motherboard. Again, in the “old days” this would not have been a big deal – but again, these days there is a bewildering array of choices.

What makes the whole experience even more maddening is the additional factor of… well, form factors. My current motherboard is a BTX form factor – a new-ish form factor that never really caught on.

Of course, the BTX form factor is totally incompatible with the far-more-common ATX form factor. Which means I’m basically SOL when it comes to upgrading. 

The handful of BTX form factor motherboards I’ve been able to find thus far are all of the same type as the one I have now – in other words, similar chipsets that don’t support Core 2 Duo or Quad.

So now I’m facing the reality that, in order to upgrade my CPU, I need to upgrade my motherboard, and in order to upgrade my motherboard I need to upgrade my case and power supply. And once all that is done, I’ll need to re-install Windows from scratch (this many hardware changes would make Windows throw a fit).

I don’t know about you, but this is starting to sound a lot less like “CPU upgrade” and a whole lot more like “whole new computer.” Which, of course, is exactly what I didn’t want to do.

See, I like my current computer – it’s been very good to me – and it’s design is very good. The cooling is excellent and it’s nice and quiet. It’s got plenty of USB ports (both front and back), which is important because I have lots of USB devices hanging off my computer. And I’m rather fond of the extra set of front-mounted microphone and headphone jacks – especially since plugging something into the headphone jack automatically cuts the sound to the rear speaker jack (very handy for using headphones). Say what you will about Dell computers, but mine is very good at what it does (being part of Dell’s higher-end XPS line doesn’t hurt either).

The thought of having to get rid of the case and buy all that new stuff is, frankly, rather depressing – mostly because it’s more work (and more money!) than I had planned for. But, it looks like I don’t have much choice. It’s either upgrade, or buy a whole new computer. All this confusion is one of the reasons why I didn’t build my last computer – but I guess I’m paying the price for that now.

I guess I just have to face the fact that upgrading my CPU just isn’t as easy as it used to be!

Computer icon courtesy of the Crystal Icon Set. Motherboard image courtesy Dell.

There’s been a major change in my plans to eventually “upgrade” to a 64-bit OS (probably the 64-bit version of Windows 7). Namely, the idea that it could be an “upgrade” at all.

There apparently is no upgrade path from any Windows 32-bit edition to any Windows 64-bit edition. If you’re going to make the jump, you have to do a clean install.

Major bummer.

It seems like there IS a way to “clear” bad sectors from your hard drive so you can use tools like GParted and the like – but I use “clear” in a very loose sense here!

First off, I MUST point out that I’m talking about file-system bad sectors. I’m NOT talking about physically damaged disk platters.

It seems NTFS keeps a list of bad sectors, and as long as those sectors are there, most partition-resizing tools will refuse to touch the disk with a 10 foot pole. HOWEVER… those of you who are beyond a certain age might remember something called a “low-level format.” (I’ll wait a moment for you while the moment of nostalgia passes.)

I thought I’d never see a need for low-level formatting in today’s world of super-reliable, super-fast, super-S.M.A.R.T, super-big hard drives – but it seems there is still one use for it.

The hard drive manufacturer’s low-level formatting utility will detect “bad” sectors and put them in the drive’s internal list of “bad” sectors – this is in the drive’s own firmware mind you, not in any file system structure (because at this point, your file system has been wiped out!).

Once this is done, the drive’s own controller will silently avoid those bad sectors – from any software’s point of view, those sectors or clusters just don’t exist anymore. (Since software rarely – if ever – directly addresses the disk, this sort of behind-the-curtain hiding of sectors or clusters is easily done by the drive’s on-board controller.)

After the low-level format, you can partition & format the drive normally, and your OS or whatever disk-checking tool you use should find a nice, clean disk with no errors.

Astute readers will note the downside to this “solution” – you have to low-level format your hard drive! Obviously this erases everything on it, without any possibility for recovery. So it’s not for the faint-of-heart.

And, coincidentally, it’s not for me, either. I’ve simply got too much data on my 2nd hard drive to back it up easily (and cheaply). And doing this to my primary hard drive (and thus being forced to re-install Windows) is simply out of the question.

For those that are interested, I found a lot of this information in this EASEUS Software Forum posting, while looking for the reason why (you guessed it) their software wouldn’t re-size my partition.

In the end, it looks like I’m stuck running the Windows 7 beta in a virtual machine – which is of course super-slow.

Maybe someday I can shell out the cash for an external hard drive so I can back up my data and do the low-level format… but until then… I’m stuck with my partitions the way they are. Bummer!!

Interested readers may want to catch up on the previous entries in this saga:

• GParted, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?
• Really Annoying Flaw in NTFS Mount Points
• Computer Drama
• A Computer Conundrum