I decided to get the Harmony 900, as it is the replacement for the Harmony 890.  The Harmony 900 is a combination IR and RF remote, where it can control devices that are not in line of site of the remote.

The Harmony 900 uses the same web base configuration tool as the other remotes, but unfortunately I had to create a new account for this new remote as the tool wouldn’t allow me to add the new remote to my existing account.  This required me to re-add all of my devices.

The IR repeater that is included in the Harmony 900 is different than the one included in the 890.  The IR repeaters include with the 890, could be attached directly to the devices to be controlled.  This helped improve the reliability of the remote signal reception.  The Harmony 900′s IR repeaters are meant to sit on the shelf with the component itself.  This is not ideal for furnature where there isn’t a door covering the equipment.  In my case, I had to disable the internal IR receiver on my Media Center PC, and use an external USB IR receiver located right next to the IR repeater.

So far the remote is working pretty well for us.  My wife is pleased as well, especially since pressing the buttons actually work.

The fitbit is a multi-axis accelerometer based pedometer, but it the main draw is that it wirelessly syncs data to the service when you are in range of the base station.  Since it is a two way sync, data that you have entered on the website can affect the display on the fitbit itself.  For example, your height or stride length entered on the website will affect the total distance value shown on the device.

In addition to helping you track your fitness, the fitbit claims to be able track how well your sleep is.  Included in the fitbit package is an wristband.  To track your sleep, you put the fitbit in “sleep” mode, and then place it in the wristband.  I assume that the fitbit services calculates the quality of sleep from the percentage of time that the fitbit detects motion while in “sleep” mode.

There are one thing that I think that could be improved with yncing without a computer.  The computers that we use most are laptops that are normally not connected to USB devices, so these will not be useful for syncing.  And the desktop computers in our house are normally turned off. Using a cell phone would be a great solution. I see a few ways that this would work.

1. Have the fitbit sync with a phone over bluetooth.  Fitbit could write an iPhone or Android application that would send the data to the fitbit server
2. Replace the fitbit device with an iPhone or Android application, assuming that the application doesn’t decrease battery life of the phone.

I decide to reorganize my home network, to try and improve things.  I switched things around so all of the media related devices are on the same Gigabit ethernet switch.  Hopefully, this will help prevent bandwidth contention, when attempting to watch television or movies.

Next time I climb up to the attic, I need to label each of the ethernet cables, so I can know which room and port each go to.  Currently, it takes me a few tries to determine what is connected to each.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhjhacUnN08

I am not sure how often I will use it, as majority of the time that I am looking at the browser on my phone, I am not at my computer, and am most likely not logged in.  Ideally, the shared links would be queued, and the pages would open the next time that the browser is opened, but it looks like that doesn’t happen.

Unfortunately, the archiving feature that Power Pack 3 implemented didn’t do anything to remove duplicate episodes, so I started to use a lot more space than was needed. Also, you are not able to specify different destination directories for the archived recordings, so you end up with one directory full of files.  I also never used the transcoding inPower Pack 3′s archive recording feature.

Version 3.9.2 of Recorded TV Manager adds support for Windows 7′s wtv recording files, so I decided to install the new version.  The instructions are very helpful for installing the Windows Home Server plugin, and the service that is needed to access the meta data from the wtv files.

I also took this as the opportunity to organize the recorded content that is on the share on the Windows Home Server. I moved some of the archived content to a share that has folder duplication enabled, and for content that I don’t care about losing, I left it in a share that doesn’t have duplication enabled.

I decided to set up the Xbox in our bedroom.  (And got the OK from my wife too.)  I have configured it to automatically start up in Media Center Extender mode when the Xbox starts up.  Since I want to access our Netflix streaming account from the Xbox, I created a Xbox Live Gold account for the Xbox, and associated my Netflix account to this Xbox account.

With this setup, I can access:

• Live and Recorded TV from the Media Center
• Netflix streaming content
• DVD content
• Content from the Zune Video marketplace
• Hulu, Youtube, and other internet streaming content through the PlayOn server running on the Media Center

Also, we will be able to play games on this Xbox.  (Most likely only when my wife has her woman’s group over)

Microsoft announced that they are implementing a Xbox Live Gold family plan type this November.  I am planning on setting up one of those plans, and associating this account with family plan.

I am hope the family plan will let me:

• Share one pool of Xbox Live points, with the a subset of the associated accounts that I specify.
• Allow all associated accounts to have access to content licensed to the main account. (This would allow content purchased by the main account to be played on a different Xbox with one of the other associated Xbox Live accounts)
• Sync all accounts associated with the Xbox Live family account to all associated Xbox 360s, including all saved game state for each accounts.

In this case, me wife’s Grandmother has several behaviors that increase the likelihood that she will be infected.

1. She installs random software that she downloads from the Internet.
2. She often runs her programs using “Run as Administrator”

I am tempted to remove Windows from these computers, and install Ubuntu, but I think that this would be a steep learning curve for her, and I would still need to set up a way for her to run windows programs (Wine or VMWare)

If I had more time to dedicate to support, I could change her account to a non-Administrator account level.  But then, everytime she wanted to install some softeare, or run a Windows Update that prompts for administrator access, I would have to do that.  Unfortunately, we are local to her, and I don’t have the time to manage all of these things remotely.There are several things that Microsoft could do to make this type of support easier

• Create a new type of user, lets call it “sub-administrator”.  This user would have the following behaviors
  • Would not be able to use the “Run as Adminstrator” command
  • Would only be able to install applications that are signed
    • The developer would sign their app with a private key, where the public key is registered with Microsoft.
    • Microsoft would only allow public keys to be registered from “reputable” developers
    • The application would only install if the signature matches what is expected
  • This user wouldn’t be able to modify backup or virus scanner settings
• Create a new “Safe-mode” setting.  In addition to the Safe-mode with Networking, there would be a “Safe-mode with Networking and secure-RDP”.  This would allow the person responsible for support to be able to log in, even when in safe mode
• Allow an administrator to specify that “Safe-mode” should be entered on the next boot.  This would eliminate the need to be physically present to enter “Safe-Mode”

Even with this scare, I don’t think that she will change her behavior, unless Microsoft adds some features that I listed above, I am thinking that either I will have to revoke administrator privileges from her account, or stop offering support.

I booted the computer with the Window Home Server PC restore CD, with the laptop connected to the network, and attempted to have the restore software find the sever, but the software wasn’t able to find the server.  It turns out that the restore CD didn’t have the drivers for the ethernet interface.  The restore software can load any needed drivers from a floppy or usb drive.  I copied the contents of the CD that contains the drivers for the m1330 onto a thumb drive, and when the software searched for any needed drivers, it wasn’t able to find any.

It turns out that Dell didn’t put the ATA or ethernet drivers on the driver CD for the m1330.  I was able to download those drivers manually and put them on a thumb drive, and was able to restore the data to the new drive.

Now, I will just label the and keep the thumb drive for whenever I need to restore that computer

• Sending a location from Google Maps to your phone, where you can easily get start navigating to the destination
• Sending web page url to the phone, where it can be viewed

The setup/transfer went pretty easy, especially since the software to transfer data from the old hard drive is included on the new Xbox.  (You do need to purchase the Xbox 360 transfer cable.)  All content was transferred, except for the games that had been installed on the hard drive.  Even though the content was transferred, it was still licensed to my old Xbox.  (The DRM on the Xbox licenses content to the Xbox where the content was purchased, and the Xbox Live account.)

Since I want the content to be playable when my Xbox Live account is not logged in, I needed to transfer the licenses to the new Xbox.  Microsoft has a tool where you can transfer the licenses for your content to a different Xbox.  Unfortunately, after you transfer the licenses, you need to redownload the content.  The download manager on the Xbox only allows 30 items to be added to the queue.  So I re-downloaded the games, but haven’t redownloaded the Rock Band tracks that I had purchased.

I do like the hardware on the new Xbox, for reasons other than how silent it runs.  Since HDMI and toslink optical are on board, I can now use HDMI and digital audio.  (There wasn’t room with the placement of the ports to use both before.)

Since the Xbox 360 is so quiet, I have been thinking about using the Xbox as our main media viewing interface.  The Xbox is significantly quieter than the computer that we have running Windows Media Center, so I could move the Media Center PC to a closet, and improve the viewing experience in the living room. Since we use Media Center as our DVR, I would configure the Xbox to start up in Media Center Extender mode. This would allow us to watch live TV or any recorded content. The Xbox natively supports Netflix, so we would have easy access to movies and kids shows, and Zune integration would give us access to newer movies.

The one thing that is preventing me from making the switch is that I need to find a solution for watching the movies that I have ripped and are on our server at home. The Xbox 360 can not play video from VIDEO_TS folders. (It doesn’t parse the index and it doesn’t play across a trasition across multiple VOB files. I could rip the DVD content into single Windows Media files, but I would loose DVD menu navigation.

My ideal solution would be to get the MyMovies interface and functionality through the Xbox 360, including DVD menu navigation.