Speed up your Harmony remote control with MCE

I always found the Logitech Harmony remote controls slow and pretty unresponsive with Media Center no matter which Harmony model I tried. After reading more about the problem I think I have found a solution that actually seems to work.

I changed some settings in the Harmony software for a 550 model I was working on and these changes definitely made the remote control work much better in Media Center, before I had to press the buttons for longer and slowly move around the UI after these changes the remote was more responsive and less frustrating to use and the button presses felt and behaved more like the standard MCE remote.

Here’s what I did:

On the Devices tab I selected Troubleshoot on the Media Center Device.

I did change a couple of settings but I believe the main one that made a difference was by selecting:

“Media Center PC responds to some commands either too many times or only occasionally”

Ramping this setting up to 4 or 5 is recommended.

I then selected: “When commands are sent one after the other, the device receives some commands but not others.”

“My Media Center PC needs the following time to pass before it is ready to receive another command:”

I also changed this setting from 500ms to 0ms not totally sure if I really need to change this setting.

However have a play around with these troubleshoot options and see if you can also increase the responsiveness of your Harmony remote with Media Center!

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , MediaCenter , How-to , Logitech , Harmony , Speed

Phaze1 Digital

Windows 7 Media Center, Music Library re-building problem.

I am seeing some very strange happenings with the 7MC Music Library and with music files stored on Windows Home Server machines. This is not just an isolated issue as I have seen the same problem at several different sites on different WHS servers / networks etc.

I posted a thread here on the Green Button and this is how I described this problem.

“I saw this in the beta's / RC and still see it now. When entering the 7MC music library (Albums) view the library looks like its rebuilding itself.

The number of albums is increasing slowly, the covers aren't visible and the default icons appear and then disappear, flashing, it eventually gets to the correct numbers of albums count, but becomes unresponsive you have to exit and go back in to the Music library several times before it finally settles down again and you then see all your albums with the covers.”

It seems others are reporting similar problems with 7MC as well.

I’ve got an official support incident logged with Microsoft, I just hope they have a solution for us?

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , Story , Media Center

Phaze1 Digital

How to create an Internet Explorer icon in Media Center

As most of you probably know you can use the excellent Media Center Studio for creating entry points in Media Center to launch add-ins and external applications, however I also like to use a program called Media Center Launcher Configurator in conjunction with Media Center Studio.

I use Media Center Launcher Configurator when I want to create icons in Media Center that launch external applications such as Internet Explorer, the reason is that when creating entry points with Media Center Launcher Configurator, it monitors for when the external application is exited and it will then restore Media Center to full screen. Also if you press the back button the external application is closed and Media Center restored.

Today we will look at creating an icon in Media Center to launch Internet Explorer, upon selecting the icon Media Center will minimize, Internet Explorer will then be launched. When exiting Internet Explorer, Media Center will be maximized again which makes for a fairly seamless transition, especially if your desktop wallpaper is the same as the Media Center blue background and you have no shortcut icons visible on your desktop.

First download and install Media Center Launcher Configurator. You can download it from here. Then I recommend if your not already using it to go ahead and download Media Center Studio from here as we will use this later to move the new IE icon to our desired location on the Media Center start menu.

Run the Media Center Launcher Configurator and populate the fields as shown below. (Right click the MCLC icon and Run As Administrator)

You can search for a suitable IE icon image on Google or you can use the Silver IE icon which I used.

Once you have filled in the fields correctly hit the Register button. Wait and then you should see the dialogue box shown below.

Because we selected Program Library under the Media Center category your new IE icon will appear in the Program Library / Extras area of Media Center.

Now test the icon works correctly.

To add the Internet Explorer icon to the Extras menu strip, simply right click the icon and select Add to start menu.

To move the Internet Explorer icon on to a different Media Center start menu strip, I would use Media Center studio to place the Internet Explorer icon on the desired strip.

To remove the Internet Explorer icon select the Existing Registrations tab in Media Center Launcher Configurator and select Internet Explorer from the drop down, then press the Unregister button.

This method of creating icons for external applications, can also be used for applications like Hulu Desktop, to create an icon inside Media Center to launch Hulu Desktop and restore Media Center when you exit the Hulu application.

References:

Chad Dyess Blog

Hacking 7MC

Phaze1 Digital

How to launch a command file from within MCE

I saw a user on the Green Button asking this question the other day and as I had a method of doing this I thought I’d write a post about it.

There may well be different ways to accomplish the same thing, but this is what works for me and the way I get an icon into the Extra’s area of 7MC and when I click on it, it runs a command line in the background. (This also works on Vista)

First you need to download this little add-in here, then extract / save it to the C:\Windows\ehome directory.

This is a single .dll file that was written for me by Andrew Cherry so credit goes to him.

Next you need to create an XML file.

Below is an example of one of my XML files, that when registered in to Media Center, allows me to click on an icon in Media Center and have a VPN connection command run in the background.

<application title="UK VPN-1"
id="{25e1993f-a9d8-4251-871c-0bf84c6d6e29}">
<entrypoint id="{58267566-672b-4b1d-812a-fc46d728d073}"
addin="MissingRemote.AppLauncher.AddIn, MissingRemote.AppLauncher,Culture=Neutral,Version=1.0.0.0,PublicKeyToken=391ca93ec5a00478"
title="UK VPN-1"
description="Connects the UKVPN1"
context="%ProgramFiles%\RasDialPro\UKVPN1.cmd"
imageUrl="C:\Program Files\RasDialPro\Images\Connect-UK.png">
<category category="More Programs"/>
</entrypoint>
</application>

Open notepad and copy the text below in to it:

<application title="The title text that appears below the icon in Media Center"
id="{25e1993f-a9d8-4251-871c-0bf84c6d6e29}">
<entrypoint id="{58267566-672b-4b1d-812a-fc46d728d073}"
addin="MissingRemote.AppLauncher.AddIn, MissingRemote.AppLauncher,Culture=Neutral,Version=1.0.0.0,PublicKeyToken=391ca93ec5a00478"
title="The title text that appears below the icon in Media Center"
description="Description text that appears below the icon in Media Center"
context="%ProgramFiles%\foldername\name of your.cmd"
imageUrl="C:\Program Files\foldername\Images\your icon image.png">
<category category="More Programs"/>
</entrypoint>
</application>

You need to change the items in red to suit your needs, my paths for this point to C:\program files, you can probably change the path to what ever you like and point it to the location of your .cmd file.

The icon images I use are 122 x 122 .png files.

Once you have finished editing your XML file give it an appropriate name and save it in to the C:\windows\ehome directory ensuring it has a .XML extension and not .txt.

Note: If you want to register more than one icon into Media Center by creating a second XML file, you will need to ensure you change the GUID ID’s on the id= and entrypoint id= lines. I normally just change the last two numbers to something else, for example:

id="{25e1993f-a9d8-4251-871c-0bf84c6d6e29}"> change to id="{25e1993f-a9d8-4251-871c-0bf84c6d6e30}">

<entrypoint id="{58267566-672b-4b1d-812a-fc46d728d073}" change to <entrypoint id="{58267566-672b-4b1d-812a-fc46d728d074}"

Now you need to register your XML file in to Media Center, open a command prompt (Run as Administrator), make sure you are in the C:\Windows\ehome directory then type registermceapp /allusers name of your.xml

Where name of your.xml is the filename you gave your xml file that you saved in the ehome directory earlier. Hit enter and you should see Success

Open Media Center go to the Extra’s library and your new icon should now be visible, click the icon and test that your command file is run?

To remove the icon you can use the command registermceapp /allusers /u name of your.xml

Well I think that’s everything, hopefully it will work for you as well.

Phaze1 Digital

DVD -> DVR-MS - How to video

This is a how to video for beginners, using VideoReDo you can easily and quickly convert DVD movie rips VIDEO_TS to .DVR-MS files.

DVR-MS is the Microsoft format for recorded TV for Windows Media Center in Vista. They also play fine on Windows Seven however.

The advantage of using DVR-MS files is you can play them natively with full FFWD functionality on Windows Media Center extenders such as the Linksys DMA and XBOX 360, say bye bye to transcoding on the fly with Transcode 360 and the likes.

My Shark 007 Win7 Codec Configuration

Update: As of Shark 007 pack version 2.28 for my configuration to work as described below, I now also have to "Disable the DMO codecs on the SWAP TAB"

I’ve been in Codec hell again lately, ever since first connecting a Windows 7 Media Center PC to an AVR and wanting to get 5.1 surround sound working. Previously I was in bliss with a 2.0 speaker setup on my Media Center at home and had no codec / playback issues what so ever.

I also wanted to make my MKV’s look better on the XBOX 360 MCX, as with the Shark 007 codec pack and the native Windows 7 transcoding of MKV’s to the extender the video quality looked pretty bad.

First thing I tried was the DIVX Tech Preview, however I was unable to get anything other than 2 channel PCM on the HTPC when it was installed and my MKV’s didn’t really look any better on the extender, not sure why? I also found the DIVX Tech Preview pretty unstable for me. Allot of people have been raving about this Tech Preview, I guess I must be missing something.

I then tried just the Haali Media Splitter Alpha for Windows 7 and I was able to play my MKV’s and get 5.1 audio pass through to the AVR but on some of the MKV’s I would get bad pixelated blocky pictures, I also get the same thing happening when using Shark 007 but I have a fix for this which is covered later on.

In the end I’ve gone back to using Shark 007, however initially with Shark when using the AC3Filter I was unable to get 5.1 audio on AVI files (XVID) that had AC3 in them, in fact Media Center would not even play these movies and would error. I was able to get 5.1 audio however on MKV’s with AC3/DTS.

If I un-checked the Use SPDIF options in AC3Filter settings, my AVI’s with AC3 then played OK, but I lost the 5.1 audio on the MKV's so at this point I was going around in circles.

I finally cracked my configuration and below is now how I have Shark 007 configured under Windows 7 (32 bit). My system is based on a Gigabyte GA-MA785GPM-UD2H motherboard which has an onboard ATI Radeon HD 4200 graphics processor. The PC is connected for video and sound via an HDMI cable to a Harmon Kardon AVR 255 which in turn is hooked up to the HDTV via HDMI.

The PC has the latest drivers installed from ATI and also from Realtek for the audio devices both the Digital Optical (Not in use) and the HDMI audio device.

The first setting I changed was a newish setting on the Realtek / ATI High Definition Audio Device properties on the custom tab. Ticking this option allows audio pass through.

I then installed the Shark 007 pack with the full installation option. The following screen shots show the options I have changed, if you cannot see a particular tab from the Shark 007 program that means I did not change any settings on that tab and used the defaults.

• TV/Projector
• No Subtitles
• Disable AC3Filter

• 5.1
• FFDShow – Use passthrough
• Enable Audio normalization

When the Use Microsoft codec (default) option is selected some of my MKV’s don’t play properly and I get the blocky pixelations as shown in the screen shot above. Enabling Use FFDshow’s codec option sorts this right out and cures the problem. Worth noting however I don’t have any live TV on this Media Center due to my locale so something to keep in mind?

I found that MKV’s with AC3 audio were crashing Media Center so I had to go in to the FFDShow audio configuration and change the decoder for AC3 to liba52.

Finally click on Output at the bottom and ensure AC3 and DTS are checked for pass-through.

With this configuration I am finally able to play all my files in Windows 7 Media Center connected to the AVR:

AVI's (XVID) with AC3 (Dolby Digital)

AVI''s (XVID) with MPEG (MP3) (2CH PCM)

MKV's with AC3 / DTS

MKV’s with AAC (2CH PCM) *

DVD rips VIDEO_TS (VOB's) with AC3 / DTS

Blu-ray ISO's with AC3 / DTS (PowerDVD9)

* The only thing I’d like to be able to do is encode on the fly MKV’s with AAC to AC3 but I haven’t figured this out yet. What are you doing with MKV’s that have AAC audio tracks?

I’ve set this up on two different PC’s and so far it seems to be working well, I’m not saying this is the only or best way to do things as I’m not a codec guru but it’s the way I was able to get my files all playing with audio pass-through in 7MC.

However my MKV’s still look bad quality on my XBOX 360 MCX, so I’ve started converting all my MKV’s to WTV using DVR-MS Toolbox, so maybe then I won’t need any codec / packs installed Amen to that!

Some related forum threads.

Shark 007 - Cannot play AVI's with AC3 audio - Using AC3Filter

How to configure AC3Filter with DIVX Tech Preview?

Phaze1 Digital

How to launch 3rd Party MCE add-in with a Logitech Harmony remote

Following up on my recent post entitled How to launch Media Center directly in to a 3rd party app, I’ve been looking at how to launch My Movies and RadioTime MCE using a Logitech Harmony 550 universal remote control.

Searching on the internet it seems some people on Vista Media Center were using macros to move the cursor up / down, left /right on the MCE menu to click on the My Movies icon, which is not ideal and wouldn’t work on 7mc anyways.

Others were using software such as Intelliremote or ControlRemote however I did not want any additional software installed and running in order to achieve this.

So I have used a keyboard shortcut method, however there is one issue with this, you need a Microsoft MCE 2005 IR keyboard to teach the Harmony the IR codes of the keyboard shortcuts. Luckily for me I had one of these MCE keyboards kicking about the place.

First thing I did was to create two new shortcuts for Windows Media Center one to launch My Movies and the other to launch RadioTimeMCE. I used the method I described in my last post here to create these shortcuts. I didn’t want them on the desktop so I created a folder in my Start Menu called MCE Custom Shortcuts.

In this folder are my two Media Center shortcuts:

Windows Media Center – My Movies

Target: %windir%\ehome\ehshell.exe /entrypoint:{8984aed5-7c9d-42f0-b2ad-c39bbcf04a25}\{810d7b87-1300-4aed-a700-1c6179f8f14b}

Windows Media Center – RadioTime MCE

Target: %windir%\ehome\ehshell.exe /entrypoint:{4c36cf23-bf48-4f93-86c5-78009734d21a}\{4c36cf23-bf48-4f93-86c5-78009734d21b}

Now we need to assign some keyboard shortcuts to these Windows Media Center shortcut icons.

Note: Important, only create your keyboard shortcut key after you have moved the custom shortcuts to the start menu. As the first time I created the icons on the desktop, then set the keyboard shortcut keys and then moved them from the desktop to the start menu, however I found the keyboard shortcuts then did not work so I had to remove them and add them again.

Creating the keyboard shortcut keys:

Right click on the first Windows Media Center shortcut from the start menu as shown above in this case the My Movies one. Select properties from the menu.

Click in to the Shortcut key field with your mouse and then enter a key combination on the keyboard. You can probably use any thing you like here I used Ctrl + Alt + M

Click Apply and then OK.

Now repeat this process for any other icons you are setting up, in this case the RadioTime MCE one.

For this one I used Ctrl + Alt + R

Test that they work by entering the newly created Keyboard shortcut keys and ensure Media Center is launched into the correct 3rd party add-in.

Ok now our Media Center PC is configured we need to use the MCE 2005 IR keyboard and the Harmony software.

I am presuming your have already added your Media Center PC so just click the Learn IR button under the Media Center PC device.

Click for larger image

Scroll down to the bottom of the list and in the Learn a New Command type “My Movies” and then click the Learn New Command button.

Click for larger image

Now this is where the MCE 2005 IR keyboard comes in to play, line it up with the Harmony remote control and then enter the keyboard shortcut key you setup earlier on the Media Center PC. In this case it was Ctrl + Alt + M

It should then say Key Detected, the Harmony software will ask you to confirm this key again and hopefully after that it has learnt the new IR code.

Click for larger image

Click for larger image

Once you have successfully learnt the IR code repeat the process for any other shortcuts you are setting up, in my case I got the Harmony to learn another command called RadioTime using the Ctrl + Alt + R keyboard shortcut key.

Finish the wizard and click Done

Now you need to assign your new commands, in the Harmony software go back to the Device tab and click the Settings button on the Media Center PC device. Then select Adjust Inputs from the list and click Next.

On this screen I chose to delete the My DVDs and Radio inputs as these are for the inbuilt DVD / Movie Library and Radio area’s of Media Center which I won’t be using.

I then added two new inputs one called “My Movies” and one called RadioTime”

Click for larger image

On this next screen you assign the new inputs to your newly created commands that will now appear in the drop down list.

Assigning My Movies input to the My Movies command

Click for larger image

Assigning RadioTime input to the RadioTime command

Click for larger image

Finish the wizard and click Done.

Now save the changes to the remote control.

On my model the Harmony 550, I click the Devices button on the remote control, select Media Center and I can then scroll through the pages on the screen and see the new options My Movies and Radio time, when I press either one Media Center is launched in to the correct 3rd party application. Job done!

In addition you could assign your new commands to a custom button such as A or B for example.

Summary

I think this wasn’t such a bad way to set this up as you don’t need to install any additional software, the only downside is you need an MCE 2005 IR keyboard which you might not currently have.

Next I need to figure out how to change the page layout and item order that shows up on the remote controls LCD screen and bring my new entries to the first page.

HeatWave makes a come back for Seven MC

One of my favorite little Media Center add-ins HeatWave has made a come back for Windows 7 Media Center in the form or version 1.2

The author James aka MCExtended posted details on the TGB thread here.

You can download HeatWave from the links below:

32 bit

64 bit

Clubhouse Tags: clubhouse , story , media center , heatwave

How to launch Media Center directly in to 3rd party app

These command line switches have been covered before but I’ve seen a few posts recently with users asking how can I launch Media Center directly in to this or that third party Media Center add-in or into a particular area of media center itself.

I’ve just tested this out and I was able to launch 7MC directly in to Media Browser, My Movies 3 and TunerFree MCE, but this method should work for any third party entry point.

You can see a list of some of these command line switches here.

A new one for 7MC for example is: ehshell.exe /nostartupanimation which will launch 7MC without the fan fair start up animation.

Ok back to launching directly into our third party apps the command is:

ehshell.exe /entrypoint:{application_guid}\{entrypoint_guid}

So in this example I will show you how to look in the registry to find the application and entrypoint GUID’s for My Movies 3.0. but you can apply this method to any media center applications you have installed.

Open up the registry editor by running regedit

Navigate to the following area in the registry:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Extensibility\Entry Points

In here you will now see a list of entry point GUID’s down the left hand side, as shown in the screen shot, click on each entry on the left hand side in turn and look in the right hand pane until you see the Media Center application you want to launch into. In this case My Movies.

Click the image for a larger view:

Make a note of the entry point GUID value in this case it was:

{810d7b87-1300-4aed-a700-1c6179f8f14b}

Now on the right hand side make a note of the application GUID value in this case it was:

{8984aed5-7c9d-42f0-b2ad-c39bbcf04a25}

Now I have all the information I need to launch my Media Center directly in to My Movies 3.0 and my finished command line is:

ehshell.exe /entrypoint:{8984aed5-7c9d-42f0-b2ad-c39bbcf04a25}\{810d7b87-1300-4aed-a700-1c6179f8f14b}

So now I can either just create a new desktop shortcut for Windows Media Center and include my /entrypoint switch or perhaps create my own .cmd file to launch media center.

Creating a new shortcut to ehshell.exe in the C:\Windows\ehome directory

Copy and paste your entire /entrypoint switch after ehshell.exe as shown below.

 

Now when I double click this new shortcut for Windows Media Center I am always taken straight into My Movies 3.0 or any other third party Media Center application of my choosing.

And as a bonus tip, run this command to launch 7MC straight in to Netflix:

windowsmediacenterapp:{e6f46126-f8a9-4a97-9159-b70b07890112}\{982ea9d3-915c-4713-a3c8-99a4688b7c59}?EntryPointParameters=

I’m assuming these are global GUID’s and will work for all users? Let me know.

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