Entries tagged with vista media center - Channel 10

Election News Comes To Media Center

sarahintampa — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:59:00 GMT

A recent post on the Windows Vista Blog provides info on a great new resource for Media Center PC users just in time for the vice-presidential debates tonight: Election News! Under the TV + Movies section in Media Center, you’ll now see a new title called MSNBC News Beta. This title will be available to Vista Home Premium and Ultimate users in the U.S. and Canada.

Here, you’ll find a selection of MSNBC’s top stories and weather listings, including Editor’s Picks and Most Popular videos. Under the Politics section, there’s a category for “Decision ‘08” where videos pertaining to the current U.S. Presidential elections will be displayed. As you browse through the videos, you may notice a plus sign “+” appears when you click on a video. Using this plus sign, you can create your own custom news video playlist which you can play back any time you want. There’s nothing to download to start using this new feature so you can simply begin using it the next time you run Media Center.

TV Manager for Windows Home Server Now Out of Beta

sarahintampa — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:56:00 GMT

In July, we told you about a new plugin for Windows Home Server called TV Manager. This plugin lets you copy your recordings from a Vista Media Center PC or XP Media Center 2005 over to your Home Server for storage and management. At the time we originally wrote about it, the plugin was still in beta. But now, the first version of the plugin has been officially released: TV Manager 1.0. With TV Manager, you can view your recordings stored on your WHS in Media Center as if they physically resided on your PC. Recordings can also be deleted from either the WHS Console or Media Center.

Since the beta, several fixes and additions have been added to the software, including the following, listed below.

Fixes:

TV Manager Service setting permissions.
Compatibility with limited user accounts.
Launch recordings straight from the Windows Home Server Console.
Changed how recordings were moved (to fix ghost file issue) but lost the ability to monitor progress percentage.

New Additions:

Added Media Center Extender compatibility.
TV Manager Add-In interface redone.
Experimental ComSkip feature (disabled by default)
Regenerate the Xml in case of cache corruption without tester.exe.

If you’ve been waiting for the final version before trying out this software on your WHS, you don’t have to wait any more: you can download TV Manager 1.0 from here and the documentation from here.

MoreMce: A New Site For Media Center Enthusiasts

sarahintampa — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:47:00 GMT

The web site at MoreMce.com is looking to become the most complete list of plugins, utilities and websites available for Windows Media Center. Unlike some other websites, MoreMce.com will allow users to add the details about new applications themselves, for a truly rich site filled with user-generated content. Currently the site has a list of 201 plugins for Media Center, with more being added all the time. You will also be able to subscribe to alerts, so you can be notified of any updates to the site. It's definitely a great resource for fans of Media Center.

My Movies Media Center Plugin

sarahintampa — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:51:00 GMT

WeGotServed has the scoop on another new plugin for Media Center - and it’s one of the more useful ones we’ve seen, too. This plugin, called My Movies, adds an extra tab to the “TV+Movies” button in Media Center and shows a list of all the ripped movies stored on your Windows Home Server, including cover art, cast and crew info, and even a link to a trailer. Of course, we can't condone ripping DVD's, but there is plenty of info on the subject.

With My Movies you are able to index your movies, browse them, stream them for viewing, share your movie database with multiple clients, and configure each client with its own parental control limitations. You can download the MyMovies plugin from here.

BBC Radio Plugin for Media Center

sarahintampa — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:05:00 GMT

For Brits, or anyone else who enjoys BBC radio, there’s now a new plugin for Vista Media Center that lets you listen to BBC Radio from within Media Center: BeebMC. This plugin is pretty cool, but there are a couple of downsides that you should be aware of: 1) it uses Real Player to do the streaming (so you need to have that installed in order to use it) and 2) it doesn’t work with extenders. Both of these problems have to do with the fact that the BBC streams their radio via Real Audio, an unfortunate choice on their part considering how many different options there are today. Still, if you’re interested in listening to the British perspective on things, this could be a fun way to do so using your Media Center PC. You can download the plugin from here.

(via We Got Served)

Olympics Are Coming To Media Center

sarahintampa — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:16:00 GMT

The 2008 Beijing Olympics are nearly here and along with the Silverlight-powered NBCOlympics website, the Microsoft/NBC partnership will also bring us video from the Olympic Games right to our Media Center PCs. These videos will be made available as clips on Vista Media Center and organized into channels based on event (e.g. swimming, gymnastics, track & field, etc.) The service, called "Olympics On the Go," won't be offering live coverage, but will be providing "up-to-HD quality" automatic downloads with help from digital content provider, Wavexpress's TVTonic. Because the content is downloaded instead of streamed, the footage can be watched whether you're online or not. And since Media Center extenders like the Xbox 360 let you view content on other devices besides a PC, you can watch the Olympics events you want to see from any room in your home. Best of all, this service will be completely free!

Read RSS Feeds on Your Media Center TV

sarahintampa — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:40:00 GMT

The Media Center RSS Reader application lets you read RSS news items on your Media Center TV as well as watch and/or listen to podcasts and watch video blogs. Originally developed for XP Media Center, there is now also a version for Vista Ultimate. The application adds a new option to Media Center's Start page called "Accessories." From there, you'll have access to a section called "RSS News & Casts" where you'll be able to view your feeds. If you run into any formatting issues or unsupported codecs, the site suggests you try downloading the content to your PC instead via IE's built-in RSS reader, instead. Since I use my Xbox 360 to watch Media Center content on my living room TV, I'm excited to have a way to access not just feeds, but podcasts too, without the addition of another set-top box to do so. (thanks to scribkin for the tip!)

Last.fm Comes to Vista Media Center

sarahintampa — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:52:00 GMT

Earlier I mentioned LastFMCE, an outdated plugin for Windows Media Center 2005 that allowed for Last.fm streaming via your WMC box. I pleaded for someone to please port this to Vista Media Center, and now, like an answer to my prayers, Damian Meher has done just that!

He created a new plugin for Vista Media Center, MceFM, which lets you stream music from the Last.fm online radio service through your Windows Media Center PC. To use MceFM, you type in the name of a song or artist, and like on Last.fm itself, similar songs to your entry will begin to play.

The plugin can also play similar tracks to songs already on your PC in your music library - just locate a track in your library, click on "More" and you'll be able to search Last.fm for similar music.

While listening to the Last.fm stream, artist and track information will display, but you can also let the service run in the background so you can do other things in Media Center while still listening to your tunes.

You will need a Last.fm user account to use this plugin, so sign up for one first from the Last.fm site.

Top 5 things you didn't know you could do with your Vista Media Center PC

EnglishBloke — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:27:00 GMT

Here I present my top 5 things you can do using your Vista Media Center PC.

Enjoy! I hope you like this one guys!, Let me know what you think on the forums. Take it easy!

And if you like my video, make sure you rate me and digg it :)

Innovation Day - HomeFX Recommender

lorigros — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 13:01:00 GMT

Am 4. Dezember war ich im Brüssel für EU Innovation Day. Auf der Veranstaltung habe ich mit Ron Mevissen, Software Design Engineer von dem European Microsoft Innovation Center (EMIC) über Information Overload (Informationsflut) und das HomeFX Recommender gesprochen.

Das HomeFX Recommender ist ein Add-in für Vista Media Center, das Empfehlung für Fernsehprogramme macht. Informationsflut wird problematisch. Mit so viele Auswähle, ist es schwierig der Inhalt zu finden, der wir wollen. Das Recommender-System baut ein Profil über Eure Präferenzen und Interessen und benutzt das um Programme und Filme zu empfehlen. Könnte das Leben ein bisschen einfacher machen, oder?!