Recommended recordings. You either love them or you hate them. There might be a middle ground, but I don't know anyone who lives there.
When I got my first TiVo, I loved the idea that it would track my viewing patterns and record more programs that it thought I would like. There were just two problems. Between my wife's habit of recording home makeover shows, and my tendency to thumbs up science fiction shows, I think we broke the thing. And what's worse, we had a 40-hour unit, which was only 20 hours at a decent quality. And I love saving up recordings to watch in marathon sessions. That didn't really leave room for recommended recordings.
Well, recommended recordings have finally made their way to Windows Media Center. Proxure's MyTV Genie lets you rate programs you like or detest, and it will recommend future programs you might like, and it will go ahead and record them for you if you let it. If you're too lazy to rate the shows, MyTV Genie will just track your viewing habits and go from there.
It's free, and a future release will have one feature missing from TiVo: community. You can share your favorites with friends or subscribe to a friend's "channel," to try recording some of their favorites.
Wavexpress unveiled a new version of TVTonic at CES earlier today which is designed to fully take advantage of Windows Vista. This new version can be accessed through the Online Media section of Windows Media Center, which means that using it just got easier.
Just to bring everyone up to speed, TVTonic is an application that can integrate into Windows Media Center to allow you to watch IPTV 'channels'. For more info, you can check out our MCE Spotlight post on it.
There are a few new and notable changes with this release, first of which is its integration into Windows Media Center via the Windows Media Center Presentation Layer, which means a nice sleek interface. Other notable features include integration with the Xbox 360, ability to play cached and streamed content, and support for HD feeds.
The best news about this new release is that this invaluable plugin is still free to users. If you are interested in trying it out, you can check out www.tvtonic.com.
Stephen Toub has updated his Position Changer add-in for Windows Media Center to work with Vista Media Center.
The add-in makes it easy to skip around media files using just your remote control, by entering time codes. While you're watching a recorded show or listening to music, all you have to do is hit the right arrow on your remote control or keyboard, and then enter the time you want to skip ahead or back to. So if you want to jump to 32 minutes and 8 seconds, you'd enter 3208. For 1 minute and 47 seconds, you'd enter 147. You get the idea.
The latest release no longer has a bookmarking feature, because it causes problems in Vista, so if you're still using Windows XP Media Center, you should probably grab an older version.
Sure, it's not that hard to figure out a way to transfer video from your computer to a mobile device like an iPod, PSP, PDA, or mobile phone. But few solutions seem quite as elegant for Windows Media Center Users as Makayama's new Mobile TV Center. In fact, the company claims its software is compatible with more than 500 different devices, although many are in the same class of devices (such as Windows Mobile or Palm PDAs).
All you have to do is install the software onto a Windows Media Center PC and pick what type of mobile device you use. Now every recording will be copied and converted to a mobile format in the background. When you connect your device or storage card, your recordings will be synchronized.
Mobile TV Center will set you back $34.95. There's also a free trial available.
Niall Ginsbourg is working on another application in the Big Screen series of Windows Media Center applications. Big Screen TV Shows doesn't sound like much at first. It monitors your recorded shows and scheduled recordings, and grabs detailed information about those shows from the internet. Yeah, that's pretty much what most PVRs do, right?
Well, Big Screen TV shows goes a lot further than that. In addition to episode data, you get cast, crew, and writer information for the series, and individual episodes. You get images letting you sort through your recorded TV shows the same way My Movies lets you sort through movies. You even get to choose from a selection of images or provide your own.
One of the nice features of Big Screen TV shows is that you'll get complete episode guide data from the web, which makes it easy to tell if you're watching episodes in order, even if they weren't broadcast in order. I've always been annoyed that most PVRs don't let you see episode numbers. This looks like a great solution, plus a whole lot more.
A new pre-release version of My Movies 2.20 is floating around, with new features, including the ability to scan barcodes from video boxes via a webcam. All you have to do to add a title to your video library is hold the box up to your webcam, and My Movies will search the internet for data. You can also type in UPC data by hand.
There's also a new database backup and restore function. Keep in mind, this is pre-release software, so download it at your own risk. And if you decide version 2.20 isn't for you and want to roll back your software, you won't be able to downgrade your video database version. So make sure to make a backup of all your data and save it in a safe place before installing the update.
One of the most common things that I use my MCE box for is to watch videos, whether they be full DVD's, DivX or XviD. The downside of watching non-DVD movies is that there are no chapter breaks, so if I want to pick up in a certain spot again, I am usually stuck either skipping forward or looking for a specific time frame.
Well BookMarkIt! takes care of a lot of these problems. This handy little plugin allows you to add bookmarks (which are similar to chapters on DVDs) to various video files so you can easily get back to where you left off.
Usage for this plugin is quite simple and straightforward. When you are watching a video and you want to add a bookmark, you can either hit the Info button on your MCE remote or you can right click with the mouse, and choose 'More'. Once you hit the 'More' button you can either save a new bookmark or open an existing one.
Installation of this plugin is quick and easy, and the best part is that it is free. For more information, and a link to download BookMarkIt!, just hit the Read link bellow.
Mobilewares has brought RSS,weather, business information, and photos to the Media Center PC by adding a 10-foot interface with their sweet of "Big Screen" products. Now you can add Big Screen Contacts to the list, which lets you browse your Outlook contacts on a TV screen.
Big Screen Contacts for Vista Media Center has just been released as a public beta (version 0.9).
The program lets you search, browse, and view contacts, which yo ucan import from Outlook 2003/2006 or from Windows Mail. The user interface is designed to mirror Vista media Center.
But to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I see the value in this sort of product. Sure, I was skeptical of programs to bring RSS feeds to the living room as well. Why read text on your television screen from 10 feet away when the stories are written to be read from computer screens just 2 or 3 feet away? (In terms of paragraph length etc.)
Anyway, it turns out that it's not too hard to read the occasional news story if you've got a good TV display. But I'm just not sure I need access to all of my contacts in the living room. It's not like they'd be taking up too much screen real estate, because the program only shows a few at a time, and you search for the contact you need. But that just seems like the sort of application I'm more likely to use in the office than the living room. Not that this is the only program that blurs the line between the living room and office for Windows Media Center users.
Maybe I'm biased because as a writer and reporter, most of the 1200 contacts in my address book are business contacts. Maybe if I had just a few dozen friends to look up, I'd want to be able to turn on the TV to find a number and dial my cordless phone. What do you think? Is this a useful addition to the list of things you an do with a media center PC?
One of the points that is reiterated a lot when it comes to Windows Media Center devices is that underneath that slick interface, there is still a computer running Windows XP. Although MCE offers a wealth of uses by itself, you can also use it for common tasks that you may perform on a regular computer.
In this day and age for example, who doesn't have an email address? Although a lot of us have webmail addresses (like Hotmail and Gmail), there are a lot of us who still like to use Outlook for our email and daily planning.
That's where the plugin MCE Outlook steps in. This dandy little plugin will give you access to all of your IMAP and POP3 email accounts that you have configured within Outlook, and all of this is viewable right in Media Center, so there is no need to leave the interface.
MCE Outlook not only gives you access to your email, but it also allows you to access to other features such as Notes, Tasks and Contacts.
MCE Outlook is a free download and can be found here.
Aaron Stebner has the heads up on three new applications for Vista Media Center from OABSoftware. They're all written in Media Center Markup Language, and do a pretty good job of bringing desktop-style applications to a 10-foot interface.
Vista Media Center Mail lets you read email from a POP3 server, or you can read the contents of your Outlook inbox.
Vista Caller ID tells you when you're receiving a phone call, and who it's from. It also keeps a log of callers, and if you've got an entry for the caller in Outlook, a picture will even pop up on your TV.
So far in the MCE Plugin Spotlight series, most of the plugins that have been highlighted have brought some sort of technical capabilities with it, whether it is something trivial like weather forecasts, or something more advanced like playing your music purchased through iTunes via MCE. So I decided to take a look at something a little more lighthearted this time around.
Every now and then we all feel like doing something a little different than just sitting in front of the TV and watching shows, instead we need a bit of interaction and stimulation. Well Funspot should be able to fill that role with the array of games that it adds to MCE.
Funspot is by no means for a die hard gamer looking to play a 3D first person shooter, rather it is for someone who wants to play the occasional game of blackjack, or perhaps try to solve a sudoku puzzle. The plugin installs quite a few different games, and although they may not be the best games known to man, they are a nice change from time to time.
Funspot is a free download that can be found on Download.com, and it is also worth noting that all of the games can be controlled via your MCE remote, so there is no need to use a keyboard and mouse.
We all know that sites like YouTube and Google Video are getting more and more popular everyday, and for that matter even video podcasts are exploding with traffic growth. The reason behind a large part of this success is due to the fact that people want to be able to choose what they watch and when, just like with their PVRs.
That brings me to the point of this particular post which is to talk about TVTonic, a wonderful plugin which not only allows you to subscribe to video podcasts within MCE, but it also has predefined content channels for you. The channels are broken up into genres like news, music, and cartoons, and within those channels you will find multiple streams of content.
This plugin also offers huge flexibility with the fact that you can create your own channels and add your own feeds anytime you want, so you are in no way restricted to what the predefined content is.
TVTonic is currently a free download, and according to this interview with Michael Sprague from Wavexpress (the makers of TVTonic), it will also be bundled with Vista's Media Center. TVTonic will also work through Internet Explorer if you do not have a Windows Media Center device.
One of the great things about using Windows MCE as a PVR is that you have the option to copy DVD's right on to the device, in effect making a DVD jukebox. You no longer need to search through your library to find that particular disc.
The downside is that by default it doesn't provide a whole lot of information about the movie. Instead all you usually get is just a title and it's up to you to remember the rest. Well that's all changing.
With My Movies 2 all of the hard stuff, like indexing movies by actors, directors, titles, etc, is all done automatically provided that you have an internet connection. My Movies will scan through your collection and retrieve all of the data for you, very similar to how the CDDB system works with CDs.
Among other features, My Movies 2 also helps you copy DVDs to your MCE device, it is available in 10 different languages, and it also offers limited support when using the Xbox 360 as a Media Center Extender.
My Movies 2 is free to download can be found here, and My Movies 2.10 Re Release 2 (which was announced recently) can be found here.
One of the biggest benefits of using Windows MCE as a PVR is that you get a full fledged media center with it, not just something that is limited to just recording TV. Although it can be used just to capture your favorite TV shows, it can also act like a jukebox for your music collection, be an on-screen photo album to showcase your pictures, and do much more.
Out of some of the uses mentioned above, the digital jukebox is one of the more popular ones, and MCE is often used as a replacement for other audio playing programs. Unfortunately it couldn't replace iTunes due to the fact that any purchased through iTunes was required to play through iTunes, up until now.
MCE Tunes is a paid plugin which will allow you to not only allows you to play your iTunes bought music through MCE, but it will also synchronize to iTunes daily to make sure that your library is up to date. The only requirements for this to work are that you have Media Center Edition Rollup 2 installed, iTunes 6.x or greater installed, and that the MCE device is authorized for the iTunes store.
As I mentioned above, this plugin is not free, but it will only set you back about $30. And although there are ways to circumvent the iTunes copy protection, this plugin doesn't break the DRM and according to the website is completely legal. Check out www.mcetunes.com for more information.
Any avid TV watcher who uses Windows XP MCE as their PVR probably knows that it doesn't take long for a hard drive to get filled, especially when a one hour show can end up consuming more than 3 GB of space. While it is easy for a hard drive to fill up quicker than you can watch your recorded shows, what can you do to save space?
The simplest and most straightforward solution is to lower the quality of the recordings, but we don't want to be stuck watching pixilated recordings. So if that isn't the best choice, we'll have to fall back to the next easiest thing: compression.
Crunchie is a plugin that was designed to take the uncompressed video that MCE records, convert it to the xvid video format, and in effect drastically shrink the file size. A real handy feature about this plugin is that you can actually run it as a scheduled task (at say 4 in the morning when you are asleep), so you don't need to worry about running it after every recording.
A note to those who wish to install this plugin: you will need to already have the DVRMSToolbox (which we will cover in another post), as well as an xvid playback codec installed on your system.
