shahine.com/omar/

WebGuide kicks the pants of Orb IMHO. The Vista SideBar Gadget lets me control my media center (view scheduled recordings, watch tv, listen to music, remote control my media center) from within my home on our kitchen PC or remotely at work.

This is a really well done piece of software. It's the holy grail of local, remote control, and streaming support for Media Center (Vista and MCE 2005).

For example, here is me controlling the audio on my MCE box from a web browser on my Kitchen PC. I can play files locally or control the Media Center via the web based remote control.

Here is a screen shot of the Vista SideBar with a list of my current recordings:

And the show playing in Windows Media Player

The setup software will configure your UPnP router to open the correct ports though. Nice.

[via Chris Lanier]

I just found out about a Media Center 2005 add-in that will play all iTunes content in the MCE UX. This seems like a better idea than buying an Apple TV just so I can watch my downloaded TV shows in my living room.

MCE Tunes seems perfect. Anyone using it? This could save me $270 (Apple TV = $300, MCE Tunes = $30).

Like Jeff, I am seriously thinking of giving Comcast the boot. I need to add up all the season passes I would need to get and see what the damage will be.

Of course, I canceled HBO a long time ago and watch all their stuff a few years later on DVD from Netflix. I just pretend it's not on (like Rome). Now if Apple could score HBO we'd be in business.

Oh, and I already have an Antenna so I get CBS, NBC, Fox and ABC in Hi-Def over the air (which my Media Center records just fine). I may need to invest in a better Antenna though as the one I have in my garage can be flaky at times.

This of course will save me a bunch of money as I won't need to get a Vista Media Center with Cable Card cause I won't have Cable .

The only hole in this system is that I do on occasion like to watch the news (not the craptastic local news though).

I mentioned one reason to get Vista Ultimate a while back: Volume Shadow Copy. Well, another reason to get Ultimate is that it includes a MPEG2 encoder/decoder. Why should you care? Well Windows XP always required 3rd party MPEG decoders to do things such as play DVDs. If you own a Media Center PC then you know just how sorry this is since it's completely useless without one. It was always blamed on licensing costs (MPEG is not free).

Well great, so how did 3rd parties take care of this opportunity? The usual way... they created buggy substandard software that was sometimes ok at decoding but incapable of encoding. Or, it would install their DVD player that would often get in the way of the built in Windows software it was meant to service and behaved a lot like Anti Virus and Security software constantly saying "hey look at me!!! check out my always running tray icon process, and watch how I take over when you insert a DVD". They found all sorts of ways to take something that costs $5 or less to licence and turn it into anywhere from a $15 to a $60 "opportunity" with fancy bells and whistles you never needed in a DVD player. Thankfully, nVidia finally came out with a decent decoder a few years after XP came out but seems like they too have fallen victim to the "Bronze", "Gold", "Platinum" strategy of selling you more expensive sugar water.

Anyway, Vista Ultimate now has a genuine Microsoft included quality MPEG encoder/decoder. One less way to get stuck in DShow Hell. You can now expect the same level of quality from DVDs and the like that you get from Windows Media Video.

update: the mpeg decoder is also included in Vista Home Premium.

I never thought I'd see this day!!! So long Comcast and big silly cable co. I will be able to tune DirecTV directly in Windows Media Center. Unbelievable. It will also work with XBOX 360.

Will have to live with crappy Comcast DVR for a bit longer, but this is excellent news.