Jan Tielens' Bloggings

A few weeks back I decided that it was time to move on to the next era of watching TV: having a Media Center PC. Since we already have a couple PC’s at home, I had to find a budget solution to convince my wife, so I “transformed” an “old” PC into a state-of-the-art Media Center. The configuration of the PC is pretty straight forward: a Pentium IV running on 3Ghz, 1GB of RAM, and a 75 GB hard disk. The only hardware that I had to buy was a TV tuner card and a remote control. I went for the Hauppage WinTV-PVR 500 MCE which has 2 TV tuners, so you can record something and watch something else at the same time (a must have feature in my opinion).

The installation of Windows XP Media Center Edition was quite easy, just like a normal Windows XP. Also the Hauppage card installation was a bliss (got the latest MCE drivers from their site). The remote control (which comes with an USB infrared receiver) is really just plug-and-play, no driver installation required. After this easy installation came a disappointment: watching Live TV on the Media Center caused a lock-up after some time (some times after 5 minutes, sometimes after 60 minutes). I also noticed that when the PC was going to crash, the audio and video were getting slightly out of sync. I tried a lot of things to solve this issue: getting the latest drivers for all my hardware, getting the latest updates for Windows XP MCE, disabling hardware one by one and so on. But none of these solutions solved the crashing. Finally I looked on the internet for some help and on many forum postings (see links below) I found many people having the same problem. Luckily some of them were kind enough to post their solution! The solution is: do not use the latest NVidia drivers for your video card (I used a NVidia 5700)! The magic number is 66.93, when I installed this version of the drivers my problems went away. So now my Media Center is running like a charm!

After a couple of weeks using the machine, I’m convinced that it enhances my overall TV experience. I don’t have a lot of time to watch TV, and the typical problem is that when I can watch TV, there’s nothing on TV! Now with the Media Center, I have always something to watch: it’s so easy to record something; watch it and delete it. I just love it! I was a little bit afraid that my PC couldn’t handle recording and viewing Live TV at the same time (cause it’s not the latest hardware), but even recording two things and watching a record show at the same time works without any glitches. Very nice! The next thing I need to figure out is how to burn a recording to a DVD which can be played on normal DVD players as well. I’ve tested some applications like ArcSoft ShowBiz, but the creation of a DVD takes 2 hours. Anybody found some faster applications?

Good community sites:

• http://www.thegreenbutton.com
• http://www.degroeneknop.nl

A must have tool for every Information-worker-technology developer, get it from the MS Download Center.

The Excel XML Toolbox for Microsoft Office Excel 2003 provides many useful tools for working with XML in Excel. This toolbox helps developers in a number of ways:

Working with Custom-defined XML Schema

• Reload schema into workbooks while preserving cell mappings.
• Build a schema or add to an existing schema, directly from Excel.
• View the schema for XML maps stored within workbooks.

Working with XML and the Excel Object Model

• Quickly refresh all XML maps with bound data sources.
• Refresh XML maps with bound data sources and persist cell formulas for mapped cells.
• Use a new XML Range Properties tool to view XML mapped cell properties and to copy the XPath or Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) statement to the Clipboard.
• View the exportable XML data without exporting.

Working with SpreadsheetML

• Quickly save the workbook as SpreadsheetML.
• View the SpreadsheetML for the active workbook.

Shortcuts and More

• Quickly open and close the XML Source task pane.
• Turn on and off the borders for XML mapped cells.
  Import and export XML.

Next week I'll be in State College, PA to deliver a SharePoint course. Any SharePoint fans or just general geeks around who want to meet?

I'm staying in this hotel, so I hope I got the location right. :-) Maybe someone has some tips for an European tourist; things to visit/to do after work?

[Via Daniel] The SPSkin Designer can be used to quickly and easily create style sheets (CSS) for SharePoint Portal Server and Team Sites. The Designer provides a GUI interface to modify the look and feel of SharePoint. Once a Style has been developed you can copy the style sheet and apply it to your Team Site or Portal.

If you are interested in SharePoint customization (both WSS and SPS), check it out. Thanks James!