Mark's MCE Blog

This blog has now been discontinued, the content shall remain here for future benifit but articles which may no longer be relevant have been removed.

Mark

For a limited time (first 100,000 downloads) you can obtain an updated Pre-RC1 build of the Vista beta (5536). Over beta 2 this has a decent performance increase, and a few nice touches in the MCE UI as well such as greater use of the thumbnail facility in My TV. This will also be available via MSDN. If by the time you read this the download limit has been reached, don’t worry RC1 should be coming in the near future.

If you have not been to my utilites page for a while at http://www.salloway.org.uk/mediacenter/util/index.htm you may notice a couple of new things.

First is a new application called Ident Set which is kind of 'run in compatibility mode for Media Center 200x', as close as you can be by manipulating the ident registry key and IE user agents. There is also an auto detect feature to help you find the correct setting for your machine/tell you what version is actually installed.

Earlier this month I put up a beta version of Configuration Reset 2, no angry emails yet which is always a good sign :) The main inspiration for a new version was Vista, although it will work on Media Center 2005. Ironically the beta I put up had to be restricted from running on Vista due to bugs in the current public version when used with it. In 5472 it was a lot better so I am hoping to get a Vista enabled one out for the public RC1.

The Vista betas of Tuner Priority has been out since about April, however that branch is what I am actively developing from now since it also runs on MCE2005. If you run the final v1.02 MCE2005 version and are told that your OS is not valid AND are not using the English Edition of Media Center, please use the Vista beta version as it contains some localisation fixes also.

Following up on my previous post on the July rollup, the KB article containing the change list is now online. The following issues are corrected in this release:

Horizontal white line on screen
When you play a DVD video in Media Center, a horizontal white line appears in some dark areas of the screen. For example, when you press the MORE INFO button on the Media Center remote, a white line appears on the bottom of some menu items. Then, when you close the More Info screen, the white line remains on the screen. 

• Media Center may crash when you use ListMaker
When you use the ListMaker sample add-in that is included with the Media Center SDK, and you comment out all media types except Pictures, Media Center may crash. 

• Media Center may crash when you open a menu page
When you open a menu page in Media Center, the program may crash. You receive an error message that resembles the following:

Program_name has caused an error and must be closed. We apologize for the inconvenience. If you were in the middle of something, the information you were working on might be lost. Please tell Microsoft about this problem. We have created an error report that you can send to help us improve Program_name. We will treat this report as confidential and anonymous. To see what data this error report contains, click here. 

• Black screen appears instead of DVD menu
When you try to play a DVD video in Media Center, a black screen appears instead of the DVD menu. This problem may sometimes occur with some DVD videos if the following conditions are true:
 
   • The Media Center screen resolution is set to 720p (High Definition) or to a higher resolution. 
   • The DVD video is copy-protected by MacroVision.

To be updated:

The latest cumulative update since Update Rollup 2 for Media Center 2005 has been released today. At present there are no details on the bug list as the KB article has not gone live yet, however the download can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=22402573-97aa-41be-8090-2ae905802045&DisplayLang=en

At 9PM tonight FilmFour will join the Freeview line-up over DVB-T as a Free to Air on channel 31. Last night I was looking through my guide and noticed that my guide data was showing as not available, to my surprise there was actually guide data for it! However because the service name being broadcast on DVB-T and the name in the BDS guide feed don’t match (FilmFour vs. Film4) the connection wasn’t made. I don't think there is much blame to place for this one, the official FilmFour site can't decided which one it is :)

If you need to manually add the guide listings start Media Center

1)      Select Settings > TV > Guide > Add Listings to Channel

2)      Select ‘FilmFour’ (Channel 31)

3)      Select ‘Film4’

4)      Select Save

Official Site

So far during the Vista Beta the extender functionality for Xbox 360 has been limited to the US and Canada. However the recently released 5472 build of Vista has opened this up to other regions. Unfortunately you need to be a member of the tech beta or MSDN (en_windows_vista_beta2_July2006CTP_x86_dvd.iso) to get access to this. Currently the next public build that will include the European functionality is RC1.

In Media Center 2005 a feature called Media Center Messenger was added which incorporated Messengers functionality into overlay windows. If you’ve had a play with the Vista beta’s you might of noticed that the feature has disappeared. The reason for this is that the feature was written to use the API (application programming interface) of Windows Messenger 4.7/5.0.  In Vista there is no built in Messenger client, and all the MSN versions of Messenger (until recently, but see closing comment) do not contain the correct API to allow MC to hook in. For the time being this appears to be a lost feature in Vista, even installing Messenger 4.7 will not make it come back. Part of the reason why Windows Messenger got removed in Vista is because no team is actively developing it anymore. Home users get served by MSN, Business have a better client in the form of Office Live Communicator. So the obvious choice might be to hook into the MSN ‘Live’ client instead, however that would mean placing a dependency from a Widows Component on a product that isn’t included with Windows, and very likely doesn’t meet the same bars that are required of Windows components. Never say never, but it’s probably less likely.

Some interesting information has come to light through a PowerPoint presentation that was posted on the Microsoft download site called ‘Preparing For TV Beyond Windows Vista’. It was presented at WinHEC 2006 (Windows Hardware Engineering Conference) by Bernhard Kotzenberg who is a Lead Program Manager in the Windows eHome Division.

Features highlighted as a possibility for the future included

DVB-T and DVB-S/S2 free-to-air and DVB-CI
Hybrid tuners
Merged program guide (PAL/DVB-T/DVB-S)
DVB-T subtitling and DVB Teletext
In-band EPG for DVB services
Interactive TV with MHEG5
Improved service scanning
FM radio station naming and analog TV channel renaming

And a number of similar features for the Japanese ISDB-T and ISDB-S standards (see slides for further details).

As a note DVB-CI is the ‘Common Interface’ standard for Premium TV smartcards rather than support for DVB-C (Digital Cable). In the presentation this was listed in the ‘Europe’ section, although I think the consequences have further reaches than Europe because the DVB standards is what a vast majority of the world has either implemented, is currently trialing or recommended. DVB-T alone is used in over 100 countries worldwide. The following images show this point rather well.

DVB-T Map
DVB-S Map

It is good to see these points being raised, when Media Center 2004 was released I never felt that the DVB-T implementation was complete. Sure it may have been at a technical document level, but compared to what the public might expect after using Freeview it missed a few features (particularly subtitles and interactive).