A number of the issues that vexed me in the prior post (Part 1) have been addressed. I've annotated the post to reflect that.

Based on Chris Morley's (Velocity Micro's Director of Product Development) dedicated and helpful participation in AVS Forum threads on CableCard PC's, and the fact that the company was incredibly gracious in upgrading that purchase in two instances before it was shipped to compensate me for some trouble getting the PC I ordered, I decided not only to order my main PC from Velocity Micro, but to sign up for three years of tech support and warranty as well (a premium of a couple hundred dollars over the minimum tech support/warranty).

Over the past five years or so I had generally come to view Dell and HP tech support as next to useless. If I couldn't find the answer to my problems myself using Google and Google Groups, then the odds were slim that these companies' tech support would be able to help me. This isn't as big a knock as it might seem-- I realize that today's PCs have to deal with incredibly complex interactions from multiple types of hardware and software, and the problems I could have used tech support on tended to be much more complicated than run of the mill user problems.

In contrast, BTW, when I did need support, I would call Microsoft. Until recently they charged $35 per incident and they were MUCH better than any OEM I ever dealt with. They would actually try to solve the problem by escalating it, to engineers if need be, rather than insisting on reformatting and reinstalling the operating system.

I had hopes that Velocity Micro would be different, and they are, but only to a point. I had inflated hopes that they would replicate my experience with Microsoft, which they did not, but they are better than Dell and HP (the last time I dealt with each) and they are actually employees of a relatively small company rather than a service that has been outsourced to India.

I had four problems with my main PC:

• The system ceased to function with any USB mouse, although it works fine with USB mice plugged into PS2 adapters. There was ultimately no resolution to this issue other than to reinstall the operating system, we tried enough things that I suspect this is probably the way to go (although its not worth it to me to actually try this advice at this point). Two caveats: (i) I suspect there is an alternative to a format and reinstall, that they did not discuss with me (i.e. an equivalent of an inplace upgrade that tries to transfer existing settings and applications to a new version of the operating system; and (ii) their support is markedly worse when calling late at night. Their hours are for non-emergency tech support end at 11pm ET, so people on calls beyond that point tend to act as if they really want to get home. In one instance I waited on hold for 45 minutes until 11:15 ET and then go their answering service for after-hours calls.
• The LiteOn DVD drive would not read the Velocity Vista DVD. It read other DVDs fine (including another Vista DVD I happened to have) and other DVD drives read the Velocity Vista DVD just fine, but the two did not work together. The problem persisted despite them sending two additional Vista discs and a replacement LiteOn DVD drive. Finally the problem was solved when they sent me another model DVD drive at my suggestion. The better, Plextor DVD drive I received works fine with their Vista DVD.
• The card reader that was part of the floppy ceased to function. Switching the USB cable to a different connector on the motherboard solved this problem in short order.
• The sound stopped working. A short troubleshooting session sussed out that the sound had been disabled in the BIOS. In retrospect this was probably caused by new BIOS firmware installed to try to address the DVD and mouse issues above.

At the end of the day, all but one of some somewhat challenging problems were solved. While they aren't as good as MS support, they are better than the alternatives from Dell and HP.

Ever since installing the excellent MyMovies application for Media Center 2005, I had hoped that I would be able to rip a DVD to a network share, point MyMovies to the directory of tha ripped DVD and have access to it from Media Center and its extenders. I thought that when Transcode 360 was integrated into MyMovies that this day had come, but alas that turned out not to be the case. Transcode 360 turned out not to be that great at following convoluted DVD streams (convoluted, presumably for copy protection reasons) and not to work that well with Vista (see the many messages on the subject).

So with my WSUS 3.0 troubles behind me, I decided to get MyMovies working with my ripped DVD collection. Over the past couple of days, I've settled on a procedure that I'll use going forward. I thought I would share it for the benefit of others contemplating having a movie collection accessible from Vista Media Center Extenders:

1. Rip the DVD directly to a newtork share using the free version of DVDFab HD Decrypter. I use an old DVD drive housed in a USB 2.0 case, which seems to handle copy protection on DVDs much better than the Plextor DVD drive in my main PC.
2. Run DVDShrink 3.2 to create a single VOB for the main title with only one audio stream. I use the Open Files button on the toolbar, select No Compression on the Video side of the resulting screen, select the streams I want, choose Re-author from the toolbar, then drag just the main title to the Re-authored DVD side of the resulting screen, make sure that the Edit-Preferences-Output Files dialog has the "split VOB files into 1GB sized chunks" option unchecked, choose Backup from the toolbar and then create a sub directory to save the resulting single VOB to.
3. I then run VideoRedo's Tools-QuickStream Fix and save the resulting file as an .MPG file in the movie's main directory on the network share. VideoRedo is a full featured MPEG editor that $50 to register, but can be used free on a trial license for two weeks.
4. I then get rid of the VOB created with DVDShrink
5. I create an entry in MyMovies and specify the directory on the network share containing the .MPG file resulting from step 3 and am good to go.

This gets me relatively pain free movie watching on my Xbox 360 media extenders. I have tried more ambitious options in the past only to find them wanting. I tried VOB2MPEG in place of VideoRedo, but found it unreliable. I tried DVD-WMV, as I would have preferred to have .WMV files so I could use fast forward and rewind functions from the extenders, but found this to unforgiving of errors and to create files with audio-video sync problems on occasion.

This approach has the disadvantages of not being able to use fast forward and rewind (but skip ahead and skip back work fine) and of taking up a lot of space as MPG is not that space efficient and keeping the entire DVD is even worse.

This solution has the advantage of keeping the full DVD and an MPG file of the main title. The MPG file is the one actually played by Media Center while I keep the full DVD files around in the hope that one day there will be a solution that really lets me play a ripped DVD, menus, special features and all from my Media Center Extender. I can of course play the full DVD from any PC in the house, which is some consolation.

Little did I know when I wrote the last entry on WSUS Issues that my troubles were not yet over.

The next morning I discovered that the WSUS 3.0 admin console would not connect. When I selected Connect to Server from the context menu from the Update Services Tree, I got the Connect to Server dialog into which I enter the server name and port (8530). I then get an error dialog saying I "do not have permissions necessary to access the WSUS server. To connect to the server you must be a member of the WSUS Administrators or WSUS Reporters security groups." I added the administrator account I logged on with WSUS Administrators group but the problem remained. I uninstalled and reinstalled WSUS 3.0 and was able to connect again with the admin console, but my clients were not.

So I took the steps I had taken before to get the clients to connect (I had also previously has to manually install the updated AU client for the client PCs, but obviously did not repeat that): reset the
password for the IUSR_LEORA user used for anonymous access and making sure the integrated windows authentication box had a check in it for the directories comprising the WSUS Administration web site in IIS. Now the clients were connecting (as I was seeing from the still running WSUS 3.0 admin console), so I closed the admin console and tried opening it again. The problem described in the initial paragraph was back!

I tried many things over the next few days, left messages is the WSUS newsgroup, posted on www.wsus.info, but received no help.

Finally I figured it out. The problem lay in part of the italicized text above. I went into Internet Information Server (IIS), the WSUS Administration site, the APIRemoting30 subdirectory, and unchecked "allow anonymous access" in the Directory Security tab for that directory. The console worked (hopefully flawlessly!). A quick check revealed that the clients were still able to connect

I am no expert on IIS, but I believe I now understand that by enabling anonymous access to that directory, which is used by the WSUS Admin console, I had prevented the admin console from connecting with high security credentials that those assigned the anonymous accessors. So when the console connected, it was given only guest privileges which weren't enough to do anything and generated the errors I described above. This theory seems to be bourne out by KB 324274.

I've certainly learned something new about IIS, and makes me wish there was some sort of Small Business Server basic theory site to visit to understand things like this.

I wonder if Home Server will be completely devoid of these issues.

Chris Lanier asks whether there is really value that would be worth the complication to add this feature to Media Center.

I think not. I never used it when I had it on a TV either. It was kind of cool to see, but never used in practice. I suspect that a combination of the following substantially diminishes the need for PIP for most people: the ability to record multiple shows simultaneously on a DVR; multiple TVs in the home; and Vistas' Sports Lounge.

No sooner did I write the relatively positive blog post about a few remaining irritations on our network, than I discovered a big problem: Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) was not updating the PCs on the network. From reviewing application event logs on SBS, I discovered that the problem started when I installed WSUS 3.0 (following the instructions for installation on SBS 2003 R2!). I was getting errors due to about half a dozen web services associated with WSUS not functioning.

I spent a good many hours on this yesterday trying to diagnose the problem, without success. I even tried uninstalling WSUS 3.0 and reinstalling SBS R2 to bring back WSUS 2.0. Even that now failed to function.

Finally I discovered the solution. Not surprisingly it was related to IIS. The sole consolation here is that I was able to effect and test the fix remotely from my office during a spare moment-- kind of cool. SBS still wasn't happy with WSUS 2.0 despite applying all of the MS suggested workarounds: reinstalling R2 and changing certain WSUS settings. So I gave up on getting WSUS integrated with SBS and pushed ahead.

This evening I reinstalled WSUS 3.0 and discovered that the directory securities had been reset again, necessitating enabling Windows Integrated Authentication in all the WSUS directories again. Finally WSUS 3.0 was working, albeit not as part of the SBS management console.

In order to get WSUS 3.0 working under SBS, it appears I would have another irritating series of installs and uninstalls if I were to try to get WSUS 3.0 to work from the SBS Management console. This is my second long bout of problems with WSUS (the prior bout related to a group policy setting that affected WMI security!). Given this history, I've decided that continuing to access WSUS natively probably makes more sense for me than trying to integrate WSUS 3.0 back into SBS-- to get some rather nebulous advantages.

In February, I laid out our ambitious plans for remaking our home network for Vista. With my new personal PC from Velocity Micro arriving a few weeks ago, the hardware upgrades were complete. Now that I have just sold and shipped my old person PC, I am able to sit back and take stock of what we have accomplished over the last few months:

• All the PCs in the house now run Vista and are connected to Small Business Server 2003.
• Five of the seven PCs in the house are new since November 2006.
• We are running Vista Media Center with dual cable card tuners and dual ATSC tuners.
• We are now running a network multifunction printer.

Despite all the new hardware (or perhaps because of it, there are a few nagging problems):

• The HP laptops have no sound when returning from sleep mode in Vista.
• My personal PC can't use a USB mouse anymore and the card reader drives no longer function. [Update 5/27/07: the card reader now works.]
• This past week the Media Center PC's Cablecard tuners stopped functioning, requiring them to be reinitialized and the channel list to be re-edited. Every few days or so, the CableCard tuner will fail to detect a signal and fail to record a show.
• Vista Media Center does not do a good job allowing Extenders to use the Music Library. The library is not easily (if at all) updated to reflect new additions, and many functions are still slow.
• The last I checked, Transcode 360 did not work properly with my Vista Media Center setup-- for reasons perhaps related to other aspects of our network setup.
• J River Media Center's design makes it difficult to elegantly transfer podcasts to my PocketPC-- in order to avoid duplicate podcasts, I have to uncheck a setting each time I run it from a client PC. (Windows Media Player's smartlist functionality is too limited to even attempt this.) [Update 5/27/07: J River has promised to fix this issue in the next build.]
• J River's Media Center doesn't handle the BloggingHeads.tv audio RSS feed correctly. [Update 5/27/07: J River fixed this issue.]

There are probably be a few others I am forgetting, and of course many things are done well: the ability to have centrally located media and to work efficiently from any PC around the house thanks to Small Business Server.

Simple: the Xbox 360 is priced at an artificially low level to attract buyers and the Microsoft makes money back by charging licensing fees to third parties that make games for the 360. Those licensing fees are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices for 360 games than PC games.

This is similar to the model that cell service providers use in subsidizing phone sales. They sell the phones at an artificially low price and then charge more for monthly service, which they bind the user to by locking the phone and requiring a service contract.

This is also like a loan from MS to the 360 buyer, to pay for part of the initial console price. That loan is the repaid over the course of the console's life in the form of higher sales prices for games. The need for these licensing fees explains one of the big reasons MS doesn't want homebrew games running on the 360-- as these involve no licensing fee being paid to MS. This is also the reason that MS charges $100/year for the Xbox creators club that allows people to run XNA software made by other users on their 360. The annual charge makes up for a lack of fees for those games.

Why this model exists is a more complicated question, but that it exists is pretty uncontroversial.

SO WHY THEM DOES SHANE KIM GIVE THE FOLLOWING ANSWER WHEN ASKED ABOUT THE PRICE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SHADOWRUN ON THE PC AND 360?!!:

The $59.99 for Xbox 360 and $49.99 for Windows Vista price points are our standard pricing for each platform. This pricing structure is not uncommon in the multiplayer-only first-person shooter genre, as numerous titles have seen success at this price point and gaming model. I think it’s premature to speak to pricing for all future projects, but as of now this is our pricing structure for our marquee titles like Shadowrun. Additionally, MGS has the same development costs as other developers and publishers out there. One advantage other publishers have that we do not is that they can leverage their marketing and development costs over all platforms, while we are focused on Windows and Xbox 360 as a first party publisher.

How incredibly obfuscatory! Why not just explain the how the business model for consoles currently works?

Deb Shindler, editor of WXPNews alludes to complaints about Microsoft's reliance on "lawyers" in the most recent issue:

Lawyers. Too many of them. I recently read a blog post by an anonymous Microsoft employee that mentioned how the lawyers tie the hands of the rest of the employees. You can't say anything in public without "running it by the lawyers." You can't publish anything, including help for software problems, without the approval of the legal department. The focus can't be on making the best products when it has to be on avoiding litigation. The reason for this is obvious and hearkens back to number 1. When a company becomes so big and successful, it becomes a target for lawsuits. Many of them are unfounded, but it still takes time to defend against them, so the attorneys become the de facto final decision makers. That doesn't make for a good environment for employees or customers.

I don't doubt that Microsoft might overly involve lawyers, but I am inclined to lay a fair amount of the blame for this on the legal system they inhabit and those that want to use it to profit at the company's expense.

Remember this is a company that was compelled to settle an antitrust case against it by the U.S. Justice department for competing in ways found to be unfair. At the time this was a fairly novel application of antitrust law. They were criticized at the time for doing things that "no lawyer" would have allowed them to do.

Similarly, as a deep pocketed technology company they are a target for patent trolls and have suffered from billions of dollars in adverse judgments.

In my world Microsoft wouldn't need all these lawyers either, but it is hard to find fault with Microsoft for trying to play by the rules that actually exist.

There is a pretty good discussion of some of the disappointing aspects of the implementation of Live (the PC version of Xbox Live) for PCs at ExtremeTech. There was a similar discussion on the 1UpYours podcast a few weeks back.

The fundamental problem is that Microsoft plans to charge PC gamers $50 for services that have been free in PC games for years. Not all PC games, but many of them.  Personally, as an Xbox Live Gold subscriber I would get Live for the PC for free, but I fear that this approach will inhibit the growth of what would be a nice service for PC games and one that would be strategically helpful for Microsoft in the console wars.

I have no objection to MS charging, but instead of charging gamers, why doesn't MS charge developers instead. The fees could be based on the technologies they used and the number of players actually using the service. Or alternatively, MS could still charge PC something, just much less than $50 per year so that subscribing became a no-brainer decision.

Gamers benefit from Xbox Live by having cross-platform features (like achievements) and developers benefit because they get access to nice code libraries for implementing online features. Gamers also are likely to benefit from Live making it easier for developers to implement features like voice chat within games.

In short, the Live system itself seems like a great idea, it would be a shame to see its adoption retarded by a poor pricing scheme.

ITWeek has an excellent article by the same name.

As I alluded in the last post, the biggest hitch in the setup of the new PC has been the transfer of about 300GB of files. These are comprised mainly of videos, applications and games. Most of the games and applications will need to be reinstalled when I use the again, but I like keeping the files around. The files remind me that I have a copy of the application and I hope (perhaps wishful thinking) they will prove useful if I need to reinstall.

I first tried to use the Windows Easy Transfer Companion, hoping that that would avoid the need for reinstalling a number of applications. Buy I discovered that only works for a transfer from a Windows XP machine to a Vista machine and I was transferring files between Vista machines. I trust this is something that will be addressed by the time the product gets out of beta.

In the past I have just moved the actual hard drives I wanted to transfer to the new machine and copied all the files over, then removed the old hard drives after the files had been transferred. This time I chose not to do this for several reasons: (i) the new PC is set up to use SATA drives and the old PC has IDE drives; I did not know if it would be possible to use them in combination; (ii) I already had a switch in my office and figured it would be easy just to lug both PCs into the network and transfer files between them that way; (iii) I did not want to bother with having a PC with and open case sitting on my floor while I swapped drives in and out to transfer files.

The first thing I tried was Windows Easy Transfer to move all the files with the suggested Easy Transfer Cable. I left that running over night, only to discover that there was a small blinking icon with a line through it on one of the Windows East Transfer windows and very few files had actually been transferred. It was quite annoying that there was no better indication of what the error was so that I could address it.

Without any confidence I could avoid this error if I tried again, I moved on to just a drag and drop of files from shared folders on the old PC to the new PC. Here I ran into issues with slow Vista file transfers that were eventually resolved by a combination of actions. These are neatly summarized here, although I culled the information from a variety of other sources.

Then I ran into a series of annoyances seemingly inherent in using Explorer for mass files transfers. So I finally ended up using RoboCopy for most of the transfers. Using RoboCopy, total time to transfer the 300GB of files was probably about 18 hours.

Then immediately after the files transferred I Windows Easy Transfer to move all of my settings to the new PC. Without many files to copy that was relatively quick and smooth.

Although I did discover after that that USB mice would no longer work with my PC, a call to Velocity Micro resulted in the suggestion to try a repair of Vista from the original DVD (which I think is probably the correct approach as I had run SFC which had revealed corruption that it could not fix). Unfortunately, I soon discovered that my DVD drive wasn't functioning, so I await a replacement part and hope that it is a drive issue and not a motherboard issue.

Overall thought: Microsoft and hardware vendors have to do a better job of making it easy for people to migrate from one PC to another. The ability to easily do this is bound to lead to more PC sales. I know I hold onto machines for longer than I otherwise would just to avoid the hassle of migration. I suspect Microsoft realizes this, which is the reason for its purchase of Aloha Bob (which it is turning into the Easy Transfer Companion)-- but obviously far more needs to be done and for its own good, it should be a higher priority.

Of course changing how applications are installed might help this too, but that's a longer discussion.