Vista VS Freecom DVB-T – Part 2… The end!

Well, just to leave a quick note regarding the post about my Freecom DVB-T USB stick, I tried installing in Vista. The truth is that I have had little time to spend experimenting with this. My windows now throws an error every time I open a folder with media files (avi/mp3/etc.) But aside from that allows me to work fine. I therefore suspect that there is either a wrong dll or driver (Yakumo?) somewhere.

I believe this error is the cause of the problems I have with Windows Media Center. Ill attach the error message whe Im back home and manage to get a screen capture.

For the moment, I watch and record TV fine with the DVB-Viewer, and dont feel like troublshooting this any more.

Vista VS Freecom DVB-T

Last month, I bought from a colleague at work a Freecom DVB-T USB dongle. He warned me in advance, that he could not get it to work in Vista, but because I run both Vista and XP on my machine, that was not bothering me too much (even less with the price he sold it for).

The Installing of the device in XP was pretty easy. I downloaded the drivers from the Freecom Site and installed the DVB-T Viewer application. All Fine!

However, the curiosity tickled, and I finally tried installing the stick in Vista, basically rebooting all the time to XP to be able to use it is an annoyance. On the Freecom website, I found the drivers for Vista. I downloaded the drivers, unpacked them, inserted the stick and the New Hardware installation wizard popped-up. I chose the location I unpacked the files earlier, and Surprise!!… Vista did not recognise anything. Boooooh!!

Googling my way through, I found that there where quite a lot of people having Driver issues with this device, and especially in the different flavours of Vista (32 and 64). I stumbled upon a couple of Forums, which managed to help me a bit further. One is http://forums.dvbowners.com and the other is http://www.avforums.com/. I found there that several people having this problem, where experimenting with BDA-Drivers from other devices.

I found a post, on http://forums.gbpvr.com/ (GB-PVR is supposed to be a very good (free!) alternative to windows medi center… might be worth having a look… when the stick works) in where a user installs the stick using the Yakumo BDA drivers, and edits the BDA.ini file. The link in the post did not work, so I had to get the file Yakumo_Quickstick_Treiber.zip from another post. The link is here: http://www.avforums.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=27089&d=1142702038

I followed the instructions where they applied, and guess what… The stick started working! It is now functional in its native DVB Viewer application. However it is still not working properly in Vista Media Center, or the GB-PVR software.

I am still trying differnt things at the moment and as soon as the stick works in media center, I consider my mission completed. Therefore, stay tuned, there is more to come!

Vaio, First Steps

After a week playing with my new Vaio laptop, I am starting to get used to it. Well most of it.

To be honest, the laptop itself is great, I really like its minimalist design, and the keyboard is very comfortable. There are still some features I haven’t played with, like the optical interface, or for example the backup partition it has.

What I have to get used to most is the Vista operating system and additional software delivered with it. Personally I am really into building the machine from scrap. I therefore always owned a PC, build from parts. The first steps where usually:

1. Build the partitions I need (or thought I needed at that moment, because they changed a lot over

2. Create a XP custom install CD with BAT PE builder, which allowed me to remove the windows features I did not like, and change some of the basic configuration.

3. Install Windows, and the necessary applications

4. Setup the Users files/Folders (Documents and Settings) on a dedicated partition

And that’s it. As you can see, I was a bit lost in a pre-configured and pre-installed system on a single drive. Also the fact that the laptop was delivered with approx. 20 gig. of software did not really help. What happened with the CD’s or DVD’s that used to come with a new system? With these you could choose the things you would like to install.

I bvelieve that here is probably the biggest mistake one can make. Which is: Start using all the pre installed stuff.

MS Office 2007, very nice and pretty but a 60 day’s version… After that? uninstall and end up with a bunch of useless documents you’d have to convert to something to use them again?

Norton 360, looks very safe to me. A bit too safe maybe. To me it gives me the feeling I am untouchable. which for most of today’s threaths is probably true. However, after 60 day’s… this protection will disappear. Meaning that me, and the others in my house using my machine would have to change our online mentality and customs a bit, if we dont want to end up with any unwanted stuff happening on our new fancy laptop.

A set of games, some downloadable, was also preinstalled. However, after trying the first game, I was aked how I wanted to pay for it. Something I do not really like. (paying for it I mean… after all I am Dutch;) ).

The Sony Vaio Software is good. It does the job, is for free, and do not occupy too much space either. This is one of the few pre installedsoftware packeges I am happy with.

Now I have more or less tried it all, I will start planning the computers future. There are so many questions yet to awnser…

At this moment, I am not sure wether to set up a second partition for documents and another one, to dual boot with XP, or Ubuntu. What I do know now, is that I got rid of almost all of the preinstalled stuff and I am getting used to Vista, which to my surprise is very straight forward and I would even call it pleasant. I will post more about that for sure!!