For a long time now, I’ve been using Windows Media Center to watch cable TV on my computer, and it’s been a real blessing. Windows Media Center knows what shows are on, when they’re on, and whether they’re new episodes or reruns. So, all I have to do is set it to record Criminal Minds, tell it to record only new episodes, and boom. I’ve got the most recent season ready to watch whenever I want. And if this weeks episode is a rerun, it won’t record it. It also knows which sports teams are playing and on what channel. That means I can set it to record all Minnesota Wild (hockey) games, and it will record every game from start to finish regardless of what channel it’s on. Why pay $20 a month for TiVo, or even an extra few dollars a month to the cable/satellite company for a DVR when you can just use your computer?!

The other day I scratched my Dish (finally!) and got my cable back. I ordered my cable company’s Family HD package (because my PC has a 28″ 1080p monitor), and as of this past Monday it’s all set up and working great. I did, however, have to order a new HD tuner/capture card for my computer (or so I thought….keep reading). I ordered two cards I’ve used in the past hoping one of them would work.

The first is the Asus My Cinema EHC3-150. I absolutely love this card. Before the days of PCI Express I was using the PCI version of this card, and I loved that one, too. But when I upgraded to the PCI-E x1 version of the card, I was blown away by the difference in picture quality between the two interfaces. Standard definition was crystal clear, and HD was like a window into the heavens. This time, however, it’s not doing what I need it to do.

Asus My Cinema EHC3-150 PCI-E x1 TV Tuner Card

This card has an ASTC, an NTSC, a ClearQAM, and an FM radio tuner on it. What that means is that it’ll pick up over the air TV, analogue cable, and digital cable (HD). I have digital cable, and the old PCI card I have doesn’t have a digital tuner on it. So I got this one, knowing that it’s a fantastic card, and hoping it’ll pick up all of my channels both SD and HD. I just put it in and it works great, but it only picks up the local channels in HD (sans FOX). That really sucks, because the only HD channel I really want is Fox Sports North (a cable channel) so I can watch Wild games in HD. Oh well, at least I have all my channels in SD.

The other card I got is the AverMedia AVerTv HD DVR. I’ve had this card for a long while now (since I got Dish Network, ohhhh…..three months ago?) and it’s been awesome. It comes with a 10-in-1 A/V dongle, which I’ll admit I was a bit skeptical about, and will allow it’s owner to plug anything, almost literally, into their computer to watch, record, edit, you name it, it’ll do it. I hooked up my Dish receiver box to it via HDMI and it worked perfectly until the HDMI port on my receiver went out, at which point I hooked it up to the component video plugs on the dongle, which worked just fine until I upgraded my computer. As anyone who reads my blog may or may not know, I recently rebuilt my computer in an attempt to figure out a video issue I was having (turns out the monitor was bad).

AVerMedia AVerTV HD DVR MTVHDDVRR PCI-Express x1 Interface

The issue I had after the upgrade was as follows: When I turned on the Dish receiver box and ran the AVerMedia Center software that came with the card (which TOTALLY SUCKS compared to Windows Media Center) I saw a glitchy picture behind randomly flashing horizontal bars of green. Since everything in my computer was totally new, I figured it was the AVerMedia card that had gone bad, so I ordered another one in case the Asus tuner card didn’t work. This card, the avermedia one, came Thursday morning. I put it in, set it up, reinstalled the drivers (just in case) and again ran the AverMedia Center. Same. Problem. DAH! I made a few phone calls, did some research, and figured out that my video card is 98% incompatible with my current setup. Now, both of these tuner cards cost around $100, and so does a video card that’s compatible with this computer setup.

So now, after all the time and effort I’ve put in to updating and changing everything in my computer around, I now have to put MORE time and effort (and money) into making it work again. The card I need (to match the performance of my current card) is a Radeon 4850. HIS has one that has almost exactly the same specs as the nVidia card I have right now.

HIS Radeon HD 4850

This card is, of course, yet another $100 I’ll need to throw into my PC. It’ll be worth it though, because with this final piece everything will be running smoothly. I just need to figure out how I’m going to pay for it exactly, and I’ll probably be ordering it on Monday. I wish I had an extra PCI-E x1 slot so I could run both cards, but my other slot is being used by my sound card (the name of which unnecessarily long). I’ll post again when I get this video card in and running.

Oooo, shiny!

As of this coming Thursday my last remaining Student Loan will be paid in full. I’m really excited about it! Debt has been a huge burden on me since 2008 and each time I’ve knocked out a credit card, or outstanding loan it’s been a major relief. It’s been nothing short of a miracle that my car has lasted as long as it has. I have to pray that it will start and get me to my destination safely every day, and I have for the past year. Fixing it would cost more than twice what the car’s worth, and I can’t afford it, nor can I afford to buy a different/newer car. For the past two years I’ve kept meticulous track of my money, and I’ve made some major life changes that have allowed me to put more of my income towards the debt that burdens me. Provided it’s within God’s will, my debts will be paid in full by the end of Q1 next year. It will be at that time that I will be able to get out from under my two-ton paperweight, and into something worth it’s weight. Yes, it will most definitely (tangent: I can never spell “definitely” right the first time, or the second time. I know this, and yet every time I type it out, it’s spelled wrong. I correct it, and it’s still spelled wrong. Unbelievable!) take me back to square one as far as debt goes, but with what I know about my spending now, what I know about what I’ll need to save for in the future, and with God on my side it will be totally worth it and it won’t be anywhere close to as big of a burden as it is now. I’m going to run my car until it’s totally dead or until the end of next summer (whichever comes first), and save every penny I can spare after my debts are cleared, and put it towards a Honda Ridgeline.

This thing is amazing. My dad wants one (which means it’s a fantastic vehicle in every possible way, trust me), and I had the opportunity to check out a brand new one a couple years ago at Sonshine Festival. The guy who tented next to us rolled up in one, and I marveled in it’s beauty. When I talked to him about it, he said his brother was or worked at a Honda dealer, and, that being the case, he knew every nook and cranny of the truck and was happy to show me all it’s bells and whistles. After taking the tour, I realized just how practical this thing would be for me and my family. It is absolutely gorgeous inside and out, and the full size quad cab and pickup box combination (along with the tail gate that opens two different ways, the storage compartment under the pickup bed, etc, etc, etc, etc) would make toting myself, my woman, her three kids, and all of our stuff around from one campsite to another to another and back again virtually painless. Unfortunately, the Honda Ridgeline doesn’t set your tents up for you, but I’ve heard they’re working on that feature as we speak, and it’s due to be released to the public sometime between now and 2150. Anyway, a used Ridgeline in fantastic shape with low miles sells between 20 and 25 thousand dollars, which will be my price range when the time comes. Whether or not my financial future will go as planned or not is up to God, of course, but in the past couple years I’ve found that even though God’s plan will prevail, it most certainly doesn’t hurt to do some planning of your own.

Since I started working nights again, I’ve spent the bulk of my free time surfing Newegg.com. I’ve “built” countless PC’s (and by that I mean I’ve created several wish lists) over the past few months, and in my browsing I’ve found a few really great parts that I added to my “Dream PC” wish list. The list is now complete, and I’d like to share it with you.

 Antec Lanboy Air Computer Case – This thing is absolutely beautiful. It’s really expensive (almost $200), and it hurts knowing I can’t afford it right now. There are all kinds of pictures and videos of this thing out there, check them out. You will be amazed (even if you’re not into nerd-porn).

Corsair HX Series 750W PSU – This power supply is a fantastic deal. It’s modular, but the 20+4 pin board power (I really don’t know why they still do the 20+4, I’ve never even seen a board that uses only 20 pins), and the 8 pin CPU power cable are, umm…..not modular. It’s also 80 Plus Silver certified, automatically adjusts to the input voltage/amperage, and has four 8-pin (6+2) PCI-E plugs for SLI and Crossfire support.

Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 ATX Motherboard – This is a really great board. It’s got 2 PCI-E x1 slots, 2 PCI-E x16 slots (one running at x16, one running at x4), 3 PCI slots (PCI is old school, if not obselete, but there’s a fair amount of cards out there that don’t require the high bandwidth of PCI-E), and my favorite part, the SATA III ports. Most boards with SATA III ports on them have 6 SATA II ports and 2 SATA III ports. This board has the opposite! Six SATA III ports, and two SATA II ports! Talk about future proof! It also has the AMD 870 chipset, which has everything I need without the frills. The AMD 890 chipset supports dual gigabit LAN, which is really nice to have if you’ve got an Xbox, or some other network-ready peripheral device that isn’t worth sharing over the network, or a crossover CAT5 cable for no-lag one-on-one multiplayer games.

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition – A six-core processor that comes running at 3.2GHz out of the box for under $300. That, my friends, cannot be beat.

G.Skill Ripjaws 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1333 (PC 10666) – The other day I was downloading the most recent season of Criminal Minds (the best show on network television since The Pretender) in the background (iTunes) and I popped in a DVD. A message came up saying that I had insufficient memory to perform the task! I’ve got 4GB’s of DDR3 1333, how could that possibly not be enough? Well, my dream PC will not have that problem. Double it!

Crucial RealSSD 128GB SSD – This thing is fantastic. I have been looking at SSD’s (solid state disks) virtually since they came out, and this one definitely takes the cake. 355MB/s read speed, 140MB/s write speed, SATA III interface, 2.5″ form factor, 128GB capacity, for roughly $270. 128GB’s should be enough to install windows and a few commonly used programs without overloading the drive. I’ve heard that some SSD’s, when full, will erase data at one end to make room on the other end. Who’s idea was that?

2 x Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB SATA HDD’s – Now, SSD’s are awesome, especially that one, but 128GB’s is nowhere close to enough total space for any computer, unless you only use it to check your email, surf facebook, and watch videos on YouTube. As you might venture to guess, I do a little more than that with my PC. On a past build, I used two of these in RAID 0 as the only hard disk space on the computer, and I haven’t done that since. The reason for that is that sometimes a RAID array can kick out, and if you’re using it as your boot drive when it kicks out, it’s a pain in the butt to get it back the way it should be. Using RAID strictly for data purposes, rather than as a boot drive, will make any problems that arise painless to fix.

Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 – For some reason the Radeon HD 5000 series graphics cards trump the HD 6000 series cards. This one’s core clock runs at 875Mhz, and the HD 6850 runs at only 725Mhz. The 6000 series cards are PCI-E x16 2.1, though, and the 5000 series cards are PCI-E x16 2.0. I haven’t really read into the differences between the two yet, but I can surely venture to guess that 2.1 is better. The 6000 series cards are also half the price of the 5000 series, so….well frankly I’m a bit confused. Anyway, this card runs a core clock 275MHz faster than my current card, and has 1GB of GDDR5 1200 RAM. With any luck, it’ll run Crysis 2 (due March 2011!!!)

Windows 7 Home Premium – I see a LOT of “super nerds” (wannabes) out there who pay the extra $70-$100 for Windows 7 Ultimate because they’re just that hardcore. News flash, idiots, the Ultimate version has two or three features more than the Professional version, which has 5 or 6 additional features to the Home Premium version, ALL of which none of you will EVER use. I say this because I bought the ultimate version when Windows 7 came out (because I love playing around with all those additional features) and I found that all the features I was playing around with, also came with the Home Premium version! I checked the Microsoft website for the differences between the versions, and the Professional and Ultimate versions had a few extra features that meant something to somebody, nothing to me. I am currently running Windows 7 Home Premium, and it’s everything I’ll ever need and more. And for those of you who don’t already have Windows 7, FOR GOD SAKE GET IT!!! Windows XP is now two generations behind the times. Get with the program!

LG DVD Burner SATA – Nothing too special about this, but I wanted to give it a shout out, if you will. There was a time I had stacks of CD and DVD drives of all shapes and sizes laying around, and when one didn’t work I’d try another, and another, and another, and so on. This LG burner has been plug-and-play on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. On many occasions it has been a frustration- (if not life-) saver for me, and it has outlasted and outperformed any other optical drive I’ve ever used. Thanks LG, you rock.

Have you ever built a computer before? What’s in your dream pc?

I was listening to my iPod at work, it was shuffling it’s 3000 song contents, and a Tech N9ne song came on. I’ve got two of Tech’s albums. I bought them some time ago because I was impressed by the speed of his rapping. The song that came on this time is called Breathe and it was one I hadn’t listened to before, that I remember at least. I decided to cut out a segment and post it, see what others think. I think it’s awesome. You wish you could rap that fast.

As nerdy as it may sound, I can’t wait to do my taxes next January (the first, at midnight. lol) Every year since my first job back in 2005, I’ve gotten a good chunk of money back (because I’ve always claimed Zero on my W4) and I go against every grandparent’s wishes and spend it all in one place: newegg.com. This time around will be no different, and I’m really excited to make the purchase. Let me show you what I plan on getting!

1. Lian-Li PC-T1B – I’ve been looking around at Mini-ITX boards and cases for a while now, and nothing has really caught my eye. Most of the reviews of the cases have all said, “Really tight fit” and I’ve seen pictures and videos of people building Mini-ITX HTPC boxes and the innards are crammed in there, literally resting on top of each other. As nice as it was to have a PC running as a DVR beneath my living room TV, a Micro-ATX case setup was just too bulky to look at. Then I found this thing (pictured below). It is so awesome I spent several hours just looking at pictures of it on Newegg and Google. It’s made by Lian-Li, so I know it’s quality, and it looks like it’d be Really fun to put together. And now, without further ado, the picture:

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I just picked up one of these yesterday:

It was a gift to myself for working 60 hours a week, 3 weeks in a row. It’s AWESOME!