my triumphant return to media center part 2

right before my birthday i fired up our television from our bedroom on media center through my tiger pc’s hdmi connection.

having a 32” monitor was nice but one screen?  what i really wanted in the office was multiple screens.  so for my birthday i ordered two lenovo 22” widescreen displays.

they are a little different in screen resolution, but the great thing is i can drag media center (or another task) to the secondary monitor (placed to the left of the main monitor) and continue to work on the main display.

so now that i’ve got a 64 bit build of media center and a hauppauge wintv-hvr-950q upstairs and a 32 bit build of media center and a hauppauge wintv-pvr-usb2 in the office (why 32 bit?  the hauppauge wintv-pvr-usb2 has windows 7 32 bit drivers but not 64 bit drivers) we’ve returned the majority of our television to media center.  i use the xbox as an extender in the family room.

the setup on the xbox with windows 7 couldn’t be easier (although i will admit this was just as easy with windows vista).  the system i’m connected to is on a smaller tv in the bedroom with a wired connection to the xbox in the family room.  we watched hd recordings just fine from the family room.  now all i’m waiting for are tuners announced at ces to replace the capability of recording up to four shows (or more importantly taping three shows and watching a fourth).

this last picture was taken on another birthday gift (hint – it’s not the digital camera) which is even cooler than i had originally hoped.  more on that next week…