theHTPC.net

It’s just really quiet on the HTPC front…for me anyway.  I’m sure there’s plenty going on, but it either doesn’t interest me or I’m too lazy/busy to get involved with it.  I haven’t completely wasted my time though - I did upgrade to Wordpress 2.5.1 today…finally.

I’ve been unable to compile any of the source on the OML site since initially getting it to work, so that’s been a dead issue for me as of late.  I continue to try out Movie Collector MCE (from Collectorz.com) since they put an update, but it still didn’t fix the linking of files for me.  I’m giving up on it so there will be no more news on that front.  I don’t like the fact that you can’t share databases between separate systems anyway.

My old media server had a failed hard drive a couple days ago.  It’s currently still rebuilding and I’m not quite sure what I want to do with it at this point.  I’d really like to use that drive space in my unRAID server, so I might actually decommission them until I can afford a port multipler capable 2-port SATA card a 5-bay PM external enclosure.  I don’t necessarily have to go with all 1TB drives…I can upgrade the 500GB drives later if I want anyway.  I think I’ll just do that.  The NetCell card is slow as hell anyway.

I also found out a week or two ago that the addition of Disney, TLC, A&E, AMC and the Science HD channels were all short-lived as they all disappeared from my HDHomeRun.  That really sucks.  They all worked for a week or so, but I guess they were just testing something and they became unencrypted.  Oh well and so it goes…

Finally, Vista4Cast and Extended4Cast are both back in action after some usage rights issues with Weather.com were resolved.  If you need a weather application for Vista Media Center, then those are what you want.  Registration with their forum is required for download.

It’s been a very hectic last couple of weeks, but I’m not dead and neither is this site.

At work, I was smacked down with an upcoming Exchange 2003 migration and Blackberry Enterprise Server implementation, so, needless to say, I was covered up there. Most of what I write up here is done during the free minutes I have at work and I had none for about a week straight. The past week has been busy being on vacation. I took a week off to welcome home the newest addition to my family - baby Zachary!

Zach was born May 14th and was 9.0lb and 22in. long.  We got to take him home Friday evening and I’ve never seen a baby sleep so good.  We were both worried about how he would do since his older brother Joseph still has some issues at night, but we couldn’t ask for a better sleeper.

In other news, I’ve been giving the new Open Media Library (OML) plugin for Vista Media Center some attention lately.  It’s not really even in pre-alpha stages yet, but if you know your way around compiling source and doing some light hacking with SVN builds, then you can take a look at it…it might even work for you!

Thus far, I got it compiled, installed, MyMovies XML imported and all my movies and coverart to show up.  However, the links to my video files don’t seem to be working for some reason.  It looks very nice though.  Here’s a sneak-peek at the default layout.

Pretty sweet, eh?  As I mentioned, this is very early in the development stages and is not ready for use.  I just couldn’t control my curiosity and the guys on their development forum seem to be very appreciative of anyone that can get it installed and offer feedback.   If you’re so inclined, I’d suggest you do the same.  It’s going to be a very nice plugin and appears to be one of the most active despite the small team size.  Good luck OML guys!

Well, that’s about all I have for the moment.  I’m sure there’s a few other things I’ve done, but I’ll save them for later…I’ve got work to do.

MC Organizer is a fairly well-known MCE plugin that has been freely available for some time. The only catch was that it was developed to work only with the Collectorz.com Movie Collector movie database software, which comes with a fee.

Just a couple of days ago, v5.5.2 was released of Movie Collector and it now comes bundled with the latest version of MC Organizer. The new bundle is now called Movie Collector MCE and costs $39.95. A free trial is available with a 50 movie limit.

What intrigued me was that this new version is capable of importing a MyMovies XML database file. I’m dying for an MCML-based frontend to my movie database. I love MyMovies, but I’m absolutely disgusted that an updated interface is still not available. I understand why and all, but it’s still ridiculous that such good software is going to waste.

I decided to give Movie Collector MCE a try and everything went fine right up to actually trying to start the plugin within VMC - Invalid Application - was the error I received and I was forced to close it. I decided not to research an answer since this was only a trial and it’s not free. I’ll wait for the open source library to come around and just pray that MyMovies is among the initial import choices.

If you’ve tried this new software and got it to work, please leave a comment and let us know your thoughts. Otherwise, you can get the trial here.

I didn’t realize until now that it has been a week since my last entry.  I guess I’ve been pretty busy.  Anyway, I’ve been needing to add an additional TB drive to my unRAID array for a while now and this weekend I got to.

Saturday I went to Fry’s and picked up another Seagate 1TB 32MB cache drive for $199.99, as they had them on their regular weekend sale.  I wish I had been able to take a few screenshots, but I didn’t want to leave the array down for very long, so I didn’t get the chance.  It couldn’t have been simpler though.  After adding, the system came up, I stopped the array, checked the devices page and added the drive to the empty 5th disk slot, and went back to the main page and was presented with an optional check box informing me that if I checked that box and started the array that all unformatted disks would be formatted.  I checked it off and it started formatting.  After a few moments, all was done and I had an additional TB of space!

All that was left was to add the disk to the user share and then I used the mv command from a telnet connection to move the folders I wanted.  I moved around 400GB to put all my TV series, documentaries and the kid’s videos on the new drive.  This was what I had originally envisioned when planning my unRAID build.

I should be good on space for quite a while now.  I still plan on adding a 6th disk for application/driver/general storage, but I’ll get to that when I can.