I changed out some things in the home network

I don't know if I have made a mistake or not. I decided to get a HDHomeRun Prime (HRP) and put it into my network. What I found out is that Windows Media Center under Windows7 is very picky about video cards. In fact, when the video card did not match it's minimum requirements for HD TV it refused to allow me to authenticate the CableCard in the HRP. What I ended up doing to get the CableCard activated was to log on to the HRP via Internet Explorer and get the values that were shown. Then I logged into Verizon and authenticated the card online with that information. Once I did that, I was able to access the HRP video stream on my Mac Mini using the PLEX Media Server.

Unfortunately, I discovered two problems with this approach; the URL information that came from the HRP folk was pretty much incomplete for my area and the stream locked itself to the Mac Mini PLEX client. I was unable to get the stream to happen on my iPad2 with it's PLEX client, although I was able to receive the stream with the HRP app that a 3rd party had developed. Maybe I should look into making my own iPad2 app because this 3rd party app does not provide a stream from the HD side of things. This is because the H.264 video is not native to the iPad2. I am pretty sure that the processor in the iPad2 would be able to handle the stream and I have sufficient bandwidth on my home network to receive the signal.

I did go out and buy a Windows Media Laptop this last weekend. It has an i7 processor (quad core) with 8GB ram and a 750GB hard drive along with a 17.3" diagonal screen. This laptop weighs about 6.5 pounds and is huge. I was able to get Windows Media Center on it to authenticate to the CableCard and be able to play back TV on pretty much any channel that I normally receive on Verizon FIOS. I did discover that it un-authenticated from the CableCard after some Windows7 patches were applied and I was using the HRP from other devices in the house. But, I was still able to receive the TV signals just fine even though it repeatedly wants me to re-authenticate the CableCard. What is up with that? More about this mystery later.


- LW

Project #2 - Replacing WMC with HDHomeRun Prime

I have decided to replace the Windows Media Center with an HDHomeRun Prime in order to start weaning myself away from my current dependence on ISP video converters.