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Vista Media Center

When I was in Brisbane last year, my friend Luke showed me a Windows XP Media Center. I thought it was pretty cool and I’ll tell you why.

For those who don’t know what the fuss is all about, a media center is like a hard disc recorder (PVR), Foxtel IQ or a Tivo. That’s one of those devices that allows you to record TV shows, pause live TV and play it all back later.

They are usually made up of:

1. Hard Disk to record shows onto
2. A TV Scheduler program
3. Connections to your TV and Stereo

They might also have a DVD burner inbuilt.

I had played with a Windows XP Media Center a few years ago, but digital TV was pretty new then and the digital TV recievers that I had were not compatible with the Windows Media Center software.

Digital TV has come a long way since then and so has the Windows Media Center platform. The hardware to make it all work is now much cheaper and easily avaialble.

So why does Windows Vista Media Center rock?

Well, Media Center is so much more than a Tivo, a Foxtel IQ or a PVR. Those things are purely oriented around TV. But whilst the media center might be connected straight up to your plasma TV or projector, it can also be another PC on your network. So with Media Center you can:

1. Easily network with your other computers
2. Share files, photos and videos around the network (think digital cameras and mobile phones that are already connected to your PC)
3. Connect to and browse the Internet easily in a familiar environment
4. Download and access online media (Think torrents - nothing illegal of course ;-), youtube, Bigpond movies).

What I found is that there is so much to watch on free to air TV but it’s never on when you’re there to watch it. Vista Media Center fixed that for me, so I cancelled my Foxtel subscription.

So when I have a moment, I can sit in my lounge, browse through some old photos while listening to some cool tunes. When I’m done, I’ll browse through the TV shows that I’ve recorded and find something worth watching!

Now if only we could get the free to air networks to buy some up to date and decent TV shows like The IT Crowd and The US Office… 

I’ll tell you a little bit about how to put your own Media Center together later…

If you’re getting a “connection to the server was interrupted” message from Outlook 2007 while trying to connect via POP3, the following may be a solution for you…

In exchange, on the POP3 connector, turn of NTLM authentication. It seems to stuff up with Outlook 2007. Something to do with Outlook trying to use the AUTH command.

From the pre-launch hype to the post release headaches, I’ve been pondering this question, “What is an Apple iPhone 3G really good for?”

There’s been lot’s of suggestion, but precious few with any substance. A colleague of mine, Jim Stewart of stewartmedia.biz told us in a video blog that his iPhone is an important business tool because it has Facebook on it…???

Don’t get me wrong, I love Facebook just as much as the next be-my-freind-to-build-my-hungry-ego guy… but is that really all there is?

Ok, so it’s a phone… that looks cool… that you can browse the web on… riiiight. *yawn*

Oh, and you can email on it. However, MobileMe, the supposed replacement of BlackBerrys and Exchange doesn’t actually work.

IT wire’s top ten productivity tips for iPhone consisted of things like how to turn the caps lock key on, and how to kill crashed programs… Hang on a minute…! What? An Apple iCrash? I was told that such a thing did not exist!

So sure it’s got a nice sexy casing and a large screen that drains your batteries faster than you can charge them.  But, now cracks have started to appear in shiny white iPhone casings.

And of course, you can’t change that battery, so the whole phone is throw-away tech.

Now I admit that this thing is so alluring that I am tempted to buy one, but that rational side of me is screaming out:

“Please, please, please tell me that there is something useful about this thing?”

I beg of you Apple, please stop marketing your electronic gadgets to me!

Apple iPhone 3G smells stinks to me like the American consumer culture at its peak. As their unsustainable consumer economy crumbles down around them, at least they can take comfort in their cracked but shiny white iPhones.

Instruction to believers:

Apple drones, you have been told what to do by the great fruit shaped corporation in the sky. The iCreator wishes you to proceed to an Apple Worship Altar Store to buy your iPhone 2.0 now. Forget that you ever owned an iPhone 1.0 and please be sure to stow it safely in your desk draw, never to be seen again!