Our home TV set up runs on Windows Media Center. Our cable line comes into a PC and all of the DVR functionality occurs there and gets fed around the house to Xbox360s hooked up to TVs. For the past few weeks, it has started having more and more issues with basic playback. It stutters or pauses for long periods of time and it almost ruined our last football party. That PC is ancient. I bought it in 2006 and it has been running nonstop as our Media Center since 2010. I never touch it and it just works. That’s the way things should be. But given the problems we were having, I had to go take a look.
Pretty much as soon as I touched it, it totally fell apart. I blew the dust out of it and maybe I was too aggressive, or maybe it was just a few reboot cycles that did it in, but the thing won’t even get to the BIOS screen anymore.
Decision time. We’re so close to just cutting cable out completely. We only watch a few TV shows and those are easily purchased on Amazon Video. The small cost of those shows is easily outweighed by the convenience and lack of commercials to skip over. But as I thought more about it, technology isn’t quite ready to fit our needs. Specifically, the NFL is too tight with their content to give me many options. I want to be able to watch live NFL games or record them and start watching them and hour or two after they’ve started. There’s no online offering that I know of in our area which allows this. Our Comcast subscription does have a live streaming TV option that works well, but I can’t record that at all.
What about just getting a Comcast DVR like everyone else? We currently pay $71/month for a package that includes 120Mbps down 10Mbps up internet, very basic HD cable channels and HBO. The Comcast rep said that my package “doesn’t support a DVR”… how is that a thing? Anyway, getting a DVR would mean adding $30-40/month to my package price and then another $10-20/month for a DVR. And then I’d only have a DVR hooked up to one TV. I’d need two if I was going to have them on both TVs. Yuck. That’s never going to happen.
There are a lot of online offerings now like Sling TV, Direct TV Now, and PlayStation Vue. They all look awesome but I don’t see the local channels available in our area and the DVR offerings are spotty at best. We’re getting there but I think it will be a couple more years until my scenario is covered.
So in the end, we decided to build replace the current PC with a new one. I built one out with parts available at Fry’s for $340. That included a case, motherboard, CPU, RAM and a power supply. I already had an SSD for the OS, a hard drive for the recordings, and the cable card tuner to receive the Comcast signal. Here’s my shopping list at Fry’s:
- Intel Core i3-6100 CPU
- MSI H110M Gaming Motherboard
- Enermax Ostrog Case
- Thermaltake 430w PSU
- DDR4 8GB 2400MHz RAM
The build only took 30-45 minutes and it booted right up. Then the trouble started. I need to run Windows 7 to use Media Center. The product has been slowly killed off since then and no longer exists in Windows 10. The problem is that the motherboard I picked had the Skylake chipset from Intel and the old Windows 7 install media doesn’t have the right drivers for that. The result is that you can’t use the USB ports on the machine. Umm… how do you install Windows from your USB key or use your USB mouse and keyboard to get through the installer if you can’t use your USB ports? Ugh. I’ll save you the long, painful story, but I ended up moving an old DVD drive over and putting the Windows install disc in there. I was able to get a USB keyboard to work just enough to make it through the installer and then I was able to install the drivers in Windows off of the mother board DVD. (This post was particularly helpful for adding drivers to the WIM files in the installer.)
I’m home free, right? Nope. Microsoft wants everybody on Windows 10 and it’s really obvious if you try to start with a fresh install of Windows 7 SP1. Windows Update won’t work for you. After gobs of trial and error and researching, I found this post which worked for me. It basically involves manually installing two Windows Update packs that update the functionality of Windows Update itself. After that it was just a matter of installing around 200 updates and THEN I was ready to go.
Media Center works great on this machine and even though it was about the cheapest PC I could build (without delving into totally unknown brands) it’s crazy fast. Windows 7 still has that “Windows Experience Index” feature. I ran it for fun and got these scores. Recall that the scale goes from 1.0 to 7.9.
- Processor: 7.4
- Memory: 7.9
- Graphics: 6.9
- Gaming graphics: 6.9
- Hard drive: 7.9
I’ll be putting it through it’s paces over the next couple weeks but I’m hopeful that this will sit quietly in the closet for 3-4 more years until I’m able to fully switch to a more modern solution.
P.S. Did you know you can still get WEI scores in Windows 10? This post has the details but I’ll copy the instructions here.
Open a Run window (Windows Logo key+R), type perfmon and press Enter. Click Data Collector Sets > System > Right-click System Diagnostics > Start. When it has finished, go down to Reports in the left pane > System > System Diagnostics and click on the name of your computer and the data will be collected. Scroll down in the main pane and expand the Hardware Configuration drop down > Expand Desktop Rating drop down > Expand the + sign below Query, finally expand the + sign below Returned Objects to display your WEI score.
2016 Year In Review
Every year as a parent is different, but I feel like 2016 was easier than the previous years. I hesitate to say that because a wise man once told me that “Parenting never gets easier, it just gets different.” But we did knock a few big issues off the list. Elijah has been battling some intestinal issues for about half of his life and we finally have those under control. That made potty training interesting but we’ve been diaper free for two weeks now! He’s not totally independent yet, but it’s nice to not lug around extra diapers everywhere we go.
The other big changes were at night. We used to spend 60-90 minutes on an average night trying to get the kid to fall asleep. It was always a battle. Now he zonks out in 5-10 minutes and he’s sleeping better at night too. We used to plan on him waking up multiple times and then being up for good at 4:45 or 5am. Now that’s very rare and some mornings he even makes it to 7 or 7:30. It makes such a difference to go into the day not feeling like you got run over a truck every night for the last week.
This was also the year of bikes for Elijah. We got him a balance bike quite a while ago but this summer, it finally clicked and he got the idea of coasting around on it. After that, he quickly got more confident on the bike to the point where we thought we’d see if he could handle a pedal bike. That was his big Christmas present and he has been successful almost from the beginning. Every day he picks up a new skill and he’s pretty independent on it now. He’s quite happy to spend an hour or two at a time pedaling around on that little bike.
After a lot of research, haggling and waiting, I finally took delivery of a 2016 F150 and traded in my trusty Subaru. It’s a luxury purchase that I’ve looked forward to for a long time and I still smile when I see it parked in the driveway. I’ve put it to a lot of good use already and love the flexibility i have to get various projects done. It’s also nice to have the option of moving 6 adults around comfortably.
Woodworking has continued to be a good choice of a hobby. I find it immensely rewarding, I can do it right in the garage, and I can find something to do even if I only have 15 minutes. I have devoted an entire bay of the garage to woodworking and while you never have enough space, I feel blessed to have an area like that work in. This year’s projects included two bandsaw boxes, a play table that fits over our coffee table, cribbage board, toy shelf, Post It holder, garage sign, garage cabinets, dump truck, Otis sign, purple box and some other stuff that I haven’t gotten around to posting yet. I didn’t add many tools this year as I have a pretty full collection but I think I’ll be adding a CNC machine early next year.
This year I felt less guilty about spending time in the wood shop. As a parent, it can be hard to find the line between spending time with your family and taking time for yourself. But that time for yourself IS an important part of being a good parent. If you’re not working on improving yourself, taking time to think, and working on projects that you enjoy, you’re not going to be in a good spot mentally to give your family the best of yourself. It’s a dial that I constantly need to adjust, but I think it’s important to keep it in mind.
Here are few more highlights from this year:
I say this every year, but I want to do more hiking next year. This was probably the last year that I’ll be able to carry Elijah in the backpack so that will change things a lot, but I’m hopeful that he’ll enjoy hiking and we can go on some adventures together either with Tyla or while she enjoys a restful afternoon by herself. Our first tent camping adventure was a success so we need to do that again as well. And who knows, maybe next winter we’ll get Elijah out on some skis too.
The text above is kind of random and there’s no obvious, overarching theme for the year that I can see. I’d love to tie it all together with a pointed, philosophical soundbite, but I don’t think that’s what 2016 was. It was a year where I felt like I got my feet back under me after a couple years of very little sleep and a year where I started to have a little more free time because I wasn’t going to bed at 8pm just to survive. It was a good year and as always, I look forward to an even better 2017.
Previous Year In Review Posts: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015