Replies

Well I just confirmed that my computer will also wake from hibernate to record – proving once again that computers are a complete mystery to me. The only thing I will say is that waking up from hibernate takes a lot longer than the instant wakeup from sleep mode. I missed the first minute of the show I was recording.

You can configure WMC to start recording one minute before the scheduled program start time (and stop one minute after the finish time) if you wish but I figure the first minute of a program isn’t worth much anyway.

I have been looking for an answer to this problem as well. My system cost over $1000 and I have a clock from the Dollar Store that keeps better time.

In particular
Now you can set the tuner priority by moving your prefered tuner up or down the list.

Thanks. I was unaware that the priority of the tuners could be altered.

As a matter of interest, I have a dual monitor setup and one of the reasons I got a tuner in the first place was to be able to watch TV while I work. I recently purchased a device from Patriot that they call the “Box Office”. I haven’t had time to set it up yet but it is approximately like an extender with a disk drive. I should be able to send ‘stuff’ to the disk drive in the Box Office and then play/watch/listen to it at my main TV/Stereo. It cost around CN$115 without a drive. I happened to have an 80 Gb drive laying around from when I upgraded my laptop to a larger drive.

I added a NAS storage device to my home network with the D-Link DNS-323 two bay enclosure ( http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=509 ). It runs around $100 and you can put any two 3.5 inch SATA drives in it that you wish. I have two 750 Gb drives in mine that were purchased separately and at different times. The device allows the drives to spin down normally and spin up on demand. They are accessable from anywhere on the network as network drive(s) and even anywhere on the Internet since it has a built in FTP Server capability. It also has a USB Printer port and Print Server capability so it can make your printer available to your network as a network printer without the need for any special network capability in your printer and without the need for any system to be ‘always on’.

Most other NAS enclosures have the capability of handling more than two drives and are typically much more expensive, They probably also offer more features such as LAN speeds of 10/100/1000 (vs 10/100 in the DNS-323) as well as things like a http Server function, hot swappable bays, etc.

Of course, you could do all this with any old PC but that involves a rather large box that may be hot and noisy. It also means maintaining and supporting the additional OS along with its regular updates, patches and AV protection. One advantage of doing the job with an old PC is that it will likely be quite happy to accept PATA drives but probably not too happy about SATA drives.

If I were you, I would look to put your SATA drives in a NAS enclosure and the PATA drives in an old system if they are worthwhile using. You may be able to find an ‘External Drive’ enclosure that will accept PATA drives (they are readily available for SATA drives) but they are not a versitile and useful as NAS enclosures. They usually accept only a single drive each and are typically designed to be portable.

I replaced my C: drive (Hitachi 500Gb) with a Western Digital Caviar Black 1000Gb yesterday. Both internal disks now run at, or just under 50C. I would be happier if they were cooler still but I can’t think of any way to add air flow over the drives.

The process was simple. Stuck the new drive into my system (that was the hardest part), cloned the C: drive to the new drive using Acronis True Image and finally changed the SATA cable from the old drive to the new one and reboot. I will keep the old drive around for a while, unchanged, in case the new one should decide to die in its infancy. After that, I will try reformatting and perhaps putting it into an external enclosure for a off-line backup drive.

BTW, the WD Caviar Black is noticeably faster than the Hitachi without being noisy or hot. My Windows Experience Index went up from 5.7 to 5.9 because of the new drive with the drive being the limiting factor on my score.

Poking in WMC with two TV Tuners I get this

http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk297/Oldbloke49/Scratch/13-03-20107-01-38PM.jpg

So WMC in Win 7 is seeing two tuner cards. Alas, we have had extreme winds in the last few days and I now have no signal ferom my TV aerial. So I can’t keep trying to understand it all

Regards
Doug

I misunderstood your question. Yes, if I go through the manual Setup, I see my two tuners (in my case, they are analog tuners since I select Cable as my signal source). I can elect to use either tuner or both. I have selected both during this setup. Beyond that, I have no control over which of the two tuners are used at any given moment to view or record a program, nor can I tell which is in use.

During the Setup, I also see two additional tuners that WMC says are incompatible with the type of TV signal I am using (analog cable). If I ask for additional information, it tells me the additional tuner names and they are both BDA (digital) tuners such as the ones you are using. These BDA (digital) tuners are only compatible with clear digital signals such as you get off-air. In North America, most cable companies are required to carry certain local “off-air” stations as part of their “Basic” cable package. Since these local stations are now broadcasting in digital (in the US, not in Canada) and the ones in Canada that broadcast in analog but have their signals converted to digital by the cable companies (to be delivered to Digital Cable Subscribers), the cable companies are required to carry these signals as clear digital not requiring a digital decoder for viewing. They would (for example) be viewable by any standard digital TV set either off the air or within a “Basic” digital cable service. Cable companies don’t make a point of telling customers that.

Since most digital cable subscribers select something more than the Basic service, they require a box that decodes the signal. In some cases, the actual TV may be equipped with a card slot into which the cable company can insert a card that performs the function of the set top box.

Because if this requirement for a decoder box in order to subscribe to digital cable, I have elected to stay with analog cable service. The downside is that I cannot get any HD broadcasts nor can I get some of the speciality services such movies-on-demand, instant replay, time shifting, PVR, etc. But I get most of those with the facilities of WMC and WMC doesn’t cost anything. Eventually, the cable companies will discontinue their analog service and I will be screwed.

I can confirm that WMC does NOT allow you to choose which tuner to use – at least, I have never been able to find a way to do so and I have never been able to even find a way to tell which tuner is in use at any given time. I guess I could yank the USB dongle and then by default it would have to use the other one.

And, the answer is. Yes!

A scheduled program record in Windows Media Center will wake the system from Hibernation, record the program and return to Hibernation.

I must add that Acronis True Image backup application will not wake the system in order to do a scheduled backup. Bummer!

Are you sure your computer can be woken up from Hibernation to record? I didn’t think anything could wake a computer from Hibernation except for a push of the power button. My understanding always was that Hibernation mode meant the computer was off but when turned back on would “boot” from the hiberfil.sys file. Are you sure you don’t mean that your computer can be woken from Sleep mode or Hybrid Sleep mode? That’s the way I’ve always done it and the way I understood the process – I was just interested to know if I had misunderstood something.

Rob

It is not a feature I use very often but I will schedule a program to record during the night tonight and I will be able to say with certainty by tomorrow morning. My recollection at this time is that I was very surprised that it does work. I recall setting the system to record a Soap for my wife when we went away for a few days. I can’t recall if she actually watched it on our return. I am certain I would not have left the system fully running while away. I do know that my system was greatly troubled by insomnia until I disabled the facility “Wake on LAN” which allows a “Magic” packet to remotely wake a Hibernating system.

I just reviewed my Power Settings and I have the Power button set to cause the system to enter Hibernation. I have the option to Sleep After set to Never. Perhaps most important and critical is that I have the option to Allow Wake Timers set to Enabled.

I have Win 7 32 bit and I also have four tuners in my system. The four tuners are in the form of two tuners in a Hauppauge Win TV 1800 internal card, which provides one analog tuner and one digital tuner. The other two tuners are in a Hauppauge Win TV 950 USB dongle. It also has one analog and one digital tuner.

Both of these devices came with software for selecting and recording TV programs etc. The internal card also includes (in the version I have) a remote control for the purpose of controlling Windows Media Center. Other versions of this card include a remote that controls the Hauppauge software. I never use the Hauppauge software except for the drivers. I use the WMC which will access and control the tuners through the Hauppauge drivers.

Both of these Hauppauge devices have one digital and one analog turner each. The digital tuners are ONLY capable of tuning the un-encrypted ‘free’ digital signals that are broadcast over the air as ‘free’ commercial TV and are sometimes carried on digital cable networks as clear digital signals. In North America, I believe this type of signal is called ‘clear QAM’.

In my own case, I have no access to digital signals since I am in Canada and do not subscribe to digital cable. I subscribe to analog cable. The analog cable signal is fed directly to both the internal card and the USB dongle. I start up WMC and it is able to access both analog tuners and access both simultaneously. I can watch one channel while recording another or record two channels simultaneously. I can even watch a recorded program while recording two others.

All this is done through WMC which also provides (free) a on-screen program guide that extends out about two weeks and will allow scheduled program or series recording (PVR functionality). The scheduled recording will even wake the system from Hibernation to accomplish the recording then return to Hibernation. In theory, the programming and recorded programs can be streamed to a separate TV set through an ‘Extender’ but I haven’t done that.

I also have all my photos, videos and recorded music on my PC and all is accessible through WMC using either a keyboard/mouse or the Hauppauge remote. Again all could be streamed to a TV set or Stereo via an extender but I don’t have the extender. An extender would require that I install a dual channel Wireless N router (probably).

Pro-active measures to stop the illegal use of facilities, including individual’s PCs, is a laudable effort. Taking measures to stop spam is not. Spam may be repugnant but it is not illegal. One can make the argument that it is a valid form of business enterprise. If the terms of service that the spammer enters into with his service provider allows spam, then it is safe to assume the spammer has paid for the right to send spam. Unless and until spam becomes illegal, nobody has the right to impose a ban because they find it repugnant. It is analogous to the individuals right to use the Post Office to send junk mail provided they pay the postage.

As for the “free” security measures suggested, I suggest they are only appropriate for individuals who have the knowledge and capability to understand how to configure and use them along with a host of other administrative practises that are part of running a sound and safe system. Such capable individuals are likely the type who appreciate how much work is involved and are likely to elect to spend $20 on a comprehensive commercial security package that does everything pretty well automatically in a seamless integrated package. For the huge number of not-so-capable individuals, the appropriate recommendation is to spend $20 for a comprehensive commercial security package that does everything pretty well automatically in a seamless integrated package.

It would seem my efforts today to find out about SMART is timely. The utility (Crystal Disk Info) indicates the “Relocated Sector Count” parameter on my C: drive is right on the threshold. In addition, the drive is continually operating at, or near, a critical temperature of 60C. It is a Hatachi 500 Mb drive that came with the system. The Utility indicates there is 14,072 hours on the drive and 1,482 Power On Counts. I’m vot sure what the life expectancy of a drive is.

I think I will free up the second internal drive and clone the C: to it and start using it as the C:

As far as I could tell before today, the drive was perfectly happy and working flawlessly. Perhaps it still is but an ounce of prevention and all that…..

While searching the web for additional info on this subject, I found the following site.
http://crystalmark.info/?lang=en

They offer a free utility (CrystalDiskInfo) that monitors the SMART info and appears to do everything I want. I have downloaded and installed and it performs as they indicate. I still need to gather more info on how to interpret the results but all the results are there for the internal drives. It won’t touch the NAS drives.

I don’t quite understand why SpeedFan can’t see this data when these people seem to have no trouble.

I will check the BIOS again to see if I am missing something. It would be nice if this data were include all in one place.

I have looked through the BIOS and can find nothing related to SMART technology so I am still looking for ways to read the data. If anyone knows for certain that it must be implemented in the BIOS and that I perhaps need a BIOS upgrade, I would appreciate known that. I don’t want to try updating the BIOS unless really necessary.

I haven’t actually looked for it in the BIOS but I will give it a look.