Looking for a way to bring your GMail to your 10-foot interface? We may have just the thing for you. If you’ve been looking for a way to separate yourself from your desktop but can’t live without immediate access to your email it might be time to give Media Center Mail a try.
Officially known as Vista Media Center Mail, [...]
Getting an extender to work properly with your Windows 7 Media Center has become slightly easier over the course of the beta but can still prove to be troublesome for many. Though by default Windows 7 now has the ability to transcode many of the formats which once required third party software it’s still far from flawless.
The preferred method [...]
This is a guest post written by Adam Thursby and originally posted at The Digital Media Zone as a follow up to Using EncodeHD for Portable Devices. Find even more great articles from Adam as well as regular podcasts over at The DMZ!
I wrote yesterday how EncodeHD can help you convert your video files for use on your portable [...]
If you like many of us trying to use Media Browser on an extender such as an Xbox360 you’ve probably been witness to the customization error of death. The result is a locked up extender and no Media Browser plug-in interface for all those movies. Especially painful if you’ve implement our recent hack to enable a start menu strip [...]
One of my favorite features of commercial DVR boxes is that many of them include the ability to display caller ID information directly on your TV display. Nothing beats the ability to see who’s interrupting your favorite movie without having to actually get up and check the caller ID display. Thanks to VistaCallerID.com it’s possible to get this feature [...]
Need to convert a video or two into a different format? Have some MKV files you’d like to play on an extender as MP4 files? Handbrake has the solution for you. Handbrake is a free, open-source program with more features for converting and encoding video than you’ll likely ever need. The interface, however, is easy enough to for basic [...]
Converting MKVs to DVR-MS is the best way to guarantee full compatibility with any extender. Since DVR-MS is the default file type for all pre-Windows 7 (and TV Pack 2008) TV recordings, the file format will have no problem with playback on any Windows Media Center Extender. The DVR-MS file format will also preserve surround sound and full resolution [...]
Direct from Josh at MN Maven, comes this tip on sharing your recorded episodes between different PCs on your network. This will even work inside Windows Media Player, letting you watch your recorded TV shows while getting a little work done at the same time.
This requires that the receiving pc be running Windows 7 (the Media Center should also [...]
In this new age of digital distribution our ever growing pile of devices needs to be able to interconnect with one another unlike ever before. The time for proprietary software and voodoo tricks to get all your devices working happily together has come and gone (long gone!). Windows 7’s new “Play To” feature may just be the first step towards [...]
