Vector Sigma Studios

XBMC, an amazing HTPC UI

Stephen da Conceicao — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:08:24 +0000

I’ve been experimenting with setting up a home theater pc for my game room, and had alot of difficulty finding anything I liked. Having windows 7, I started with Windows Media Center, and quickly found it sluggish and hard to get around. It also had alot of issues with more exotic video formats, like MKV’s.
I eventually came upon XBMC, and haven’t looked back. Not only is it great, it’s also free. Originally intended as a front end for the original X Box, the X Box Media Center eventually went into the open source domain, and can be run on pretty much anything, even an original xbox.
It took me about a week to get it setup fully to my liking, but it was well worth it. Besides being a very convenient front end to your local or NAS media, it also extremely extendable. Although Hulu has removed fully integrated support from it, you can use plugin called Launcher to directly load the Hulu Desktop, all from within XBMC.
Check it out, and you’ll be hooked too.
http://xbmc.org/

EOP impressions after 1 month

Stephen da Conceicao — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:51:30 +0000

I’ve had my Netgear XE104 EOP setup for about a month now, so I feel more qualified to rate my experience having used it pretty extensively in that time. The best thing about them is how flexible they make our network. I can have a fast connection out in my detached garage or anywhere else without needing to run wires or deal with wireless issues. I just bring the switch with me and plug it in. The speed has been excellent, with my internet so far being the bottleneck. I have to say I’m surprised they haven’t caught on more, given the limitations of wireless in certain households.

My first foray into EOP

Stephen da Conceicao — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:06:29 +0000

One of the problems with having an older house is that they aren’t easy to network. The walls are solid plaster and block most of wifi solutions. I’d heard about Ethernet over Power, and thought it was too good to be true. However, the prospect of trying to run cat5 cables from my basement all the way up to my office on the second floor prodded me to try it out.
After doing some investigating, I ended up going with 2 Netgear XE104 switches. They got pretty good reviews, and were around the price I was willing to spend, about 70 a piece.
The setup was about as easy as imaginable. I plugged one switch in the basement near my current router, and then another in my office. The hardest thing was actually finding an empty wall socket to plug the switch into in the basement. Then I just plugged my cat5’s from the router to the switch in one room, and from other switch to the office computer, and in about a minute I was online and able to share with my other computer.
Besides being extremely easy to setup, it’s also very easy to extend and more secure. To network any other rooms, I just need to buy another switch, which I can have up to 4 of. If I decide I want to have wireless in that room, I can either add on a wireless switch to the switch a or buy a wireless EOP switch.
As for security, with wireless, anyone who can connect to your signal can get into your network, with some work. With EOP, the only way into the network is by breaking in and connecting to my power system.
Overall I’m extremely impressed with the potential of the system, and the fact that it saved me atleast 1 weekend of hard labor.

Resolved Windows 7 bootup

Stephen da Conceicao — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:42:58 +0000

I finally figured out what was going on with my bootup issue. It turns out that no matter what disk you install Windows 7 to, it stupidly sets disk 0 to be your boot disk. This is all fine and dandy unless you have multiple disks, and your first isn’t the one you install windows too. Due to my setup, my c drive is on a disk 2. This was why it couldn’t find the bootup application when I restarted.
To resolve it, I had to run the following commands.
bcdboot c:\windows /s c:

f:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt6o c: /force /mbr

The second command pointed to the dvd drive that contained my 7 installation disk.

Happy Halloween!

Stephen da Conceicao — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:22:35 +0000

To celebrate the holiday, here’s a pumpkin I carved up lastnight.

Click for full image

Windows 7 woes

Stephen da Conceicao — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:25:35 +0000

I was one of the crazy few who made the jump from Windows XP to 7 this weekend. I was thoroughly enjoying my new operating system until my first reboot. First I couldn’t boot at all, then I was able to boot(with the installation disc in only) but multiple erroneous networks were coming up, none of which could connect to anything, despite Window’s assurance that I was online. That issue turned out to be with Adobe’s Bonjour service, which comes with Photoshop CS3. Disabling it fixed that issue.
Then I couldn’t hibernate without the computer immediately restarting, which kind of defeats the purpose of hibernating. That turned out to be a 3 prong problem, with my network card, usb mouse, and usb keyboard all simultaneously telling Windows to wake up. Disabling them all in the power options menu fixed that.
I’m still trying to figure out the boot issue. I’ve been following alot of promising leads, but so far none of them have panned out.
The morale of the story is to not jump into a new OS the first week it’s out. As much of a pain as my experience has been, I’ve seen far worse.