Wake On LAN has been around for ages but I never really looked at it until now (since Windows Home Server won’t power up of it’s own accord!). Setting up Wake On LAN can be quite tricky, there are quite a few pre-requisites that you need to satisfy before you can get it working. Even when you’re ‘done’, there are still the ’shutdown’ and ’scheduling’ aspects to sort out.

Over the past couple of days I’ve put together a small web application here that allows me to schedule wake-up, shutdown, and reboot events for computers across the Internet. In order to handle Shutdown/Standby/Hibernate and Reboot on LAN I created a lightweight NT service to listen out for packets on a given UDP port. The packet structure is very similar to the existing magic packet used by Wake on LAN, but different enough so that the intention (wake, shutdown, etc.) is not confused.

I’m still testing the web application and service (so far all indications are positive), but if you’re interested in helping test please drop a line in the comments area.

Generally by about 2am everyone in my family is usually asleep; and those with a vested interest in the services offered by WHS (i.e. me) are usually at work until 5-6pm. That’s about 15 hours a day during which WHS consumes approx 55 W idling. Put another way, the cost to run my server 24/7 is over £52 a year; idle time accounts for almost 60% of that.

It seems reasonable to have WHS transition into standby or hibernation around 2am until required at 5pm (weekends excluded); but surprisingly there is no easy way to do this out-of-the-box, so I created a small add-in to do just this.

How it works

The add-in is an MSI package (46KB) that you copy into your Windows Home Server’s Add-In directory; you then use the Windows Home Server Console to install the add-in. A more detailed explanation can be found here.

In addition to the assembly that implements the add-in and a helper application, the package contains a class library (written by Dennis Austin) which facilitates access to the Task Manager. The very light-weight helper application (PollStandby) is executed once every hour and determines whether the system is idle, and whether it is time to put WHS to sleep. Daily, one of seven scheduled tasks is run, ensuring that the system awakes at the appointed time.

Usage

Click on the ‘Settings’ button in the Windows Home Server Console, and then click on ‘Power Saving’. Here you will be able to specify whether your system should transition to standby or hibernation (if you’ve enabled it on your system); additionally you can specify the ‘bed-time’ schedule. The first time you enable ‘Power Saving’, you will need to provide authorization (i.e. username and password) since the Task Manager requires a valid account in order to run the scheduled tasks.

* Update / Note *

Over the course of the afternoon I’ve noticed that WHS likes to wake up of it’s own accord to perform some task at regular intervals, I’ll need to investigate further, so I’ve withdrawn the download link.

James has completed porting the project to .NET 2.0, delt with the changes introduced by Vista Media Center, deciphered my arcane installer script and written some Windows Firewall helper apps to simplify installation. His enthusiasm has even rubbed off on me, such that I’m keen to dabble with MCML and perhaps work on a newer, flashier, user interface for the Vista crowd.

If you’re running Vista RTM you may be interested to know that James has released an early beta build, be sure to check out the release notes and forum posts as there are a couple of known issues that can easily be worked around.

Download Transcode 360 Vista RTM Beta over here (or here) and feel free to leave feedback in the forums.

In short this means that users of Windows XP (and other Windows platforms) can now automatically stream their video library to the Xbox 360, to some extent irrespective of the file format and encoding used. E.g. DivX, XViD, etc.

There is a limitation with regards to seeking while transcoding and the transcoding thread priority is a bit too high, but beyond that I found TVersity very easy to get up and running. I haven’t yet had the chance to see how it handles AC3. In any case, no doubt the solution will improve over time, but at this early stage its looking very promising indeed!

I thoroughly recommend you check out TVersity as it is in my opinion a much better solution than Transcode 360 for several reasons. For starters T360 requires a Media Center PC, but perhaps more importantly, from an implementation perspective T360 has a lot of dependencies that make installation more complex than I’d like.

The beauty of TVersity as a solution is that its (a) UPNP standards based (b) supports both Windows XP and Windows 2000 (c) designed to work with many more devices than just the Xbox 360.

More information after the jump.

TVersity Official Website

You’ll probably want to edit the Settings to increase the resolution of the transcoded video to compensate for the poor quality scaling algorithm the Xbox 360’s UPNP client applies. I find that 640×480 works pretty well but if you have the horsepower its almost certainly better if you can match the 360’s native resolution. The 360’s client currently only supports WMV video, so inherently more CPU resources are needed.

Update: Having played around with TVersity some more I have to qualify my recommendation since theres an additional issue worth considering. Previously I mentioned how poorly the Xbox 360 UPNP video client is at upscaling, a bigger issue is the client’s terrible user-interface. All video files and folders are flattened out into a single list, which can be very inconvenient when you have to scroll through 100’s of files to find the one you want; both issues are outside of TVersity’s control, so let’s hope Microsoft gets on the case and addresses them in their next update.

And Microsoft while you’re at it, how about some MPEG 2 love? Forcing UPNP servers to transcode to WMV just isn’t right!

I’m of course referring to Microsoft’s latest dashboard update (and not this long overdue post!). Those of us hoping for a wider range of video formats will have been disappointed to find that the streaming media enhancements on offer are limited to WMV over Windows Media Player 11 and Windows Media Connect.

In related news, I’ve had word from Brian of My Movies confirming that the integration work is still going ahead and is now in its final stages so stay tuned…

I also found some time to squash a few long-standing bugs and am currently testing a new version of T360 on my new dual core Media Center setup. I’m not sure whether it might make sense to time its release with My Movies. I should be receiving a release candidate any day now so I’ll defer the decision until then.

Despite that, believe it or not I haven’t forgotten about Transcode 360; things are progressing: My Movies author Brian Binnerup is currently evaluating the interface I’ve provided him and I’m pretty hopeful any change requests that come my way can be quickly turned round.

Other than that ’tis been a crappy month: my DSL service is on the blink (intermittent fault - connection drops every 3-10 minutes as the day warms up or cools down); the deathtrap car broke down (intermittent fault - engine cuts out at low speeds and unpredictably at 60 mph - nice!); and England get knocked out of the World Cup.

Needless to say I’m looking forward to a change in fortune…

Despite my affection for XBMC I cannot hand on heart say I’m satisified with its DVD performance. This prompted some soul searching - how much longer could I hold out with a format war only just looming on the horizon? And once thats over, would I be prepared to pay hand over fist for hi-def versions of movies I already own on DVD?

I recently had the opportunity to compare a regular DVD (rendered by a high-performance DVD player through a digital connection), to its 1080i high-definition equivalent (rendered by an HTPC), and while it was easy to see substantially increased detail in the hi-def source, particularly in large panaromic shots with plenty of movement, I really had to question whether I could justify re-purchasing the title in one of the new formats at what I guess will amount to almost four times the price.

Of course this particular dilemma isn’t unique to me. Can the next generation formats come soon enough for you? Are you prepared to buy into a particular format before a clear winner emerges? Do you plan to replace your existing DVD collection? I’m keen to hear your thoughts.

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On a completely unrelated note the author of My Movies is getting married today (congratulations Brian!); while he’s happily discovering married life (poor soul!) I plan to claw back some time and catch up on Oblivion and some of the games I bought a while back that are still snuggly tucked away with their shrink-wrapping intact.

You’ve probably noticed that I’m no longer posting in the forums as frequently as I have in the past (with the exception of the Priority Support forum which I do my best to attend). The reality is that its not possible for me to spend hours answering posts, many raised by new users, so I’m counting on help from the community to generally point people in the right direction.

That said, I’m pretty satisfied that many of the issues raised have been addressed in some form, so if you’re new to the forums - keep digging and I’m sure you’ll find answers.

There is a new ‘Automatic’ installation option that will run T360 in the task notification area (system tray); this makes configuration super-easy and mitigates the network permissions issues some users encountered.

Both 2 and 6 channel (5.1) AC3 is supported and the AV sync issue affecting NTSC content has been fixed. Note that due to reliability issues Forward/Backward Skip are disabled while streaming AC3 soundtracks.

In addition to regular playback of XviD and DivX, Transcode 360 supports DVD ISO and VIDEO_TS folder streaming with subtitles; determining the best combination of soundtrack/subtitles appropriate to you based on your locale.

Download the latest version of Transcode 360 here