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.

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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!]

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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

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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.

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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.

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