Some good TV shows

Previously today I was thinking about writing some TV recommendations and when I read Johannes's request for pointers I figured I'd get started. What good is a HTPC and TV with no content to watch? The following are some of my personal favorites, both old and new:

• The West Wing, Season 1-4. Aaron Sorkin stopped writing the show after season 4 and it was still very good, but no longer the best show ever. TWW is a show looking behind the scenes of the precidency of the United States.
  
• Sports Night, Sorkin's first TV series is another look behind the scenes, this time at a sports show on TV. It might have been Felicity Huffman's and Peter Krause's breakthroughs - at least that's where I first noticed them.
  
• Studio 60, Sorkin's latest TV show. If you're starting to see a pattern you can stop worrying, since Sorkin hasn't written anymore for TV yet. This is yet another look behind the scenes of a TV show, with Matthew Perry, Bradley Whitford and Amanda Peet depicting the main characters behind a Saturday Night-like late TV show. Unfortunately the general reception of the first season hasn't been that good and it looks like the show has been cancelled.
  
• On to the next writer, Steven Moffat, and two of his shows. Coupling is a brilliant british sitcom in a Friends-like setup but with a lot more bite. It was later reshot with an american cast, but you want the original british version.
• Moffat's latest show is the drama series Jekyll. Only six episodes of the first season, and its unclear whether or not there will be more. James Nesbitt delivers an impressive performance in the role as Dr. Tom Jackman/Mr. Hyde.
• Finally some quick tips on other shows I've enjoyed, but with no further motivation as this post is getting a tad long already: Gilmore Girls, Scrubs, Heroes, Grey's Anatomy, How I Met Your Mother, The Class (unfortunately cancelled after one season), Two and a Half Men, Californication, Boston Legal, Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and Entourage.
  

Some of the shows I started following but did not get that hooked on include Rome, The Riches (although I usually like Izzard's stand-up), and Dexter (only I only watched one or two episodes which weren't that bad - I might actually give this show another shot later).

So, do you have any tips of your own? Leave a comment.

Insane-man finally decides!

Well, it seems I managed to get out of indecisive land after all. All it took was a push from my wife who explained that we need to be able to record TV and that I probably won't be happy unless I can get everything to work exactly as I want. So an HTPC it is. But I took the easy way out and got the Scaleo EVI since I didn't want to have any hassle setting it up.

Boy was I wrong.

It took me 4-5 hours to get TV4 and TV6 up and running. I was very close to returning the entire system, but kept looking for new services within Vista MCE and finally TV4 showed up. I don't think I did anything (and I have an excellent signal with rooftop antenna), but I did try to enter a different area code to see if I could get MCE to find the additional channels (who were on the same mux btw).

Now on to configuring the rest of the software. Vista MCE crashes when entering a folder with Xvid files, some reports that this is a Nero problem (which came pre-installed). I'll update and see if it helps.

Still lost in undecisive land

If I'm not getting an HTPC at the moment, is there anything else that might be interesting? I really want to view HD content on my TV, but how? Perhaps getting and HD DVD player might be the way to go. Elgiganten currently has a promotion where you get a player and five movies for 4kSEK. But then again - will HD DVD be alive in a couple of years? If the DVD playing functionality in the Toshiba HD-E1 had been region free and with DivX support I might have taken the plunge since it is a great upscaling DVD player. As it is now I still need a second DVD player for my region 1 movies and Divx content.

What about a gaming console? The PS3 is 6kSEK (still waiting for the price cut that US saw recently) and the Xbox 360 about 4kSEK. With the PS3 you get a Blu-Ray player in the price, but the Xbox has video live which seems interesting. Not yet available in Europe, but it will come.

So. I'll wait some more. But I'm really itching to buy some new gadget. Any suggestions?

Choosing an HTPC

Now that I've decided on an HTPC running Vista, all that remains to do is to get a system. I can either get a pre-built system from a major supplier or go for a system assembled from parts - either by myself or a store.

The pre-built systems are nice, somewhat expensive and not very easy to expand. A Sony Vaio system might be a good choice, but I haven't found any in Sweden. Other options are Scaleo EVI (12kSEK) or Acer Aspire Idea (11kSEK). If I drop the HDMI requirement an FIC spectra for 8kSEK might be an option. (The Scaleo is available for 10kSEK at netonnet - and they have it in stock in Malmö close to where I live. Interesting...)

The main problem with these systems is that they are most likely not possible to upgrade later. The main reason for this would be to be able to use HD-DVD or Blu-Ray in the future. Another option would of course be to get a separate stand-alone player.

The benefits of a pre-built system is that they are well integrated, everything should play well together and they have a relatively nice form factor.

Looking at a system built from components then. There are a couple of firms in Sweden that sell HTPC:s they assemble themselves. The ones I've found are pyrotech.se and tvpc.se. A local firm such as itel also might have HTPC models.

My price point is around 10kSEK (I wouldn't cry if it was cheaper) and in that category pyrotech has their HTPC 2 system for just shy of 8kSEK. Itel's version costs 8.500 SEK, but has more memory and a slightly larger disk but no TV-card. Add another 1kSEK for that and the price is similar to the Scaleo EVI system from netonnet. Oh, I also need a USB stick for WiFi so thats another 300 SEK.

All of these choices are driving me mad - and is the reason for me writing these posts. I must try to make some sense of it.

If I'm going for an assembled system, at least I've decided on getting the Antec Fusion chassi and an AMD processor (I'm leaning towards the new low power BE-2350) with a G690 motherboard. For a TV-card I want the Hauppauge Win Nova T-500 which has dual DVB-T tuners (no encrypted channels).

Hopefully I will have decided soon and can tell you what system I got. But if you have any comments or pointers on what to get, please let me know.

Video solution, part 4 - Home Theater PC

As you might have gleaned from my summary of media players I'm not really happy with the current alternatives available. This leaves me with one option: getting a HTPC. It might sound easy in theory, but can be infinately complicated in practice. I've decided to look at hardware and software simultaneously and look at the alternatives as a complete system. Of course you can install Myth TV on a hardware you originally planned for MCE (if there's Linux support for your HW). The options for me are:

• A Linux system with PVR software
• An OS X system
• A Windows Media Center Edition 2005 (or XP) based system
• A Windows Vista Home Premium system

There are a couple of alternatives for Linux, where MythTV seems to be the best choice. Going this route will probably take some time to set up, but get you a great system once everything is up and running. Other cons include lack of hardware support for newer hardware. I was hoping on using a graphics card that could off-load the processor for HD decoding and I haven't seen any support for those in Linux yet. Also, not all DVB-T tuner cards are fully supported. So, tempting as it may be, I'll move on to the next option:

An OS X system. The Mac Mini is close to a perfect fit for an HTPC but it does not have HDMI out (it does have DVI, and a DVI->HDMI converter so you can get the image to your TV but no sound), its built on the Core Duo (not the Core 2 Duo which is a 64-bit processor as opposed to the 32-bit Core Duo) and also the hardware is overdue for an update. If Apple were to release a new version of the Mac Mini anytime soon with HDMI I'd buy that in an instant. You need a third party solution for DVB-T recording; Elgato seems to have the best solution for this.

Many people swear by Windows Media Center Edition 2005 since they have something up and running that they are pleased with. I'm building a new system and am very reluctant to go with an old operating system. Which leaves me with:

Windows Vista Home Edition. Its certainly not the be-all and end-all for everyone, but this would be my choice if I were to build a system today. It has a built-in Media Center and even if people complain about driver support I'm sure its better than for Linux when going for new hardware. E.g. I'm looking at the Radeon HD 2400 Pro graphics card for off-loading the processor when playing back HD content and there's no support in Linux for that card. (Apparently there's barely support in Windows, but that's another matter.) Choosing Vista also leaves the door open for alternative DVR software such as Mediaportal, DVB Viewer or GB-PVR should I not be happy with the built in Media Center.

Most problems reported with Vista and MCE are related to viewing scrambled channels, and as I mentioned in my first post in this series this is not something I need to do. What remains now is to choose between 64-bit and 32-bit Vista and set up a suitable hardware configuration. But that's for the next post.

Video solution, part 3 - Media Players

This is the third post in a series where I'm trying to find a good solution for handling TV and video in my living room. In the last episode I introduced the contenders and covered the HDD recorder category.

Now on to the media players.

This is an interesting category where a ton of development is going on at the moment. If you're interested you can read up on the MPC Club forum. The most interesting option here is probably the TViX M-4100SH which has HDMI, supports resolutions up to 1080p and has a DVB-T tuner add-on. You still have a sucky GUI and a box that is pushed to its limit with HD content. It costs 3.400 SEK for the box, 900 SEK for the tuner and an additional 1.000 SEK for a 160GB HDD = 5.300 SEK. And there's no support for the matroska container, which means you might have to re-mux or re-encode stuff. Oh, and it only supports wireless networking with an external USB dongle (which adds more to the cost) and the stability is less than stellar. Some people have also reported problems with the fan noise being perceived as a problem.

AppleTV is the other interesting candidate in the media player category. For 3.700 SEK you get a box with a 160GB HDD, but no tuner capabilities. Unless you hack it, the box only support media you can watch in iTunes, which means we need to re-encode pretty much everything. It appears you can also get a tuner to work with AppleTV which is promising, but not quite there.

XBMC is a tried media center, but the xbox suffers from being to noisy and it does not support HD content.

If you are willing to wait until late this fall the Syabas Media Tank is probably the media player to get. Its only a reference design and no consumer models have yet been announced. The HW specs look excellent though and it is well worthy of consideration.

Which leaves us with the final category: a Home Theater PC. Details and options to follow in the next post in the series.

Video solution, part 2 - Meet the contenders

As I just mentioned I'm looking for a solution to handle my video and TV. I'm fine with multiple boxes, but would prefer an integrated solution. Without further ado, lets bring out the contenders:

• HDD recorder with DVD
• Set-top box with DVB-T HDD
  
• Media player / media streamer
  
• Home Theatre PC

The HDD recorders with DVD I've looked at were the Sony RDR HXD870 and the yet to be released Samsung DVD-SH853. The main problem with these units is that the GUI is rather bad, they do not support scheduled season recordings and you can't play high-definition content on them. In other words you need to complement a HDD recorder with a media player to fulfil all requirements. The price for a HDD recorder is approximately 4.500 SEK.

There are a couple of set-top boxes available with a harddisk and DVB-T. They suffer from the same drawbacks as the HDD recorders (although some models, e.g. the Topfield 5700 can be hacked to provide a decent GUI with exentions). They also have no DVD-player, but I have one already today so its not a big issue. Prices between 4.000 SEK to 6.500 SEK for the unreleased dreambox 8000.

In the next post in this series, I'll cover the media player options.

Finding a video solution that makes me happy

This is the first post in a series where I'm trying to find a video solution that makes me happy.

I'm picky. I'm not impossible, but picky. Having looked all over for a good solution for handling my music I settled for the Squeezebox and I must say I'm very satisfied. There are a few performance issues with the server; if I haven't been using the remote for a while it sometimes takes a long time before the Squeezebox reacts to input. Other than that its excellent.

Having the music part taken care of I now need to find a solution for my TV and movies. Did I mention I'm picky? But not impossible. My top priorities are to:

• Record Swedish DVB-T freeview channels in SD with 5.1 sound, including show series programming
  
• Watch DivX/Xvid in up to 720p resolution
• Watch DVD:s
• 5.1 sound output over optical or coaxial to my surround system
  
• HDMI output for video and sound to my TV
  
• Have a really nice looking and easy to use GUI
• Have a rock solid, quiet system with as low power consumption as possible
• No wired network (i.e. if a network is needed it has to be wireless)
  

I would also like to (but these are not absolutes):

• Pause Live-TV
• Dual tuners to record two programs simultaneously
  
• Watch and record Swedish DVB-T freeview channels in HD (only test transmissions in Stockholm at the moment, unclear whether or not this will become a reality and when)
• Watch HD-DVD and/or Blu-ray once the format war is settled
• Have a nice looking physical box

I do not necessarily need:

• A gaming platform
• A VFD
• To watch encoded TV channels
  
• To surf the Internet on my TV
• One box for everything - multiple boxes is fine if not ideal
  

Btw, my TV is a Samsung 42" plasma which is not suited as a computer monitor but excellent as a TV.

In the coming posts we'll take a look at possible solutions listing pros and cons. I'm pretty sure I'll end up with a Home Theater PC (HTPC), but then again I might not. Stay tuned.