You’ll be seeing photos from me here and from others here on TDL and their own blogs, Ian’s already posted.  We videoed most of the sessions too and Garry will be posting them sometime soon, there’s about 5 hours of footage to edit to something watchable so it may take some time.  Ian got some superb material for the podcast too and he’ll be releasing that in an upcoming podcast, although probably best to check out his post for details.

Thanks to everyone who made it, you made the day superb and just like Pete Brown said it’s the community that makes Media Center what it is.

I had some great conversations and got to see some really cool stuff.  We had Amulet devices there with their awesome voice control remote for Media Center – seriously folks this is amazing – it’s the best thing I’ve seen for Media Center since TunerFree MCE and it was just so impressive.  Passive showed off their super high end Evolve units which just look stunning and have B&O amps built in - they gave us a glimpse at building really robust Media Center PCs and a vaguest hint at some of their clientele.  I wish I could count myself among that select group.

Andrew Edney gave us a look at WHS Vail and Andrew Cherry gave us a great intro to building apps for Media Center and Garry showcased how simple it is to build Windows Phone 7 apps with the Windows Phone 7 SDK and other free tools.  I’ve got no excuse, I need to build a remote IP camera app for both…must get to that.  Pete Brown gave us a superb insight into what it’s like running a community like TGB, basically I think we all felt the love…not least because everyone left with at least a USB stick and one guy left very happy with a SONOS S5 and another with a ZuneHD and 10 more peeps left with Xtreamers courtesy of Tranquil and another 12 people got DVBLogic licenses!!

Pete gave away some great Zune originals art work too, which I’d personally have loved for my office, but that’s one of the downsides to not being in the audience.  We also got free Pizza courtesy of the NxtGenUg.

Ok without further ado, here are some of the best pictures I took of the day (yep there are lots), they’re uploaded to Windows Live SkyDrive with Windows Live Photo Gallery – if you can’t see them then join the Digitiallifestyle.com Windows Live Group although everyone should be able to see them.

More next year.  Looking forward to reading the other guys thoughts, if you attended let us know about it in the comments…we’ll be getting out a survey soon too…

The image on the left is a one box media center (notice the small m & c) that incorporates everything you need (one obvious exception) to enjoy your entertainment experience.  The one box incorporates the speaker, the TV, the media player – BluRay and all the wires and fuss.  That’s superb design.

Oh yeah and it turns into the picture below, and it can even store your CDs and DVDs in original format.

The only thing that would make this better is if it actually held a Media Center.

It’s from a collection by Boxetti that includes beds, offices and kitchens all collapsible to boxes.  Perfect if your a serious minimalist or live in a very small house or even a container.

The price tag is only Euro 5520 or about $7550 or £4989

So, has anyone developed something similar themselves?

[via Doornob]

In the case of the TV we've got both strategies. We actually have a TV implementation in some senses built into Windows. It works really well for small screen TVs that you might call a PC, but for that big screen device here's a piece of hardware that we build, there's no diversity. You get exactly the Xboxes that we build for you. We may have more form factors in the future that are designed for various price points and options, but we think it's going to important.

Now to say something about this.  It doesn’t matter folks.  He was addressing a question about strategy and placing things in boxes that most people understand and he’d just show off SkyTV on the Xbox.  Steve was demonstrating how far ahead of the pack they are with their TV strategy and with Media Center being a poster boy (yes the above quote does that) it’s not going anywhere any time soon.  It might change a bit, I dunno.

What I do know is that we have the best TV experience anywhere and I love Media Center.

(controversially I also think Steve B is doing a great job leading Microsoft’s leaders – this is the best Microsoft yet)

• Hulu
• PlayOn
• Boxee
• SecondRunTV
• TunerFree
• TubeCore
• ZeeVee
• SkyPlayer

Wow, it’s impressive there are so many options…

Simon May

Searching the Squeezebox forums I came across this thread which talks about a little bit of software called DSBridge.  The download details are in the thread but it’s really simple to install and it’s worked flawlessly for me for a couple of months.  Here’s what you do:

1. Download dsbridge. (it’s in the thread linked above)
2. Extract the dll file into my Spotify folder (c:\program files\spotify)
3. Get lame_enc.dll and also put it in the Spotify folder.
4. Restart Spotify – and start playing a track (I put the volume to zero in Spotify).
5. On my Boombox I connected to http://192.168.0.199:8124 (the IP of my computer) and VOILA – It plays music!

[taken from ted1001’s post]

Now you can open the stream anywhere on your network (or you can forward the port and stream over the internet if you want).  What happens here is DSBridge steals the output from the DirectSound API and streams it over HTTP, so the sound output stops from the machine running Spotify.  It is possible to have more than one output open the HTTP stream though…

It also streams the album art and song details to Squeezebox!

So there you have it, download and try.

Searching the Squeezebox forums I came across this thread which talks about a little bit of software called DSBridge.  The download details are in the thread but it’s really simple to install and it’s worked flawlessly for me for a couple of months.  Here’s what you do:

1. Download dsbridge. (it’s in the thread linked above)
2. Extract the dll file into my Spotify folder (c:\program files\spotify)
3. Get lame_enc.dll and also put it in the Spotify folder.
4. Restart Spotify - and start playing a track (I put the volume to zero in Spotify).
5. On my Boombox I connected to http://192.168.0.199:8124 (the IP of my computer) and VOILA - It plays music!

[taken from ted1001’s post]

Now you can open the stream anywhere on your network (or you can forward the port and stream over the internet if you want).  What happens here is DSBridge steals the output from the DirectSound API and streams it over HTTP, so the sound output stops from the machine running Spotify.  It is possible to have more than one output open the HTTP stream though…

TIP: It also streams the album art and song details to Squeezebox!

TIP: Also it works to do the same thing with iTunes (i.e. stream your library over HTTP)

So there you have it, download and try.

What Paul’s done is created a little tool that requires no installation (but we will do a little bit to make it even easier!) that watches your recorded TV folder for new WTV files, when it spots one it uses Windows 7’s built in WTV to DVRMS conversion (which is rapid) to convert the program to DVR-MS.  Very cool, nothing sexy, but brilliantly useful.

Okay, Okay, I know there are people screaming, but DVRMSToolbox does that and ShowAnalyzer can remove commercials without the need to convert them.  Personally I don’t get on with the former, I know it’s really well loved and super tool and if you want all singing all dancing its the best choice.  I however struggle with it, I’m simple like that.  Second ShowAnalyzer costs money, which again is well deserved because it’s an excellent application and lots of work’s gone into it, but not everyone can convince the Mrs that it’s required.

So here we go, get rid of commercials in Windows 7 recorded TV…

1. Get the tool from the project on Codeplex
2. Unzip it to your Recorded TV folder
3. Run WTVWatcherConsole.exe then copy it to the Startup group on the Start Menu
4. Download and install Lifextender (it’s a dead project, but still my favourite for this stuff)
5. Once Lifextender has started up (it’ll be a blue orb in the notification area) right click the orb and select Options… the tick Automated Library Scanning and Automatically scan when new files are detected, click save and your done.  Kick things off right away though by starting WTVWatcherConsole.exe

That really is it, files converted and commercials removed with no hassle.  Oh and it’s all free!  Oh yeah, and thanks to superbar goodness and using the built in converter you get a progress bar for conversions!

I’ve created this list WindowsMediaCenterExperts and I’m intending to gather up all the experts so you can find out what they’re talking about in one place (other than thedigitallifestyle.com obviously!)

I need your help it’s very incomplete, and it right now only includes a few people from my list who I could spot in the 10 minutes I have before I get to the office.  So what I want you to do is to nominate people to be on the list to me on Twitter by Twitter name in a DM or a @reply.

This list should be really useful to us all, thanks for the help.

[EDIT: Folks it looks like I jumped the gun, and the feature isn’t there for all.  That said I can still build this list for us so send me your experts!]

And it turns out that there’s a simple fix, thanks to @datbasejase and @the_ape for suggesting this.  Doing a keyword search it’s still possible to add the show, and next time it comes it on air it’ll be recorded automatically…can a set top box (thinking about a specific popular UK DVR here) do that…no!

Anyway I’ve set it up to record now, and this is how you can too…

How to…

1 Start Media Center and go to Recorded TV then go to Add recording and you’ll get a screen showing different ways to add a recording, select Keyword
2 Next decide how to track the program down, I’m going to use title since I know the title, but you could use this method to record every program containing the keyword “Wine” if you like your wine.
3 Next enter the name of the program that you want to catch, “newswipe” in this case and select the Use: “newswipe” button.
4 Setting the nuances of how exactly the recording will happen is next, including how often to record the show and when to delete it, click Record when done.
5 Finally confirm everything with the Ok button on this screen.

Now, when you catch the last episode of a great series, you can make sure you don’t miss the first episode of the next series.

Posted by Simon May, follow me on Twitter or if you like email me

I’ve also just put up a review of TunerFree MCE.

I’m now going to move most of my Media Center related posts over to my blog on The Digital Lifestyle, but you’ll always be able to see the posts in my friend feed to the left.

What I want to have happen is:

• Screen where I can view my Y-CAMs live feed (it’s RTSP).
• Small pop-up that alerts me when the Y-CAM detects motion.

Learning to develop in MCML is a bit tricky, so I’ve scoured around and found this guide on Push a Button on developing with MCML, I actually read about this a while ago on thedigitallifestyle.com.  It looks good and assuming I can get something off the ground I’ll be donating to the author.  I’ve also armed myself with my copy of Visual Studio 2008 Pro (but Express is all that’s needed) and the Media Center SDK. 

I wonder what else I’ll need along the way, hopefully this will be small evolving series.

• There’s an annoying .net framework error popping up on the Media Center every so often.
• My Harmony remote isn’t quite set up well enough.  It doesn’t work well when the Media Center is already on.  The problem is that I’ve installed a standby saving power bar, which I want to keep, but it doesn’t play nice with the remote.
• I need to find a way to ARM the Y-CAM when we leave the house and disarm it when we return.  Or I need to move it to an area with slightly less traffic, i.e. where we don’t walk all the time so that my mailbox doesn’t fillup!
• I need to be able to view the Y-CAM stream on my Windows Mobile device, or at least be able to see the latest image.  That might mean configuring FTP, which means finding a secure FTP server on the net.
• I want to workout the overall power consumption of the kit in the house.  I might be scared.
• The TV Arial just doesn’t seem to be quite right, it’s a few degrees off!  Time for cable?
• My Windows Home Server is using a bit too much power, 40kwh in standby – that needs to come down.

Technorati Tags: y-cam,media center

Having done loads of looking about the only really good thing I could find was from Y-CAM.  It’s now been delivered and it’s installed.  I picked the Y-CAM Black and bought from ebuyer, since it was about £30 cheaper than everywhere else.

Having installed it, at first it really wasn’t a great experience, it didn’t like my router and it brought down the whole network…I’ve done a firmware update now and all seems to work well.  Very well.

This camera sees really well in the dark with its knight vision, and the management software is pretty good.  Actually it’s a breeze to setup.  It can do motion alerts to email, which again was simple to setup and allows me to select 4 regions of the picture to watch for motion.

Two I need to work through at the moment:

• I need to setup FTP publishing to somewhere so that I can view the camera at work since I can’t see the active X control
• I need to get an app for my WinMo phone that allows me to view mp4 encoded RTSP…unfortunately HTC Streaming media won’t cut it.

Finally I’ve also emailed the manufacturer to find out if they have an API, so that I can develop something to easily arm the motion detection.

Tonight I’ve had a bit of a geekout and got two really cool things done.  Both are on my Windows Mobile.  Firstly I’ve just installed Manilla 2D from XDA_Team over at XDA Developers.  Its superb, it’s an amazingly good home screen for Windows mobile,

just like you get on the new Diamond devices, it look amazing, everything scrolls beautifully.  The weather is a big improvement, the browser integration with Opera is great and the settings screen is good too.  The best thing is the cool blue colour though.

The other thing I did was to setup the RC of the Media Center SideShow gadget.  That involved putting some sideshow software onto my Windows Mobile phone too.  The install was simple enough, but a gotcha was doing it using RDP, it threw a dialogue up on my sesson 0 (yes I know that Vista doesn’t really have one but its a nice way to describe it) which was on my TV.  The RC is available on Connect, but I’ve not read the agreement enough to know what can be talked about at the moment…..A good night of Geeking!

Gotta say I’m really loving the experience of Home Server.  It’s got to be one one the best products MS have put out in years!  It’s so simple, so well thought out.  I’ve got the client “Connector” software installed on both my laptop and Media Center and both have started to do backups.  And that client tells me what’s going on with a little pop up bubble.

I’m currently trying to do a MASSIVE backup over WiFi (802.11g) but it’s seriously slow, and it keeps failing.  That’s my WiFi network card though I’m sure that keeps vanishing.  Trouble is I don’t have a CAT5 Patch cable to speed things up!!

I’ve piled on two add-ins so far.  Both from We Got Served (Fantastic resource).  The first is Event Viewer – simple and useful.  The second is Whiist, which lets you add web sites and customise the basic home server web site that you see when you connect remotely.

Here is said server, it’s my old Media Center, an AMD Athlon XP 2100+ with 1.25gb RAM, two disks one 160gb and one 300gb.

I’m amazed at how simple it was to setup.  Pop the CD in, tell it to format all the drives, enter a password and wait.  When it was done I logged on and got it to do updates using Windows Update.  I also setup one user for myself and I turned UPNP on on my router.

Next I setup my laptop and media center.  All I had to do here was connect to \software">\\<server>\software and run the home server connector software setup.  Now my machines will backup to the Home Server every night.

All I need to do now is work out how best to manage the power…

For more on Windows Home Server, check out We Got Served

So time for my long awaited Squeezebox Duet review, actually make that series of posts.  I first read about the Squeezebox when it was announced, and Automatedhome.co.uk also has great review.

Whilst I was in the states I picked up a Squeezebox Duet from Fry’s in Seattle, it was actually on sale on Memorial Day weekend, so it cost $349 + TAX.  This thing is brilliant!

When I got it home it was a doddle setup.  First off, I bought this in the US, so power needed to be sorted out.  The power supplies are international and can take anything from 100 to 240v input, just a case of changing to the UK adapter.

The next thing to do was to install the SqueezeCenter 7 software on the Media Center.  Again a simple process, no install glitches – but I did have to manually start the scan of my music library.  About 20 minutes later it finished and had catalogued all the albums.

Next I installed softsqueeze3 on the Media Center.  This is a cool bit of software that emulates a squeeze box.  After configuring it with a name and pointing it at the SqueezeCenter installation, a web address on port 9000, it was able to access the media fine.  So I turned on the Duet controller.

The controller picked up my Wifi network and asked me for the security setup.  Then it found my SqueezeCenter server automatically, and, I was a bit surprised about this, it let me select my SoftSqueeze installation on the controller.  All of a sudden my Media Center was pumping out tunes controlled by my Squeezebox Controller!!

Very cool.  This thing can control any squeezebox!

So I went into the kitchen and setup a micro hifi and plugged in all the stuff for the Squeezebox Reciever.  I pressed the button on the front and… the controller sprang into life and picked up the receiver, automatically configuring it!  Next thing I know I’ve got some Fun Lovin Criminals bouncing out of the stereo in the Kitchen…and it sounds, GREAT!

Wondering what else this thing can do I found the ability to sync the output from the Kitchen Squeezebox Reciever with the Softsqueeze installation in the lounge!  This is going to be great when we have a party.

Next I went into SqueezeCenter, which is really the heart of everything and found that I can control all the squeezeboxes through the web interface.  Including being able to make changes to them.  So I did, I changed the names, the Softsqueeze to “Lounge” and the Duet Reciever to “Kitchen”.

This is becoming one cool whole house audio system.  Need to sort out Media Center integration though, enter MCE Softaqueeze.

How would I rate ease of installation 5 stars, Ease of use 5 stars.  I love this thing.

Comming soon:

Part 2 – Overview of the Squeezbox controller

Part 3 – Looking around SqueezeCenter

Part 4 – Extensions

Part 5 – The wish list

Martin Millmore has created this great plug-in as the beeb have been a bit slow to react to making a Media Center interface for iPlayer, although they have made one available for wii, I must sort that out (not to self).  What I love about this is that its nice and clean and installed really easily.  Lots of the other hacks out there to get this working require the local iPlayer client, this plug-in doesn’t require that as it will display the stream’s that iPlayer offers.

The streams are by the way, watchable, not amazing but not bad either, I was able to watch the Madonna performance at The Big Weekend last week absolutely fine.

There is a minor niggle with the plug-in in that it needs the mouse to start the stream, not a big problem as there is software to make the Media Center remote work as a mouse.

Martin, if you read this post, then there is one improvement I’d like to see…a blue background.

From my point of view I can’t wait to see support for this in Media Center, there are some codec changes that need to occur for MC to be able to view the Sat channels, which I think are MPEG-4.  Hopefully this will come from the Direct-TV changes being made for the US.  This will give us HD TV in Media Center in the UK quite nicely.

Also over the weekend I upgraded my parents Digital Terrestrial aerial with one with a really great, and now VERY highly recommended bit of kit from Maplin.  I bought this unit, Gigaboost, it gives a 16dB boost to the signal and is simply the best Freeview reception I’ve ever seen!!  Installation was fairly simple, following electrocuting myself on a mains cable loose and un-terminated in the loft!  It’s powered mast head amplified unit.

First up I should explain how I use these services, firstly I’m very mobile, typically I don’t do two days running in the same office and I’m all over the country and I travel by train…you might see frustration in my twitter or my FB status.  Every day I use a personal laptop, a work laptop, my personal Hermes phone and my work BlackBerry Pearl.  I need my stuff to stay in sync.

Google Reader (Greader) – this is a great online reader, I use it to aggregate all my RSS.  I can access it from every device it’s totally web based and always in sync.  Why don’t I use something like News Gator?  Simple I can’t install it on my work laptop or BlackBerry.  The items I share in Google Reader appear in my FriendFeed and my Shared items.

FaceBook – rather obviously it’s a brilliant social site.  I update my status regularly and automatically with FBMCE and with FindMe and using the mobile version of the site.  When I finally get a code for HelloTxt that will be brill, I’ll be able to update my twitter status too, making HelloTxt a killer app…especially with an API!

National Rail Enquiries Wap Site – Lame I know, but the wap site is the most useful thing that National Rail do.

del.icio.us – Great social bookmarking, took me a while to get into it but now I use it exclusively and can see friends and colleagues bookmarks too.  Tagging makes it semantic and yes it’s part of my FriendFeed and you can find my shared bookmarks.

Google Browser Sync and Foxmarks- I use Firefox 2 for all my browsing and wherever I am, my Firefox stays in sync.  I use Firefox as a portable app too.  Foxmarks also keeps things in sync, but normally I use del.icio.us for bookmarks.

WordPress – That’s where you’re reading this.  I moved here from Live Spaces because it’s more flexible.  I get quite a few hits from the WordPress community, and WordPress tags.  I use the mobile version to view my stats and occasionally to post from my phones.  I have two blogs, this one and one for my house renovation.

Sharp Cast – I currently use Sharp Cast to hold all my photo’s, I moved there from Picasa, it’s great ‘cos it just keeps things in sync.  I think I’m going to move away though because I like idea of the Windows Live Gallery and Flikr hookups and because Flikr is much more customisable and semantic than Sharp Cast.

iGoogle – My homepage is iGoogle, I tried Live but I just prefer iGoogle.  I have a number of gadgets, including my stock portfolio (not as grand as it sounds) my scheduled recordings on Media Center,  my Gmail,  and Google Reader.  I’ve just added the FriendFeed gadget too.  What I really love, and what really suits my mobility is the PDA version, here I have BBC news, stock quotes and Google Reader items all in one place.

Hotmail – Obvious to all, but using Windows Live Mobile it sync’s with my Hermes.

I think that’s about it for now, but speaking of mobility, I’m currently on a train, writing this on Windows Live Writer packaged as a portable app, writing off line, and I’ll have to setup the vast array of links later.

You can get it here, I am right now.

The Green Button – Vista SP1 DVD available now from scan.co.uk £0.50 ex VAT

Not much you can say on that really!  I’ll be waiting for the download though!

So here’s how I’ve set it up.

Setting up the laptop

The first thing I did was download the tool from here.

Second I simply ran the install and entered some details, note that they don’t HAVE to be your LiveID (how odd???).  Then using the web page I selected the files I wanted to sync.

Setting up the Media Center

The next thing I did was copied the install .msi file over to the Media Center, and installed it.  At the end of the install it asks you what libraries you want to sync, and where too, again through a web page.  Then it start to sync things. 

Using it

In the system try on both boxes is a little folder share icon.  Click on it and it gives me some options, including activity which oddly enough tells you what’s going on.  So now when I download something on the laptop, it just appears on the Media Center.

Conclusions

Great Tool.  I’ll probably smarten this up when I get more used to it, but it’s one of the nicest little sync programs out there.  I’ve also been using Sugar Sync which also stores everything in the cloud – which I’m not sure about, the p2p technology in FolderShare is far more efficient for what I want. 

Question to Microsoft is why not integrate FolderShare with SkyDrive?

Extra Bonus: you can access all the files on your boxes from anywhere now over the web, I need to play with that a bit, I’ll probably pop along to the local Costa Coffee later for their free WiFi and check it out.

Share this post :

cctv: I want to be able to remotely monitor the house while we are away from home. By that I mean being able to monitor the front door and have it capture the face of all visitors. I also want it to alert on approach to the house.

Media Center setup: I want to change the setup so that the current MC box becommes a WHS box. We’ll buy a new PC which will becomme the media center. In the master bedroom I want to have a v2 extender, or possibly an X360. In the kitchen I want a squeezebox to pull music down from the WHS.

The Phone: I’m currently thinking about upgrading to the Touch Plus on T-mobile, unless Orange an beat the deal! I’ll be moving to a normal data package, so I’ll be able to use it to blog during the day, to check the home cctv and setup and anything else good.

Home automation: I want the lounge to be on IR remote control from the Harmony remote. I want the rest of the house to be on HomeEasy and for all that gear to be controlled by the Media Center! Need to work out a way to control the loung on that…perhaps I should re think the IR control in the lounge?

Security: I want an alarm for the house that notifies us about all sorts of household alerts, doors / windows left open, smoke, motion etc. I also want some of the house lights to turn on on approach to the house.

I think thats all the tech projects covered…they may be changed a little with our trip to Seattle in May.

Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile

The Basics
The basic PC is actually quite old, I bought it to replace something stole during a break in over 4 years ago!  It’s a Compaq Presario 6000.  It’s got an AMD Athlon 2100 XP in it and an NVidia MoBo.  It’s been a very sound box over the years.  It’s currently got 1.25gb of RAM, I think it’s PC2300, from memory.  And a 40gb Hard Drive…wooooo.  It’s got a basic graphics card.

What makes it a Media Center or HTPC?
That’s where the hardware gets mildly more interesting.  I’ve also got a 300gb HDD in it.  Simply put it’s partitioned into two, a 60gb partition used for recorded TV and the remainder for “media”, be that music, Archived TV, Archived DVDs, or photos.

The next important addition is the tuners.  I have two, both over USB2.  I have a Hauppage USB2 DVB-T Diversity Stick, which has the potential to be great but doesn’t work that well for me, it’s a dual tuner stick with Diversity (that’s two aerials to give a better quality signal).  It should work as dual tuner, but as soon as I do that it starts to conflict with my Media Center IR blaster (bean bag).  The second is a Hauppage USB2 DVB-T unit.  This unit’s great, its the rock of the system, I wish I had two.

Next is that bean bag thing.  That came with the Hauppage USB2 DVB-T unit as it was an MCE unit, does what it says on the tin.  Which leads me on to the remote…which is quite cool.

The remote is a Logitech Harmony 525, highly recommended.  Its programmed over USB from some really cool Logitech software.  I love this thing, but I want the top end version…other things to buy first!

To enable the USB I’ve got a USB2 card, I had to shop around and find one with an ALi chip set, I had a VIA chip set card and it SUCKED!!!

Sound comes courtesy of a X-Fi Audio card and some Altec Lancing Speakers.  Currently in a cut down 5.1 setup – no back speakers.  Again I’m not happy with the support of this card, it’s OEM but come on Creative are usually quite good, support on Vista has sucked and it doesn’t do half of what it should.

Finally there is the Tesco Value Webcam.  See this post for what it does.  Note to self – play with that more.

So that’s the hardware setup, oh display is courtesy of a cheap Beko LCD TV which we will be upgrading when we actually have a lounge!

Also it’s where I found this little app for customising your Media Center start menu.

LifeExtender – This app extends your life! It sits and goes through your recorded TV and removes the adds. I have it configured to do this at 10am every day, as that’s when we are less likely to be watching. It’s just been updated. I learnt about this from The Green Button.

myTV – This is a really cool tool for managing your archived TV shows. I love the “helix” display, so cool! myTV took me a while to get setup properly and I’ve blogged about that before, in my opinion this is the single best independently created plugin I’ve seen. I learned about this from the Australian Media Center community.

TVTonic – What this app does well is allows me to watch on10.net content on a big screen. That’s all I really use it for but it can do much more. I learned about this from on10 actually.

K-lite Codec Pack – For ages my box was crashing whilst we were watching TV. I recently found this codec pack and that has mostly gone away. My box is much more stable now.

VNC – This is simple remote control, I use it to do most of the work on the Media Center. This is a staple tool that ITPro’s have been using for years.

FBMCE – This is a neat little too that’s just come out for updating your facebook status with what you’re currently watching. Jason Langridge’s blog turned me on to this.

WebGuide – The guy that created this now works for Microsoft, this is one of the best bits of software out there for Media Center. I use it to access my Guide from my phones to remotely record stuff!

Yawcam – I’ve just set this up, so just have a look at this post for more.

DivX Converter – Great, simple software. I use this to convert stuff to view on my mobile.

I think that’s about it, I’m looking something cool for managing movies that aren’t in DVD format and that isn’t myMovies.

So I picked up a Tesco Value Webcam and found the rather good Yawcam software after lots of searching. Good webcam software is hard to find. I now have, for less than £6, a motion sensitive security camera. It works too, bit needs some tweaking to get it right, I had 40 emails from it today. Oh yeah, that’s what it does, emails me when it detects motion and runs a web server that I can connect to to check in on it any time.

Todo: make it run through IIS, make it less sensitive, work out a way to activate it when we leave the house.

myTV has made me reorg my filling system and it now works a bit like a dream. When I want to watch some archived TV I can browse right through to it…and it looks cool.

I’m actually going to spend money on this!

One thing I’d like to see is better updating of the database…Izd like to be able to tell it to refresh, rather than having to wait a couple of hours

I rate this one high EVERY MEDIA CENTER NEEDS THIS, now just need something in MCML to deal with films better, actually just like myTV but for films (not DvDs). This is as essentia, and almost as slick, as Webguide.

Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile

The Media Center show interview & Media Center in the kitchen!?

I think this device would complement it really well (if it were a full Media Center, not an extender).

This little baby is the new DiNovo mini from Logitch and it has to be the greatest little keyboard I’ve ever seen. It would look super cool in the kitchen!

It’s Bluetooth and back light changes depending on what it’s doing, green for media, orange for normal keyboard. It’s got a Green orb, and it’s palm sized!

Share this post :

I’ve updated the filing of all my shows, something I needed to do anyway, and wow…I can actually navigate to stuff so easily now!

Loving this…just need a better way to view films that aren’t DVD!

Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile

I’ll update with how well it works later, initial thoughts are good.

Livestation | Livestation: broadcasting over broadband | Download the free Livestation player