Alright, I am kind of cheating by incorporating a Tip Of The Day with a plugin announcement ;). Obvious cheating aside, I just read over at The Green Button that the plugin MceFM has been released that will allow you to listen to LastFM in Vista Media Center. The Green Button Thread: What is Last.FM? Last.fm tracks what you listen […]
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Here are a few of my thoughts on improving Vista Media Center. 1. Some sort of digital distribution that ties nicely into Media Center. After using a 3rd Party Netflix plugin, it is very clear to me, and no doubt to anyone who has used that same plugin, that digital distribution is here and damn great. I guess the obvious […]
Read moreMicrosoft is banking on digital downloads for its XBox system and appears to be OK with letting Blu-Ray just pass it by. GamesIndustry Going forwards, digital downloads is really where it’s at," Lewis told GamesIndustry.biz. "More and more people’s ongoing and ever-increasing downloading of music and movies is becoming the de facto. I think that’s going to happen in very […]
Read moreMickP just posted a fantastic guide/build log on his Multi Zone Audio experience over on the SageTV forums. Its a great read if your interested in the topic. SageTV For some time I’ve been trying to work out a way of sending audio directly from one of my machines to another. I’ve looked at various hardware solutions such as those […]
Read moreFrom firingsquad.com comes an interesting review of the AMD/ATI 780G IGP. I realize that the main premise of the article is performance but it brings up two capabilities that the 780G chipset allows builders to employ that might be useful for the HTPCer: As the article points out, the family HTPC might serve mom and dad just fine as a […]
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There are a lot of press releases that hit the wires that typically amount to a company congratulating itself for releasing a new product. Though this press release isn’t that different it does show how Niveus is advancing the Media Center platform. They are utilizing a new movie front-end plug-in that better emulates the Vista look and feel. Keeping the […]
Read moreI love the Ultimate Media Center contest Microsoft hosts, as you get to see really true dream Media Center setups. Well, Ian’s running a contest of his own for the little guy, big or small, matters not! The Digital Media Lifestyle It could be a big multi-room installation or a small neat single PC setup , anything that you have […]
Read moreIn Electronic House’s Q of the day, they answer what the difference is between the various multi-channel audio formats. This is a good primer for a person just getting into the Home Theater world. Electronic House The new Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD formats provide the digital audio signal at significantly higher bit-rates than that encoded on traditional DVDs. They are […]
Read moreChris nailed the proverbial nail on the head when he said Microsoft is not in talks with the Blu-ray association. As confirmed by Reuters, Aaron Greenburg said they are not in talk and will concentrate on the digital download experience instead. I think this is a very "head-in-the-sand" approach from Microsoft. Digital disitribution is not where its at for the […]
Read moreMedia Center’s “IR toggle codes” mean the platform isn’t very friendly to most universal remotes. At Media Center University at EHX, Autonomic Controls revealed some registry fixes for the quirk and created a script that can solve the problem with the click of a mouse. CE Pro Windows Media Center expects to see two different alternating IR codes for certain […]
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