Forget Netflix! MCE LoveFilm 2.0 is here!!

You may have read my recent post here about MCE LoveFilm and the lack of a Netflix Windows Media Center add-in here in the UK. Well Martin Millmore of Milliesoft has been hard at work lately coding version 2.0 of his MCE LoveFilm add-in. I have been lucky enough to do all his beta testing so this version is pretty polished. There are new features and I think it works really well, version 2.0 is certainly a great improvement over previous releases and its the first version I have installed on to all my HTPC’s for everyday use!

I recently switched my LoveFilm package to the new unlimited streaming package which costs £4.99. Previously my package had no online streaming and was for discs in the post only.

MCE LoveFilm Setup:

Download and install the add-in from here. Once installed open Windows Media Center and launch the MCE LoveFilm add-in

The first time you launch MCE LoveFilm you will see this screen, click on Set LoveFilm Username.

A browser window will then open the LoveFilm website so you may need to minimize Media Center to see it.

Click the Link My Account button.

It will then say: Link To Account – Approved.

Now return to Windows Media Center and click the Click after authorizing button.

You will then see a Success dialogue click OK.

Your LoveFilm rental list should then be shown.

Now we need to login to the LoveFilm website via the MCE LoveFilm browser window. There are two ways to do this, you can navigate to the Settings on the pivot menu and select the LoveFilm Home Page button.

Note:- mine says “Thank you for purchasing MCE LoveFilm” as this is a purchased copy. I will talk about this more later.

When you click the LoveFilm Home Page button the MCE LoveFilm browser window will be launched outside of Media Center.

You only need to do this the first time, grab your mouse and select Sign In

Sign In

Or the first time you select to play a video you can press L on the keyboard and it will take you to the sign in screen.

Once you are logged in OK hit the backspace button on the keyboard to exit from the MCE LoveFilm browser window.

That’s it your setup of MCE LoveFilm is now complete and we can now look at the MCE add-in in more detail.

My Rental Lists

If you’re an existing LoveFilm user and you receive discs in the post then you will probably have some titles already listed in the My Rental Lists section. These are the titles you have selected to “Rent”.

I can see which title(s) I have at home and other titles shown in “Stuart’s List” are titles I was waiting to get the discs for.

If you press OK on a title you will see the titles overlay details page. I can select to remove the title from my rental list if I decide I don’t want the disc after all.

When browsing the genres for new titles I can choose to rent any title that is available on disc, by simply clicking the rent button, this will add that title to your rental list.

Once you have selected a title to be rented, you can set the priority of that rental. To do this go to actions on the menu and then you can select if this rental should be High Med or Low priority.

Genres

By selecting genres from the pivot menu we can select titles by genre. For example if I select action/adventure then I will see all the titles in that genre.

You can see there are some new pivot menu options, we can now in version 2.0, filter the titles by Blu-ray / DVD / Watch Online. This is a critical new feature and makes finding titles by format for rent much easier, and it also allows us to view titles that are available to watch online.

Note:- Pay Per View and Free watch online titles are not currently visible in MCE LoveFilm, only titles that you can watch with your package are displayed. This may change in later versions of MCE LoveFilm.

If we select a title, in this example I have selected Inception from the Blu-ray section, I can either play trailer or rent this disc. The front cover and the synopsis can also been seen. Unfortunately you cannot read the full synopsis, Martin tells me LoveFilm limit their synopsis text to 200 characters and there’s nothing he can do about it. We can also see the star rating as from the LoveFilm website.

We can also push up and navigate to the cast + crew menu. Here we can select directors and actors.

If I select an actor then all Blu-ray titles that this particular actor stars in will be displayed. If I navigate to the DVD or Watch Online sections it will also list titles for that actor under those sections as well.

Action/Adventure genre DVD’s

Action/Adventure genre Watch Online

You can see in the above screen shots that only 50 titles are displayed at a time (Paid for version of MCE LoveFilm) You can scroll right to the end of the titles and then select the big arrow to bring up the next 50 titles

In the free version of MCE LoveFilm I believe you can only see 25 titles, which means you will need to probably purchase the add-in if you want the full functionality, the price is currently £9.99 per PC. Personally I think version 2.0 is now worth buying. Perhaps Milliesoft can introduce some multi PC prices ? You can compare the free and premium features here.

All of the functions of MCE LoveFilm within Windows Media Center work with the remote control. However in this new version Martin is using a custom made browser window to display and play the Silverlight video from the LoveFilm website, this is external of Windows Media Center. The videos should auto play without your interaction.

In the screen shot below I have selected a title from the Watch Online section, you can see I now have an additional play button as well as play trailer and rent buttons. If I select play WMC will be auto minimized and the MCE LoveFilm browser window will be opened.

Note:- Due to limitations with the lack of information made available to MCE LoveFilm from the LoveFilm website, Martin is unable to accurately tell if a trailer is actually available for a title or not? So therefore the play trailer button is always there in Media Center, but you may find for some titles once the video page is displayed no trailer is actually available.

Once you click on Play or Play Trailer as shown on the above screen shot, the MCE LoveFilm browser window launches externally outside of Windows Media Center and displays the LoveFilm website zoomed in to the video playback area of that page. Depending on which button you selected in Media Center, auto mouse movements will select to play the trailer or watch now with package.

Video playback

Don’t under any circumstances use your mouse and click the Full Screen button in the top left hand corner. You don’t need to press or use this button. If you do you will end up with a blank black screen and no picture and you won’t easily be able to exit out. Martin says the reason for this is “Because the full screen Silverlight control blocks all key inputs to the application”. So just don’t press that button!

You can however use the volume control and other transport controls as shown below. You can press the 0 button on your remote control to pause and play the videos.

Pressing the BACK button on the remote control however will close the MCE LoveFilm browser window and return you nicely back to MCE LoveFilm in Media Center.

Due to LoveFilm not consistently placing the video playback area in the same position on each webpage on their website, we have to occasionally adjust the screens position. Don’t panic, we can easily do this using the up down / left right directional arrows on the remote control.

In this screen shot you can see the video is not quite fitting the screen correctly. To correct this I just have to press down arrow on my remote a few times till the video image fills the screen nicely.

Video playback after using the directional arrows to move its position.

These issues sound a lot worse than they actually are, I would suggest you install the MCE LoveFilm add-in for yourself and try it out . Over time I expect Milliesoft will improve things further and make things more seamless.

Search – There is also a search button at the top right.

Summary

Overall this is a solid release of MCE LoveFilm allot of the kinks have been ironed out now and I will certainly be using this add-in for the first time on my TV screens and my youngest daughter is now happily watching Thomas the Tank Engine. As you are probably aware there is no official LoveFilm Windows Media Center add-in but we are able to use this great 3rd party add-in thanks to Martin at Milliesoft

Netflix for Windows Media Center

With regards to the official Netflix Windows Media Center add-in and that it is still only available to users in the US. It is my opinion that it is fairly unlikely that UK users will be given access to the add-in. I can’t say for sure obviously and I might be wrong but users in Canada and Brazil never got it either. And I can’t see that any of the threads on the Netflix forums have received an answer either.

If Netflix / Microsoft are unwilling to give UK Windows Media Center users what they want, I would suggest said UK Windows Media Center users vote with their wallets. Stick to LoveFilm and use MCE LoveFilm for your Windows Media Center PC!

No Netflix in Media Center? Depressed? Try MCE LoveFilm instead!

The big news this week was that Netflix have finally launched an online streaming service here in the UK. I have been waiting for this for a long time and naively assumed because Netflix in is Windows Media Center for users in the US that we would also get access to the official Microsoft/Netflix add-in. However I discovered this week that Netflix users in Canada and Brazil never got the Netflix add-in for Windows Media Center. So I am now not holding out much hope we will ever see it.

I will only cancel my LoveFilm subscription and change to Netflix if I can use it in Windows Media Center. There might be a way to fool the system and change the locale of the PC to US and get the Netflix add-in but then the problem is how to change the locale back to UK for Live TV and guide data etc but retain the Netflix add-in? I did previously have Netflix working in Media Center when I lived in Thailand and used a VPN connection but I didn’t have Live TV configured in Media Center then so it didn’t matter if the PC’s locale remained set as US. There is a thread on The Green Button here about Netflix in Media Center and possible UK usage.

I’ve emailed the WECH MVP email group at Microsoft and asked the question and also posted on the Netflix forums here but so far no response and I am not holding my breath.

So now I am depressed and thinking of options, I could use the Netflix app on the Nintendo Wii that is sat in the living room. I could use the Netflix app on the XBOX 360 but I would have to purchase an XBOX Live Gold subscription and as I don’t play games online I haven’t got one. LoveFilm is also available on the XBOX 360 and requires Gold. I don’t have a Sony Playstation 3. Roku are launching UK boxes with Netflix but that’s another box, I’d rather just do it all on the HTPC. Obviously I could add an icon in to Windows Media Center to launch Netflix externally in a web browser but its not ideal.

Or maybe I can stick with LoveFilm and not give Netflix my money! My current LoveFilm subscription is for discs only and I’ve been getting Blu-rays in the post, they have countered Netflix’s UK launch and now have a new £4.99 package for unlimited online streaming only no discs but I am thinking of switching to this package.

I’ve contacted LoveFilm a few times in the past and they have no plans of doing an official Windows Media Center add-in either, shame on you Love Film! But Milliesoft have written a 3rd party LoveFilm add-in for Media Center called MCE LoveFilm.

It looks the part the UI is beautiful but there are some draw backs. As LoveFilm is flash based its the old webpage embedded in to Media Center affair which can be tricky if the auto mouse moves don’t start and full screen the video you are trying to play. Also due to some limitation developers have working with the LoveFilm SDK/API there is no easy way of telling which movies are available for online streaming? You have to click in to each movie individually and get to its details page to see if there is a Play button present of not. So you end up clicking in to loads of movies that you then find are simply not available to Play and only available to rent (Disc in the post) which is frustrating to say the least.

Maybe Milliesoft could add some sort of overlay icon on the movie covers if a Play button is available for that title? That would help improve things somewhat. Ideally I’d like to be able to filter on all titles that are available for streaming in to one view and any titles that can only be rented are excluded from the view.

I believe Martin Millmore is currently working on a fix as it seems LoveFilm have recently changed the layouts of their pages and when I tried it the other day I was unable to get any videos to play.

Also the free version of MCE LoveFilm is limited to only display 25 titles You can compare the free and premium features here. The full version is £9.99 per HTPC which if it works I think I would buy it. I will let you know as soon as Martin has a new version available and the issue is fixed so please wait until I update this post before you install it.

How to move the Netflix & Internet TV 7MC start menu icons

Using Media Center Studio you can edit the Media Center Start Menu strips and icons. If you want to move the new Netflix and Internet TV icons to a custom menu strip you can!

Create a new custom menu or use an existing custom menu such as the one My Movies creates.

In this case I just created a new custom menu called custom menu.

Then move Promo (Movies1) for Netflix and Promo (Browse TV) for Internet TV to your custom menu strip. Save the changes in Media Center Studio.

Open Media Center and the Netflix and Internet TV icons should now appear on your custom menu strip.

Thanks to Advent for the tip about using the promo tiles.

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , Media Center , How-to , Media Center Studio , Netflix , Internet TV

7MC Netflix – Screen shots

WThe new Netflix application has changed from the Vista version and looks more integrated in to the Windows 7 Media Center overall style with the overlays.

Also there are 13 genre pivots along the top, I seem to think this is more than was visible in Vista? Search looks the same to me.

Click the images for larger views: