I'm researching what I need to use my desktop computer with my TV to watch and record OTA TV. I have everything figured out but the control of WMC. The computer on which WMC is located is in a different room that the TV. They are separated by two walls and approximately 20 feet. So an IR remote won't work. I want to be able to sit in the room with my TV and control WMC on my computer. What are my options- Iphone or Android apps? what else?
USB over LAN for the remote IR sensor ? I found a kit for £7 on Amazon.
The USB dongle will need to be about 20 feet from the computer. Will using a 20ft usb cable affect the signal?
I've never used one - I just did a search on Amazon. Apparently they knock the USB down to 1.1. I have a 25m Cat5e that works fine for regular network stuff at that distance, so read customer reviews . For a few quid its gotta be worth a dabble. Just depends if the IR sensor needs USB2. The sensor will need a few mA going down the CAT5, so there could be a slight voltage drop which may affect things.
also double check the male/female socket details
The budget models (as above) appear to be just balins that extend the USB. These require a dedicated CAT5 cable and can not be connected to a household LAN. The better models are actual network devices that transmit, up to USB-3, data over a LAN.
If your IR sensor is external to your PC, this may work. It won't work if the IR sensor is part of the PC like mine. You will also have to consider how the output from your PC gets to the TV. There's limits on HDMI cable length too.
I wasn't suggesting plugging it into the home network. It does say extender over single cable in the ad.
Actually my suggestion was just to try the gadget, and if it don't work - its only cost a few quid. Apparently you can get active USB extenders for a bit more cash. I guess they work like other repeaters ie send some DC down the wire to a boost amp midway. A bit like using 2 cables and a powered hub.
The spec for USB is 5m - I have a 5m USB cable for my printer which works fine. AFAIK printers need a bit of handshaking down the wire, and a longer cable having signal delay could affect this. Whether a remote's IR sensor would be similarly affected I cannot say.
Maybe I just like buying cheap tatt that's made in China 'to see if it works' - I've often been pleasantly surprised eg my £5 spy camera disguised as a pen (eBay/China). Loads of fun !
One approach is to install a Windows Media Center Extender at the remote HDTV location, which is the standard configuration to deliver WMC content around the house to up to five extenders simultaneously active. This is essentially the "whole home" MOCA setup your cable/satellite company provides but running over your home LAN ethernet cable infrastructure instead. Then the extender connects to the HDTV via HDMI, just like a standard cable/satellite DVR/STB box would. This method supports completely independent HDTV watching at all five nodes simultaneously, and also is what is required to deliver copy-protected content from WMC to a remote HDTV.
So assuming you have an ethernet connection from the HTPC to the remote HDTV locations around the house, you can use XBox as an extender, or you can still find Linksys DMA2100 units (100% silent), and you can also buy Ceton Echo extenders which are currently available.
Alternatively, Ceton sells a piece of software ($5) named "My Media Center" that has an HTPC component as well as a smart phone app component. It allows you to use your smart phone as a WMC remote control, either from within your home WiFi network or from any remote location away from home. So you can "check in" on your recordings, set/delete recordings, etc. It's not for viewing TV... it's for remote control of WMC, either just to manage scheduled recordings or actually to be a realtime remote control... either for a specific extender (if active) or for the main WMC HTPC itself.
Works fantastic.
Each extender is a LAN-based box connected using Ethernet cable or wireless (but wired is preferable) to your HTPC. And each extender is connected HDMI to the associated HDTV.
Then, each extender is really the functional equivalent of its own Windows Media Center! In fact it shows up in Windows as a "remote desktop connection", but it's conceptually a standalone WMC. In that way it has complete independent access to whatever WMC on the HTPC itself could do... watch live TV if an available TV tuner can be found, watch recorded TV (which does not require any TV tuner), watch videos or movies or any other WMC-available content, etc. It is a completely self-contained standalone mini-WMC, independent of every other extender you might also have and independent of what's going on at the HTPC itself. That's what "remote desktop" provides, and that's how extenders function.
Now if you're not using a Ceton cablecard-enabled TV tuner card (which would provide either 4 or 6 independent cable tuners) in your WMC HTPC, I would assume you have some other type of "free OTA" TV tuner card connected to your roof antenna. In my own setup I have both: (1) Ceton 4-tuner InfiniTV4 to support my Time Warner Cable channels, and (2) Hauppauge HVR-2250 2-tuner OTA/ATSC fed from my own roof antenna. So my WMC has 6 tuners available at any time, for combined simultaneous use for either (a) recording shows, or (b) viewing "live" TV. Again, watching previously recorded programs does not use any tuner.
With respect to a cablecard-enabled WMC setup, an extender (connected to HTPC via Ethernet cable) is the ONLY way to deliver "copy-protected" content (e.g. premium channels or any other basic cable channels which your cable system marks as "copy-once") to an external HDTV which is not connected directly to your HTPC via HDMI cable. Those are the DRM rules that Microsoft agreed to with CableLabs in order to be able to have WMC and Ceton (or Silicon Dust) deliver copy-protected encrypted content to a PC that uses a cablecard-enabled TV tuner for decryption.
@dsperber thanks for info. One last stupid noob question - can the viewer watching TV on an extender press 'record' ?
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