media center

Exceptional Innovation is demonstrating CableCard support in Windows Vista at the Electronic Home Expo. CE Pro reports that Exceptional Innovation has a demo unit consisting of a Sony XL3 Media Center PC and 1080p Sony Bravia TV.

Up until now, the only way to get high definition programming on a PC running Windows Media Center was with a HDTV card that can pick up over-the-air broadcasts.

Niveus will also be showing off the ability to stream CableCard content to multiple Xbox 360s serving as Media Center Extenders at the Electronic Home Expo. Of course, all the demos in the world aren't going to help your local cable guy better understand how to install CableCards in your PC. TiVo Series3 owners are full of stories of cable installers trying to put CableCards in the TV rather than the TiVo.

Apparently Orb went and snuck a really cool feature into version 2.0 without bothering to tell us about it. Orb generally lets you access videos, live TV, photos, audio, and other files from your computer through a web interface.

But Ian Dixon was snooping around his computer the other day and found a file called orb.mcl in his Orb directory. Hey, MCL files are Windows Media Center files! What happens when you click on it? Windows Media Center starts, and asks you to sign in with your Orb username and password.

Here's where it gets really interesting. If you're running an Orb server client on your home computer, but login using orb.mcl on a different computer, you can browse all of the shared files on your home computer using Windows Media Center's 10-foot interface. Pop on over to your buddies house to watch the big game that you recorded last night. Go visit grandma and show her your latest vacation photos for a change. This is all assuming your grandma and buddy have Windows Media Center and a broadband connection.

Okay, once you get over the sticker shock, what does that kind of money buy you? Well the FX series starts with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, two 500GB hard drives, a GeForce 7600GT video card, 7.1-channel audio, an HD-DVD drive, HDMI output, and two HD and two standard def TV tuners. A bluetooth keyboard and IR remote also come standard.

There's also a media server line that includes four 500GB hard drives in RAID storage, and 6 swappable drive bays. You can upgrade systems with extra hard drive storage or Blu-Ray burners. Both the FX series and the Media Server should be shipping within the next few weeks.

[via Electronista]

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]

Now that the AppleTV is out and about and we can see what it is (or isn't) capable of, there are still a lot of people looking for PVR functionality on their Macs. In the past we have mentioned some options, but today Mac News offers up a review of MediaCentral.

MediaCentral supports a lot of the standard features such as a Music section, an area for pictures as well as a DVD library. Some of the more interesting features that it boasts are IPTV, Skype integration and support for radio stations.

Here's a cautionary tale about all that crap that PC makers load onto a computer before shipping it to retailers.

A user over at The Digital Lifestyle forums reports that he went and purchased a new HP Pavilion M7775 PC runnings Windows Vista, figuring he'd be able to use his Xbox 360 as a Media Center Extender. After all, that's what he'd been doing with his old PC running Windows Media Center 2005.

How often have you said to yourself, "self, I love my media center PC, but wouldn't it be great if I could fold it in half?" if the answer's never, you're probably not alone, but if you grew up watching The Transformers and have ever since believed that everything mechanical or electronic should have more moving parts, have I got a PC for you.

The Pietroguerra FLeX 4.2 media center comes in a slim home theater PC that would look good next to your cable box or VCR. But you can also fold it in half to give it a cube shape, without the need to reconnect any cables.

The machine's not all style. Configurations start out with an 1.66GHz Dual Core CPU, up to 3 analog or digital TV tuners, 7.1 channel audio, 512MB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and low-noise cooling system.

Prices range from £1,450.00 ($1888) for the base configuration to £2,534.00 ($3300) for a fully tricked out system.

Aufero is an information gathering application written for use with Vista Media Center. Oh yeah, and it has a BitTorrent Client written in. The program's still in development, and there's no download available yet, but here's what Aufero's meant to do:

• Navigate and view information about movies, previews, trailers, reviews, and torrent files using your remote control.
  
• Manually download torrents.
• Manage library of downloaded media.
• Create a wish list of videos you'd like to download, and schedule automatic recordings as soon as that video is available.
• Notifications when a video file is downloaded.

[via Chris Lanier]

Sometimes you want a nice cold brew to go with a good movie. Wouldn't it be nice if you could get the two from the same device?

MCE Integration has designed the Rock Box media center, which has the look of a classic jukebox, a cooler for your beer, and an Aopen Mini PC running Windows Media Center 2005. Later this year, you'll be able to buy a Rock Box sporting Vista.

The front panel of the fake jukebox hides a large touch screen display for navigating the system and selecting media to play. If you'd rather have a subwoofer than a fridge, MCE Integration can throw one in the base.

Style doesn't come cheap. The system starts at $6500.

Yougle is a Windows Media Center plugin that lets you search, browse through , and watch videos from YouTube, Google Video, Grouper, and DivX Stage 6 from the comfort of your couch.

Version 2.0 is in development, with support for Windows Vista. The developers are looking for alpha testers. Right now, there's a lot of work to be done, as you can search for videos with the latest version, but you can't watch them yet. That should be fixed any day now.

If you ask me, online video search is the sort of thing that Microsoft should be building into Media Center. But failing that, it's nice to see the user community and third party developers picking up where Microsoft leaves off.

[via Chris Lanier]

Everyone's favorite remote management tool for Windows Media Center, WebGuide4, has been updated to version 4.016. The newest version is now completely compatible with Vista (including the x64 release), which is good news for early adopters of the new OS.

If you run Windows MCE 2005 or a version of Vista with Media Center included, this application is well worth taking the time to check out. The concept behind the application is simple: allow users to view their Media Center content from any web browser or PocketPC / Smarthphone enabled device.

Other features include remote management of recorded shows, scheduling recordings via a web browser and the ability to create different user accounts to restrict access to your Media Center PC.

For a complete list of updates in this release, you can check out eHomeUpgrage's post on this. If you are interested in trying out WebGuide, you can find it here.

Well folks, you've seen the ads, you've heard the hype -- and some of you have probably already bought the software.

Of course, I'm talking about Microsoft's Vista -- and if you're a PVR nut like me, you probably picked it up to try out the Media Center features built in to Vista Ultimate.

We went one better than that, and decided to have a chat with Mark Schwesinger, Program Manager for the Media Center PVR team at Microsoft. Here's what Mark had to say about Vista, Zune, MCE and Apple...