No More ASP.NET

Free HDTV signals on cable tv are transmitted over Clear QAM. To receive the free HDTV signal you must have a QAM tuner, period. No other way around it. I tried.

Windows Media Center (for Vista and XP), as of January, 2008, does NOT support QAM, period. It may in the future, but for now, it doesn’t.

Yes, I know, they say Windows Media Center supports QAM, but it doesn’t. At least not with any PC tuner you can buy off the shelf. I tried.

To get the QAM signal your PC tuner must trick WMC into displaying the signal by transmogrifying it. HD Homerun does just that. Brilliant.

So, after building an WMC PC, putting two HDTV tuners in it (ordered two by mistake), and ordering basic digital cable (no extras), plugging all this in and setting up WMC, I find out that WMC does not support QAM tuners without transmogrification, or paying the toll tax.

So what now? Buy an HDHomerun or just use the set top box that comes from the cable provider. The set top box works ok with WMC, but it’s kludgy at best.

I’ll run with the set top for now, since another $169 for the HD Homerun is just not feasable right now with things changing so fast.

We bought an Xbox 360 on black friday morning… early. After spending the first couple of days playing games I decided to connect it to the Windows Media Center we have as our PVR.

First off, WMC cannot be beat as a PVR. Tivo has NOTHING on on it. It’s like a Tivo-zilla. I could go on and on about its features but you can google it of you want to know. I took an unused PC, put Vista on it and bought a Media Center remote control (with USB thingy to plug into the computer–you need this), and put a tuner in the PC. Friends are simply blown away by this thing.  Even my father-in-law is impressed with the sports features.

Anyway, so the WMC was already connected to the network for internet access. Once I put the Xbox on the same network–ok, pause for rant:

The WMC used the only network cable we had going to the entertainment center (you would need this no matter what PVR you use). Well, when i put the Xbox in, it needed an Internet connection as well so i unplugged the WMC and plugged in the Xbox. Later I decided to connect both using a small router. Nix that action… the power cable for the router was missing so I used another one. Well, the router uses a 5v, 3A power adapter and I (dumbly) plugged in a 12V, 1.2A adapter. The router died silently.

Anyway (again), after some the silent death drama I got a wireless USB-G adapter. *beep* wrong! The wireless router, an eggcellent ZyXEL X-500 XtremeMIMO, while it has the best transmission power of any (er, one) router I’ve owned, it is on the opposite end of the house, in the basement, in a closet, behind my offices. The signal, therefore, was just too weak to do great video. Nix the USB-G adapter.

Then I ran another cable to the entertainment center.

Once the Xbox and WMC were on the same network, the WMC poped up an notification that an Extender was online. Sweet. I hit next..next..next and it was configured. Oh, I forgot, there is an 8-digit code the Xbox will give you when it sees that you’re using a WMC remote control.

Now I can move the WMC into the basement.