Hauppauge MediaMVP Review - Hooking it up
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Hooking up the MediaMVP is a very simple process. It needs power, a cat5 cable, and AV cables. The AV cables hook to your TV, the cat5 cable to your home network, and the power cable to the wall. Wow, the hardware part of the installation is done.
Seems pretty simple, right? Here's a shot of it hooked up to my TV.
I hooked it up to the front panel of my TV, since this isn't a permanent installation. It seems that my bedroom is the ONLY room in the house that the previous owners did not wire for Ethernet. I'll either need to upgrade to the wireless MediaMVP, or I'll need to drop an Ethernet jack in here. For now, though, I have a long cable running from the next room.
Now comes the more complicated part of the setup, configuring the PC to serve media to the MediaMVP. Start by installing the CD-ROM that comes with the MediaMVP. It installs all the required services and software to make your PC into a media server.
Once the software is installed, you will need to run the "Search for Media" application, to allow the software to catalog your media files to be accessed by your television. There are separate areas for Pictures, Video, Music, and Radio. The first three are fairly easy to figure out. You choose a starting position and click SEARCH. The software searches each and every folder under your starting position and creates a list of matches on the left side of the screen. You then pick the files you want shared, click ADD to allow access, then click SAVE to save your progress.
The radio screen is a little different. For starters, you can only stream media that is in MP3 or WMA format. If the music streams via Real audio, it won't work. Secondly, there must be an HTTP URL to locate the radio station. In other words, there must be an address you can type in your web browser that triggers the radio to start playing. Shoutcast is an excellent example of a web site with radio stations you can stream through the Media MVP.
When in Shoutcast, instead of clicking the TUNE IN button to tune into a station, RIGHT CLICK it. In your menu, you will see a new option, titled "Add to MVP Favorite Radio Stations." Click this option, choose a name and optionally a category for this station to fit into, then click okay. The yellow arrow below points to this new option on your right-click menu.
When you have all the radio stations added to your favorites, you must once again go back to the search application. Select "Radio" in the drop down, leave it in the default of "My Computer," and click search. The MVP software will then scour your computer looking for the MediaMVP bookmarks. Once it finds them, it adds them to your library; then you click SAVE to save them.
Okay, the software is installed and the hardware is hooked up, so let's give it a spin.
Next: The testing >>
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