Server Upgrade

Today the server got an upgrade: 1.5 TB of additional storage. Installing was a breeze, Windows Home Server takes care of the formatting and adding it to the storage pool.
I chose another Samsung Spinpoint, because I like how silent these are. Soon I'll remove the 160GB Maxtor hard drive from the server, because I don't need a third disk and I want to minimize power usage.

The server setup is now:

• CPU: Intel Celeron 440 2.0GHz, 800MHz FSB
• Mobo: Gigabyte EP35-DS3, Intel P35 Chipset, ATX
• Memory: 1x Kingston Dimm 1GB DDR2 PC2-6400
• Video: none
• Sound: MoBo intgrated
• CPU cooler: Cooler Master Hyper TX 2
• HD 1: Samsung SpinPoint F1 750GB, SATA, 3.0Gbps
• HD 2: Samsung Spinpoint F2EG 1.5TB, SATA, 3.0Gbps
• HD 3: Maxtor 160GB harddisk, PATA
• Case: Cooler Master Centurion 5
• Power: Medion Power Supply 250W
• OS: Windows Home Server UK
• TV card 1: Hauppauge PVR350
• TV card 2: Hauppauge PVR150

Samsung TV

Finally, I own a digital flatscreen TV. After long and careful consideration I put my money on the Samsung 40B7020. It's full HD, 100Hz. The all new LED backlighting technology results in deeper blacks, a relatively low power consumption and a very thin - only 3 cm - screen. This particular model comes with an ethernet connection and all kinds of network and internet functionality. It's a Media Center in itself!

Maui Platform HTPC

Tom's Hardware has an interesting piece on building an HTPC based on AMD's Maui platform and Windows 7. Silent PC Review and others reported on the platform in November and what's interesting is that the audio amplifiers can be integrated in the HTPC.
Not for me though, my 13 kilogram AV receiver won't be exchanged for an amplifier on a PCI express card. I'll keep feeding it digital signal exclusively.

MP TV series (2)

A little over a year ago I reported about the MP TV series plugin and how it blew me away. Last week a new version was released and it's even better. It still makes extensive use of the TV series database at http://www.thetvdb.com/. Not only the series banners, screenshots and episode guides are used, but also the fanart graphics are used in the background. The user interface for configuration has been improved.

By now my TV series folders are standardized to the extent that I don't need to tweak the regular expressions for filename parsing anymore.

The first screenshot on this page shows the opening screen where you can select which series you want to watch. The second secreen shows the different season posters. The last one has the individual episodes for a particular series and season, including a screenshot and an episode guide.

Interestingly, this plugin project is hosted on Google Code, not on Sourceforge.