HTPC vs the Wife

V

Vorg

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 31, 2007
Messages
137
The goal is to get a home system set up so that I can ditch the Tivo unit.

Problem is Tivo is very easy to use plus I can get all my cable channels and record anything I want off of cable. My currect Tivo contract is coming up for renewal in Nov. 2010. And I would like to ditch it because I don't want to pay around $12 a month or pay the lifetime of $300.00 (heard tell that if I wait until the month before they may offer lifetime upgrade for only $99). Downside of Tivo only two tuners. Wife and I like a lot of the shows available between the broadcast channels and cable channels we can easily tie up 4 tuners.

I could purchase another Tivo but then consider the expense, cost of another unit plus the monthly expense of another cable card rental in addition to the monthly or lifetime expense for tivo service.

So I purchased the parts to build a HTPC which will allow me to record qam off of cable for the broadcast channels and I can use Tivo for the encrypted cable channels until there is readily available a cable card tuner that handles multiple tuners.

So here are some pic's of what I have put together so far
may2010003.jpg

may2010005.jpg

may2010008.jpg

may2010016.jpg

may2010022.jpg


I'm using a Zotac H55 ITX board so far no problems but I never tried to flash the bios to the current ones. My moto if it works leave it alone (well not always) I have installed Windows 7 professional. In addition I installed a HDhomerun.

Setting up the HDhomerun was easy and the HTPC started up great no problem getting it to start up in media center and it works great getting the broadcast channels to show up in 7MC plus recording is just great some features of 7MC is much easier to use than Tivo.

1st problem I ran into, windows explorer's window will not fit on the screen. Nothing that I do seems to work. Finally after messing with it for day found the setting on my TV to just scan my god it worked finally.

Now I don't now about all of the rest of you but my wife just doesn't have the patience to mess with something, I admit sometimes I feel the same way I just want the damn thing to work.

So we sat down in the Living room here I have the HTPC set up to watch a show, Tivo was tied up recording and we had nothing saved to watch but I had some shows on the HTPC saved plus I had downloaded a season of Fringe in HD from Amazon. so I turned on the tv. Went to watch Fringe and 7MC wouldn't play it, Now I had tried it on 15 episodes and it had worked fine. But of course the ones we wanted to see wouldn't play. Now I'm up a creek because of 1st impressions was, this thing is a piece crap. I was able to start the show in media player but I was already screwed.

Next night we sat down again to watch some TV on the HTPC, Tivo again tied up. This time both tuners on the HTPC was being used, no problem I thought I would just play something recorded. Nope not going to happen. 7MC just wouldn't respond. I could navigate to recorded tv and play the file in WMP but i would not play in 7MC. Strike 2 wife is really thinking this HTPC stuff is crap.

I know I can get this working but my lord why does it have to be it works one time but not the next. My goal is to add a server to store recorded programs plus to save my purchased movies and watch anytime I want with ease. But at this rate I will never be able to get rid of that Tivo unit.

Next is to get the server going plus continue tweaking the HTPC to get it working with out problems. Also need to get my Ipad to control the HTPC to make it all easy to control.

Stay tuned as we travel this rocky road in getting the HTPC to pass the wife acceptance. It may just end up being something that only I can enjoy and we just keep the Tivo.
 
You made the mistake of unveiling it too soon. HTPC work is a lot of trial and error, you should have done as much of that as you could before showing the wife, and just unveiled the finished and polished product. You're already in a hole now as far as the WAF (wife acceptance factor) is concerned.

I can't wait until the Ceton card is readily available.. quad digital cable tuners. That'd probably be enough to ditch the tivo
 
LOL your right I thought when I had previewed 15 episodes that I was in the clear, WRONG. So I may pull it all back into the work room and try to get this ironed out. I'm just wondering if I set up a media extender if it might work easier. work on that at a later date.

Some pic's of living room setup. I have a PS 3 to play blu-ray that works great. But as Activate:AMD said I "unveiled it too soon".

Dog toys on carpet
IMG_0208.jpg


Subwoofer and one of the rear speakers
IMG_0209.jpg


HTPC in cabinet
IMG_0210.jpg
 
If you want a high WAF with multi-room capability including recorded TV...SageTV might be your only hope.
 
wow.. Similar here.. Although Win 7 mc is just a stopgap as I am going to use SageTV. But I had 2 Tivo's & sold the living room one. well last night we sat down to watch soa & WTF, no audio coming across the hdmi. We are going to ditch the tivo's all together. Ditching the cable-cards too for the time being. Will be using just the locals on ClearQAM & analog cable.
 
sorry to say but it will never 100% work all the time or pass the WAF :( when we built a new house a few months ago we (i) decided we weren't going to get cable/sat and go with a HTPC/server and use OTA and streaming off the net. i'm 5 months into it and while most stuff works without a hitch there is always something. finally after many times of her having to need me to come fix something or clear this or that error off i was like, fine we will just pay $100/mo for satellite and be done with it, and she said, i don't want to do that, i just want you to come fix it when i yell and go away. so now i just take care of the issue when it happens and try and figure out whats causing what each time to try and prevent it from happening again, but there is always something.....
 
TheBlackAngel said:
sorry to say but it will never 100% work all the time or pass the WAF :( when we built a new house a few months ago we (i) decided we weren't going to get cable/sat and go with a HTPC/server and use OTA and streaming off the net. i'm 5 months into it and while most stuff works without a hitch there is always something. finally after many times of her having to need me to come fix something or clear this or that error off i was like, fine we will just pay $100/mo for satellite and be done with it, and she said, i don't want to do that, i just want you to come fix it when i yell and go away. so now i just take care of the issue when it happens and try and figure out whats causing what each time to try and prevent it from happening again, but there is always something.....
Click to expand...
Women! :D

Vorg said:
LOL your right I thought when I had previewed 15 episodes that I was in the clear, WRONG. So I may pull it all back into the work room and try to get this ironed out. I'm just wondering if I set up a media extender if it might work easier. work on that at a later date.
Click to expand...

Thats always the way it works eh? I have my 7MC setup chugging along perfectly fine, but I know that as soon as anyone but me tries to use it, they'll break it!

PS: very nice setup! I like the little mini-itx setup. I just went for a standard mATX system and i definitely foresee size issues in the future :\
 
HTPC case is this one - http://www.origenae.com/en/htpc_m10.htm

I warn you its not cheap. Problem I have with it, well 1st off I want to say its a beautiful case I like the clean lines. However I put two quiet fan's (60mm on the sides) and when you run it without the top being on you can't hear anything, when you put the top on the fan grills create a whistle noise, (can't say its actually a whistle but its a noise that I don't like) if you put one finger anywhere over the fan grill it goes away.

I have put a fan controller on it and even at the slowest setting I can still hear it. Which makes me mad considering how much I paid. However with it being in the cabinet I don't really hear it.
 
Love these little Zotac mobo's, they are freaking sweet. Looks like you've got a great start.

Are you going to be streaming any MKV's from other computers?
 
My wife has to have the TV on, whenever she walks into a room the TV has to go on. She doesn't watch it, It just has to go on. I asked her why? I just want the noise, is the response I get.

I'm afraid your right TheBlackAngel. It well probably never totally pass WAF, Good thing we only go into the living room to watch a movie or show together. My wife never goes into the the living room otherwise. So I may just have to leave the Tivo in the Family room. I just really want to break away from paying.

I have had Dish and now Comcast, I haven't tried Direct. I hate the cable company's DVR so 3 years ago we purchase a Tivo Series 3. Which works fine, though every couple of months we turn it on it and the characters on the screen are all blue. We have to unplug the unit and after the reboot everything is good for a while longer.

Maybe I'll just keep it as it is it will be just something I will have to deal with. Right now the I'm having a couple of problems. How to wake the HTPC up without having a keyboard or mouse around. The MCE remote works but I'm trying to get way for having 4 remotes laying around. So I'm trying to use the IPAD. I have more work to do.

2nd problem is when the HTPC wakes up is seems a little sluggish. It takes media center about 30 sec. to respond to a command whether is coming from the usb mouse or from my Ipad.
 
It took me a month of fixing and tweaking to get mine setup and during that month I got everything from "Why are we doing this" to "You just can't NOT spend money can you?" to borderline divorce threats. Now, everything is butter, and she can't imagine living without it. What really sold her was that she can watch her soaps anytime she wants thanks to XBMC's CBS plugin.

We run XBMC with transparency skin and have a launcher setup to use Zinc.tv. It's running on Windows 7 in a full size tower behind the entertainment center with some 2tb hard drives. So now it's out of sight, it's quiet, and it flat out works.

The real trick to get her to look past the small problems was showing how little real work it would really take to get our shows. By using uTorrent's RSS feed searcher and Metabrowsers tagging feature, our shows download automatically, and then get sorted automatically. XBMC finds them and we literally have 2-3 new shows to watch at any given time.

We no longer have cable, it's worked great the last 3 months, and the HTPC has paid for itself twice over and all of the sudden the complaints have stopped. Hang in there.
 
This is the exact reason I use Popcorn Hour+YAMJ with a central storage server. I control the front end interface all from the server and any changes made there are reflected on the Popcorn Hour's that I have in each room of the house. This is really nice because you have a movie and TV Show wall and all you have to do is click and play. Also you cannot modify the front end configuration in any way with the remote, it must be done on the server. This rules out the chance of someone breaking your configuration or deleting stuff on accident.

As far as content this might be a controversial issue but I use utorrent and have RSS feeds setup top automatically download every episode of the shows that I watch. In this way my system is completely automated in that I never have to log into the server to fetch new shows at all or do anything. They just show up after they air.

I don't have any cable or satellite services. Just the Popcorn Hour's and over the air TV.

Here is exactly what the front end looks like.. That is a direct link to my library and is what you would see on the Television with the exception of the TV Shows section which is formatted to view properly on the Popcorn Hour devices. Also the GUI has a nice blue glow to indicate when you have something highlighted like this...

popboxyamj.jpg
 
TheBlackAngel said:
sorry to say but it will never 100% work all the time or pass the WAF :( when we built a new house a few months ago we (i) decided we weren't going to get cable/sat and go with a HTPC/server and use OTA and streaming off the net. i'm 5 months into it and while most stuff works without a hitch there is always something. finally after many times of her having to need me to come fix something or clear this or that error off i was like, fine we will just pay $100/mo for satellite and be done with it, and she said, i don't want to do that, i just want you to come fix it when i yell and go away. so now i just take care of the issue when it happens and try and figure out whats causing what each time to try and prevent it from happening again, but there is always something.....
Click to expand...

Hahaha! Yes I feel your pain buddy....thats why I ditched HTPC's several years ago! Too much of a PITA for never ending maintenance.
 
Krazypoloc said:
This is the exact reason I use Popcorn Hour+YAMJ with a central storage server. I control the front end interface all from the server and any changes made there are reflected on the Popcorn Hour's that I have in each room of the house. This is really nice because you have a movie and TV Show wall and all you have to do is click and play. Also you cannot modify the front end configuration in any way with the remote, it must be done on the server. This rules out the chance of someone breaking your configuration or deleting stuff on accident.

As far as content this might be a controversial issue but I use utorrent and have RSS feeds setup top automatically download every episode of the shows that I watch. In this way my system is completely automated in that I never have to log into the server to fetch new shows at all or do anything. They just show up after they air.

I don't have any cable or satellite services. Just the Popcorn Hour's and over the air TV.

Here is exactly what the front end looks like.. That is a direct link to my library and is what you would see on the Television with the exception of the TV Shows section which is formatted to view properly on the Popcorn Hour devices. Also the GUI has a nice blue glow to indicate when you have something highlighted like this...

popboxyamj.jpg
Click to expand...

Unless I am missing something you arent recording Live TV? If this is the case then this is not a substitution for a tivo unit.
 
bastage said:
Unless I am missing something you arent recording Live TV? If this is the case then this is not a substitution for a tivo unit.
Click to expand...

I am not recording live TV....but I could add a TV tuner and do that on my server if I wanted...I don't need to do this though as I am downloading shows that others have recorded. Thats why I mentioned depending on where you live this could be a controversial issue due to copyright laws and such.

Nice HSU sub BTW. I have one myself. :)
 
Vorg said:
Maybe I'll just keep it as it is it will be just something I will have to deal with. Right now the I'm having a couple of problems. How to wake the HTPC up without having a keyboard or mouse around. The MCE remote works but I'm trying to get way for having 4 remotes laying around. So I'm trying to use the IPAD. I have more work to do.
Click to expand...
You could also look into a harmony remote. mine works like a champ and the software offers a lot of customization options. it took some fiddling to get all the buttons assigned properly in MCE, but i think thats because my HTPC is using an imon IR receiver, not a standard MCE remote
 
Too get the WAF, simplicity is key. Took me a while to get the wife on board with the HTPC as well. I finally got all the kinks ironed out, got it all programmed with macros into the harmony remote. Now she loves it. She doesn't have to go start the computer, get the keyboard, switch all the inputs, use like 3 remote (her biggest complaint). All she does is hit "HTPC" on the remote, wait a couple seconds and everything is running, and navigate using the remote. Now all I have to do is update the software occasionally and everything is good to go.
 
My wife is begging me to get rid of cable and build a HTPC with OTA, Hulu Desktop and use our Netflix subscription. We watch our TV shows, shows for our son but stopped 'channel surfing' years... years ago. I suppose I'm lucky she's 100% on board. We'll be saving a ton of money every month now, and only sacrificing a few things.

I'm just getting started with my build though. We already use my 360 as a MC extender to access my library of like 200 movies, our music and photos. We also use Netflix on the 360, so there really isn't a barrier or learning curve (I think). I'll just be integrating everything into 7MC so that we dont need to use the 360 anymore. I need 1 interface to simplify things, make it a solution worthwhile and something we can easily use to turn our back on cable/satellite for good.
 
theNoid said:
My wife is begging me to get rid of cable and build a HTPC with OTA, Hulu Desktop and use our Netflix subscription. We watch our TV shows, shows for our son but stopped 'channel surfing' years... years ago. I suppose I'm lucky she's 100% on board. We'll be saving a ton of money every month now, and only sacrificing a few things.

I'm just getting started with my build though. We already use my 360 as a MC extender to access my library of like 200 movies, our music and photos. We also use Netflix on the 360, so there really isn't a barrier or learning curve (I think). I'll just be integrating everything into 7MC so that we dont need to use the 360 anymore. I need 1 interface to simplify things, make it a solution worthwhile and something we can easily use to turn our back on cable/satellite for good.
Click to expand...

Check out Boxee. Its free and you can try it out in advance on an PC.
 
Vorg, what hard drive are you using?

It looks like a Western Digital Scorpio Blue.

I think that might be your culprit in terms of sluggish performance from sleep, and might also have led to the lockup when you had two streams recording simultaneously.

One thing to check is whether the HDD is running in AHCI mode. That enables NCQ and the other functions that assist in multitasking.

Warning: if you installed windows in native IDE mode, switching to AHCI post-Windows-install might cause Windows issues like locking up during boot, etc. So give it a shot, but change back if you see problems.

You might want to explore your options in terms of 7200 rpm 2.5" drives. The seagate momentus 7200.4 has a good reputation
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148374

As does the WD Scorpio Black
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136692

I noticed samsung has a 640gb version out:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152237

Clearly, the fastest option would be an SSD, which would blow you away with its performance. But getting one big enough for HTPC use would be costly.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820250003

However, your BEST bet might be the momentus XT hybrid drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148591

It gives you some of the benefits of an SSD along with a good price point.
 
Krazypoloc said:
Check out Boxee. Its free and you can try it out in advance on an PC.
Click to expand...

I love Boxee, but.. am already used to MC. I dont mind switching but I'm looking for Hulu Desktop integration (or Hulu in general), and Netflix, among Live TV support. How does Boxee stack up to MC in those regards?
 
Krazypoloc said:
Check out Boxee. Its free and you can try it out in advance on an PC.
Click to expand...

I've used boxee for over a year (since alpha) and it's come a long way, but it's not foolproof yet. My feelings for it often shift from "awesome" to slight annoyance.. My win7 install is as clean as I can get it, but there are still bugs. I'm hoping the release of the Boxee box will give us a more stable release.

Also, it has no DVR function, which it sounds like OP wants, and the hulu integration is famously finicky..

edit: well Noid asked the question I answered while I was posting:) I've never tried, but like I said I'm pretty sure there is no way to integrate live TV into boxee.
Can I ask a question back? :)As someone who have barely used WMC; is it possible to get online content there, (like boxee)? I.e free stuff from comedy central, ABC, etc? That's what I love about boxee but the buggyness is getting annoying. Sorry, I'll go see if find some info about it.
 
Last edited:
ObiDamnKenobi said:
I've used boxee for over a year (since alpha) and it's come a long way, but it's not foolproof yet. My feelings for it often shift from "awesome" to slight annoyance.. My win7 install is as clean as I can get it, but there are still bugs. I'm hoping the release of the Boxee box will give us a more stable release.

Also, it has no DVR function, which it sounds like OP wants, and the hulu integration is famously finicky..

edit: well Noid asked the question I answered while I was posting:) I've never tried, but like I said I'm pretty sure there is no way to integrate live TV into boxee.
Can I ask a question back? :)As someone who have barely used WMC; is it possible to get online content there, (like boxee)? I.e free stuff from comedy central, ABC, etc? That's what I love about boxee but the buggyness is getting annoying. Sorry, I'll go see if find some info about it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. I agree the TV integration and searching is fantastic with Boxee, but no Live OTA feed is a deal breaker for me. My experience with 7MC is that its been great, surprisingly so considering I used to hate many MS products. Unfortunately most of my experience and customization has been with MC itself, mainly for Media Browser (movies) and other things. There certainly are plugins, both 1st and 3rd party available for MC that can be dropped in at any point. Using Media Center Studio allows for near complete customization for MC, including plugins how things look, icons, themes etc..

I'm willing to bet there are plugins for ABC and Comedy Central but I haven't used them. I was tinkering with Hulu Desktop in MC last night and it was seemless. The GUI was just remarkable and exactly the kind of experience I need for not so techy family when they come over.

Tonight I'm testing some OTA reception and integration with my new antenna and tuner card. My end result will likely look like this...

HTPC->Windows Media Center 7
HD Movie rips
Music
Pictures
Home Videos
Live TV/guide (OTA)
Recorded TV
Hulu (using Hulu Desktop Integration)
Netflix ($8.99/mo)

Add-ons/Plug-ins
Media Browser (custom Movie interface)

Tools
Media Scout (MetaData)
Media Center Studio (custom themes, appearance of 7MC)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total Monthly Cost = $8.99

Optional
Xbox 360 Arcade Slim : MC Extender (in the bedroom for access to everything other than Netflix and Hulu (not supported in extenders))
 
ObiDamnKenobi said:
I've used boxee for over a year (since alpha) and it's come a long way, but it's not foolproof yet. My feelings for it often shift from "awesome" to slight annoyance.. My win7 install is as clean as I can get it, but there are still bugs. I'm hoping the release of the Boxee box will give us a more stable release.

Also, it has no DVR function, which it sounds like OP wants, and the hulu integration is famously finicky..

edit: well Noid asked the question I answered while I was posting:) I've never tried, but like I said I'm pretty sure there is no way to integrate live TV into boxee.
Can I ask a question back? :)As someone who have barely used WMC; is it possible to get online content there, (like boxee)? I.e free stuff from comedy central, ABC, etc? That's what I love about boxee but the buggyness is getting annoying. Sorry, I'll go see if find some info about it.
Click to expand...

haven't used this much myself yet but i think this may be able to do what you are looking for.... http://secondrun.tv/default.asp?action=drawpage&pageid=22
 
I have 2 HTPC's. One for my dedicated Home Theater and one in the living room which sister and mom use. I built the one in the HT first to work out all the kinks. My setup:

win7mc auto start/no win7 desktop
harmony remote for one button operation
media browser to stream movies/tv shows from my server
second run for hulu
netflix

I have directv but hardly watch it anymore.

If you use dish and want HD I highly recommend the hauppage HD-PVR

I also use mobile mouse/air mouse from my ipad/iphone to control windows desktop but that's just for me.

One thing I want... espn3 from win7mc!!!
 
WOW thanks for all the suggestions. I think with one of you I want to swap wives. Mine is one that just gives me the look "your spending again to get that thing to work".

1st I want to apologize for the crappy pics some glare.

AirMouse which CrazyCuz2k refered to its really a nice program. This pic is what I have from my desktop Notice Icons on bottom refers to pin taskbar items
IMG_0215.jpg


Air Mouse with Window media Center up
IMG_0216.jpg


only problem I have with Air Mouse at least with WMC is my fingers must be too fat sometimes I hit the wrong thing.

Another good remote is discussed on the AVS forums which I have messed with called IRule I have only just messed with it so I just set up some simple keys
IMG_0219.jpg


Nice thing about Irule you decide how big and how far apart the buttons are apparently with my sausage fingers I need big spacing.

Harmony Remote is it this one?
IMG_0222.jpg

Its a nice remote what I have been trying to do is have one remote that I could use in any room and the Ipad I pretty much have with me all the time it just so handy.
 
estrada42
We run XBMC with transparency skin and have a launcher setup to use Zinc.tv. It's running on Windows 7 in a full size tower behind the entertainment center with some 2tb hard drives. So now it's out of sight, it's quiet, and it flat out works
Click to expand...

XBMC you know I have messed with that program I modded an original Xbox to run it. It is an awesome program.

I haven't ruled it out. Its just that 7MC should be able to take care of everything we would want. I'm probably stubborn and mad that I can't figure out what is going on. Plus alot of people seem to like it and I like the interface.

Your the man jebo_4jc
Vorg, what hard drive are you using?

It looks like a Western Digital Scorpio Blue.

I think that might be your culprit in terms of sluggish performance from sleep, and might also have led to the lockup when you had two streams recording simultaneously.

One thing to check is whether the HDD is running in AHCI mode. That enables NCQ and the other functions that assist in multitasking.

Warning: if you installed windows in native IDE mode, switching to AHCI post-Windows-install might cause Windows issues like locking up during boot, etc. So give it a shot, but change back if you see problems.
Click to expand...

I'm so stupid, that is more than likely where the problems lay. I was just about to purchase another M/B, just because I have this damn hole dug so deep what another $100.00 and that wouldn't have even fixed the problem. I owe you a beer man or make that a case of beer. AHCI you know I have read that term I must admit I don't know what is does. It seems like there was some problems associated with it some time ago so I just wrote it off but it may have been with the SSD's. Getting too old to remember all the stuff I have read.


jebo_4jc
However, your BEST bet might be the momentus XT hybrid drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148591

It gives you some of the benefits of an SSD along with a good price point.
Click to expand...

That is exactly what I'll do plus use AHCI which I still need to try to understand what it does.
 
check in your BIOS for hard drive mode. I think the typical options are AHCI, Native IDE, or Native SATA....might differ slightly.
 
theNoid said:
Thanks for the info. I agree the TV integration and searching is fantastic with Boxee, but no Live OTA feed is a deal breaker for me. My experience with 7MC is that its been great, surprisingly so considering I used to hate many MS products. Unfortunately most of my experience and customization has been with MC itself, mainly for Media Browser (movies) and other things. There certainly are plugins, both 1st and 3rd party available for MC that can be dropped in at any point. Using Media Center Studio allows for near complete customization for MC, including plugins how things look, icons, themes etc..

I'm willing to bet there are plugins for ABC and Comedy Central but I haven't used them. I was tinkering with Hulu Desktop in MC last night and it was seemless. The GUI was just remarkable and exactly the kind of experience I need for not so techy family when they come over.

Tonight I'm testing some OTA reception and integration with my new antenna and tuner card. My end result will likely look like this...

HTPC->Windows Media Center 7
HD Movie rips
Music
Pictures
Home Videos
Live TV/guide (OTA)
Recorded TV
Hulu (using Hulu Desktop Integration)
Netflix ($8.99/mo)

Add-ons/Plug-ins
Media Browser (custom Movie interface)

Tools
Media Scout (MetaData)
Media Center Studio (custom themes, appearance of 7MC)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total Monthly Cost = $8.99

Optional
Xbox 360 Arcade Slim : MC Extender (in the bedroom for access to everything other than Netflix and Hulu (not supported in extenders))
Click to expand...

You know for 2 years I was a NexFlix subscriber I was paying $20.00 a month then they wanted another $2.00 or so for blu-ray. It seemed they never had a series that we wanted to watch, plus I would sometimes go months and have the same 3 movies. At the time I was a Dexter fan, still am. But they never had the past season, oh they would have it available on DVD or Blu-ray but not for streaming. So I just stopped it this June. I'm now using RedBox for $1.00 I get the movie for about 36 hours $1.50 for blu-ray. I have 3 RedBox's within a mile radius. I hop on my Scooter and get them and take them back.
 
jebo_4jc said:
check in your BIOS for hard drive mode. I think the typical options are AHCI, Native IDE, or Native SATA....might differ slightly.
Click to expand...

I just pulled out the User manual on the Zotac sure enough it has AHCI, probably have to do a reinstall of windows but thats not a problem. I'll just wait until I get that hard drive.

On my gaming system I run two SSD's in Raid 0 I probably should run those in AHCI what do you think?
 
Vorg said:
I just pulled out the User manual on the Zotac sure enough it has AHCI, probably have to do a reinstall of windows but thats not a problem. I'll just wait until I get that hard drive.

On my gaming system I run two SSD's in Raid 0 I probably should run those in AHCI what do you think?
Click to expand...
the benefits of RAID 0 are debatable. I've run my SSDs both ways, once by themselves in AHCI mode and once together in RAID 0. RAID 0 is theoretically faster in certain situations, but you lose some benefits.

There's plenty to discuss there, I suggest you make a post in the Storage subsystem forum.
 
Vorg said:
I just pulled out the User manual on the Zotac sure enough it has AHCI, probably have to do a reinstall of windows but thats not a problem. I'll just wait until I get that hard drive.

On my gaming system I run two SSD's in Raid 0 I probably should run those in AHCI what do you think?
Click to expand...

You don't need to reinstall. Theres a registry setting you have to change, search for it! (I'm too lazy right now :()
 
jebo_4jc said:
the benefits of RAID 0 are debatable. I've run my SSDs both ways, once by themselves in AHCI mode and once together in RAID 0. RAID 0 is theoretically faster in certain situations, but you lose some benefits.

There's plenty to discuss there, I suggest you make a post in the Storage subsystem forum.
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The only reason I went with Raid 0 at the time I couldn't get the Intel drives bigger then 80 gig I was after 160 or so. Sold out everywhere at the time. Also I don't store stuff on them they are always only at 50% capacity. I put items on a 750gb drive. Plus I'm currently working on a WHS server to keep everything.
 
450 said:
You don't need to reinstall. Theres a registry setting you have to change, search for it! (I'm too lazy right now :()
Click to expand...

Your right that discussion talked about that registry setting and what you have to do.
 
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