One of the biggest complaints I’ve heard throughout the years about Windows Media Center is that everything is locked down. Changing the background or appearance usually takes some sort of odd registry edit, and who wants to do that? Well, fortunately, there’s some great developers out there who feel your pain & design apps to help you out. Overview MC […]
Read moreHere’s an oldie but a goodie I brought over from the HTPCnews days, it’s still relevant today because of the limitations of S/PDIF and the high resolution audio tracks found on the next generation formats (Blu-ray/HD DVD). So with that in mind there are some quick changes to modernize the information. What is S/PDIF? S/PDIF stands for Sony/Philips Digital Interface. It is […]
Read more
BigScreenGlobal is one of the premier Media Center plugin companies in the world. You’d be hard pressed to find another development company which does as much customization with the MCML abilities, while still keeping things simple & easy enough to use. The expectations are a bit different than a lot of apps, however, since all BigScreenGlobal apps are commercial & […]
Read more
Many people use Media Center to combine their music collections into one. But more & more people are learning the joy of websites like Slacker, Pandora, and the one for this plugin, Last.fm. These sites basically bring all sorts of music to you, based on particular artists that you like to listen to. Best of all, these services are free […]
Read more
Netflix & Media Center users must be excited these days. With Netflix allowing for streaming of movies to your computer, it was inevitable for some fantastic developer to create an MCE plugin which would bring that to your home theater PC with the convenience of your remote control & from your sofa. Nobody could have predicted however, that there would […]
Read more
For some people, sound can make or break a home theater. For others, they just want to set it up, have it work and generally sound decent. Today I’m going to step through some of the critical factors in determining how to connect your Home Theater PC to your audio system. Hopefully the information will allow you to determine the […]
Read more
I was recently looking at my development system and wanted to load Windows as a boot option to a system primarily running Linux. This got me to thinking. What if I did something that corrupted or overwrote the boot sector on my hard drive? What if I could no longer boot into Linux as I had intended? What if I […]
Read more
Sometime ago, we had a few readers request an update to our build guides we published shortly after we started the site. I will remind our readers of a couple important points. Ultimately we pick a piece of hardware because we feel it offers the best bang for the buck. I would imagine that there will be a lot of […]
Read more
Ignorance Is Bliss has been hard at work for our HTPC community and has recently released an update to his Yougle plugin. Of course, that means we need to provide an update to our "Life With A Plugin" series! As mentioned in my previous episode, Yougle takes information typically found on a webpage and presents it in a 10′ UI […]
Read more
Remote Scheduling allows you to view your TV guide listings & modify your Media Center recordings from anywhere in the world. Currently, there’s only two real players in this category. One is Microsoft’s Remote Record, and the other (Webguide), well…got bought out by Microsoft. Both are useful in their own way, and I’ve found a happy medium in using both […]
Read more