The Build from Hell: Part VI: Batman: Arkham City

Isn't it nice when things just work? You get in your car, turn the key, and the engine doesn't tell you that your log in information is incorrect. You pick up the phone, push some buttons, and don't have to enter your 20-digit hexadecimal product code to complete the call. You turn a knob on a faucet and don't get a message that you've used water in the maximum number of approved sinks.

This is the way computers should be and, until recently, the way they had been working for me. That all changed with The Build from Hell.

Back in part I, I mentioned that one of the things I wanted to do on the new HTPC was be able to play vidjimagames. A nice new processor, with a good graphics card would make it faster than my desktop, and ideal for playing any games that support a controller.

Around this time, I was working my way through Batman: Arkham City, sequel to the game-of-the-year Batman: Arkham Asylum. I loved Arkham Asylum and pre-ordered Arkham City on Steam as soon as it became available.

The Resident Batman-lover, that is Anne Marie, forbade me from playing either game without her present at every moment. This usually meant me sitting at my desk, with her sitting behind me, looking over my shoulder. A workable solution, but not ideal. This seems like the perfect game to be able to sit on the couch and play with my wireless controller.

So I install Steam on HiFi and begin downloading the many billions of bytes necessary to play the game. While it's downloading would be a good time to explain Steam Cloud.
Valve, in their infinite wisdom, has implemented a feature in Steam called Steam Cloud. Basically, game data, such as saves, preferences, and configurations can be saved to The Cloud, or on Steam's servers. The advantage to this is that you can then move from one computer to any other computer and retain your saved games, or keyboard configuration, or player customizations. Arkham City supports this, so I can easily move from my desktop to the HTPC, and pick up where I left off in the game.

And this feature works exactly as advertised, so after I install Arkham City on the HTPC, I try to play. This is where I crash head-first into the dark and shady side of what is otherwise such an amazing piece of game design: Games for Windows Live.

The Build from Hell: Part V: Watching Blu-Rays

Isn't it nice when things just work? You get in your car, turn the key, and the engine doesn't tell you that it only works on manufacturer-approved roads. You pick up the phone, push some buttons, and don't have to press speakerphone to hear over the handset. You turn a knob on a faucet and don't get an error message that your sink is not in the correct region.

This is the way computers should be and, until recently, the way they had been working for me. That all changed with The Build from Hell.

So part of the reason for the Build from Hell was to be able to watch Blu-rays. A few days after the initial frustrations, I decided to test this ability out.

The movie of choice was Toy Story 3, because it's one of three Blu-rays we have (the other two being Toy Stories 1 and 2). Pop the disc in, Windows Media Center automatically opens and... wants me to set the region for the Blu-ray drive. OK, this is a little odd, considering I had already set the region when I watched a DVD the other night. Can you set the region for Blu-ray playback separately from DVD? Kind of cool, if so, but irrelevant.

So I set the region, then hit play and... an error appears! (Were you expecting anything else?) The error is (some of the more knowledgeable of you may have seen this coming) "Blu-ray playback requires a connection that supports HDCP encryption, such as DVI or HDMI".

BLARGH BLARGH BLARGH BLARGH!

As you may remember from Part III, while the card has DVI out, the TV only has VGA in, thus necessitating a converter (of which I have plenty lying around), and the HDMI plain and simple doesn't work... unless another monitor is plugged into the video card. This gives me my workaround: I leave the DVI-to-VGA connection in place, but reconnect the HDMI. The Windows desktop is now extended from one TV connection to the other. Flipping inputs on the TV changes between the two halves of the Windows desktop. I set up the HDMI-half of the desktop as the primary desktop (and ironically have difficulty getting the Display Settings control panel onto it), and try the Blu-ray again. Now it works.

This is how it remains to this day: the Windows desktop is extended on the same display device. The second half of the display only exists so the first one--the one I want--will actually work.

The Build from Hell: Part IV: Christmas Morning: Part II: Network Nuisances

...First Blood, Part II: Revengeance of the Revengening: The Sequel: Episode I: Breaking Dawn.

Isn't it nice when things just work? You get in your car, turn the key, and the engine doesn't explode. You pick up the phone, push some buttons, and don't get electrocuted. You turn a knob on a faucet and acid doesn't come out.

This is the way computers should be and, until recently, the way they had been working for me. That all changed with The Build from Hell.

So as we read in the last chapter, Christmas morning is rapidly deteriorating from "spend wonderful time with wonderful family" into "fight to the death with technology". At least now we can actually see stuff on a screen. This is a big step forward. The next step is to plug in the network adapter.

I have a fancy-dancy D-Link USB wireless network adapter that I used to connect the old computer to our wireless network, so I didn't need to run a 50' network cable from the den to the living room. The wireless network doesn't work when the baby monitor handset is turned on. Weird, but irrelevant to our tale.

I installed the drivers for it, plugged it in, and attempted to connect to the network. It connected, but--oddly--had no internet connection. Windows' network troubleshooter was exactly as useful as a screendoor on a submarine. I tried resetting the adapter, resetting the connection, unplugging and replugging the adapter, cussing at it, sacrificing a goat to Baal. No dice.

I checked the router page, and it showed the computer was connected and had an assigned IP address, however, running ipconfig on the computer showed a different address, not in the given subnet. A google search showed that sometimes, D-Link's built-in software could conflict, and there were recommendations to remove that, install the driver only, and use the Windows network connections to connect. Tried that and it still didn't work.

At this point, I was out of time and patience, so I just left it and went to take care of the boys. About 30 minutes later I returned and, hey! An internet connection! Aren't the best problems the ones that solve themselves? Actually, not at all, because then you don't know how to fix it when it inevitably occurs again.

The Build from Hell: Part III: Christmas Morning: Part I: Display Dilemmas

Isn't it nice when things just work? You get in your car, turn the key, and the engine starts. You pick up the phone, push some buttons, and someone answers on the other end. You turn a knob on a faucet and water comes out.

This is the way computers should be and, until recently, the way they had been working for me. That all changed with The Build from Hell.

As I forgot to mention in parts I and II, the Build from Hell (which we shall from henceforth refer to by its given name "HiFi" because that's kinda what the case looks like) was intended to be a Christmas present for "Rie" and by "Rie" I mean primarily for myself, but Rie can use it too.

When I ordered the parts, I had them shipped to work, and I assembled it there, so Rie wouldn't know about it. My vision was that early on Christmas morning, before Rie got out of bed, I'd set up the computer in the living room, then cook her breakfast, so she'd arise to two perfect children, a perfect hubby, a perfect breakfast, and a nice shiny new computer under the TV.

The reality is she woke up to two screaming children, no breakfast, and a hubby who was fussing and fuming at a computer that wouldn't DO WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO DO, GORAMMIT!

Ah, Christmas, that magical time of year when our thoughts turn to peace, love, and disemboweling the graphics chip set designers at AMD and HIS.

The specific issue here was one of display. The video card has two DVI outputs and one HDMI output. I figured I could just use the HDMI output to hook it straight into the TV. This has the advantage of a) it does not require an adapter, which the DVI connections would need to plug into the TV's VGA connector, b) it does not require any additional audio cables, since HDMI carries an audio signal as well (and the video card has a built-in audio card!), and c) it would make flipping to the computer easier, since the TV's remote has a shortcut button for the HDMI inputs, but not for the VGA.

So I hooked up the computer and powered it on. It POSTed, everything looked fine, it started Windows, then the screen went blank. After waiting about five minutes, I realized something was up (maybe it hung, maybe it was the hard drive issue), so I restarted. Same thing.

The Build from Hell: Part II: Assembly

Isn't it nice when things just work? You get in your car, turn the key, and the engine starts. You pick up the phone, push some buttons, and someone answers on the other end. You turn a knob on a faucet and water comes out.

This is the way computers should be and, until recently, the way they had been working for me. That all changed with The Build from Hell.

So, when we last met our intrepid hero, he had just ordered the components for the Ultimate HTPC of Ultimate destiny. He had also decided to refer to himself in the third person.

Order was placed on a Thursday. Parts arrived on Friday, except the case, which arrived the following Monday. Eager to put the thing together, I dove into the boxes, ripping them open. Everything was good and new and shiny and OH, DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN!

The Build from Hell: Part I: Shopping

Isn't it nice when things just work? You get in your car, turn the key, and the engine starts. You pick up the phone, push some buttons, and someone answers on the other end. You turn a knob on a faucet and water comes out.

This is the way computers should be and, until recently, the way they had been working for me. That all changed with The Build from Hell.

So, as is becoming an annual custom, at my yearly review, my boss informed me that they had underpaid me by quiggly-thousand dollars (again) this year, so I'd be receiving a large check to cover the balance. This should make me furious that they've been underpaying all my (snerk) "hard work", but, for some reason, I look forward to this inevitable occurrence. Probably because, like an IRS refund, the brain just interprets it as FREE MONEY! WOOHOO! when it's actually been my money all along, and someone else was just holding on to it, interest free. Secondly, because this is the closest I ever get to a Christmas bonus. You see, my company doesn't pay Christmas bonuses, because our directors are too busy taking the entire UK staff up to the Lake District to stay in a rented castle (I imagine it looks like Hogwarts), so they need us poor saps in the US to stay in the office during the week between Christmas and New Years and if we could just come in on Saturday that would be greeeeeeat.

So I actually almost prefer that they don't pay me all my salary over the year, but save some until the very end, so it feels like I'm getting an end-of-the-year bonus. So long as we don't tell me brain, it's happy to live in its own little delusion.

All of this is a very roundabout way (or "traffic-circular" way, for those in the US) of pointing out that I recently had a bunch of money burning a hole in my pocket. Instead of doing something responsible with it, like investing in a college fund for Damien and Anthony, or paying off my credit card or student loans, I decided it was time to upgrade our living room computer.

When I last upgraded my desktop computer, I took the old one and hooked it up to the TV to create a home theater-esque PC. Since we didn't have a good DVD player in the living room, this was what we used, and since the TV's speakers were crappy, but we have a nice THX-certified 200 watt speaker system for computer, this was our method of actually hearing audio from the TV. But the computer was getting old. I built it nearly 8 years ago, right after we got married, when it was totally the rage to have a computer with enough fans to power a NASA wind tunnel. The thing was loud. Loud enough to drown out audio from the TV, and since it needed to be on to get audio for the TV, it was its own Catch-22. Also, the DVD drive had about a 10% success rate on reading DVDs, so the whole purpose of using it to watch movies was kind of defeated.

I decided now was the time to upgrade to a real Home Theater PC, with Blu-ray support. We've had a 1080p TV for about 4 years now, but with no Blu-ray player, only 720p cable TV HD, and a video card manufactured in the Dark Ages of twenty-aught-four, before 1920x1080 was a commonly-supported video card resolution, we had no way of using all 360 of those extra rows.