Lyrics plugin for WMP11

This is an old one but it's a good one, cool little plugin for WMP11 that shows all the lyrics for what ever song you happen to be playing. Simple and works extremely well. You can download it from here.

It's official!

I'm ranked number 15 on The Green Button top posters ranking list! A nice chap from Microsoft informed me of this very fact personally via a recent email communication. Maybe I talk too much lol.

I haven't been posting much lately on this blog due to a recent move from the UK to Thailand. But I am now in our new house and have a new 2MB Internet connection so plan to get back in to all things Media Center related and post some new threads here on my blog so keep posted.

Stuart..

Microsoft announces Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile Development Beta

"Finally, after some 3rd party developers released some Windows Mobile compatible SideShow drivers, also Microsoft gives SideShow some love by releasing Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile. Not yet mass-market ready, Microsoft's Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile Developer Preview v0.01 is an application for Windows Mobile 5 and Windows Mobile 6 Pocket PCs and Smartphones that allows you to use your Windows Mobile device as a Bluetooth SideShow-compatible device. This enables you to use your phone as an extra window into your PC. You can both access your computer's information from your Pocket PC or Smartphone, and control the computer through a gadget interface.

While the phone is out of range, or when your computer is off, you can continue to view content sent to the phone previously. This makes it easy to send information to the phone that you'll need later on.
The developer preview is available in English only and supports Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise, Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate Bluetooth-enabled PCs using Microsoft's Bluetooth stack. Toshiba Bluetooth stack isn't supported at the moment. Furthermore, Windonws SideShow for Windows Mobile requires a Bluetooth-capable Windows Mobile 5, Windows Mobile 6 Standard or Windows Mobile 6 Professional device with the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 installed."

This is very good news and I hope the Windows Media Center SideShow gadget that has been in internal beta at Microsoft is released soon to the public. Hopefully this will be a cool way to control your media center from your hand held Windows Mobile device!

Source
Windows Side Show team blog
Download

Problems setting up an extender with XP SP3 ?

Possible issue running Xbox 360 PC setup on a Window XP SP3 system with Media Center 2005 installed.

Aaron Stebner from Microsoft outlines an issue with MCE 2005, XP SP3 and setting up extenders:

Recently, I have heard from a few customers who have had an issue installing the Xbox 360 PC setup package in order to configure their Xbox 360 as a Windows Media Center Extender. I want describe the issue, what is happening behind the scenes and how to work around it in case anyone else runs into it in the future.
Description of the issue
The customers I talked to had all previously upgraded to Windows XP SP3, and when they attempted to run Xbox 360 PC setup afterwards, they received an error message that looks like the following:
There is a problem with the installation of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. Uninstall the update to Media Center Edition 2005 and then re-install the update from the Windows Update website. Then run Media Center Extender setup again.........................

The full blog post about this issue can be found here.

No XBOX 360 Spring Update this year?

In an interview with general manager of Xbox Live Marc Whitten, Next-Gen gets all the first details on big changes to the service—including that there will be no spring dashboard update, and that underperforming XBLA titles will be removed.
According to Whitten, XBLA titles that have been out for more than six months, have a Metacritic score of less than 65%, and have a conversion rate of less than 6% will be eligible for desliting. Microsoft will give three months of notice before these titles are removed. Whitten also told us that there would be no spring dashboard update for Xbox 360 owners this year, saying that resources were instead focused on “building the proper infrastructure and scale for the service.” There will however be a change to DRM policy and a tool released next month that will allow 360 owners to re-license content to a single console—finally fixing the issue that forced gamers playing XBLA games to be connected to Xbox LIVE if their 360 broke down and was replaced.

Read on for the complete Q and A, which provides all the details on this news and more, including a new 1st party development studio and why the DRM issue took so long to resolve…