Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/2203



Four years ago Microsoft introduced Windows XP Media Center Edition, a special edition of the popular OS that featured a Microsoft-designed "10 foot UI" for use in a TV setting. Originally only available to OEMs, the first iteration of MCE showed promise as an elegant and fast DVR, much better than anything prior on the PC and even better than set-top DVRs. The problems of course could not be ignored; MCE systems ran for at least $1500, compared to much lower rental costs from your cable company or lower ownership costs from companies like TiVo and ReplayTV. Then there was the issue of stability; despite Microsoft's best attempts to control hardware and drivers used in MCE systems, they were still prone to crashes and performance issues just like any normal XP machine. In many ways, the performance and stability issues were worse under MCE because the software was so much more stressful than normal applications under XP and the impact was far greater; your PC crashing may make you lose that document you were working on for several hours, but if it made you miss an episode of 24, there would be hell to pay.


Windows XP Media Center Edition: Original Edition  

Despite the problems, MCE gained traction, and near the end of its time the majority of systems sold in retail were pre-loaded with MCE instead of Windows XP Home or Professional. With each subsequent version, MCE got better and better, there were fewer crashes, performance got better (mostly due to faster hardware out at the time), and the overall package grew more polished. Unfortunately, as MCE matured, it also grew more useless. While MCE was being updated, the HD revolution also took place, with more and more cable providers offering HD content. At the peak of MCE's development, it lacked any HDTV support; effectively, the most powerful DVR on the market could only let you watch analog TV.


Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005: Updated, but too little, too late  

If MCE was out during the late 90s, it wouldn't have been a problem, but when MCE 2005 made its debut with no more than OTA HDTV support, it was clear that MCE had lost its potential. You could easily get an HD-DVR from cable companies and for a lot less money than a dedicated media center PC. As HDTVs grew in popularity, being able to watch little more than standard definition on your brand spanking new media center PC was more than embarrassing; it was the wrong DVR decision.

Digital cable became the norm, and with it the power shifted back to the cable box. If you wanted digital cable, you needed a cable box, and if you needed a cable box anyways you might as well just get the HD-DVR cable box from your provider rather than fumbling with an MCE setup that could only give you OTA HD channels. The advent of CableCARD offered an alternative for those who really didn't want a cable box but were willing to give up on demand services and a robust channel guide. However, the PC was no where to be seen as consumer electronics companies embraced and worked around these changes that were happening to mainstream cable.

Part of the problem was that the PC was seen as a device that couldn't be trusted. The provider supplied set-top box is the ideal piece of equipment from a content provider's standpoint. If it's compromised, simply send an update down to it to plug the hole; the cable company controls everything about the system; it's closed and it's trustworthy. There are ways to get content off of the box, but by no means is it easy; there's very little chance that deploying a bunch of HD-DVR set-top boxes is going to result in HD shows being streamed directly from them to users across the globe using torrents or P2P services. Set-top boxes are safe, secure, and give content providers that warm fuzzy feeling inside.

The PC on the other hand, especially running Windows XP, was a pirate's playground. There was no concept of a trusted path for content to flow through - after all the OS was many years old before any of this was a major concern. Although work had been done on bringing digital cable and CableCARD support to the PC during the Windows XP timeframe, the content providers weren't satisfied with what the OS could offer and the development was stalled until Vista.

Vista changed everything; it was chock full of DRM and was secure enough to make just about everyone confident that high definition content could be stored on it without being easily compromised. While it's far too early to determine if that holds true over the coming years of Vista's existence, the important part is that it's enough today. At CES 2006 ATI demonstrated what had the potential to become one of the biggest features of Vista, the first working Open Cable Unidirectional Receiver (OCUR) for a PC running the upcoming OS.


ATI's first OCUR demo: CES January 2006

We were impressed by OCUR, as it had the potential to make media center valid and useful once more. The downside was that we had to wait; we saw the first demo of OCUR at CES in January 2006, and we were told that it wouldn't be released until Vista was available to the public. At CES in January 2007 ATI, now owned by AMD, introduced the final product: the ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner (DCT). Once again we had to play the waiting game, as Vista was not yet out and no one had committed to a ship date for systems equipped with the newly named OCUR.


ATI's second OCUR demo: CES January 2007  

Vista's launch came and went, and there was no sign of OCUR anywhere. We spoke with AMD on many occasions asking for the status of review samples but were told little more than that they are coming. Finally, a little over a month after Vista's public launch, we received a visit from Dell. In their possession were two external ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuners; OCUR had finally arrived, Vista's media center was on the brink of being saved, and today is a preview of what is soon to come.


ATI's TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner up and running at AnandTech: April 2007



The Requirements

Much like the introductory MCE systems, there is a strict list of requirements that must be met before you can get your hands on any OCUR device, much less the ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner. The fact that OCUR came to us hand carried by Dell is a blatant hint at the first requirement: OCUR is OEM only at this point. For content providers, making the jump from a set-top box to an open, hackable, torrent infested PC is a difficult one, so there's a certification process in place to once again give everyone involved that warm fuzzy feeling.

A select group of OEMs, Dell included, have access to the OCUR program and its specs. Follow the specs in their entirety and submit a form stating you have done so to CableLabs and your OEM system can be sold with an OCUR device, the first and only of which currently being ATI's TV Wonder DCT. We will talk about the OEM-only requirement of OCUR shortly, as well as plans to bring the devices to retail and what this means to DIY-ers, but for now know that OCUR is OEM-only. You have to buy a complete system with OCUR in order to get the functionality.

The OEM system has no vendor requirements; AMD or Intel processors may be used, and the only real hardware requirements are that the system must be Vista Premium logo compliant. Given the relatively lax nature of Vista Premium requirements, you can expect any OCUR system to offer significantly more than just the bare minimum as timeshifting HD content is quite resource intensive.

Earlier this year at CES AMD made public the fact that certain information will have to be populated in the system's BIOS for OCUR to work properly. This information is supplied to OEMs only and helps ensure that you can't simply move an OCUR device from the system you bought it with to another system of your choosing. If the information is not present in the BIOS, OCUR will not work and you will not get any CableCARD support.

On the software side the system requires a version of Windows Vista with Media Center, meaning Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate. There is also a video driver requirement: only WHQL certified video card drivers may be used.

Another obvious requirement is HDCP support at all levels for a digital signal. The video card must support it, the video driver must, the OS obviously already does, and if you're running a digital output to your monitor then your monitor must also support HDCP. Over VGA, the HDCP requirement doesn't apply, but over DVI/HDMI it does.

Finally, there's also a separate product key for OCUR devices. On the Vista certificate of authenticity for OCUR systems there are two product keys: the original Vista product key and one labeled "Digital Cable Support for Windows Vista". The second key registers the unit and system with CableLabs and phones home periodically much like Vista's activation. OEMs have the option of pre-loading the digital cable product key rather than making the end user input it during Vista media center setup.

With OCUR being OEM-only at this point, the overwhelming majority of these requirements will never have to cross the end user's mind. If you buy an OCUR system, it will work with OCCUR; otherwise, for now, you've got no other option for CableCARD support on the PC.



The Platform

Given the requirements, we couldn't test the ATI TV Wonder DCT without the help of an OEM - that OEM being Dell in this case. Dell will be one of the first OEMs to ship an OCUR enabled PC with the TV Wonder DCT, starting sometime in late April/May.

The system Dell sent was a decently configured XPS 410 - you can read our earlier review of the XPS 410 for additional details about the system. The XPS 410 is actually one of three validation vehicles used by CableLabs for OCUR.

This XPS 410 came equipped with a Core 2 Duo E6700 and a GeForce 8800 GTX, the latter being overkill for our purposes but welcome nonetheless. Under operation, the system was whisper quiet as befits Dell's M.O., but the combination of the 8800 GTX and the E6700 resulted in an extremely warm system. Rounding out the system configuration is 2GB of DDR2-800 memory and two 500GB hard drives running in RAID-0, as you can guess to maximize the amount of storage for recorded HD content. Dell included both a DVD-RW as well as a Blu-ray drive.

As with most Dell systems, accessing the inside of the case is a simple process of unlatching the rear and opening the side panel. Cramped quarters is what you'll find inside the XPS 410, but it's all very well organized.

The XPS 410 features a hefty amount of USB 2.0 ports (6 on the back, 2 on the front), which is very useful given that we needed five just to set up the system. We had two TV Wonder DCT units, each requiring its own USB 2.0 port, plus a USB Bluetooth receiver for Dell's keyboard/mouse. Another port was taken up by the cable going to the monitor's hub (which sort of cancels out the use as the monitor provides four more USB ports), and the final one was for the IR receiver for the included remote control.

The included keyboard was actually quite nice; it has a compact layout that just feels right (and everyone that used it while it was set up seemed to agree). Our only complaint was that it was wireless, which caused power management to kick in during idle periods - meaning there was a bit of wakeup lag noticeable when you first hit a key.

Our feelings on the included mouse are not as good unfortunately; the mouse is awkwardly long and takes a little too much effort to click the buttons. It definitely looks cool but we'd prefer a standard Microsoft or Logitech offering. Again, the wakeup issues with the mouse were also annoying. While we understand the attraction to wireless keyboards/mice, we'd prefer a wired alternative in this case.

Dell shipped the system configured with 32-bit Windows Vista Ultimate; there's currently no support for the TV Wonder DCT under 64-bit versions of Windows Vista. Although Dell has done a good job of reducing the amount of pre-installed software on its machines, it's still not perfect. The icing on the cake was Dell's pre-installed copy of Google Desktop Search; that may have been useful under Windows XP but under Vista it's just a tad redundant.

Dell didn't stop with the XPS 410, as its OCUR setup will most likely be sold as a bundle (including installation). Dell shipped us its 27" 1920 x 1200 panel, the largest single-link DVI LCD monitor Dell currently offers. We're working on our review of the panel so we'll save comments on it until then. The bundle was topped off with a pair of Creative Labs E-MU PM5 bookshelf speakers.



Inside the TV Wonder DCT

Before we get to the installation, we obviously have to take you on a quick tour of the TV Wonder DCT itself:


Two LEDs: one indicates that you're authorized on your cable network, the other one indicates that you're good to go in Vista

The CableCARD goes in the front, while you connect power, USB and the cable input on the rear of the device:

In the off chance that someone who buys this system doesn't have cable at all, but rather satellite, the ports on the top of the system can be used as a passthrough:

There is an internal version of the TV Wonder DCT that will be shipping at the same time as the external version, but it too will connect to the PC via USB. It is up to the OEM to use either the internal or external version; you need an extra tuner for each simultaneous video stream you want to watch/record, making the internal version more attractive for multi-tuner setups.

Remove four simple screws and we can gain access to the inside of the device:

The analog tuner is powered by an ATI Theater 550 Pro:

The rest of the components are on the main board that accepts the CableCARD itself:

Interestingly enough there appears to be a PCIe x1 connector at the bottom of the main PCB:



The Installation: Day One

Prior to Dell's arrival we had a handful of telephone conversations and email exchanges to clear our intentions for this article. Dell is used to dealing with sending review samples of complete systems that it has built and tested time and time again. Dell was not used to sending a platform out that was buggy, not yet ready for prime time and dependent on a cable network that it had absolutely no control over. In short: Dell was nervous.

Dell asked us if it was alright if a handful of representatives accompanied the system to our office in North Carolina, just to make sure things went smoothly. We didn't anticipate any problems but said that if it made them feel more comfortable, they were welcome to oversee the initial setup. From our perspective the setup couldn't be simpler: 1) Setup the system, 2) Insert CableCARD, 3) Watch TV. It turned out that we were a bit optimistic.

Even though it had been over a year since we first saw OCUR demoed, the devices and platform as a whole weren't perfect. The problem is that proper operation depends on far more than just a piece of hardware and its associated driver. With OCUR, you have the usual hardware and software problems, but then you've got issues with wiring at the location. Is the signal coming to the coax port sufficient for OCUR? We found that what was sufficient for a Scientific Atlanta HD-DVR wasn't necessarily enough for proper OCUR operation. Then there are issues with the actual cable network the device is running on. Each cable network is slightly different and we found that these devices don't always behave similarly across different networks. Then there's Dell, a company that at best can only control how the system was built and what hardware went into it; a company that was tasked with taking the brunt of any problems that crept up at ground zero when we set up the OCUR system.

Dell came prepared; upon landing at RDU International Airport, we got a call asking if it was okay if a Time Warner technician was present during the install to help with any problems. The more the merrier we thought, so Dell made a phone call and a Time Warner technician was present. As a side note, the last line was exactly how it happened. Apparently the magic number Dell called dispatched a Time Warner technician to what is known internally as a "VIP Customer". There were no vague time windows, no waiting, and no arguing; just a phone call and poof: instant technician. After discovering this magic ability that Dell possessed, we asked Dell to move in with us permanently. Regrettably Dell declined and its representatives did not confirm whether or not they had similar influence over the local phone or utility companies.


When you're Dell, TWC comes with lights and sirens blaring

For the first part of the setup, Dell was quite ambitious. Gary Lusk from Dell was the resident performance engineer on site (aside from yours truly), and he had hand carried two ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuners with him from Austin. Figuring that nothing could go wrong, he confidently hooked up both tuners and began the configuration process. Both tuners required a firmware update provided by AMD; however that won't be a step that end users will have to worry about once these things make their public appearance.


The TV Wonder DCTs appear as Network devices

The tuners were detected by Vista, which has a built in driver for them. As a side note, Microsoft (not AMD) wrote the Vista driver for the TV Wonder DCT, so any driver bugs are actually Microsoft's responsibility and not AMD's. Each OCUR device actually appears as a Network device in Vista. Each OCUR has its own IP address, which if you visit in a web browser you get a configuration website served from the OCUR. The configuration pages give you the necessary information that your cable provider will need to activate your CableCARD(s); however, this information is also accessible through Vista's media center interface. The configuration pages are a bit more robust and will let you do much more, but in theory you shouldn't have to toy with any of the options.

Dell had requested that we have a CableCARD ready upon their arrival, so we called up Time Warner and had them activate a single CableCARD on a TV with hopes that it would speed up the entire process. Activating CableCARD is far more painful than it should be in our opinion. Time Warner, like many cable providers, doesn't offer a self-install option for CableCARD in the Raleigh area. We also weren't able to order CableCARD online; we had to call up Time Warner and request a CableCARD which would be installed by one of its technicians.

Upon asking for a CableCARD, the TWC representative informed us of a few things. CableCARDs aren't available for self install, it usually takes about 3 days to get one in after the order has been placed, and the installer would be available after then. We were then warned that features like On Demand and the program guide would not be available with CableCARD. The rep asked us what the make and model number of the TV was that we would need the CableCARD for and how many cards we needed. The monthly fee was $1.99 per CableCARD with a one time installation fee of $42.95. We felt the installation fee was a bit ridiculous given that the installation consists of sliding the CableCARD into the slot and calling Time Warner with the Host ID and MAC address of the CableCARD to activate it. We'd hope that at some point a self-install process can be developed, but until then this is the only option.

After Time Warner activates the CableCARD on its end, there's a period of time before the CableCARD will actually give you access to your content. During this period you (or the technician on site) are told to simply watch the EMM count increment, generally until it reaches some arbitrary value that determines when you get digital cable access. We went through the process with Time Warner on the TV and it worked flawlessly; when Dell arrived a couple of weeks later, we simply took the CableCARD out of the TV and stuck it in one of the TV Wonder DCTs.


TWC tech on the left watching Dell's Gary on the right talk to a TWC tech on the phone

Despite working flawlessly in the TV, after sticking the CableCARD in one of the DCTs we could not tune to any digital cable - much less HDTV - channels. At best all we got were analog SD channels. We went through the hardware setup several times with Dell and weren't able to fix the problem. Time Warner stepped in and tried fixing the issue on its end, once again to no avail. In a particularly hilarious moment, the Time Warner technician on site passed the phone to Gary Lusk of Dell to work with another Time Warner tech on the phone. The first day ended in a series of failed attempts, Dell extended its stay in sunny North Carolina, and we vowed to try again tomorrow. This time we would have AMD, Microsoft, and more Time Warner folks on call.



The Installation: Day Two

The second day started off on a new foot. The same Time Warner tech from the day before showed up, but this time his supervisor was with him. The two brought new CableCARDs just in case the ones we tried earlier were somehow too old to work with the tuners. A third Time Warner employee also showed up, this one a regional digital engineer. A fourth Time Warner representative appeared during the course of the day, albeit due to a mistake in scheduling.


Testing levels at the outlet to make sure we had a good enough signal

The Time Warner trio joined us as we got both Microsoft and AMD on the phone trying to get to the bottom of our problems. There was a single OCUR test platform somewhere in the Raleigh area that had been activated and was currently in use on Time Warner's network, so we knew it was a solvable problem; it was just a matter of solving it. While yours truly went to work with AMD on tracing through the setup steps to make sure we didn't miss anything, Gary Lusk was on the phone with Microsoft and Dell making sure there wasn't anything else we could try. The three Time Warner folks also went to work; our peak number of concurrent telephone conversations was about 4 at this point (and that's not counting the one Time Warner rep who had two phones up to his head at once).


Two TWC techs


Two phones, one TWC tech


Everyone is on the phone

The first problem TWC fixed was with regards to our initial CableCARD installation. When a CableCARD is activated on TWC's network, the host id of the CableCARD is married to the device it is activated on. When we switched that CableCARD to one of the OCURs, TWC's system wouldn't let it on the network as it was married to two different devices. [Ed: So polygamy is out of the question?] The system should have automatically deleted the duplicate host id but it had to be manually done on Time Warner's end; after doing that, things started moving a lot smoother.

We were actually able to get some digital cable channels after Time Warner reset the CableCARDs on their end; however, we had trouble tuning to some channels and we'd randomly lose signal. Time Warner suspected that the wiring at our location might be a problem so they went to work on cleaning things up a bit. The cable signal coming in to the location was fed through a surge suppressor and then sent to an amp and two 8-way splitters. The techs removed the surge suppressor and replaced the amp with an amp of their own; this amp had a built in splitter that directly fed the coax inputs on the two TV Wonder DCTs.

Removing the surge suppressor and isolating the coax lines that went directly to the tuners helped a bit, and we could almost watch digital cable normally now. At the end of the entire ordeal, the senior TWC representative that was with us turned to us and asked us what this system could do. We explained, to which he responded with the most priceless of facial expressions. It was an expression that needed no explanation; his reaction asked the question "why on earth would you go through this when you can just rent an HD-DVR from us for $9 a month?"

There were still some lingering issues which we will get to shortly, but as far as Time Warner was concerned, the installation was complete. Dell and TWC left, leaving us to spend some quality time with the system.



The Experience: Vista Media Center

There are a few parts to the experience of Dell's OCUR enabled system. First and foremost is the Vista Media Center experience which we've never talked about in great detail. With Vista, Microsoft did away with having a separate Media Center Edition of the OS and simply rolled its functionality into two versions of Vista: Home Premium and Ultimate. Armed with either version of the OS, you get the familiar green icon that will launch a 10-ft UI designed to be used with a remote control.

Vista's media center UI is a much more polished and updated version of the MCE we remember from Windows XP; the old UI just looks dated now. Vista once again cemented Microsoft's lead in the DVR UI market, it's just so slick:


The Program Guide

If you bring up the guide in front of video you get a nice overlay effect:

There are still parts of the media center UI that will minimize the playing video into an unreasonably small PiP square in the lower left corner of the screen:


The little square in the lower left corner: useful or not?

Functionality hasn't necessarily increased, although like many of the changes in Vista's UI it's not hard to feel that the UI is a bit more cluttered.

Systems are far faster today than when Media Center Edition first made its debut, and thankfully the performance requirements of the UI haven't gone up too much. With Vista, the media center UI is nice and snappy with one exception: navigating the main menus appears choppy if you try to scroll horizontally too quickly. We're not exactly sure why, even on a custom built system we run into the same sluggish scrolling through the horizontal menus.



Vista media center also changes the way recorded shows are displayed. By default, if you have a small number of recordings, they are displayed horizontally with accompanying graphics and text:

If you've got a lot recorded, Vista media center will recommend that you reorganize your recorded shows library into a bunch of columns of text. It's not nearly as pretty, but it's necessary if you record a lot of content.

The problem with both approaches is that while Vista tells you what program you recorded, the day it aired and how long it lasted, it does not immediately tell you when the program originally aired. You have to click on the item once more in order to find out that information. This is in stark contrast to other DVR solutions that make the time the program aired far more visible, which in our opinion is a useful thing to know.

The system Dell shipped also had Blu-ray support, which appeared as an option in the media center interface. Unfortunately launching it simply brought us to a poorly made front end for PowerDVD that looked a lot like MCE 2005 and nothing like Vista's media center.

Making its return once more is the Movies section in media center. The movie guide gives you a rental store experience without actually having to pay for anything: it lists all movies that are going to be on TV in the near future.

The movies are listed according to title, not channel, which makes sense but it means that you may unfortunately get your hopes up and try to watch a movie on a channel that you don't subscribe to.



There's now a Sports item in the main media center menu; the sports section basically gives you a listing of all sports related content that's currently on TV.

You can also get easy access to scores:

...and player stats:

The sports section is much like the movies section but for sports fanatics, making it a useful addition to media center if you fall into that category.



The online content offerings are actually decent, a far cry from what they were when they made their initial debut in MCE. Watching MTV's Overdrive channel for example is pretty much as useful as watching the actual TV channel; you arguably get even more music since you can select to watch just music videos (you actually get the entire music video this way, no screaming interruptions).

Unfortunately, watching online content quite possibly causes the most bugs in media center. We'd often have problems where content wouldn't play, or it would keep playing even after we told it to stop. When it does work, however, it's not bad.

Vista's media center has an included burn to CD/DVD option where you can create burned copies of recorded shows and other data.

Unfortunately, the recorded content can only be played back on the system you recorded it on making it only useful for making backups of shows you want to keep.


This is the error you'll get if you try to play your burned CD on another Vista system

Unfortunately, media center won't downsample your content to make it fit on your media:

Thankfully, media center continues to be very multitasking friendly: you can burn your CD/DVD in the background while you continue to use media center.



The OCUR Experience

What about the OCUR experience itself? As you can guess, when it's working, the TV Wonder DCT works just like any other TV tuner - the only difference being that you can now watch absolutely any channel you've subscribed to thanks to CableCARD. Watching digital vs. analog channels is seamless; the tuner had no problem switching between analog to digital to digital HD channels and back in any order. Once the CableCARD is properly set up, you never even know it's there.

Given that OCUR stands for Open Cable Uni-directional Receiver, you obviously only get one way communication to the cable network. On Demand and network guides aren't available, though the latter isn't an issue as Vista's program guide is easily as good as any other electronic program guide available.

The key phrase from the top paragraph unfortunately is "when it's working", because the reason that the ATI TV Wonder DCT isn't shipping is that it still has some major bugs that need to be worked out. The ATI TV Wonder DCT we previewed isn't a finished product, despite being "ready" for over a year now. The problem is that the TV Wonder DCT isn't a standalone product; rather, it is simply one piece of a much larger puzzle that extends far beyond the PC that the device is attached to.

By far the most annoying problem we encountered during our preview was that occasionally we wouldn't be able to tune to a channel. The problem usually happened when switching between an SD channel on digital cable to an HD channel; instead of the HD channel just popping up when we'd select it, we were greeted either with a black screen or a still frame of the HD channel. After several seconds Vista would give us an error stating that it did not detect a TV signal and that we should check our hardware or call our cable provider. We couldn't come up with a real resolution to this problem; sometimes we would have to reboot the system and reset the TV Wonder DCT, while other times we simply needed to change channels and try again before it would work.


We saw this error a lot

We suspected that it might have been a signal strength issue, however after one day when the problem was at its worst (tuning to HD channels was impossible - we couldn't watch any HDTV on the system) it seemed to just go away, only to return a few days later. We're not sure if there were any fixes done on Time Warner's end that alleviated the problem for the period of time when the system worked flawlessly.


This one popped up a few times

AMD is aware of the problem and it assured us that the TV Wonder DCT would not ship until the TV signal bug was resolved. At this point AMD couldn't give us an exact answer as to the cause of the problem, although there are a number of potential culprits (cable network, signal strength, and hardware driver being prime candidates).


More bugs

The TV signal bug itself really accented the difficulty of deploying a product like the TV Wonder DCT. AMD made the hardware, Microsoft wrote the driver, CableLabs defined the specification, and a variety of companies own and operate the networks that the hardware will work on. To make things even worse, each and every cable network is slightly different - creating a myriad of potential causes for any one bug. We've all had to deal with the joys of working with a cable provider to diagnose cable TV problems; now toss in diagnosing PC problems to the mix. It's like trying to get cable internet support all over again, and hopefully "unplug your router" won't be an early step in the diagnostic tree when it comes to OCUR setups.



OCUR as a QAM Tuner

You don't have to have CableCARD for the TV Wonder DCT to be useful, as it also functions as both an analog and digital QAM tuner. Working as a regular SDTV tuner is nothing special, but being able to tune QAM channels broadcast over cable networks is quite intriguing.

For those of you that don't know, CableCARD is only necessary to tune to encrypted digital channels on a cable network. Just like some channels can be received using an ATSC tuner "over the air", there are other unencrypted digital channels (including HD channels) that are sent over the cable network; a QAM tuner is necessary to receive these channels. Generally these unencrypted channels are digital versions of local channels, which works for those who only want to watch prime time television shows in HD that air on local stations to begin with. Not all cable networks send this content unencrypted, so your mileage may vary, but in our case using the ATI TV Wonder DCT as a QAM tuner gave us access to all digital local stations.

To configure the TV Wonder DCT to handle QAM channels simply go through the TV signal setup process but inform Vista that you don't have a CableCARD. Doing so will enable you to tune analog channels just fine, but to find QAM channels you need to select the Scan for Additional Services option under TV setup.

After we did that, our program guide was full of sub-channels (e.g. 5.2) that gave us access to all available QAM channels. All of the other media center features (recording, scheduling, etc...) worked the same once we populated the channel list and guide. Unfortunately, dealing with the sub-channels is still rather annoying, as we discussed in a previous look at a couple QAM tuners.



Completing the Digital Home: Xbox 360 Extender

The idea of keeping your Vista media center PC hooked up to your TV and attempting to make it a dual-use platform is far fetched for many. It appears that the fad of trying to get the PC, as we all know it, into the living room is dying. Microsoft recognized this early on and started down a different path. While the media center interface is perfect for use on a TV, it also works for simply showing content to many people huddled around a single computer screen (although Apple's Front Row interface is arguably a bit better suited for that given its simplicity).

The interface itself is only part of the strength of the media center platform; the ability to store all of that wonderful content is the other major component. So why not use a PC for what it's really good for - storing and accessing data, and simply use "lesser" devices to display that content on TVs and other CE devices throughout the digital home? That's the concept behind digital media extenders, and for Vista/OCUR there is only one such extender that you can stream this content to: an Xbox 360 console.

Shipping the Xbox 360 with built-in media center extender functionality was a brilliant move by Microsoft. Not to say that it took the most intelligence to realize that giving something away for free was a good thing, but it means that today there is an installed base of over 10 million media center extenders across the globe. That number is far greater than any other media center extender that has ever been shipped in the past, and although not everyone will use them in that capacity, if Microsoft can make the entire digital home solution compelling enough a lot of them might.

Setting up the Xbox 360 as a media center extender for Vista isn't difficult; the process works much like it does under Windows XP. On the Xbox 360 you select the Media Center option under Media, which will bring up a screen displaying an 8 digit code that you will have to type in on your Media Center PC (you can repeat this process for up to five Xbox 360s).

On the PC side, Vista will actually detect that there's an Xbox 360 on the network and ask you if you'd like to configure the extender. If you choose not to you can always manually add an extender under the Tasks menu within the Media Center interface. Configuring the extender simply requires that you input the 8 digit code displayed on the Xbox 360 and click next a couple of times. The entire process just takes a few minutes and you're done. Once the extender has been paired with your Vista PC, you won't have to repeat the process again.

After the Xbox 360 and PC have been paired, you can now watch live TV, recorded shows and view/listen to all of your content on the TV that's connected to your Xbox 360. The interface is actually streamed from the Vista PC, so on the Xbox 360 it looks like a carbon copy of Vista's Media Center UI.

While you can use the Xbox 360's controller to navigate through the UI, with no on-screen explanation of what each button does we found it far more user friendly to use the Xbox 360's remote control. The extended remote that ships with the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive worked particularly well as it made the experience very TV-like, the only exception being that volume control didn't work so we had to use our television's remote control for adjusting channel volume.

Just like on our Vista PC, selecting live TV from the Media Center UI brings up a live TV stream sent to the Xbox 360 by our PC/OCUR setup. Navigating the guide is almost as fast as it is on the PC, but switching channels is a bit slower. There's a good several second delay between when you hit the channel up button and when the next channel actually appears. Long channel switching delays are of course common whenever you have a DVR in place but streaming to the Xbox 360 lengthens this delay. All decoding is actually handled on the Xbox 360 itself, so from the PC's perspective any additional load is only in the sense of streaming data to the 360.

What is truly necessary is media center extender software for other PCs. While there are 10+ million Xbox 360s in homes today, there are far more second or third PCs and laptops that are out there. Being able to use any of those systems as media center extenders could significantly extend the range and usability of Vista as a DVR and media hub. While we've heard rumors of such a project, it seems that turning the Xbox 360 into a media center extender was a lot easier of a task since it's a closed system with clear content restriction policies. Once you start streaming this content from your OCUR PC setup to other potentially less secure PCs in the house, you compromise the security of the content (again not an end user problem but unfortunately we don't generate the content).



Performance

Although Dell sent a beefy system for our OCUR evaluation, it turns out that you actually need that sort of a system for decent performance when recording/watching HDTV. To recap, Dell's XPS 410 was configured with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66GHz), 2GB of memory, and two 500GB drives in a RAID 0 configuration.

With two 500GB drives running in RAID 0, the XPS 410 left us with just under 1TB of total storage. While Vista MCE allows you the ability to adjust quality settings for all analog recordings, digital broadcasts can only be recorded in the bitrate it was originally broadcast in. We recorded an hour-long episode of the show 24, broadcast in 720p; the resulting file size was a whopping 4.73GB for a single show. In its default configuration, the 1TB of storage offered by the XPS 410 gave us the ability to record a maximum of 104 hours of HD content.

It sounds like a lot, but once you start factoring in installed applications and games, you almost need a dedicated 500GB or 1TB of storage just for your recorded content.  Thankfully, hard drives are cheap, but when even 1TB of space is used up quickly, it's still a concern. The ability to compress the content to some lower bitrate (but still high quality) video standard would be very useful, but performance requirements for even a single HD stream would be very high for real-time encoding. Quad core and even octal core CPUs could change the situation, however.

Much like previous versions of MCE, CPU requirements are also high when it comes to OCUR and Vista MCE. CPU utilization while watching an HD broadcast can easily average 50% of our Core 2 Duo E6700, one of the fastest dual core CPUs currently available; recording used about half of that. Streaming HD content to a single Xbox 360 ate up around 20% of the E6700's available cycles.

Needless to say, you need a good amount of CPU power if you want a single or dual tuner OCUR system to be used for more than just watching HDTV. If you've wanted to know what a quad core CPU could be useful for, here's another very good example.



DIY and the Future of OCUR

Microsoft has a vested interest in the success of not only the TV Wonder DCT but all OCUR products for Vista. For Microsoft to be at the center of the digital home, all content needs to be stored on the PC - music, movies and television all need to come in to the PC and then get sent to all of the networked devices in the home for consumption. Bringing cable TV to PCs has been done time and time again, but Microsoft seemed to miss the HD boat. OCUR changes all of that....

Microsoft, not AMD, wrote the Vista driver for the TV Wonder DCT, so any driver bugs are actually Microsoft's responsibility and not AMD's. The reason why Microsoft is the author of the driver and AMD just the hardware manufacturer is because Microsoft wants more companies to make OCUR devices, and it wants a single driver for any OCUR under Vista. If another manufacturer chooses to go through the necessary steps to create an OCUR for Vista, it will work with the same driver that the TV Wonder DCT does.

The long term goal is this: Microsoft (and AMD) hopes that a new class of PCs will become available in the market. These PCs will be labeled "Digital Cable Ready", meaning that they meet all of the hardware, software, and protected path requirements necessary to support an OCUR device. Given that the requirements are fairly easy to fulfill, it wouldn't be too far fetched to have most PCs on retail shelves be Digital Cable Ready in a year or two.

With a good number of Digital Cable Ready PCs on the market, the next phase would be to introduce a retail OCUR product. AMD told us that if the conditions are right, it will introduce a retail version of the TV Wonder DCT for use with a Digital Cable Ready Vista PC. Given that the first TV Wonder DCT systems have yet to even ship, it will clearly be a while before enough of them get out there to make AMD consider releasing a retail product.

Unfortunately things don't look too good for DIY-ers at this point; AMD mentioned that it currently has no intentions to release a TV Wonder DCT that would work with a home built system. The limitation stems from the BIOS flag requirement of OCCUR; without the necessary BIOS flag present Vista and the TV Wonder DCT hardware will not function. Currently that BIOS flag is only being provided to OEMs who will be producing Digital Cable Ready PCs, and not to motherboard manufacturers for use in their own motherboard designs. It is highly likely that simply adding support for the flag to an unsupported motherboard may be possible in the future, once more is known about this flag and how Vista reads it. However according to AMD, unless that requirement is lifted you won't see an official solution for DIY-ers.

Future compatibility is somewhat guaranteed with the ATI TV Wonder DCT. Multi-stream cards will be supported but they will only function in single card compatibility mode. Future bidirectional cards will not work however and they will require a new tuner, currently called BOCR (Bidirectional Open Cable Receiver). AMD informed us that BOCR would be a brand new product to be released in the middle of 2008 at the earliest. Upon the release of a BOCR product, you can expect OCUR to possibly move into a lower price point.



Final Words

We're glad OCUR is here, but it's clear from our time with the ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner that there are still a number of hurdles that have to be cleared before it's ready for prime time.

The TV signal issues we ran into were only the tip of the iceberg, because we were only able to run into them after we got the system set up. Although AMD and Dell have been working extensively with cable providers to make sure the installation process of Digital Cable Ready PCs goes as smoothly as possible, we are very skeptical of how smoothly this process will be at this point. We've already seen how much of a pain a simple CableCARD installation can be, and tossing a PC into the mix complicates things even further. Cable technicians aren't generally good PC hardware techs, and PC hardware techs can't really diagnose/repair cable network problems. Either the entire system will have to be virtually flawless or a new type of super tech will have to be bred in order to aid in OCUR installations.

Although it's been a long road, we believe that Microsoft is on track to building a comprehensive digital home solution. For Vista to truly succeed as a media center platform it needs two things: HD support and the ability to stream content to more devices. The TV Wonder DCT grants it the first requirement; it's the second one that Microsoft needs to work on next. It took too long for the TV Wonder DCT to even get to the stage we're at today; hopefully fulfilling the next requirement won't be a similar exercise in patience. In many ways, Vista media center is no different than the first version of Windows XP MCE; it's got so much potential, but most of that potential remains untapped. If Vista could easily stream its content to virtually any device on a network it would be able to offer a significant advantage over dedicated set-top DVRs, but without that it is a difficult platform to get overly excited about.

The longer Vista exists as a good but not perfect solution, the more time there is for the CE manufacturers to step in and make a more attractive solution, faster. Microsoft has a limited window of opportunity here, or else similar to Windows MCE 2005 they will only finally get everything to work properly after much of the market has moved to other solutions.

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