Transcoding VS Remuxing? MS where's the native support? Have your say!

Ever since I got in to Media Center DVD playback and now Blu-ray and MKV playback on extenders has really really frustrated me! In the fact that they don't support it!

I still can't believe in this day and age, that we are unable to natively play ripped DVD's on extenders. I was amazed MS even gave us native DIVX/XVID support in 7MC MCX on the XBOX 360. After 18 months of moaning about it I was happy to see they eventually did it and I'm sure other people were waiting a hell of a lot longer than I was.

It's not a technical limitation but must be political one with the big Hollywood content providers, but as a comsumer I don't care frankly. I've purchased my DVD and Blu-ray's discs, I should have the right to consume them in my home with my family anyway I choose and on any device.

What are the current options for DVD playback on extenders ? Transcoding where the VOB's are remuxed on the fly to MPG. Transcode 360 is a life saver no doubt but it's just not reliable enough for my liking. Transcode 360 can be used with MC, My Movies and Media Browser and gives it more scope over the newer Vaders's transcoder which only works with the Vista Media Center native DVD Library, I could never get it working on the native 7MC Movie Library and am not aware of anyone having done so ?

So transcoding in my mind is flakey at best and not 100% reliable. Then there is talk of this new native transcoding in 7MC. The ideal idea is that anything I can play in 7MC on the PC can be transcoded to the extenders natively. I have yet to have seen this in action. I'm not sure anyone really knows how and when or if this native Win7 transcoding occurs? What's the process that runs?

It certainly doesn't transcode my MKV's or DVD Vob's to my extenders so is it even there? And the newly added DIVX/XVID support on the XBOX 360 MCX seems native to the XBOX side to me via a dashboard update which re-appeared in the 7MC MCX the first time when trying to play DIVX/XVID on the 7MC MCX.

What are the other options then? The best I have found for DVD is remuxing the container to DVR-MS using Video Redo Plus for seamless DVD playback (Main Movie Only) on extenders with full FFWD capabilities. And TSMuxer to remux MKV's in to M2TS files which 7MC natively supports.

It's still all a mess it's still way too much hard work for the average guy in the street when will it ever end ???

I love Media Browser but this is a show stopper!

My new favourite MCE add-in has to be the very slick looking Media Browser add-in.

It beats the pants off Microsoft's new Movie Library offering in 7MC and really does put them to shame, but having lived with Media Browser for a while and having recently tested out my extenders again properly I have a big wish list item for the Media Browser developers!

It seems Media Browser does not support both DVD rips VOB's in VIDEO_TS folders and DVR-MS / MPG files, as does the old My Movies UI for example.

Let me explain:

If you have a movie folder E.G.

D:\DVD\Scarface

And in that folder you have a DVR-MS file which is a copy of the main movie only for native extender playback.

D:\DVD\Scarface\Scarface.dvr-ms

And then you have a subfolder, which contains the entire ripped DVD disc in VOB's.

D:\DVD\Scarface\VIDEO_TS

In the original My Movies UI it knows if you are on an extender or on the Media
Center PC. If your on the PC it will play the ripped VOB's in the
VIDEO_TS folder and you get the full DVD movie experience, menu titles
and extra's etc. If your on an extender if knows to play just the DVR-MS
file instead.

Media Browser does not do this and it really needs to!

If you have Transcode 360 installed with Media Browser and you play a film from Media Browser on the extender, it starts transcoding the VOB's regardless and does not play the
extender friendly DVR-MS file you already have present in that folder.

This is a massive show stopper for me now with Media Browser. If you would also like to see this functionality added please head over to the Media Browser forums and voice your request. No doubt the dev's over there are doing a fantastic job and I hope they are open to new suggestions.

Transcode360 works but is too flakey, the better transcoder created by Vader only works with the native VMC DVD Library so has it's limits currently, so a solid solution is needed which isDVR-MS files for extenders and WTV files moving forward in to 7MC.

DVR-MS files are quickly and easily created from DVD rips with Video Redo Plus. The My Movies UI is so dated now, so I really hope the Media Browser developers can add this functionality?

Apparently this issue has been raised before on the forums in the past but has not be deemed a priority ?

Looking forward to your comments on this one!

A look at the Shuttle D10 with 7” touch screen

I’ve been testing out a little Shuttle D10 which also has a 7” touch screen, for the last week or so and I do really quite like this PC.

I installed Windows Vista 32bit and configured Windows Media Center and also connected up 5 Linksys DMA extenders, 4x 2100’s and 1x 2200.

As you can see from the picture the Shuttle is very small and compact and would make a great living room PC.

The touch screen works fairly well with Media Center, if you know where to press your finger to hit the hidden navigation arrows that are on the VMC start menu, but my main disappointment was that my new favourite VMC add-in Media Browser does not support touch, so when using Media Center on the touch screen, I had to revert back to the older looking My Movies UI.

It had an Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 2.8Ghz CPU, 2GB RAM and I installed an additional 1.5 TB hard disk drive for media storage.

The machine had no issues playing 4 movies at the same time. Two DVD rips I had converted to DVR-MS using VideoRedo and two XVID movies. Under this load the CPU utilization was between 10 - 19% and the RAM usage was around 1.42GB.

I was also able to play the same movie at the same time on multiple extenders (I tried this with an XVID and a DVR-MS Movie) which I’ve never tried before and didn’t know you could do so that was pretty cool!

The only thing I’m not sure about is how to get the virtual on-screen keyboard back on and working again, after I re-formatted the drive to do a clean Vista install and after installing all the drivers and utilities from the Shuttle support website I still have no on-screen keyboard popping up. Anyone with a D10 know how to sort this out?

Overall a solid little machine that handled everything I threw at it, HD Movie playback on the PC itself was smooth, I played a few MKV movies I had on the disk drive and all looked well, I was also able to transcode the MKV’s to the extenders using Transcode 36o. It worked but it’s not ideal and I will be looking in to ways to convert MKV’s to DVR-MS or WTV or something.

I took a few photos which you can see below:

Shuttle D10:

Linksys DMA 2100’s

Linksys DMA 2200 connected to the Shuttle D10, running a 42” Panasonic Plasma.

Clubhouse Tags: clubhouse”, media center”, story”, shuttle D10”

Windows 7 update KB963660 - will replace certain audio and video codecs

My Windows 7 PC just picked up this update via Windows Updates. KB963660

"In prerelease versions of Windows 7, certain audio and video codecs expire after 90 days. When you try to perform certain operations in this situation, such as DVD playback, TV playback, and some device sync operations, the operation fails with an error message such as "Decoder not found." The affected codecs include MPGG-2, H.264, and AAC. Additionally, Dolby Digital-related media may not play successfully. In this situation, you also receive the "Decoder not found" error message.

This problem occurs because the trial period of the components expires on March 15, 2009. After you apply this update, certain audio and video codecs will not expire on this date."

UPDATE:

Is anyone else having problems installing this update? On my machine it says failure configuring updates, then, reverting changes.

I have FFDShow Tryouts Beta 6 and Haali Media Splitter installed.

Exclusive - Hulu in TunerFree MCE

I've been running a beta version of TunerFree MCE all day today and I can access Hulu content from within this MCE add-in !

Martin Millmore the talented developer behind TunerFree MCE is currently working on Hulu integration and possibly other US based IPTV content as well!

It seems Hulu in MCE are like buses they all arrive at the same time. My preference is not to have one add-in that only allows you access to one type of online content. So I will be backing TunerFree MCE in this race, as ideally we all want to have one MCE UI that we can use to access as much IPTV content as possible.

There is nothing worse than having to use this 3rd party add-in for X content and another add-in for Y content. And untill MS wake up and do something decent natively then its 3rd party developers like Martin and Yaggs that are really moving things forward for the entire MCE community in this area and I solute you both!

You can download the TunerFree MCE - Hulu beta here. The remote control doesn't work yet with Hulu so use your mouse.

Oh and obviously if you are not located in the US you need to use a USA VPN connection, proxy support should be added in later builds.

You will see this if you are not located in the US and are not using a VPN / Proxy connection.

Another look at Boxee - BBC iPlayer & Hulu

Well things are certainly hotting up and getting more exciting recently with all this talk of these different applications for IPTV content on your HTPC. I can't wait to try out the new Hulu MCE add-in and I've really been getting in to TunerFree MCE as well lately.

I decided to have another quick look at Boxee today, whilst this is not an application that run's within the MCE UI, it is still a very promising option. The guys at Boxee seem to be taking a different approach to the integration for the online content sources. I'm a layman when it comes to application development, but it seems to me like they are not just displaying the BBC iPlayer and Hulu websites for example within their application.

The integration seems to go further and certainly looks more seamless to me, than some of our already favourite MCE add-ins. Some welcome news is there are also some inbuilt options and settings for HTTP proxies which will come in handy no doubt!

I've said it before and will say it again Microsoft we need something like Boxee native to our beloved Media Center, please please please!

BBC iPlayer in Boxee

Hulu in Boxee

Proxy Options

You wanted it, you've been waiting for it, it's finally coming? Hulu for MCE

I've been looking at the Hulu related threads lately on The Green Button as I've recently started watching some of the great content on the Hulu website.

It seems there were a few attempts at add-ins for Hulu, but they never got off the ground and delivering the goods. Then I saw this thread a few days ago and my hopes for Hulu within Media Center were instantly raised.

A new Media Center developer called Yaggs has posted screen shots and a video of a very promising looking add-in for playing Hulu, it's not clear if extenders will be supported at this stage as Hulu uses flash like the BBC iPlayer and I believe the BBC channels in TunerFree MCE don't work on extenders as a result, so maybe this new add-in might have similar limitations as both add-ins use a method of displaying the HTTP WebPages in MCE rather than actually tapping in to the video streams proper.

None the less it's welcome news when Microsoft really seem to be dragging their heals in this area of Media Center development and as a result are likely to be left behind in the IPTV content race by the likes of Boxee and co.

View the video here add-in home page: www.secondrun.tv

Media Center MVP nomination

I received an email the other day from Microsoft, informing me I've been nominated for a Media Center MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award.

Another existing MVP has nominated me apparently, not sure who that was, but I guess thanks are in order. It's nice just to be nominated, I don't expect for a moment I would win such an award however, but I guess my passion for Media Center is being noticed in certain circles.

But I enjoy blogging and using the community discussion websites and giving something back to the community if I can, as when I first got in to Media Center which was not that long ago really, it was those guys on The Green Button that got me started and answered my newbie questions and since then I have been hooked on Windows Media Center and the connected digital home dream.

First look at Boxee

I took a quick first look at a new Media Center application called Boxee. This software is currently in private Alpha for the Windows Platform but you might get lucky and be accepted for the beta if you register on their website or you could look else where on the net for a copy as I did.

The reason I installed Boxee was because I was interested in the online media content and the fact I'm very tired of the lack of it in Windows Media Center ! Plus I found this MCE / Boxee integration guide, so you can launch Boxee from within MCE.

First impressions? It's buggy it crashes but it's got lots of potential!

Internet Video Sources:

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Internet Pictures:

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Internet Music:

Full Screen View

The Green Button - New Windows 7 Public Beta Forum

It wasn't obvious to me and others by the sounds of it, due to this new forum's location on the Green Button's forum home page right down at the bottom and no apparent announcement of it's creation either?

I have no idea when it was setup, but there is a new Windows 7 Public Beta Forum there now.

All the original Windows 7 threads that users started are still mainly in the Vista Media Center General forum including the "Windows 7 Official Beta (Media Center) Your issues, requests and feedback" thread which so far has had a massive 412 replies and contains allot of useful information if you are thinking about trying out the official Windows 7 beta and Media Center.