Shok has got his to work, so lets see how I do.
Monthly Archive for March, 2006
Realizing that the old look had some functional limitations, I will be moving to the K2 theme system. Help me ensure trackbacks, commenting, etc. are working if you’d like.
Now that XBOX 360 is out, the origional XBOX’s are cheaper then ever. One might ask why you would buy them for anything other then ‘2nd class gaming’ at this point.
But here’s an idea I’m finding works very well for me: Augment or ditch your fee-based TiVo or cable DVR for a XBOX ($50-90 used) and the XBOX Media Center Extender ($30) to place a Windows Media Center Edition 2005 ($100-130) ‘head’ on every TV. Now that you can buy MCE2005 as ‘OEM’, you don’t have to buy a new PC to get it.
Once you have MCE installed on a computer somewhere in your house, every XBOX with the extender installed becomes a nearly 100% identical-to-MCE DVR (Extender comes with a XBOX DVD, software to link the XBOX over your home network to the PC with MCE, a IR remote, and a XBOX IR receiver). I have a cable input on a AMD XP 2500+ that sits in the office. Now where.there is an XBOX, there is a WMA/MP3/WAV file media jukebox (TiVo still only supports .MP3), live and recorded TV access, a video jukebox supporting any WMV stored on your WMC computer (TiVo only supports specific MPG files, and have to be uploaded from a PC first).
I have two TiVo’s (Series 2) and one XBOX in the home. The XBOX with the Extender is a bit slower to respond sometimes, but allows you to put DVR on your non-primay TV’s without adding monthly fees (If you got the cash, the 360 is supposed to be 10 x’s better as an Extender and likely to beat TiVo feature for feature, but that’s not the point of this post). After being a TiVo owner for 5 years, I’m tired of their lack of inovation (TiVo is basically the same thing it was in 2001) yet Microsoft keeps adding on features to WMC. Paul Thurrott’s site has a large amount documentation on WMC.
So, after two years of having two Tivo’s, you would be out $572 in hardware and monthy costs. Assuming you already have a PC to support MCE, it would cost you around $450 for two XBOX’s, two Media Center Extenders, a $130 copy of MCE, and $100 video capture card for the PC. Since their is no monthly fee, your done with the costs.
Here’s a year-old paper I submitted to SANS for the GIAC GCWN Certification. It’s is focused on using Exchange 2003, Windows 2003, and ISA 2004 to enable email gateway security features which in the past were only available on open source solutions.
You need a new or better VPN for your Windows clients. You want it to be the industry-standard IPSec. You want it to be seamless to your Windows XP clients, and easy to roll out and administrate. ISA 2004 Enterprise is the answer. Just finishing a project for this, there are some steps that seem to be missed in all the current documentation at technet.com and isaserver.org.
More details soon…