Jas Manghera Blog

Media Browser Beta 2.1.0.0

2009-06-19T00:13:00.007+01:00

After a long wait we are really excited to release Media Browser Beta 2.1.0.0. for Vista Media Center and Windows7 Media Center. For the eager folks you can download Beta 2.1 here, the rest of this blog will highlight some of the new features and enhancements in 2.1. I have a lot to talk about so get comfy.

New enhanced home screen

CORE CHANGES

As Media Browser grew from release to release we realized that our core engine was not as flexible as we would have liked. A lot of work took place behind the scenes with attention to the engine driving Media Browser, the direct results are quite impressive.

Behind the scenes we’ve implemented many changes to Media Browser’s core including a lot of enhancements to the data logic layer including a complete revamp of the library refresh mechanism, metadata workflow stack, new provider model, item management and merging, plug-in architecture… I can do this all day long but I can sense some eyes starting to glaze over at my geek out – moving on…

Speed

Our core scanning process is now over a complete order of magnitude faster than before. Sam put a lot of hard work and man-hours into this and the results speak for themselves. This increase in speed allows us to potentially issue a full metadata refresh every time you launch the application which is unheard of compared to previous versions of Media Browser. (Ok we don’t really issue a full refresh as we’d probably D.O.S our data partners but I’m just saying we could and not miss a beat ;-) )

Note: Chart is for illustration purposes only.

Stability

As we progress with each release the stability of Media Browser keeps improving. So much so that this is perhaps the most stable release of Media Browser.

PLUG-IN FRAMEWORK

We now support an open plug-in model where anyone can contribute and extend Media Browser so you don’t even have to be on the Media Browser team to write a plug-in. Media Browser looks for plug-ins under the C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser\Plugins\ folder. If you don’t want to use a particular plug-in for whatever reason you can use the configurator to add or remove plug-ins as you like, or if all else fails simply remove it from the plug-in folder and voila.

Plugins Folder

We will be providing more technical information on the plug-in framework very soon, ultimately this framework allows developers to extend our object model, entities, define new media types, and even append items to the root menu. To validate the new plug-in architecture there are a number of plug-ins available with this release of Media Browser.

Apple HD Trailers Plug-in

Prior versions of Media Browser were in essence very limited to the type of content it could handle, going forward you can begin enjoying digital media outside of your home network. It begins with online trailers we are shipping a plug-in for Apple HD Trailers that allows you to consume the vast amount of great trailers in high quality. The downside of Apple trailers is of course the codec format being .mov which is not playable on extenders.

Film Trailer Plug-in

For those of you who may have problems with Apple Trailers we have a second online trailer source available.

Obligatory screenshot

We are sourcing trailer content from filmtrailers.co.uk in .wmv format, however, the trailers are encoded using Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec V2 (MP42) why is this significant? Unfortunately we found out the hard way the Xbox 360 doesn’t support playback of certain flavours of wmv, and yes you guessed it MP42 is one of the unplayable formats. I can’t comment on the Linksys or other extenders as I don’t have them available to test on (although I should point out I am more than willing to accept extender donations ;-) ).

DVR-MS Support

The DVR-MS plug-in with the ability to decode your recorded TV files and extract metadata so you get the same rich experience with dvr-ms files inside Media Browser.

DVR-MS Plug-in In Action

Movie Thumbnailer

Another frame grabber has been added based on the Movie Thumbnailer project here. This frame grabber has greater support for working with different media formats to generate a preview thumbnail. Some of the codecs supported are:

divx / xvid

mpeg1 / mpeg2

mp4

vc1

vmv

VODCAST – ONLINE MEDIA!

How would you like to view online videos within media browser? We have taken steps to begin aggregating online content starting with vodcasts. Using the configurator we have made it super easy to add a video RSS feed to Media Browser, it’s literally a 2 step process.

First you within the configuration utility navigate to the podcasts tab, and press the add button. The second step is enter the video podcast feed into the input box, and press OK.

Configuration Utility: built-in vodcast support

The Config utility creates .vodcast files by default in the c:\programdata\mediabrowser\Podcasts\ so you can add streaming video rss feeds into Media Browser. Before you start adding any old video RSS feed in my experience RSS feeds with video attachments are more stable and less error-prone.

TIP: You can add a custom folder image for podcasts by placing a folder.jpg or folder.png file in c:\programdata\mediabrowser\Podcasts\ location.

Just to get you started here are a few of my favourite video podcasts (.wmv friendly of course for extenders):

Channel 9
Scobleizer
Tekzilla
Scam School

http://channel9.msdn.com/Feeds/RSS/
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/fastcompany-tv/scobleizer-tv
http://revision3.com/tekzilla/feed/wmv-large/
http://revision3.com/scamschool/feed/WMV-Large

NOTE: If you have a slow internet connection be aware that adding high-bandwidth video podcasts can result in a bad end user experience.

A NEW INTIAL EXPERIENCE

I have personally have been working very hard on this exciting new addition to Media Browser. There are so many customization combinations available for Media Browser that it can get a bit hard for the novice user to setup initially. We were looking for a way to decrease the complexity for new users while also providing a common interface that we as a team can control and predict. It is hoped that with the Media Browser team controlling this default intro screen we can begin providing even more services to our users, something that would have been very difficult to do with the dozens of customization options otherwise.

Enhanced home screen (with black color scheme, and custom backdrop)

Initially this view was not intended to be enabled by default, however, though the course of alpha testing and other feedback the enhanced home screen (EHS) is now on by default. If you prefer the old default screen you can disable the EHS in a couple ways: either in the configuration page of the application, or the configuration utility.

Configuring the Enhanced Home Screen

Recent Items

One of the most common scenarios after living with any media aggregator is how well it handles your growing media collection on a day to day basis. With the introduction of the home screen we have taken significant steps to enhance this experience. The last 5 recent videos for each selected folder are automatically displayed on the initial screen allowing you to select and play that file immediately without having to navigate into your collection.

Recently Added List

Weather Forecast

We’ve also implemented weather support using Yahoo! Weather Data Services. For those of you living in the US you can simply enter your zip code, the rest of the world can visit Yahoo’s weather website and retrieve the unique location ID here. Typical location Ids look like this “UKXX0065” “CSXX0032” etc. Once you have your location ID users can leverage the configurator to set this information in the display tab under the Enhanced Home Screen section.

The weather service is refreshed every 3 hours and viewable only on the new home screen. When highlighted the weather control also displays a forecast for the next day.

CONFIGURATION UTILITY

You seen some of the enhancements to the config utility already, with this release we have added even more customization options keeping with our long term goal of making changes to Media Browser as fast as possible.

Enhancements

We’ve added a new folder browser dialog system, a lot of users were complaining about not being able to add network locations through the configuration utility. So I overhauled the whole folder browsing mechanism while making it just as simple and easy to use. Network traversal really works this time I promise.

Display Tab

This tab provides more configuration of Media Browser’s display. It allows for quick and easy setup of your theme and a whole host of other options.

External Players Tab

About a month or so back a Media Browser user J.Brown emailed me to donate some code for the config utility. Thanks to JB users can now add external players for selected media types very easily through the configuration utility. Thank you JB!!

OTHER STUFF

Multi-Backdrop Support

The default movie screen now has multi-backdrop support, with a nice cross-fade when switching between the different backdrops. If you want to have your own custom backdrop fades all you need to do is name them accordingly, starting from backdrop.jpg to backdrop1.jpg and so on.

Director Links

Directors are now selectable links and work just like the existing actors capability allowing you to view all movies in your collection for a particular director.

Global Indexing

Global indexing is fantastic, now it is possible to have your collection separated into several sub folders and if you perform a search for a genre filter say “Action”, we now index and return your entire collection that has the genre tag “Action” not just the current folder as in the past.

Another example, previously if you had split your movie collection into say Hollywood and Foreign films the search would only be performed on the folder you were in. Now we correctly search through your entire collection even online content for that actor. This is really awesome if you have a favourite actor combined with online trailers you can know in advance what their next project/movie is!

Folder Play Menu

It’s been a long time coming but now you can play all files within a folder with a simple key press. You can choose to play all sequentially or random. This is a great feature for the kids as you simply point to the “kids cartoons” folder and press the PLAY button on the remote (CTRL + P on the keyboard) which brings up the folder play menu and select random play – job done!

NOTE: Right now videos played under this mode do not toggle the unwatched/watched flag.

Synchronized Views

It’s kind of amazing when you realize one of the most requested feature is finally in but it takes this long just to talk about it. We have implemented sync views for TV shows, specifically season and episode layouts respectively. So if you set the episode listing to say the detail view, Media Browser will cascade that to all other episode layouts for your other TV shows.

Startup Folder

I have been warning users on the forum since the launch of the configurator application to migrate to the new start up folder. In this release we have moved one step closer to that by setting the default starting folder to C:\programdata\mediabrowser\startupfolder\ .

I strongly advise users to utilize the configurator application for setup of your media collection and try to migrate to the new startupfolder location. We cannot guarantee we will support custom initial locations in the future.

Enhanced Item Shortcuts

We have added a number of shortcuts available for both the remote and keyboard, here they are listed below:

Name	Description	Remote Shortcut	Keyboard Shortcut
Refresh Metadata	Performs a manual refresh at the item or folder level.	[REC] Button	CTRL + R
Folder Play Popup	Play all or play random on folder level.	[PLAY] Button	CTRL + P
Watched Indicator	Toggles watched / unwatched indicator. This command also works recursively.	[CLEAR] Button	CTRL + W
Layout Switch	Toggles the UI layout (not available on the enhanced home screen).	[STAR] Button	*
Config Screen	Brings up the on screen configuration menu in the vanilla theme.	[HASH] Button	#

DIAMONDS ARE A GIRLS BEST FRIEND…

There is a special treat for long-time users in the form of a brand new theme for Media Browser titled Diamond. Here is a little teaser, I won’t spoil it so it’s up to you to explore the rest of theme for yourself.

I’m very certain there are items I haven’t talked about (e.g. Log Viewer app) hopefully I’ll cover that in another post. As always comments or questions are welcome in the forum, if you found this useful and want me to continue this sort of thing in the future drop me a line here.

Hope this helps.

- Jas

LINKS
Download Link: Media Browser Beta 2.1
Forum Link: Media Browser Forums

I’m on the Digital Lifestyle Podcast

2009-04-16T19:37:00.002+01:00

Just a heads up, Sam Saffron and myself on behalf of the Media Browser team are on the Digital Lifestyle Podcast hosted by Ian Dixon. We'd like to thank Ian for having us on the show, I think we were a bit nervous at the start but settled in after that.

This is the first time I’ve personally done something like this and really enjoyed the experience; hopefully I’ll have many more opportunities in the future. Let us know what you thought of the podcast either here or in the forums.

Links

Listen to the podcast here.
Digital Lifestyle RSS Feed.

*Updated podcast link.*

Media Browser Beta10 (Vanilla Ice Crea… er Theme)

2009-03-13T07:02:00.001Z

The Media Browser two-week clock has ticked (or is that tocked?) and along with that comes another release of Media Browser, welcome Beta10 officially Media Browser 2.0.10.0 (Vanilla). Please click here to download Beta10. You can read the full release notes here.

.Net 3.5 Now Mandatory

Let’s jump right into it the second biggest news of the day first (no that’s not a typo). The Media Browser project going forward now requires Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5. Those of you have been putting off the .Net 3.5 update can download the framework here.

Users who already have .Net 3.5 installed (standard on Windows 7) can leverage the beta updates to automatically update to the latest version.

Vanilla Theme

Ok back to the major news, Beta10 welcomes a new theme - the Vanilla theme has been integrated in the application. With the addition of this popular theme users will notice a few refinements to the Media Browser theme selection:

Visual Theme: Allow you to select 1 of 3 standard themes (Classic / Default / Vanilla).
Color Scheme: Default (natural MCE Blue) and Black colors.
Font Size: Small and default.

I think Robert has done a great job finding a balance between visually stunning while still retaining ease of use – which is always a tricky balance to strike. Those of you who have been following along in the forums will no doubt have seen this before; however, for those that haven't here are a few screen grabs of the new theme.

Stability and Performance

There have been a lot of changes taking place behind the scenes on Media Browser. Beta10 includes a number of enhancements to stability and performance, as well as general bug squashing from previous betas.

(Just wanted to comment the feedback on the forums has been excellent, and I’d like to thank many of our users who take the time to provide feedback good or bad)

Other Thoughts

A lot of new ideas, feature discussion, road mapping have been taking place recently and personally speaking I feel this renewed passion is very encouraging for Media Browser’s future. I’m not at liberty to go into further details at this time but rest assured we have some cool features in the pipeline - I believe our track record speaks for itself.

As always feedback is appreciated, the team plans to monitor feedback carefully over the next few weeks.

Hope this helps.

Download Link: Media Browser beta10

Forum Link: www.mediabrowser.tv

Wiki Link: Quick Start Guide

Microsoft .Net 3.5 Link: .Net 3.5 Framework

Media Browser Beta 9 Configuration Utility

2009-02-26T22:48:00.001Z

It’s that time again, another beta build of Media Browser (Beta9) is available. With the success of our previous release (Beta8) we have seen a large number of new users migrating from other applications to MB. As with any new application there is a learning curve and MB is no different. With strong community feedback we found the learning curve for MB steeper than we imaged. In particular, the initial setup proved to be the most complex task new users were facing when migrating to MB. With that in mind this release was focused on getting users over the initial setup faster, so they can really join the rest of the community and enjoy their MB experience.

Enter the Media Browser Configuration Utility or as I prefer ‘The Configurator’. The configurator is a small utility that is auto-launched after the install process and subsequently made available in the start menu. This utility allows users to setup their media collections, options and setting in an easy to use graphical interface written in WPF. As of Beta9 the configuration utility allows users to:

Manage their media collections
Minor configuration settings

Enough rambling let’s take a closer look at the utility. When you first enter the configurator you are presented a rather blank tab ‘media collection. On this tab you can create locations by clicking the Add button .

After you have added a media collection, a new panel appears to the right enabling you to configure the details of that collection. Here you can set the default image (to be displayed within MB) and add more folders as a part of that collection. This enables users to integrate different folders together so that they appear as a single collection within MB.

Some of our intermediate users will quickly pick up on the similarity to virtual folders – and you are right. The configurator gathers information and creates .vf files to manage your collection of media -meaning you will never have to touch .vf files ever again (well... unless you prefer using text editors)! If you don’t know what a vf file is – it is a simple text file that MB can read to manage collections of media.

We have changed the default initial folder which is now available at: C:\programdata\mediabrowser\startupfolder\ instead of user’s video folder. This change was made to help extender users under win 7 open only one folder with access rights instead of multiple locations.

In addition Beta9 has introduced a number of fixes which you can read in the complete release notes here. As always feedback is welcome good or bad.

Download Link: http://code.google.com/p/videobrowser/downloads/list

Wiki Link: http://code.google.com/p/videobrowser/wiki/00_Index

Forum Link: http://www.mediabrowser.tv

Batch Process to Create Folders for Media Browser

2009-02-20T12:10:00.000Z

As many of you are aware, Media Browser requires each movie to be placed under it's own folder. If you have a large amount of movies this can quickly become a long and tedious task. Jon from theHTPC.net has posted an excellent .bat script to create these folders and automatically move your movie files into them, thereby automating the process and saving you a lot of time & grief.

Read the full post here, there are a few items you'll need to pay attention to.

Media Browser Beta 2.0.8.0 Now Available

2009-02-11T01:45:00.001Z

Today we just released another beta of Media Browser 2.0.8.0 (Beta 8). You can download the new release here. Beta 8 works with both Vista and Win7 and includes a bunch of new features and refinements built on previous versions. You can read detailed Beta 8 release notes that cover changes/additions here. In this blog post I'm going to cover one of the biggest areas of focus with this release: the user interface.

Let's look at the changes - the view menu.

Users now have the option to select from 2 additional views: Cover Flow and Thumb Strip. In addition to these new views there are a number of tweaks/adjustments to the already established ones.

Cover Flow View

I am a big fan of minimalism and this has to be one of my favourite views currently in Media Browser. It is outstanding for presentation of your movies especially when combined with automatic poster-art retrieval.

Thumb Strip View

We didn't ignore the TV side of Media Browser; in fact I think the TV side got a lot more love from the dev team this time around. Thumb strip view is the return of the original thumb strip on steroids, it provides details and background art perfect for TV series.

With all these views available, we have added a shortcut by pressing the '*' [star] key on your remote you can switch between the different views.

Actor Images

Beta 8 now allows you to display images of your favourite actors. By dropping a folder & folder.jpg with the name of the actor in the ImagesByName directory Media Browser will pick that up and display it onscreen.

So an example using Steve Carell would be.

C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser\ImagesByName\Steve Carell\folder.jpg

And the end result:

Backdrops

In previous version we experimented with adding the backdrop to every view. This was problematic as not all views are equal. The backdrop has been removed from the detail view due to overwhelming user response. The detail mode now really shines combining a large thumbnail and description area to maximum effect. The Detail view joins the Poster and Cover Flow views which do not display backdrop images.

I hope this post provides a good overview of Beta 8, there is so much that I haven’t even talked about. If you are thinking about making the switching to Media Browser (and I highly encourage you do) we have a quick start guide available here. You can also find more information on our forums.

Jas

Cover Flow for Media Browser

2009-02-04T18:03:00.001Z

It’s been a long time since I lasted posted so no better time to post than right now.

A few days ago forum users requested another view for Media Browser (MB), the cover flow view ala Apple. Very sleek, simple, and do-able in mcml? Um…

Trying to get this view exactly replicated in mcml proved to be quite tricky. The lack of z-ordering in mcml is really starting to get on my nerves. I know this subject has been harped on by others and microsoft probably doesn’t read my blog, but z-order is not in the Windows 7 Media Center SDK either. I really hope that doesn’t mean we have to wait for Windows 8 to get true cover flow in Media Center!

Getting back on topic, with the help of Paul Haley, fellow MB developer, I had the basis of the coverflow. The trick was creating a content-item under a repeater to be list aware. Meaning each content-item (in this case covers) needed to understand where it was in relation to the scroller and the currently focused item. If the cover was to the left of the focused item it needed a different rotation than the covers on the right. Sounds simple enough.

Without boring you on the mcml implementation, this is the result I have achieved so far:

I must admit I have wasted more than a few minutes just staring at this screen admiring it. There is still a lot of things to do, but the basis is in place and hopefully we can roll this into the next beta of Media Browser.

QWebL Automation

2008-08-20T21:54:00.001+01:00

I'm sure by now many of you have heard of QWebL Automation and the terrific contests that was put on by them this past month. If that wasn't enough their bold tag line certainly peeked my interest in the company.

"On August 19th Home Automation Will Change Forever" - QWebL

The marketing campaign was so good in fact I found myself checking their website 3 or 4 times yesterday hoping they'd finally lift the curtains and reveal their wares. Unfortunately that was not the case as they must have run into some last minute technical issues and now the countdown is working its way upwards. It's sad to see them miss their deadline, I only hope they can fix whatever it is that is holding them back quickly as a lot of people are interested in seeing what QWebL can bring to the home automation party.

So here I am sending some good karma to QWebL.

* UPDATE *

They have decided to wait until CEDIA to unveil their products, more information can be found on their website.

Add TV-Show Data in Video Browser

2008-06-15T16:08:00.001+01:00

A common question asked is "where do I get metadata for TV Shows?" for Video Browser. Currently the only supported method of gathering TV Show metadata is the official Ruby script. I'll try my best to explain this process and a couple tricks I've learned from the community.

NOTE: I guess I should also put in a word of warning, this is an easy process with many steps which makes it complicated. Metadata gathering is definitely targeted towards advanced users, hopefully in the future someday Sam and I can refine this process to be more universally accepted.

Before You Begin

1. You must have Ruby installed on your system. You can download Ruby here: Ruby Download

I downloaded Ruby and installed it in the following location "C:\Ruby"

2. Download the TV Scraper script file here: tvdb_scraper.rb

For simplicity sake I saved the script file under "C:\Ruby\tvdb_scraper.rb"

Now We Are in Business

Video Browser looks for the following TV folder structure:

"TV SHOW \ SEASON XX \ FILES"

eg. "E:\TV\Heroes\Season 1\s1e01-Heroes-Pilot..."

Once you have the folder structure setup you can use the following command to gather metadata, under command prompt:

Ruby [PATH to tvdb_scraper file] [PATH to TV Show to Update]

eg. ruby "C:\ruby\tvdb_scraper.rb" "E:\TV\Heroes" -r

There are two switches "-r" and "-f" explained in more detail below:

-r: This refreshes the metadata for all TV Shows

-f: This renames episode filenames to: Episode Number - Episode Name format. It is especially important that you verify the metadata collected is correct first before using this command.

Now under command prompt you can run the following command to grab metadata.

Creating An Automated Process

One of the issues I had with the Ruby scrapper was that it relied extensively on me typing in command line, which being a developer is no problem, but was a real hassle for the non-tech savvy family members. To overcome this I use batch files (.bat).

This is what my bat file looks like:

ruby "C:\ruby\tvdb_scraper.rb" "E:\TV\Heroes" -r
ruby "C:\ruby\tvdb_scraper.rb" "E:\TV\Heroes" -f
Pause

AS you can see I customized my bat file for a specific TV Show, the reason I chose to do it this was is that many times I want to only update one series, so combining every tv show into one bat command would be first a waste of processing, and second a waste of time.

I put my customized autoscraper.bat file under the root of each tv show:

eg. E:\TV\Heroes\autoscraper.bat

Now when someone adds more tv shows from Itunes, all they have to do is launch the bat file (via double click) and it gathers the appropriate metadata for that episode. Much more easier for the wife, and lets be honest if it makes the wife happy that's half the battle!

Questions, comments? Feel free to ask questions or get help at http://videobrowser.ch/

Video Browser - Addin for VMC

2008-05-12T19:58:00.001+01:00

I've been playing around with the Video Browser addin, from Sam Saffron, for about a week now and I love it. I had a need for this functionality since I first got my hands on Vista Media Center.

I felt the need to tweak a few things so I decided to join the development of Video Browser. In any case my first goal was to remove the black background and switch to a transparent background.

Which was great .... at first .... but then you know I thought it kind of looked a little cheesy. I mean everyone and their dog has a transparent background, what this application needed was something with a little more pop. So I began (re)-searching and eventually I came across a background which I liked much better.

It looks much better don't you think? With the background issues out of the way I began to focus on the main screens. One of the things that drew me to Video Browser in the first place was the lean/mean interface (all killer no filler). My main goal here was to further enhance clarity.

Sometimes when working on a media center application as a developer you become so
concerned about the open-screen design (think open-floor design for you real estate types) that you forget it's ok to have some boundaries. I was going down the wrong path until I made a u-turn and sorted that out, screenshots tell a better story than words:

Now for the bad news, the only person who has this is me - sorry Sam! I got a few issues to sort out which will work themselves out in time. Comments feedback are welcome at the Green Button Forum.

MCML Samples

2008-04-29T21:39:00.001+01:00

Today Olcay Buyan and I released our MCML Samples project with the Media Center community. This project provides real world examples of vista media center-like controls written in mcml.

We hope that sharing this project will alleviate a lot of that frustration by allowing anyone to use/modify these samples for any purpose, be it personal or commercial or other.

There project includes a variety of controls with full source code, providing a rich control/view item set for novice developers. Our goal is that new developers will spend less time worrying about how to make a radio button, menu bar, etc. and focus more time on how to better their applications to provide maximum value for their customers.

The end goal is better media center products which brings more interest to media center which in turn helps all of us devs. Anyway I have rambled on long enough you can download the project from here:

Download MCML Samples source code here: http://www.codeplex.com/mcml

Olcay Buyan, MCML Samples Co-Author: http://www.mcedev.com

Live Mesh

2008-04-23T20:31:00.001+01:00

Live Mesh where the heck were you when I was in college? Unified data management is something that I've needed since ... well ... seems like foever. I remember there were many a time where I would be FTP'ing into my home machine to retrieve a file I had forgotten to take with me that day.

Now that I am removed from that environment I still find myself manually syncing files most commonly by sending myself an email with the necessary files in the attachment. I could really care less about the social aspects of live mesh but there is a lot of potential in sharing content with others.

FEATURES GALORE

I haven't even gotten into the other features of the mesh such as:

Unified Device Management
Unified Application Management
Centralized Management

MORE INFORMATION

If you want to learn more Amit Mittal has a good introduction to Live Mesh found here.

Testing Live Writer

2008-04-23T17:37:00.001+01:00

It's been a long time since I've posted anything on this blog, I've been pretty busy with my move to the UK that I haven't had near enough time to devout to this blog. Currently things are starting to settle down a bit and I'm testing Windows Live Writer on this blog, if everything works out that will mean a lot less headaches for me and more frequent updates in the future.

Blu-ray Xbox 360 Planned By Microsoft

2008-02-19T06:03:00.000Z

Smarthouse.com.au is reporting that a new Blu-ray periheral is being planned by Microsoft, here . If any more confirmation of HD-DVD's death was needed here it is. I for one am just glad this whole nonsense of two competing formats is finally resolved. Hopefully now content makers can focus on making content thats worth watching.

So I just Voided my Laptop Warranty

2008-02-18T04:34:00.000Z

A few weeks ago I purchased a new MSI GX600 notebook. Specs-wise it's the fastest pc I've worked with even surpassing my development machines at work. In fact it's so fast it beat out our development machines in build processing by more than 50% which probably has my colleague asking managment for a new laptop (forget the desktops).

It Begins

Everything was going great until I noticed there was a small dust particle underneath my keyboard. I'm naturally very careful with my gadgets and gizmos and seeing that dust particle hit a nerve. I tried everything except using an air-cannister (of course the one time I need it I can't find it) all of which failed.

I turned the laptop upside down and gave it a gentle shake. Sure enough the dust particle came out and Jas E was a happy camper again. That was until I booted up the machine afterwards.

CRASH! ... More Like Hang

Notebook stuck on the bios screen. My heart sank, tried to reboot multiple times with no progress. Then I thought about all the work that was on this machine, even though I only had it for a few weeks there was already some irreplacable documents. Back to the topic at hand, after calming down I began to think of what could have went wrong my first guess was I had somehow shaken some parts loose.

By opening the hard drive bay I would be breaking a seal on the laptop which reads "WARRANTY VOID IF SEAL BROKEN" well I was desperate and I needed to take some chances - opening the HD bay is no problem if you have those small philips screwdrivers. Unfortuantely my computer screwdriver set was out of town (literally) so I went back to square one, cursing for another 5 minutes.

Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures

I went down to the garage and picked up an exacto knife (yes you know where this is going). I figured I'm already breaking the seal so what the hell... I carefully used the knife to unscrew the cover. Success, HD bay open but the HD looks like it was connected just fine. Still I decided to pull the HD out and reseat it. I flipped the notebook over and hit the power button and went past the bios screen - woot. I broke out the happy dance - thankfully no one was around and no one was hurt.

So there it is I broke my Warranty after just 3 weeks of use. Good work on the seal placement MSI. After all is said and done, I'm just glad everything is back to normal - now I gotta find that copy of Ghost ... I know its around here ... somewhere ...

Home Server version NEXT?!

2008-02-12T05:50:00.000Z

Activewin.com is reporting that Microsoft's upcoming schedule shows that the next version (vNext) for Windows Home Server is being :

a) Is being worked on
b) Currently scheduled for late 2008 release

Wow! I hope both the ehome and home server teams are finally talking to each other and including media center support in home server. I can dream can't I?

OTA HDTV in MCE 2005 (Vancouver, Canada)

2008-01-08T18:29:00.000Z

Like many people who've invested heavily in the Media Center ecosystem, I am still to this day, hesistant to move my primary recording machine to Vista. But that doesn't mean I want to miss out on High-Definition television either.

Unfortunately for us Canadians, Microsoft in it's infinite wisdom decided that Canadians can't have (or can't handle) Over-The-Air (OTA) HD. There are several websites / blogs out there that tell us how to overcome this situation but many of them have an eastern bias for Toronto. So I'm writing this post to help other Vancouver-ites get free OTA HD into their Media Center 2005 machines.

REQUIREMENTS

To get OTA HD you'll need two items:

A Digital ATSC tuner card (I managed to get a hold of the Fusion HDTV5 Gold)
An HDTV antenna available from Futureshop, The source, etc. (I am using a cheap $40 Indoor Antenna)

SETUP

Installing the ATSC card was very easy - Find a free PCI slot, Install the Card, Boot up PC and install the drivers. I had a situation where the drivers did not install correctly so I was forced to manually update the device drivers. Always make sure the hardware is correctly installed by looking at the hardware through the Device Manager and install them one by one if needed.

Running the Fusion HDTV application I had to first scan the airwaves, I was able to pick up both CBC and CTV on the first try. It also helps that my location is in Burnaby with a clear line of sight to Seymour Mountain.

CBC HD 2.1 RF 58 Signal Strength 99-92%
CTV HD 32.1 RF 33 Signal Strength 93-82%

If you don't get a good signal you may wish to move your antenna around for the best signal reception.

MCE CONFIGURATION

So at this point I've confirmed OTA reception and picked up both OTA channels available in Vancouver - not bad for 10 minutes of work. Now adding this to MCE 2k5 takes almost as long. This requires registry editing so please make a backup before you begin and as with all registry editting *BE CAREFUL*!

Launch MC and in TV Setup tell it you are in the USA, find a ZIP Code near you and use it to setup a provider (I used a Blaine ZIP Code: 98230).
Now let MC automatically detect the tuners.
MC should have setup the digital channels automatically, but because we are fair distance away chances are you won't see any Seattle OTA HD feeds even though they are in your guide. What you need to do now is add the Vancouver OTA Feeds.
Go to the Guide and Add Missing Digital Channels, here you will need to enter 2.1 for the channel (CBC) and the frequency 58 and also the name you want to give this channel (I chose CBCHD - yes very creative .. I know). Repeat this process for CTV.
Verify you are able to see analog and OTA channels albeit with a screwed up guide at the moment. Close MC.
Open regedit, search for systemgeoid (found under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\MCE.GlobalSettings) and replace the following keys with these values:

systemGeoID: 0x00000027 (39)
systemGeoISO2: CA

What this does is re-establish your region as Canada without losing the channels you manually added.
Relaunch MC, go into guide setup and re-run it (you don't have to redo the whole TV configuration process). The guide should now start with the Canadian region enter your postal code and setup your original provider.
Yeah baby, the hard part is over - now test it out and ensure it all works.

You can hide the extra US OTA channels, and share listings for the Canadian OTA HD feeds under the Guide Setup which should be pretty straightforward.

WRAP UP

Basically this whole process took less than 40 minutes - but I was a novice who was bumbling around the internet for directions. Now armed with this information I'm sure you can too can add OTA HD to your MCE 2005 machine in a matter of minutes.

One word of warning, I now find myself watching CBC shows in HD that I had never ever watched before in standard broadcasts - HD really is that good!

mControl for Window Home Server Released

2007-11-05T19:52:00.000Z

Today, Embedded Automation releases the mControl Add-in for Microsoft's Windows Home Server platform.

You can read all the details here.

Media Center and the Future?

2007-11-05T18:54:00.000Z

A great discussion has been taking place on Charlie Owen's blog. What started out as a Xbox entender discussion quickly began to take a life of it's own and evolved into a discussion about the future of Microsoft's entertainment products and their integration with each other. Definitely a great read if you are interested in Media Center. Click here

Whole Home Audio - Nuvo Grand Concerto

2007-09-05T23:36:00.000+01:00

Recently I acquired a Nuvo Grand Concerto (GC) to serve as a whole home audio unit for the new home I’m building. I plan on having 6 zones of audio, with MP3, AM/FM, music fully controllable in each. Since the house isn’t quite finished and my technogeek kicked in, I decided to open the box and connect the system together to verify it works.

The Nuvo manual is very straight forward and to the point, with several diagrams for quick reference, which great for guys like me who plug in cables first and read the manual later.

After starting everything up I found the GC came from the factory with version 2.06 which is not bad (but not the latest either). So I decided to upgrade the GC firmware to the latest version, 2.10.

For this I needed to download the GC 2.10 configurator software available from Nuvo in the ProZone section of their website.

If you don’t have .NET 1.1 installed you’ll need to install it before you install the 2.10 Configuration Software, you can download it here. With my PC connected to the GC via a DB9 Male/Female serial cable I loaded up the Configurator software and started playing around with it.

There is a ton of things you can do with the configurator, and while most of these features are available via the keypads themselves, the configurator application does make initial setup much more convenient. I won’t get into the details of everything you can do, because quite frankly it’s a lot, and that’s what the manual is for anyway.

Once I tweaked the names of sources, zones, and other minor things I hit “download to GC” and let the firmware upgrade process begin. It took roughly 1 minute to update, I then proceeded to plug in one of the keypads which displayed a message “2.06” at first my heart sank and I thought, “oh no it didn’t work” then the screen turned black (cue the scary halloween music). After a few seconds I saw the firmware updating message, and for what seemed like a long time (my brother says 15 seconds) the keypad rebooted and displayed version 2.10 – success!!

Now there were a couple parts during this update were I was tempted to press buttons on the keypad and figure out what was going on. My advice is if you are impatient such as myself - take a couple deep breaths, count to twenty and let the device do its thing and don’t interfere.
To quote that weird cuddly-toy-guy on American Inventor “everything will be alright...”

So there you have it, I tested the system to make sure it was all functional, and successfully updated the GC from version 2.06 to 2.10. This blog entry has become longer than I thought it would, and I haven’t even discussed things like sound quality, feedback display, overall design etc. there is just so much to write about. Stay tuned for my next entry where I’ll hopefully get around to talking about all these issues and more.

Sneak Peak HTC: Shift

2007-08-13T22:02:00.000+01:00

Introducing the HTC:Shift Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC), the biggest innovation is that this HTC model features dual processors for dual modes. What that means is users can actually run Windows Vista (Business) and Windows Mobile software concurrently on this device.

Hugo, from ubertablet.blogspot.com, managed to get the HTC Shift for a few days. He had a chance to test it out and make a video review on his blog. More from Hugo:

I had The HTC Shift for a little over 60 hours and was able to play with many of its great features, which include Pocket PC, HSDPA, Vista Business, Tilt Touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard and more. It is an incredible device with many possibilities, this video will hopefully showcase some of that. I managed to literally squeeze it into a very tight schedule I am running at present and did what I could to cover off some of the burning questions folks might have. Machine specs (as tested):

Windows Vista Business (3 hrs battery)

Intel Santa Rosa A110 Processor

1GB DDR2 RAM

40GB HDDHSDPA (Data only) ready

Web CamBiometrics

Windows Pocket PC (over 5 days battery life when used exclusively)Qualcomm
400MHz Processor

64MB RAM

I just recieved word that a small company DualCor designed and patented a similar device, found here. Of course this begs the question does HTC already have an agreement with DualCor and their use of the patent or will this product be held up in patent hell?

Busy at Work .... (proof inside)

2007-08-13T02:48:00.000+01:00

Been a long time since my last blog post, and in that time I've been very busy with all sort of things going on in my life (more details in a future post). At work I'm working on a mControl client for Windows Home Server.

There is a good preview of Windows Home Server on Paul Thurrots winsupersite here.

The really cool thing about Windows Home Server is how it addresses one of my pet peeves: running an automation client on a pc. Now before you technogeeks say isn't WHS a pc? well yes and no. Yes in the sense it is a Windows machine and therefore is every bit a PC. But what really distinguishes WHS is the design paradigm. WHS is designed to be running headless (meaning without a keyboard or monitor attached) and it is also expected to run 24/7. So whilst WHS may be a PC it's design and operation differs radically from current home PC's.

With WHS, mControl finally finds that stable home PC (doh there is that word again) that it can further leverage being available anytime, and of course the end user benefits with a lot more than just a simple automation.

Microsoft's Notebook Presenter Mouse

2007-07-20T00:09:00.000+01:00

I'm not much of a powerpoint man myself, but the new Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 looks interesting enough that I may just pick one up. On the outside the mouse looks like any other standard notebook mouse, but it's when you flip is over you see the new features that have been added.

There is a bevy of features (see here) the most interesting feature to me is the inclusion of a Media Remote. If the media remote is truly customizable as they say it is, I can see potential for this device making it's way into the hands of DIY home automation users. Click a button to trigger a scene and your home goes from quiet to party mode. This all warrants further investigating and I hope I'm not getting ahead of myself. More information can be found here.

mControl 2.0 Screenshots

2007-05-17T18:17:00.000+01:00

I've had a few requests from people asking for a preview of the new mControl user interface, so without further or do here they are:

Main Screen:

Camera Details Screen - With a great look at one of the test benches

HVAC Details Screen:

Extend mControl Vista Interface to Other Machines

2007-05-10T18:29:00.000+01:00

Today I'll talk about an "unofficial" method of extending mControl's Vista user interface to other Vista machines. This will allow you to store all your mControl zones, devices, macros, etc. on 1 machine and allow other second, third, fourth, etc. machine(s) to connect and control the same devices using Vista's high-fidelity media center interface.

Please note that Embedded Automation cannot be held responsible for unofficial tweaks. Use this guide at your own risk.

Before we get into the nut's and bolts we will need 2 Vista Home Premium or higher machines (1 machine to act as the server, the 2nd to act as the client). The next step is to install mControl 2.0 on both machines, and write down each machines IP address (this information will be useful later).

Now select which machine you want to be the server (in my case Computer 1) and don't touch it. Go to your client machine (Computer 2) and open the RemotingClient.config file found in the C:\Program Files\Embedded Automation\mControl\ directory.

Here you want to change the client URL so that the client machine now looks to the server for it's information. Locate the following two lines in the RemotingClient.config file:

wellknown type="EmbeddedAutomation.mHome.Api.IAuServer, tcp_mHomeApi" url="tcp://localhost:29992/mAuServerURI"

wellknown type="EmbeddedAutomation.mHome.Api.IAuServer, http_mHomeApi" url="http://localhost:29991/mAuServerURI"

Now you will need to replace the URL from "http://localhost..." with your server's IP address http://192.168.1.10... which we wrote down earlier.

wellknown type="EmbeddedAutomation.mHome.Api.IAuServer, tcp_mHomeApi" url="tcp://192.168.1.10:29992/mAuServerURI"

wellknown type="EmbeddedAutomation.mHome.Api.IAuServer, http_mHomeApi" url="http://192.168.1.10:29991/mAuServerURI"

Now the hard part is done, time to grab a drink, fire up Media Center and give mControl a test run on the client machine. If you followed the steps correctly you should have the same data/information displaying on the client machine and the server machine.

By changing the RemotingClient.config file per client you can add as many clients as you need, but I will point out once again this method is strictly "unofficial" so please keep a backup of your RemotingClient.config file just in case something goes horribly wrong. And of course with all "unofficial" tweaks use them at your own risk.