Now you can watch your favorite shows on your PC. With your DIRECTV Plus® HD DVR receiver and PC connected to your home network, the DIRECTV2PC™ application allows you to stream the programs you recorded on your DVR to your PC, where you can watch them on your HD monitor.

Sounds like a pretty cool idea.  I installed it on my Windows 7 PC tonight.  The interface looks as if you were sitting in front of your TV.

The bad news was that after about five seconds the video stopped playing a dialog on the screen indicated that it “couldn’t apply hardware protection mechanism”.  In doing further research it appears that this has something to do with the video and support for specific features around protected content within the driver.  I am using an ATI Radeon X1650 Pro which is a dual port DVI out card that has 512MB RAM.  I thought this card would sufficient.  The built-in Windows 7 driver for it is up to date, and ATI doesn’t have any Windows 7 drivers for this model.  When you select Windows 7, it takes you to the Vista x64 drivers and says that “these should work” but are unsupported in Windows 7.  That’s kind of a bummer.

 

This weekend I will probably have to see what else I have laying around for video cards and give those a try.  I have heard that this actually works on a Mac when run from inside BootCamp, however, the DirecTV app is not supported on a Mac, only a PC.

If you want to give the DIRECTV2PC beta a try for yourself, click here.

[caption id="attachment_209" align="alignleft" width="168" caption="Acer 10.1" Netbook"][/caption] Picked this up last weekend.  Netbooks are all the rage right now.  A simple, compact laptop that provides enough power and performance to do email, offer Internet access, and use Office apps.  Battery life is between 4-8 hours depending upon what you do.  The Acer that I purchased is suppose to get about 7-8 hours of power.  The first batch apparently is shipping with the larger (longer lasting) battery, while later productions will ship with a smaller battery capable of 4-5 hours; which is still great. I loaded mine with Windows 7, Office 2007, and a few other apps that I use regularly.  This is the perfect device for travelers who regularly have to present (VGA output), like to take notes in a meeting or lecture, or just need quick access to email.  It weighs under 3 lbs., so you can't ask for much more.  It ships with 1GB RAM, but for $20 you can swap out the 1GB chip for 2GB. So far, I'm very impressed with it.  I did my research on these, which was a very frustrating process.  It is really hard to find full specs on a lot of these units, specifically information about upgradability of RAM and hard drive.  Needless to say, I saw a few people out in Redmond running with the Acer (both 8" and 10" screens), and were very happy with them.  The Acer is available through Amazon, CostCo, and MicroCenter.