Keyboard shortcuts in Media Center

Home

Whats next?

Well it's been awhile since I've had a nice little side project.

I'm trying to debate what to do next. Should I finish more work on the arcade? Should I build out the 2 racing arcades I have in my garage? Maybe start working on home automation, or add more cameras?

My file server system is getting pretty solid, and I do know I need to purchase more battery backup systems.

But for now, I seem somewhat content (atleast as far as having money to buy/build more)... So I find myself at a cross roads.

What next?

Feel free to email me suggestions. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Samsung... Where did this love come from?

This psuedo, unsure love I now feel towards you Samsung...It's so, so unclear.

Why? I've RMA'd my second bacth of 2 1.5TB drives to Sammy.. SAMSUNG EcoGreen F2 HD154UI drives to be exact.

sadly I've RMA'd another 4 to NewEgg, but thats another story

A week after I had sent the pair of failed hard drives, I get a package from Samsung and inside find 2 Samsung EcoGreen HD203WI 2TB drives.

Well thats good news, sent in 2 1.5TB drives, and they send me 2 2TB drives =)

Yet... bad news... The array I want to add them to is built out of 1.5TB drives, so I'll be waisting 1TB total between the 2 drives =(

Once I drop them in the server and spin them up, I'll report on their stability compaired to the horrible quality I've come across in their 1.5TB EchoGreen drives.

Last Updated ( Thursday, 22 July 2010 22:24 )

On the Radar

Well my MicroSoft remote has finally taken a dump on me. Sadly it's only one button thats failing and I've cleaned and repaired it more than I care to disclose. It's the <- Back button. The most commonly used button in the household and it's toast...

So off to find a new remote. So far my heart sits with

The Logitech Harmony One Advanced

alt

Featuring a Color Touch Screen I can't wait to play with =)

If this is the toy I decide on, look forward to my review and comments.

Last Updated ( Sunday, 18 July 2010 14:48 )

Veem's FastSCP

Thank you, thank you thank you Veem.

I can't say it enough, for us Windows admins a nice little toy such as Veem's FastSCP is a god-send.

Allowing Host-to-Host SCP between ESX, ESXi, VirtualCenter and *nix machines from the comfort of your Windows desktop.

Below is a screen cap of the main interface with one of my media servers online. FastSCP is what I used to acheive my 58MB/s transfer rate between my OpenFiler systems.

My 58MB/s transer was acheived during the following operation.

Reading from -> OpenFiler box #1 (Dual Core 3GHZ 2GB of RAM IBM server, Dell Perc RAID controller)

RAID5 Disk array, 11 73GB SCSI3 Ultra160 10K RPM drives + 1 Hot Spare

Writing to -> OpenFiler box #2 (Single Core 2.2GHZ 2GB of RAM, homebrew server, areca ARC-1260 controller)

RAID5 Disk array 4 320GB SATA 150 5400RPM drives

It makes me wonder what speeds I can pull with beefy disk on both sides?

Last Updated ( Thursday, 29 July 2010 17:33 )

Windows MediaCenter Hotkeys

Keyboard shortcuts in Media Center

In a search for DVD Audio controls for MediaCenter, I came across the full list of hotkeys / keyboard shortcuts for Windows Media Center.

MicroSoft Link

Use navigation shortcuts to move around in Media Center.

To Press

Move up UP ARROW

Move down DOWN ARROW

Move left LEFT ARROW

Move right RIGHT ARROW

Select ENTER or SPACEBAR

Jump back one page at a time PAGE UP

Jump ahead one page at a time PAGE DOWN

Start Media Center Windows logo key+ALT+ENTER

Go back to the previous screen or backspace a single character in Search BACKSPACE

Change channels

To Press

Change to a specific channel The number for the channel you want

Move up one channel EQUAL (=) or CTRL+EQUAL

Move down one channel MINUS (-) or CTRL+MINUS

Menu shortcuts take you directly to the main menus for feature areas.

To go to top level menus for Press

My TV CTRL+SHIFT+T

My Music CTRL+M

My Videos CTRL+E

My Pictures CTRL+I

TV and DVD menus

To go to TV and DVD menus for Press

Guide CTRL+G

Record CTRL+R

Details CTRL+D

DVD Menu CTRL+SHIFT+M

Recorded TV CTRL+O

DVD Audio CTRL+SHIFT+A

DVD Subtitle CTRL+U

Transport controls control the playback of your media.

To Press

Pause CTRL+P

Play CTRL+SHIFT+P

Stop CTRL+SHIFT+S

Replay CTRL+B

Skip CTRL+F

Rewind CTRL+SHIFT+B

Fast Forward CTRL+SHIFT+F

Mute F8

Volume Down F9

Volume Up F10

Last Updated ( Sunday, 18 July 2010 10:23 )

Just my luck...

Lighting has struck twice...

Oddly enough it was a storm that took out my power, causing my Dell PowerVault 220s Array to fail yet again. I spent a couple of days trying to remount the NFS volume served up by OpenFiler that the PowerVault hosted.

VMWare timed out every time I attempted to mount the NFS volume...Even after a fresh build of OpenFiler, a Initialize and reconfig of the RAID5 array used for the NFS volume and a rebuild of the XFS volume inside of OpenFiler.

I was able to connect via SMB, and the data (VMs) were there. I decided to utilize a fun little tool I use at work called Veem FastSCP, allowing me to initiate a transfer from one OpenFiler server to another (as well as tranfers between ESX hosts, Linux systems and Virtual Center servers).

My speeds were decent going from one OpenFiler box to the other prior to my removal of the RAID5 volume and recreationg (starting at the RAID card level and working my way thru a new OpenFiler build)

I eventually gave up trying to get VMWare to connect to the server in question via NFS again. It had at one point, until the array behind it all took a turn for the worse... Yet again I still was able to mount the volume in Windows via SMB and access the data...

Once everything was dumped over to OpenFiler box #2, I pointed ESX at that system and was able to load up NFS and mount the VMs (ruling out an issue with the ESX server).

In the end (as of the moment of writing this article) I ended up falling back to iSCSI to get the enviroment back online.

I've kept a copy of all the VM servers on SATA, residing on OpenFiler box #2.. Hopefully providing a fast DR until I get a better backup solution and more batteries in the rack!

Last Updated ( Thursday, 15 July 2010 18:53 )

More Articles...

<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next > End >>

Page 1 of 10