Old server is gone

I used to have a CoLocated server.  Its no longer co-located anywhere with internet, so its doing me no good.  It used to run my blog, but I have since switch over to here.  One of the popular posts on it was about my old Acer laptop having a WHITE SCREEN OF DEATH.  Basically the computer would only show a White screen when you powered it on.

The solution is to open the panel on the top right side above the keyboard.  This is where the LCD screen connects to the mother board.  The ribbon cable is only held in with some tape and can easily become loose.  When it does, the screen will go white.   Just push the connection all the way back on and secure it with something better.  I used some blue painter tape.  Some people have noticed the round toroid on the ribbon cable.  This is supposed to be there.  It is to filter the signal LCD screen.  Do not remove it. 

4 HD Tuners

Months ago I bought a ceton 4 tuner HD card.  Its been sitting in my computer picking up over the air HD channels.  Though nice, it wasn't using the full potential of the card.  I finally call the cable company to get someone out to install a CableCard and Network tuner.  Technically, they are required to let me do this for free, but insisted  on sending someone out and charger us for it.  Mainly because they have issues with CableCards not working the first time.

The CableCard worked the first time and I was able to pick up cable channels on the card.  A small issue happened when tried to watch the HD channels.  Seems all the HD channels use SDV (switched digital video). To watch SDV channels, you need a tuner adapter.  Because there are so many cable channels now, they can't send them all down the pipe at the same time.  The tuning adapter is an extra box that connects via USB to the computer.  The computer tells it which channel you want to watch and it reports back what frequency that channel will show up on.  

The tuner adapter did not connect to the computer the first day, or the second.  I opened a ticket with Ceton about it, they were quick to respond and had me send a few diagnostic logs.  Then, a few days later it just started working on its own.  Might have had to do with the fact the computer finally auto installed SP1 on it.

Now that its working correctly, I have to say its pretty nice.  I'm able to watch 1 channel and record 3 others at the same time.  I can even share the tuners over the network so other computers can watch tv too.

Some things I'm sad about.  Media Center will not allow you to watch 2 channels at the same time, ala Picture in Picture.  The hard drive in the computer is TOO small.  I used an old 80gb laptop one I had laying around.  This is not even close to what you need when recording HD video.