Keyspan's new RF remote for Windows Vista Media Center has all your usual play, pause, and fast-forward style features. It's even got the signature green button in the middle.

But there's one thing that's missing. A huge price tag. It seems like every day a new company is releasing a remote control that's more powerful than your computer, and costs more to boot.

The Keyspan remote might not be as cheap as the universal remote you can pick up for your TV/VCR/DVD player at the local Radio Shack. But at $50, it's a pretty solid looking device. Since it's an RF remote, you can control your media center from up to 90 feet away without a direct line of sight.

Unlike Snapstream Media's similarly priced Firefly RF remote control, which is designed to work with BeyondTV, Keyspan's remote is made for Windows Media Center. That means you won't have to install any software to use it.

[via Business Portal 24]

So you've been meaning to turn your old PC into a home theater machine, but you're not quite sure where to begin. The MCE-Components database includes a huge list of TV tuners, CPUs, graphics cards, motherboards and operating systems used in media center PCs.

The database was built on information from users who have built their own systems, and you get to benefit from their mistakes (and successes). Want to know if that Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 TV tuner will work with your Abit-NF M2? Just browse the TV tuner section, find your tuner and then check to see if anyone's used it with your motherboard. Or vice versa.

Right now the database consists of 100+ systems and counting. You can add to the wisdom of the masses by contributing your information.

[via The Green Button]

MCEtilities from ActiveASP Software is a tool for editing DVR-MS metadata files and viewing metadata for dvdxml files on Windows MCE 2005 and Vista computers. This is beta software, so metadata editing for DVD files should be coming soon. There's also an SDK for anyone who wants to write their own plugins.

But MCEtilities does more than offer up a pretty interface for editing information about the videos stored on your computer. It also gives you limited control of DVD changers like Sony's XL1B2 which, as Chris Lanier points out, you can pick up for about $200. MCEutilties will let you mount, unmount, eject, and rip DVDs from the changer.

Does that mean batch DVD-ripping? No. At the moment, you need to hit a button to begin ripping each DVD. But the developer is looking for ways to implement batch ripping in the future, which would allow you to backup your entire DVD collection onto your computer while you sleep, work, or go on vacation (depending on how large your DVD collection is).

[via Chris Lanier]

Microsoft seems to have left out from Windows Vista the ability to log in to your PC without logging out another user. While this was something that was technically only supported on earlier Windows Server products, there was an easy hack that allowed you to replace a dll file in Windows XP.

Okay, so why is this important? Well, if you want to update your Windows Vista machine or access some files on it, but someone's currently using the media center application to watch a movie, you pretty much have to wait until they're finished watching, take over the machine until you're done, and then deal with an angry spouse.

On the other hand, if you could login from a remote computer without logging off the first user, one user could continue to use the media center while the other user performs tasks in the background.

Well, as tends to happen when Microsoft leaves a useful feature out of their operating systems, the user community finds a way to enable it. The fine folks at The Green Button are working on a hack. Unfortunately one of the primary developers had his computer (with the source code) stolen the other day, which could slow the progress.

[via Missing Remote]