Part two of this two part article is based on the Software required to get your Media Center PC up and running.  If you remember from part 1, we have a $600 budget but only spent about $400.

Operating System:

Really the most expensive component of this PC is the operating system.  What you’re looking for is a copy of  Vista that has Media Center in it.  There are two options: Windows Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate.

If you have an existing copy of XP (that is not installed on another computer) you can upgrade to Vista cheaper than buying it.  If you don’t have an extra copy then you can buy a legit version off ebay for $128.  The upgrades go for half the price at around $65 dollars.  You might ask, “Well why don’t I just go with XP Media Center 2005?”.  Well you can, but with Windows 7 coming out towards the end of this year XP is going to start really getting phased out this year.

If you’re really adventurous you can go with Windows 7 Beta Ultimate which has Media Center built into it – but remember its a beta, and it expires in August ‘09.  But the download is free for a couple more weeks.  I’m sure though someone will have a copy – but you want to make sure you get your legitimate key before hand.  I’ve tested Windows 7 on my Macbook and it runs pretty well.  You can read up on that experience here.

Anyway,  the one thing to take out of this is that you do want to ensure that you are purchasing a 64 bit version of Vista – or if you’re downloading Windows 7, make sure you get the 64bit version as you want to take advantage of the 4GB of RAM, and the 64bit dual core processor.

General Purpose Video Player:

One great video player that has all of the codecs you would ever need built into it is VLC Media Player.  Downloaded a 1080p H.264 MKV file no problem VLC has the codec to play this built in.

It’s free, open source, and works on any operating system.  Now the drawback is that when you go to play that 1080p MKV file with a 2.0 GHZ dual core processor it is going to choke on the video file and die and you’ll notice your CPU is through the roof.  Again this is something I pointed out – few tools are optimized to utilize multi-core CPUs and VLC.  This is where specialized codecs come in handy.

Codecs:

The thing about codecs is if you load too many of them you’ll screw up your system.  For the most part you’re going to need 4 things.  FFDshow, Hali Media Splitter, and the MKV codec, and divx.  The first 3 can all be installed by getting the Combined Community Codec Pack.

They have a free player as well, try it if you like, but all you need is the actual codec pack.  Divx can be found by going to divx.com. You’ll notice that this is, in many cases, the default encoder for videos that you would upload to youtube etc.   There is a player that they offer as well, but all you really need is to ensure you have the updated codec from them.

Now you might say “But there are other codec packs like the Vista Codec Pack out there.”  This is true, but generally you only need a couple codecs and heck, you may not even need these, it depends on the format of the HD content you’re viewing.

CoreAVC:

So now you’ve pulled down all of the above free tools and codecs and you’re still having problems running a smooth 720p or 1080p h.264 MKV file.  There is only one option when it comes to codecs that has any twinkle of multi-core support (even if its not great).  CoreAVC. 

This codec is not free, and rightly so – it allows you to buy a slower dual-core processor and utilize it, as opposed to going out and buying a more expensive piece of hardware.   You do not want to buy the standard edition you want to spring for the professional edition as it does offer support of SMP (mult-core CPU).  The great news is there is a free trial so you can download, install and test it out to verify.   Not only that you’ll notice that if you compare video quality of VLC with a higher-powered processor vs. CoreAVC the picture quality is better with fewer dropped frames.   At $15 bucks, its a small investment to have high quality decoding.

Zoom Player:

Now, when installing codecs, where do they go? They install to windows but not all players allow you to easily choose which codec to use in which scenario.  There are work arounds to allow Windows Media Center to take advantage of all codecs but if you’d like to have more control and ease of use/choice there is one last Media player that you should take a peak at.  Zoom Player.  You can change codecs on the fly and I find that it plays MKV files with CoreAVC very well as it seems to use less overhead than launching Media Center.  The drawback of course is that you can’t use your Media Center Remote with it.

BlueRay/HDDVD Player:
When it comes to playing actual HDDVD’s or BlueRays – or maybe you have the actual files on your computer – if its real BlueRay files the answer is simple.  PowerDVD.

Forget about Codecs, if you’re watching real HDDVD or BlueRay content off a file or the disc itself PowerDVD offloads the processing power to your Video Card and unlocks the performance of the card to run a smooth viewing experience.   The unfortunate part of this is of course is that the cost is slightly higher the Ultra version of this is $99 bucks.  Remeber I said the main costs are software.  Here you go.  Sometimes you’ll get lucky and it will come with a DVD drive or with a video card but chances are you’ll need to buy this direct or upgrade from a previous version.  But if you are not watching Blue Rays/HDDVD’s then you don’t have to worry as you don’t need Power DVD to play a regular old DVD in your computer – Windows Media Center takes care of that.

Why don’t you use open source?
This is actually an easy question to answer.  It boils down to ease of use and availability of compatible software and devices.  To an average person trying to figure out installing codecs to Linux, trying to find a decent tool to capture and record TV and/or act like a Media center in Linux, finding good software that can play a movie – not only that how about trying to get COREAVC to work in Linux.   Can it be done? Yes.  But this is about the path of least resistance.   And I’m sure someone is going to chime in and say “oh but you could do this so easy in ubuntu with x program and x configuration all you have to do is recompile this, modify that”.

Stop that.  Seriously.  Soon as you talking about recompiling a kernel, yeah the novice user isn’t going to do that nor do they need to.  There is a lot to know as it is just to do it in windows – you jump the complexity bar WAAAY up there when you add in an open source OS solution.  That’s why Linux is still not mainstream.  And I’m a person who runs a flavor of Linux on one of my machines right now.

But, because you’re going to google it and find us – I’ve gone ahead and done the research for you because that’s the type of jackass I am.  Go here to check out Media Center type setup for Linux.

Summary of Cost:

Windows OS Upgrade $65
CoreAVC 14.95
PowerDVD 8 Ultra 99.00

Total Software $178.95

Summation:

You may or may not need all of the extra pieces of software but when you add it up – we’re still under $600, in some cases you might even come in under $500.  With todays economy piecing together a system like this can make things a bit easier.  Not only that you might find some really good deals on additional used or spare parts.

After having a $350 electric bill its time to start working on being more energy efficient.  Some of you know that I purchased a house in Round Rock (suburb of Austin) to fix it up and resell it.  Basically live in it for 2 years, thus making the taxes less when I sell it, and take my time to fix it and decide on what to do that improves the property value and what doesn’t improve the property value.  

July, August, and September here in Austin are usually really damn hot.  We have a lot of 98-102 degree weather here and with the cost of energy going up it makes it just that much more expensive so I figured purchasing tinted film for my windows (at least the ones that get the afternoon sun) is a wise investment. Who knows, it can only help the resale value. 

Being a moron I jumped the gun and didn’t research film prior to just buying a few rolls at Lowes.  The 30% (keeps out 70% light, reflective, UV, Heat etc) goes for $32 bucks a roll x4 rolls, and a $9 dollar kit. I’m down $150 bucks with taxes etc. I bought the 3′ wide roll and it works perfect for the majority of my windows and the sliding door.  I unfortunately didn’t know how to do this stuff(applying tint) aside from watching the guy who tinted my car in my garage but apparently that gave me enough of an idea to try it myself.

The film that comes from Lowes is pretty good (Gila) and it even comes with a moron’s guide to putting on film with pretty pictures.  But of course I knew best and started with the big ass sliding glass window and cut a large section for that first instead of you know.. cutting a smaller window first to learn.  Anyway, one piss poor application and a zillion bubbles later I decided to read the instructions and actually use a razor to get the extra dirt and grit off the glass before applying the next section of tint and I decided to try a smaller window.  (Of course I actually blame the not reading of the instructions on Mimzy because whenever a woman says “lets read the instructions” a switch in the mans brain says “lets not”.) 

So, half a roll down and basically half that I’m going to have to buy again in 6 months because it’s going to peel, I decide it was one of those good learning things that you just have to learn the hard way of what not to do. Choosing a smaller window pane was easy, I first cleaned with windex and a paper towel, then used the handy dandy spray bottle of application spray(read soap and distilled water) on the window as lubricant along with a razor blade to get the additional dirt of the window.  Next I sprayed with the application spray again and then used a squeegee to remove the water.  

I happen to have a glass dining room table and it turns out this is the absolute best surface to use when removing the clear coating from the sticky portion of the film.  Basically you take two pieces of tape (masking not duck) and put them on each side of the film, press together and then pull apart.  This separates the film from the protective clear stuff.  This also allows you to figure out which side is back and which side is the sticky side.  Once you know where the back is, you spray the glass table top and press the back of the film on that.  This keeps it down as you peel the rest of the clear coating off the film. As you remove the coating spray the sticky side with the application spray (soap and water).  Note: As long as you keep this stuff sprayed down good, the chances of it sticking to something else like your clothes… or itself are reduced, and I tell you from experience.

Once you’ve removed the outer coating and you have this film sprayed down laying on your table you spray the window again and leave it.  Lift up the corners of the film, put it on the window, spray the back of the film again and then use the squeegee on the first pass.  Once you have it where you like it and more or less stuck you then take the razor blade and cut the excess film off.  Note, this is not always easy with the rubber around windows, sometimes there is some excess silicone – you might have to cut the silicone or the film around it. 

Once you have used the squeegee you may want to use the plastic tool to push out any smaller air bubbles, its really handy for the hard to get stuff.  Voila tinted window pane, you have 24 hours or less to fix it before its really stuck.

Notes: Once I got the hang of it, I was able to do about 4 panes in 30 minutes with help from Mimzy pre-cutting and removing the backing while I was cleaning and preparing another window pane.  Doing this is really not a one man job, it can be done but its really, really, difficult. That extra set of hands holding the film while you carry it really helps.

Tips:

Measure the width and height of your windows before you go to pick up the film.  (That said you can get it cheaper online but you have to buy larger quantities. (I may actually buy some online if my friends want to go in with me)

Don’t buy the application spray unless you just want the spray bottle, once you run out of what is in it, put some joy and filtered/distilled water in it. 

Buy the razor/squeegee/hard plastic edge tool kit it is worth it unless you already have pro-tools, which if you do why are you reading this?

The plastic cutting edge tool is a pain, I just cut by hand and follow the window frame, it goes faster and it is actually more accurate. 

Find someone to help you, its not a one person job.  If you can, find someone who has done this before so they can show you all the do’s and don’ts.  

Clean the window several times and then use a razor blade scraper with soap and water.  You’ll be surprised when you look at the blade that its dirty.  There are lots of things you just can’t see but you can feel them and see them after they have collected on the razor blade.  Putting this film on requires super-clean glass.

Don’t be a moron and try a big window first (like your sliding glass door). Start small and cut a small window pane first.  

Amazingly enough after doing most of the windows in my house, it’s not too bad.  It cuts down on the heat for sure and it cuts down on glare.  I might even be coerced into helping you out (for a fee).