So a couple of days ago I started doing experience write ups of using some Windows Phone 7 applications to remote control Windows Media Center.  The first app was Big Screen byRemote which is excellent for being able to remotely schedule recordings and otherwise manage your recorded content and EPG.  But what about point and do remote control?  Something I’ve always wanted to be able to do since getting my Logitech Duo a couple of years ago was to be able to view the content on my Media Center from my remote, then when I found what I wanted to play to…well…just play it.

That’s now possible thanks to apps like Remotely Possible.

As is the way with all these remote applications you need to install a server component onto the Media Center PC and you need to download the Windows Phone 7 application from the Marketplace.  Before we take a look at the installation experience we’ll have a quick review of some of the things that are possible with this application:

• Remotely view your media* on your phone, select it to play on your Media Center
• Remote control your Media Center over WiFi
• Launch applications other than Media Center over WiFi and remote control them…Internet Explorer for example.
• Also supports the iPhone (if you have legacy hardware around )

The application, at the moment, doesn’t give you access to EPG data on your device or provide any of the remote record facilities that an application like Big Screen byRemote  does.  Ok I know you’re itching to see it in action so here you go:

So how do you go about configuring this thing?

Download the Server from Validbit.com and install it on your Media Center, there’s not much more to it than that.  If you don’t fancy remote controlling iTunes you won’t need Bonjour.  You will need to set a password which you’ll later need to enter on your Windows Phone 7 device.  To make things easy just follow this 2(ish) minute video.  I’d also recommend rebooting to get things into a totally stable state.

Next download the Windows Phone 7 App from the Marketplace or using the Zune software.  Make sure you’re connected to your home network via WiFi.  Then launch the app and go to Settings, use the + at the bottom to enter the IP address of your Media Center, you’ll also need to enter the password you entered when setting up the server software.  Save everything and you’re done.

Final thoughts

Another good application that does a really handy job, I especially love the ability to view files on the phone first and I really, really like the additional meta data that it makes available.  That extra meta data improves the usability of the application no end and makes it look delicious on the phone.

On the down side I’ve just spoken to someone else who’s mileage has varied from mine.  He couldn’t get reliable skipping during playback or a couple of other things working perfectly.  I however did (as the video shows) and I had a great experience.  This is one of the best things about Windows Phone 7 you can Try the application before you buy, just like I did.  In the trial the fetching of media in your collection is limited to 10 albums / TV shows etc. but it’s plenty to test….indeed it’s plenty to make 2 videos and a blog post from

p.s. that’s my first video with my new Sony a55, nice isn’t it!

It’s been a while since I’ve written here.  You might know the reason but essentially blogging has become my full time job and my exploits with Media Center have taken a back seat.  Anyway I thought I’d mark my return by writing a little series on some of the apps that have become available for Windows Phone 7 for remote controlling your Media Center in some way…and there are already quite a few which is a testament to how easy it is to get to doing stuff for Windows Phone 7 with the SDK – especially now that VB.net is a compatible language.

Any way the first app is Big Screen byRemote Ian’s written about it in the past but I thought’s you be interested in the installation experience and using it for a couple of days first hand.

Setup

Well it’s pretty simple, the basic architecture is that you run a server on your Media Center and that provides web / phone access.  Whilst that’s the top level view there’s a few key tasks that you’ll need to go through to get it working beautifully.

1. The best first step isn’t to get the App on your phone…it’s to go to the Big Screen website and register and download the Free Edition (you can also try the Beta for the Pro edition for free too)
2. When you register you’ll be given a code that you’ll need to enter into the software on your Media Center, but otherwise the setup is the usual next next next type thing.  To sort the lincense key bit, once the install wizard is done take the option to launch in browser and you’ll see something like this:

Yes my machine is called MONKEY!  Hit Reverify Registration (might be veryify on yours) and enter your code on the subsequent screen then select Begin Registration. And you’re done with your Media Center install.

It’s kinda cool to be able to use this in your house, but you’ll want to be able to do it elsewhere so it’s time to do some router config.

1. Depending upon what router you have go to your router config page, quite often it’s 192.168.1.1 like mine is.
2. Next locate something like a Servers or NAT select and you’ll need to map your internal Media Center IP address to your external IP Address and map the ports used by byRemote to an internet facing port.  byRemote uses port 83 by default so you can probably just set that up for external use.
3. You might need a router reboot.
4. Now you should be able to access your byRemote server using the external address of http://bit.ly/geamtd which will be the Silverlight client.  You need to replace myip with your IP which you’ll be able to get here

Ok that’s pretty cool, but you can make it easier to use yet.  You could do with a nice friendly name, if you’ve got a home server that will sort it out for you, hopefully just pop in your home server address with :83/sl at the end.  If you don’t then a service like DynDNS will help.  This basically updates DNS with a name for your home network and they have a client that you can run on your PC to keep the service constantly updated.  My router actually does this for me.

So with that little lot done it’s time to get the phone going.

1. Grab your Windows Phone 7, open Market Place and download Big Screen byRemote – the easiest way is to start market place, press the search button and type byremote into the search.  When you find it download the app (you can buy it immediately or try it first).
2. Next you need to plug in a couple of details.  When you start the app scroll through the panorama to more…
3. Tap manage hosts then the + icon
4. Finally enter the details of your host.  It’s all very simple.

Now you can enjoy the ability to set your TV to record stuff remotely, browse your guide, delete recorded stuff and see how much storage you have available anywhere, including your phone or any PC with an internet connection.

I have to say I love this application, it’s really tightly integrated and after running it on my MC for a week the server component isn’t causing any impact on the box or on the Media Center experience, which some other software I’ve tried has.  I would have recorded an awesome video, but Niall already did that…

Right, on to some more Windows Phone 7 + Media Center goodness … in the next post we’ll take a look at the experience of using the phone as an actual remote.

Well we did the 2nd Media Center and Windows Home Server User Group meet up in the UK and it was awesome!  @iandixon, @garrywma and Andrew Cherry actually did all the work. The speakers explained some of the more advanced Media Center topics and some really interesting dev topics.  Amazing Day!

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…

I’ve just spotted this on Lifehacker and see the need to share it.  Something I really want to do, when we finally get there, is to build a theatre into our back garden for watching movies outside (and wouldn’t it be cool to watch the World cup right now?).  Well if I ever need to know anything about it I’ll be going to backyardtheatre.com for tips.  The forums are excellent with help from everything to choosing projector screens (water proofing included) to selecting the perfect hot tub to watch movies in and all the way down to what popcorn to go with!

Backyard Theatre via Lifehacker

I just happened across this bathroom mirror (yep you read that right) and just had to share it with everyone.  I’ve seen kit like this before, and there’s some really expensive bathroom mirror monitors on the market but this is the first mass market item I’ve seen.  It’s a neat touch screen mirror with built in FM radio and the ability to connect an MP3 player.  What’s most interesting though is that it’s made by Roca – these guys normally make toilets and sinks – so this represents a bit of a move to the mainstream for bathroom tech.

This has got me thinking, I’d be really interested to see what people have got installed in their bathrooms in the way of tech.  I’ve seen at least one very cool Media Center install in the past, but I’d really like to know what people are doing.  I’ve got a bathroom to remodel in 3 months!  So throw some links to your installs in the comments.

Via Dornob.

Hi folks, it’s been a while since I’ve been able to blog properly – ‘tons going on, not the least of which was getting married, going on honeymoon and getting stuck thanks to a massive volcano.  It’s all good though and I’ve got some good stuff to share about some IP Camera’s that I’ve been integrating and the trials and tribulations of that, but I’ll cover that another time…right now it’s this is about remotes.

I’ve been a sucker for wanting some super cool looking touch screen job for a while now, but the price has made me hold off.  I now have a new excuse and it’s one that I’d never really considered.  Simplicity.

We had a load of guests staying during the wedding and a major problem was that I kept getting asked to turn on the TV, change the channel or something else.  What the ! it’s easy right? … Wrong, no one could work the remote, it was scaring them.  It’s just a Logitech Harmony 520 which I’ve been really happy with and I though was pretty simple.  Apparently people weren’t used to holding the screen and they didn’t want to break it.  I know I was shocked too.

This lead me to thinking, what do I really want in a remote?  I’ve narrowed it down to:

• Easy to use
• Controls everything

That’s it, I’ve taken “looks cool” off the list.  I went in search of something that fits the bill and the Harmony 300i, a super simple remote looks to be the best fit and I’m a bit shocked about that, no touch screen nothing cool looking.  I’m getting a review unit in soon, so look out for a review.  It also got me thinking, what' else is new…does anyone have anything cool?

I really like the Amulet device and I can’t wait to get one of those in my hand too…I’m thinking given the above experience it might be too complex though but I’ll have to wait and see.

So what’s your remote, why do you like it and would you recommend it?

Great design is something I’m into, I love things looking beautiful and I’m a believer in the need for form to follow (actually to lead) function.  Having come across this it’s something I just had to share.

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]

Ok I was watching Steve B speech at Washington U yesterday and heard this…it shocked me a little and I tweeted it…people picked it up and found it interesting so here it is, it’s take from Microsoft’s transcript of the event:

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)

Microsoft must hate developers…that’s what I’m seeing lots of today.  The crux of the issue being that it’s been confirmed that Windows Mobile x (we’ll come to that) applications don’t run on Windows Phone 7 Series devices.  Well I have two words for that “Thank you Microsoft” followed by “thank you, thank you ,thank you,thank you, thank you !”

This folks is a good thing, for everyone, even developers and here’s why:

Developing for mobile is about developing for the use experience

If you think you’re developing something for another reason (other than money and for that see below) then you need your eyes tested!  The user experience for Windows Phone 7 is wildly different from Windows Mobile and different from other platforms.  No one is gonna want that cruddy app that you need a stylus for, no one wants to look at a UI developed in the 90’s that’s evolved like a snail. 

From experience, developing an application for mobile is about getting the user experience right, everything else is limited by what you can do with your finger and a small screen.  Of course it’s not at all limited because there’s such a rich sensor environment going on, but that requires some innovation and that requires stepping back and looking at the big picture.  In Windows Mobile there was a need to build things to a minimum spec and that spec was basically set back in the 90’s.

We have a new spec, a new UI and a new experience and

Customers want a congruent experience

Doesn’t it feel nice when stuff just works together?  We love it when stuff looks like Media Center when we launch it from there, when it behaves in the same, predictable way.  We get cool stuff that pushes us forward like Media Browser but at it’s core it’s still “on message” with the user experience of Media Center.  It’s the same with iPhone, buttons look similar between apps and everything looks nice.  Hey it’s the same with books, they look slightly different – that’s down the editor and designer and writer – but they have the same basic way of working.

Windows Mobile lost it.  Sense UI on a HD2 is lovely, really cool, until you drop back to Windows Mobile.  Then it feels disjointed.  This cannot be allowed with Windows Phone 7 Series or it’s bye bye.

Microsoft wants tons of developers

And it’s not doing anything to push them away, other than say, “go do it better” and that’s what customers want.  Microsoft has the best developer community on the planet!  They offer a true, multi-dimensional platform that covers everything you need using a set of core principles that transcends the tools, the language and by extension most barriers to entry into the platform.

Tons of developers = tons of ideas = tons of innovation = cool stuff!

Customers and Microsoft want innovation

I left Windows Mobile because the developers did – at least the ones that matter did.  All the cool stuff went to iPhone…it’s now beginning to go to Android.  They were new platforms.  The cool dev’s will be back because those other areas now have millions of apps and

Developers want to make money

Or they want fame, they want kudos, recognition something – I wanted eyeballs.  By operating in saturated markets (iPhone, Android soon) new developers don’t really get a look in…you need to start with a business plan and then an idea to make money there now.  Don’t get me wrong, people do still make it, but it’s hard.  For a while Windows Phone 7 Series apps will be easy pickings. 

Yes that will deliver some dross – wobbly boobies apps probably – but hey at least it’s using the accelerometer and who’s to say that the student who develops it won’t take it into an app at that makes your driving safer (idea there if someone wants to run with it).  The real question though is one that’s been bugging me for a while.

Who do you trust?

There have been cases of phishing apps in the Android market place.  Their open model isn’t working there.  Apple actually have this right, and it annoys developers massively.  They test everything, on an Apple device you can be 90% sure that the app will work and won’t do something naughty like steal your info.  On Windows Mobile right now you can’t.

I could, I won’t and I’ve not, right now write an application that would steal your stuff.  Do I need to access every nook and cranny on your phone to do it?  No.

Windows Phone 7 Series is all about the cloud, like Steve B said yesterday.  As a result your identity is in the cloud, all I need is to write an application that asks for your Facebook username and password, or your Twitter username and password, or something and then sends it back to me.  Simples.  On Windows Mobile anyone could just get it and install the CAB file.  They’d have to trust where they got it from, and frankly some are good and some are bad sources.

Trust is absent, it needs to come back.

Epilogue

So do you still think not being able to use TwitterMyFlicker on your Windows Phone 7 Series phone is a bad thing?  I don’t.  Giving developers a fresh start, a new competitive field where they can innovate and be damned is critical here.  Giving customers the best experience is critical to the developer experience and I’m gonna embrace this new challenge…when I find the time.

Just spotted this and it’s worth sharing.  UK Money saving site Quidco (get an account and you’ll make loads of money – I do) have got a deal on SkyPlayer at the moment.  You can get 3 months for the price of 2 and £20 cash back through the site, the total saving is about £55 give or take and it’s a nice way to try the service (it will cost you about £38.50 a month I think) and it works on your 360 and Media Center (although the content differs).

One of my favourite blogs is DataViz, they’re experts in Infoporn.  This is a superb rendering of how the various forms of 3D work; in case you need to know.

[updated so that you can read the darn thing!]

I started getting these, as expected, a couple of days ago.  It’s a guess but lots of others are receiving them now too so I thought I’d take the opportunity to remind people about what’s going to happen:

http://simon-may.com/windows-7/windows-7-rc-has-15-days-left/

I’ve already got my RTM key ready to go, but don’t have time for a rebuild before the end of the month so you can follow here to see what happens….

– Simon May

Hulu is fantastic, unless of course you happen to not live in the US then it’s a chocolate teapot unless of course you use a VPN to make the service think you’re in the US.  The name “geotarding” has been applied.  TV Gorge have currently overcome this and have lots of shows available for free online streaming.

It’s TV hell either, the lineup includes:

• The current series of 24 (and previous series)
• 30 Rock
• CSI (xyz)
• Chuck
• V

In fact there are lots and lots and lots of available shows, and the quality is pretty good.  The site requires flash, no shock there, an seems quite snappy.  I can’t find anything on the site that indicates that it’s not got agreements in place with content providers, but I do wonder if this will get geotarded soon.

[via Download Squad (who rock)]

Lifehacker have a very interesting how to all about how to run whole home audio over your homes internal phone wiring.  It’s kind of a neat solution if you have this in your home already…interestingly I’ve recently stripped my home wiring out since I don’t need it, kind of which I hadn’t now.

It’s a very detailed solution and as you can see from the left it’s quite simple…no really it is quite simple.

I’d be interested if anyone’s doing this or has repurposed any other home wiring for the same kind of solution.

Wow, I knew we were going to get a 3D offering from Sky but this is something else!  So fast…  Sky are broadcasting the first ever 3D sports match, a football (soccer for you US types) er on Sunday.

Yep, a world first, and in the UK the first ever 3D sports on TV and it’ll be between Arsenal and Manchester United in the Premier League this Sunday.  It’ll be available to anyone with a 3D TV (so no one then) and a bunch of pubs have been given some TVs to use for the show.  There’s one in Manchester for Ian to go to.

To support this landmark broadcast, the nine pubs – located in London, Manchester,  Cardiff, Edinburgh and Dublin – have been kitted out specially with some of the first ‘3D Ready’ TV sets to reach the UK and Ireland.   As 3D TVs become more widely available, Sky will roll out its 3D channel to hundreds of pubs from April, allowing football fans across the country the opportunity to experience a live Premier League match in 3D each week. 

And also interesting to read how they do it:

To make the 3D preview a reality, Sky Sports will produce two edits of its live coverage of Sunday’s game at the Emirates Stadium, one for its HD channel feed and another dedicated to 3D.  Eight specially engineered 3D camera rigs will house sixteen of Sky’s high definition cameras, to provide comprehensive stereoscopic coverage from all angles.  The 3D broadcast will be supported by Sky’s dedicated 3D production team and purpose built 3D outside broadcast truck, which will enable live mixing between camera positions, slow motion replays and the use of innovative 3D graphics. There will also be a dedicated commentary team to support the 3D edit.

This is gonna be very cool stuff folks this 3D lark.  Sky’s full consumer service launches in April, best get them 3DTVs on the market folks…

Full details in the press release

Long’s spotted a great series of advertising by Microsoft in the US that’s got a digital home bent to it so I thought I’d throw it out there.  In Australia Microsoft are sponsoring part of the Open tennis coverage and (very cleverly) using the snap feature to do picture in picture switches between matches.  What a cool idea, never really thought about using it like that to say, watch the news and the Rugby at the same time, but it’s clever…

Anyone else doing that?

Head over to istartedsomething to watch the vid

Wow, talk about a cool way of looking at tweets.  This, my friends, is Seesmic Look, the second output from Seesmic since they’ve started developing closely with Microsoft.  I’ve just downloaded it and started to play, and it’s very sexy looking.  @Loic (runs Seesmic) has just launched the product and you might be thinking “what the hell, this isn’t Media Center related”.  Well it is.

Just like Media Center it’s works brilliantly with the Media Center remote and it’s fully touch enabled.  Super cool.  Developer folks, this is what you can do.

Seesmic Look is designed to be far more consumer friendly than any other Twitter client.  I looks stunning and it focuses on getting Twitter content in front of your eyes.  You can get it here

–Simon May

Techcrunch has an interesting article about Apple moving iTunes into the cloud, it certainly represents and interesting idea.  According to the article the plan is for a fully fledged cloud based iTunes, perhaps removing the need for a local install, certainly it could make purchases a great deal easier over the web.  There’s also the possibility of an API (which our developer community would right, imagine being able to purchase the track from a Media Center interface).

I wonder if we could see a Microsoft, cloud based Media Player or store?

As Brandon just reminded me, there is the Zune store which already is cloud based, yet another thing that Zune has over the iPod / iPhone…unless of course you don’t live in the US or Canada.  I’d love to see a Zune store API too though, I like APIs.

Anyway, a little off topic but lots of us need to use iTunes for those iPods and iPhones…Do you buy from iTunes, would you if it was easier? (I don’t unless I’m mobile and stuck for something to listen to)

–Simon May

Sarah’s written a great and very, very, comprehensive article for On10.net about all the different options for watching TV in Windows Media Center without a TV tuner, she covers:

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

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

Simon May

I seem to be getting hooked on the tablets.  No not little pills but the new wave of gadgets we saw at CES and even more by some of the ones that missed CES.  I’ve just spotted this at liliputing.com the HOTT M700 a small tablet (7”) that can output at 1080p and the price point is set for well under $300.

There are downsides, the OS isn’t something Media Center capable, it’s running Windows CE 6.0.  It’s hit me again though.  Custom installers.  This is a very viable home controller with the right app and the price for this could be right.

Head over to Liliputing.com for the video and more specs.

By Simon May

The New York times has an interesting article on how Microsoft are positioning Xbox360 with major content providers, like Disney an ESPN to be a TV device in your living room.  Nothing new there.  Interesting that it’s popped up in the Business section though and interesting that Disney is implicated – a Mr Jobs is on the board over there…

Also interesting is the positioning of interactive TV shows:

In November, Nielsen started to track “1 vs. 100” play and ad views. The pilot program “is the tip of the iceberg,” said Gerardo Guzman, a director for Nielsen Games; eventually, he hopes to generate TV-style ratings.

All in all, interesting stuff.

At the CES keynote yesterday Ballmer unveiled the “beautiful” HP slate and gave it a brief demo using the Amazon kindle application.  Cool stuff.  One thing worth noting is that it’s running Windows 7 and that naturally (depending on the version) means that Media Center is there, and it’s touch enabled and obviously so is Media Center…

So could this be the best PMP (personal media player) ever.  I think it could.

I can imagine being able to sync a whole bunch of media content to it (Mesh anyone?) and then be able to access everything on the go, or even using Internet Streaming from within Windows Media Player.  What’s more the screen size looks good enough to watch a movie on if you were in the back of the car (ala cheapo DVD player attached to the back of the drivers headrest) or on a plane.

I’m going to be keeping an eye on slate PCs for exactly that reason, rather than being great eBook readers, which the undoubtedly will be, they’ll be great portable media devices.  The key thing is going to be battery life here so we’ll have to see what other vendors put out in this space.

What do you think, do you see a slate becoming a great PMP?  Did anyone love the original Media Center PMPs? 

Here’s the teaser video:

Now that Martin has released the beta of Spotify MCE I thought I’d explain quickly how you can stream Spotify all over your house.  I use a Squeezebox for this, which is where the solution comes from, but equally anything that can play a HTTP MP3 stream will work.  That includes Windows Media Player, your iPhone, your Windows Mobile or whatever…

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!

So there you have it, download and try.

Now that Martin has released the beta of Spotify MCE I thought I’d explain quickly how you can stream Spotify all over your house.  I use a Squeezebox for this, which is where the solution comes from, but equally anything that can play a HTTP MP3 stream will work.  That includes Windows Media Player, your iPhone, your Windows Mobile or whatever…

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.

According to the New York Times a group called DECE (Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem) is planning an announcement at CES about their plans to make content (Movies specifically) available in any format you choose once you’ve bought a single license to own it.  So you buy it once on DVD, and get the right to make copies, download it for mobile or even in a hotel suite if you choose and you only pay once…sounds too good to be true doesn’t it?

This might actually work though, there are big, big names signed up including Microsoft and all the biggest film studios (there is a notable exception) are signed on and at CES the group will announce that membership has grown and includes vendors like Tesco and Best Buy along with Netflix and some other big names.

This could work.

The way it will work might cause problems though, but that’s just detail surely?  The mechanics basically requires an online vault that stores your license for content and it checked against every time you want to use some kind of content….Ok this is all gong to go down to the mechanics isn’t it?  Hopefully with the whole life cycle (except the consumer?) represented in the chain we’ll see something workable.  Or we might see another DRM.

But this could work.  I’m sceptical but I’d love to be proved wrong, I’d really like the distributor to take over the burden of remuxing, transcoding, covnerting and the admin I have to do around content.

The big names not at the table, Apple and Disney.

[via TiPB]

Last week I blogged about a new project I found on codeplex called WTVWatcher that delivers a fantastically simple process for decommercialising TV shows recorded in Windows Media Center with Windows 7.  Well a weeks rolled on and thanks in tiny part to encouragement from readers of this blog Paul has updated the tool, actually twice.  The new version includes a GUI rather than a console, runs in the notification area (which is sweet) and the GUI pops things up like toast.

It’s nice, I think you’ll like it too.

With this update it’s really clear to see what’s happening and Paul’s lost none of the simplicity.  The tools easier to work with now too.  There’s a wrench icon that lets you set the location of your recorded TV, that WTV Watcher will watch, and that’s about all there is to it.

The extra new feature is also handy, there’s now an installer with auto update.

So here are the new steps to getting it working, all 5 steps

1. Install the tool from here
2. Set your Recorded TV folder by clicking the wrench
3. Move the desktop shortcut to your Start > All Programs > Startup folder
4. Install Lifextender
5. Configure Lifextender as per the next image.

TIP: It’s possible to do the conversion your network and if you’ve got a fast network it can be quicker if your main Media Center isn’t a massive multi core system

I think I’ve found something too good to be true.  I was just looking about on codeplex and came across this project WTVWatcher by Paul Bruce.  It almost has me shaking in my seat for it’s simplicity and ease of use.

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!

In the last few hours Twitter has made a very cool feature available to all, lists.  Yep, a list.  Why is that cool?  Well it makes it really simple to share tweets from people who know something cool about a subject, like er Windows Media Center.

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!]

In the last few hours Twitter has made a very cool feature available to all, lists.  Yep, a list.  Why is that cool?  Well it makes it really simple to share tweets from people who know something cool about a subject, like er Windows Media Center.

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!]

To make it easy for everyone I thought that I’d throw up a post with the stream in it.  Enjoy.  Silverlight is required.

I was travelling back from a meeting yesterday on the train and decided to grab the UK edition of Wired to read to pass the time.  In it there was a good, short and to the point article on home automation perfect for anyone looking to understand what to hook up and where.  In the main it uses the Domia kit which is internationally available and hooks very nicely into Media Center. 

It’s a great article, worth a look and available totally online here.

The Xbox beta program is looking for more participation according to Major Nelson.  Requirements etc. are located here, and as always there’s no guarantee that you’ll be accepted to the Beta (Gold Members have a better chance) but there’s some interesting stuff in this Beta, especially the Zune video store.  Although you might want to get the chat pad before you try twittering from your Xbox controller…

Two internet TV stories in one day, whodathunkit?  Channel 4 in the UK have announced that they’re going to start putting all their content on YouTube.  That’s got to be some kind of coup for YouTube as Channel 4 is actually a public service broadcaster, it’s also a good thing for UK internet users in general as YouTube’s dominance makes it a good distribution mechanism.

Cnet is reporting that Channel 4 aim to have a huge amount of their back catalogue on line by 2010, which in turn is a huge amount of TV.

It doesn’t look like the content will work outside the UK, without the usual VPN malarkey.  There’s no mention of 4oD, Channel 4’s on demand service going away, but it’s safe to assume that it will – so time for another TunerFree update then Martin!

[via cnet]

Sky have announced today that they’re partnering with FetchTV to launch their SmartBox set top box…their what?  I’ve never seen this device before today, but there’s what looks like quite an interesting Freeview + (a DVB-TPVR) that can also connect to the interwebs and stream content from the likes of BBC iPlayer, and from today from SkyPlayer (which is er, iPlayer for Sky).

The device doesn’t integrate with Media Center so it’s not our normal bag, in fact there is a significant feature overlap, but it’s another tool that you might want in your home, however what’s interesting is what Sky is doing…

Sky are allowing non Sky TV subscribers to access Sky TV content over the web, through this device, and through Xbox.  I hadn’t actually realised until now that the service is already available (over the web), for less than £1 per programme, it’s hidden away on Sky’s site for some reason.  However I suspect this means that more Sky content will be made available in the UK like this (and since they don’t make their own content it means more US TV really). 

So essentially what I’m interested in is what this means for the Xbox model, here’s what they say:

As with access to Sky Player via PC, Mac and, from later this year, Xbox, existing Sky TV customers will be able to access a range of content for no extra cost based on their core subscription, whilst non-Sky customers will be able to sign up to a choice of TV packages via a monthly subscription paid directly to Sky. 

So there it is, there’s going to be a subscription model for accessing Sky TV, over the Internet.  Looks like we’ll be seeing the same for Xbox and getting the added flexibility of pay-per-view (already offered on the web) for about £1.  I might be wrong, but things are looking interesting for IPTV in the UK.

As yet, now word on pricing.

How you backup your PC is becoming increasingly important, especially for those of us that keep EVERYTHING on there.  Thousands of family pictures and memories, not to mention TV series and that massive movie collection are amongst the most important.  Keeping everything in one place, i.e. your house, is a great start but it’s good to have some offsite backup with the likes of something like Mozy or a BT digital vault.

We’ll today there’s a new player in the market, and it’s a trusted brand for millions of people (unless they’ve ever sent you a massive mobile data bill).  Vodafone have announced an interesting partnership in the UK with Decho (which is actually the company behind Mozy and is also owned by EMC).  In the UK this will be a big value add thing for Vodafone as they struggle to differentiate their offerings like all mobile operators.  For Decho it means breaking a new market as the Mozy brand isn’t well known, no iJustine on TV advertising it over here.  The interesting thing is, what does it mean for us?

Well I’m hoping we’ll see better priced (or free for Vodafone customers?) cloud backup.  There is no word on pricing at this stage, but I reckon it might mean that at least people will get an idea that they might be able to make backups.

What are people out there doing for backup, how does your strategy work?  Mine, I backup to Mozy right now (and also sync lots of stuff with Live Mesh), what about you?

Today BSkyB in the UK is launching their new subscription based music model carefully named Sky Songs, but I wonder how long the idea to call it SkyTunes was banded about in the office?  The subscription model they are introducing looks quite similar to the Zune model and to Spotify on the surface and looks set to really mix things up here in the UK music market. 

Sky have huge muscles and are certainly the biggest media distribution company to enter the field so far here.  Most of the major labels and quite a few independents have signed up and I don’t doubt that this will become a big player in the music market in the UK.

But I don’t like this one little bit, and here’s why

1. The subscription model is a too complicated though for my liking, but the gist is that you pay either £6.49 and get 1 album (that costs up to £6.49) or 10 tracks to download and keep per month and unlimited free streaming or £7.99 per month for 1 album (that costs up to £7.99) or 15 tracks to download and keep per month and unlimited free streaming.  Additional tracks will cost 65p.  
2. This seems to be a “buy an album and get a month of free streaming” deal to me, I mean, that’s the offering here isn’t it?  Individual tracks from Amazon are priced about the same, so there’s no benefit there in terms of a reduced cost for downloading tracks, and I have to buy an album to get access to the unlimited subs.  I already have free, unlimited streaming from Spotify (for example), so why buy an album?
3. In terms of a subscription based model Spotify has the best offering (in the UK) at under £10 per month for unlimited music, which I can listen to offline. 

I’m sticking with what I’ve got but I wonder how many people will be drawn to Sky’s offering?  It’s free for the first month for Sky Broadband customers, so with my bargain hunting hat on, if you have Sky Broadband go get your free album.  Then go elsewhere, save more money and get a more innovative service because this doesn’t look like one.  I wish Spotify worked in Media Center.

The service is available here: http://songs.sky.com/

And the full press release is here

So folks I’d really like to know what you think about this.  As everyone knows, in England, we’re passionate about this game called football (the real one, the one that girls play in the US, what you call “Soccer”) [p.s. I actually couldn’t give two hoots about the sport] but lots of people care, lots and lots.  This weekend sees the first ever game that will only be shown online, no “TV” broadcasters wanted to pay the Football Association enough money for the rights.

The situation we’re left with is lots of people very scared to be pulled in the 21st century and being forced to “watch on my tiny laptop screen”.   The beeb have a superb write up on the situation.  I’d like to know what the folks over the pond (and everywhere else) think about this, if it were an NFL, NHL or NBA game, what would the reaction be?  Is it too early for this?  Is the technology mature enough?  It is, by the way, being streamed in Flash.

Pummel the comments button!

This is an interesting one.  I’ve just come across [thanks to @whatleydude on twitter] a way connect to the media on a Mac from your Xbox 360, which brings it into the box of interesting things to do.

The software is called Connect 360 and it’s from Nullriver.  Put simply it let you:

• Get to your iTunes music from Xbox
• Shoutcast streaming
• Viewing an iPhoto library
• and HD streaming

I don’t think this is new, but has anyone found it useful, I’m guessing this is a uPNP server for Mac?

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) has just been released so I thought I’d throw up a quite guide on how to get it and do the install (this is very basic folks, as the product is really simply put together, but some people like this stuff).

• Go to http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/ and click the big Download Now icon
• Select your location and which version of Windows you have
• Download and run or just Run the setup file, you’ll be prompted to allow the install by User Account Control in most cases
• Read and accept the Ts&Cs by clicking Next and I accept

• MSE can ONLY be installed on a legal version of Windows (yet another reason to stay legal kids) so you next have to accept validation by clicking Validate you will be told if your version passes.  Click the Install button to begin, it’s very quick under 2 minutes for me.

• Finally you’ll have option of scanning your machine, I recommend you do!

• Now that MSE is installed it will download updates, this for me took around 3 minutes on a 10mbit connection and once complete a scan will start, the time the scan takes will vary according to what you have on your PC, the more stuff the longer it’ll take.

The end.  That’s all their is to installing it, and whilst that scan is running you’ll notice that you can use your PC and you can play with settings in MSE if you’d like.

The folks at TwonkyMedia have just released an IE plug in that lets you do something very similar to PlayTo in Windows 7 from a web page and unlike the other PlayTo features, Windows 7 isn’t needed. 

The eHomeUpgrade article covers everything I’d like to say but what great find, the software is available here: http://www.twonkymedia.com/beam/ and obviously you’ll need a DLNA compliant device (a DMR) to send the content to, so your Xbox 360, digital photo frame or Sonos are perfect!

Via eHomeUpgrade

Not quite Media Center related, but it could help if you’re mobile.  This is one of the more interesting takes on browser selection criteria that I’ve seen, it’s something I’d not really thought about before…does the browser you use affect your battery life?

The answer from AnandTech is that yes, it does, and quite dramatically as the image below shows.  Also look what’s right at the top of the performance list for a change, IE8!  This I’m thinking is yet another reason that Windows 7 performs so well in battery tests, and I wonder if they did any benchmarking against mobile performance whilst IE8 was in dev, like the engineering team did with Windows 7.

For the full analysis read AnandTech’s post, but what’s interesting is Flash usage plays a major part in battery usage.

File this one under impressive installations.  This little video, featured on Make magazine shows a superb kitchen installation of a touch screen EEE PC that’s been modded and had a touch screen added.  Looks like a good bit of installation work.  Play on full volume in the office on Monday for some interesting looks! (or play it on mute if you don’t want the funny looks).

Looks like the ad machine is starting up with this very cute ad that also shows off some of the great things that have been said about the new OS.

Love it or hate it Microsoft have lots of hope pinned on the Xbox360 as a device for entertainment in your living room.  Right now it’s also the best extender available as it remains to be seen if new ones will be announced at CEDIA.  It is then quite nice to see that the price for an Elite has dropped by $100 USD and Pro (which will also becomme extinct) has dropped by $50 USD….hope we see these drops in the UK and EU too!

As this Gizmodo post points out that brings pricing back into line with the PS3, which is a good thing.  Go on then, someone comment on the noise…

Ian tweeted Friday about a TV show in the UK called Newswipe, unfortunately just a day after the series ended.  Now I know that I can catch up on it using TunerFree MCE but I wanted to make sure that I don’t miss it again – it’s funny, but it’s already gone off the air, so it’s not in the guide.  So I fired out a tweet asking the community on twitter what I could do.

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

Just thought you’d like to know that I’ve just posted my first blog entry to my blog on The Digital Lifestyle.

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.

I’m about to start trying to write a little addin for Windows Media Center to let me make better use of the Y-CAM.  I’ve applications, like MCENetCam, but they just aren’t doing it for me.

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.

Ok, it is time to admit it.  All is not well in the geeky home.  There are little niggles, everythings working but it’s not slick and it’s not well integrated enough.  It’s time to start finding some solutions.  Here are the snags, if you know a way I can overcome any of them, then let me know in a comment on this post, email me, or twitter me.

• 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

For a while now I’ve been looking at some home monitoring systems and how I can best integrate them into my digital experience.  Previously I’ve used Yawcam with some pretty great results but currently I’m trying to reduce my carbon foot print and I want to make everything that has to run as low power consumption a possible.  For that reason I really wanted an IP Webcam that didn’t need a PC powered on all the time.

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.

It’s been a long time since I had something work actually blogging about but I just had to talk about this.  I’ve finally got around to setting up my old PC as a Windows Home Server, it’s taken me this long as I’ve not had a lounge to expand into.

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

I picked up on this from Ian’s blog but this has got to be one of the best Media Center plug-ins in development at the moment.  If you’re in the uk you’ll have heard of the BBC iPlayer, basically we have a “uniquely” funded broadcaster and they are making much of their content available for free in the UK.

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.

Stuff-em-up-the-hill-backwards has an interesting piece with links etc, on Freesat’s launch today in the UK.

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.

I’ve posted in the past about what’s on my phone, what’s on my Media Center, and what my Media Center hardware is.  In the same theme this post is about the killer web services that I use. 

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.

Well, it’s official. I’ve heard about it from Download Squad , LifeHacker, and Jason’s blog. And it’s really well written about in the Vista Blog.

You can get it here, I am right now.

TGB Just posted this:

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!

Ian Dixon and the Live Team blogged yesterday about FolderShare.  It’s a little tool that’s in Live Beta that lets you synchronise your files between computers.  Ian brought up the BRILLIANT idea of synchronising your media using it.  I’ve decided to do something slightly different and synchronise my downloads, since almost all my surfing is done on the laptop it makes much more sense.

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 :

It’s fair to say there are a number of projects I want to do ggua year and I intend to post about each of them as I do them.

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

Well I’ve already posted about my software setup, but just what do I use in hardware terms on my Media Center Rig?

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!

One of the best communities, and by that I mean most active, most knowlageable and friendly is the Australian Windows Vista & XP Media Center Support Community. I’ve been watching them for a while. It’s how I found out about one of my favourite plugins, myTV and it’s where I’ve just found the list of Vista Tips linked above. A great sticky on their forums.

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

I don’t think I’ve ever actually talked about how and what I use to run my Media Center. This is a little list of what I think is some truly excellent software that’s been produced by some very talented individuals. I run Vista Ultimate on my Media Center and I try to run it pretty clean.

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.

I wanted some form of monitoring from the home setup of something. Not really sure why but I sometimes get a bit worried when we are away from home.

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.

It’s been a few days now since I got myTV working fully on my MediaCenter rig. Got to say I’m loving the experience!

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

Over on10 Steven Lindsay as done something I’d really love to do at some point, if I’m allowed, and has installed a Media Center into his kitchen. Looks cool too, here’s the link:

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 :

Over the weekend I downloaded and installed the excellent myTV for media center. It’s written in mcml and is the best non Microsoft Vista Media Center app I’ve seen. I dont’ have access to the link at the moment to check my delicious links for a link to the app.

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’ve just been given the go ahead to download the technical trial of Livestation.  It seems that it’s mainly news stations that are available, but a couple of those are really interesting to see on there.

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

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