I had bought a couple of 250GB hard disk drives several months back, but I finally got around to installing them earlier tonight in the Windows Media Center system, which now has almost 1TB of disk space. Yes, that’s one TERAbyte – wow, that would’ve been unfathomable for a home computer only a few years ago!

1. Anyway, I need the additional space for two reasons:I now record all TV shows in “Best” mode in order to take maximum advantage of playing them back on my new LCD TV.
2. I’m starting to take more and more home videos using my PowerShot SD450, which can take up to 10 minutes worth of pretty good quality video with the 1GB SD Card that it has. I love the fact that the video files are in AVI format, so I can transfer them from the SD Card to the Media Center system without having to do any time consuming format conversions.

   A bunch of Media Center enthusiasts at Microsoft have recently posted pictures of their systems at http://www.flickr.com/groups/mediacenter. I just posted one of mine there, which isn't as impressive as the others, but I just don't have the dough to spend for a mega setup. The display for my primary Media Center system is a 15 year old 32" Sony Trinitron TV that I bought while in college! I continue to be amazed that this TV still works so well and has never needed any repairs. I will eventually replace this with a 42" or 50" plasma display when the prices drop below $2000, which I'd expect will occur in about 3 years. I may do it sooner, but I just don't have enough free time to watch that much TV to make it worthwhile.

   I just finished converting my very first "Recorded TV" video from Media Center's DVR-MS format to WMV, and the difference in file sizes is about 3.5:1 even though the audio/visual quality sounds/appears to be the same. Now I can watch recorded TV videos on any of my computers in the house or while I'm on the plane! And I can even convert the videos to DVD Video format, burn them to a DVD disc, and watch them on a standard DVD player.

   For DVR-MS editing, I used DVREdit, and for converting DVR-MS format to WMV, I used DVD2WMV, both of which can be found at The Green Button's Downloads area.

   Well, my new Media Center has been working overtime during the past week as I ripped the remaining 50 or so CDs in my collection. I now have almost 40GB of music in WMA format!

   My wife is starting to get used to the system, but she still doesn't like having to use two remotes (1 for the TV, the other for Media Center). So, I will probably get the Harmony programmable remote pretty soon. Besides, I need an extra remote anyway since I just setup another Media Center system in our master bedroom (see pic below), which will be very convenient for my wife to use (primarily for background music) when taking care of (i.e. feeding) our new baby, who is due in less than 2 weeks (on Jan. 20th).

   I also just received my order of 100 blank DVDs from TapeandMedia, which I highly recommend for their low prices and prompt delivery. Also, I bought the Verbatim brand DVDs because I had heard that they're relatively more reliable than those of lesser known brands. And I've already gone through 20 DVDs without any problems. I just love how I can put over 4GB of data on each disc! My DVD-RW drive (an NEC ND-3450A OEM'd by Dell) actually supports Dual-Layer DVDs, which can hold over 8GB of data, but it's too bad that DL discs are still so expensive compared to standard DVD discs.

   Oh, one last thing, I had to upgrade Nero 5.5 to 6.6 in order to use NEC ND-3450A DVD-RW drive. For some reason, 5.5 didn't recognize the drive as a "recorder" even though it sees other DVD-RW drives (on my other machines) just fine. Fortunately, Nero 6.6 works and has a ton of new features that take specific advantage of DVDs.

   After spending the past few nights transferring about a dozen 60 to 90 minute MiniDV tapes to my Windows Media Center system, I realize that I need to do two things:

1. Instead of getting a dual turner video capture card, I should've gotten two separate cards instead because the dual turner card supports either composite or S-Video on one turner and RF (coaxil) on the other. The problem for me is that I use the S-Video port for my DirecTV receiver, and my MiniDV camcorder can only output to either S-Video or composite, so either way, when I do my camcorder video transfers, I need to disconnect the DirecTV feed, which means that I can't record in the background. Sure, I can use the RF port, but c'mon, the video qualify sucks compared to S-Video.
2. I really need to figure out a much faster way to transfer my home videos to the Media Center system than simply playing them back and recording/capturing with Movie Maker. I know that I can do something with the Firewire interface, but I haven't had time to figure out how to do it or find the (Sony i-Link) cable for the camcorder.

   Anyway, now that I have a bunch of home videos in WMV format (which Movie Maker defaults to, and it seems to be very good in both compression and video quality), I will start parsing them and creating clips. This is getting really fun!

   It's been 6 or 7 years since I first read Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital and looked forward to the day when I can become totally digital in terms of my pictures, home videos, CDs, DVDs, etc. With the release of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 just a few months ago and with a deeply discounted deal for a Dell Dimension 8400 PC (check out GotApex for the latest deals) along with an employee discount for a Hauppage dual tuner card, I figured that I can finally get what I need at a very reasonably price (about $1200) to start digitizing everything in my (and my family's) life.

   So, after spending a few long nights tweaking the system, I now have a Windows Media Center system that:

1. Is easy enough for my wife to use (via a remote control), which is the most important criteria because it now sits between the DirecTV receiver and the TV, and when my wife wants to watch TV (with what precious little free time she has these days), she doesn't want anything getting in the way. The system also provides Tivo-like "PVR" functionality, which my wife has been bugging me about for over a year, so this feature along would make a great Christmas present for her.
2. Enables me to rip my fairly large CD collection and to access it much more readily and in turn enjoy it much more frequently. Over half of the CDs had been in moving boxes for 3-4 years!
3. Enables me to rip my DVD collection, so the kids can more readily watch their favorite movies and I won't have to worry about DVDs getting scratched anymore. We don't let the kids watch TV very often (i.e. absolutely no TV during the school week), so when we have our "Family TV time," it really helps to be able to find and play a DVD movie with just a few clicks of the remote control.
4. Stores all of our digital pictures and provides a very easy and pleasant way -- a slideshow with a music playlist going in the background -- to view them. I even bought another digital camera just so we can take even more digital pictures in the future, especially when Joseph and Sophia have important (school) events on the same day.
5. Enables me to transfer, edit (primarily using Movie Maker), and centrally store all of our MiniDV-based home videos. Just like my CDs, most of our home videos had been sitting in a box for a long while. Now, just like everything else above, all of the precious moments that we've captured can be easily accessible!