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| Media centre extenders work best over wired ethernet connections |
The final part of the puzzle is the device you actually plug into your TV; usually a Windows Media Center Extender that can take the stream from a media-centre PC, decode it and play it back over S-Video, component or HDMI connection, depending on your screen.
Which you choose will probably depend on your network. If you've gone wireless, something such as the Linksys DMA 2100 Media Center Extender has the draft-n speeds required. That said, you can't go wrong with Microsoft's Xbox 360 console. If you're not using it over ethernet, plug in the appropriate draft-n bridge.
Of course, there's one major drawback to this approach - you have to leave a power-hungry PC on if you want to watch TV. The solution? A media-friendly NAS or Windows Home Server that can store the programmes recorded on your PC and ping them to a Media Center Extender for playback.
Oddly enough, Windows Home Servers don't play as well as you might expect with Vista's Media Center Extender, but there are ways of getting the backup features in WHS to watch and copy from the Recorded TV folder in Vista (see http://tinyurl.com/9hpztm for more details).
NAS devices with a UPnP media server also have their place, and apps such as SyncToy (http://tinyurl.com/2jx4sk) will synchronise the Recorded TV folders on your PC with the relevant video folders on your NAS or server.
Just two things to be aware of: first, some Media Center Extenders won't work hand-in-glove with a straight UPnP server that isn't running Vista or WHS; second, you may need to transcode files from the DVR-MS format used by Vista into a format the server and streamer can work with.
There are commercial packages that can do this and an excellent, if rather intimidating, free applet called DVRMSToolbox (http://tinyurl.com/42p9wn) that can do the job. We'll talk about this later.
Streaming on your TV
Wherever you store your programmes, your Vista machine will need to be switched on to record them. Instead of turning it off when you have recordings scheduled, put it to sleep. Of course, with a PC at one end and a Media Center Extender at the other, you're not limited to watching programmes you've recorded. You can also stream across any content you download from internet services such as iView or NineMSN Catchup.
These catchup programs require a downloadable player for PC or Mac (Now in the case of ABC content, HIRO for NineMSN). Then simply share the All Users | My Deliveries folder using Windows Media Player 11 and you're good to go. Pick Add to Library from the Library tab, then browse for and add the folder.
You can then go to Library | Media Sharing and check you're set up to share media files across the network. The DRM can cause snags on Xbox 360s and other Extenders - see http://tinyurl.com/79xvds for workarounds.
If you can't achieve smooth, TV-like playback, all is not lost. If you've gone down the wireless route, experiment with the position of your router and/or your PC or Extender. Even with a draft-n connection, you can improve throughput by plugging the PC or the Extender into a wired connection. Check you have no 802.11b devices - such as handheld games consoles - connecting while you're trying to watch TV.
If things are really bad, you can try "segmenting". Basically, you buy an additional router. Your primary router handles communications with internet traffic, your media PC and your Extender, and this communicates through an Ethernet link to another router that acts as a wireless hotspot for all the other devices in your home. This allows your media-centre PC and Extender to make the most of the available bandwidth.
Finally, whatever technology you use, check your router's QoS settings. Some can be programmed to prioritise traffic of a particular type (video, for example), or coming to and from a particular IP address (your media PC or Media Center Extender, for example). It's also worth checking that settings such as Dynamic Fragmentation (your router may use different terminology) aren't turned on.
And if all of this sounds like too much hassle, you can always eliminate the network altogether. Some USB hard disk and flash memory-based products can take files directly from a PC then play them back through S-Video, Component or HDMI connections to your TV. SanDisk killed off its innovative, flash-based TakeTV product, but look out for LaCie's LaCinema product line, or Western Digital's new WD TV Player (January 2009, page 66), a device that hooks up to your TV then streams files from a standard external hard disk.
It's also possible to go the other way. The Archos 605 WiFi and Archos TV+ can record direct from a satellite or DVB-T source then copy files to your desktop, NAS or home server over USB. Bear in mind, though, that this involves a digital to analogue to digital conversion, and so a minor quality drop.
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| Shows downloaded from iView or other catchup services can be streamed to a media extender. |