Everything OK - Media Center Set-up -sort out the guide listings.
Scan for channels
Do a manual scan on 10714.00 H, 22000 for Channel4 and Film4 +1
See this link for all the freesat channels with frequencies - http://en.kingofsat.net/tv-28.2E.php.

If desired, tweak registry for ITV HD.

Because ITV HD is a red button interactive service it needs to be set up as a separate channel.
Vista will not see it when doing a channel scan unless MHEG (red button) on DVB-S is enabled.
Run regedit and browse to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionMedia CenterSettingsTVConfig
Change the value of “fAllowDvbsMHEG” from 0 to 1.

Do a manual satellite scan with the values: 11428, 27500, H.
A few new channels should be found including 10510 which is ITV HD.
(If you don’t find these try 11426 and 11427 instead of 11428.)

Rename channel 10510 to ITV HD by going to the guide and highlighting the 10510 channel name before using “More Info” to edit the channel.
You can then use the rename channel option to set it to be ITV HD.

Q. I’ve been watching ITV HD and have switched to BBC HD and the screen fades to black after a second, what’s going on?
A. No one is quite sure. However, this is easy to fix by pressing Stop and then Live TV again. If this does not work then close the Media Center application before re-opening it.

Check Guide listings present
Scan for the channels the standard scan doesn’t

Finally, Tweak the menus - If you want to!

Back to the Software…

1. download the standalone MPC-HC filters.
2. Extract MPCVideoDec.ax and copy it into c:windowssystem32
3. Open a command prompt, navigate to c:windowssystem32, and run regsvr32 MPCVideoDec.ax

Jeff also indicated that he needed to use something like Radlight Filter Manager to assign H.264/AVC, but when I go to this step it was already selected.

Unfortunately I still needed FDDShow Audio Decoder to correctly handle AC3 and DTS over SPDIF for all file formats.
I installed the CCCP Pack, as this is what I had always installed previously, but it may be overkill if the magic dll does all that is supposed (and seems) to do.
Some investigation is probably required here, but for now things are working.

Prior to the Media Player Classic Home Cinema solution, I’d swear by the CCCP Pack, an excellent codec/filter package.

I hate the lack of options when it comes to Blu-ray playback. The options consist of the most unstable, unreliable software releases I have ever encountered.
Until recently I have gone with Power DVD, but I’m now running with Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre due to it’s better integration with Media Center and the option to down sample Dolby True HD, which my current amplifier cannot handle. At this point we have a clean install, now is the time to install it (and the only point I’ve ever had it reliably work). I’m still not convinced on the repeatability of this, but I’m giving it a go.

MST Standby tool (http://slicksolutions.eu/mst.shtml) - simply the simplest and best tool for making sure your stand by and resume settings are correct (HTPC or otherwise)
LED Driver tool (http://slicksolutions.eu/ledsdriver.shtml) - This is a great application from Herman van Eijk (http://slicksolutions.eu/), who wrote MST Standby. When combined with a very simply DIY project (http://www.degroeneknop.nl/forum/index.php/topic,4809.0.html), this can turn you HTPC into a much more living room friendly DVR.

AnyDVD HD - You just need it.

Deamon tools lite or Virtual CloneDrive - I’m still undecided on which.

Media Browser plug-in - need to tweak configuration so My Videos is not the root folder containing my library

Tuner Free MCE plug-in

Back to the operating system and drivers…
On to the Media Center Software…

Install O/S - blitz main partition/primary drive. (If this is a re-install you’re fine, because all you media is on the second drive.)
Nothing to say about this bit. Follow the prompts and make a brew in between.

Start up and deal with any primary drivers not installed automatically.

Obviously the main focus here is the Motherboard, Graphics card and Sound. Though in my current set-up the Vista install picked up everything straight away and correctly.
(Even the BIOS, which though wasn’t the latest, was up to date for the processor I was running.)

NB Initially I answered yes to ACHI SATA configuration, but felt latter that this may have been the cause of the system occasionally freezing. I hadn’t pre-installed a specific windows driver for this first, which seemed (from reading around) to be required. The feature wasn’t something I particularly wanted at present, so it was easier just to go back to IDE mode.

The only hardware element I needed to install was the TV Card.
I went for the latest drivers straight from the Black and Gold website.

As things currently stand, the most irritating bit of an install is with the Media Center TV Pack for Windows Vista (Fiji). Not because it’s difficult, just because it’s not seamless. Despite it being a legitimate and supported OEM update (at least most of it and you can’t just get it from legitimate channels) , it does feel a little messy, though saying that, installing MCE form the original media was even less well strung together.

As ever, the green button and av forum has the low down on the TV Pack.

Prerequisites:
A PC meeting the minimum hardware requirements for Windows Vista
Clean install of Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate with Service Pack 1

Installation Instructions:

1. Windows Media Center TV Pack 2008 (x86)
2. Install the PlayReady PC Runtime (x86)
3. Install the following patches from the Download Center (both of these are included in the ZIP file)
KB951685 - The video playback application stops responding when you watch video or Live TV on a Windows Vista-based computer
KB950754 - Noticeable problems occur in the video when you use the DirectSound renderer on Windows Vista
4. Install any required or recommended Windows Updates

And even when you’ve installed that, you need to re-enable HD content.
HD Driver Hack H.264

Move “My” folders to the second drive.

Back to the hardware…
On to the Software…

• Silverstone LC14MC Case
• Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-US2H, AMD 780G
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e, Socket AM2
• 2GB DDR2-800 PC2-6400
• LG GGC H20L Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Rom Combo Drive
• BlackGold BGT3540 DVB-S and DVB-T tuner card
• Media Center IR Receiver
• 2 Hard Drives

I prefer two drives, but this is not essential. I like to separate the operating system from the media. I have found that the additional set-up steps is far out weighed by the simplicity to reinstall cleanly and quickly if necessary. As I said, I tinker, so occasionally I want to blast things back to basics with minimal interruption.
You could also partition a single drive for the same benefit, but I read somewhere that having a second physical drive for data read/writes improves performance.
Being that my HTPC is primarily a digital video recorder (DVR), this seemed to ring true.

I modified the case, replacing the hard drive indicator LED with one that runs from a COM port header. Just being able to visually see the operating mode as coloured light makes the unit feel much more like a set-top box.

This is connected to an AV amplifier via SPDIF and a 46″ 1080p HD LCD TV via DVI.
(Previous hardware did not have HDMI and as I didn’t/don’t need audio to the screen, DVI was fine - so that’s the cable in the wall. With hindsight, Not very future proof.)

Back…
On to the Operating system and drivers…

I have done this a few times now (because I can’t resist tinkering), sometimes from notes and sometimes from memory, but I wanted to capture and collect the nuances (if any).
Actually, the process has become simpler as the software support has improved and I have moved from Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (MCE) to Windows Media Center within Vista Home Premium (VMC). I’ve stuck to 32-bit builds of the operating systems, partly because of the issues I’ve read on drivers and partly because the H.264 functionality for the Fiji TV Pack is so far only 32-bit. I am currently experimenting with a 64-bit build of Windows 7, but that’s for another day.

The instructions here are particular to my hardware configuration, but only in the finer detail. The general process steps have remained consistent even when the hardware and software has varied. The building blocks of what you need for a HTPC are pretty constant.

PC with TV tuner and optical media drive
Operating system and drivers
Software to play stuff, such as Mpeg decoder, codecs and filters
The Media Center Software

All of this stuff is out there to be searched for and I’ve tried to include the appropriate links at the appropriate points.

On to the hardware…

A test running problem free on the test server was throwing a transformer error locally:

javax.xml.transform.TransformerException:
Had IO Exception with stylesheet file: C:\jboss-4.0.3SP1\server\default\conf\documentservice\pmi\include.xslt
at org.apache.xalan.processor.TransformerFactoryImpl.processFromNode(TransformerFactoryImpl.java:126)
...


On the surface, it looked like there was no difference in the environments; same deployed war file, same JBoss version, same Java version, same everything. Obviously something was different…

Xalan 2.7.0 was distributed in the WEB-INF/lib of the war, but stepping through the code on the failing local server, the byte code didn’t match the attached source. It wasn’t 2.7.0 being used, it was actually the 2.6.0 version shipped with JBoss (found in lib/endorsed).

It turns out that libraries in the lib/endorsed directory are considered system libraries by virtue of being loaded by the System and bootstrap class loaders and as such being used in preference to deployed war files version. (It should be noted that this is an older version of JBoss, namely 4.0.3 SP1.)

That explained why the wrong class was being picked up locally, but not why it worked in the test server environment.

The main difference was that the server was being run as a service on the test server and via a batch file locally.

Purely by chance, the endorsed.dirs parameter had been missed from the configuration of the service wrapper.

wrapper.java.additional.2=-Djava.endorsed.dirs=%JBOSS_HOME%\lib\endorsed

Striking this out of the local batch file, sanity returned once more.

rem set JBOSS_ENDORSED_DIRS=%JBOSS_HOME%\lib\endorsed

Removing Xalan and Xerces from lib\endorsed would have much the same effect and is proposed in this jira task at jboss.org

Though I have no idea why the ability to enable it is not a core configuration option, the methods are well enough documented around the place.

With such simplicity however, you often run into a restriction or a niggle that in a stand alone set-top box you may well just live with. With an HTPC though, which is most definitely a labour of love, you search an probe for a way to do that particular thing you want to do.

My niggle was that I wanted files other than DVD images to be accessible via the DVD Library. This desire was further provoked by Vista listing movies I recorded from TV in the library. This was almost enough. If I could have moved these movies out of the Recorded TV area and still have access to them, but no.

I found references to other format files being made accessible to extenders from the DVD Library via play lists and virtual links. I was again spurred on.

Ultimately though I was disappointed to find that these only worked from the extender and locally the DVD Library was truely limited to DRMS or WTV files located in a watched TV folder or DVD files.

I came across a free plug-in called Video Browser, but I was sceptical. I really didn’t want to install a plug-in to solve something I felt there must be a way around in the core software.

Nevertheless, in a fit of idle curiosity I installed it and pointed it at my folder of DVD Images.

Excellent. By default I had an interface almost identical to that of the DVD Library (at least in that release), but with a richer detail screen and the promise of other file types. There were eye-candy back drops and cover art for nearly every film without me doing anything. The plug-in is really slick and integrates seamlessly.

Slowly I started moving my other movie files into the sights to the plug-in. It has a simple convention…

Create a folder for the movie and drop your file, image or whatever into it.

After a spousal consultation, I gave up on the standard DVD Library “poster” view and moved to the detail view.

I then started thinking about the series I had and moved them over. I played with the options and tried the supporting metadata tools for getting more images and information Media Scout and Salamis movie browser (which is a stripped back version of the My Movies data capture interface tuned to the plug-in).

Finally, I moved the library, movies, series and all to the Home Server, something I’d never felt ready to do with my “open issues” with the DVD Library.

I feel my quest for the solution to my original niggle may be over.
Until the next one that is…

One problem with video browser is aside effect of a very positive side of it. It is in beta and is under the seemingly constant attention of its contributing developers. Even while writing this post and update was released which significantly changed the detail screens and removed some of the big brash eye candy banner art for a more subtle presentation.

But the project from the forum the developers seem open to suggestions and besides, it is also open source. If I really want something a certain way, I just need to pull my finger out and make it so.

All of a sudden traffic to the site peaked massively, but the first I noticed was a couple of comments on posts that I almost dismissed as spam themselves. To the senders of those e-mails, I apologise.

Grant wrote:

You or someone using your website is sending fradulent, illegal phishing mail to customers of Bank of America. If it’s you, you’ll end up in jail. If it isn’t, someone you know, or not, will be going to jail soon. While there, they will have a broomstick rammed up their asshole.

Nice sentiment…

Veritas wrote:

Someone hacked you blog and is using it to redirect for phishing

Brendan wrote:

how ironic that the most recent post on your site is on security…as your site is being used by a phishing scam…from an email i just got from “Wells Fargo”

Not that I feel responsible for the exploitation, but perhaps that I didn’t resolve it as quickly I could.

As soon as I realised what was going down, I contacted my hosting provider, locked down my site and wondered a little at the ingenuity I found in the files that had found there way into the darkest recesses of my directory structure.

Then, feeling a little vulnerable, I guess I pulled down the shutters and hid.

Hardly a challenge at all really, the JSecurity Plugin - Quick Start takes you through everything you need to do and there’s also a AcegiSecurity Plugin, if that’s your bag.

There you go, post done.

Well… unless you want/need to use JEE role based authentication at the application server level. That’s a little more involved.

Unfortunately, this involves a little jiggery pokery in grails itself, but this is only really to have the bundled jetty server include some security configuration. The intention here is after all, having the authentication at the application server level.

The task has been covered admirably at the coders corner in the article Setting up Grails to work with JEE role based authentication. This then goes on expand on how to expose the grails project’s web.xml, in order to configure the access.
grails install-templates
And what you need to put in src/templates/web.xml to configure the access is covered in Using Role based security, in much greater detail than I would want to duplicate here.

There really is nothing to add so far, the steps described just work.

The next step took a bit more digging and looking outside of grails oriented guides. The actual deployment environment I have to target is JBoss, but the best description of the security configuration I found was in the article JBoss Role-Based Security.

This got me 90% there. To bend it to grails, I had to add a little bit more to the jboss-web.xml file I added for deploying to JBoss:

    <context-root>/my_app</context-root>
    <security-domain>java:/jaas/my_app_policy</security-domain>

Obviously making sure the domain matched what I had put in the JBoss configuration.

I also happened to include two properties files for roles and users in src\java so they were deployed with the application and reference these in the JBoss configuration file login-config.xml:

  <application-policy name ="my_app_policy">
    <authentication>
      <login-module code="org.jboss.security.auth.spi.UsersRolesLoginModule" flag="required">
        <module-option name="usersProperties">my_app-users.properties</module-option>
        <module-option name="rolesProperties">my_app-roles.properties</module-option>
      </login-module>
    </authentication>
  </application-policy>

This has worked for me locally, but as I describe it, I feel that it is a bit odd having a dependency between the server configuration and specific files in a deployed application; even though their absence doesn’t seem to cause a problem. I think I might move those into the folder along with login-config.xml

I also believe that these could be just as easily be the default files JBoss expects by not specifying the above module-option elements.

All this done…

It didn’t work!

As soon as I tried to access a protected resource, I got a 404 error trying to locate the authentication controller actions I have in my application!

I couldn’t find a clear reference to this problem, but the following entry on the struts issues dashboard -
Action’s can’t be used for web.xml declarative security URL’s certainly describes the problem and also provided me with a fudge solution.

I edited my web.xml to point at a jsp:

    <login-config>
        <auth-method>FORM</auth-method>
        <form-login-config>
            <form-login-page>/login_redirect.jsp</form-login-page>
            <form-error-page>/login_redirect.jsp?success=false</form-error-page>
        </form-login-config>
    </login-config>

and added a login_redirect.jsp:

   <%
        if ("false".equals(request.getParameter("success"))) {
            response.sendRedirect( request.getContextPath() + "/auth/failed" );
        } else {
            response.sendRedirect( request.getContextPath() + "/auth/login" );
        }
    %>

Now it works!

I have a working application. It has a few rough edges, but for all intents and purposes, it’s there. I just needed to see if creating war and deploying to the target environment, JBoss.

Surely it can’t be as simple as…
C:\local\groovy\my_app> grails war

No, it isn’t… But nearly!

Deploying into JBoss, the problem I hit was down to log4j and the jar within the deployed grails application conflicting with the one in JBoss.

Obviously this has all been covered before and a few alternatives are offered on the grails faq.
Q: I’m getting errors when deploying on JBoss 4.0.x What do I do?

First off I had to scope the application classloader. To do this for a war, create a file called jboss-web.xml with content like the following:

<jboss-web>
    <class-loading java2ClassLoadingCompliance = "false">
        <loader-repository>
            my_app:loader=my_app-0.1.war
            <loader-repository-config>java2ParentDelegation=false</loader-repository-config>
        </loader-repository>
    </class-loading>
</jboss-web>

and place it in the web-app\WEB-INF folder.

This still isn’t quite enough to get it to work though, since the log4j.properties file used by JBoss still results in a conflict of interest.

Luckily enough I was able to take the preferred solution of renaming JBoss’ log4j.xml to jboss-log4j.xml and editing the jboss-service.xml file such that the ConfigurationURL of org.jboss.logging.Log4JService points to the renamed file.

Et voila!