Meglet Rambles On

How to install Vista and set it up to record and play HDTV and Blu-ray movies:

Step 1: Make sure there are no small children around. Lots of swearing will be involved.

Step 2: Insert the Vista DVD in the DVD-Rom drive of your computer, and reboot. Note: you need a real DVD-Rom drive, not a Blu-ray drive. If you try to install from a Blu-ray drive, Vista will spend 2 and a half hours pretending it will install, then tell you to get stuffed and try again later.

Step 3: Once you have replaced your Blu-ray drive with a regular DVD drive and installed Vista, update drivers. This is best done one device at a time, testing in between. Update your video drivers, reboot, make sure you can get the proper resolution (assuming you still have video.) Update your sound drivers, reboot, make sure you still have sound. Don’t even think about updating your network drivers if they’re already included in Vista. It will think about updating for a while, then dump the network stack instead. Good luck getting back online.

Step 4: Run Windows Update to get the latest security patches. Round 1 of patches: 125MB of “Security Updates,” reboot. Round 2, 75MB of “Updates for Windows Vista” to allow the installation of later updates. Reboot. Round 3: Hope you get Service Pack 1. Reboot. (are you sensing a pattern here?) Round 4: Oh look, MORE “Security Updates!” Reboot again.

Step 5: Make sure you can play a windows media file. Grab one from your media server (you do have a media server, right?) and play it with Windows Media Player. Once you are done playing 20 questions during the Media Player setup. Do you have sound and video from the media file? Consider yourself lucky.

Step 6: Time to start setting up TV, DVD, and Blu-ray playback. Note the sign stating “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

Step 7: Install the drivers for your SiliconDust HDHomeRun tuner. Be grateful they’ve fixed the software and made it play nice with Media Center. Follow their instructions here to run a channel scan and configure the stations.

Step 8: Spend 3 hours previewing each channel to make sure it really is what the guide thinks it is. Then do it again in the Media Center TV setup. (You didn’t actually have other things to do today, right?) Uncheck the 126 crappy shopping and public access channels you don’t intend to watch, leaving the remaining 11 channels that may or may not have some interesting and useful content.

Step 9: Where’s Waldo? Dig through the less-than-impressive guide listings to find the 9 shows you watch, and set up series recordings for them. Make a note of their time and channel, because eventually Vista will decide that they’re supposed to be on Channel 0, and you’ll have 14 minutes to recreate your scheduled recordings before your absolute favorite show that never repeats and isn’t available online broadcasts!

Step 10: Make sure you can actually play HDTV. This means checking live TV, and recording something so you can test playing a recorded TV file. If either one fails, time to go spend days screwing around with previous and/or beta versions of video and audio drivers, upgrading the memory in the system, and doing a voodoo dance in the middle of the night during a full moon.

Step 11: Make sure you can play a DVD. Whether your method is to just put a disc in the drive, or use the DVD Gallery hack to show Video_TS folders stored on a hard drive, or if you use the My Movies application to give you a pretty list, make sure it works. Once again, if it fails, you will need a headless chicken, lavender picked at the height of the full moon, and some time in the center of the nearest crop circle if playback fails.

Step 12: Install your Blu-ray playback software of choice. This is where you break everything you have done up to this point. If you’re installing PowerDVD, well, you’re a bigger optimist than I am. My preferred Blu-ray software is Arcsoft Total Media Theater. This means that after 4 reboots, rolling back my sound card drivers to the previous version, and holding my breath until I pass out, I can actually play Blu-rays on my HTPC.

Step 13: DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING. No extra video players, no upgrades, no “cool programs” that your brother sent you in an email. And for crying out loud, do NOT update your video drivers!!

PS: If you want to watch recorded TV shows from a network drive, well, “May the Force Be With You.”