windowsmediacenter

Why invest in an expensive media center remote control when you could just use that Wi-Fi enabled Windows Mobile PDA or Smartphone you've already spent good money on?

Matt Ivers has posted a clear and concise set of instructions for developing your own application that will let you control your Windows Media Center machine from a handheld device running Windows Mobile 5.0. While it's not quite as easy as downloading and installing an application that will do all the work for you, if you've got a little coding experience, it looks like a fun weekend project.

You'll need Visual Basic or Visual C#, Windows Media Center SDK 5.0, and Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone SDK, and of course a PC running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 or Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate.

Hopefully if enough folks leave feedback for Ivers, he'll consider releasing a prepackaged version of the program for the less technically inclined.

[via Ian Dixon]

The Xbox 360 Spring 2007 update rolled out this week. There's been a lot of attention given to the integration of MSN Messenger and support for 1080p MPEG4 and H.264 video. But it looks like the media extender capability's been tweaked (a little) as well.

If you think of your Xbox 360 first and foremost as a way to access content on your Windows Media Center PC, and secondly as a gaming device, you might want to boot into the media extender interface very time you press the power button. Now you can.

Of course, when it comes right down to it, this isn't that exciting. If you have a media center remote, you could always have just pressed the green button to load the media extender when your Xbox 360 powers up. But if you're a bit old fashioned and like walking over to the box to turn it on, now you can.

[via Aaron Stebner]

WebGuide 4.1 beta is out, and the popular web-scheduling application for Windows Media Center has a few new features. The biggest one is probably streaming of unencrypted DVDs over the web. By unencrypted, we mean you'll probably have use home movies or other DVD you made yourself into your DVD drive in order for this feature to work.

You can rip the DVD to your hard drive and watch it in a web browser over the internet. As long as Webguide can find a Video_TS folder or mountable ISO image, it will treat it as a DVD with titles, chapters, and menus.

Here's a few of the other updates/improvements:

• Added a "Now Playing" page to mobile section
• Added new streaming profiles
• Added video/DVD streaming to mobile client
• Cleaned up font sizes in mobile pages
• New ability to submit errors for review
• Cleanup of old image cache items after 30 days

Sure, Vista Media Center's only been officially available for a few months. But onwards and upwards. Microsoft is already prepping the next version of Windows Media Center, and the company is looking for beta testers.

You have to fill out a series of questions in order to apply. Microsoft will notify those selected as testers by May 31st. Basically, they're looking for users who are able to provide feedback.

While this may seem like a great opportunity to play with tomorrow's technology today, keep in mind that there's a reason this is a private beta. Don't expect every new feature to work all the time. And don't expect your PC to record every show you tell it to. I wouldn't recommend signing up and installing the beta software on your primary PVR.

The point might be moot, because Microsoft is looking for a limited number of beta testers, and odds are you won't be chosen anyway.

[via Missing Remote]

Mike Garcen of Missing Remote has written up a detailed comparison of three programs that leverage your PC to let you watch live TV from any internet-connected PC.

Orb, WebGuide4 and SageTV Placeshifter are all programs that let you access your home computer to watch and record live TV over the internet. SageTV Placeshifter is designed to work with SageTV, and has an interface that looks just like the desktop application. WebGuide4 works with Windows Media Center, and Orb works with pretty much anything.

My Blockbuster v0.1 is a new Windows Media Center plugin that lets you manage your Blockbuster Total Access queue while sitting on your couch.

The free plugin lets you:

• Add and remove titles from your queue
• Browse new releases, recommendations, genres, and collections
• Search for movies
• View movie details
• View similar titles
• View all editions available for a title
• Watch movie trailers

The plugin is for Windows XP MCE 2005 only at the moment.

[via Chris Lanier's Blog]

So there are any number of ways to resolve conflicts on a PVR. Some rudimentary PVRs won't know what to do if you've got two shows set to record at the same time -- even if one program ends at 9:01 and the next begins at 9:00. So they just skip the second recording.

But many PVR boxes or software packages now let you automatically cut off the beginning of the next show so that you don't miss the end of the first show.

Of course, if you have multiple TV tuners in your set-top-box or computer, conflicts don't arise as often. But what if you've got multiple Windows Media Center PCs throughout the house -- each with just one TV tuner? Wouldn't it be nice if they would talk to each other and resolve conflicts together?

The developer behind DVRMSToolbox has released a program that does just that. Recording Broker lets you schedule all your recordings on one box running Windows Media Center. If you're out of tuners on that PC and there's another PC on the network with a free tuner, Recording Broker will send the scheduled recording over to the second computer.

By default, Windows Media Center gives you a live TV pause buffer of 30 minutes. That means if you hit pause, you've got about 30 minutes to go check on dinner, take out the trash or do whatever other chores need doing before your PC will decide it's had enough and just start playing again.

Through some registry hacking, you can extend that buffer time, but you'd better be sure you know what you're doing before you go mucking around in the registry.

That's where MCE Live TV Buffer Manager comes in. This new application lets you extend your buffer size up to two hours and 15 minutes, without having to manually change your registry settings. The program should work with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 and Windows Vista systems.

[via Ian Dixon]

Ever wish you could trim the commercials on your Windows Media Center recordings, or create a short clip of a video to post on YouTube (assuming you're not watching a Viacom program), without having to pull out the ole keyboard and mouse?

Media Center Cutter is an upcoming Vista Media Center plugin from MCEDev that will allow basic video editing from within the Media Center interface. The program will let you edit and/or cut DVR-MS files. You can automatically convert files to other formats for exporting to a Zune, iPod, or other portable device. And the final recording will retain metadata including show and episode titles.

No word on a release date yet, but a pre-release version was shown off recently at CeBIT.

[via Chris Lanier's Blog]

If Windows Media Center's not your cup of tea, and MythTV is too complicated to set up, you might want to check out LinuxMCE. The program is described as an open-source add-on for Ubuntu, with a 10-foot user interface for a PVR, media center, and automated home control center.

Just a quick warning, this video contains some hardcore Microsoft-bashing, and a narrator with a really smug voice.

I've been absent from the pages of TV Squad and PVR Wire for a few weeks, partly due to a combination of personal circumstances and downright laziness, but also because I've been up to something I should have done a long time ago.

In short, I built myself a Windows Media Center PC.

I know, I know -- it's something I should have done a long time ago, especially given that I've been writing about MCE on PVR Wire for over a year.

MCEMailbox isn't the only program for checking your email using Vista Media Center's 10 foot interface, but it is a pretty slick option.

MCEMailbox lets you check POP3 and secure POP3 mailboxes. The add-in checks for new mail at regular intervals and sends you a notification when a new message arrives. You can also access the program directly and view the contents of your inbox, which you can sort by date, subject or sender.

I've never been sure that a 10 foot interface is ideal for reading email, RSS feeds, or really any content that's ext heavy. That said, as someone who works from home, it'd be awful nice to be able take a break for lunch, watch a movie, and not feel like I have to keep pausing it to check and see if I have new email that requires immediate attention.

[via Ian Dixon]

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.

While most of the news out of last week's 3GSM conference was understandably mobile phone-related. But i-mate took the opportunity to show off their upcoming X-Stream Digital media Hub.

The unfortunately named X-Stream is basically an LCD TV sporting 720p and 1080i support with a built in Media Center PC running Windows Vista Ultimate. There's also a 500GB hard drive and a wireless router hiding in there. No word on pricing or availability yet.

i-mate also announced the X-Stream Dock, a small box running Windows CE that connects to your TV, allowing you to stream media from your PC to your TV set, and the Momento digital picture frame sporting 802.11b/g and supporting RSS feeds (think Flickr feeds).

While BeyondTV was busy pushing out a point release of its PC-based PVR software, competitor SageTV has been working on its own series of updates. Over the last week, SageTV developers have issued several release candidates for several software updates, featuring a total of 110 bug fixes.

SageTV is a complete media center suite that runs on Linux or Windows PCs, with a place-shifting client for Mac (meaning you can stream recorded programs from your PC to a Mac). Unlike BeyondTV, SageTV provides a 10-foot interface for accessing music, photos, online video, and stored videos. In other words, it does pretty much all the same things that you can do with Windows Media Center, but provides far more in the way of user customization options. I'll be curious to see how programs like these do now that Microsoft is including Media Center functionality in several retail versions of Vista.

[via Missing Remote]