Software Media Center Extender | The Coffeehouse

daSmirnov

My TV card has just had it's beta BDA drivers released. So now I'm toying with the idea of buying MCE to check it out. Can't find a trial version tho. Sad

Longterm however I'd rather have the MCE box shoved away in the cupboard (as it will no doubt be serving my Xbox 360 too). However. All my TV watching is done on my main monitor sat on my desktop, with my desktop machine.

Is there any such thing as a software extender, so I can extend MCE on the box in my cupboard out to my desktop machine? Is one planned?

IanD

At the moment there is NO software extender. There is no trial version but if you have MSDN you can install it from there

You could have 2 MCE boxes and share the content from the one in the cupboard

You should listen to the Windows Media Center Show Smiley

Ian
The Media Center show

eddwo
Wheres my head at?

Longterm there is always the XBox 360, which will integrate with MCE/be a Media Center Extender.

There is also an open source alternative to MCE
Media Portal http://mediaportal.sourceforge.net/
which you could try out with the BDA drivers before you decide to upgrade or not.

Is your TV card a Nebula DigiTv?
I've been waiting a while for BDA drivers for that too.

daSmirnov

Yup it's the Nebula card. I'll check out Media Portal. Nah I don't have an MSDN sub, but I do listen to the Media Center Show now and then. Wink

IanD

"but I do listen to the Media Center Show now and then"
Thanks
Some stores are selling MCE OS and the remote as a bundle for £130 ish, I am sure Scan in the UK sell it.

I had a nebula card and you would find that MCE is miles ahead of there software. Not just for the TV stuff

Steve411

eddwo wrote:
Longterm there is always the XBox 360, which will integrate with MCE/be a Media Center Extender.

There is also an open source alternative to MCE
Media Portal http://mediaportal.sourceforge.net/
which you could try out with the BDA drivers before you decide to upgrade or not.

Is your TV card a Nebula DigiTv?
I've been waiting a while for BDA drivers for that too.

Thank you!!!!

daSmirnov

Yeah the Nebula software is painfully slow - although that should be fixed in the version after 3.5 when they use DirectX for the UI.

But you can do cool things with the Nebula software such as streaming TV to other computers. Which is something I really want MCE to do. Crying

Don't suppose you know if the upcoming update for MCE solves some of the UK issues such as losing channel data when there's a change and things like that? Anyword on red button support?

When the 360 invades my living room I need a rock solid MCE box I can rely on behind it. Smiley

My plan is to get rid of Sky and just use my freeview card and I'm fighting against everyone to do it cuz they're all sport mad. So it's a race against time before someone goes and buys a Sky+ box! lol.

IanD

daSmirnov wrote:
Yeah the Nebula software is painfully slow - although that should be fixed in the version after 3.5 when they use DirectX for the UI.

But you can do cool things with the Nebula software such as streaming TV to other computers. Which is something I really want MCE to do.

Don't suppose you know if the upcoming update for MCE solves some of the UK issues such as losing channel data when there's a change and things like that? Anyword on red button support?

When the 360 invades my living room I need a rock solid MCE box I can rely on behind it. My plan is to get rid of Sky and just use my freeview card and I'm fighting against everyone to do it cuz they're all sport mad. So it's a race against time before someone goes and buys a Sky+ box! lol.

You can stream content with MCE by either just sharing the file and opening in another pc (I share the recorded TV folder then I can watch any record TV on any of the pc's on my wifi network)
Or using a service like Orb (www.orb.com)
That works over a lan and the internet

As for the UK features I spoke to Jon Canning from the eHome team at Redmond on show 13 and I got the impression that the red button features will be coming but I don't know when.

Apart the the channel naming problems my MCE box is rock solid and the naming problems don't happen to often.

I did hear that a euro specific Media Center version is in the works...

blowdart
Peek-a-boo

daSmirnov wrote:

When the 360 invades my living room I need a rock solid MCE box I can rely on behind it. My plan is to get rid of Sky and just use my freeview card and I'm fighting against everyone to do it cuz they're all sport mad. So it's a race against time before someone goes and buys a Sky+ box! lol.

All I want is a media centre PC which will replace my sky+ box. Completly.

Red button.

Series links.

Support for paid for movies & events.

And a way to copy the wife's recorded big brother episodes to her notebook so she can watch them in another room Smiley

daSmirnov

Software extender would be great. At the moment I can watch a Live TV feed on my Tablet PC... That's just hard to be without.

Does the MCE save network passwords? Or does it behave like Home in that respect and require you to enter it every reboot?

IanD

Live straining is something that is missing unless your in the USA as Orb will do that

I think it does ask for passwords
Windows Media Connect is another option

Resrick

IanD wrote:
Windows Media Connect is another option

Unfortunately, this is what everyone keeps saying. However, I have my eye on the shiny new Vista MCE with CableCard solution. My understanding of that box is that anything recorded through a cable card is encrypted and cannot be viewed on a different pc. You can only view these recordings on the original pc or through an extender.

So having a software extender would be very nice. This would allow you to view the recordings on another computer in the same house without breaking copy protection rules.

acrophile

In reply to Resrick

#Mar 17th, 2008 @ 4:44 PM

Any news on this front??? It just boggles my mind that the 360 has an extender so it should be pretty trivial to get one running under Windows.

Sigh... Sad

GoddersUK
I CAN has cheezburger and you CAN'T has stop me!

In reply to acrophile

#Jun 4th, 2008 @ 10:39 AM

Can't you just use Windows Media Player Media Sharing?

AndyC

Isn't a MCE effectively just an RDP session to the Media Centre PC that auto launches the Media Centre app? Couldn't you replicate it by just using the Remote Desktop Client?

GoddersUK
I CAN has cheezburger and you CAN'T has stop me!

In reply to AndyC

#Jun 4th, 2008 @ 3:23 PM

Great frame rate Big Smile

daSmirnov

In reply to AndyC

#Jun 4th, 2008 @ 3:23 PM

Nope, performance would be terrible, assuming the video would even work.

It isn't something hard to do, but it looks like Microsoft have no interest in developing a software extender, despite a couple of years of people bringing it up.

ASP.Confused

In reply to daSmirnov

#Jun 4th, 2008 @ 4:33 PM

There's an open source project called SoftSled that's working on a software-based MCE extender. It appears to have some things working, like getting Vista to recognize it as an extender.

http://softsled.net/

But the project looks like it may be stalled out...? This is their CodePlex page:

http://www.codeplex.com/softsled

yman

In reply to ASP.Confused

#Jul 5th, 2008 @ 12:11 AM

Indeed, there is, I'm one of the developers on it Smiley

We've basically hit a wall. Microsoft is using an overly complicated key exchange algorithm and it's proving excruciatingly difficult to reverse engineer. Don't expect anything soon unless there's a massive break-through.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

In reply to AndyC

#Jun 4th, 2008 @ 3:23 PM

The RDP session is used for the media center UI (at disappointingly low framerates and colour depth), but it uses a separate channel for video streams, hence why extenders need their own built-in codecs.

yman

In reply to W3bbo

#Jul 5th, 2008 @ 6:27 AM

You're quite right that the very first extenders used an RDP session solely for rendering the UI. However the new extenders such as the 360 extender and the V2 extenders by Linksys, Dlink are able to render the UI with similar fidelity to the local Media Centre session i.e. nice animations etc. Media Centre can support multiple renderers including the local DirectX renderer, GDI renderer (for use over RDP). It appears that they have implemented a remote loosely coupled renderer (called Xeneon I believe) which runs directly on the MCX and is communicated with over the network. However it appears than even with the new extenders an RDP session is still used. I think they composite parts which cannot be rendered with the remote renderer such as WebPage add-ins for example.

mongo

In reply to yman

#Jul 5th, 2008 @ 6:50 AM

I've been looking for this as well - it would be a great software feature. I want to put my server in my utility room.

And better yet - why not release an extender version for the mac? This would be a great answer to the 'iTV' - just make it part of the Media Center home experience! Shoot- why not write an extender for the iPhone/iPod Touch - that would require the appropriate wireless bandwidth, but how freakin' cool would that be?!

mongo

In reply to mongo

#Jul 26th, 2008 @ 10:38 PM

If the server could down-scale the video on the fly for the iPhone/iPod Touch, these might be doable over the G network support offered by these devices. Imagine - being able to call up your music library, recorded programs, radio and live tv on your iPhone at home and then moving it to a big screen when you want it. Very cool.

zhackwyatt

Has anyone tried WebGuide?

http://www.asciiexpress.com/webguide/

I have had it installed a couple of days and so good it works pretty good. It allows you to stream the TV shows or download them to another computer. It uses a web interface. Not the same as a Media Center Extender, but pretty nice. Allows you to create recordings as well.

marco.morreale

In reply to mongo

#Jul 26th, 2008 @ 10:56 PM

Hi guys! Any news? We still need a software extender!

Marco