One of the good things in terms of fiddling about with the Extenders is that they use Windows user accounts to run each devices session under (MCX1-5 for each device). This has been useful as it allows you to use logon scripts to allow the extenders session access to network resources.

This also means that you can set allowed time Windows unique to each extender using the the ‘net user’ command as you can for any other account. You can see the details on the syntax of this on my XP site at http://mvps.org/marksxp/WindowsXP/userhours.php

If someone tries to start up an extender which has had its logon hours limited, they won’t actually be told they’ve been blocked. A more generic, ‘There was a problem contacting the Media Center PC’ message will appear.

Unfortunately net accounts /forcelogoff does not appear to be effective against an extender session, so forcing the session to end when the time expires isn’t that simple. A very dirty method of kicking off your extenders would be to setup a time limit, copy the following into a .cmd file and setup a scheduled task event to run the cmd file at the time you want.

tsdiscon 1 /v

tsdiscon 2 /v

tsdiscon 3 /v

tsdiscon 4 /v

tsdiscon 5 /v

tsdiscon 6 /v

However doing blanket in the dark disconnects, isn’t a particularly good idea if you have more than one extender. This makes no distinction between Extenders, or PC remote desktop sessions. If the session is holding the lucky number, it gets booted. If you want to be a little more precise over what you disconnect, the console command ‘Qwinsta’ allows you to see all sessions active on the local machine. You could match the Extender username to a session ID and disconnect it by typing in tsdiscon x /v (where x is the session id), but that would have to be done manually since things can move around depending on what’s going on.

One thing has been sorely missing since Media Center first became available in Europe back in 2003. That was DVB-T radio channel support, as right now Media Center isn't setup to be able to handle the data coming from these channels so they get blocked out during the channel scan. In Media Center 2005 the way tuner cards were handled changed. This allows them to be put into use when live TV or a recording is not in progress (where as 2004 'locked' onto the card for itself). This has opened up the TV Tuner hardware to 3rd party applications, and Hauppauge have released a beta application which allows access to DVB Radio services. The downside however is that currently only the WinTV Nova-T USB2 tuner is supported, although Hauppauge are expecting to add support for the rest of their DVB-T hardware in the coming months.

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/support/support_mce.html

If you purchased an x64 based PC between March 31st 2003 and July 31st 2005 which came preloaded with the OEM version of Windows XP Professional, a trade in program has been established which will allow you to 'upgrade' to Windows x64 Professional Edition for the cost of shipping. Though I would recommend you try the free trial version before taking part in this trade in because once you are licensed to use x64 Edition, your 32 Bit Edition will no longer be licensed.

Free Trial:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/evaluation/trial.mspx

For more on the trade in see
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/upgrade/default.mspx

5 Reasons to use Windows XP x64
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/evaluation/top5.mspx

Good news if you own a Sony PCV-RZ4x, PCV-RZ5x or VGC-RA series Media Center 2004 PC! Sony has announced that they will be offering an upgrade to Media Center Edition 2005 for $9.99. This is a time limited offer, so if you wish to take advantage of it, be sure to get in before May 31, 2005.

http://esupport.sony.com/info/winxpmceoffer.html

This post is a summary of the updates that have been made available in the first 3 months of this year for Media Center 2005. A requirement for all of these updates is that Media Center 2005 Rollup 1 has already been installed.

Windows XP Media Center Edition Update for Standby Mode (895678)

The Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Update for Standby Mode helps prevent the black screen that you may encounter when resuming use of the Media Center PC from Standby mode. LINK

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Update for Intel 915g Integrated Video Adapter (895198)

This update is only for Media Center 2005 system which use an Intel 915g Integrated Video card. If your system features this video card and you are currently seeing visual artefacts on video playback whilst in windowed mode you should download and apply this hotfix. LINK

The easiest way to check if you have such a video card in your system is to right click on your desktop and select properites. When the display properties window opens select the settings tab and look at the section where it says 'display:' The wording of this area is 'Monitor/Display Device' on 'Video Card'

Update for Conflict Management in Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (890760)

The Update for Conflict Management in Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 enables improved conflict management for users who schedule TV recordings through MSN Remote Record. LINK

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Zoom Update (890629)

The third mode of zoom does not always work as expected when watching live or recorded TV. LINK
This update also requires the installation of the following hotfix - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;891220

Tweak MCE 

While technically being neither a patch, nor requiring rollup 1 the Media Center 2005 PowerToy ‘Tweak MCE’ is now available as a standalone download from
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9c02f0a8-8525-4110-aaa8-36aa8aebf2af&DisplayLang=en

Tweak MCE is a utility which allows you access to some of the more hidden settings of Media Center, which previously required manual changes using the registry editor.

Corey sent me this link today http://www.cothrun.com/gallery/albums/Misc/windows_mix.swf , I can’t help but remember ‘Press The Green Button’ from the Media Center 2002 launch time. Wonders what you can do with the new mail alert  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8122d9fa-e21e-4765-ae08-03ae7305e922&DisplayLang=en

On the third Thursday of every month at 3PM Pacific Time, the Windows Media Center MVP’s and members of the Media Center team from Microsoft host a live chat session with users of Media Center. If you’d like to put some questions to us live remember to come along to the chat session this Thursday at

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/chats/chatroom.aspx

Today during his keynote speech at the RSA Conference, Bill Gates announced Microsoft's on going commitment to provide safer web browsing for Windows Customers. As part of this it was revealed that the first beta of Internet Explorer 7 will arrive this Summer for Windows XP SP2.

This goes against a decision made back in 2003 which was that a new version of Internet Explorer would require a new version of Windows and not be available as a standalone for other versions (Windows XP featured Internet Explorer 6, and would receive upgrades to IE6 SP1/SP2 as part of a service pack update). As Windows Longhorn has been taking some time in arriving I welcome this update for XP, however I hope Internet Explorer 7 will not be an entirely security focused release. Since Internet Explorer 6 in 2001 a great many things have come onto the web scene, some technologies which are in IE6 simply do not fully work as they are meant to/’modern’ versions are not implemented at all, CSS support is a good example. This is something which really does need to be addressed. Bill also announced that Windows® AntiSpyware technology would be made available with no additional charge.

Press Release

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/feb05/02-15RSA05KeynotePR.asp

IE Team Blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/02/15/373104.aspx

Well, the upgrade to v1.7 of dasblog was a bit more fun than I expected it to be, and ended up with all of the content being non accessible today. But luckily thanks to Karl on the server side it all seems to be up running nicely again. The new version of dasblog looks quite promising, particularly in the area of blog spam and actually having a decent log viewer.

I’m off to have a play