Website: http://windowsmediacenter.blogspot.com/
cw-kid has written 124 articles so far, you can find them below.
![WHS-VPN1[1]](http://thedigitallifestyle.com/w/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/5008.WHSVPN11_5F00_thumb_5F00_5571B8E6-135x90.png "Turn your Windows Home Server V1 in to a VPN server")
I was looking on the Internet for an easy to follow guide to be able to setup a WHS to act as a VPN server. However the guide I found on a popular WHS website didn’t seem to work for me. So I did it a way I knew would work using Routing and Remote [...]
Full Story »![Photato1[1]](http://thedigitallifestyle.com/w/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/2502.Photato11_5F00_thumb_5F00_70D7D47C-135x90.png "Facebook photos on your Media Center – Photato")
I heard about the Photato Media Center plug-in awhile ago now, but I stumbled on their website again today, so I thought I’d install the plug-in and give it a look. What is Photato? If you are an avid Facebook fan and use it for sharing and viewing photos then Photato is a ‘must have’. [...]
Full Story »![hide-media-center-strips-01[1]](http://thedigitallifestyle.com/w/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/1727.hidemediacenterstrips011_5F00_thumb_5F00_62C5A89F-135x90.png "Media Center updates break custom menus")
I’m sure most Windows Media Center users who customize their menus, are now aware that something is up with the menus in Media Center! I use Media Center Studio which is a fantastic 3rd party utility developed by Advent. With Media Center Studio you can create custom menu strips and move icons around to different [...]
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Oh well time for bed… Critical Error: Data Store Unavailable The data store used by Community Server cannot be opened. Please ensure that your database is online and running and that the connection string in your web.config file is correct. To configure your connection string: 1. Open [Install Location of Community Server]\web\web.config 2. Within [...]
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On the workbench today we have an iTX Mini PC, using an Antec ISK 310-150 Mini iTX Case. I quite like this case, it is sturdy, however I’m not keen on the quite flimsy silver plastic front especially the thin DVD opening cover. There are plenty of vents for cooling however and room to fit [...]
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Well it’s been a long time coming but I’ve just spotted on my thread on The Green Button that Microsoft have now released a hotfix to an issue that I and many others raised, I wrote about this issue back in February on my blog here. KB Article number 981770 You can get the hotfix [...]
Full Story »![DH55TC_sm[1]](http://thedigitallifestyle.com/w/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/DH55TC_5F00_sm1_5F00_thumb_5F00_3751A490-135x90.jpg "Intel DH55TC motherboard – True-HD & DTS-HD audio as standard!")
I’ve been testing out a new HTPC platform recently, based around the Intel DH55TC motherboard and an Intel i3-530 Clarkdale processor. I’ve not had much time to really grill this machine fully, but my initial thoughts are its pretty good. MKV and Blu-ray playback is nice and smooth in Windows Media Center / PowerDVD [...]
Full Story »![Shark-DXVA1[1]](http://thedigitallifestyle.com/w/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/SharkDXVA11_5F00_thumb_5F00_75EEFD49-135x90.jpg "MKV’s with Subtitles and now with DXVA aka hardware acceleration!")
Last time I tried to get some MKV movie files playing with subtitles on an AsRock ION 330HT Nettop PC if failed. I lost the hardware acceleration and the video playback became choppy to say the least, mainly because the CPU was ramped up to 80-90% usage. With subtitles turned off and using the default [...]
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I always found the Logitech Harmony remote controls slow and pretty unresponsive with Media Center no matter which Harmony model I tried. After reading more about the problem I think I have found a solution that actually seems to work. I changed some settings in the Harmony software for a 550 model I was working [...]
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I am seeing some very strange happenings with the 7MC Music Library and with music files stored on Windows Home Server machines. This is not just an isolated issue as I have seen the same problem at several different sites on different WHS servers / networks etc. I posted a thread here on the Green [...]
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Better late than never, a special show for you this ... ∞ 
Garry and Andrew are back and we talk over the ... ∞ 
This week Garry and Andrew were busy so Jason Coombes ... ∞ 
Back in the UK for this weeks show. Andrew was away ...