You've read the sub-line to my blog, and this is a rare occasion that I feel like typing it all out.
For your sanity, I'll keep them to topic for each section. Bare with me as there my a few to swim thru.
Ladies and gents, what you are viewing here is my new 'addiction'. I am completely consumed with this concept of a 'connected lifestyle', screw 'connected home', I'm way past that.
Since we moved in to our new house I've been looking for a pet project. You see, I don't have many skills. If I can't do it outside of the computer, I'm pretty much screwed. I can barely keep the oil changed in my own car, that's how bad it was. I was the kid standing next to dad on a Saturday morning while he worked on cars, however, I was standing there pouting and kicking the dirt cause I was pissed off and wanted to be inside 'gaming'. Not that I am any good at gaming having spent countless hours playing as a child, it's just something that I've grown to love doing with my spare time.
I had an unacceptable absence in the 90's due to sex, drugs and rock and roll, but that's a story for another time.
So, back to the present. An opportunity presented itself during the summer where I was able to get a head start on my project.
What I wanted to do was start testing out some of these theories of connecting everything around me. Example, from the TV I wanted to be able to look at the pictures on my computer, some how, some way. Easy to start with.
At the point that I'm starting I've already done a little homework, so I know what I'm dealing with, and the roadblocks/stumbling blocks to come.
My dad get's me started with the computer system. Let me rephrase that, I saw this system my dad had started to put together and I got bug-eyed over it and guilted him in to letting me buy it off of him at a rock bottom price. I'll break down the system for you in another post.
The purpose that I was looking at for the PC was to have it serve as the main hub for the home, naturally.
I have a big screen TV in the living room which serves the whole family. We have family over and throw 'lil shindigs here and there and I wanted to be able to provide entertainment in the room instead of just having the TV set on in the background.
Windows Media Center in Vista Ultimate was my fix for this.
I already had the 360 tied to the TV, and going over the top with my gaming habits in this instance showed an added bonus to my lovely wife.
The wife has to be key to all of your decisions with you going down this dreaded path. There is some 'incurred' expenses and with that comes monthly charges for all of the 'add-on's'. You can see where this road can lead I trust.
In my case, as is pretty much the case all of the time here, my wife gave me some leeway with the 'experiment'. As an added bonus I got a chance to build my man cave. My own little place to escape and play.
I put the system together and topped it off with a nice Dell wide screen, HDTV of course and put another HD DirecTV box in the office. With that added touch and already having Sunday Ticket I was bound to never leave from the cave. I just need a toilet, shower and a fridge in here and I just may never leave. Just wait 'til the basement is ready to move in to.
Well, with the final touch I pretty much interrupted the 'perfect' set up. I had the Media Center fine tuned and had finally wrapped up some hefty firewall discussions with the boys from Microsoft OneCare on why their products couldn't co-exist in the same eco-system having come from the same damned company. Be assured this is a topic for it's own. I'll deal with you later.
I had set up the wife's favorite programs along with a few of my own to be recorded thru the media center for viewing downstairs, on the tv when ever she wanted, ala DVR. She dug it. But once I added the HD box to the set up I could no longer capture video thru my already unstable tv tuner card.
This is the main reason for leaving that to a different discussion. I am in search of the perfect fit for just getting back to recording SD video again. Until then, I'll hold off on that subject.
So, there I was stuck with nothing left to do until after the holidays. There's this whole 'Christmas' thing that I have to buy tons of gifts for, then I can play again.
Well, I had recently reintroduced my Sony PSP and Nintendo DS to a dusting off of the portables and a good re-powering of their juices so they could be played again.
This is when I picked up on something really cool. I could share my media center content with my PSP as well. Now were talking.
For another $20 for a 2GB memory stick (thank you EBay) for the PSP and $16.95 for my Sony Media Manager software I was able to sync up and have my media content on the go, recorded TV included. Bonus.
I spent a few hours the other night loading up the PSP with some of my content and even downloaded some stuff from the new Sony Store Online, included in the download onslaught was SOCOM Tactical Strike. After it was all said and done I still had about 400mb left. I was impressed. It had compressed down all of the video and fit all perfectly.
Not even realizing, there was another pleasant surprise. I got in the car the next morning and realized that I could plug the jack from my Sirius radio in to the PSP and enjoy some podcasts I needed to catch up on. I'm just glad that after having this for almost 2 years now, I have finally found a great use for it. Oh yeah, and it plays some games too.
I'm definitely behind the times when it comes to this stuff, but it was fun learning about all of it now.
No comments:
Post a Comment