mceNetCAM - New add-in review on the wiki

If you have IP cameras and would like to view and control them from within Media Center, take a look at the mceNetCAM add-in.

See the mceNetCAM wiki page here for more details and screen shots.

Twitter comes to TunerFree MCE

I can’t say I’m a big fan of Twitter, I could never really see the point of it, but I am a big fan of TunerFree MCE and I know allot of you are also addicted to Twitter, put the two together and you can now tweet to all your followers what you have been watching in TunerFree MCE !

Setup is easy you just go in to the Preferences in TunerFree MCE, enter your Twitter username click on a button on a webpage that opens up and then click on another button inside TunerFree MCE and your done!

You will then get a new Twitter  icon on the TunerFree MCE start page.

 

Twitter webpage

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse, Media Center, Story, Twitter, TunerFree MCE

Clubhouse – Windows Community website

Check out the new Microsoft Clubhouse Windows community website, you can take a look at our Media Center related posts that are on there from this page.

The text below is from the Clubhouse website.

Clubhouse Purpose:-

“Let’s keep it simple. We’re here to help others learn how to creatively use Windows. The Clubhouse is all about sharing content and ideas. Showing what you do best. Voicing your opinions. Being an active member in a community that will select the best content for display on the Windows Vista and Windows Live sites.”

Clubhouse Content:-

“Sharing how Windows works in your life — that's what the Clubhouse is all about. Know any “secrets” that help you organize your day-to-day and stay connected? Have you discovered some cool ways to share memories with family and friends? How about making it easy to work — or play — from anywhere? We want to hear all about them!

• You could:
  • Tell us a story of what you did and why — a story that may inspire others to give it a try!
  • Share your tips on using a certain feature or a shortcut you've figured out.
  • Show off your skills by answering the challenge with great new content. “

200x200 Low-res album artwork still not fixed? - Build 7077

I've been looking at the album artwork issue again in Windows 7 build 7077 and as far as I can work out things are still the same.

Although there appears to be a bit of good news with what seems to be a bug fix in 7MC, in regards to all tracks on a single album now showing the album cover.

For the full details see this thread, I go in to quite a bit of detail so you might want to look here for the summary.

Are you seeing the same results?

Take Caution when upgrading WIN7 BUILD 7077

I recommend you take caution before upgrading to Windows 7 build 7077. Ensure you have a full back up of your data files.

I upgraded build 7022 t0 7068 with no problems and then I upgraded to build 7077 and I found that all the file security permissions on my D: data drive had been stripped off and corrupted rendering my system unusable.

See here.

vmcPlayIt Media Center add-in for PlayOn

I saw PlayOn a good while ago now, it’s a UPnP media streamer for the XBOX 360, PS3 and HP Media Smart TV’s.

You can get content such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon VOD, CBS, You Tube, CNN, ESPN and with PlayOn add-ins more content is available such as from Revision 3.

I thought this was going to be a great solution and I emailed the PlayOn developers at the time asking if they had any plans for a Media Center add-in as using the XBOX 360 dashboard didn’t really appeal to me that much. The answer I got back was no they were not going to be writing a Media Center add-in for PlayOn. So I was a little disappointed and then forgot about PlayOn.

However I saw yesterday on TGB on a thread that a chap called Eric is developing a PlayOn add-in for the Media Center UI so my interest in this was immediately sparked back up again. The add-in is called vmcPlayIt which is a free bit of software. PlayOn is not free however but you can tryout their trial for 2 weeks and have a play around with it.

Let me know how you get on with the PlayOn and vmcPlayIt add-in?

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse, media center, story, vmcPlayIt, PlayOn

I'm amazed it happened considering, but say hello to your new Media Center MVP !

I mentioned last month I think, that I had been nominated for a Media Center MVP, Most Valuable Professional award from Microsoft. Not sure who nominated me other than it was an existing MVP, which I know a few.

I was informed yesterday that I have been granted MVP status as a result of my contributions to the Media Center community, which is normally just me moaning things aren't working as I want them too, to be honest hehe! But obviously it's not gone un-noticed.

But it's a great honour with less than 5000 MVP's across the world in the various Microsoft fields of expertise, it's quite an exclusive club!

So what does this mean? I'm not too sure right now, I get a shiny new MVP badge, free subscriptions to TechNet or MSDN an account manger at MS and other perks which I've yet to explore.

But I really hope I can voice my and more importantly your concerns directly to MS in some fashion and that as a so called "community leader" I can influence MS more than I might have been able to in the past. Which will be good for all of us Media Center enthusiasts as we all want pretty much the same things at the end of the day!

On a more personal note, I'm moving in to the Custom Installer game at the moment, having just started a new consultancy job on Koh Samui , Thailand with a Smart Home company called Techworx, who I've got a feeling are going to become the leading Media Center solutions company in South East Asia!

Hence the lack of my blog posts recently, but it's a dream job for me on a paradise island, so I'm having a turn of good luck! And I am really enjoying the challenge. I am also hoping I can bring you more information on the inside track from the other side of the fence that as enthusiasts we don't really get to see properly, but only read about in snapshots, I hoping to open some of that up if I can.

Some of the software I've been wanting to get my hands on like Casa Tunes and Autonomic Controls Mirage and Poly Tunes for integrated whole home audio with Media Center. I'm hoping to work on Media Center integration with Home Automation solutions as well.

So my blog posts might not be as often as I want, but I am hoping they will contain more content and insight in to Media Center from a custom installers point of view, bridging over that gap from enthusiast to installer..

OK I'm rambling again..................

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”