A friend of mine passed on the Rumor of Microsoft IPTV again today.  It seems that the topic keeps coming up and various evidence all points in the direction of an offering from MS sometime in the near future.  Check out these screen shots posted by an Xbox fan out there:  http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2007/10/26/rumor-leaked-screens-show-iptv-and-fall-update/.

I say bring it on Bill, IPTV for the masses!  Mostly I'm just continually irritated that the cable companies keep block us out from getting full HDTV over cable without having to purchase "OEM" machines.  OEM is just another name for proprietary lock down without any ability to upgrade.  Give your customers freedom and they will certainly appreciate you.

Well, make your own decision and let me know if you have any information to add  by commenting below. 

I recently decided to wire up strategic locations in my house for Cat 5e 1GB Ethernet.  I've been streaming a lot of videos to my Vista Media Center box and my DSM-520 Media player.  Wireless worked for a while but the DSM-520 would have issues because of the 802.11g limitations.  Running Structure Wiring provides up to a 1GB network and is probably the best thing you can do if you want to stream media.

Project Steps

1. Planning: The first step is deciding wall box placement and central wiring panel placement.  In my case, I had an existing smart box or central wiring panel that I used.  Also, I wanted multiple lines to each wall box and I decided that I wanted wall jacks in the living room, office, and master bedroom.  I have additional ports on my router for future expansion as well. 
2. Running Cables: This is the difficult part.  I chose to only run cable on interior walls.  I did this so that I wouldn't have to deal with insulation when fishing cabling through the walls.  Also, if you can reuse existing boxes and just add additional insert the process in much simpler as well.  In my case, I reused boxes for cable and phone connections.  You'll need to get a fish tape from Lowe's or Home Depot that you can attach cabling to and feed it down from the attic into the wiring boxes.  Run multiple cables at the same time by looping the Cat 5e cable at the end of your fish tape.  This way you can get two cables run at once.  Run the other end into your central wiring panel for termination.  I found that the punch down wall inserts were the way to go for termination at each wall jack.
3. Setup and Configure Network Appliances:  At a minimum you will probably need at least three network appliances: Cable modem, router, and switch.  In my case I used a Cable Modem, Firewall Appliance, Unmanaged Switch, and Wireless Access Point.  This gives me a lot of flexibility in my configuration.  Comment below if you have any questions why I went with this configuration.  I also added a UPS in my wiring closet that all appliances use for power.  This gave me the extra outlets that I needed as well as providing temporary battery backups for short power interruptions.  Splice into a cable in the central wiring panel and add a splitter to provide a source for the cable modem.  Next, run a cable from the cable modem to the WAN port on your Firewall Appliance or Router. This appliance will act as the DHCP server for the internal LAN as well as control access between the WAN/LAN.  Next go from a port on the Router/Firewall to the Unmanaged Switch.  Attach each cable for the wall plates to the Network Switch.  Finally you can add a Wireless access point by attaching a cable from the main Firewall Router to a LAN port on the Wireless Access Point/Wireless Router.  Turn off DHCP on this unit as the Firewall/Router will act as the DHCP server for the network.

Supplies and Tools

In order to complete your project you will need a number of tools as well as networking supplies such as wall covers, RJ45 Inserts, RJ45 plugs, Cat 5e Cable, etc.  I've included a full list of tools and possible supplies below:

Tools

• Wall Fish Tape
• Scissors or Cable Cutter
• Cable Stripper
• Screwdriver with Bits
• Punch Down Tool (110/88)
• Ratchet Crimper
• Cable Tester

The tools are all available as kits by various manufacturers.  A basic Network Toolkit can be found by clicking this link. 

Supplies and Networking Appliances

• Cat 5e Cable
• RJ45 Cat 5e Plug Terminators
• Cat 5e Snap-In Inserts
• Wall Plates
• Firewall Appliance: ZyXEL ZyWALL 5
• Unmanaged Switch: NetGear 16-port Gigabit Switch
• Wireless Router/Access Point:  DLINK Extreme N

Final Product

Depending on your networking appliances you will end up with a 10/100/1000 Mbps network.  I was able to successfully get 1GB connections working through the house.  Your final product will look professionally installed and no one will know the difference.  Here are a few pictures of my wall jacks and central wiring closet:

Useful Links

http://www.swhowto.com/

http://www.lanshack.com/make-cat5e.aspx

Feel free to contact me in our Networking forum with any questions that you may have.  It can be found at http://xmilk.com/forums/10.aspx.

I've been trying to successfully get DVRMS Toolbox setup for quite some time with the purpose of automating commercial skipping from my Recorded TV from Vista Media Center.  Unfortunately after banging my head against the wall for hours and trying to modify the configuration repeatedly I still got the dread message:  "Commercial add skip has stopped responding, you will now be returned to MCE."  The problem seems much more common on Vista x64 MCE.  There are numerous postings and rants in babgvant's forum about the issue.  Please don't misconstrue my frustration for DVRMS toolbox, I just think think things need to be easy and simple.  Lifextender does just this and does it very well. I will probably take another run at DVRMS Toolbox when release 1.2.0.9 is released publicly, but until then Lifextender will be my choice for enjoying commercial free content. 

Lifextender is my current choice because I simply downloaded the executable install, ran it, and presto!  Now I am able to enjoy commercial free television on my Windows Vista x64 Media Center.

The only real tweak I have to offer up here is that initially I would get a message that stated "Windows has blocked some startup programs" when the application started upon login.  This is a documented feature of User Account Control (UAC) and is discussed here on the the Lifextender FAQ:

http://www.lifextender.com/troubleshooting.aspx#i_have_uac_enabled_and_lifextender_doesn

The Fix

Yes, I said there is a fix for the UAC issue with Lifextender.  The fix doesn't however come from the MS support site at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930367.  I found that the better solution to the problem is to use the Vista Scheduler to launch Lifextender rather than launching from the Startup Folder.  Here are the steps to follow:

• From the Start menu Type "Task Scheduler" in the Search Box.  You can also access the scheduler by going to     Start Menu → All Programs → Accessories → System Tools, but the previous is much faster and more fun.
• From the Actions pain to the right side click "Create Task".  This will bring up a dialog box that looks like this:

• Enter a name for the task such as "Lifextender"
• Click Change User or Group to specify the account the application should run under
• Select the Run only where user is logged on Radio Button
• Check the Run with highest privileges box
• Go to the Triggers tab and click New.  This will bring up the dialog box below:

• Choose At log on from the Begin the task drop down box
• Select the Any User radio button
• Be sure the Enabled box is selected in the Advanced Settings area and Click OK
• Go to the Actions tab and Click New.  This will bring up the yet another dialog box:

• Select Start a program from the Actions dropdown list
• Click the Browse button and navigate to the Lifextender executable by default at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Yellow Cup\Lifextender\Lifextender.exe" and Click OK
• Navigate to Start Menu → All Programs → Startup.  Right click Lifextender and delete it from the startup folder.

Woot!  No more annoying dialog boxes in the tray after startup.  Lifextender is now working and will startup properly at login!

Good luck and enjoy commercial free recorded television.  Just in case you didn't catch my link above. It is available totally free from here: http://www.lifextender.com/.  Great job Yellow Cup Project for putting out a wonderful new MCE add-in.

The MCE customization begins.....

With the hype of the Doug Berrett's WebGuide and Microsoft Deal, I figured it was time for me to set it up for myself.  Specifically I wanted to be able to stream to my HTC TyTN II and watch recordings on my laptop while I'm on the road on my consulting engagements.  I downloaded the binaries from http://www.asciiexpress.com/webguide/ and began setting up the prerequisites. I'm going to go into a lot of detail here for newbies so feel free to jump around if you know what you are doing.

Install and Configure Web Guide

Run the WebGuide executable to install the software.  The setup wizard here is pretty intuitive.  My only complaint is if you choose not to install the Cassini Web Server then the installation ends.  So go ahead and install the Web Server and then after installation and configuration is complete Cassini can be removed from the Programs and Features dialog. 

Now on to configuration.  WebGuide is pretty simple to configure with most default options being reliable.  First click the Windows Accounts button from the General tab.  You'll need to setup the Windows Media Player user so that the application can retrieve information about your library from the player.  Next I went ahead and entered a username/password for the Streaming Service.  This is a Windows service that runs in the background and handles the video transcoding.  Next you'll need to setup users on the user table.  This is pretty straightforward so I won't elaborate.  The Network configuration can be crucial.  For the Web Port choose the port that will configured IIS to use.  In my case 8080.  I just left the video port set to the default but made note of the port number so that I could configure my Router later.  Finally, configure the options on the Media Sharing tab and SAVE your Settings.

IIS Configuration

Rather than use the Cassini Web Server, I decided that I might as well use IIS 7 in Windows Vista.  I navigated to the Turn Windows features on or off dialog and began to configure install the IIS components that I wanted.

Having recently installed SQL Server 2005 reporting services on another Vista based machine, I chose to install similar components here.  Detailed steps are available here:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934164.  Another important note is that since we have installed IIS after the .Net framework we should run aspnet regiis.  From an administrative command prompt navigate to C:\Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/V2.0.  Now run aspnet_regiis -i. 

Because my ISP, Cox,  blocks port 80 the first thing I had to do was configure the Default Website to use a different port.  I chose port 8080. 

• From the Control Panel Select Administrative Tools
• Double Click Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager
• Expand Web Sites
• Right Click the Default Web Site and click Edit Bindings
• Select the http entry from the dialog box and click Edit
• Enter the port number you want in the Port textbox and click OK
• Right Click the Default Web Site and click Restart

Now you should be able to navigate to http://localhost:8080/ from a Web browser.  Be sure to include your port number as I have done here.  This will show the default II7 page.  IIS Configuration is now complete.

Finally, we need to add a virtual directory for WebGuide. From IIS Manager perform the following steps:

• Right Click the Default Web Site and click Add Application
• Enter WebGuide in the Alias Textbox
• Choose the Physical Path by clicking the ellipsis.  Standard path is C:\Program Files (x86)\WebGuide\WebGuide4 on an x64 bit machine
• For the App Pool choose the Classic .Net AppPool from the drop down box and click OK
• Click OK and the WebGuide application should appear under the default web site.
• Restart the Default Web Site for good measure

Now we can bring up the page in a browser by navigating to http://localhost:8080/WebGuide. 

Router/Network Setup

Before you can access WebGuide from outside your internal LAN you'll need to setup some port forwarding rules on your router.   In my case I had to open up port 8080 for http traffic and port 49253 for video streaming traffic on my Dlink DIR-655 Extreme N Router.  Also, if you have a dynamic IP address you'll need to configure dynamic DNS and sign up for a dynamic DNS Service.  This configuration varies greatly for each router, so consult your routers manual.  Here are  some good links on port forwarding and Dynamic DNS.

• Free Dynamic DNS Service http://www.dyndns.com/
• http://portforward.com/routers.htm

Final Thoughts

Woot!! WebGuide is a great extension to add to your Media Center bag of tricks.  It's easy to setup and something that you can brag about to all your friends.  With terminal web client enabled machines becoming more prevalent and broadband mobile access, you can watch your recordings and even live TV from almost anywhere! Here's a screen shot from my favorite Showtime series "WEEDS" streaming over WebGuide.

A couple of months ago, I had the motherboard in an old Alienware machine that own go kaput.  Since I had been wanting a good PVR solution for sometime and I like to build my machines, I decided to shell the guts of this thing and build a Media Center PC.  Because Vista has the hottest buzz right now, I decided I would go the Vista MCE route rather than MythTV, Freevo, LinuxMCE, or many of the other respected platforms. 

Hardware

I started off with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 Conroe 2.66GHz that I decided to pull from my Gaming PC figuring that I could upgrade it to a Quad core.  Next, I navigated to newegg.com to start building the beast that became my MCE.  I went beefy just in case I wanted to scrap the project and do something else with the hardware.  Here were my final specs:

• ASUS P5LD2 Motherboard R2.0
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 Conroe 2.66GHz
• OCZ Platinum Revision 2 2 4GB (4 x 1GB)..unfortunately the board only recognizes 3GB usable
• Zalman CPU Cooler
• PNY VCG7300GXPB GeForce 7300GT 256MB Graphics Card
• Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 500 MCE Analog Dual Tuner
• Hauppauge WinTV HVR 1600 Digital/ATSC Tuner
• Western Digital 500 GB Hard drive... RAID 5 here we come (~1.4 TB)
• Reused a couple of DVD drives
• ThermalTake 600W Power Supply
• DLink DWA-556 Extreme N Wireless NIC
• MS media Center Keyboard:  This is total junk don't make the same mistake
• Gryration MCE remote...I couldn't live without this thing
• Windows Vista Ultimate x64

The parts arrived from newegg on time and in perfect condition as usual.  I quickly threw the system all together and got Vista Ultimate x64 installed and configured.  Of course getting the Extreme N NIC card to be recognized and working was a bit of a challenge. After finding the right drivers for the NIC, I was ready to move this Media Beast into the Living Room.  I quickly and easily attached my two cable TV set top boxes to the Hauppage MCE 500 and attached an HDTV antenna to the HVR 1600 and I was ready to go.  The Vista MCE setup wizard was smooth and the tuner configuration was seamless.  I was ready to rock and roll.  I also configured MCE to recognize my media stored on my Dlink DNS-323 NAS. Victory!

Bill certainly rocked things this time.  This was the easiest setup and configuration I had done. Of course this was just the beginning.......Lots of customization to come!!!