Last weekend, we finally decided to order the components for and build a new home theater PC (HTPC) for running MythTV (DVR software). We really have a need for two computers to perform this function: one for the home theater on the third floor and the other for the family room that we’re setting up in our sun room, but we decided to start with building just one and see how it works out before buying the parts for a second.

Ideally, we would have preferred to run all of the AV cables from the server in our basement straight to the televisions (eliminating the need for the frontend PCs like the one we just built), but our TVs were just too spread out and fishing wires through the walls of our nearly 100-year-old home presented too great of a challenge, so we had to give up on that idea. A couple of weeks ago, we found a feasible solution for wireless networking that we decided to go with for streaming the video recordings from the MythTV backend server in our basement to a frontend PC located nearer to the TVs, but we still needed the frontend PC(s) to make it all work. And that’s what we built last weekend.

Here’s a picture and the specs for the new computer we built:

• CPU - Intel Pentium E2200 2.2 GHz Allendale Dual-Core
• Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H with on-board:
  • nVidia GeForce 7100 graphics chipset with HDMI out
  • gigabit ethernet
  • 8-channel surround sound output
• System Memory – 1 GB
• Storage – SYBA SD-CF-2IDE-U IDE to Compact Flash Adapter and 4GB Compact Flash Card
• Power Supply – Antec earthwatts EA340
• Case – Silverstone Silver Micro ATX GD02S HTPC Case

The computer is actually pretty low spec, but there are a couple of cool things about it. First, it’s housed in a case that’s meant for home theater PCs, so it looks less like a computer and more like a stereo component. Even though the plan is to not have it be visible, this should make it blend in with the rest of our AV equipment a lot better. Second, we used a 4GB compact flash card in place of a hard drive, which cuts down on heat and noise … and it turned out to be a bit cheaper too. Since we’re running a trimmed down Linux install, we really didn’t need that much space and this provides a neat, solid-state alternative that the computer doesn’t even have to know about since the adapter plugs in just like any ordinary IDE hard drive.

Assembling the components was pretty straight-forward. The only challenge we really ran into was getting the button on the case for the DVD drive to line up with the button on the drive itself. We wound up super-gluing another piece of plastic to the case to make it work better. It wasn’t a big deal, but it would have been nice if the case had been designed to work with a larger selection of DVD drives. As far as the software install, on this and all of our other Linux computers, we run the Gentoo distribution of Linux, which has always worked pretty well for us. With this build, though, we had trouble getting the LiveCD to work and wound up having to install off of the system restore disk to get support for some of the hardware components – like the SATA DVD drive – which we thought was pretty weak. The difficulty we had with Gentoo on this build will definitely make us consider a different distribution next time around.

So far, though, we’ve been testing the new PC out on the third floor (in the home theater we’re using as a family room until our furniture for the sun room arrives) and it’s been working pretty well. We still need to tweak a couple things with the boot loader (GRUB is giving us error 25 randomly on start-up), set up a remote control to work with it so we don’t have to be tied to the keyboard, and get it moved into the cabinet with all of the other components. For now, though, it’s up and running … and we’re really enjoying being able to watch all of our favorite television programs without all of the skipping!

When we moved in last fall, our swimming pool had already been closed for the season. All winter, the pool has been covered with the winter cover (that resembles a large tarp). The cover is weighted down with water bags. The bags work pretty well at keeping the cover in place, but starting shortly after we moved in, something has been ripping the them to shreds and dragging them down the hillside away from the pool. At first we thought some animal was trying to get to the water, but even when the pool (and water bags) were covered with snow this winter, something was digging them up and tearing the bags to shreds even though the water inside them was frozen. It’s been a complete mystery to us. The bags are pretty heavy, so it doesn’t seem like something that an animal the size of a raccoon could do, but it doesn’t seem like the work of a person. We’re also confused about why any animal would bother doing this.

Today, we spent some time out by the pool pumping some of the water off of the cover since the pool was getting pretty full and they’re predicting rain for the next couple of days. While we were out there, we replaced another 4 of the water bags that had been punctured and dragged off of the pool cover. Hopefully we’ll be able to get through the next month or so without the water bags getting destroyed. I’m definitely looking forward to opening the pool when it gets warm enough so we don’t have to deal with this any more. Maybe we’ll have to think about a different type of cover next fall – one that’s animal proof …

The power company came by this morning and replaced our electric meter with one that allows the meter readers to take wireless readings while driving down the street. It sounds like they’re still trying to work out some of the details like figuring out which streets and alleys they need to drive down to pick up the right meters, but it should be a lot more efficient than what they’re doing now.

The meter replacement was really unobtrusive – the power was only out for about 10 seconds. And when we went out to look at it after they’d left, we noticed that the new meter reading was 0 … something that surely won’t last long, so we thought a picture was appropriate.

I called yesterday to get an update on our furniture order for the sun room. The tables and television stand were delivered a couple weeks ago and the rest of the furniture was supposed to be here by the middle of March. I talked to our decorator yesterday and it sounds like our sofa is in, but the rest of the furniture won’t be here until the end of the month. The couch has been sent to the delivery company, so hopefully we’ll hear from them sometime soon so we can schedule the delivery. I’m really looking forward to being able to spend more time in the sun room once we actually have furniture!

We think we’ve finally found a feasible solution for getting a network connection to our home theater on the third floor of our house … without fishing cat-5 cable through our walls!

So, here’s the situation: we have a Linux server located in our basement that we use mostly as a file server and the back-end of our MythTV DVR system. The server is located in the basement primarily to keep the noise and heat out of our living spaces, but also because we’d eventually like to locate a service panel for structured wiring (home network, video, audio, etc.) in this room next to our electrical service panel, so it seems logical to to co-locate the server with the rest of our network equipment.

Now the challenge: to watch the television recorded by MythTV in our home theater on the third floor, we need to be able to stream the recorded video files from the server in the basement to a PC with a network connection that will be physically located nearer to the television (and connected to it via standard audio/video cables). Since some of the content we record will be in HD format (once we get the HD antenna up and running again), we need a fairly speedy network connection. Our first choice would be to have a wired connection, but that means running cables up three floors, most likely through insulated walls, which won’t be a small task. So, we’ve been exploring wireless alternatives, with limited success.

This weekend, though, we tried something that appears to solve the dilemma. The Netgear WNHDEB111 HD/Gaming 5 GHz Wireless-N Networking Kit comes with two access points/bridges. One gets plugged in to the router in the basement via a network cable and the other gets plugged in to the MythTV front-end PC in the home theater, also with a network cable. They communicate with each other over a wireless 802.11n network (that’s configured with the touch of a button) … and, so far, they seem really quick. We were able to stream two non-HD recordings and download a 2GB file over the wireless-N network at the same time without the playback skipping or stopping (something that wouldn’t be possible on our wireless-G network). The data speeds we calculated indicate that it should be able to handle transmitting an HD recording (approximately 10 GB per hour) without a problem. Although the network speed is somewhat slowed down when we place the access point for the home theater on the third floor, we get a really fast connection when it’s located in our second floor office and running cat-5 network cable from the office to the home theater on the third floor is no big deal, so we think we’ve found a winner.

We stopped at the carpet store again this weekend to look for more carpet samples that might be closer to what we were thinking for our master bedroom. We spent a lot more time looking through all of the different samples this time and I’m completely amazed by the number of frieze samples they had. I guess that must be the new big thing in carpet. The frieze samples the sales lady sent home with us last weekend were really rough feeling and rather messy looking … we weren’t fans. But, when we started to look today, we noticed that there’s really a wide variety of options, some of which are nothing like the samples we brought home last week.

We came home with three more samples to look at this week … all of which are considered frieze. Here’s a picture of a couple of them:

The one on the right is a really close color match to the walls, which I thought would be a good thing until I got it home and now I think it’s all going to blend way too much and make everything that doesn’t match exactly (like the blinds and comforter) look yellow-y. The one on the left is kind of a mix between the wall color and the shade color, so it picks up some of both. Right now, I think that might be a better option, but I’m still kind of confused. There are just so many options! The third sample we brought home was more for the texture since the sample itself is kind of a blue-y green color. Texture-wise, I think any of them would be ok … and they’re all available in colors that would probably work. It just seems like this is one case where life would be so much easier if there weren’t so many choices!

The shades we ordered about a week and a half ago for the master bedroom and bathroom came last week. I was really impressed considering that the website said to expect a 2-3 week wait, but they shipped within 2 days! We started installing them last week and finished up this morning. I’m really excited to have them up – the bedroom has been noticeably colder since we took the old shades down for painting.

For the master bedroom, we ordered the standard room darkening Levelor cellular shades in a color called “Sand”. The color isn’t quite as good of a match to the wall color as I thought it would be, but it’s a pretty close match to the comforter so it still looks like we knew what we were doing when we ordered them. :) Here are some pictures:

In the master bathroom, we chose a light filtering cellular shade in the same “Sand” color. Even though they’re the same color, they don’t really look like a match. The room darkening ones are so much more opaque, so the color looks really solid. On the light filtering one, it’s a lot more variegated. It’s fine for our application since they’re in two different rooms, but they’re definitely not a close enough match to put them in a space where you’ll see both and expect them to look the same. Here’s a photo of the new bathroom blind:

We opted for an inside mount to avoid covering up the trim, but I think if we had it to do again, we might have gone with an outside mount instead. Since our windows aren’t perfectly square, mounting the shades on the inside really brings out any imperfections. We still have one that we need to spend some time adjusting because it hangs a little crooked. We also had one window that was added after the house was built (when the sleeping porch was enclosed in the 50’s) and it’s trimmed out a little differently than the others in the room. We didn’t really pay attention to it when we were measuring for the shades, but when we went to hang the shade for that window this morning, we realized that there was no clear place to put the mounting brackets on the inside of the window without damaging the trim. So, we just mounted it on the outside instead. It looks fine except that it’s a little narrower than we would have ordered had we been intending to do an outside mount. Eventually, we’ll probably put up some drapery panels, and by the time those go up, I’m sure it won’t be noticeable. If we had it to do again, though, planning on an outside mount would have been a much easier approach!

From last November thru the end of January, we had all kinds of problems with our Trane XR90 furnace, which resulted in it shutting off and flashing an error code indicating a “pressure switch error”. These issues seemed to be corrected after the last service call at the end of January where the technician lowered the gas pressure and increased the fan speed to reduce the heat buildup inside the unit. Since then, everything has been working great, until a couple of nights ago when we noticed that the furnace had been running for a long time and was blowing cold air. When we went upstairs to look at the unit, it was blinking twice, which means “external lockout”.

We tried shutting the furnace off at the thermostat, but it didn’t respond. Flipping the power switch in the furnace closet and then turning it back on seemed to fix the problem. The furnace kicked back on and it has been blowing hot air ever since.

After a quick Google search, it sounds like the “external lockout” code could be caused by the flame sensor needing to be cleaned, or it could also be because our gas pressure is too low. It seems like we just can’t win with this furnace! We’re really hoping that this was just a fluke – neither of us are too excited about another round of service calls.

This morning I spent about an hour replacing about 30 outlet and light switch covers in our master bedroom, master bathroom, and sun room. It sounds like a silly thing to think about replacing, but it made such a difference – in the bedroom especially.

The master bedroom and bathroom (and also the kitchen, hallway, and third floor) had oak outlet covers when we moved in. I’m not a big fan of the wood finish since it’s such a contrast to the paint, but I’ve felt kind of guilty about replacing them with the standard $.39 variety since I know the oak ones are probably about $7 a piece new. Since we’ve painted the bedroom, though, I keep thinking how much more I’d like it without the wood outlet covers, so I finally broke down and spent a whopping $13.00 at Lowe’s last night to buy plain cream ones, which I installed this morning. Here are before and after photos:

Before

After

I’m happy with the way the standard covers look, but I’m not sure what to do with the nice wood ones we took off. So, if anyone happens to be in the market for some oak light switch and outlet covers, I can make you a great deal! We’ve got about a dozen outlet covers, 3 switch covers, and another 3 with the rectangular cut-out for GFCI outlets, etc.

In the sun room, the outlet covers had been wallpapered and still had a bunch of glue on them, so I figured they could stand an update while I was at it. There’s really not much of a difference in how they look until you get up close and notice that the new ones aren’t sticky, but I’m still glad to have that crossed off my list of things to do. Here’s the “after” photo:

Since we moved in to our house last September, we’ve been trying to figure out how to set up our network to deliver HD content to televisions and computers throughout our house (using the open source MythTV DVR software). In our previous home, we were able to run the whole bundle of wires (audio cables, video cables, coax, etc.) from our MythTV server through the drop ceiling in our basement to all of the rooms we needed to access. This house, however, is presenting a much greater challenge. Our computers and televisions are spread out over three floors without a single drop ceiling in the house.

We’ve realized it’s probably going to be too great of a challenge to run the full bundle of cables to every television in the house, so we’ll probably have to switch to a setup where we have separate client PCs near the televisions so that all we’ll have to run is network cable to provide a way for the clients to talk to the server (conveniently located in our basement). Even running just Ethernet cable, though, is no easy task, so we’ve been looking at other options.

Our first attempt at setting up the network was to run everything over wireless. It’s great for surfing the web, but even non-HD television skips. So, this weekend, we were at Best Buy and saw the Netgear Powerline HD network adapters that promise to provide a network over a home electrical system that runs at 200 mbps, capable of streaming HD content. We were both pretty skeptical, but thought we’d give it a try since it sounded like the perfect solution to our problems.

The adapters are easy enough to set up: one gets plugged in to an electrical outlet near the cable modem & router, with a network cable connecting it to the router. The other gets plugged into an outlet near the computer with a network cable connecting it to the computer. It takes about a minute, but the two eventually boot up and the blue light comes on, indicating they’ve “found” each other. Since setting them up, though, we’ve run a bunch of tests and been rather disappointed in the performance overall. On average, it appears to operate much more slowly than our (802.11g) wireless network and we weren’t able to achieve anything near 200 mbps unless we had both units plugged in to the same outlet (which of course isn’t practical). We aren’t sure if the poor performance is due to our wiring situation or if it’s typical for them to perform slowly, but even moving the two to outlets that are physically no more than 6 feet apart and clearly on the same circuit degraded the performance dramatically.

I think it’s fair to say that the power line adapters would perform fine for surfing the web, but come no where near performing well enough to transmit HD content from our basement computer to the television in the attic. So, it looks like they’ll be going back to Best Buy and we’ll continue to look for a way to snake Ethernet cable throughout our house.