What Animal Is Joe Eating?

The computer in my media rack died.

Posted: 4/10/2007

Well, it didn't really die, but the composite TV out on the video card died. Everything else still works, but just this one small piece of hardware puked. Which made it useless for the task it was given.

Here’s the background— it’s a PIII that I got free as surplus. I put an operating system on it, put in a 10 year old ATI Rage video card w/TV out that I had been saving in a dead Cyrix 686 box for six years, dropped in a kWorld video capture card, and loaded GB-PVR, a free DVR software package. Total out-of-pocket cost for a working DVR/Media extender— $0. I have about 600 albums that have been ripped to my server, including several out-of-print discs from the 80s that are showing signs of CD Rot.

With GB-PVR, there are a number of plug-ins that are available, including a fantastic media player plug-in that’s database driven. By last week, I had the media player plug-in database cleaned up beautifully, and ready for family who would be arriving early Saturday afternoon. Friday night, I booted the computer to copy the completed database with close to 10K in records to the program folder. Nothing on the TV behind the bar; it’s blank. Bugger.

What to do? I can’t have a bar sans tunes. So I went to the internet. I have several electronics stores within a few minutes of the house. As much as I hate to have to spend any money on my media player, I figure I can find a cheap video card with composite video out somewhere and pick it up in the morning. The first two stores, who I believed would have something cheap, only carried ridiculously expensive gaming video cards and dirt-cheap bare bones video cards sans TV video. I checked TigerDirect as they have a store nearby, and I had heard that if they have it on their website, you can get it at their stores.

They had numerous cheap video cards with TV-out listed as a feature. But as I looked at pictures of the cards, every single one only had s-video. The fifty dollar TV behind my bar does not have s-video in. Bugger again.

I knew I’d be giving up the PVR function and the slick, easily customizable interface of the GB-PVR, but I started looking at networked media players. I quickly thought what I’d need in a player: ethernet port, digital audio outs, video interface, and looks like a piece of stereo equipment instead of computer equipment.

I liked the idea of the AppleTV, but not for three hundred bucks, and definitely not if it had to use iTunes, which on a PC is garbage. And again, the AppleTV is mostly a video device (and looks like computer equipment), and after all, I mostly wanted this to play music; anything else is bonus.

I went to BestBuy’s website and looked at the Roku Soundbridge, which looks nice, but I wanted a product that displayed a menu on a television. Back over at TigerDirect, I saw the D-Link DSM-320, with which I wasn’t familiar, but had a very appealing price— a little over a hundred bucks after the mandatory rebate.

So I check for reviews. They’re mixed. It seems that most people are trying to use this thing wirelessly and are struggling with encryption protocols and other wireless-related issues. I have gigabit ethernet wired, so I won’t have deal with any of that. Other people are complaining about the server software that comes with it, but many people are swearing by a couple of free servers. I downloaded one that seemed to get the most positive reviews, installed it, and watched it crash on my server. Repeatedly. Hmm, maybe the server that comes with the box won’t be too bad.

Saturday morning, I drove over to TigerDirect and picked one up. Final cost is about $110 more than I wanted to spend, but at least I’ll have quick access to every album I own again.

I installed the server that came with the box. Bugger— it doesn’t run as a service. No matter how well it works, I’ll have to find something better later. I put the box in my rack where the computer used to be, hooked it up and powered it on. It saw the server, and within five minutes, I had music playing. So much for the horror stories I read from people trying to use this thing wirelessly.

But people were correct in calling the server junk. Not only doesn’t it run as a service, but it also crashes every couple of hours. I ended up installing Twonky, which cost money and doesn’t have the neat international TV feature of TVersity, but is rock-solid, runs as a service and has an easily customized directory structure based on tags.

And as a bonus, the box even appears to output up to 1080i video via component outputs.

Update: it doesn’t do 1080i over component.

What Animal Is Joe Eating?

Updated 12/6/06

The computer in my media rack died.