So I spent a happy few hours this Sunday cleaning the dust off the various parts and then hooking it up to the TV in the living room.  I gained a sense of perverse satisfaction from seeing a computer from 1982 hooked up via an RF lead to a 40″ 1080p LCD panel.  Of course every appears in black and white since it was only a quirk of CRT display technology that allow the Spectrum to have a colour display.

After trying out a few commands, and typing the obligatory “Hello World!” program, it was time to try and load something from “tape”.  Problem number one: I have no Spectrum software on tape.  Problem number two: even if I did have tapes, I don’t have a tape deck with which to play them.  The first problem is easily solved by downloading virtual tapes, these TZX files are backups of the original Spectrum data.  I downloaded a few 16K games from World of Spectrum.  Then I used the winTZX tool to convert these files into .wav files.  Yes that’s right – audio files of that godawful screeching noise you thought you’d never have to hear again.

For some reason the soundcard in my MacBook Pro was too noisy, or not loud enough, or too loud or something, but playing the audio via WinAmp resulting in the Spectrum not quite reading the data from the “tape”.  So I gave the Spectrum some solid state storage: a first generation iPod Nano!  I copied the .wav to the Nano, typed LOAD “” and pressed play on the iPod.  Boom!  Or should I say “screech” as the Spectrum loading screen burst into life.  A couple of minutes later (did it really take that long to load 16K!?) and I’m looking at the load screen for Escape which, it must be said, doesn’t seem nearly as “original and absorbing” as it used to!

So that was my nostalgic Sunday.  It’s reminded me of the rest of my early console collection, and that I need to get hold of some of the other 8 and 16 bit machines from my early computing days…

In order to play these files in VMC I had to install a few extra codecs and applications:

Haali Media Splitter

This is the standard app for any system trying to play video stored in the Matroska container format. It “splits” the file, piping the video, audio and – if present – subtitles to separate codecs for further processing. It does not do any decoding itself, merely allows other decoding apparatus to see the streams. It also allows the system to see into the containers to create thumbnails – which makes things in VMC much prettier.

ffdshow tryout

This does nearly every other codec you can imagine. During installation on the mixer settings screen I turned the mixer off. After installation I ran the audio and video configurations to make a few more changes: AC3 and DTS audio were set to spdif: this allows ffdshow to direct the audio stream directly to the optical out for my A/V Receiver to process.

Also, in the Video Configuration I set x264 decoding to disabled, because instead of using ffdshow, I used:

CoreAVC

CoreAVC (which actually includes Haali as part of its setup) is a multi-core aware AVC video decoder. With a fast enough processor it is capable of decoding 1080p MKV files while ffdshow pushes DTS audio to my receiver. It’s not free – setting you back a measly 15$ – but is well worth the price. Rumour has it that ffdshow will soon be multi-core aware, if so it would mean you could do without CoreAVC. At the time of my build however, this seemed the best solution.

In the CoreCodec Settings, make sure that Explorer Integration is set to Yes – this enables thumbnailing.

In order for VMC to recognise .mkv files as video, I had to add these settings to the registry:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mkv]
@="CoreMedia.MKV"
"PerceivedType"="video"
 
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.ts]
@="MatroskaVideo"
"PerceivedType"="video"
"Content Type"="video/x-matroska"

Save that as “mkv.reg” and double-click to add it to the registry.

With those applications installed and with those few changes made your system (assuming decent processor) will be able to play 1080p x264 mkv files, complete with 5.1 DTS audio. You may congratulate yourself with a cup of tea. Come back soon for why I’m using satellite TV cards rather than Freeview (and why doing so is a pain in the proverbial in the current version of VMC) also: the must have VMC plugins to manage your movie collection and TV episodes.

Having ditched the increasingly expensive and irrelevant SkyHD last year, we’ve been watching what little broadcast TV we see via a Windows Media Centre machine upstairs connected to an Xbox 360 front end. This was fine for the odd episode of Doctor Who or the Apprentice, but we wanted an interface that gave us access to all our music, archived TV, ripped DVDs along with live TV. Since the old XBMC can do neither live TV nor HD content and since the Xbox 360 in Media Centre Extender mode can not play back the more esoteric formats (such as MKV or XVid) it was necessary to build a true Home Theatre PC.

The requirements of this machine:

• record at least two TV channels at once
• allow playback of any recorded or archived content
• indexed access to our music, TV and movie library
• playback of any format up to full 1080p content in MKV containers
• small enough to fit into the AV rack
• quiet enough that we wouldn’t notice it

I’ve now completed the build and configuration of the HTPC, and I’m very pleased with the result. The compents I used for our system are:

• Antec NSK2480-UK V2 Media Case (Scan)
• Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H Motherboard (Tekheads)
• AMD AM2 Athlon 64 X2 6000+, Windsor CPU (Scan) with Scythe Mini Ninja CPU Cooler (using Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound) (Overclockers)
• 4GB of RAM (Crucial)
• 2x Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-HD-S2 satellite cards
• 2x Western Digital 750GB SATA-II GreenPower HDD (QuietPC)
• 1x 16x DVDR (bog standard from PC World!)
• Logitech Dinovo Edge Keyboard (eBuyer)

I originally installed the low power AMD 4850e CPU which worked fine for MPEG2 content (standard TV/DVDs) and could even drive a 720p picture with DTS surround sound, but it wasn’t quite up to the task of decoding 1080p MKV files – a task which the onboard Radeon is unable to hardware accelerate.

The system runs quite happily with no CPU fan, only needing the large slow moving fans in the Antec case running on medium to generate enough airflow. I was concerned that the faster AMD would run too hot but the Ninja Mini heatsink is performing admirably. Fan noise is minimal; you can hear it in an empty room but it is far far quieter than having the Xbox 360 running, and any noise virtually disappears once we’re listening to some content.

The system has two harddrives which the Antec case cleverly mounts against small rubber grommets which absorb any vibration. This stops the noise you would otherwise get when vibrations travel through the chassis. I’ve opted for lower power, variable speed drives from QuietPC; these spin from 5400 to 7200 rpm depending on what the system is doing.

I’ll talk about the decision to use Hauppauge’s satellite cards in a later post.

Video and audio output is via DVI to HDMI and optical out into my Pioneer A/V receiver. All of my devices are controlled by a Logitech Harmony 895 RF remote. For the few occasions where we need to type at the HTPC, I have a stylish looking Logitech Dinovo keyboard.

More detail on the software later, but in summary the software running on the system comprises:

• Vista Ultimate
  I know that Vista gets a lot of bad press, but I am convinced that the Vista Media Centre component is its killer app. It is without doubt the best reason for upgrading to Vista and running as a dedicated HTPC I have had no issues with it. The interface is fast and attractive, and with a few extra plugins does everything we need.
• Out of the box Vista won’t decode High Definition content, and doesn’t know how to display Divx or MKV files in the Media Centre inferface. To achieve flawless 1080p playback I had to install and configure a few extra apps and codecs – I’ll detail this in a later post.
• MyMovies plugin
  This gives me an indexed view on my movie collection which I can also manage from an app on any machine on my network. It contains information on all my movies be they DVD rips, Divx or full 1080p MKV containers. I can search by actor, director, genre, format etc, and can even publish the information in my database for others to search.
• MyTV plugin
  Using thetvdb.com as source, this pulls down series information including episode summaries and screencaps. It means I can browse TV series season by season, episode by episode with a far better idea of what each episode is about.

  Both MyMovies and MyTV make use of a SQL Express database I have hosted on my main server – this means that multiple Media Centre machines are able to make use of the data, and reduces the resource use on the HTPC machine.

• Autologon
  The old SysInternals (now Microsoft) tool is handy to ensure the system logs on automatically, and starts the Media Centre interface without me doing anything.

It’s very handy knowing that we can watch or listen to any of our content via one slick interface, and having full 1080p video with surround sound is something to behold. It’s made us very picky about the content we view though, and terribly snobby about going to the movies. After all, when the video and audio at home are so good, why bother visiting the cinema?

1. Led Zeppelin – Immigrant Song
2. David Bowie – Life on Mars
3. Blue Oyster Cult – Stairway to the Stars
4. Lou Reed – I’m So Free
5. The Who – Baba O’Riley
6. Deep Purple – Rat Rat Blue
7. Deep Purple – Fireball
8. Cream – White Room
9. Wings – Live and Let Die
10. Deep Purple – No One Came
11. Willie Lindo & The Charmers’ Band – Drum Song
12. Thin Lizzy – Saga of the Ageing Orphan
13. Deep Purple – Lazy
14. Pink Floyd – One of These Days
15. Sweet – The Ballroom Blitz
16. Uriah Heep – Gypsy
17. Free – Wishing Well
18. Atomic Rooster – Head in the Sky
19. Hawkwind – Brainstorm
20. David Bowie – The Jean Genie
21. Jethro Tull – Cross-Eyed Mary
22. Hawkwind – Silver Machine
23. Slade – Gudbuy T’ Jane
24. Rolling Stones – Wild Horses
25. Sweet – Blockbuster
26. Thin Lizzy – Call The Police
27. Status Quo – Good Thinking
28. Thin Lizzy – The Rocker
29. Cream – White Room
30. T Rex – Jeepster
31. Roxy Music – Would You Believe
32. Hawkwind – Urban Guerilla
33. Roxy Music – Mother of Pearl
34. Nina Simone – I Wish I Knew (How It Would Feel to be Free)
35. Louis Armstrong – What A Wonderful World
36. The Hollies – I Can’t Tell The Bottom From The Top
37. Peters & Lee – Welcome Home
38. Nina Simone – Sinnerman
39. Atomic Rooster – The Rock
40. John Kongos – Tokoloshe man
41. Atomic Rooster – Ear in the Snow
42. Atomic Rooster – The Devil’s Answer
43. Wizzard – See My Baby Jive
44. Lindisfarne – Meet Me On The Corner
45. Free – Little Bit of Love

That ought to keep you busy searching your music collections (and iTunes)!

Edit (10 April, 2007): Corrected spelling of Uriah Heep (not Heap!), thanks to Dave in the comments. :)

Edit (6 December, 2007): There is a BitTorrent file floating based on this (Series 1) list.

Bonus geek points to anyone who finds this funny.

Download the code and installation instructions.

I had to learn TCL to make this work. That’s a whole new language for me. Neat.

Back? Good. I know it’s a niche thing, but I imagine there must be a few others WordPress users who have Tivo, and a home network and want to share their tivo status with the world. If you’re one of those people head on over here for a small download and installation instructions.

It works for me, but I’m a lazy coder and haven’t yet made sure it’ll work for every variation of the /info page on Tivoweb. If you rewrite bits of it (because it is ugly code) please send me a copy, thanks! Especially if you fix the screen-scraping parser to work more generically!

Oh, and can anyone explain why the hover text doesn’t hover in Firefox? It’s fine in IE! *grumble*

Update: Thanks to Garett (see comments) for pointing out my schoolboy error with the alt tag. Using the title tag has sorted it. Thanks!

I’m assuming at this point that you’ve already installed a network card in your Tivo, and that you can telnet to a bash prompt, FTP to Tivo, and have got Tivoweb installed. If not, go and read this excellent guide.

On the Tivo

You need to install the vserver software. You can get this from the tivo-mplayer sourceforge page.
I used this link: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/tivo-mplayer/vserver-1.2.tar.gz

Installing vstream:

• Uncompress the archive and copy the vserver binary to /var/hack on the Tivo (or wherever your hacks live).
• Configure vserver to run on tivo startup by editing your rc.sysinit.author (or if you’re brave, the rc.sysinit file directly):
  I just added /var/hack/vserver & to the end of the file.
• Execute the binary:

  # ./vserver

Hacking Tivoweb:

Tivoweb is great, and you can use it to work out which ty stream to connect to (vstream takes urls of the format: tivo://tivo.ip.addr.ess/tystreamid) but wouldn’t it be nicer to just click a link in Tivoweb and have VLC just load and start playing? Of course it would!

In your tivoweb-tcl/modules directory you’ll have a ui.itcl file – this contains the code we need to mess with – specifically the code that generates the nowshowing list. Somewhere around row 2880 is a line:

if {$manual || $watchonly} {

You need to add a line before that. This whole chunk is towards the end of a function, the next function is action_nowshowing, if it helps you find it! So, the line you’re adding before that if statement is:

set delete_td "$delete_td [td [html_link "tivo://192.168.0.240/$fsid" "View"]]"

Note where I’ve lazily hard coded my Tivo’s IP address. I could have done this properly with a variable, but really couldn’t be arsed. Change this to whatever IP your Tivo has!

Save ui.itcl, and do a full restart of Tivoweb – the now showing list should have your View link now:

On your PC

• Install VLC – it is available for multiple platforms.
• You’ll need the VLC vstream binaries – these enable tivo streaming in VLC. They’re available for OS X, Windows and Linux. They need dropping into the plugins directory in the VLC installation folder.

You’re now in a position to test it. Open Tivoweb and the Now Showing page. Right click the View link and copy the link to the clipboard. Open VLC and hit open file, paste the URL (It should start tivo://). Click Open, and it should start streaming video to your machine! Horrah!

Finally:

• Configure IE to launch VLC from tivo:// urls

Here’s the registry settings to get Internet Explorer to open “tivo://” links in VLC. Double-click the .reg file to import it into the registry. Restart IE, and now clicking that View link will launch an instance of VLC and play your chosen video. Yay! Job’s a good’un. If anyone can work out how to configure helper actions for Safari or Firefox on OSX, let me know!

Update 15/11/2006:

Thanks to helpful folks in the comments, I realised that in cutting and pasting the example Tivoweb code above, I made an error (now fixed).  Hope that didn’t cause too many people any hassle!

I read an article a while ago (in the Times, I think) that pointed out that the UK and the US are going through a change of competency when it comes to comedy and drama programming. For years it was accepted that America was the source of all the great recent comedies: Cheers begat Frasier and Seinfeld begat Curb Your Enthusiasm, while Friends and the Simpsons ruled every country in the world in syndication. Meanwhile the BBC continued to produce quality drama. Recently that trend has changed – the BBC gives us (and then America) The Office, BBC Three proves that it deserves to exist by giving us the sordid and fantastic Monkey Dust while Channel 4 gives us Black Books and Spaced. (Although it’d be nice to get some more Spaced – Pegg: get busy!)

On the other side of the pond, the American networks have been creating some fantastic drama and science-fiction. 24 is an obvious standout, we’re four hours into Jack’s new nightmare day and I’m as gripped as ever. It’ll never seem as fresh or as imaginative as the first season when the concept still seemed brand new but it’s still great episodic television. I have good memories of the first series as I caught up with it in one marathon viewing over a bank holiday along with my then housemates. We put on the first disc “just to see what it was like” and then kept feeding the DVD player with discs until we’d had our fill. Great stuff.

Nip/Tuck‘s second season started last week on Sky and is proving just as fun as the first season. So far with no repercussions from the genius way they got rid of the bad guy in the season finale, but I’m sure it’ll all kick off again soon enough.

Battlestar Galactica is the best science-fiction on television today. Filmed in almost documentary style, even the CGI has a gritty realism; just watch the next time you see a shot of a space battle in it, the camera pans *past* the ships, and then back again – as if the “cameraman” missed the action. It’s small touches like this that really make the show worth watching.

It owes little to the series that spawned it; taking the basic concept and some character names and running with the idea. Less time spent visiting interesting planet of the week, more time spent dealing with the Cylon threat, political in-fighting, and the dirty business of surviving. I love it. This is grown-up SF – there’s no magic reset button at the end of an episode here. If someone dies, they stay dead. StarTrek never seemed more safe or staid. If you can get hold of it try and see the mini-series that acts as the pilot for the show – it has some truly powerful moments. I think it works because it is a quality drama series that just happens to be set in space not just an “alien-of-the-week” episodic SciFi show.

It was great to see Farscape back on the small screen in the guise of a mini-series titled “Farscape: The Peacekeeper War”. I’d forgotten how much fun Ben Browder’s Chrichton was to watch and how entertaining the banter between him and Scorpius. I’m really looking forward to Browder and co-star Claudia Black showing up in season nine of Stargate SG-1 later this year.

Despite Richard Dean Anderson’s reduced input to the show, StarGate SG-1 has continued to provide great stories balancing the epic story arc that now stretches back to the first season with characters and situations fresh to the latest season. SG-1 is another of those rare SF shows that doesn’t push the reset button at the end of a show: if SG-1 discover a bit of alien technology, you can bet they’ll put that to use in a later episode. If they meet a friendly alien race it’s a fair bet that they’ll turn up in a later episode with some input to the current crisis. Add to that the ongoing political machinations back on Earth and you’ve got a hell of a lot of story to tell. Ben Browder’s character will appear in season nine which will be fun, it’ll be interesting to see if he shares any screen time with Claudi Black when she reprises her SG-1 role from season eight.

StarGate Atlantis has been a blast. Not least for showing us how capable an actor David Hewlett is when given the chance. His Rodney McKay – the acerbic astrophysicist – has appeared before on SG-1 where he rubbed Carter up the wrong way, but he really shines as a more rounded character in Atlantis. Evolving from the insular scientist we first met he’s become an explorer, a fighter, in some cases even a leader. His banter with Shepherd has been particularly enjoyable.

The real surprise of the new season of telly has been HUFF, a show I’d heard precisely nothing about. Airing on FX289 in the UK it introduces us to Hank Azaria’s troubled Craig “Huff” Huffstodt a psychiatrist who lacks balance and clarity in his own life, while struggling to help others achieve these goals. His wife, Beth, is played by Paget Brewster who you’ll recognise from her stint in Friends playing Kathy – Joey’s girlfriend with whom Chandler falls in love. I’ve only seen the first two episodes but I’m hooked, primarily because of Hank Azaria’s outstanding performance. This is a man who I’ve previously only known as the voice of Professor Frink (and who knows how many more characters) in The Simpsons. His nuanced performance as Huff is a revelation.

Alias continues to impress and confuse in equal measure! This is a show that never seemed to take off in the UK, so I have to get my fix via BitTorrent download. This is no great hardship as it is broadcast in HDTV on ABC in the US so the quality I get is outstanding – HiDef widescreen with surround sound. Nice! The first few episodes of season four have managed to rearrange everyone’s lives to the extent that if you’d missed seasons two and three, you’d think nothing had changed from season one – everyone is working for Sloane again. Dixon is back in the field, and Sydney continues to flip-flop her affections for her father and of course, for Vaughan. I still miss the character of Sydney’s almost platonic friend Will who seemed to disappear completely in season three. I can understand why removing him makes the writing easier: Sydney no longer has to invent endless cover stories for her travel as she now works with all her friends on the same missions. A bit of writing convenience that I’ll allow them! Now we wait for the inevitable betrayal by Sloane…

Joey started in the UK this week after a frenzied bidding war between Sky, Channel 4 and Five which Five one by paying half a million pounds per episode. They must be praying it doesn’t tank. Judging by the first two episodes it has a reasonable chance of success – with at least one likeable new character in the form of Paulo Costanzo’s Michael – Joey’s genius nephew. You’ll recognise Paulo as the pot-smoking genius from Road Trip. He plays much the same character here (minus the pot, obviously – this is prime time America after all!). By the end of the pilot they’d engineered his moving in to Joey’s apartment, thus setting the scene for a nice “odd-couple” arrangement. Hmmm, Joey living with someone much smarter than him? Well, it worked for 10 years with Chandler…

Smallville kicked off this season by introducing Lois Lane to the cast and putting Lana out of Clark’s reach once again by giving her a new boyfriend: the football coach no less! Clark, fed up of sitting on the sidelines (literally and metaphorically) has decided to join the football team and get in the game: expect awkward moments and lots of “Kiss Me You Fool” moments with him and Lana. Smallville hasn’t grabbed me yet this season, but I’ll continue to watch it just to see how they manage to keep weaving the Superman backstory into the show. Some of the nods and winks last season were inspired – especially the use of the original theme when Clark met with Christopher Reeve’s character. I heard rumour of an episode where they play around with the “Flash” origin story, so that should be fun.

So, lots of good telly. Good job I have a TiVo to record it all for me, now if I could only find the time to watch it all…

The information is cached and will be updated once every fifteen minutes so as to not overload the TiVo itself. It’ll appear in the sidebar on the right there, so you can see what my TiVo is doing. I know, I know, I’m a geek. So sue me.

Tivoweb itself sometimes reports no information on the page. I’m not sure why – it may be something to do with resource locking in the Tivo’s MFS database. Whatever – when it happens all you’ll see is a grey blob and no further info!