The Ramblings of Ken

The release date for Windows 10 has been announced. It is coming on July 29, 2015. The upgrade will be free for consumers that are running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. I am not going to upgrade.

This little icon appeared in my system tray yesterday:

If you look back through my previous posts you can easily see that I am a big Windows Media Center fan. Microsoft will not be including Windows Media Center in Windows 10.

From https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-specifications:

If you have Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows 8 Pro with Media Center, or Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center and you install Windows 10, Windows Media Center will be removed.

I have grown quite fond of Windows Media Center ever since I abandoned the Comcast X1 platform. It has been absolutely flawless as a DVR platform for me. With the X1 DVR I was missing recordings of my favorite sports teams for no apparent reason. Windows Media Center has not missed a single recording for me.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't upgrade to Windows 10. However, if you are a Windows Media Center fan, stay far, far away.

It's time that I post what I've been up to lately.

This past semester I took a Python and Powershell class. In all honesty, we didn't do too much with Powershell. We only spent about three weeks on it compared to nine weeks on Python. What I didn't expect from this class is that it would cause me to completely dive in to Python.

We spent two weeks on Python web frameworks and focused specifically on Django. Django has really hooked me. Once you learn how it works and learn a little Python, it is so simple to get a dynamic, powerful web page running in no time.

I think my boss might be annoyed with how much I have dived in to Django. I have now created three web pages on our intranet that have tools I have seen a need for. Two of them I created from scratch, another one is an adaptation of Django-helpdesk for our environment.

For years I have been telling myself that I am not a developer. Well, I just might have some developer blood in me. I'm going to continue learning Python and Django and see what else I can do with it. If you have any coding background at all, I highly recommend that you go through the Django tutorial. It is one of the best tutorials that I have ever been through.

Now, I'm off to create another Django powered site...

I need to post a follow up from my post almost a year ago about Windows Media Center.

In August my family resubscribed to cable. We have a college football addiction that cannot be cured with over the air TV. We got the Comcast X1 system on a promotion for two years. I was mostly satisfied with the service, but there were a few bugs with setting recordings and then having them not record. I also wasn't too happy with the picture quality on some channels. It sure seemed to become pixelated at times.

Even after getting cable, I was still using Windows Media Center to record some of the over the air programs that we enjoy. I then discovered software that plugs in to Windows Media Center to provide a web interface to stream your recorded shows and live TV over the internet. It was time to find a way to make this work with my cable!

I ordered the Silicondust HDHomeRun PRIME in December. It was a little bit of a pain to setup because you have to go to your cable provider and get a CableCARD to insert into the device. You'd think that they could activate the card at the office and then you just take it home and put it in and be off and running. The process is not that simple. You have to call in after you have the card installed and have the provider "pair" the card to the device that it is installed in. I called in and found someone who could do the pairing process. After about 30 minutes I was getting my cable channels on my Windows Media Center.

What a sight it was to see ESPN and all of the other premium cable channels on my Windows Media Center guide.

I have been blown away by the possibilities that the HDHomeRun PRIME has unlocked for me. Earlier in this post, I referred to plug-ins that can provide a web interface for streaming your content. I just recently moved from Remote Potato to Media Browser 3. These are both free plug-ins that integrate with Windows Media Center. I discovered Remote Potato first and used it for awhile to be able to remotely schedule programs to record when I am away from home and also to stream recorded content. However, it never really worked for live TV. While I was searching for a way to fix live TV on Remote Potato I discovered Media Browser 3. After installing the server program and the ServerWMC plug-in for Media Browser, live TV was streaming flawlessly in my browser!

For anyone who understands port forwarding and dynamic DNS, it is a really simple process to get all of this running over the internet. All of this can be done for the price of $10 for Windows Media Center on Windows 8 (it is free on Windows 7 Home Premium or above) and for about $100 for the HDHomeRun PRIME. Coincidentally, as I write this post, the HDHomeRun PRIME is $78 on Newegg.

If you desire to take your home entertainment and especially your recorded programs on the go with you, I highly recommend this setup with Windows Media Center and the HDHomeRun PRIME.