Bought a Sony Media Center PC on uBid? You poor bastard.

I've been busy lately with this new/old house. Not much of it digital, however - clearing dead branches, fixing walls, changing light fixtures, etc.

One area that I did dig into recently was finally setting up a Media Center PC.

I ended up with a Sony "MCE" (which is apparently what it is called, but shouldn't it be MCPC?), mainly because it was liquid cooled. I had heard bad things about MCEs with monster fans in them - imagine how annoying that would be when you're watching TV!

So like most new PCs (I bought it refurbished on Ubid), this thing has some mongo specs - Pentium 4, 1Gb RAM, etc. It's in a black tower, which is a bit of a bummer but I don't know of any liquid cooled MCEs that look like a stereo component.

I plugged it directly into my router. Interestingly, the ethernet port was taped over with a logo of a phone with a line through it. How many morons plugged a phone linto that port and called Sony Support such that they had to design and manufacture a sticker for it?! Geez.

I connected the VGA-out to a spare display and plugged in their (surprisingly wired) keyboard and mouse. I also connected the s-video out to my TV.

Fired it up and the display came to life (but not the TV). Hmm...went through the MCE setup - downloaded the TV Guide stuff, placed the IR thingy on the cable box so the MCE can change channels - cool, etc. I went into Display Properties, Advanced, etc. but I couldn't get the TV output.

I ran some tests to make sure my TV was in the right mode and the s-video in was working. All set. Power cycled the MCE with the TV connected and still no TV output. Aargh. My kids, who have been hovering over my shoulder, are starting to ask questions.

I check the ATI control panel (it has an ATI card which menas you get about 18 new tabs in your Display dialog box - thanks!) and in fact there is a tab that is supposed to have a TV on it that you click. I say "supposed to" because there is no TV icon there - it's blank!

That is bad news.

I decide to call Sony. I wait twenty minutes and give the tech the lowdown. He slowly starts to run through his tech support script - "click start . . . click control panel . . . click . . ."

I gently interrupt. "I work for Microsoft, let's save some time and just tell why the icon isn't there."

He paused and then put me on hold. Next tech comes on the line - he cuts to the chase. "Your drivers need to be re-installed."

Whoa! Fortunately I knew where they were - re-ran the ATI setup from way down in the directory structure and all was well.

But how can you ship a system, a Media Center PC, without the drivers installed properly to display on a TV?

If you bought a Sony Media Center PC on Ubid, and you're getting no TV output, I hope you find this post, you poor bastard.

On another note, after I got it working, I realized I needed a new TV. My rear projection CRT is really showing its age! But I'lll save that for another post.

Comments

[Sean]

I use two of these for my business and really enjoy them. One did come with a bad mother board from the factory but Sony came onsite and fixed it for no charge.

Take care,