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

Turn your MCE remote in to a mouse & keyboard

UPDATE:

RemoteKC has been updated to now work properly on Windows 7, by a user called fbird17 on The Green Button forums.

I've not tested it yet but I assume it's working.

You can download the new .exe and .ahk files from these links.

I just had to highlight this little application it's fantastic!

It's been around for awhile I think but I've only just discovered it, it's called RemoteKC

RemoteKC allows you to use your Windows Media Center Edition remote control as a mouse and keyboard.

I am mainly interested in this for the mouse functionality. Having TunerFree MCE in mind when those auto mouse clicks don't work and those parental guidance pop-ups appear, you have no option but to get up and get out the mouse in order to click.

Now with RemoteKC, I don't have to leave the sofa. The mouse is basic, up down left right but enough to click on a prompt you can't otherwise click on with the remote control in normal operation.

I've only tested this on Vista Media Center, looks like it was written for MCE 2005. I've not tried it yet on 7MC.

You can download RemoteKC here

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.

My Movies for Windows Home Server

I saw this on Ian's blog, sounds very interesting can't wait for the podcast show about it.
More details and screen shots here

A look at the new ClipShow MCE add-in

Project Description
clipShow is a Windows Vista Media Center application that provides the ability to view a personal video collection in a slide-show type fashion. It features a "clip" capability that can play continous random clips of video media (customizable by 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 90 seconds, or the entire video). It also provides the capability to create custom playlists from the Media Center video library. In addition it also can organize a video media collection by common tags stored in the video file metadata, and allow clips to be played by those tags.

Homepage
Downloads

This sounded like an MCE add-in that was worth a try, I have several short Video clips in .MOV format that were taken on my Nikon digital camera. I never really knew what to do with them as far as my media center setup was concerned. So I just left the various .mov files mixed in among my photo folders and photo files.

I had to install Quick Time alternative to get .MOV to play in WMP11 / VMC but other than that they play and I currently access them (If I remember they are there) in VMC in the Picture Library, if I am in a certain folder that also has some movie clips in there as well, I see a Related Videos option. If I click this I am taken to the Video clip(s). This kind of works for me as is but I cannot create a playlist and play each .mov one after the other!





clipShow

When ever I install a new VMC add-in I open MC Menu Mender first to see where the applications Icon has been placed and if I want to move it, first thing here, what's with the big red stop icon for clipShow in MC Menu Mender?
Answer: In the VMC UI there is no icon visible for clipShow.







No icon:


Upon launching clipShow I got two messages about having to create a playlist and another about Clipshow crawl execption, see screen shots below.





I eventually found a clipShow playlist creator entry in the Program Library area of VMC, again no icon showing for this plug-in.

I had to give the new playlist a name and the only locations I was given to "browse" for media was the Recorded TV or Video Library. Does that mean I am restricted to just those two locations? Neither of these locations are the current location of those short movie clips in .mov format I mentioned earlier.







So I selected Video Library and when in to a folder I have called home movies where I have larger DVR-MS clips from my Samung Mini DV digital camcorder. I selected all movies in this folder and saved the playlist.

I then got three critical errors see screens, I clicked OK on the final error and that just took me back to the program library, so not a good start at all with this application.
I closed Media Center and tried the same steps again same deal again.








So I tried to select a different folder with MP4 files in it instead this time the Burn progress thing said 100% complete, but then I got the Media Center Extensibility Host had stopped working message. Why does it say Burn progress anyways? I thought I was creating a playlist!

"Copy is progressing" so it's copying my movies from their original location to where exactly?



Followed by another clipShow has stopped responding message and then another Burn Failure.

At this point I am getting bored now and this really isn't turning out to be the kind of review I was hoping to give you.

Keep in mind this is a Beta, give it a go and let me know if you get any further with it? Maybe it's just my machine or something who knows!

Now where is that uninstall option?

UPDATE:

OK so I gave it one more try, I copied all my small .mov files in to a folder in the VMC Video Library. I then tried to create a Playlist again in clipshow, upon clicking save playlist I still get all those errors and the playlist is never created.



Do let me know if you get this working for you?

CallerID review of MCE Plug-ins

I decided to take a look at Caller ID and Windows Media Center to see what was available and how easy it is to set up? Mainly because as I am living in Thailand now and I never know who is calling the house phone, because I cannot speak to them in Thai that well!

My idea was to have a pre-configured contacts list of friends and family members over here and when they call, if no one is home but me at least I know who has called and can then tell the misses to call them back.

I will be taking a look at TapiRex and MCETapiRex first of all and then in a later review, I will be looking at Vista CallerID which is a free program, TapiRex is not free however, but is only $19.99 US and the MCE plug-in is free.

Frst some considerations have to be made to get CallerID working, your phone company needs to usually enable this service at extra cost to you. It cost me about 5 UK pounds to enable the service on my phone line and they even sent me a new telephone with a CallerID display not too bad at all!

Second you need a computer modem that will support CallerID. It's the Tapi 2.1 Modem drivers that handles CallerID and most newer modems come with Tapi drivers.

I had some issues with the in-built modem on my Acer laptop. If you are not sure your modem is enabled for CallerID take a look at this here where you can test it using Hyper Terminal. Hyper Terminal no longer ships with Vista but you can download it from here. Don't use the Release Candidate version as it has expired. You may also find this CallerID Repair utility helpful as well.

Thirdly the person who is calling you and their network operator needs to pass through the CallerID information, on mobile phones for example you can disable this in the settings so if you are testing with your own mobile phone make sure CallerID is set to Yes.

OK so now some of the more technical stuff is out of the way, lets look at TapiRex in a little more detail.

The software installation was pretty straight forward, you can pull in contacts from Outlook as I am not using Outlook on this PC, I picked the Database option for my contacts. It's just a simple case of adding in your contacts name, phone number and photo if you have one.

TapiRex creates a system tray icon and runs in the background waiting for incoming calls. By right clicking this icon you can gain access to the Options and Latest Calls List. This list contains a record of all the calls with information like: Date / Time, Duration, Caller, Callee, Incoming, Outgoing, Answered etc.

In the Options I had to tick two options under Connection, for my modem to work and pickup that there was an incoming call and for the notification to be displayed on screen.
These were: Get CallerID in "OnCallerID" and Handle as Data Modem. You may or may not have to set these opitons for your modem.

Once I had gotten the correct settings enabled it all then started to work, I called the house phone from my mobile phone as a test. The desktop notification popped up informing me of the incoming call, you can turn the desktop notification off, if you only want the MCE one switched on.

There is a very nice setting in TapiRex on the Notifications tab, where the MCE Notification is listed you can select the Edit button and turn on:- Pause media on incoming call. This is great if you are playing music or a movie and an incoming call comes in, it will automatically stop the media playback in Media Center cool!

The areas that I have blocked out in black on the screen shots are just where it shows the phone number of the person calling you.

Overall I think TapiRex is a solid application and with the MCE integration it makes an excellent addition to your Media Center setup, well worth the asking price of the software I feel. Next I will be looking at the free Vista CallerID to see how I get on with that.

Desktop and MCE notifications:

TapiRex MCE User Interface:
Screenshot1
Screenshot2
Screenshot3
Screenshot4

Open Media Library Public Beta

Finally, an open source solution for viewing and organizing your dvd library with Vista media center. This add-in allows users to browse their movie library all in one location. The titles have associated actor, producers, summaries, runtime displayed. The main layout of the project was designed to work through an extender such as the xbox360.

Project hompage

Features: All requested, refused, and current features are listed here. Each item should contain a status.
Legend:
DONE: these items in in BOLD
IN DEVELOPMENT: these items are in italics
REJECTED: these items are strikedout
ON HOLD FOR FUTURE DEVELOPMENT: these items are normal

(DONE) Mymovies Xml support (one single file)
(DONE) VIDEO_TS playback
(DONE) Image file playback with auto-mounting/unmounting using Daemon Tools (iso, bin, cue, img, udf)
(DONE) Codec based playback support
(DONE) DVD Library manager support
(DONE) DVD Profiler Xml support (one single file)
(DONE) Movie Collectorz Xml support (one single file)
(DONE) Image caching for speed in loading images (using VirtualList class)
(DONE) Command Line app to import data into OML database
(DONE) multi-file (single movie in multiple files) playback support (auto create playlists)
(DONE) Extender support
(DONE) Support for Blu-Ray/HD-DVD ISO files
(DONE) Triple tap: jumping to movie by using letters on remote control
(DONE) Filter by genre, rating, date, runtime, year etc
(DONE) UI based setup (importers, daemontools settings, etc)
(DONE) Metadata editor
Top Requests from 0.1b
Nicer/Better quality thumbnails on menu page
Folder view option
Recursive folder support for mymovies.xml files
(ON HOLD) Support for Blu-Ray/HD-DVD (50% Complete)
(ON HOLD) Movie bookmark features (20% Complete)
(ON HOLD) Movie trailer support (80% Complete)
(ON HOLD) Using 3rd party programs as datasource (10% Complete)
(ON HOLD) Search functionality (0% Complete)
(ON HOLD) DVD playback (actual discs in a real drive, see mounting/unmounting for images of discs) (0% Complete)
(ON HOLD) Define OML xml scheme for 3rd party export/import
(ON HOLD) Option to omit "The" in movie sorting and displaying
(ON HOLD) Native VMC UI controls design
(ON HOLD) Movie Label 2009 Xml support
(ON HOLD) Ant Movie Catalog Xml support
(ON HOLD) Mymovies Xml support (one file per folder)
(ON HOLD) DVD Profiler Xml support (one file per folder)
(ON HOLD) Movie Collectorz Xml support (one file per folder)
(ON HOLD) Boxset and season support (group multiple titles on the main menu into a single boxart/season shown)
(ON HOLD) Releated movies on the movie detail page
(ON HOLD) Parental filter with password
(ON HOLD) Selection of audio track from eg. dvd and mkv
(ON HOLD) Selection of subtitle track from eg. dvd and mkv
(ON HOLD) Multiple right-click options
(ON HOLD) View: Instead of moving a cursor around the screen, the cursor is frozen center and instead the movie rows move
(ON HOLD) Movie queue
(ON HOLD) DVD changer support
(ON HOLD) Windows Home Server support
(ON HOLD) View: File/folder view
(ON HOLD) Autoupdate feature/automatic information of new build
(ON HOLD) Delete movie feature, deleting everything releated to the movie (metadata, moviefile, moviefolder, covers etc)
(ON HOLD) "Mark as watched" feature
(ON HOLD) Ripping DVD's to local/server harddrive
(ON HOLD) Automatic metadata/cover art retrieval
(ON HOLD) Support of other languages
(ON HOLD) Holding down the down button on the movie screen resolves in stopping scrolling and instead displaying letters changing up the alphabet. Stopping scrolling takes the user to the first movie starting with the letter chosen.

BBC Radio plug-in for MCE

A BBC Radio plug-in for MCE has been released by Damian Mehers. It enables you to play the BBC Radio streams in Media Center. It has some ristrictions:

Your need Real Player installed
You need version 3.5 of the .NET framework installed. It is available here if you don’t have it (or if you are not sure).
It will not work with Extenders, since the BBC streams using Real Audio.

I've personally been doing this for some time now, using the Web Media plug-in to stream the BBC Radio channels and it does work on extenders for me and I don't even have to have Real player installed on the PC which is a good thing in my opinion. So I would say my solution works better for me anyways.

You can download BeebMC here

Reminder Plug-in for Media Center

I saw details of this new plug-in for Media Center on Chris Laniers blog here.

"Ever wanted to have Media Center remind you of specific events while you are watching TV or listening to music? A new Vista Media Center plug-in called Remind Me does just that, ensuring you never miss your appointments or forget to make a phone call.

This is a good concept for a plug-in, but without it connecting to some sort of personal information manager like Outlook I’m not sure it is ready for everyday use. Sync it with Outlook or something like it and I think this would be a great plug-in.

It is a free download, but be sure to donate if you like the plug-in."

Shoutcast Internet Radio Plug-in for VMC

I'm not an expert on Internet Radio by any means and its one area I'd like to learn more about! I've seen various Internet Radio plug-ins for VMC but I've never really used any. I've recently been listening to 80's music radio stations on Shoutcast however on my Sony PSP, I did a PSP update recently and a new Internet Radio feature appeared and is driven using Shoutcast.

Sornt from German has written a Shoutcast Internet Radio plug-in for VMC called mcShoutCast, which looks pretty interesting. More details can be found here. The screen shots are in German but I believe there is an English version as well. No official support for extenders however from the author.

I think I will have to look in to some of these VMC Internet Radio plug-ins in more detail and give a few a go.

Top tip for "My Movies" database connection issues

I was pulling my hair out in the past, because my "My Movies 2" program stopped working, every time I opened the Collection Manager it simply would not connect to my database.
After much reading and messing about, I came to the conclusion that my SQL database was fine and that the SQL Server service for My Movies was running ok.

I changed a registry entry for My Movies under HKLM\Software\My Movies\ changing the Server entry from the local loopback address 127.0.0.1 to the host name of my Vista Media Center PC and voila everything started working again.
Full details can be seen here on the My Movies forum.