Windows Media Center has supported high-definition ATSC for a few years now, but never officially in Canada.  In case you don’t already know, you can get crystal-clear high definition video with dolby digital sound in most major Canadian cities just by plugging in an antenna. Some enterprising users figured out how to force Media Center 2005 to receive ATSC in Canada, but that method no longer works in Vista.  Below is a new method that works in MCE 2005 and Vista Media Center.

Prerequisites:

• You will need a decent ATSC tuner for your PC.  I am personally using a DVico Fusion5 USB, and an ADS InstantHDTV.  Both of these cards work well with Vista.  While I haven’t tested myself, several people recommend that you stay away from the ATI HDTV Wonder.
• You should get a good quality UHF antenna.  In most cases I’ve read about it comes down to a Channel Master 4221 or Channel Master 4228 depending on your distance from the transmitters.  Consult this handy chart (PDF) to select the right antenna for your area.  I personally have a 4221 in my attic which was both easy to do and very neighbour-friendly.
• Because I know someone will ask, I can’t vouch for any particular vendor but I do know that Sensuz is a canadian supplier who sells the tuners and the antennas and I personally bought my equipment via US vendors on eBay.

Step 1 - Configure MCE pretending that you are in the United States

Microsoft has at this point only enabled ATSC tuners for consumers in the United States.  Lucky for us, it’s pretty easy to pretend that you are an American in Media Center and get it working.

• Navigate to Tasks, Settings, TV, Setup TV signal
• When asked if Canada is the correct region for setup, select no and choose a different region.
• Select United States as your region.
  
• Continue with automatic setup, Media Center should recognize your ATSC tuners automatically.  Configure all of your tuners as if you lived in the United States.
• When you reach the guide setup area choose any zip code, I used 14201 for Buffalo.  Continue setup process as if you lived in Buffalo, actual provider you select for cable or satellite is irrelevent as we’ll be overriding that later anyways.
  
• Once you reach the end of the setup, Media Center will test signal strength for the digital stations that it thinks you should be able to receive.  Ignore this section, it will get overwritten later anyways.
  
• Finish setup, and test to make sure that Media Center is at least working (it should be).

Step 2 - Copy the ATSC tuner settings from the registry

By this point, Media Center has configured your ATSC tuners to work, and we want to make a quick copy of that configuration from the system registry to use later.  Note that playing with the registry can be dangerous, and if you’re not comfortable doing this by yourself you should call that buddy/kid/grandchild who knows about computers to help with this step.

• Start the registry editor by clicking the Vista Start button, and typing regedit followed by enter into the Start Search box.
• Navigate through the registry tree by clicking on the plus arrows on each of the following branches:  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners
• Right-click on the tree branch labeled {71985F48-1CA1-11D3-9CC8-00C04F7971E0} and select Export…
  
• Save the file on the desktop and give it a memorable name, something like us_atsc_tuning.reg

Step 3 - Configure Media Center for Canada

Now that we have the configuration that makes the ATSC tuners work copied, we want to get it working for real with the Canadian region and your actual cable or satellite provider.

Step 4 - Force the ATSC tuners back in to Media Center

Media Center should now be working in its boring old analog, low-definition glory.  Only a couple more steps to supercharge it to HDTV.

• Close Media Center
• Double-click the registry file we saved earlier on the desktop to import it back into the registry.  You will get a warning when doing this, again if you’re not comfortable editing the registry you should stop.  Otherwise select yes to insert the tuner settings for ATSC.
  
• Navigate to the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\EPG\ATSC and modify its value from “0? to “1?.
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• Restart your computer, and/or restart the Windows Media Center Receiver Service and the Windows Media Center Scheduler Service.  The scheduler may stop but not restart, as far as I can tell that is not a concern.
  

Step 5 - Manually add the ATSC channels for your area

Since ATSC isn’t supported in Canada, the Canadian guide won’t have any information about channels available in your area.  Media Center includes a settings wizard to add in missing digital channels.  At this point it should be noted that even in the US there isn’t really an ATSC guide for media center.  Instead, it tries to infer guide listings by matching the station name to one that’s in your standard analog lineup.  Bottom-line:  it’ll work just fine in Canada.

• Find a listing of the ATSC channels that are broadcasting in your area.  Unfortunately this might be easier said than done, here are some suggestions on how to go about this:
• If you live in the Toronto area, check out this web site.  Translating into MCE terminology, the Digital TV channel is what you’ll find in gray text on this page, the assigned frequency is in red text (or if there is no red text then the assigned frequency is the same as the digital tv channel).
• If you live in the Ottawa/Montreal area, check out this web site.  Translating into MCE terminology, the Digital TV channel is what you’ll find in gray text on this page, the assigned frequency is in red text (or if there is no red text then the assigned frequency is the same as the digital tv channel).
• If your tuner card came with its own software, do a scan with that software and make note of what it finds.  Without knowing the specific software you’re using, I can’t coach you on what numbers go where in MCE.
• If you have a high-definition television, do a scan with the TV and make note of what it finds.  In most cases the TV will be showing you the Digital TV Channel, which for MCE is only half of the picture.  To get the assigned frequency, use this list of Canadian OTA stations.
• Navigate to Tasks, Settings, TV, Guide, Add Missing Channels, Add DTV Channel
  
• On the first page, Media Center needs to know what channel you’re trying to add.  What it’s looking for here is the “virtual channel”, which is probably the same channel that your television shows you when watching that channel.  For the purposes of this article I’m going to walk through adding the Buffalo Fox Affiliate.  Their Digital TV Channel is 29-1.
  
• On the second page, Media Center needs to know the frequency that the channel is broadcasting on.  In the world of digital TV, this may or may not be the same as the channel you added on page one.  In the case of Fox Buffalo, the assigned frequency is channel 14.
  
• On the third page Media Center wants to know the name of the station, or more specifically the four-letter callsign of the station.  This callsign is what MCE uses to match up the guide listings with your existing guide so it’s important that it’s correct.  For Fox Buffalo, the callsign is WUTV.
  
• Add all of the channels you need for your area and then click on Done on the Add Missing Channels page.  Note that after you hit done, it will chug for quite a bit as it builds the new guide based on matching the channel names.
• Go to the guide and make sure all of the new channels are properly listed (they will be located above channel 1000).
  

Additional Notes/Tips

• Because ATSC is somewhat new, your cable provider might not always carry the local station.  For example, there is a brand new CW affiliate broadcasting in Buffalo but my local cable company doesn’t carry it.  Instead, they carry WPIX which is the CW affiliate in New York city.  So in order to get listings for that channel which are reasonably accurate I simply lied and told MCE that the name of the channel was WPIX; it matched up the listings and now I have a guide.
• Also because ATSC is somewhat new, it is not uncommon that the engineering department of your local station has something configured not quite right.  Media Center is especially finicky to these settings.  If you’re getting “No signal detected” errors when you’re certain that the channel is working fine, take a look at this article for more troubleshooting steps.
• If you want more information, feel free to post comments here of course but also be sure to check out the OTA HDTV forum and the HTPC forum over at Digital Home Canada.

Vista has gone RTM, based on this post by Jim Allchin.
I’ve been using RC2 as my primary Media Center machine for quite awhile now, and once ATI released some updated drivers the other day I can say that it’s been working very well.  Congratulations Microsoft, it’s been a fun and exciting beta process.

As I’ve mentioned before, I get a ton of usage out of my Portable Media Center.  During the week, my Media Center PC churns away recording all of my favorite television shows while I’m on the road for business.  When I come home on the weekends, I plug the PMC into the computer and it copies all of the week’s television onto the device.  Back to the airport the next week, and I can catch up on all of the goings-on of my favorite shows.  It’s a great way for me as a traveling consultant to stay in touch.
I had high hopes for Vista, especially now that it supports my fancy new 64-bit processor.  In theory, going 64-bit should really speed up the transcoding process that occurs to get all of the TV shows compressed for the small screen and onto the portable hard drive.  With the upcoming Zune player from Microsoft, it looks also like the portable media concept is very much alive and moving forward… this is gonna be great!  But I ran into problems.
One of the other things that I’ve decided to leverage in Media Center for Vista is high-definition television, which is a whole different topic in and of itself (yes, it is awesome).  It’s the combination of HDTV, Vista, and PMC that seems to have caused my problems.  When I fired up my first sync, almost all of the recordings failed to copy over to the portable media center.  All of the standard-definition shows copied over well, and a few of the high-definition recordings came over too, but the far majority of the content just sat there with an error message.  Being the good geek, I dug in and tried a bunch of different things to get the sync working (including different codecs, different transcoding engines, hopping on one foot while singing the national anthem, everything I could thing of) but was in the end unsuccessful.  Collaborating with some beta testing colleagues and with the Microsoft development team, we came to the conclusion that 1080i content was by its very nature unable to be transcoded.  Bummer.
Several weeks passed, and I’m now getting ready for another business trip today with a pretty hefty layover at Chicago OHare.  I’d sure like to be able to take some television with me, so I dug in once again.  And what do you know, I’ve found a combination that works!  It’s a workaround, but at least I can take my shows with me now and I have enough evidence to get the bug reopened on the Microsoft side and hopefully addressed in a future hotfix (it’s too late to get a fix in for RTM).  Here’s how I did it, and how you can do it too (unfortunately you’ll need a second Windows XP maching lying around):

1. On the Vista PC, share the Recorded TV folder.  This may bring up additional popups prompting you to turn on file sharing, which is normal.
2. From a Windows XP machine, navigate through the network to the share you’ve just created.  In my case the name of the Vista PC is “vista64″, so in order to get to the share I click on Start, then Run, and type in \\vista64\Recorded TV\
3. Type in the user name and password for the vista machine when prompted, then you should be able to see the list of recordings on the vista machine.  If you’re using Windows XP Pro, check off the “Remember my username and password” box so that you won’t have to type them in ever again.  If you’re using Windows XP Home or MCE, unfortunately you’ll have to type in the username and password every time you reboot your PC.
4. Launch Windows Media Player 11, and click on the little arrow below Library and select the Add to Library option.
5. Under Monitored Folders click on the Add button.
6. In the Folder box, type the full path to your recorded TV share (in my case this is \\vista64\Recorded TV) and click OK
7. Click OK again to close the add to library window.  Your Windows XP machine should now list all of the recorded tv programs from your Vista PC as part of the media library.  To see the list, click on the music notes icon in the top-left of WMP11 to change the view from music to Recorded TV.
8. Note that in order to play back and sync recorded TV on you Windows XP machine you’ll need to have a supported MPEG-2 codec on your machine.  If you have a DVD player in the XP machine and can watch DVDs, you should be all set.  You can use this utility supplied by Microsoft to check your machine for compatibility.
9. Plug your portable media center into the Windows XP machine and set up the sync as you would normally.
10. An additional tip:  make sure that your virus scanners on both the Windows XP and Windows Vista machines are set to ignore dvr-ms files or you’ll see some terrible performance hits during the entire process.

Now who knows how well all of these specs will play together, but someone forwarded me a link to a new Linksys device that includes DVD and Divx playback *and* runs as a Vista Media Center Extender.  In theory, this thing should be able to playback divx as an extender which is a feature alot of us have been asking for.  I hope this ends up being the case and not some lame “plays WMV when used as an extender, plays Divx using proprietary 1990s style UI”.  Sign me up, I’ll take two!

It’s hard to put together a title for this one that doesn’t sound bad, but really I see this as good news. ZDNet is reporting a quote from Jim Allchin, “We won’t RTM (release to manufacturing) in a week”. I’ve been testing Vista for awhile now and while RC2 is pretty good, I still experience more crashes than I think I should given how name-brand all of my components seem to be. If I’m having troubles, I can only imagine that everyone with small-name hardware will be right out of luck for usable drivers.
Vista needs a bit more time, mostly so that someone can light a fire under the driver developers’ and get some decent drivers. I for one am happy to see that they’ve put quality above arbitrary dates.

Update:  I haven’t seen this confirmed anywhere so it might be bogus.

I went downtown tonight to take part in x’06, the canadian version of the 2006 xbox meetup. They rented out the branthouse, a trendy bar in downtown toronto. There must have been just under 100 xbox 360s set up showing off upcoming games and accessories.
I spent most of my time playing with the xbox hd-dvd drive and grilling the microsoft product manager on some of the details. It looks very cool and I was excited to learn that they’re pricing it on-par with the us version, or $199 cad.
I also got a chance to play some sweet multiplayer gears of war… What a great looking game! They had two booths set up with 4 screens each all battling each other. I got chainsawed in half quite a few times, but got my own kills in too!
The evening ended with some draws where they raffled off four limited edition “gears of war” faceplates and the first hd-dvd drive to be released to a consumer.
I *really* wanted that hd-dvd drive, but luckily my buddy gary walked away with that prize. I actually walked away with one of the faceplates and got it signed by a couple of the gears of war dev team who were onsite.
Capped the evening off by visiting an old open text colleague, nicole, for dinner and a couple of beers. All in all it was a fun night!

So we’ve had Vista RC2 running for a few days now and apart from some relatively minor technical issues it seems to be the first build where I haven’t gotten any major grief from the wife.  It caught all of our weekend shows, no logic glitches in the guide, and nothing that causes me to sleep on the couch.  That’s something I can’t say about previous builds.  This is all good.
I’ve still got the following issues that are in my opinion big ones, but with enough of a workaround that I can keep them from overly affecting the WAF.  Those include, for the benefit of others who might be experiencing the same issues:

• I can’t turn on mirror mode using the built-in ATI x800 drivers.  I could in earlier builds, but can’t now and there’s no UI to toggle mirror mode available anywhere in vista unless you’re running a laptop.  So there’s no good way for me to turn on the video-out portion of the video card and playback on a regular TV.  Workaround:  download the catalyst control center from ATI.COM and turn on their “clone mode”.  Unfortunately that leads to the next issue.
• I can’t run through the “set up your display” wizard in MCE without causing some nastiness to happen (power-cycling of my monitor, scrambled display on the TV).  So I’m stuck running in VGA mode, where the PC insists on running at 1024×768 (which is non-native to the TV display) and I can’t turn on any overscan compensation in MCE (so some of the controls appear to be behind the frame of the TV).
• Nvidia nforce4 and Marvell Yukon NICs are in my machine, neither of which seems to want to play nicely with the extender.  When playing back ATSC HDTV shows, they pixellate in a nasty way that makes the picture almost unwatchable.  You can work around this by enabling “flow control” on the advanced driver tab.  This will make it watchable but will leave the UI a little less responsive than I’d like.

So while these are reasonably big issues in my mind, the main bar in my house is making sure that Jodie doesn’t notice any major usability issues.  And it would appear that for the most part, we’re finally there with RC2.

And to pre-empt the obvious question:  yes I’ve bugged these and am working through the official channels.

It’s early on of course, but I had a “new TV season epiphany” last night while watching a recording of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.  You see, I really really liked Studio 60.  It was fast-paced, had good writing, good acting, and surprisingly well done characters.  In fact I liked it so much that I realized the other shows that I thought were going to be keepers are now looking very much like stinkers.  Here’s the winners and losers in our household so far this season:

Winners:

• Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
• ‘Til Death (cheesy, but I really like the two leading men)

Thought they were good, but probably going to be losers soon:

• Justice (it’s a cool show, but after 3 weeks I feel like I’ve seen the same thing every time)
• Vanished (I was hooked, but now it’s just not pulling me back in every week.  Plus I read that they’re going to put it on hold once 24 is back on the air.  We really got into another serial called “Reunion” last year and when they canceled it without tying up any loose ends I was unhappy.  I fear the same thing with Vanished)
• Standoff (I like most of the action but c’mon that dating partners subplot is just dumb)

Losers:

• New Adventures of Old Christine (not a new show, but we decided to give it a shot this season and blech)
• Happy Hour (the definition of suck)
• Men In Trees (still have to watch episode 2 so it might get better but unlikely)

Anxiously awaiting:

• Heros (it just looks neat, and yes I’m a geek)
• 30 Rock (although given how much I like Studio 60 this is unlikely to work for me)
• Ugly Betty (it just looks interesting but also high risk of suckage)
• Smith (it’s recorded, just haven’t seen it yet.  I love Heist flicks but Ray Liotta is going to be a tough sell)

And the returning shows:

• Likely to stay in the watching lineup:  CSI:LV, CSI:Miami, Prison Break, Family Guy, Desperate Housewives, Amazing Race, Survivor (not me, but Jodie still loves the show), Everybody Hates Chris, Two and a half men, NCIS, Veronica Mars, House, Grey’s Anatomy (Jodie’s again, I’m not a fan), My Name is Earl, NUMB3RS, Las Vegas
• Likely to drop:  Law & Order:Everything, Without a Trace, Simpsons, American Dad, The War at Home (that made it to season 2?), Criminal Minds, The Unit,
• And the rest we gave up on a long time ago

Doing up this list it’s clear that we watch way too much TV, but to be fair it’s not all at the same time.  I record all of this on Media Center and watch when convenient, including for many shows taking them with me on the plane and watching them them while traveling.  That’s what I’ll tell my sponsor when I go to my first TV-Anonymous meeting and start the 12-step program.

The theory has been proven, WIVB updated their Thales Amber config to ensure that the TSIDs match and like magic it’s back on the air for Media Center users.  In case anyone else stumbles upon this via Google and are trying to fix a similar issue in your area, be sure to read this article and note that in WIVB’s case the following detail applies:

• Using Thales Amber ATSC equipment
• All PSIP configuration information was correct
• However, the offending TSID was located in the initial setup configuration which also needed to be corrected

In so many ways I’m alot like the dad in one of my favorite movies, A Christmas Story.  I get excited about little things, and my family thinks I’m a huge geek for doing so.  Here’s a quote from that movie, when the dad wins a glowing leg lamp from a contest in the newspaper:
Mr. Parker:
It’s a Major Award!

Swede:
Shucks I wouldn’t know that. It looks like a lamp.

Mr. Parker:
What is a lamp, you nincompoop? Tt’s a Major Award. I won it!

Swede:
Damn, hell, you say won it?

Mr. Parker:
Yeah, mind power, Swede; mind power.

Well today I’m in my glory, it appears that I won an award for being one of the top bug producers in July on Media Center.  It’s a - get this - Windows Media Center mug that plugs into the USB port on the computer to keep my coffee warm.  It’s so cheesy that it’s cool, and I can wear it like a geek badge of honor on my desk.  And just to set the recod straight in case you bump into my wife, yes I’m pretty much a huge geek.