Building a media center, part 3

(To recap: Rather than buy a new Media Center PC, we converted an existing Windows XP computer by adding a TV tuner card and SageTV PVR software, which includes a ‘server’ and a client application that let us view TV on other networked PCs. With the PVR up and running, we tried the client application and discovered a slow and jerky connection.)

We considered the connections between the ‘server’ PC and the clients. First, we swapped out the wireless link between the client and the router with an Ethernet cable. While the app improved slightly, we still got jittery video. That left the HomePlug connection (14M bit/sec data rate) linking the server and the router.

Since our house isn’t wired for Ethernet, we replaced the HomePlug link with 802.11g — luckily we had a Linksys USB 802.11g wireless adapter handy. That move gave us a steady 54M bit/sec data rate from the server to the router.

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(To recap: Rather than buy a new Media Center PC, we converted an existing Windows XP computer by adding a TV tuner card and SageTV PVR software, which includes a ‘server’ and a client application that let us view TV on other networked PCs. With the PVR up and running, we tried the client application and discovered a slow and jerky connection.)

We considered the connections between the ‘server’ PC and the clients. First, we swapped out the wireless link between the client and the router with an Ethernet cable. While the app improved slightly, we still got jittery video. That left the HomePlug connection (14M bit/sec data rate) linking the server and the router.

Since our house isn’t wired for Ethernet, we replaced the HomePlug link with 802.11g — luckily we had a Linksys USB 802.11g wireless adapter handy. That move gave us a steady 54M bit/sec data rate from the server to the router.

The connection improved and we tried the SageTV client again (connected via Ethernet cable to our router), and successfully watched TV and our recorded programs. The quality was acceptable-to-good - a few hiccups but much better than before. Also, we had the TV turned on in the same room as our laptop and noticed a time delay of a few seconds on the client machine. We didn’t try it with a wireless client because we accidentally dropped our laptop on the ground and broke the network adapter card (there’s always something).

With the SageTV client working, our “media center” now has the ability to record TV, play recorded shows, display photos and play music on any PC on the network. But we’re not finished yet – next, we want to watch recorded shows or listen to music on our TV and stereo.

For this, we’ll try the ADS Tech Media-Link Entertainment Center , which streams multimedia content from the PC to TV and stereo. More on that next time. Now, let’s examine three lessons learned so far:

• The PC you use as the media center should connect to your router directly via wired Ethernet.  You can also use 802.11g, but that leaves you open to interference problems.
• A HomePlug connection might be fine for Internet surfing, but it’s too slow for transferring video across the home network (especially large video files). However, the HomePlugAV spec is expected to be ratified in June, making way for HomePlugAV gear with a 200M bit/sec data rate (about 90M bit/sec actual throughput) expected by the fall.
• Speaking of large files, if you plan to record a lot of shows, invest in more storage. We quickly maxed out our “media center” PC’s available 50G bytes, leaving us little room for our application data. We transferred some content to a network-attached storage device (160G bytes, records about 80 hours), but a USB hard drive would do the trick, too. Either way, we recommend at least 80G to 160G bytes so you wouldn't have to pick and choose which shows to save, and still have room for your music, photos and backups.

Read more about home networks in Network World's Home Networks section.