This week, as Adam warms himself by the fire, he and Josh get a chance to cover all of the great emails and comments we’ve received in the last two weeks. You guys make our show what it is so keep them coming! There are a ton of options for contacting us and you’ll find them listed below.
We also take time to discuss your various 3rd party options when it comes to movie cataloging and viewing within Media Center. There are some great options out there when it comes to displaying your movie collection and we talk about three of them. Each has it’s pros and cons and you’ll find links to them below.
Don’t forget that your voice can be a part of the show! Just call 1-877-856-4933 and leave us a message. We’ll get you dropped right in. Of course you can always use the contact page to reach us or find us on Twitter!
Show Notes:
Click Here to download Episode 48!
Don’t forget that you can support us and skip some commercials at the same time! Entertainment 2.0 is sponsored by Dragon Global, creators of Show Analyzer, the ONLY commercial skipping solution compatible with Windows 7 WTV files.
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great episode as always….
first email from Brandon about extenders vs. pc. Like always if you want what I call a “true tv experience” on all the tv's in your home. IE having a unified guide data, being able to watch a tv show on one tv, pause it and pick up right where you left off without having to FF or RR to where you left off, the ONLY solution are extenders.
As for content, yes extenders are limited in codec support, but if you are ripping/backing up your content yourself, and not downloading it, why not just rip the content into a format your extenders can already support?
Now onto Adam about the cable card hack. There honestly isn't much to it. It does not affect your pc or your OS install. It redoes the boot manager and fakes out the bios so it makes the OS look like it is running an approved bios. it doesn't touch the OS and doesn't affect its operation at all. The tweaking and install of third party apps in media center are much much more detrimental to the stability and every day use of media center than the cable card hack does.
I agree with prices for cable card tuners, $300 for the 4 tuner Ceton card is the perfect price point. or if ATI single tuners drop to sub $100 each would also be ideal.
Josh buy an HDTV already!!!!! and Damn get in the 21st century, drop the land lines and get cell phones, no one does land lines anymore.
Also I couldn't go without my cellphone for a day, I'd go nutz, it is my life line, more so the internet on the phone than the actual phone part.
Onto another emailer issue, KJ I believe it was? Had issues with OTA and saying HTPC's and Media Center was great but stability with HD was an issue. I can tell you that I've been running Media Center (at the time 2005) for over 5 years now. and I've been running stable/solid OTA ATSC HD for that entire time. In fact I am running 6 HD tuners, 4 ATSC and 2 QAM with my current setup and I have absolutely ZERO issues with HD.
I also agree with Java Jack and his comments, more media centric support, native flash support on extenders, the Native Netflix working on extenders would be huge.
Also Adam when the emailer was talking about 100lbs, its a British term for cost, 100 pounds is like what we would say 100 dollars. Pounds = dollars, well sort of but you know what I mean.
Also Josh/Adam DVD Library, now called Movie Library in 7mc has been around since MCE 2005, it was just hidden and was enabled if you had one of the Sony 200 disc fire wire dvd changers. You could enable it via registry edit, and it would work for anyone. Also YES DVD Library/Movies Library will play back Video_TS folder structure for dvd's. That is actually how DVD Library/Movie Library was/is intended for use. Just Video_TS doesn't work on extenders.
As far as Meta data goes, to speed up the DVD Library/Movie Library you can use a site like DVDXML.com to download the dvdid.xml file for dvd library. You can mannually do it, or you can use automated tools like Clever tools DVD Library Tool: http://www.clevertec.co.uk/productsutilities.htm
or the DVDXML.com windows client: http://www.dvdxml.com/download.php?view.15509
Clever tools dvd library tool isn't free, it is $20, then you also have to pay $20 for API access to the DVDXML.com site.
the dvdxml.com windows library client is free, however you still have to pay for the API access.
Once you run either app, it'll save all the meta data for your movies in the DVDinfocache file stored on your htpc, this will then make DVD Library/Movie Library load instantly.
If you don't do this, what windows/media center does is re-load the meta data for the dvd library each and every time you open it, which is why if you have a ton of movies it takes forever to load.
So I know this was a long comment, but wanted to get some of the topics covered.
– Josh
Josh, regarding the pound thing, I think Adam was trying to be funny.
My email said “£100” so the monetary use of the word pound was clear. If I'd been meaning weight, then I'd have used kilos. It pains me to say it, but the metric system is the one thing the French got right, and we got wrong.
Josh, regarding the pound thing, I think Adam was trying to be funny.
My email said “£100” so the monetary use of the word pound was clear. If I'd been meaning weight, then I'd have used kilos. It pains me to say it, but the metric system is the one thing the French got right, and we got wrong.