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MEDIA CENTER ADDENDUM
I just finished reading your article on Media Center PCs in the
December 2004 issue and want to comment on two issues.
One issue your article didn’t address is how the Tivo
and Media Center PCs interface with a cable or satellite
box. My cable company won’t give me a cable box with
an activated serial port so I have to use the included IR
emitters. I’ve never had my Tivo crash, but I do miss
recordings or have the wrong show recorded because my
cable box didn’t receive the channel change command
correctly. I probably have one missed/wrong recording out
of every 30. That’s a big factor for the reliability of Tivo,
even if it’s the cable box’s fault.
Also, Tivo no longer charges extra to network two Tivos
or to access music and photos from your PC. You would of
course have to buy another
Tivo, pay another monthly
fee (at a reduced rate of
$6.95), and buy a USB-to-
Ethernet or USB-to-Wi-Fi
adapter.
—TRAVIS BLANTON
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF GEORGE JONES RESPONDS: Good point, Travis.
Also known as an IR blaster, the device you mention connects to
your USB port and has a wire lead you attach to an IR emitter that
you literally stick onto the IR receiver on your cable or satellite box.
Obviously, this technology is much less reliable than a direct serial
connection. If set to transmit IR signals too rapidly, the IR emis-
sion can fail, resulting in faulty automated channel-changing and
missed recordings. In our experience—with both Tivo and Media
Centers—you can achieve 100 percent accuracy by slowing down
the speed of the IR transmission. Simply go into the Media Center
or Tivo setup for the cable/satellite box connection, and reduce the
“Speed” setting to slow.
08 MAXIMUMPC JANUARY 2005
YES, WE’RE SURE
In your December 2004 issue you
have a review of a Pioneer DVR-
A08 double-layer dual-format DVD
burner. Are you sure you aren’t
reviewing the DVR-A09? I thought
the A08 came out in July or August.
As for the 7 verdict—since when is
the overall score of a drive brought
down by the lackluster software in
the box? I seem to recall previous
optical drive reviews where the
score was a 9 or 9/Kick Ass with
the reviewer saying the included
software brought down the score
from a 9/Kick Ass or 10/Kick Ass.
But a 2-3 point drop because of
the bad software? What were you
reviewing: the drive or the software?
—WILL
BIG MEANIE LOGAN DECKER
RESPONDS: We did indeed review the
DVR-A08 last month. There is no DVR-
A09 from Pioneer yet, and hopefully
Pioneer will allow time for media
manufacturing to ramp up before it
begins marketing a new drive.
The harsh verdict—and it was
harsh, given the top speed of the
drive—emerged from a number of
issues covered in the review. First of
all, the hype factor is out of control.
The packaging boasts 4x DVD-R DL
burn speeds, but we still can’t find
the media on store shelves. What’s
the point? If you purchase this drive
because your set-top DVD player
prefers DVD-R discs and you need
more capacity than single-layer discs
provide, you’re gambling on the hopes
that media will be attainable at some
nebulous point in the future after you
purchase the drive. That’s silly.
Although our reviews are gener-
ally focused on hardware, Pioneer’s
software blunder deserved particular
emphasis. We mentioned that software
errors ruined two double-layer discs;
that’s a $30 loss—almost 20 percent of
the cost of the drive itself! Think of it
this way: Automobile reviewers don’t
make a fuss about the airbags—unless
they don’t work.
It’s a good drive, and tremendously
fast, but in order to get a superior ver-
dict and a Kick Ass award, manufactur-
ers need to deliver on all their promises.
SLI = FOUR DISPLAYS?
I just finished reading the December
2004 “Gear of the Year,” specifically
the write-up about nVidia’s GeForce
6800 Ultras on the PCI Express bus
with SLI. I’m planning to build a
new machine for digital editing
within the next few months, and
my question is this: If I purchase
this dual-card setup with each
card having two DVI connections,
will I be able to run three or four
monitors, with each monitor
having a different program open on
its screen? I would like to be able
to run Premiere Pro on one screen,
After Effects on another screen, and
the final rendering of the movie/
documentary on the two other
screens.
—ALAN SHIFLETTE
TECHNICAL EDITOR WILL SMITH
RESPONDS: You can definitely con-
nect four monitors to a dual-card SLI
rig, but if you aren’t going to use the
system for gaming, we strongly rec-
ommend you use the cheaper (around
$250) GeForce 6600 PCI Express cards
instead of the $500 6800 Ultra boards.
SATA CONTROLLERS?
Which SATA controller do you
recommend? Are some better than
others?
—PHIL KRITZMAN
ASSOCIATE EDITOR JOSH NOREM
RESPONDS: The reason we haven’t
reviewed any of these cards is twofold.
First, there are primarily just two com-
panies making cards: Silicon Image and
Promise. Both make great SATA control-
ler cards that we highly recommend.
Second, in our experience, the
performance difference between these
cards is practically nil because today’s
fastest hard drives are still incapable
of saturating an older ATA 66 control-
ler, much less a SATA 150 controller
(Western Digital’s Raptor is a different
story, of course). Even though the inter-
face has changed and the bandwidth
for the channel has opened up a bit
from ATA 133 to SATA 150, actual drive
performance has changed very little
because hard drives themselves have
received only modest speed bumps
over the past few years.
All the performance gains
we’ve seen in the latest drives are
the result of internal improvements
such as larger buffers, faster spin-
dle speeds, and higher areal densi-
ties. The move to SATA makes drive
installation easier, but by itself, the
interface doesn’t provide any speed
improvements over parallel ATA.
VIVA LA REVOLUCION!?
In the December 2004 issue’s
game review of Call Of Duty:
United Offensive, I noticed the
positive heading in the verdict
box was “Communists” and
the negative was “Fascists.”
I understand the choice
for negative just fine, but
the positive had me a bit
flummoxed. Considering that
the death toll of innocent
human beings resulting from
the reign of Stalin alone
significantly outpaces the fetid
goose-stepper we all love to hate
by about 30 million (this isn’t
counting Pol Pot and Mao), I
find the analogy disturbing, to