Overview

Last week my wife told me she wanted to cancel our DirectTV, because she did not think we used it enough to justify the $74.99/month we were paying. I couldn't really find any fault in her logic, other then the fact that we would pay a $120 early termination fee.

In it's place, the Wife wanted to re-subscribe to Netflix, as all of the shows we did watch, are available, and allot of them are available via streaming. So we signed up for the 2 DVD at a time plus unlimited streaming for around $14.99 I believe.

So where does the home theater PC (HTPC) fit in? Well, I figured that if we are getting rid of DirectTV, now would be the perfect time to invest in a HTPC to replace my aging modded XBox and Xbox Media Center. While functional, it lacked the horse power necessary for high quality H264 encoded videos, and windows networking was a bit of a pain.

Component Build List

I remember reading a post by Jeff Atwood early this year were he upgraded his HTPC on the cheap, and decided to work off his parts list. Since it's been almost 7 months since his post, prices have dropped, and I was able to get a relatively the same build for less money. The 2.4 Ghz AMD was replaced with a newer model running at 2.5 Ghz, and I opted for 4GB of ram. The most expensive item you can see was the case with an 80plus power supply. I had a copy of Vista Ultimate laying around that I won at a meeting somewhere. Not on the list below is a wireless keyboard and mouse (currently a MS 6000 that I want to take back and try a Logitech at the same price point as the MS one doesn't work at 10' on my lap even though it claims a 30' range). Also missing is a 2.5" to 3.5" mount adapter for the laptop hard drive.

Assembly was straight forward, although the case gets quite cramped. The included power connectors are not satisfactory for an all SATA build like I was doing. I have no idea how they thought the power cables would even reach. I had to use some Molex to SATA convertors, which also served as extenders to power everything.

Installing Vista

Vista Ultimate installed fairly quickly as well, although it appears to hang on the first gray screen giving the impression that it's locked up. Oh, forgot to mention, the retail case for Vista is a real treat to open ;)

Here is a quick run down of how I setup my HTPC.

• Change video card memory in BIOS from automatic to 512MB.
• Install Vista Ultimate with SP1(64 bit)
• Install all latest windows updates
• Joined to domain and set static IP
• Create _WorkstationUsers group for setting permissions. I create this local group on all my PCs so if I ever need to change user accounts, I can just add it to this group.
• Add exceptions for remote desktop, and file/printer sharing in Windows Firewall.
• Installed .Net 3.5 with SP1
• Installed AMD power monitoring software. Observed processor dropping down to 1800 mhz and lower voltage
• Created Domain User and related group for logging into the HTPC.
• Stopped following Services
• DHCP Client
• Diagnostic Policy Service (DPS)
• IP Helper
• Tablet PC Input
• Windows Media Center Receiver Service
• Windows Media Center Scheduler Service
• Windows Search
• Add registry entry for .mkv files (see below)
• Installed vista codec packs from http://shark007.net
• Vista 32 bit version 473
• Vista 64 bit version 152
• Download Windows Media Player Classic

Vista Media Center (VMC)

I had some issues getting getting my h264 encoded videos in an mkv container to show up and play in Vista Media Center. I first  tried the Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP) as I've had really good luck with it in the past. What I didn't realize is that it's designed for 32 bit systems (specifically the Haali Media Spliter), and VMC uses a 64bit player. After some research I found a forum post that suggested using the 32 and 64 bit Vista codecs that I linked above. After uninstalling CCCP and installing the Vista codec packs (and a reboot for good measure) I was good to go.

One thing I'd like to point out, is that when adding folders to monitor for your library in VMC, it takes quite a long time for everything to show up, especially in network folders. I would suggest leaving VMC run overnight to get everything in the library the first time.

So everything is working at this point, except for subtitles in the anime I get off the net. The easiest solution is to just drop out of VMC and use Media Player Classic. The Vista Codec pack supplies a subtitle codec that's worked with everything I've thrown at it so far.

Encoding Video

I have a bunch of DVD's I want to encode to my new HTPC. Previously I've used XVid, but the times have changed and H264 is the new king on the block. I'm using the latest dev snapshot of Handbrake (www.handbrake.fr) with the following settings:

• High Quality Film (1800 video bit rate)
• AC3 Pass thru

I can't tell the difference between the original DVD and my encoded file. Star Wars Episode 3 was compressed from ~7.4 GB down to ~2.4G, with full AC3 surround sound.

Registry Entry for .MKV files

Copy between the lines, paste in Notepad

_______________________________

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mkv]
"PerceivedType"="video"
"Content Type"="video/mkv"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Multimedia\WMPlayer\Extensions\.mkv]
"Runtime"=dword:00000007
"Permissions"=dword:0000000f
"UserApprovedOwning"="yes"

_________________________________

Allow me to leave the realm of technology and offer up my thoughts on the election, just like every other blogger out there.

In an effort to be up front, I will state that I voted for McCain, although this will be the last year that I vote for someone strictly because they are a republican. I think it’s time to start seriously looking at independent candidates, although I feel that the republicans will be re-energized in 4 years.

I am grateful that the election is over and I can listen to Pandora without having a giant picture of Obama smiling at me (not that McCain would have been any better, maybe Palin would have been ;) ). The Pandora add illustrates the type of campaign that Obama was running, and other candidates should have taken notes.

I feel that this election was too much about race, and I cringe when I hear people talk about the first black president, and how this shows what America is really about. Yes, in fact it does show what America is about, and that is, that for all our talk, race STILL IS an issue, otherwise no one would be mentioning it now! I will celebrate the day when a candidate can win (be they white, black, man, women, etc) without playing the race/gender card (and yes, white males can play that card as well). I also think it will be a more momentous occasion when an independent candidate is elected President, as Democrats and Republicans are more alike then they are different.

Scott Hanselman has been blogging a bit about the race, as well as the outcome last night. Scott is someone who I can identify with because we share a similar passion about technology. Scott made this comment in his post, “My boys will grow up in a country that values people of all kinds, including ones that look like them.” and I’m a little disappointed, as are a few of the people who left comments. To think that I or anyone else valued his children less because they have a darker skin complexion is something I wholeheartedly disagree with. Furthermore, to think that the election of a President with a darker skin complexion, who played the race card, illustrates a flaw in our society that must be overcome before I start celebrating. To be honest, I think Scott’s family shows a more positive image about America, with respect to the race issue, then the election of Obama.

In the end, I just get the feeling that the Republicans knew they were going to loose no matter what. I don’t think they threw in the towel, but maybe they felt it better to conserve their resources to fight another day. While I hope for a dramatic turn around in the economy, history has shown that it follows a different set of rules. There is a tough road ahead for the Democrats, and they have 2 years to fix everything, or we’ll have a repeat of 94 when the republicans took control of congress.

I don’t know about your experiences with server manager, but mine are less then positive from a resource usage point of view. On decent hardware I’ve seen this peg the CPU to 100% for a good minute. Even on a multi-core system this can be a problem where you have business processes running.

Server Manager, by default starts up whenever you log into Windows Server 2008. While there is a check box that allows you to disable the auto-launch of server manager, it’s a per user setting, and you have to do it on every server you log into. Thankfully there is a solution. This article lists two registry settings that you can change that disable the auto-launch. Couple this with group policy and you no longer have to worry.

I prefer to put a shortcut to Administrative tools on my desktop, and from there I can access only the functionality I need.

Recently there has been some talk about a bunch of us getting iPhones thru work. Even though I have vowed to never own an Apple product, I figured I wouldn’t be too much of a hypocrite if work paid for it. Well that deal kind of fell thru, but it did get me looking into an upgrade for my Mogul, as it appears I have a $150 new phone credit available to me thru Sprint.

I did do some research into the iPhone to see if I would even be able to “use” it, should work have provided one. For the most part it seems like a decent phone, however there are a couple of things that made me go out and look to see what new WinMo phones were available.

First, my 1 year old after market car stereo which has iPod support, does not have iPhone support (as confirmed by numerous posts on various forums). This isn’t so much a knock against either the iPhone or my car stereo, it just would have been a nice to eliminate the separate MP3 player I have now. Newer model head units are reported to have no problems with the iPhone, but I don’t want to buy a new head unit right now.

Second, I have grown very used to my slide out physical keyboard on my mogul. I have heard mixed reviews about the touch keyboard on the iPhone, with one of the most negative criticisms being that the keyboard/mail program will not rotate to landscape mode. There are several hacks and work around's available, but as most people point out, this is something that should have been fixed in the 2.0 firmware.

Finally, there seems to be a real need to install iTunes, and that’s probably the #1 issue I have against the iPhone. I’ve heard way too many horror stories about iTunes, the extra stuff it tries to install, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to hate on the iPhone, I just don’t think it’s for me. So, what is the phone for me? After some research, I’ve narrowed my search to the HTC Touch Pro.

Specs:

• 528Mhz Processor
• 228 MB of Ram, 512MB of ROM
• 2.8 VGA touch screen
• GPS, Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR (including stereo A2DP)
• Opera 9.5 built in
• MicroSD expansion slot

The reviews so far have been very positive. The TouchFlo3D interface developed by HTC looks very polished, but as people are quick to point out, the TouchFlo3D UI only works with certain applications. However, for 90% of my usage, I’d be using TochFlo3D applications, including E-Mail, and the Web Browser.

The Touch Pro is supposed to have the option to connect via USB as a Mass Storage Device like the Touch Diamond (already released on Sprint), which is a huge selling point for me. I have no need for Active Sync or Windows Mobility Center since I use exchange for syncing. As a Mass Storage Device, I can just drag and drop files, and most media players support syncing. What’s even more important is that my car stereo does support Mass Storage Devices, which is how my current MP3 player connects.

There are also plenty of free applications available for Windows Mobile, and as a developer myself, it is very easy for me to write applications for it should the need arise (which I must admit it hasn’t yet). I was working on a really cool Windows CE project that got canceled earlier this year, so I haven’t been into the mobile development as much. I have a couple of ideas for a proof of concept at work that having a WinMo phone would help.

The phone should be released sometime soon, but in the meantime I need to pull my custom ROM off my Mogul and take it in for some service. The battery seems to be going, and my beloved slide out keyboard doesn’t close all the way (which I guess is a con of the slide out keyboard, the mechanism is susceptible to wear and tear).

A recent post by Scott had me look into how our IIS 7 servers were configured. Turns out we were not using dynamic compression (Ok, I already knew that as I’m the one who set them up), so I decided to go about installing the dynamic compression module (you can always un-enable it).

If you already have IIS 7 installed, you can go into the Role Manager and add a role service. The dynamic compression is under the performance section. Once installed, you will need to enable it via the IIS 7 management tool, or use the following command line option:

appcmd set config -section:urlCompression /doDynamicCompression:true 

The appcmd command line tool lives in C:\windows\system32\inetsrv, which is not included in PATH. You will want to review the httpCompression section in C:\Windows\System32\Inetsrv\Config\applicationHost.config to view what Mime types are compressed. By default, when you install dynamic compression, you get the following settings:

<dynamicTypes>
     <add mimeType="text/*" enabled="true" />
     <add mimeType="message/*" enabled="true" />
     <add mimeType="application/x-javascript" enabled="true" />
     <add mimeType="*/*" enabled="false" />
</dynamicTypes>

I couldn’t find a page that specifically listed mimeTypes in the context of IIS 7, but here is the full list of MimeTypes itself which should give you an idea of how you can configure compression.

As Scott points out in his article, you should make an attempt to justify your change, which I did by performing a simple test using a large web page (1.3 MB) we serve up, and noting the response size and time using Fiddler.

The 1.3 MB web page originally took 30 seconds to receive (I know, there is something funny going on with the network connection somewhere, but it does easily illustrate the savings compression gives). Enabling compression shrunk the response to 130KB, taking only 6 seconds.

For some additional information on compression in IIS 7 check out this blog entry by Kanwalijeet Singla.

Scott just blogged about T4, the Text Template Transformation Toolkit. It’s a full blown template driven code generation tool that uses the same syntax as Asp.Net. It’s lacking things such as syntax highlighting and intellisense, but it’s free, and part of Visual Studio.

I feel with the recent press this tool is getting, it will become even more popular, and some of the missing features added by the community. Scott has a whole list of links on his post that provide good samples, as well as a link to a company that provides a free and pay version of a plug-in to add some of the “missing” functionality.

Yesterday I attempted my first bike to run activity. I started out with a 10.5 mile bike ride (which I wasn’t too happy with in terms of performance), followed by a 5 mile run. I had about 10 minutes of rest in-between, because even though I had “planned” this, things just didn’t work out for a quick transition.

While the bike ride was a sub-par performance, and my quads were really tight, I actually completed the 5 mile run in about 42 minutes, or about 2 to 2.5 minutes off my best 5 mile time (without riding the bike). The 42 minute time made me feel pretty good, and gives me something to shoot for in terms of improvement.

I am working on resolving two issues with my legs. The first is an IT band condition around my right knee, the second is medial tibial stress problems (shins) on both legs. Surprisingly running isn’t all that bad on the shins, and is only painful during the exercises at Monkey Bar’s (I guess that is a little unfortunate). Like I said, I’m working to get these issues resolved with the goal of being able to run 15-20 miles per week pain free by the end of January.

After establishing a good base for running, I will be working to ramp up for the Madison Marathon, as well as train for running at least one Olympic Distance triathlon in 2009. Speaking of triathlon’s, I really want to trade my bike in for a Cervelo P2C ;)

We setup all of our virtual machines in our new data center to run with a single virtual processor. The thought behind this was to start with the minimum and add additional resources as needed after observing our VM’s under load.

Well the time has come to add a second virtual processor to three of our VM’s, all of which are running Server 2008 data center edition. In the past, adding a second processor (or even enabling hyper threading) could cause issues due to an incorrect HAL (hardware abstraction layer) being chosen when you first install the OS. I thought I had read that this is not an issue under Vista and Server 2008, but couldn’t find anything to confirm (other then the lack of people reporting problems).

Since we are using virtual machines (VMWare ESX Server), it’s easy enough to take a snapshot and revert if something goes terribly wrong. However, the snapshots were NOT needed, as the servers booted up without issue after adding the second virtual processor.

Something I might want to consider next time would be to disable ESX’s dynamic resource allocation routine before shutting down three VM’s.

Rob Conery, creator of SubSonic, and the ASP.Net MVC Store Front video series has released an early prototype of a Visual Studio 2008 add-in called the SubSonic MVC Scaffold Addin. Let me point out right away that there is no dependency on SubSonic itself, rather this add-in uses Linq2Sql, although Rob says a SubSonic plug-in is on the drawing board.

Not to rehash his announcement, but basically this add-in takes a Linq2Sql class, and generates some views (view, edit, list), and a controller based on the class. This is meant as a quick start kind of thing, not a full fledged commercial web site generator.

I encourage you to visit his blog post and watch the video he has prepared, it does an excellent job of showing you what the Scaffold does. Here are some of my take-away's:

• Uses pre-existing Linq2Sql generated classes
• Creates wrapper objects around Linq2Sql classes
• Creates MVC views (you can create your own template to use in this process)
• Creates MVC controller
• If you re-run the scaffold on a class you previously generated, no files are updated (overwritten). You can delete individual files, and scaffold will generate them again.
• Not everything works perfectly, you will/may need to go in and change some code. This is to get you started with something quickly.
• RESTful style URL

While in search of the Windows Live Hotmail for Outlook Connector (future blog post in the works), I found a small add-on that enables the ability to save office documents as PDF (or XPS). The add-in adds a new option under “Save As”, and worked well in my limited testing. This works different from other PDF utilities, in that it does NOT install a virtual printer driver.

The add-in is limited to the following programs, and sadly, outlook is not one of them, but all the other major office applications are:

• Microsoft Office Access 2007
• Microsoft Office Excel 2007
• Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007
• Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
• Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
• Microsoft Office Publisher 2007
• Microsoft Office Visio 2007
• Microsoft Office Word 2007

Remember, you access this add-in by going to “Save As”, not Print, like you may be used to for other PDF utilities. OneNote adds a new option under File, other applications may differ as well.

Info and Download:

• Main Microsoft Downloads page (requires Genuine Software check)
• Direct download link