Has your XBOX 360 ever broken?

 

My first generation XBOX 360 has died for a second time with the dreaded 3 Red Rings of Death. Microsoft UK are now wanting 68 UK pounds to have my console repaired. That seems like allot of money when you can buy a new 4GB slim model for 150 quid.

 

 

My console first died whilst I was living in Thailand and at this time when checking the UK XBOX support website I would have been entitled to a free no cost repair according to their online system. However I could not easily post my XBOX from Thailand back to the UK for repair and they would not have sent it back to me in Thailand anyways.

I recently moved back home to the UK so I checked the XBOX support site again and now their system states a fee of 68 pounds is required. I contacted XBOX support via email but they just said they could not offer me a free repair at this time.

So that’s that, I’m not paying to have it repaired and I doubt very much I will buy a new XBOX from Microsoft again. I’ve heard many stories from my own friends and people I speak to in the forums that their XBOX’s have died at some time or another.

I did some searches on eBay UK and US today and was amazed at the numbers of faulty and broken XBOX 360’s listed for sale, page and pages of them!

eBay UK search results

eBay US search results

If you have had problems with your XBOX 360 and feel frustrated about it, then please leave a comment and let us know!

My new Shark007 x64 codec configuration

I recently built a x64 bit Windows 7 Ultimate HTPC. In the past I'd mainly stayed away from x64 bit OS and always used 32bit, mainly because I was usually testing lots of different applications and utilities and also just because I felt more comfortable with 32 bit and codec setup.

But on this latest HTPC for my own living room I decided it was time to try x64 bit properly and make it stable. If you are using the Shark 007 codec pack on x64 you first need to install the x86 version of the codec pack as nornal, in addition to this you then need to install the x64 components.

By default on 64 bit Windows 7, the default WMP12 player is the 32 bit version, there is also a 64 bit version of WMP12, Shark recommends sticking with the 32bit version of WMP12 and not changing the default to be the 64 bit version. The Windows Media Center by default is 64 bit ! The x86 version of the shark codec pack is used to configure 32 bit players such as the default WMP12. And you use the x64 bit version of the shark codec pack for configuring 64 bit players such as Media Center.

Before I continue, at this point I'd like to thank Shark for his help setting up my new x64 bit HTPC as I did get stuck in places and required his help, some of the below information was passed on to me from Shark and if you are using his codec pack and find it useful, please consider making a donation to him as I expect releasing these codec packs and supporting them is very time consuming indeed.

I'd like to state that the below settings are working for me on my HTPC for my files, this is not to say these exact same settings will work for you as you expect! I'd also like to point out that my HTPC is based on an AMD Processor and an onboard ATI HD Radeon 4200 graphics chip. Also I currently don't have an AVR so I am not passing through or bit streaming audio to the AVR, its just a simple HDMI connection from the PC direct to the HDTV. But I will mention audio pass through later.

When launching either version of the Shark codec pack from the start menu you should always right click the icon and run as administrator. Ok so lets get started!

The first tab is the configure tab, on here you can choose which version of WMP12 is the default, stick with the 32 bit version as recommended. I also never use subtitles so I change the Subtitle control to "No Subtitles". You probably want to change the Hardware Output to TV/Projector.

I found some of my HD MKV movies where stuttering so I decided to enable FDDShow DXVA (hardware acceleration) on the H264 tab, which meant on the Config tab clicking Configuration Items and selecting FFDShow DXVA

Under the FFDShow DXVA configuration, I unchecked Subtitles, as I found some MKV's were showing the hard subs. I also checked H264 and VC1 under DXVA codecs enabled.

I did not change anything on the Misc tab.

Ignore the tool tip on this screen shot, I don't think I changed anything on the Audio tab either, however if you have an AVR and want to pass through / bit stream the audio to the AVR you should select: use pass-through (Digital Audio) under FFDShow S/PDIF pass-through. You'd probably select 5.1 as well from the Choose speaker configuration. When I am using an AVR I don't use AC3Filter as I always had problems with it and just use FFDShow.

On the AVI tab I have been selecting Gabest's splitter lately, but Shark recommends using the Microsoft Splitter here. So that's what I am using at the moment.

On the H264 tab I select the settings you can see that have red rings round them, as I said I enabled FFDShow DXVA for hardware acceleration.

On the MKV tab I am using the Haali Splitter and there is also a DIVX Media Foundation Splitter, this is for XBOX 360 users apparently. However I had issues with this setting until Shark explained it to me, you MUST disable the DIVX Media Foundation Splitter on 64 bit OS. If you don't, when you play MKVs and other files in Media Center they will not use FFDSHow but the Microsoft codec. So I have to have this disabled on my X64 HTPC.

But I also have an XBOX 360 extender, I've not tested playing any MKV's on the extender yet, but ideally you would want the DIVX Media Foundation Splitter enabled for playback on the XBOX 360, which means manually changing this setting first. Also AVI's on my XBOX 360 MCX are not playing that well, slowing down and speeding up. But if I play the same movie that's on the WHS from the XBOX 360 dashboard video library it plays fine.

Apparently this is not a problem for 32bit OS as you can have the DIVX Media Foundation Splitter enabled and it will also still use FFDShow in Media Center OK.

MOV OGG tab I did not change anything on this tab, I can play some 1080p .MOV movie trailers I downloaded from Apple OK in Media Center, I've not tested the .MOV files my little digital camera creates yet.

On the MPG MP4 tab I am using Gabest's splitter for MP4 playback, I did play one sample MP4 video file OK in Media Center.

Under overall MPEG Playback 1/2/PS/TS I am using the default which is Automatic section.

Below is a quote from Shark:

"To playback TS variations such as M2TS etc., it is imperitive that you disable Media Foundation on the swap tab. If the source was blu-ray, you will also need to select the blu-ray splitter on the MPG~MP4 TAB. many of these m2ts files use VC1 instead of AVC(h264) for the video so you will also need to select a different decoder on the SWAP TAB for WVC1 content. I prefer setting MPC-HC for WVC1."

So during my test I tried selecting the Gabest's Blu-ray splitter but I found my Blu-ray ISO images on the WHS were stuttering badly in Media Center on the HTPC. In the end Automatic selection seemed to be better for me.

Swap tab, below you can see the settings I am using. The main ones to point out are:

FFDShow codec for XVID/DIVX/MP4v in DirectShow.

FFDShow for WVC1 instead of Microsoft

I also had to disable Media Foundation for a sample .M2TS file to play in Media Center.

The thing that has changed, is in the past with an AVR and when playing AVI files with 5.1 audio tracks in them I would have to disable DMO for them to play. You don't need to do this any more apparently.

That's it!

I can play the following on my Media Center:

• MKV's
• AVI's (XVID)
• DVD rips in VIDEO_TS
• Blu-Ray ISO images (PowerDVD 10 within 7MC)
• Media Center Live TV
• Recorded TV (WTV)

Above are the main video types I use, however I also tested the file types below in Media Center using sample video clips I have:

• .DVR-MS
• .FLV (Flash)
• .M2TS
• .MOV
• .MP4
• .MPG
• .VOB
• .WMV

I also used GraphStudio during my codec setup to render media files and see which codec were being used in the graph.

If anyone has any comments or suggestions please let me know, also I am not a codec expert who knows everything about them so please don't ask me for technical support with codec, I would recommend heading over to the Shark 007 forums here.

http://www.phaze1digital.com/

Two highly recommended WHS V1 add-ins

I recently built my first WHS for my own home using my old desktop PC and whatever bits I had lying about the place. I’ve build several high-end rack mount WHS boxes for clients before, but not one for myself!

During this setup process I discovered two WHS add-ins that have made my system all the more better. These are not new or free add-ins and some of you will be using them already, however as I liked them so much I wanted to mention them here on my blog.

The first is called Disk Management for Windows Home Server, by Tentacle software you can see their webpage here.

Description

“Disk Management is an Add-In for Microsoft Windows Home Server. This Add-In is designed for users who need more detail about their server's storage status than what the standard Server Storage interface provides.”

Features:

• Detailed information for each disk in your Windows Home Server
• Real-time temperature and activity monitoring
• Capacity indicators for individual disks
• Customizable disk names
• Customizable 3D wireframe representation of your server

As soon as I’d create the 3D wireframe representation of my server and seen what information this add-in was now displaying to me in the WHS console, I bought a licence for it there and then! And also thought why didn’t Microsoft do this?

I can now see the used space on each individual hard disk, see temp stats, read/write activity indicators etc.

Overall an extremely useful add-in and worth the asking price.

Add-in #2

The next add-in I wanted to mention is called Lights Out. You can find the webpage for Lights Out here which is a blog done by some German dudes, if you scroll further down this page however they have kindly also written in English.

Now usually I am pretty bad with leaving PC’s turned on and running 24/7. At work I’d always leave my workstation(s) running constantly whilst everyone else was expected to shutdown their machines down every night, must be an I.T. guy thing! And even at home I use to leave my desktop running all the time. However I must be getting more green as I get older or more likely the cost of energy these days has gone up massively and I’m thinking about my wallet more.

So I wanted some way to turn my “recycled” WHS off when not in use, thankfully there is a brilliant add-in as I said called Lights Out which fits the bill! No pun intended.

Below is a bit from their website:

Lights-Out – The name says it all

“This Add-In is used to put a Windows Home Server into suspended mode or hibernation and resume on user defined events.”

Mode of operation

“Lights-Out monitors several sources for activity. As long as one source signals activity, the server is kept running. When the monitoring detects no more activity, the server is disabled.”

Basically it detects when your Windows PC clients (WHS clients) are active. There is also a Windows Client bit of software that you can install, this runs in the system tray and allows you from this icon to suspend an wakeup the server manually. You can also add IP devices to be monitored. For example I gave my XBOX 360 static IP address and then added this address to be monitored in the Lights Out settings.

The best thing about this for me, apart from it automatically putting your WHS to sleep (suspend) and then waking it up again when any clients connect, is the Up Time Diagram. The screen shot on their website doesn’t have much detail in it, the one below is from my own WHS.

You can easily see what is active and when! Great for routing out any problems with something staying awake and what time it woke etc.

On the 12 and 13th of October you can see I had a problem and the WHS and HTPC (MCX01) were on most of the night. Initially I thought it was the HTPC not going back to sleep after the WHS backup. However after seeing the start and end time of the backup I ruled that out as the problem.

Noting they woke at 2:30am, I then changed the Media Center update task on my main HTPC to run at 7PM instead of the default which is 2:30am The next night on the 14th both stayed sound asleep!

Up Time Diagram:

Click here for larger image

I’m still on the free trial, there is a free community edition and a paid version, there is a matrix comparison here I’m not quite sure yet what will stop working when my trial runs out however.

The only issue I have with Lights Out, is that I have a monitor keyboard and mouse hooked up to my WHS that is in the office room. If I am the WHS console directly it keeps going to sleep on me automatically if no other clients are active on the network. I have to remember to disable the Lights Out first.

Overall it works well and its certainly worth checking out. I just hope both of these types of features will be native in WHS Vail or these 3rd party developers release new versions for WHS Vail.

www.phaze1digital.com

My Channel Logos – Jazz up your Media Center Program Guide

I was setting up a new HTPC this week for our living room and one of the things I wanted to do was add channel logos in to the program guide. I’d done this previously using Big Screen EPG. However I found another great little utility called My Channel Logos who’s only job is to add logos in to your guide, unlike Big Screen EPG which can also be used to import guide data from 3 party sources.

Upon the first launch of My Channel Logos it will automatically download the logos for your region. Logos are currently available for the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, Germany, France, New Zealand.

Once the application opens it looks like the below and its really just a case of hitting the Auto Populate Logos button and your pretty much good to go.

However I did find that for the UK logos some were missing. But you can add your own custom logos, so I had to find some extra logos from Google images for the following channels:

• The Big Deal
• Channel One
• Create and Craft
• ITV2+1
• Price Drop TV

The end result is nice looking channel logos in your Media Center program guide as shown below.

I believe My Channel Logos was a free application but now to download it, you must donate a minimum of $3.

www.phaze1digital.com

Fix Media Center Studio without jumping through too many hoops!

I tried a few times to fix Media Center Studio after updates release by Microsoft broke parts of its functionality. There was several threads on the Green Button forum about renaming .dll files or replacing them with blank ones and changing security permissions, which sounds like an easy way to give yourself a headache. None of these fixes seemed to work for me, I also tried a patcher program someone had released but still my Media Center Studio was busted.

Then a user on the Green Button forums kindly gave me a link to MCSFix.exe you can see the thread here. You need to create a shortcut to the MCSFix.exe in the startup menu. Or if you don’t reboot often you could create a scheduled task for it to run every hour or so.

So far its been working for me and my customised Media Center menu’s have remained in place.

www.phaze1digital.com

Turn your Windows Home Server V1 in to a VPN server

I was looking on the Internet for an easy to follow guide to be able to setup a WHS to act as a VPN server. However the guide I found on a popular WHS website didn’t seem to work for me. So I did it a way I knew would work using Routing and Remote Access which is part of Windows Server 2003.

Why would you want to do this? If you are away from your home and you want full LAN access to your home network then VPN on WHS is ideal for this. I’m sure most of you will have used VPN’s to connect to your companies corporate networks before when you are remote working, its the same kind of deal.

To setup your WHS as a VPN server you can follow these steps.

Remotely connect to your WHS using RDP.

To use Routing and Remote Access you first need to disable the Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) service.

Go to the Start Menu –> Run and enter Services.msc then press OK.

Scroll down and find Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) right click it and select services. Stop the service then set the startup type to disabled on the General tab.

Now open Routing and Remote Access

Start –> All Programs -> Administrative Tools -> Routing and Remote Access.

Right click the server name and select Configure and Enable Routing and Remote Access

You will then see the Setup Wizard, click Next.

Select Custom Configuration and click Next.

Select VPN Access and click Next

Click Finish

Click Yes to start the Routing and Remote Access service.

Now we have to tell Routing and Remote Access which device on our network is doing DHCP?

Expand IP Routing and right click DHCP Relay Agent and click Properties.

Enter the IP address of your DHCP service. Normally your broadband router / gateway. In my case this is 192.168.1.1

Click OK.

Now we need to specify which users on the WHS will have VPN access. Go to the Start Menu and right click Computer and select Manage.

In the Computer Management console, select the Local Users and Groups and then Users from tree on the left.

On the right hand side right click the user account you want to enable for VPN access and select Properties.

On the Dial-in tab select Allow access under Remote Access Permission (Dial-in or VPN) and click OK.

You now need to configure your router to allow inbound the VPN ports to your WHS.

These ports are:

• 1723 TCP
• 47 TCP

How you do this will depend on the make and model of your broadband router. But basically we need to use NAT to port forward requests coming from the Internet (WAN) to the Windows Home Server on the LAN.

My test router was a D-Link DSL-2542B and I had to select Advanced Setup –> NAT

Its also sometimes called Virtual Server on some routers.

You might be able to see on this screen shot that I have TCP ports 1723 and 47 port forwarded to the internal IP of the WHS which is our case is 192.168.1.6

That’s it, you just need to setup a Windows Client VPN connection on your PC or Laptop and point it to the WHS domain name for your server and login with the user account you enabled for VPN access earlier.

Windows 7 PPTP Client VPN connection.

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , WHS , VPN

Facebook photos on your Media Center - Photato

I heard about the Photato Media Center plug-in awhile ago now, but I stumbled on their website again today, so I thought I’d install the plug-in and give it a look.

What is Photato?

If you are an avid Facebook fan and use it for sharing and viewing photos then Photato is a 'must have'. Built using the Facebook Platform and designed to run within Microsoft Windows 7 and Vista Media Center, Photato will enable you to view and interact with your Facebook photos through your TV.

Features

• View all your Facebook photos
• Browse your own and your friends' albums
• Flick through tagged photos
• Enjoy a full-screen slideshow
• Designed for your TV
• Runs in Windows 7/Vista Media Center

The first thing you notice about this plug-in during the Media Center setup is that the animations are great! The yellow post-it notes pan in and move around.

Media Center setup – Login to Facebook

Synchronizing with Facebook

Photato – Home menu

Friends photo albums

Selected friends photo album

Using the menu on the right hand side you can then start a slideshow of your friends photo album.

Slide show: it doesn’t seem to pan like the native Media Center slideshow, but the photos zoom in towards the viewer of the screen.

Back on the friends photo albums page you can also filter the photo albums using the options on the left:

• Modified Date
• Created Date
• Album Title
• No. of Photos

Photato is still in beta. I’m not sure if the development is still active or not? The plug-in did crash on me once whilst I was using it. However this plug-in is very good, especially if you are a Facebook addict and like to view your family and friends Facebook photo albums. Photato is visually stunning the animations are extremely well done.

I need to use Photato some more at home to really get a feel for it, but I am now wondering why I didn’t install this great Media Center plug-in before now?

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , Media Center , Facebook , Photos , Photato

Media Center updates break custom menus

I’m sure most Windows Media Center users who customize their menus, are now aware that something is up with the menus in Media Center!

I use Media Center Studio which is a fantastic 3rd party utility developed by Advent. With Media Center Studio you can create custom menu strips and move icons around to different menus strips and customize your Media Center to suit your needs.

However recent updates from Microsoft for the updated online content services: MSN Video Player / Netflix HD have broken Media Center Studio and custom menus in general.

If your like me and you use My Movies you probably hide the native Movies menu strip. I also never use the Sports menu strip so like to hide this as well. I also like to add icons for 3rd party plug-ins such as TunerFree MCE to the native TV menu strip etc. After these recent updates all of my menus and everyone else’s were messed up and I had the native Movies and Sports menus visible again on my Media Center, also the order in which the menus appear had changed.

There is a thread on the Green Button here discussing these frustrations. Fortunately there is some relief in the form of “Hide Media Center Menu Strips” a little utility from one of our favorite Media Center developers Mikinho.

With the aid of this utility I was able to quickly and easily re-hide the native Movies and Sports menu strips in Media Center, which has helped to improve my situation some what.

However unfortunately custom menu strips and placement of 3rd party plug-in icons on native menu strips and re-ordering menus are still broken until Media Center Studio hopefully gets fixed.

There has been no official word from Microsoft that I am aware of regarding this issue. But customizing Media Center menus is a “hack” so I wouldn’t expect one any time soon if at all.

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , Media Center , Media Center Studio , Menus

What’s on the workbench today? iTX Mini HTPC!

On the workbench today we have an iTX Mini PC, using an Antec ISK 310-150 Mini iTX Case.

I quite like this case, it is sturdy, however I’m not keen on the quite flimsy silver plastic front especially the thin DVD opening cover.

There are plenty of vents for cooling however and room to fit two full size fans on the right hand side, no in-built IR which could be an issue.

What’s inside:

Minix 785G-SP128M, this little motherboard has the AMD 785G chipset. I’ve used regular micro ATX motherboards from Gigabyte before for other HTPC builds with the same 785G chipset, which isn’t too bad for HTPC’s so it’s all familiar stuff.

Motherboard Key Features Highlight:

1. Integrated ATI Radeon™ HD 4200 Graphics
2. Supports DirectX^® 10.1 3D graphics, Windows 7 Ready

3. Supports AMD^® Phenom™ II x4/ Athlon™ II x4 processors (up to 65W max.)

4. Built-in 128 MB Local Frame Buffer (Side-port memory)

5. Supports ATI Avivo™ HD technology and built-in Universal Video Decoder 2.0 (UVD2) which leverages CPU consumption when play HD movie, hence power-saving

6. Designed with 100% high quality solid capacitors and components to ensure high performance and great longevity

7. One PCI-Express Gen.2 slot for expansion

8. Two DDR2 SO-DIMM slots for extensible upgrade

9. 7.1+2 Channel High-Performance HDA Codec with Content Protection (Realtek ALC885)

Specs:

• Motherboard: Minix 785G-SP128M
• CPU: AMD Phenom AM3 x3 Processor 2.3 GHZ
• CPU Cooler: Glacial Tech PLA08025S12L
• RAM: Kingston DDR2 RAM 2GB (Notebook)
• HDD: Seagate 160GB (Notebook)
• DVD: Sony CRX890S (Slim)
• PSU: Antec FP-150-8 150 Watt

Software:

• Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit
• My Movies Client 3.13
• Heatwave 1.3
• RadioTime MCE
• SilverLight
• Flash Player
• AutoHotKey
• Media Center Studio
• Shark 007 Codec Pack 2.4.8

Windows Experience Index Score: 4.1

I installed the latest drivers from AMD / ATI / Realtek. I also installed the Shark 007 codec pack for Windows 7.

With the default settings in the Shark007 pack unchanged I played a High Definition MKV movie, in the screenshots below you can see the CPU usage.

I don’t think hardware acceleration is on. I tried a few different settings in the codec pack but the CPU usage remained about the same, should be more like 10-15% when accelerated.

I only ever seem to be able to get hardware acceleration working on the Asrock Nettop’s which have Nvidia graphics and CUDA. Perhaps someone can tell me how to get this working with the ATI graphics?

Conclusion:

Overall not a bad little machine and has more power and grunt than a Nettop. I need to test it some more, but so far so good.

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , MediaCenter , iTX Mini PC

Phaze1 Digital