Configuring Media Center to Look for Recorded Shows on a Network Share on Windows 7

Personal network attached storage devices are becoming more and more common in the home environment. I recently purchased a 1TB NAS (Network Attached Storage) that I use to back up all my personal documents as well as store recorded TV shows. I have my Media Center recording shows all the time, so the hard drive on my desktop fills up very quickly. For the shows that I want to keep, I move the file from my record folder to a special folder on my NAS that I have configured Windows Media Center to watch and play files from. This is possible with a few setting changes within Media Center.

Follow these steps to configure Windows Media Center to watch for recorded shows in locations other than the main record folder:

1. Click on the Start Button, type in Media Center, and hit Enter to start up Media Center.

2. After it has started navigate to Tasks with arrow keys and then select Settings and hit Enter.

3. Click on Media Libraries.

4. Select the Recorded TV media library and click Next.

5. Select Add folders to the library and click Next.

6. Select Let me manually add a shared folder and click Next.

7. Type in the shared folder path such as \\Server123\SharedFolder and also a username and password that has access to the shared folder. Click Next when ready to connect to the share.

8. Click Yes, use these locations on the confirmation screen and then click Finish.

After you have added the new network share to your library you can click the green button in the top right of the Media Center window to return to the main menu. You are now able to watch recorded shows that are stored on another computer.

Source of Information : Windows 7 Tweaks 2010

Creating Shortcuts for Windows Media Center on Windows 7

Windows already includes shortcuts to start Windows Media Center in the Start menu. Next, you�ll create advanced shortcuts that will allow you to jump directly to different sections of Media Center. For example, how to make a shortcut that, when clicked, will open Windows Media Center and go directly to the TV Guide. It is also possible to go directly to other sections, such as Live TV, Recorded TV, Pictures, Music, and even Sports Scores.

This is all possible with a special /homepage command-line argument that the Windows Media Center executable uses. First, right-click your desktop and select New and then Shortcut. Next, enter the location as shown in the following options, depending on what you want to happen. Press Next, name the shortcut, and you are finished.

Start Windows Media Center and Go Directly to TV Guide
%SystemRoot%\ehome\ehshell.exe /homepage:videoguide.xml

Start Windows Media Center and Go Directly to Live TV
%SystemRoot%\ehome\ehshell.exe /homepage:videofullscreen.xml

Start Windows Media Center and Go Directly to Recorded TV
%SystemRoot%\ehome\ehshell.exe /homepage:videorecordedprograms.xml

Start Windows Media Center and Go Directly to Music
%SystemRoot%\ehome\ehshell.exe /homepage:audio.home.xml

Start Windows Media Center and Go Directly to Photos
%SystemRoot%\ehome\ehshell.exe /homepage:photos.xml

Start Windows Media Center and Go Directly to Radio
%SystemRoot%\ehome\ehshell.exe /homepage:radio.xml

Start Windows Media Center and Go Directly to Movies
%SystemRoot%\ehome\ehshell.exe /homepage:movies.library
.browsepage.xml

Start Windows Media Center and Go Directly to Slideshow
%SystemRoot%\ehome\ehshell.exe /homepage:Slideshow.xml

Start Windows Media Center and Go Directly to Sports Scores
%SystemRoot%\ehome\ehshell.exe /homepage: SportsScoresPage.xml

Source of Information : Windows 7 Tweaks 2010

Turning Your PC into a DVR with Windows 7

So, you have an edition of Windows 7 with Media Center but no TV tuner card installed? You are missing out on the main Media Center experience. With the help of this section and an inexpensive TV tuner card, I show you how to turn your PC into a fully functional DVR that will give any TiVo set top box big competition.

Before you can get started, there are some minimum system requirements that I must go over so that you will be able to watch TV on your computer. Your computer must have a video card with at least 128MB of RAM. To support the best appearance your video card must also support the Aero Glass effect.

The most important aspect of adding a tuner to your PC is picking one that is compatible with Windows 7 Media Center. Several tuner cards are on the market, but not all are compatible with Windows 7 Media Center. One way to find a tuner that Microsoft has certified compatible is to use the Windows Logo product search page located at http://winqual.microsoft.com/HCL/Default.aspx?m=7 and search for compatible products. Just select either the 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows you are running, set the Category to TV Tuner Cards and the Additional Qualifications box to MediaCenter, and click the Start button on the web page. You will be shown a list of all the cards Microsoft has certified.

As you can see, there are both internal PCI cards and external USB devices that can be added to your computer. The following are a few more models that are known to work well on Windows 7:

� Internal PCI-E: WinTV-HVR-1250
� Internal PCI-E: WinTV-HVR-2250
� External USB: Diamond ATI TV Wonder HD 750 (TVW750USB)

Installing the TV tuner is also very easy, especially if you purchased an external USB tuner. Simply plug it in and install the drivers that came with the device. If you purchased an internal PCI or PCI-E card, just turn off your computer, unplug the power, open the case, and pop in the card in an open PCI or PCI-E slot. Make sure to install the drivers after you power your PC back on although in some cases Windows 7 will automatically install the drivers as it did with my PCI-E TV tuner card.

After installing your TV tuner card, you are ready to get started configuring it in Windows Media Center. Make sure you have your antenna or cable feed connected to the card. Follow these steps to get your Windows Media Center up and running:

1. Click the Start button, type Media Center in the Search box, and then press Enter.

2. If you are prompted with a setup wizard, just select the Express option. You are going to configure your card a different way. After you are on the main Media Center screen use the arrow keys to navigate down to the Tasks section. Then navigate to Settings and press Enter.

3. On the Setting screen, select TV and press Enter.

4. Select Set Up TV Signal and press Enter. At this point, you will get a Tuner Not Found error if your TV tuner hardware is not installed properly. If this happens, make sure that you have the latest drivers for Windows 7 installed.

5. Confirm your region by selecting Yes, use this region to configure TV services and click Next.

6. Type in your ZIP code and click Next.

7. Click I agree on the Program Guide Terms of Service screen and then click Next.

8. If applicable, click I agree on the Microsoft PlayReady PC runtime EULA and then click Next. Microsoft PlayReady will be automatically downloaded and installed.

9. After the TV Signal detection has completed you will be presented with what Windows Media Center found. On my PC it said it detected Digital Cable (ClearQAM) and Analog Cable. If your results are correct click Yes, configure TV with these results. Otherwise click No, let me configure my TV signal manually and specify your setup. When ready click Next.

10. You will now be guided through setting up each of your sources where you pick the provider so Windows Media Center knows what program guide to provide you with. Click through the guide for each source and select your TV signal provider. When completed, click Next on the TV Signal Configuration confirmation screen.

11. Microsoft PlayReady updates will be downloaded along with the TV program guide. Then the TV channel scan will start automatically. This step will take several minutes. Once completed click Next on the results screen.

12. The TV signal should now be configured. Click Finish to exit and start using your new DVR.

Your Windows Media Center is now set up. You can begin to watch TV and set up shows to record in the guide. Now you are ready to further customize your Windows Media Center.

Source of Information : Windows 7 Tweaks 2010

Removing Items from the Context Menu in Windows 7

Over time, your context menus can become cluttered with program entries from old programs that you may not use anymore. You might experience programs that take over all your context menus. Compression apps such as WinZip, WinRaR, or Picozip always end up adding program entries to all the context menus. I have Picozip installed on my computer and every time I right-click any file or folder, I see five entries from Picozip giving me different compression options. This can be a convenient feature, but if you don�t compress and extract zip files very often; you might not need the added convenience. Instead, you could remove these entries from your context menu, which will give your system a cleaner interface as well as a small performance boost if you have a lot of extra entries in your context menu.

Removing these programs from your context menus can be a little tricky because they can be spread in different places in the registry. The only way to remove these types of entries is to edit the registry directly. Follow these steps:

1. Click the Start button, type regedit in the Search box, and then press Enter.

2. When the Registry Editor appears, expand the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT folder. You will now see a list of every file type that is set up on your computer.

3. If the entry that you want to remove from the context menu appears in all context menus, such as the preceding WinZip example, you will have to expand the * folder. Otherwise, expand the folder with the file extension you want to modify.

4. After expanding the correct folder, expand the ShellEx and ContextMenuHandlers folders. Your registry path should be HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\ShellEx\ContextMenuHandlers.

5. Look through the list until you find the entry that you want to remove. Right-click the entry and select Delete. You will find that identifying some of the programs is easy. For example, WinRaR is labeled WinRaR. However, you may run into some items that are listed using their application/class ID or a vague name. If so, do a registry search of the class ID (Ctrl+F), which is formatted as {XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX}, to find other references that will give you clues to what the ID belongs to. If that does not work, try doing a search on Google to see whether that turns up anything.

6. After you are finished removing all the entries from your context menus, just close Registry Editor and you are finished. Your changes will be in effect immediately.

Source of Information : Windows 7 Tweaks 2010

Cloud Broker

One method of achieving interoperability is through a cloud broker. A cloud broker is a cloud that provides services to cloud consumers but might not host any of its own resources. In this example, the broker federates resources from Cloud 1 and Cloud 2, making them available transparently to cloud consumers. Cloud consumers interact only with the broker cloud when requesting services, even though the delivered services come from other clouds.

As the DTMF stated in its white paper on Interoperable Clouds, the goal of the Cloud Incubator is �to define a set of architectural semantics that unify the interoperable management of enterprise and cloud computing.� Building blocks provided will be used �to specify the cloud provider interfaces, data artifacts, and profiles to achieve interoperable management.� It outlines its deliverables thus:

The Phase 1 deliverables�reference architecture, taxonomy, use cases, priorities, submissions from vendors, and existing standards and initiatives� will be analyzed to deliver one or more cloud provider interface informational specification documents, which will be the basis for the development of future cloud standards. These documents will describe functional interfaces, protocols, operations, security, and data artifacts. These building blocks are being worked on, but have not yet been published. Phase 2 will deliver a recommendation for each standard, which will include the gaps and overlaps as well as abstract use

Source: http://www.dmtf.org/about/cloud-incubator/DSP_IS0101_1.0.0.pdf

The evolution of cloud standards is coordinated by cloud-standards.org, and they maintain a Wiki for that purpose.

Open Cloud Consortium (OCC) is a member-driven organization that supports the development of standards for cloud computing and frameworks for interoperating between clouds, develops benchmarks for cloud computing, and supports reference implementations for cloud computing.

The OCC also manages test-beds for cloud computing, such as the Open Cloud Testbed, and operates cloud computing infrastructures to support scientific research, such as the Open Science Data Cloud.

OCC seems to be an effort driven mostly by Yahoo! and its university research partners.42 However, its concerns are industry-wide; its Working Group on Standards and Interoperability For Large Data Clouds (one of four working groups at this writing) focuses on developing standards for interoperating large data clouds. For example, what are standard interfaces to storage clouds and compute clouds? What are appropriate benchmarks for large data clouds? The group is concerned with architecture for clouds popularized by a series of Google technical reports that consists of a storage cloud providing a distributed file system. A compute cloud supporting MapReduce is a patented software framework introduced by Google to support distributed computing on large data sets on clusters of computers and a data cloud supporting table services. The open source Hadoop system follows this architecture. The working group uses the name large data clouds for these types of clouds.

One big challenge with today�s PaaS offerings is that they are all fairly unique and incompatible with one another and with the way that enterprises run their applications. Once you select a PaaS offering, it is easy to become locked into their particular offering, unable to easily move your applications and data to another PaaS provider or back into your own datacenter should the need arise, which is a challenge for cloud computing as a whole.


Interclouding, DTMF and OVFS
Google�s Vint Cerf says that what we need is Intercloud, a goal that Google, VMware, and several others are working to address within the DMTF45 including the Open Virtualization Format Specification. Just as personal computers didn�t really take off until there were just two standards (Apple and IBM-compatible), so too we can expect to see Interclouding, once supported by all major vendors, to greatly accelerate movement to the cloud.

Source of Information : Implementing and Developing Cloud Computing Applications 2011

DMTF

Industry-wide, the standardization effort is being coordinated through The Distributed Management Task Force, Inc., (DMTF33) a not-for-profit organization devoted to developing management standards and promoting interoperability for enterprise and Internet environments. Winston Bumpus, VMware�s director of standards architecture and DMTF president, formed the Open Cloud Standards Incubator together with others as a committee within DMTF. The Open Cloud Standards Incubator (OCSI) was to focus on ways to facilitate operations between private clouds within enterprises and other private, public, or hybrid clouds by improving the interoperability between platforms through open cloud resource management standards. The group also aimed to develop specifications to enable cloud service portability and provide management consistency across cloud and enterprise platforms. As the Web site states:

The DMTF Standards Incubation process enables like-minded DMTF members to work together and produce informational specifications that can later be fast-tracked through the standards development process. The incubation process is designed to foster and expedite open, collaborative, exploratory technical work that complements the DMTF mission to lead the development, adoption and promotion of interoperable management initiatives and standards.

The current incubator leadership board currently includes AMD, CA, Cisco, Citrix, EMC, Fujitsu, HP, Hitachi, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Novell, Rackspace, RedHat, Savvis, SunGard, Sun Microsystems, and VMware.

Source: http://www.dmtf.org/about/cloud-incubator (Courtesy, Distributed Management Task Force, Inc.)

Only Amazon is conspicuously absent.

The DMTF works with affiliated industry organizations such as the Open Grid Forum, Cloud Security Alliance, TeleManagement Forum (TMF), Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).


OCSI Standardization Efforts
The management standards developed within DMTF deal predominantly with IaaS and help manage clouds that provide infrastructure as a service. One OCSI initiative is Virtualization MANagement (VMAN): A Building Block for Cloud Interoperability.34 VMAN standards address packaging/distribution, deployment/installation, and management of cloud IaaS that rely on virtualized systems. Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is a DMTF standard for packaging and distributing virtual appliances. A virtual appliance is a prebuilt software solution, comprised of one or more virtual machines that are packaged, maintained, updated, and managed as a unit. OVF enables portability and simplifies installation and deployment of virtual appliances across multiple virtualization platforms.

The issues relating to interoperable clouds are discussed in OCSI�s white paper.36 This white paper describes a snapshot of the work being done in the DMTF Open Cloud Standards Incubator, including use cases and reference architecture as they relate to the interfaces between a cloud service provider and a cloud service consumer.

The main use cases being addressed are:

� How building on standards provides flexibility to do business with a new provider without excessive effort or cost.

� How multiple cloud providers may work together to meet the needs of a consumer of cloud services.

� How different consumers with different needs can enter into different contractual arrangements with a cloud provider for data storage services.

Source of Information : Implementing and Developing Cloud Computing Applications 2011

Interclouding, Standards, and VMware�s Focus on Open PaaS

Google started The Data Liberation Front31 at the urging of Vint Cerf. This is an engineering team at Google whose singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products. Google says,

We do this because we believe that you should be able to export any data that you create in (or import into) a product. We help and consult other engineering teams within Google on how to �liberate� their products. This is our mission statement:

Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google�s products. Our team�s goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.

Source: www.dataliberation.org/

The statement is a recognition that data liberation, in the end, grows the business faster and larger than forcing customers into lock-up data silos. Cloud vendors, especially Google and VMware, noted that enterprises are very concerned with the portability of their applications�something that is often a concern or blocker for public PaaS offerings.

Amazon, too, has made available AWS Import/Export,32 which makes it easier to move data to and from Amazon S3 using portable storage devices for transport, with a maximum device capacity of 4TB. While this form of �sneaker-net� has been around since system engineers hand-carried floppy disks from one stand-alone PC to another, it�s much cheaper and more reliable than trying to send very large files over the Internet.

Still, it�s a stopgap measure at best. VMware�s PaaS will have a significant focus on enterprise-grade qualities�providing strong controls for privacy, identity, and authorization control, allowing applications to be extensions of those in the corporate datacenter.

VMware�s entries into this space focus on addressing this challenge and, with the company�s partners (described earlier), creating �Open PaaS� offerings:

Virtualization is about separating the logical view of server assets from the physical resources upon which they run. By severing the tentacles that crept in between traditional operating systems and hardware, it enables virtual machines with hardware independence and mobility (among many other capabilities). In similar fashion, a PaaS offering can be architected in a way that clearly separates layers and avoids the restrictions seen in many of today�s implementations. Furthermore, the parts of a PaaS offering that the applications depend on (e.g. libraries, messaging, data access) can be built using open development frameworks and technologies with liberal licensing programs. Ultimately this makes it easier for an ecosystem of more compatible PaaS offerings to grow, providing choice for the developers and consumers of the applications.

Our initial open PaaS offerings focus on a particularly important choice . . . choice as to where you deploy and run your applications.

Source: http://blogs.vmware.com/console/2010/04/vmforce-andvmwares-open-paas-strategy.html

As VMware knows, offering a choice such as this requires industry wide standards.

Source of Information : Implementing and Developing Cloud Computing Applications 2011

Today is Like 1973

Vint Cerf, a founder of the Internet back in the day and now a Google employee, says the situation today reminds him of the e-mail delivery situation in 1973. There aren�t yet universal standards for moving data around. Vendors need to work cooperatively so customers can easily move information between services. Until that happens, enterprises will exercise caution about moving vital data to the cloud. Cloud computing today is similar to the earliest days of snail mail delivery, when a nationwide network did not yet exist to reliably and expeditiously move letters from one location to another. From the need to deliver mail came peering, in the form of reciprocal agreements and flat rates. Mail began to be charged by weight. Address standards emerged. Standardized envelope sizes and stamps allowed for better handling and portability; the emergence of trains and steamships provided an improvement in infrastructure.

Today, Alex Williams, an editor for ReadWriteWeb says, �we need cloud peering in the form of reciprocal agreements and flat rates. Compatibility means open APIs and formats. Portability is about standard virtual machines and images. And better infrastructure is needed to reduce intercloud latency.�

It�s not tremendously complicated, and we are moving rapidly in the right direction. �Peering agreements can be relatively simple,� Williams says. Peering should be simplified, as most data centers are clustered in specific geographic regions. Tom Hughes-Croucher (Yahoo! Developer Network) and Carlos Bueno (Yahoo! Mail) point to the effects on carriers when SMS messages could freely flow between the networks. SMS message volume increased anywhere from 250 percent to 900 percent in the span of a short six months.30

As Hughes-Croucher says, lock-in is not just about APIs and data formats. �It�s a BIG mistake to think that lock-in has gone away because we have open-source software. There are some kinds of problems that you can�t program your way out of.�

Vendors are listening.

Source of Information : Implementing and Developing Cloud Computing Applications 2011