ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner: AMD and Dell Bring CableCARD to PCs
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 3, 2007 11:37 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Completing the Digital Home: Xbox 360 Extender
The idea of keeping your Vista media center PC hooked up to your TV and attempting to make it a dual-use platform is far fetched for many. It appears that the fad of trying to get the PC, as we all know it, into the living room is dying. Microsoft recognized this early on and started down a different path. While the media center interface is perfect for use on a TV, it also works for simply showing content to many people huddled around a single computer screen (although Apple's Front Row interface is arguably a bit better suited for that given its simplicity).
The interface itself is only part of the strength of the media center platform; the ability to store all of that wonderful content is the other major component. So why not use a PC for what it's really good for - storing and accessing data, and simply use "lesser" devices to display that content on TVs and other CE devices throughout the digital home? That's the concept behind digital media extenders, and for Vista/OCUR there is only one such extender that you can stream this content to: an Xbox 360 console.
Shipping the Xbox 360 with built-in media center extender functionality was a brilliant move by Microsoft. Not to say that it took the most intelligence to realize that giving something away for free was a good thing, but it means that today there is an installed base of over 10 million media center extenders across the globe. That number is far greater than any other media center extender that has ever been shipped in the past, and although not everyone will use them in that capacity, if Microsoft can make the entire digital home solution compelling enough a lot of them might.
Setting up the Xbox 360 as a media center extender for Vista isn't difficult; the process works much like it does under Windows XP. On the Xbox 360 you select the Media Center option under Media, which will bring up a screen displaying an 8 digit code that you will have to type in on your Media Center PC (you can repeat this process for up to five Xbox 360s).
On the PC side, Vista will actually detect that there's an Xbox 360 on the network and ask you if you'd like to configure the extender. If you choose not to you can always manually add an extender under the Tasks menu within the Media Center interface. Configuring the extender simply requires that you input the 8 digit code displayed on the Xbox 360 and click next a couple of times. The entire process just takes a few minutes and you're done. Once the extender has been paired with your Vista PC, you won't have to repeat the process again.
After the Xbox 360 and PC have been paired, you can now watch live TV, recorded shows and view/listen to all of your content on the TV that's connected to your Xbox 360. The interface is actually streamed from the Vista PC, so on the Xbox 360 it looks like a carbon copy of Vista's Media Center UI.
While you can use the Xbox 360's controller to navigate through the UI, with no on-screen explanation of what each button does we found it far more user friendly to use the Xbox 360's remote control. The extended remote that ships with the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive worked particularly well as it made the experience very TV-like, the only exception being that volume control didn't work so we had to use our television's remote control for adjusting channel volume.
Just like on our Vista PC, selecting live TV from the Media Center UI brings up a live TV stream sent to the Xbox 360 by our PC/OCUR setup. Navigating the guide is almost as fast as it is on the PC, but switching channels is a bit slower. There's a good several second delay between when you hit the channel up button and when the next channel actually appears. Long channel switching delays are of course common whenever you have a DVR in place but streaming to the Xbox 360 lengthens this delay. All decoding is actually handled on the Xbox 360 itself, so from the PC's perspective any additional load is only in the sense of streaming data to the 360.
What is truly necessary is media center extender software for other PCs. While there are 10+ million Xbox 360s in homes today, there are far more second or third PCs and laptops that are out there. Being able to use any of those systems as media center extenders could significantly extend the range and usability of Vista as a DVR and media hub. While we've heard rumors of such a project, it seems that turning the Xbox 360 into a media center extender was a lot easier of a task since it's a closed system with clear content restriction policies. Once you start streaming this content from your OCUR PC setup to other potentially less secure PCs in the house, you compromise the security of the content (again not an end user problem but unfortunately we don't generate the content).
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n7 - Wednesday, April 4, 2007 - link
I am amazed at how restricted this is.I was looking forward to the day when i could get a tuner capable of high def support to add to my PC.
And now i see that the once again, the consumers are basically getting royally ******.
I'm incredibly disapppointed.
Thanx very much for this article though...does an excellent job of showing just how retarded DRM has become...
Cygni - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
Thank you for this article Anand. When you first reviewed Vista, i asked for a review of its MCE component, to which you replied such an article was comming. I was beginning to think you forgot about writing that article! :DI am in the shrinking majority of non HDTV owners. I have a 32in Sony CRT TV that ive had for at least 10 years. Its still one of the best looking TV's around, in my opinion. I use MCE to function as a recorder so that I dont have to pay a monthly fee to anyone. I feel thats ridiculous. I bought a $50 ATI TV card and with MCE, can do everything a TIVO can, AND save money, AND burn what programing i want and give it to who i want.
I have one big question i wanted to ask, however. Did you try Vista Media Centers multi screen performance? I use Svideo to connect my TV and computer, and i enjoy working on one screen while having MCE going in the other. However, MCE 2k5's performance in this situation is pretty bad, and the MCE team itself admitted that they hadnt thought of this scenario.
feraltoad - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
So let me get this straight the ONLY people that really want OCUR (people with media center PCs) will be the ones that can't get it? WTH! Bad enough you need HDCP monitors and Video cards, but even when you do upgrade everything it still won't be enough until you buy a ready made box (and if you have a HTPC that is used as a Media PC then it is probably DIY). So the people that this things is going to marketed to will be people that 1)Have no idea it exists 2)Don't/Won't want it 3)Apparently will be better served to pay $10 a month to rent something that will "just work". I have a MCE2005 pc, and it looks pretty obvious which way the wind is blowing: HD-DVR here I come.Also, besides a rant I had a question. What if you have ONE HDCP compliant monitor(HDTV) and one non HDCP LCD (that doesn't merit replacement yet). Will it still work and let you play the content on the TV? Or will the non hdcp monitor "break" the compliance and thus the functionality.
thestain - Wednesday, April 4, 2007 - link
AMD's kissing Microsofts rear is a recipe for an american made disaster.Is there no hardware company that is willing to give customers ownership of the hardware they buy anymore??
AMD/Daamit would do better getting the cpus and gpus out that have been delayed and delayed.. or nVidia and Intel will destroy AMD.
Wolfpup - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
That wasn't mentioned in the article. In two years I'll have to get some sort of ATSC replacement for my NTSC-only S2 Tivo.Also-is this for real that you can't burn real DVDs with this setup? I presume that means you can't even copy files to another computer to watch (only stream them to a 360)?
In that case this doesn't work for me. Hope there are more ATSC solutions available by the time I need them...
Smilin - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
Your #1 mistake was activating the card on a different device first. This caused you major problems. The mating of the card to a particular device is not a time-warner only thing. Had you not made this pretty dumb move you wouldn't have had Dell, ATI and Time Warner dancing around like monkeys for so many days.The problem switching between SD and HD is most likely a server issue at the cable company. Unfortunately "that guy" who is smart enough to fix it is so far up the food chain you'll never reach him through the mass of standard techs.
How do I know this? Go check out the Support forums over at Tivo. The problems are everywhere. The series 3 has dual cable cards and guess what? Cable companies give it fits. In every case the cable company will push back and say it's a problem with your device. In every case this turns out not to be true.
I ran into many of the issues you are seeing with my Series 3 Tivo. After like 4 cable cards, 5 trips from techs, pulling my hair until I was bald I finally got "the guy" who said it was merely a server issue on their end. No problems since.
mwales - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
So as a Kubuntu Linux user, on a PC built from parts, and "soon to be owner" of a PS3, I feel a little left out of the party. Seriously, the amount of restrictions for a system to do this is ridiculous and makes me want to vomit.I happen to have a Windows XP running Beyond TV DVR software (it's NTSC only unfortunately). But I'm able to share my media folder and access it from Windows PCs, Linux PCs, and even both XBox systems when they run XBox Media Center. It works FANTASTIC! Even my wife can stream content and watch it on an XBox without any issues or help. Once I get a Creative Vision M, I can easily move my non-DRM files unencumbered to my portable video player. I'm also able to burn DVDs of shows I really enjoyed so I can watch them later on my DVD/DivX player.
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
As long as the content providers are allowed to dictate how and where we watch their content, these products will always be a pain in the ass to setup and use.Still waiting on the CES 2006 announced DirecTV / MCE tuners.
michal1980 - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
i'd get that 4000 grand pc if it came with all the techs to help set it up.cable card needs bi-directional support before it gets my vote though.
BPB - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
This article was not at all interesting for me personally. Oh, the tech end of it was, and the fact that AMD/MS/Hollywood/the cable industry can't work well as a group was interesting. But since the technology itself is not available to me unless I buy an expensicve Dell (or equivalent), I really don't care about it. I'll continue to go along using my Cox HD-DVR and be happy. Actually, if I do want to do something like this I'll simply rent a Cox HD cable box and plug it into my ATI 650 based tuner card (which has HD support) or my X1900 AIW (which accepts HD input). So for the price of the Cox rental I can have HD on my PC, and for far less money. Then again, the way MS and the cable industry are going, I can't be sure that would work. Oh well, guess I'll have to continue using the Firewire out on my HD-DVR to copy movies to my wife's notebook, then my desktop. It's a pain, but it's cheap and easy. My dad's new HD-DVR is also a cable modem. I wonder if it can be networked? Wouldn't that be nice?