Workaround: Blank screen upon lid open (Lenovo ThinkPad laptop)

Occasionally when I open the lid of my Lenovo ThinkPad T500 laptop, I get a blank screen – nothing at all is visible on the laptop’s display, even though the machine is powered on.  In particular, this tends to happen after I undock the computer from the docking station, close the lid, wait a short time (i.e. carry the laptop with the lid closed into another room), and then open the lid again.

I’m not sure what the root cause of this issue is.  However, I’ve found a workaround to get the display to come back on after I’ve opened the lid and the display is blank: Press Fn+F7.  (This is the same keystroke that switches display modes when multiple monitors, or a projector, are connected to the PC.)

(Note: I don’t have the Lenovo Presentation Director application installed on my machine, because it doesn’t seem to work very well with the 3-monitor configuration I have at my desk.  Presentation Director overrides the Fn+F7 keystroke; thus, I’m not sure whether this workaround would work on machines with Presentation Director installed.)

HTPC remote control review: Lenovo N5901 multimedia remote with keyboard

A couple of months ago, to use as a remote control for my Windows 7 HTPC, I purchased a Lenovo N5901 multimedia remote with keyboard (part no. 57Y6336).  The remote control easily fits in one hand, yet it combines a QWERTY keyboard, a trackball and two mouse buttons, and volume / playback buttons.  Following are my comments on the different aspects of the device, based on my experience with it so far.

Setup: The trackball and keyboard both worked fine “out of the box” for me with Windows 7 upon plugging in the (tiny!) USB wireless receiver to the PC, both in Windows Media Center and on the normal Windows 7 desktop – no software install was needed.

Keyboard: The keyboard is a “mostly-full” keyboard.  It isn’t suitable for touch-typing; I’m a pretty good typist on a standard QWERTY keyboard, but I can’t use the keyboard on the N5901 without looking down at it as I type.  The keyboard also has no function keys (F1, F2, … F12). 

The N5901 keyboard isn’t really suitable for use for any heavy-duty typing (e.g. composing emails) but it works well enough for keying in a Windows password at boot time, or for entering a few characters of the name of a show to search for in Windows Media Center.

Trackball: The included trackball and two mouse buttons work just fine.  One-handed use is possible, but I’ve found that it works best to use it with two hands; using the controller with only my left hand, I occasionally accidentally nudge the trackball with my thumb as I reach around the trackball to left-click.  It works better for me to hold the remote with both hands and use right thumb for the trackball, and left thumb to left-click.

Battery Life: The battery life is at the very least “okay,” as I’m on my 3rd month of using the remote, and it’s still on its original set of two AAA batteries.

Wireless Connectivity: The wireless connectivity for me was slightly suspect – when I first used the remote, it would usually work fine, but it would occasionally “drop” a split second of my trackball use, or a single key press using the keyboard.  (The latter was particularly frustrating when entering my password logging in to Windows following a reboot.)  My couch where I would typically sit and use the remote is located around 15 feet from the HTPC – well within the device’s specified operational range of 10 meters.

In my living room configuration, the couch is “L” shaped, with one side of the “L” extending along a wall toward the TV and the HTPC.  I was therefore able to work around the occasional wireless connectivity issues by purchasing a 10-foot USB extension cable (for less than $5 shipped off eBay), running that cable from the PC under my couch to underneath the place I usually sit in the middle of the couch, and plugging the N5901’s USB wireless receiver into the extension cable under the couch.  Having done this, the wireless connectivity now works with no problems.

Playback Controls: The N5901 features “play”, “stop”, “fast forward”, “rewind”, “previous”, and “next” multimedia playback control buttons.  All work just fine and as expected out of the box with Windows Media Center on Windows 7.

Volume Controls: The N5901 also features “volume up” and “volume down” buttons.  For some reason, at least for TV playback, although when I press these buttons Windows Media Center reports the volume level going up and down (minimum 0, maximum 50), the actual sound output level from my TV speakers doesn’t change, unless I turn the volume all the way down to 0, at which point the sound does cut out entirely (mute). 

Since the volume button presses on the remote are being received successfully by Windows Media Center, the problem apparently is with some other aspect of my hardware configuration, not the N5901 itself.  I’ve just been using the TV’s own remote instead to control the volume, which works fine.

Orange Button: The N5901 features a prominent, but unlabeled “orange button” in the top-left corner of the control (visible in the above image).  On my Windows 7 machine, pressing this button results in the somewhat odd behavior of bringing up a Windows Explorer window with the location set to “My Computer.”  Neither Windows 7 nor the N5901 itself provides any way (that I could figure out) to change this behavior.

What I really wanted this button to do was to act similarly to the “TiVo” button on a TiVo remote – that is, in the case of my setup, as a “Go to Windows Media Center Home screen” button.  Specifically, I wanted this behavior:

1. If Windows Media Center (WMC) is not currently running, run it.
2. If WMC is already running, but is not the active window, make it the active window.
3. If WMC is the active window, navigate to the WMC front page / main menu.
4. Suppress the default behavior of bringing up "My Computer."

The “green button” on “designed for Windows Media Center” remote controls might have this behavior as well; however, I’m not sure, never having had the chance to use one.

After some research, I was able to come up with a script for the free AutoHotKey utility to accomplish this behavior.  This is the script:

VKB6::  ;On a press of the Lenovo N5901 orange button:
  if WinActive("Windows Media Center")  ;Is WMC the current active window? 
    Send #!{Enter}  ;Act like a "green button" press (go to WMC main menu) 
  else 
    run c:\windows\ehome\ehshell.exe  ;Run/activate WMC 
  return

The complete details of how I created this script are available in a superuser.com post.

Backlight: Probably the biggest drawback of the N5901 is that the buttons are not backlit.  In a completely dark room, the QWERTY keyboard is pretty much unusable, and the playback control buttons are pretty difficult to use.  The trackball and mouse buttons are no problem to use in the dark, though.

Conclusion

Based on my positive experience with the device over the past couple of months, I would recommend the N5901 as a reasonably inexpensive “all-in-one” (mouse + keyboard + playback buttons) HTPC remote control.

Bad eBay experience – Inadvertently buying a bootleg DS game

A couple of weeks ago, I had a hankering to play a classic RPG game.  After looking around at the available options for systems that I own, I decided to pick up a copy of Dragon Quest V for the Nintendo DS.

Unfortunately, even though the game was released in the U.S. just last year (2009), it’s already out of print, so I went to eBay.  There were just a few copies of the game for sale; most were going for around $30, but one “cartridge only” auction was going for a “buy it now” price of $17.  The auction was from a seller in New York and nothing about the auction at the time made me suspicious (though perhaps it should have – keep reading), so I went ahead and bought the auction.

I got the game in the mail a few days later, and played it.  The game didn’t slide particularly smoothly into my DS Lite – it was a slight “pressure fit” – but I didn’t really think anything of it at the time.  The game started up with no problems.

After viewing the introductory sequence (showing the main character’s birth) and proceeding to the first playable portion of the game (where the main character, now a child, is travelling on a small ship), I ran into a problem: I couldn’t figure out how to get off the boat or otherwise advance the plot.  I’d talked to all of the NPCs on the ship several times each, and explored everywhere that I could; after doing that, there just seemed to be nothing else to do, and no enemies at all to fight.

Eventually I consulted gamefaqs, but none of the FAQs gave any special attention to the boat scene – they all just seemed to assume that advancing past the scene would present no problem at all. 

I searched Google for terms like “dragon quest v boat stuck,” and got my first obvious clue that something was not right.  Apparently the programmers at Square Enix, the game’s developer/publisher, included code in the game that when playing a counterfeit copy of the game, the player would experience game behavior exactly matching the problem I was having – the game would just never advance past the boat scene, and the player would basically be stuck. 

However, all of the references to this behavior that I found were in reference to players playing an unauthorized copy of the game via an emulator.  I, on the other hand, was playing what I had thought to be a legitimately-purchased copy of the game, on actual physical Nintendo DS Lite hardware.  Still, the behavior I was seeing made me strongly suspect that I’d been sold an unauthorized, or “bootleg,” copy of the game.

Researching further, the copy of the game that I’d been sent had a serial number on the front of the cartridge of “NTR-CDXP-EUR.”  Googling on that, I found two things:

1. That serial number actually apparently was assigned to some game called “Driving Theory Training” (and not to Dragon Quest V);
2. A few forum posts from other people saying that they had a DS cartridge with that serial number (of various other games, neither Dragon Quest V nor “Driving Theory Training”) and they were suspicious that the cartridge was a bootleg. 

This convinced me that I did have a bootleg cartridge on my hands.  This made me pretty unhappy – I purchase all of my games legitimately, and don’t “pirate” games.  If a particular game costs more than I’m willing to pay to play it, then I simply don’t play it.

I contacted the seller, and he agreed to refund my money upon my shipping the cartridge back to him.  He claimed to be unaware that he was selling bootleg copies of games, and said that he would take the issue up with his supplier.  Ultimately I’m not sure exactly how honest he was being, but he did end up refunding my money (less the the $3 and change that I paid to ship the game back to him).

So: What should I have done to avoid buying this game to begin with, and what should I do to avoid buying counterfeit game cartridges in the future?  None of the following points taken on its own is a certain indication of a bootleg game; however, all together, they may be adequate cause for being suspicious of a particular auction:

• Price: The low sell price of this game relative to other auctions for the same (somewhat rare) game should perhaps have been cause for suspicion.
• Contents: The fact that the game was “cartridge only,” rather than including case and manual, should perhaps have been cause for concern.  (Again, certainly there are many legitimate “cartridge only” auctions, but this taken in combination with other factors should have raised a red flag.)
• Origin: This particular auction was shipping from New York rather than from China; I have seen, though, some other sales of unusually low-priced games originating in China that are pretty obviously for counterfeit copies.
• Image: The auction listing included an image of the cartridge, but it was blurry, and the serial number on the front of the cartridge was unreadable.

I couldn’t have determined this from looking at the auction online, but when I tried physically lining up the counterfeit game next to a few of my legitimate DS games, the difference was fairly obvious.  Although the counterfeit cartridge on its own was pretty legitimate-looking upon a casual inspection, the size and shape of the cartridge were just barely “off” compared to the other legitimate cartridges, which were all identical to one another.  (This was the cause of the issue I mentioned of the bootleg cartridge not quite being an easy fit into my DS Lite, like legitimate games all are.)

At least this incident was a learning experience -- that bootleg console game software is out there and is being sold.  In the future I will likely take one or both of the following steps before bidding on an auction that seems like it might be suspect:

• Just ask the seller if the game is a genuine copy.  If the answer is anything other than an honest-seeming answer along the lines of “yes, absolutely,” then don’t bid.
• Ask the seller what the serial number on the front of the cartridge is (if it isn’t visible in a photo on the auction).  If it isn’t what it should be, then certainly do not bid.

I might never have realized that I was playing a counterfeit copy if there hadn’t been this particular variety of DRM built into the game.  I’m not normally a big fan of DRM (who is?), but I understand the necessity of it; still, I wish this DRM had been of a “fail fast” nature (i.e. have the game refuse to run at all if it identified itself as being counterfeit) – then I wouldn’t have lost a couple of hours of my evening to playing a broken game and researching the problem.  I’d much rather have just had the opportunity to honestly purchase a legitimate copy of the game (and avoid supporting whatever pirate created this unauthorized copy) the first time.

HTPC Build part 5 – Parts List! My $500 Windows 7 2010 HTPC

This is the fifth in a series of posts I’m writing about an HTPC (Home Theatre PC) build that I recently completed.  To see a list of all posts in this series, click here.

Having gotten over-the-air HDTV set up, successfully tested a PC TV tuner and Windows Media Center, made an attempt to recycle an old PC into an HTPC, and done some testing with a loaner HTPC, I was finally ready to finalize a list of parts, place the order, and build my own HTPC!

Here is the final parts list for my HTPC:

		Cost (USD; shipped; including tax)	Purchased From	Purchase Date
Motherboard	Gigabyte AMD GA-MA785GM-US2H	$58	newegg.com	May 2010
CPU	AMD Phenom II X2 550 Callisto 3.1GHz	$77	newegg.com	May 2010
RAM	Corsair 4 GB (2x 2GB) DDR2-800 (PC2 6400) TWIN2X4096-6400C5DHX	$26	frys.com	November 2008
Hard disk	Western Digital 640 GB internal SATA	$70	newegg.com	February 2010
Onboard video	ATI Radeon HD 4200	$0 (on motherboard)	--	--
Add-on video card	(None -- yet)	$0	--	--
TV tuner	Hauppauge USB HVR-850	$50	amazon.com	January 2010
Optical drive	ASUS 24X DVD RW DRW-24B1ST SATA	$27	newegg.com	May 2010
Wireless LAN	Monoprice USB Wireless Lan 802.11G	$11	monoprice.com	January 2010
PC case	(Recycled 2004 desktop PC case)	$0	--	2004
Power supply unit	CORSAIR CMPSU-400CX 400W	$30 (after rebate)	newegg.com	May 2010
Operating system	Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (OEM)	$100	newegg.com	May 2010
Remote control	Lenovo Multimedia Remote with Keyboard 57Y6336 / N5901	$38	lenovo.com	April 2010
HDMI cable	HDMI cable, 6’, male-to-male	$1	meritline.com	November 2009

Total Cost: $488 (Not including a PC case)

To cut to the chase: This HTPC works great!  The hardware worked fine immediately upon being assembled; the machine works great as a DVR and meets all of my other goals as well (with the exception of being able to act as a high-end gaming PC -- more on that below); and the machine has none of the video/overscan issues with my Philips 3000-series HDTV that I had encountered with the Intel-based loaner HTPC I tested.

Read on for more detailed commentary on the specific parts that I decided on ordering, followed by my thoughts on the performance of the new HTPC over the several few weeks that I’ve had it up and running so far.

Parts

Motherboard / CPU / Onboard Video

As I mentioned in the previous post in this series, I had encountered some fairly significant video issues with overscan and flickering of thin black lines when testing with an Intel-based HTPC and its Intel GMA X4500 onboard video, which my friend Dave had been kind enough to let me borrow and test with my TV for several days.

My consequent decision to opt for an AMD/ATI-based build for this HTPC, including Radeon HD 4200 onboard video, turned out to be a good one!  Hooking the PC up to my Philips 32PFL5332D/37 HDTV via HDMI, everything just worked great “out of the box.”  There were no issues with overscan; the PC video output running at 1920x1080 was automatically sized correctly to fit the viewable area of the TV display, without me having to do anything.

Further, the overall quality of the display was much better as compared to the Intel GMA X4500 test machine.  There were none of the issues with thin black lines appearing to “flicker” that I had noticed with the Intel onboard video.  Text on the TV display is quite readable, particularly once I increased the default text size in Windows 7 to 150% (via Control Panel | Appearance and Personalization | Display).

Regarding the specific motherboard and CPU I purchased, the purchase criteria for these parts were, in roughly descending order of importance (most important criteria first):

• Decent quality onboard video capable of HD video playback
• Native onboard HDMI-out
• Very positive reviews (Parts that would be likely to “just work”)
• Reasonable price
• Compatible with the 4 GB of DDR2-800 RAM I already owned (more on this below)

The Gigabyte AMD GA-MA785GM-US2H and AMD Phenom II X2 that I ended up deciding on fit all of these criteria nicely.  At a combined cost of $135 shipped (including a $22 “combo” promotion that newegg.com was running at the time of my purchase), I got performance that was adequate for the demands that would be placed on the HTPC at a pretty good price.

RAM

Although I included the cost of the RAM in my calculated “Total Cost” above (the $488 figure), I actually ended recycling 4 GB of Corsair-brand RAM that I had purchased for the desktop PC that I built in 2008, which is still my primary home PC.  Running the 2008 desktop PC with the 4 GB of Corsair RAM and 4 GB of Crucial-brand RAM (8 GB total), the machine would be mostly stable (and pass Windows 7’s suite of memory tests), but would bluescreen once every month or two.  I pulled the 4 GB of Crucial RAM out of the machine, but the problems continued; I replaced the Crucial RAM and pulled out the Corsair RAM, and the problems stopped.  (Note: I do realize that I shouldn’t have been running two different brands of RAM in the same PC in any event.) 

To save some money, and on the theory that there was just some kind of incompatibility between my 2008 PC’s motherboard and the Corsair RAM, I tried installing the 4 GB of Corsair RAM in the HTPC.  So far, this experiment has been a success; I’ve had no bluescreen/crashing troubles at all with the HTPC in the several weeks that it’s been running at this point.

Hard Disk

I bought the hard drive for the HTPC, a 640 GB Western Digital internal SATA drive, a couple of months earlier than most of the rest of the parts, as part of my attempt to turn my old 2004 desktop PC into an HTPC.  When that didn’t pan out, I was able to just use that same drive in the final HTPC build, as I had planned. 

The only downside to this approach turned out to be that over the last month or so, there have been a lot of good sales on hard drives; had I waited, I could probably have picked up a 1 TB drive for not much more than the $70 that I paid for the 640 GB drive back in February, which would allow me to record a lot more HD video on the HTPC.  I’m not too concerned about this, though.  640 GB still allows for a good amount of HD video recording, and in a year or two when hard drive prices have dropped even further, I can always easily add another (larger) SATA internal hard drive to the machine if I find that I want more recording capacity.

Add-on video card

As noted in the table above, I opted not to buy an add-on video card for the HTPC as part of the initial build.  Aside from not being able to act as a high-end gaming machine, the HTPC functions fine with just the onboard video.  By waiting, I’ll be able to buy a more powerful video card for my dollar later on.

PC Case

As with the RAM, I decided to save money by re-using an old part.  Using the 2004 motherboard, CPU, and RAM for the HTPC didn’t work out, but the 2004 case was still perfectly good; I took out the old motherboard, and installed the new parts in that case.  It’s a full-size desktop PC case rather than an HTPC form factor case that would fit in the entertainment center cabinet and look nice sitting next to my other devices such as the Wii; a “real” HTPC case is always something that I can “upgrade” to later.  

Remote Control

The remote control I purchased, a Lenovo Multimedia Remote with Keyboard 57Y6336 (N5901), is something that I wasn’t originally planning on getting.  I had originally envisioned using a more traditional TV-like remote to control the HTPC from the couch.  However, when the N5901 went on sale on the Lenovo site for 50% off, I decided to take a chance on it – a handheld remote that could also function as a mouse and as a QWERTY keyboard seemed pretty cool. 

My experience with the N5901 has been mostly good, with a few caveats.  I’ll share my full thoughts on the device in a subsequent post in this series.

The Build

Putting together the new PC was smooth and easy – just the way I like these things to work!  All of the parts went together with no problems, and the completed PC booted up successfully the first time that I powered it on.

My new OEM copy of Windows 7 64-bit also installed smoothly and with no problems.  Windows 7 recognized all of my devices, including the HVR-850 TV tuner, the Monoprice Wireless Lan adapter, and the Lenovo Multimedia Remote with no problems, and without me having to manually install any drivers. 

Performance

I’ll go through and discuss my goals for this HTPC system one at a time, and how the system measures up against each goal.

Primary goal: Act as a DVR (record HD TV broadcasts, and playback HD video)

The primary goal for the this HTPC was to serve as my household’s primary (and only) DVR – to automatically “tape” (record) TV shows, and to play them back later on demand.

The HTPC works great in this capacity.  The Windows Media Center software works very well.  I like it even better than the Tivo that I used for a while previously, due to being able to use the mouse in the Windows Media Center interface to quickly skip directly to a particular location in a show.

The HTPC has no problem recording one show while playing back another.  In theory, I could in the future add a second TV tuner to the machine (another HVR-850 or a similar device), and be able to record two different shows simultaneously.

It’s also worth mentioning that when Windows Media Center is recording a TV show, the impact on the HTPC’s resources (processor and memory) is negligible – the machine can be recording a show while at the same time running a game or other Windows applications, with no noticeable performance impact.

Secondary goal: Act as a secondary home PC

The goal here was to be able to close or minimize Window Media Center and drop back to the Windows desktop and use the HTPC like a regular PC – to browse the web, check email, and so forth. 

The HTPC works great in this respect as well.  As mentioned above, the Radeon HD 4200 onboard video produces a great-looking signal on my Philips HDTV, with no overscan and very readable text.  Just last weekend, I used the HTPC in this capacity: I sat on the couch with my family, and used the HTPC to show on the TV screen a bunch of digital photos that my Dad had taken of the house he’s building in Florida.

Secondary goal: Play DVD movies

Since my old DVD player died, I had been keeping my Playstation 2 hooked up to the TV mostly to act as a DVD player and play the occasional movie. 

The HTPC works just fine for playing DVDs, so now I can replace the PS2 with some other device if the need arises.

Secondary goal: Play old NES / SNES / Nintendo 64 games

On occasion, I use my desktop PC to play via an emulator an old NES (Nintendo), SNES (Super Nintendeo), or Nintendo 64 cartridge that I own (and is stored away in my basement).  Playing these old games on a PC monitor while sitting in an office chair just isn’t quite the same as playing them on the TV while sitting back on the couch, though. 

I haven’t spent a lot of time using the HTPC for retro console gaming aside from the initial round of testing yet, but the HTPC does work great for this.  Even the old NES and SNES games look really nice on the HDTV.  The image is really sharp, and there’s no blurring or aliasing. 

The responsiveness of emulated games on the HTPC is also very snappy.  I was a bit concerned that there would be some small delay between doing an input on the controller and seeing the corresponding action happen in the game on the TV screen, but there has been no such delay; the games I’ve tried have responded instantly to controller input.

I’m using an XBox 360 controller (which is compatible with Windows PCs via USB) as my controller, and it works pretty well for controlling old NES games.  At some point I’m planning to pick up an SNES controller USB PC adapter and get my old SNES controllers out of storage to complete the retro gaming experience.

Secondary goal: Play new PC games / “Poor man’s XBox 360”

As with the Intel PC I tested with, I’ve tried two more “serious” modern games on the HTPC: World of Warcraft, and Batman Arkham Asylum.

As with the Intel PC, World of Warcraft runs just fine on the HTPC in full 1920x1080 resolution, although not at the maximum graphics settings.  I’m not really planning on playing much Warcraft on this HTPC, but it’s nice to know that the game runs on the machine just fine, and I now have another PC that will run WoW in a pinch.

Also as with the Intel PC, and also as expected, Batman Arkham Asylum runs, but so slowly that it isn’t really playable.  The Radeon HD 4200 onboard video isn’t up to the challenge of running a modern graphics-intensive game, even on the minimum settings.  An add-on video card will be an easy addition to the HTPC at some point in the future; I’m saving a full play-through of Batman for the time when I’ll finally be able to sit back on the couch and play through the game on the HDTV.

Secondary goal: Stream video between PCs

One thing that occurred to me that it would be nice to be able to do is to stream recorded video (TV shows) from the HTPC over to my desktop PC, for those (very unusual) occasions where Melissa and I both want to watch TV at the same time, and we don’t want to watch the same show.

The software (Windows 7 and Windows Media Center) does support this functionality – I can fire up Windows Media Center on my desktop PC and see the shows that have been recorded on the HTPC.  Unfortunately – and this is the only “unexpected” issue that I have with my setup at the moment – when I try to playback a video over the network (even a standard-def video), the playback is extremely choppy, to the point of being unwatchable.  I did run this test over both of my other test machines (the converted 2004 machine, and the Intel test machine) so the problem is apparently my network setup, not the HTPC itself. 

Both of my PCs are running USB 802.11g wireless adapters, and my router is a Belkin F5D8233-4 802.11n.  Unfortunately, my home is situated such that running a wired network isn’t really possible, so all of my machines are connected via wireless.  I suspect that streaming video (even full HD video) over a home wireless LAN should be possible, and that it’s some kind of problem with my network that’s preventing this from working for me, but I haven’t gotten this tracked down yet.  When I have an opportunity to do so, I’m going to try a different router and see if that does anything to improve the situation.

Tertiary goal: Run quietly

One final goal that I had for this HTPC is that it run quietly – I didn’t want to have to increase the volume of the TV at all just for the sake of having to compensate for a loud PC (particularly given that Melissa and I typically only ever sit down to watch TV when the kids are sleeping upstairs). 

Fortunately, this HTPC build is indeed silent when it runs.  Even with the PC on and TV turned off, when sitting back on the couch, the PC fans are not audible whatsoever.

Conclusion

This HTPC build turned out to be a lengthy project, due to the methodical approach that I took to testing purchasing and testing components prior to doing the final parts purchase and build.  It was a lot of fun to work through the process, though, and it was a very good learning experience.  Best of all, I have an end result that I’m really happy with!  My family is very happy with our new HTPC/DVR as well.  (I can hear Melissa in the other room as I write this using the HTPC to watch the recording of the finale of “Lost” that started airing earlier tonight while we were still getting the kids to bed.)

As a bonus, I didn’t spend too much money to achieve the desired result!  Although the total cost of almost $500 up front was by no means trivial, it’s nice that, going forward, I will have a $0 “DVR fee” alongside my monthly $0 TV and $0 phone expenditures.

This is the last of the primary posts in this series.  I will be writing at least one more follow-up post, though, covering my thoughts on the Lenovo Multimedia Remote with integrated trackball and keyboard that we’re using to control the HTPC from the couch.

HTPC Build Part 4 - Testing an Intel-based HTPC

This is the forth in a series of posts I’m writing about an HTPC (Home Theatre PC) build that I recently completed.  To see a list of all posts in this series, click here.

Before finalizing a parts list and placing an order for the parts for my new HTPC build, I was fortunate to be able to gain access to a "test machine": A newly-built, working HTPC that my friend Dave was kind enough to let me borrow for a few days.  Specs on this machine:

CPU	Intel Core 2 Quad
Motherboard	Intel BOXDG43GT LGA 775
Memory	2 GB Kingston DDR2-800
Onboard Video	Intel GMA X4500 with HDMI
Add-on Video Card	(None)
Operating System	Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

I brought the Intel HTPC home and hooked it up to my TV, a Philips 3000 series LCD HDTV.  As with the old 2004 PC that I tested using as an HTPC, the Intel test PC had some pros and cons.  Pros first:

• The PC ran very silently -- there was no noticeable fan noise at all while the machine was on.
• It was easy to connect the PC to the TV via the built-in HDMI port, and both video and sound output were transmitted from the PC to the TV via a single HDMI cable.
• No problems at all with HD video playback.

I ran into a significant problem, though: When rendering video output at the TV's native resolution (1920x1080), the rendered screen image was "too big" for the TV.  The edges of the Windows desktop, including the taskbar and Start button, were off the screen.  Those elements were still present -- I could move the mouse off the screen to where the Start button should be located, click, and (partially) see the Start menu appear -- I just couldn't see them.

After spending a while trying to research this problem online but running into problems getting quality Google search results when trying to search using terms like "htpc tv image too large" or "tv display edges not visible" (and multiple other variants), I finally came across an article where I learned that there is a specific word for this phenomenon: Overscan. 

Now, searching with search terms including the word "overscan," the quality of search results I was able to find markedly improved.  However, I was still unable to solve the problem; in several hours of trying, I was unable to correct for the overscan either from the PC side, or from the TV side.

Most PC monitors include geometry controls that allow the screen image size, but there were no such controls available in the my TV's built in software menu.  In further poking around online, I found an avsforum.com thread that described how to access a "secret" admin/service menu where additional TV controls could be accessed; I actually got this to work on my TV and accessed the TV menu (after bypassing a warning about possibly voiding my warranty -- the TV is out of warranty anyway), but on my TV, there were no geometry controls in the admin menu, either.  Finally, I tried to do a firmware update for the TV's software to see if a later version would have the geometry controls I was looking for, but the TV reported that it was already running the latest version of the software when I tried to apply the update via the TV's built-in USB port.

I also investigated correcting the overscan on the PC end of things.  The Intel video card comes with software that allows a lower screen resolution to be sent to the monitor/TV to correct for overscan; however, whenever I tried to apply a "non-standard" lower resolution, the Intel software itself complained that the target resolution was not supported by my display.  Setting the screen to the next-lowest standard widescreen resolution (1680x1050) resulted in wide areas of black around all four edges of the display, so that wasn't a good solution either.  I tried updating to the latest version of the Intel video driver and video software utility package, but that didn't help either.

So, I was left with the question of whether the overscan problem would be a deal-breaker for my intended uses of the HTPC.  My goals for the HTPC were as follows:

Primary goal:

• Be able to automatically record and playback HDTV program broadcasts.  (Tivo-like DVR functionality)

Secondary goals:

• Be able to use the HTPC as a secondary home PC, i.e. to do things like browse the Web, check email, and view photos and videos.
• Be able to play DVD movies (and later, Blu-Ray movies, once the price of Blu-Ray optical drives drops).
• Be able to play old NES, SNES, and N64 games that I own the cartridges for (via emulation).
• Be able to play newer games while sitting on the couch and using my XBox 360 controller for PC -- have the HTPC act as a "poor man's XBox 360." (Ironically, though, an actual XBox 360 now retails for significantly less than my overall budget for the HTPC!)

With respect to the primary goal of playing back HDTV content, I needed to be able to use the Windows Media Center (WMC) interface in order to accomplish this.  With the overscan problem, several of the key UI elements of Windows Media Center appeared off the screen.  However, I found a post on Aaron Stebner's WebLog detailing a series of registry keys that can control advanced options in Windows Media Center.  Using these registry tweaks, I was able to get WMC to "pull in" from the screen edges its various UI elements, such that everything was visible on my screen, even with the overscan.  Pretty cool.

However, I had no such luck with applications outside of Windows Media Center.  With the Windows taskbar, the Start button, and the edges of the Windows desktop being out of view, using the HTPC as a regular Windows PC wasn't a very nice experience. 

I also encountered one other problem: On the Windows desktop, thin black lines (such as "divider lines" in various applications) sometimes rendered on screen with quite a bit of "flicker".  This didn't make the display unusable, but it was pretty annoying to look at.

Between the overscan problem and the "flicker" problem, I made a decision not to go with an onboard Intel video card for my final HTPC build.  Having had good experiences with ATI video cards in the past, I decided I would instead go with an AMD-based build including an onboard ATI video card. (The processor company AMD acquired the video card company ATI back in 2006, so now AMD is presumably using the solid ATI technology in its onboard video cards.)

I did also do some testing with the Intel machine with my secondary goals in mind.  Old NES and SNES games ran just fine on the PC via emulation; I was worried there might be some lag time between controller button presses and the responsiveness of the games, but there was no noticeable lag at all, and the games I tested were very playable. 

I also tested a couple of newer games: World of Warcraft, and Batman Arkham Asylum.  Warcraft (being a 5-year-old game at this point) ran quite acceptably when configured to use lower-end video settings.  However, the game was affected by the overscan issue, making the action button bar at the bottom of the game window partially invisible, resulting in the game being not very playable, at least in full-screen mode.  (The screen capture at right approximates what I was seeing on my HDTV in terms of the game image being clipped.)

Batman Arkham Asylum, a newer game, ran on the PC, but the game ran very slowly, even on minimum video settings.  Although the game ran, it wasn't really playable.  Somewhat interestingly, rather than drop frames and run at normal speed but with a poor framerate, the game just slowed down the overall gameplay to match the throughput that the video card was able to produce -- the end result was although the display was smooth, the game just ran at about 50% of normal speed (so it took Batman an unusually long time to walk from place to place, etc.). 

The poor performance of the Batman game was actually in line with my expectations: I didn't expect the onboard video card to be performant for high-end gaming.  My plan at this point is to run with only onboard video for the time being (sacrificing the goal of being able to use the HTPC as a "poor man's XBox 360"); at some point in the future, I'll purchase an add-on video card for the machine (or maybe, I'll purchase a new video card for my primary desktop PC, and do a hand-me-down of that PC's old video card to the HTPC).

The next post in this series will (finally!) cover my final HTPC parts list, and my experiences with the completed build.