Month: December 2005

The Media Center Show #39 | 29th December 2005 (1hour 19mins 50secs) MP3 – 27.4MB (Download Here) This week Ian Dixon hosted The Media Center Award Show with Thomas Hawk.  Both of them review the winners and have some special guests joining them (including me!).  A big thanks to Orb Networks for supporting the awards and supporting the show in 2005. Now, for the two that I covered…. Winner – Best Enthusiasts Media Center Blog Thanks to everyone who voted in the Media Show Awards!  I’m happy to say that my blog won the award for “Best Enthusiast Media Center … Continue reading The Media Center Show #39 – Awards

The Media Center Show #38 | 22nd December 2005 (1hour 0mins 48secs) MP3 – 20.8MB (Download Here) This week Ian Dixon talked with Duncan Rae about how he fitted Windows Media Center in a car, along with info on the Media Center Show Party at CES (and your invited)! Also, another chance to win MCE Sudoku and some winners from last weeks show.

Online Petition for Xbox 360 DivX Support | “…There are also plenty of DVD/DivX players currently for sale on the market. Why should the Xbox 360, potentially the hub of our home entertainment centers lack this vital link the chain?…” Sign the Petition Here var dc_UnitID = 14; var dc_PublisherID = 11967; var dc_AdLinkColor = ‘6699cc’; var dc_adprod=’ADL’;

Windows XP Media Center Online Apps (Via Mary Jo Foley) | ExtremeTech takes a look at the handful of Windows Media Center Edition Online Spotlight applications.  Their take? It’s a mixed bag. Some are great; some are less so. ExtremeTech Final Thoughts: “The Windows Media Center team needs to take some hints from the Xbox Live experience, and enforce some user interface and system integration standards. While some applications and content delivery schemes worked just fine, others were tedious to install and more difficult to use than they needed to be. Some didn’t work at all.” var dc_UnitID = 14; … Continue reading ExtremeTech Looks at Media Center Online Spotlight

Last year, Phillip Swann said Media Center would be the Biggest Flop of 2005.  While Phillip is will maintaining is “Predictions”, he is dead wrong.  Phillip says “Some might argue, but sales of the convergence PC has disappointed even its makers.”  I’m laughing at Phillip right now, as I usually am. Let’s take a look back at Media Center in 2005, and took ahead to Media Center in 2006/2007. According to Current Analysis, 43% of all PCs for the week ending August 20, 2005 (Four Month Ago) where Media Center-based PCs.  While 71% of the PCs shipped without a TV … Continue reading Did Media Center Flop In 2005?

WMP Tag Support Extender | WMP Tag Support Extender expand support of artist, title, etc. (“metatags”) information in Windows Media Player. It adds support of APE tag format (read & write), FLAC MetaData (read & write), and OGG Vorbis Comments (read-only). You can then extract the information save in your files and modify it directly in Media Library. No need to use an external program, you manage your library with just ONE tool ! It supports : – Monkey’s audio (*.ape) – MusePack (*.mpc) – WavPack (*.wv) – OptimFROG (*.ofr) – FLAC (*.flac) – Vorbis Comments (*.ogg) <- READ-ONLY Download … Continue reading WMP Tag Support Extender (FLAC, APE, and Vorbis Metadata)

Media Center Show Party and Geek Get Together at CES! | Ian Dixon and Orb Networks have a party planned at CES, if you are going to be in town get in contact with Ian! On a side note, anyone with a few free tickets to CES, send them my way. 🙂

I’ve been thinking about a solution to transcoding DivX to WMV9 for streaming to Extenders.  I’ve come up with a few problems in the design using current hardware & software.  The first is that one-pass encoding is all that could be done, you really can’t do two-pass encoding.  This isn’t a deal breaking, but would mean a lower quality streaming once transcoding.  For SD material, I don’t think this would be a huge problem, although I haven’t done any comparison testing.  I would think anything above 720×480 would be out-of-the-question for on-the-fly transcoding to WMV9. The second issue might be … Continue reading Thinking About On-The-Fly DivX to WMV9 Transcoding

1080p: A Card Up Microsoft’s Sleeve? (HD Beat) | “ATI did clarify that although Microsoft isn’t targeting 1080p (1920 x 1080) as a resolution for games, their GPU would be able to handle the resolution with 4X AA enabled at no performance penalty.” Hmmm.  So assuming that a Digital Output Dongle is coming, and assuming that you will be able to stream HD-DVD Managed Copies to an Xbox 360, the Xbox 360 still would still add up to Why Microsoft is Still My Choice to Win Your Living Room.  Even better if we will be able to stream Managed Copies … Continue reading Xbox 360 Could Output 1080p?

Mobius 2005: Portable Media Center v2.0 | “According to Pete Bernard, Group Manager, Portable Media Centers represent the “tip of the sword” – most of the innovations that Microsoft is creating around media comes from this type of device, and the enhancements make their way down to Pocket PCs and Smartphones. For the next generation of PMCs, they focused on several things: making the devices cheaper, giving consumers more choice through giving the OEMs options for differentiation (FM tuners, recording radio, PVR functionality, DVB-H tuners, more CODECS, etc.), making the devices better photography companions, ensuring that the devices look better … Continue reading Mobius 2005: Portable Media Center v2.0