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News, Analysis, and Opinion on Microsoft Digital Media Technologies (and TGB News!)
April 2007 - Posts
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April 25th 2007, New York, NY - S1Digital, a leading builder
of high-end Media Centers announced they will be introducing CableCARD (OCUR)
enabled Media Centers and Servers in early May.
Digital Cable Tuners are the “must have” technology of 2007
and will allow customers to watch and record digital cable programming,
including premium HDTV channels, directly from their S1Digital Media Center
without the need for a set top box. Up to two Digital Cable Tuners can be
installed on each Media Center.
When coupled with Media Center Extenders (such as the Xbox
360) customers will be able to stream live TV, including HDTV, to other rooms
around their home via a standard home network, providing an extremely easy to
install and use multi-room video distribution solution.
Adding Digital Cable Tuners rounds out S1Digital’s already
full featured solutions that include HD-DVD and Blu-ray playback, 1080p HDMI
video output, 7.1 channel surround sound, multi-terabyte storage and Intel Viiv
Technology. S1Digital Media Centers are powered by Intel Core 2 Duo and Quad
processors and run Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate.
“We are excited to offer this new HDTV experience on our
Media Centers. The inclusion of CableCARD technology is yet another example of
S1Digital’s commitment to bringing the very best home entertainment solutions
to our customers,” said Paul Heitlinger, S1Digital CEO and founder.
S1Digital ProLine and Home Series Media Centers with CableCARD
are available for pre-order now.
For a demonstration of S1Digital’s Media Centers with
CableCARD, visit the S1Digital Experience at 117 E. 7th St or Stereo
Exchange, at 627 Broadway, just North of Houston St., in New York City (from
the middle of May).
For further information, please visit www.s1digital.com, email sales@s1digital.com or call (888)632-6897.
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Cross Posted from Chris Lanier's Blog at http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/
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One Voice Technologies, Inc. developer of 4th Generation
voice solutions for the Telecom and Interactive Multimedia markets, and HiPe
PC, manufacturer of high performance desktop, notebook, media center and
professional workstations, today announced that HiPe PC has launched
Driv-N(TM), a new line of in-vehicle devices based on Microsoft Windows Vista
Media Center and powered by One Voice's voice control. Starting at $799, Driv-N
is the ultimate in-vehicle entertainment experience designed to fit into most
vehicles and offers a brilliant in-dash 6.5" motorized touchscreen display
(Driv-N I15) and optional 15.3" roof mount LCD for added rear passenger
enjoyment. For more information about Driv-N, visit http://www.hipepc.com/store/pc/viewCategories.asp?idCategory=102
or http://www.hipepc.com.
With Driv-N you can watch DVDs, listen to CDs, MP3s, Apple
iTunes, enjoy XM online satellite radio, Internet Radio and browse the web,
while remaining connected to your home or office PC in ways you've never
imagined. Best of all, Driv-N can be controlled entirely by voice! Voice
Control for Driv-N, powered by One Voice's Media Center Communicator(TM),
delivers high accuracy for a wide variety of accents, operates on simple to use
voice commands and requires no voice training.
Driv-N features include:
- Voice recognition by One Voice
- Motorized 6.5" touchscreen monitor
- Integrated GPS navigation
- High speed mobile internet access
- AM/FM/XM Radio
- DVD/CD/MP3/WMA/iTunes playback
- Bluetooth hands free calls
- Onboard OBD II vehicle diagnostics
- Integrated rearview camera control
- Read and send email
- Create your own custom voice commands to launch websites
and applications
"Driv-N revolutionizes the in-vehicle entertainment and
navigation experience by consolidating the functionality of many devices into
one affordable package," said Richard Stenlund, Sales and Marketing
Manager at HiPe PC. "Our integration with One Voice enables Driv-N users
to easily and naturally navigate their digital entertainment while keeping
their eyes on the road and their hands on the wheel."
"We are very excited about our partnership with HiPe PC
and the tremendous potential of the emerging car-pc market," said Dean
Weber, president and CEO at One Voice Technologies. "Drive-N represents
the most feature rich in-vehicle entertainment and navigational system
available today, and at an affordable price. We look forward to a strong and
prosperous relationship with HiPe PC."
About HiPe PC
Driv-N is the first of several new lines of personal
computers by HiPe PC. HiPe PC offers unique computer technology products that
include Home Theater computers, Gaming Computers and high performance Notebook
PCs built from top quality components, with a strong focus on silent, high
performance computing and superior customer service. For more information on
HiPe PC, visit http://www.hipepc.com or call 1-888-602-6960.
About One Voice Technologies, Inc.
One Voice Technologies, Inc. (OTCBB:ONEV - News) is the world's first
developer of 4th Generation voice solutions for the Telecom and Interactive
Multimedia markets. Our Intelligent Voice(TM) solutions employ revolutionary, patented
technology that allows people to send messages (E-mail, SMS, Instant Messaging
and paging), purchase products, get information and control devices - all by
using their voice. The company is headquartered in La Jolla, California. For
more information, please visit http://www.onev.com.
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Cross Posted from Chris Lanier's Blog at http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/
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Ryan Tollefson over at The Green Button has created my new
favorite application for Media Center. MCE Virtual Remote
uses Charile Kindel’s MCE
Controller to create a virtual software remote that you can use for basic
controller of your Media Center.
If you are like me, and always have a laptop (or a tablet)
in front of your face while sitting on the couch this is must have software. I always seem to lose my actual remotes, and
this is the best backup I can have.
Another great use, and while Ryan developed it is to use it with a UMPC.
Ryan released it last night, and after playing with it I
suggested that he add a minimize to tray feature for the Virtual Remote so that
you could always have it running on the PC.
Apparently Ryan also liked the idea and updated the program an hour or
so later with the feature.
Give it a try, free download and very useful. While you are trying that out, you also might
want to take a look at Ryan’s Group Policy for Windows Vista to replace Explorer.exe
with Media Center.
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Cross Posted from Chris Lanier's Blog at http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/
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mControl
v2.00 Alpha 3 (Registration Required) | If you are an mControl user and you
are running Vista you might want to start playing the v2 which is now code
complete. x64 is not yet supported, so
only x86 Vista users can try it out. It
will also install on Windows XP, but I don’t believe you get any of the new UI
elements (MCML).
Embedded Automation has also added conditional macros which
is my top request for mControl. I don’t
see the main one I want yet (automation based on playlist access), but it’s
getting there.
Registered users can download the Alpha now, but as with all
pre-release software it is not recommended for daily use.
On a related note, you can also check out mControl
running on Windows Home Server.
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Cross Posted from Chris Lanier's Blog at http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/
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I might be too busy to post, but that sure doesn't stop things from happening around us!
Microsoft at NAB 2007
DWAnderson get a CableCARD PC
CE Pro Bits
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Cross Posted from Chris Lanier's Blog at http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/
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I’ve been really busy, but that shouldn’t stop you from clicking here
and thus getting a chance to beta test the next version of Windows Media
Center! If chosen, you will be contacting via e-mail by May 31, 2007. (Via
Jessica)
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Cross Posted from Chris Lanier's Blog at http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/
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Looks
like Apple gets convergence marketing for Apple TV (as expected), maybe
Microsoft wants to take a hint from this commercial and apply it to all of
there offers.
This is, in my opinion, the biggest problem with the
platform. It’s not the lack of SoftSled,
it’s not that CableCARD requires you to buy a new PC, it’s not limited codec
support on Extenders. It’s the fact that
people don’t know what they have or what they can do.
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Cross Posted from Chris Lanier's Blog at http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/
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We have seen NetFlix
support in Media Center for years now, but it looks like it is Blockbuster’s
turn now. My Blockbuster v0.1
is a new plug-in for Media Center 2005 that allows you to Add and remove titles
from your queue, Browse New Releases, Browse Recommendations, Search, View
movie details, Watch movie trailers, and more.
Check it out here.
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Cross Posted from Chris Lanier's Blog at http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/
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Spring Update
for Xbox 360 | Among the new features to the Xbox 360 with the Spring
Update is this little jewel below.
- H.264 video support: Up to 10 Mbps, Baseline, Main, and High
(up to level 4.1) Profiles with 2 channel AAC LC and Main Profiles.
- Added MPEG-4 Part 2 video support: Up to 5 Mbps, Simple
Profile with 2 channel AAC LC and Main Profiles.
The question now is does it apply just to the Dashboard or does it also apply to Media Center Extender functions?
Notes: DivX and XviD are MPEG-4 Part 2 ASP. According to the announced support, they are not supported. It also doesn't say if AVI containers are supported. There is a lot unanswered at this point about the support, but considering audio support is marked for AAC I assuming that it only supports MP4 containers (meaning not AVI).
Edit: Confirmed that it does not apply to Media Center Extender of the Xbox 360.
Update: Microsoft updated the page. It used to say H.264 at 15 Mbps, and MPEG-4 at 8 Mbps. It now says 10 Mbps, and 5 Mbps respectively.
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Cross Posted from Chris Lanier's Blog at http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/
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Recording
Broker - Automated Recording Conflict Resolution over Network | I wouldn’t
expect anything other than greatness from the man who bought us DVRMSToolbox,
and Recording
Broker is no exception. It is a very neat utility for those of us with more than one Media Center
PC. No longer do you need your single Media
Center PC to have six tuners, now you can share the love!
Recording
Broker is a simple application and service that runs on your Media Center
PC’s. When you have a recording
conflict, it pings the other Media Center PC’s on your network and asks them to
resolve it for you. This means that you
can schedule four shows to record on a PC with three tuners, and it forwards
the forth recording request to your other Media Center PC, which might have two
tuners.
I’ve been playing with it and it works amazing well. I’ve got a Media Center PC with three tuners,
and a second one with two tuners. An
Xbox connects to the Media Center PC with three tuners, and all is happy. However, there is every so often when you
want to record four things at night.
Sure, I could walk to the other PC and schedule it, share the recorded
TV folder, and etc. But, with Recording Broker
I just schedule away via the Xbox Extender and Recording Broker distributes the
load between the two Media Center PC’s (you still would want to share the Recorded TV folder though).
Free
download from Andy’s Blog, but you know with something this cool you want
to donate
a few bucks to Andy. Versions for both MCE 2005 and Vista.
Don’t forget to also check out DVRMSToolbox
with Automatic
Commercial Skip.
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Cross Posted from Chris Lanier's Blog at http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/
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Every time I see a post about what Microsoft should do to
make Media Center better it never fails that one of the first replies to “record to something other than DVR-MS.” No matter how many times people request this,
it will not happen. DVR-MS is a
necessary format for Media Center for various reasons; the main ones from a
user perspective are metadata, content protection, and hardware resources.
- Metadata –
Metadata is very important to Media Center, as with any PVR. Standard MPEG-2 isn’t going to be able to hold
the same amount of metadata (none, actually).
You might be saying “I don’t need to stinkin’ metadata,” and you would
be wrong. Show title, recording date,
duration, etc are all part of what DVR-MS brings. Remember, DVR-MS is really just MPEG-2 within
an ASF wrapper, so you can strip the MPEG-2 out easily. Having the metadata within the file is
helpful when converting the format to other formats like WMV, and also when
copying the file to other PC’s. The metadata
stays attached in both of these scenarios.
- Content Protection –
You can complain all you want about Microsoft supporting DRM, but it’s not
going to change anything. Supporting
CGMS-A in Media Center since the first version can be seen as the first step to
CableCARD support. It can be seen as the
first step to DIRECTV/Dish support.
Notice how no other PC PVR has these, and then notice the file formats
they record in. PVR’s that record to
vanilla MPEG-2 will be forced to change to a format like DVR-MS to get support
for anything new. Yes, there are
problems with CGMS-A, big ones in fact (post on that coming later).
- Resources – This one never fails too, “I want to record to XviD!” I say “Why?”
It’s important to remember to recording directly to MPEG-4 means that
your CPU is going to be encoding the video on-the-fly. That means lower video quality, and it ups
the system requirements for the PC. Media Center supports two NTSC (or two CableCARD
Tuners) plus two ATSC Tuners. If you
were to record to XviD you are going to be lucky to have support for two
tuners. Even with dual-core and
quad-core processors, it is still going to tax the system to much. When hardware manufactures start including
hardware MPEG-4 encoders on their cards, this will change. However, very few are doing this right now
and I don’t expect it ever to be supported in Media Center. I think we will see the first MPEG-4 capture
come with the DIRECTV solution.
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Cross Posted from Chris Lanier's Blog at http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/
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ATI TV Wonder
Digital Cable Tuner: AMD and Dell Bring CableCARD to PCs (AnandTech) |
AnandTech has an article up about CableCARD in PC’s. It gives a nice overview of where Media
Center started, and where it is now. Not
much new in terms of information on CableCARD and Media Center. If you have been watching my posts over the
last year you will basically know everything they have to say on that topic.
They do however give a overview of Dell’s CableCARD ready
machines. They also go through their
problems with getting a TWC to correctly install the CableCARD.
Very long article, but worth the read.
Thanks Valy!
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Cross Posted from Chris Lanier's Blog at http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/
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Linksys
v1 Media Center Extender | $99 (Geeks.com) Geeks.com has Linksys v1 Media
Center Extenders for $99 again. It’s a
nice pick up it you don’t plan on upgrading to Vista right off the bat as v1
Extenders will no longer connect to Vista.
I believe they are referbs, but it doesn’t seem to note. If you search their website you will find
that they do sell referbs, at a price of $124.99, which is noted on the ad as the
regular price.
Happy buying, remember it doesn’t work with Vista.
Thanks Valy!
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Cross Posted from Chris Lanier's Blog at http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/
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I missed
a post from Peter Rosser last week that pointed to a Microsoft Jobs Details
webpage. Microsoft, always growing is
looking for more Media Center team members.
Peter, specially pointed to
this post which could give some good details on where Microsoft is headed
with Media Center.
Within the job description is says “…you will design and build groundbreaking new user experiences that
will be enjoyed by millions of people worldwide and further deepen our integration with other MS technologies like Xbox
360, Zune, and Windows Live.” [Emphasis mine]
This could just be a blanket statement, but it could also
mean they are really looking to integrate these specific technologies into
Media Center! Currently, Zune has no
integration at all, just one of the reasons I’ll never buy one. If Microsoft added Zune syncing via Media
Center if would get me more exciting, about to the point I am with the Portable
Media Centers that Microsoft seems to have abandoned. And using Zune’s Wireless for syncing would
be even better.
More Xbox 360 integration is always good, I would personally
like to see the integration go the other way though. Bring Xbox 360 to Media Center, not Media
Center to Xbox 360. What I mean is bring
the content from the Xbox Live! Marketplace to Media Center. I would sure like to keep my media
integrated, and right now if I was to buy something from the Marketplace I can
only watch it on that single Xbox 360.
So, hopefully we will really see “deeper integration” in the
next version of Media Center.
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Cross Posted from Chris Lanier's Blog at http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/
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Should it be any shock they never
released this application? Your probably
right though, nothing to hide on their part and clearly nothing was stolen in
this coverup which resulted in no application being released.
Update 3: Before commenting, remember that no one from
MediaPortal has contacted Doug or replied to his e-mails as of 04/04/2007 at 1
pm CST
Despite MediaPortal's
"mistake" saying they only “borrowed” the graphics, Doug
has posted more code samples in the comments of my other post. You can compare the code of WebGuide to the
code of MediaPortal and see the similarities.
As I have said, I’m not a programmer but I do understand a few of the basics
and I do see similarities in the two.
Feel free to compare. It’s hard
to not think that the code was lifted from WebGuide4 when you consider what
else they have admitted to already “borrowing.”
Doug also posted a follow-up to the reply by Frodo from
MediaPortal with
a post in his support forums
Doug: “I'm mystified
as to why I was not contacted by MediaPortal in the first place when they
wanted to "borrow" my work, and I'm having difficulty reconciling
Frodo's explanation with the extent of the "borrowing" that took
place. My entire library of images (more than 120 and the WebGuide
logo) were included in the MediaPortal site, my stylesheets are being
used, and the source-code is strewn with hardcoded pieces from my
HTML/ASPX pages. There's also some awfully familiar logic flows to the
layout. And the site was even called WebGuide! That's an awful lot
of "borrowing!" I am reassured that Frodo has stated that any
references to or infringements upon WebGuide's copyrighted material will be
removed from MediaPortal's site.
I've spent thousands
of hours over the past four years turning WebGuide into what it is today, and
it is discouraging and even a little mind-boggling to find that someone
has "borrowed" my work to jump start their own
product. I appreciate the Media Center communities' overwhelming support
and help in solving this issue. Developing for such an engaged and loyal
community is extremely satisfying, and I look forward to focusing on making
WebGuide an even better product.”
So, you can judge for yourself based on everything that has happened today. I see it as a huge problem, and MediaPortal's cover-up of the issue is an even bigger one.
Of course, Media Center users (MCE 2005/Vista) should check out WebGuide4. Download it here.
Update:
And so in contiues….The
MediaPortal Admin’s edited my post in
their forums to point to Doug’s forums instead of my blog. Not that I have a problem with people going
to Doug’s forums (I’ve linked to them several times today and have been
communicating with Doug too) but MediaPortal is now trying to cover up this
even more by forcing users to only see the information they want them to see.
Yeah, they have nothing to hide.
If they didn't want users to see their "mistake," the frist step would have been not to steal someone else's work. Be it a single image, line of code, or whole program.
Stop trying to cover it up MediaPortal guys, it ain't going to work.
Related:
MediaPortal
Steals Images from WebGuide4 Developer (Rips Off Program)
Updated:
Did MediaPortal Just Rip-Off WebGuide4?
Update 3: Before commenting, remember that no one from
MediaPortal has contacted Doug or replied to his e-mails as of 04/04/2007 at 1
pm CST.
Note: Original title read “Update on Stolen Code from WebGuide4
Used In MediaPortal”. Changed to reflect
known facts and too try and get MediaPortal supporters to answer my questions,
instead of avoid and ignore them. I’ll digress
on the code for now.
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Cross Posted from Chris Lanier's Blog at http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/
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