Yesterday, the 1st of 4 webinars on the HP MediaSmart Connect took place with special guest Ed Bott from
ZDNet. You can register to watch the session
on-demand here. The HP MediaSmart Connect is a brand new Extender for Windows Media Center device that enables you to "extend" your Windows Media Center experience to any HDTV in your house. I took a look at the device myself and
posted about it last week.
There are 3 more webinars for you to attend - with the next one being tomorrow June 26th, 2008 at 1:00pm PST with Ian Dixon from The Digital Lifestyle. Click here to register for the webinar.
I'll also be posting reminders for the webinars coming on July 8th and 10th.
Written by Brandon LeBlanc on June 25th, 2008 with no comments.
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Yesterday, the 1st of 4 webinars on the HP MediaSmart Connect took place with special guest Ed Bott from ZDNet . You can register to watch the session on-demand here . The HP MediaSmart Connect is a brand new Extender for Windows Media Center device that Read More......(
read more)
Written by Windows Vista Team Blog on June 25th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on 1354 and 1426 and 1429 and 1673 and 169 and 2065 and 2157 and 401 and 544 and Contributors and HP and Windows Media Center and Windows Vista.
Last week I had blogged about upcoming webinars from HP and Microsoft on the new Extender for Windows Media Center - the HP MediaSmart Connect (you can register to attend those webinars here ). Today I'd like to take a more in-depth look at the HP MediaSmart Read More......(
read more)
Written by Windows Vista Team Blog on June 17th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on 1354 and 1426 and 1429 and 1673 and 169 and 2065 and 2157 and 401 and 544 and Contributors and Digital Media and Featured News and HP and Hardware and Windows Media Center and Windows Vista.
Last week I had
blogged about upcoming webinars from HP and Microsoft on the new Extender for Windows Media Center - the
HP MediaSmart Connect (you can register to attend those webinars
here). Today I'd like to take a more in-depth look at the HP MediaSmart Connect with an overview of the device.
But first, take a gander at today's Press Release from HP on the HP MediaSmart Connect...
Press Release: HP MediaSmart Connect Makes It Easy to Enjoy Digital Media from Any HDTV
Ok, now let's take a look at the device. First off - the form factor for the HP MediaSmart Connect is perfect for "extending" your Windows Media Center experience into other rooms in your home as it does not take up tons of room. Its exact dimensions (width x depth x height in inches) are 8.5 x 8.5 x 1.8. The unit would fit perfectly right next to a flat panel HDTV or on an open shelf. I currently have my review unit sitting on a small shelf next to the entertainment unit that my HDTV sits on. It would fit within the shelves of the entertainment unit had they not been completely filled with DVDs (heh). It is also not very heavy (around 3.5 lbs).
It will come in black with HP's identifiable "Zen" pattern on the top which also exists on some of their laptops (similar to the pattern seen on my HP tx1000 Tablet). You'll see in the photos I took of my review unit HP sent me that it doesn't have the "Zen" pattern however the production version will.
The front of the unit consists of 2 panels that open.
The HP MediaSmart Connect comes with 2 outputs for HD video: component out and HDMI.
Video output is either 720p or 1080i - with a switch (depending on your TV) in the front to switch between the output options.
There is a single USB port on the front as the HP MediaSmart Connect comes with the ability to read media off a USB device such as a thumbdrive or external harddrive. There is also a USB port in the back giving the HP MediaSmart Connect a total of 2 USB ports. If you want to get fancy you can add a HP Pocket Media Drive as there is a single slot for one in the front as well.
For audio you have stereo analog audio out and digital audio out.
You have several networking options with the HP MediaSmart Connect. It comes with a single Ethernet port supporting 10/100-Base-T or wireless IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n. The wireless antenna is built directly into the device so there are no protruding wireless antennas to get in the way.
A Universal Remote is also included with the HP MediaSmart Connect. In comparison to the remote that comes with a HP Pavilion dv6871 - the HP MediaSmart Connect has more buttons designed to accommodate it's functionality as a digital media hub as well as Windows Media Center extender.
The HP MediaSmart Connect supports a variety of digital media formats:
- Video: MPEG-1, MPEG-2 MP@ML, MPEG-2 MP@HL, MPEG-4 ASP, DivX®, WMV, WMV-HD, DVR-MS, H.264 (MP4)
- Audio: MP2, MP3, WMA, WMA-Pro, AAC (m4a)
- Photos: JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG
The HP MediaSmart Connect also supports online services for digital media:
- Snapfish
- CinemaNow,
- Live365
Some of these services work with Windows Media Center - such as CinemaNow.
In terms of features - you get the "extension" of Windows Media Center with the unit. But HP has added functionality on top of the Extender experience you get with Windows Media Center by giving the HP MediaSmart Connect the ability to also aggregate content for multiple "media servers" or PCs sharing media. If I have 1 PC sharing media and say a Windows Home Server - the HP MediaSmart Connect will aggregate content from both those systems. I currently have a HP MediaSmart Windows Home Server that the HP MediaSmart Connect finds content off of and aggregates it.
The HP MediaSmart Connect certainly comes with some pretty good specs.
Following up this post in the near future - I plan to post about several of my experiences in using the HP MediaSmart Connect.
Written by Brandon LeBlanc on June 17th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on 1354 and 1426 and 1429 and 1673 and 169 and 2065 and 2157 and 401 and 544 and Contributors and Digital Media and Featured News and HP and Hardware and Windows Media Center and Windows Vista.
This summer HP is launching a brand new Extender for Windows Media Center device - the HP MediaSmart Connect . The HP MediaSmart Connect will let you wirelessly stream your Windows Media Center experience including content such as Live TV, Recorded TV Read More......(
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Written by Windows Vista Team Blog on June 10th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on 1354 and 1426 and 1429 and 1673 and 169 and 2065 and 2157 and 401 and 544 and Contributors and Digital Media and Extenders and Featured News and HP and TV and Windows Media Center and Windows Vista.
This summer HP is launching a brand new Extender for Windows Media Center device - the HP MediaSmart Connect. The HP MediaSmart Connect will let you wirelessly stream your Windows Media Center experience including content such as Live TV, Recorded TV Shows, Music, Photos and Videos to any TV in your home using your wireless or wired home network. And I've got some information below on how you can attend online webinars put on by HP and Microsoft giving you a first-hand look at the HP MediaSmart Connect! Read on...
Extenders for Windows Media Center are devices that are designed to "extend" the Windows Media Center experience from a centralized Windows Media Center PC running Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate to any room in your home with a TV using a personal home network.
The HP MediaSmart Connect packs quite a punch. You can stream recorded or live HD content from your PC to your TV as well as take advantage of Windows Media Center's Internet TV Beta - which I blogged about here a few months ago. With Internet TV Beta - you can watch movie clips, movie trailers and even music videos such as Weezer's brand new single "Pork and Beans" (a personal favorite!). The HP MediaSmart Connect is also capable of searching all the PCs on your home network and creating a single list for all digital media such as photos, music, and videos and as well as access to great entertainment from services like CinemaNow, Snapfish and Live365. There is much more to the HP MediaSmart Connect but I'll save the rest for a later post!
I'm personally very excited to get my hands on the HP MediaSmart Connect myself because I have a Windows Vista PC that serves as my digital media hub in my living room using Windows Media Center that is connected to my HDTV. However with the HP MediaSmart Connect - I can now "extend" my digital media I have on this centralized Windows Media Center PC to any room in my house such as the master bedroom. I'll be able to stream recorded HD TV shows such as Discovery Channel's When We Left Earth series to my bedroom for late-night-geeking-out to stunning video of NASA's early missions. And the form factor is perfect for sitting right next to my TV (whisper quiet - no fans!) in the bedroom.
To celebrate the launch of the HP MediaSmart Connect - HP and Microsoft are putting on 4 webinars this summer to demonstrate the capabilities of the HP MediaSmart Connect. HP's Director of Marketing for their Connected Entertainment group Brian Burch will be headlining the demos along with industry experts who will share their own experiences during the webinars.
And I of course will be attending the webinars myself as well! Click here to register for the webinar you would like to attend!
I will also be talking about the HP MediaSmart Connect here on the Windows Experience Blog in the coming weeks as well. Stay tuned!
Written by Brandon LeBlanc on June 10th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on 1354 and 1426 and 1429 and 1673 and 169 and 2065 and 2157 and 401 and 544 and Contributors and Digital Media and Extenders and Featured News and HP and TV and Windows Media Center and Windows Vista.
We had this problem this morning suddenly the printer was buggy.
Trying to edit the printer properties resulted in an Explorer.exe message somthing like this:
C:\Winnt\Explorer.exe error. Function address 0x4f4c49f9 caused a protection fault. (exception code 0x0000005) Some or all property page(s) may not be displayed
And I saw this in the application eventlog.
An unhandled win32 exception occurred in spoolsv.exe [1084].
Luckily the spooler did still work for other printers connected than the HP one.
I suspected a driver corruption and installed the drivers for the HP 2300n from the HP site.
That did not help still the same message but I got into the printer properties and got to the driver properties.
I then installed the old drivers we had backupped. But again at no avail.
After searching the net I installed the HP Universal Print Driver [UPD].
http://h20338.www2.hp.com/Hpsub/cache/342988-0-0-225-121.html
This solved the problem.
please do not put this on your own site,
link at least back to http://daily-it.blogspot.com
Written by Teus on January 28th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Driver and HP and Laserjet and Print and UPD and Universal and explorer.exe and fault and protection.
This weekend I completed the roll-out of my new HP MediaSmart Server running Windows Home Server. I ordered the HP MediaSmart Server EX470. I originally had Windows Home Server running on my Dell Dimension E520 but decommissioned it when I created my "Ultimate" PC. I really wanted to try out the experience the average consumer will have in purchasing a Windows Home Server and setting it up in their home. The HP MediaSmart Server seemed like the perfect choice in checking out the Windows Home Server experience.
The HP MediaSmart Server EX470 has the following specs:
- Processor - AMD 1.8GHz 64-bit Sempron
- Memory - 512MB DDR
- Interfaces - 4 USB 2.0 Ports, 1 eSATA Port
- Storage - 1 500GB SATA 7200 RPM
The EX470 model of the HP MediaSmart Server comes with a single 500GB harddrive, however the EX475 model comes with 1TB (two 500GB SATA harddrives). I don't need 1TB just yet so decided to go with the EX470. The EX470 comes with 3 expansion slots to add my own harddrives at a later date which is really nice.
Windows Home Server gives a great deal of added benefit to Windows Vista users. First and foremost, it allows you to make sure your PC is completely backed up and that all your PCs on your home network are backed up. With a Windows Home Server restore disc, you can easily restore a complete PC backup from your Windows Home Server via your home network. Windows Home Server also makes sure all your PCs are protected by as well - alerting you if a PC becomes unprotected our has out-of-date antivirus/spyware definitions. And Windows Home Server takes advantage of Media Sharing abilities built in to Windows Vista for photos, music and videos. I can move recorded TV shows onto my Windows Home Server where I can access them on any PC on my home network. Same goes for my photos.
There are 3 reasons why Windows Home Server is essential for my home network:
- A centralized place for data storage with quick access from any PC on my.
- Quick and easy remote access to PCs and data.
- Complete PC backups with full and quick restore capability.
I do a lot of traveling and when I'm away from my home office, I cannot begin to explain how amazing it is to be able to login to my Windows Home Server to access important data - or files I accidentally left behind. I can even use Remote Desktop to login to my PCs at home remotely.
In setting up the HP MediaSmart Server, I was curious how the experience would be in setting up a "headless" server from a consumer standpoint. There's no monitor connection on the HP MediaSmart Server - only way to access it is remotely. I was incredibly impressed on how easy it was.
Essentially, the HP MediaSmart Server comes with an install disc you use on any of your client PCs on your home network. The install disc will install some HP software for the server as well as launch a wizard that takes the user through a step-by-step process in setting up Windows Home Server. The wizard lets you setup a Windows Home Server Password, check for updates, name your Windows Home Server, and install the Windows Home Server Connector.
After the wizard completed, I had a fully functional and accessible Windows Home Server. Took me only a matter of a few minutes to set up. Very nice.
Coming up, I've got some more experiences to share with Windows Home Server and Windows Vista.
Written by Brandon LeBlanc on December 3rd, 2007 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Backup and Featured News and HP and HP MediaSmart Server and Media Sharing and Networking and Windows Home Server and Windows Vista.
This weekend I completed the roll-out of my new HP MediaSmart Server running Windows Home Server. I ordered the HP MediaSmart Server EX470 . I originally had Windows Home Server running on my Dell Dimension E520 but decommissioned it when I created my Read More......(
read more)
Written by Windows Vista Team Blog on December 3rd, 2007 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Backup and Featured News and HP and HP MediaSmart Server and Media Sharing and Networking and Windows Home Server and Windows Vista.