My Blu-ray player plays every DVD, Blu-ray, and even every streaming Netflix movie as smooth as can be. Not so much for my Windows 7 HTPC (home theater PC). I have found several issues that affect how smoothly video and even audio play at times in various places. The term is jitter. Jitter simply means […]

My good old FIOS DVR let you change the Skip and Replay Intervals in the setup of the DVR.  Windows MCE isn’t that sophisticated.  But it is available to change if you are up to changing the registry. As always, registry editing is done at your own risk.  Changing the wrong value in the registry […]

I am using an Harmony 200 remote with one of my extenders and it has worked great.   Today, however, it wouldn’t work and the three device buttons were flashing. I checked the batteries and they were low.  Replacing the batteries didn’t correct the problem, however. I tried to find a manual, but evidently none is […]

Windows Media Center (WMC) advertises they can work with wireless networks. WMC extenders come with big antennas. Is it really feasible to plan on having a whole house WMC feeding multiple extenders? The answer is no. The problems are bandwidth and freedom from interference. Using a Silicondust HDHR3 device provides two streams of encoded HD […]

Windows Media Center is a good DVR.  It has Pause, Rewind, Fast Forward, the ability to work with extenders to become a multi-room DVR; all very good. But my Panasonic Blu-ray player takes 480p recordings and upscales them to 720p.  SD programming streamed from Netflix gets scaled up to higher resolution. Windows Media Center does […]

After Windows crashed and I used System Restore to restore to an earlier instance my Windows media Center no longer worked. So I tried to go through the Windows Media Center setup again and it failed at installing the Microsoft play ready process which is a digital rights management process that protects content providers from […]

Windows Media Center is really a fantastic tool. It is a built in DVR, with all the functionality that you expect from your local cable company. And, by adding extenders, you can use your HTPC, using Windows Media Center, to provide both programming and DVR functionality to multiple TVs, thus eliminating the need for multiple […]

Introduction Not too many years ago I entered the DVR world.  With an HDTV and a FIOS DVR I’ve become liberated from the idea that I had to plan to sit at home on the nights when my favorite TV shows were on.  Of course everyone knows it’s impossible to be home all the time […]

HDMI is the standard for the best audiovisual output from a computer or A/V device.  But, as I found out recently, there may be times when a standard VGA cable may serve better. I recently hooked up my XPS 8300 Dell desktop to my HDTV. I wanted to see how Windows Media Center, built into […]