Fitted The Xtreamer Cooler
I fitted the Xtreamer cooler the other night. I was a little concerned how easy the how-to made the whole process look, nothing is easy. To be fair though once I’d got the side panel off, which must have been stuck down with the worlds strongest double-sided tape the whole thing was a breeze to complete. It even looks good as an end product with the cooler attached. On a plus note it worked afterwards. I hadn’t slipped and ploughed a screwdriver across the chipset.
I haven’t however watched it enough since to see if the cooler actually works but reading around others seem to think so. Its also stopped acting up. After a little playing around after my previous post, here. It turned out the Windows Home Server wasn’t 100% happy with the Xtreamer on the network. Its fine now, the problem was the WHS, at idle spun down the hard drives when they were not in use and when the Xtreamer started to stream a file there was a delay while the hard-drives spin back up. This is ok when your streaming to Boxee, a PC etc as there is about a 2 second delay the Xtreamer however seems to get confused. I think I’ll file a bug report when I can test this more.
On a similar note the Xtreamer with its HDMI output is pushing me towards getting a HD TV. I’ve been watching the new series Life on BBC/iPlayer and the awesome shots they have in HD are just amazing but I’m stuck watching it on my PC monitor… for now.. any recommendations?
4 Weeks Later
Well it has been a while since I have posted and a lot has been going on so I do apologise. Its been just over 4 weeks since I moved to Birmingham and what a great experience it has been. My placement has kicked off to a great start and I quickly got to know the ins and outs of the company and its systems so a big thanks to Talwinder, the current placement student I will be replacing.
Birmingham its self has been awesome. Last Monday I went with my new flatmate and his friends to The Rainbow to see Kid British! What a great band and they played amazing live! I also saw The Anomalies which were also awesome and other band which were very good but I have no idea what they were called… Any who it got me in the mood for V festival which is only a month away!
My placement has been a real learning curve and I think its going to get steeper which is always fun. I’m currently looking at a Windows PBX called 3CX which may be implemented at the office.
This weekend I’ll hopefully get round to having a look at the new update for Windows Home Server. Power Pack 3 has been released under a BETA tag, which means its not quite ready for the public as it might still have bugs in the software. It brings support for Windows 7 enhancements to Windows Media Centre. Check it out here.
On that note I have been checking out a new media centre called Boxee! After leaving the Stafford house the original Xbox running XBMC has been retired as I no longer have a TV (Soon to change) so I started using Boxee as a Windows version had just been released. I was very impressed initially and continue to be bemused by its features. Boxee is based on XBMC but does a much better job at presenting its self. The applications feature is also a great edition allowing UK users to watch BBC iPlayer, although here in Birmingham I am on 2mb broadband so can’t stream the HD content. I was going to set up XBMC on my new TV though a PC rather than an the Xbox but I think now it’ll be running Boxee so watch this space!.. Going to have a to buy a TV first though.. and maybe a new small computer..??
Also a quick GOOD LUCK to Andrew, Michael and Dave who are in Germany finishing their first week on placement!
