To get started with Remote Potato’s newest features we’ll need to download and install the latest version of Remote Potato from FatAttitude. The program will need to be installed on the main Media Center machine only. Remote Potato uses a web-based front end for remote viewing meaning no extra software to install on each machine. Once installed on the Media Center machine access to the front end can be found at http://networkname:9080. This of course is only possible if the proper firewall rules are allowed during setup, which you will be prompted for during installation.

Once installed and running the first thing of note is the revamped start page for Remote Potato. This new look is certainly more stylish and even a little bit entertaining watching the background respond to mouse movements. Those looking for something different can even choose from a few other themes in the Remote Potato server configuration including retro and minimalist. There’s also a blank theme included for those looking to customize for themselves.

The biggest new feature of recent version, however, is the ability to remotely stream Recorded TV to anywhere with access to the internet. Simply press the Recorded TV entry in Remote Potato’s menu to bring up a listing of recorded television. Just choose an episode, press play and select a quality. Here of course is where it gets a little sticky.

In normal quality, over a gigabit network, everything was able to stream from the main Media Center machine (no lightweight machine). Unfortunately, normal quality was terrible to actually watch. Content was fairly blocky during action sequences even on HD content.

Likely this was only due to the quality settings chosen when play began, unfortunately, we couldn’t get HD content to successfully stream over the local network in any higher quality setting than normal. Hopes were high as it is a gigabit network but the buffer would start to climb then abruptly “wonk out” displaying random numbers. Also the server would report all clients disconnected in debug mode’s event viewer.

Standard Definition content was able to be streamed in full quality (Ultra) with considerable success over the local network. There was quite a bit of buffering going on at some points but the show was ultimately watchable in the default view. Under the full screen view, however, there was considerable interlacing visible though when scaling standard definition to 1080p in a web browser this is completely forgivable.

Yet to be tested personally, streaming across the internet is likely to only give worse results with a much more limited available bandwidth to work with. Though the program has spawned an epic thread on The Green Button spanning over 52 pages at this point and the answer may lie somewhere in there to solve our streaming troubles. If you experience any issues the thread appears to be a fantastic place to get technical support for Remote Potato bot from the community and the project owner carlosp_uk.

Browsing around to the older features of the program this is one thing Remote Potato still does extremely well. Remote scheduling of recordings and viewing of the TV guide have become much more stylized and easier to use. New features include loading the EPG data, including channel icons, directly from the Media Center machine as opposed to retrieving them on each client machine.

With new selectors for popular times of the day and the ability to quickly select later dates it’s almost easier to use than the built-in Media Center TV guide. Shows are now colored coded similar to the option available in Windows 7 Media Center and any icons added by My Channel Logos are loaded automatically.

Search the guide from the main menu as well as managing scheduled recordings and even series schedules, Remote Potato still does all of this very well. Even better it’s all complete free and open-source, two of our favorite words. Be sure to give Remote Potato a try, it’s definitely worth the time to install and even seems to run straight out of the box very well. Even if you haven’t the need for remote scheduling capability it’s interesting to see what’s slowly becoming possible with Windows 7 Media Center.

Of course, we could go in and edit the registry manually increasing buffer time. It’s not incredibly simple though and may even test your math skills a bit, not to mention cutting into your TV time. Luckily, there’s a handy app available that will do the heavy lifting for you. MCE Live TV Buffer Manager from Doug Knox is a small app whose sole purpose is to increase the default live TV buffer size.

This little app based on code from Schmecky on The Green Button Forums gives you a handful of options ranging from 30 minutes up to 120 minutes of replay buffer length. Just choose the duration you’d like to set and press the Apply button. Of course, before the new setting will take effect you’ll need to do a quick reboot of your PC as well.

That’s all there is to it. Now you can increase the live TV buffer in less time than i takes to make popcorn. Thanks to Schmecky and Doug Knox for making this incredibly useful little application and Rick Broida of PC World for bringing it to attention. Though the program doesn’t specify working with Windows 7 Media Center, the changes needed to alter the replay buffer are the same as in previous versions of Media Center. Enjoy and be sure to stick around Hack7MC for even more handy tools like this one!

Even more importantly, this third party program requires very little configuration to get setup and working on your home media center system. Most users will find the most complicated portions of the setup to be forwarding the ports of their home router and setup of the xmltv files. Upon first launching Remote Potato you’ll receive a window letting you know that the server has been started along with a windows dialog to allow the program appropriate rights to the firewall (provided you are using the built-in Windows 7 firewall). Once you’ve allowed access to the program you’ll notice a Show Settings button on the main window. Pressing this will reveal the options and setup portions of the program.

For those just getting started with Remote Potato the main settings that need to be set are going to be the TV Guide and the options found under the General tab. In order for the program to obtain a listing of channels and programs you’ll need to have an xmltv file. To get one of these handy files for your system you can simply follow this guide here on Hack7MC to using MC2XML. Of course this file will need to be updated regularly (every few days is recommended). Doing this automatically is simple enough using Windows 7’s built-in Task Scheduler.

Open Task Scheduler from the start menu by entering “Task Scheduler” into the search box and hit enter (crazy, right?). Then on the right hand side you’ll notice a number of actions that can be performed. Select Create Basic Task and go through the simple wizard setting a name for the event, choosing Daily (which can actually be set to run every X number of days) and then selecting the shortcut created in the MC2XML guide as the program to run.

Once you’ve setup your xmltv guide file open the TV guide section of Remote Potato’s options and set the “Get EPG Data from” option to  “a locally stored XML file”. Next locate the file created by MC2XML in the XMLTV file dialog box and once the program has finished the initial loading of the file contents set the import option to re-import data for approximately the same number of days as you set in the Task Scheduler.

Next, under the General options tab most users will want to set the program to automatically start with windows and do so minimized. Simply check the box for both these options and the program should be all set to go. Now provided you’ve setup proper access from your router to access the port on the media center system you can now access the Remote Potato guide from a remote system.

Simply open your favorite web browser and navigate to the media center’s ip address followed by the port set under Remote Potato’s general options (ex, 55.55.55.555:9080) If you are having trouble accessing the machine remotely be sure to check from the actual machine itself using localhost:port.

The web based interface is fairly intuitive and the program even provides a Silverlight version, which can be enabled under the Silverlight tab in the options. Users can easily browse, search and manage recordings from anywhere with internet access including moblie devices such as a PDA or cellphone.

Thanks to FatAttitude for putting out this great application and making it so easy to setup and use as well. This handy utility is sure to fill the gap for many Windows 7 Media Center users that are consistently on the go but don’t want to miss out on recording their favorite shows and new series.

This method will work for anyone who is moving from a basic Windows Vista install, without the Fiji pack installed, but will only copy the recording schedule. This means that the channel lineup and other custom settings will not be carried over and will need to be setup by the user. The recording schedule works by scanning the TV lineup for shows listed in the schedule then marking them for recording. The schedule is actually more of a list than a schedule, containing a list of shows and a set of rules for recording than a list of times, dates and channels to be recorded.

To get started, the files we need to access are located inside a hidden folder so we should enable the viewing of such folders. In the Control Panel, select Appearance and Personalization then Folder Options. Under the View tab in Folder Options select the Show Hidden files and folders option and press OK.

Once you’ve enabled the viewing of hidden folders open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:\Program Data\microsoft\ehome\recording. Copy the contents of the folder to a backup location such as a flash drive or network storage location. Now proceed with your clean installation of Windows 7.

Once you’ve completed your clean install, follow the steps above to show hidden folders once again and locate the C:\Program Data\microsoft\ehome\recording directory (or create it if it doesn’t exist). Now place the recordings.xml file you backed up from Windows Vista into the folder before running the Windows 7 Media Center setup.

During the initial setup of Windows 7 Media Center the recordings.xml will be converted into the Windows 7 Media Center recordings schedule and all of your recordings should be processed once the TV guide listings have been processed. If you’ve already run the initial setup you can also achieve the same results by running the TV Signal Setup from the Settings area.

Once the machine has had time to scan the TV guide listings for your scheduled show recordings you should be able to view scheduled recordings from Recorded TV’s view scheduled area. That’s all there is to it! You should now have a completely transferred recording schedule from Windows Vista into Windows 7.

If that sounds like just what you’re looking for then look no further! Get started by downloading and installing Recorded TV Manager 3 from Drasch Software. Once installed running the program will prompt your to add your initial Recorded TV location. During my initial run I mistakenly selected the desktop and was unfortunately unable to remove this initial selection later on.

Once you’ve selected the proper recorded TV folder you can begin browsing your recorded series from the Recorded TV Manager interface. In the default view you can browse by location and then by series name.

From here you can right-click any episode and choose to move or copy it from the current location as well as view a short display of information on the episode. It also provides a convent method to watch a series in the order that it was originally aired as the date is displayed as well as the last episode you’ve watched.

The meat of the application, however, seems to be in the AutoMove tool. Launch the AutoMove tool from the programs menu to set up the Windows service. This is the location where you will be able to configure new folders for viewing in the Manager tool as well. Under the first input box you’ll find a link to browse for new folders which will then be added to the main application.

Once you’ve selected your main recordings folder in the first input box browse for the folder you’d like to use as storage in the second and the ability to Enable AutoMove will be available. Check the box at the top of the application to enable and start the service. Now the program will check the currently set directory for new recorded TV every 30 minutes by default for new recordings to move to your storage location.

Once setup you can adjust the settings including whether you’d like AutoMove to move or copy your files and the duration between checks. There is also an option to wait before moving a newly found recording which would be recommended so that the program doesn’t attempt to move recording still underway.

While the Recorded TV Manager could use some extra functionality the AutoMove feature is certainly something to check out if you’re looking for an easy way to automatically relocate new recordings to a central storage location.

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To get the latest version you’ll need to be a registered member of the Dragon Global Forums and download the latest version from this thread. Once installed run the ShowAnalyzer User Interface from the programs menu and you’ll immediately notice the improvements over previous versions.

This revision of ShowAnalyzer comes with a very well done and easy to use interface. Usability has greatly improved over previous versions allowing even novices a reasonable chance of mastering the basics in a mater of seconds. Even better for beginners is the addition of a Directory Watcher service built in.

Inside Tools –> Settings.. you’ll find the option to enable a Directory Watcher service that will monitor your recorded TV folders for new recordings and add them to the process queue automatically. No more fussing with DVRMSToolbox’s FileWatcher service priorities and settings.

Under the Output tab you’ll find the options for processing your recorded TV files including support for DVRMSToolbox’s MCE plugin to support skipping commercials during live TV.

Getting started with a single file or even whole directories is extremely simple. Just open up the File menu and select single file or directory. ShowAnalyzer will add the shows to the queue to be processed and get down to business. Depending on the number of analyzers you set in the Scheduler options you’ll see a number of tasks appear in the Active tab.

Processing a single hour long WTV file took just over seven minutes to complete. A cursory check of the output indicates that the program was fairly accurate in determining the location of commercial breaks as well although some fine tuning may be necessary.

That’s all there is to getting started with ShowAnalyzer with brand spankin’ new WTV support. Be sure to stick around as we’ll most definitely go further in depth with this amazing product in the near future!

We won’t be covering the various uses for XMLTV files quite yet but will be referring back to this guide in the future as we get into them. To get started with MC2XML you’ll need to download a copy (Hack7MC Mirror) to your hard disk. Launch the program using the exe provided, there’s no installation process.

On first launch you’ll be prompted to setup your location. We’re going to focus on Media Center here but there’s also support for retrieving guide data from TitanTV and Schedules Direct. Enter your postal zip code and country code into the input boxes provided. For example, the United States would be country code US, Great Britain would be GB and so on.

Next you’ll be given a list of guides available for your location. Choose the same guide you chose during your Media Center setup. If your using a custom channel lineup this makes things a bit more difficult as MC2XML currently only allows you to download a single lineup at a time. Settings are saved in a file in the same location as the program named mc2xml.dat.

Each time you run the program once you’ve setup your settings MC2XML will automatically load the .dat settings file and download your guide data. In order to use multiple locations you’ll need to use a command line switch to change .dat files. Create a shortcut for each location and establish separate files using the “-D <filename>” switch to set the .dat file and “-o <filename>” to set the output filename.

That’s all there is to it. You can find a complete listing of command line switches as well as the download for Windows, Linux and OSX on the official MC2XML website.

Be sure to check back with Hack7MC soon to cover the various uses for these XMLTV files!

Among one of the bigger advantages includes the simple fact that we no longer need special software to operate the new drive. Most USB drives come as plug-n-play devices. This means we can simply plug the device into an available USB port and be ready to go without even needing a basic format.

Using a thumb drive will also allow you to take advantage of ReadyDrive included in Windows7. The disadvantage of course is that a USB flash drive isn’t going to be quite as fast as using a RamDisk or Solid State Disk drive.

Once you’ve got your USB flash disk installed open up Windows Explorer and navigate to the default Recorded TV location. Unless you’ve changed your recording location in Windows 7 Media Center the default location can be found at C:\Users\Public\Recorded TV\. Inside this folder you’ll find a hidden folder named TempRec.

You’ll need to delete this hidden folder before continuing so we can create a symbolic link to our new flash drive location. Once you’ve deleted the TempRec folder open an elevated command prompt  by entering “cmd” into the start menu and pressing ctrl + shift + enter.

Next, change to your Recorded TV folder using “cd C:\Users\Recorded TV\”. Once inside your Recorded TV folder enter the following command to create our symbolic link, “mklink /d temprec D:\”. Replace D:\ with the drive letter of your USB flash drive.

Inside your Recorded TV folder you should now see a temprec folder that appears with a shortcut icon in the corner. This symbolic link should now  be sending all your live TV buffer files to your USB flash drive instead of the slower hard disk location.

That’s all there is to it! Enjoy your modest speed increase without the high cost of a RamDisk or Solid State Disk drive.

The down side of using a RamDisk is that the data must be saved to the Hard Drive before shutting down or it will be lost forever. Also, in regard to Windows 7 Media Center, the files we are going to be using this drive for are quite large and will require somewhat extreme amounts of ram.

For instance, an hour of SD programming will require anywhere from 3-4gb and an hour of HD programming will require approximately 7-8gb. This means you’ll need around 16gb of RAM on top of your base system RAM to keep a 2 hour buffer for HD programming.

If you meet this steep level of entry the let’s get started. The first thing you’ll need is a copy of QSoft’s RamDisk. Navigating their website can be somewhat tricky so we’ve provided copies of the RamDisk x64 Evaluation and Preferences program for download. Purchasing a copy of the non-time limited software is as little as $12 which is extraordinary as well.

Now to get started, the installation process is somewhat difficult for novice users so let’s go over that in detail now. Extract the software to your hard drive and open your Control Panel. Next go to Hardware and Sound then open Device Manager.

Right click your PC name at the top of the list and select Add Legacy Hardware. Click Next then select Install the hardware that I manually select from a list and press Next.

On the next screen select Show All Devices and press Next. Afterwards select the Have Disk button and locate the directory where you have extracted the program, select your language’s folder and find the included .inf file. Select the file and Open.

Continue through the process until complete and your new RamDisk should be installed and ready to be configured. Run the RAMDrivProperties program for your operating system. Select the RamDisk properties tab and you’ll be presented with something only slightly less confusing than the installation process.

As mentioned earlier your going to want to have ample RAM available if using this drive for the live TV scratch drive. Set the size of the Ram disk using the Disk Size dropdown at the top or set the percentage of ram to use automatically. Changing the size of the disk will require you to restart the RAMDisk.

Here you can also select the drive letter and the file system to be used. Selecting NTFS is recommended as it’s the native file system used by Windows 7. Assigning a Volume Name can also be helpful to identify the disk later on in Media Center and elsewhere. Press OK to save your settings, you’ll most likely need to restart your machine at this point as well but it may not be necessary in all cases.

That’s all there is to setting up the RamDisk itself, now let’s make it the default location for the Live TV buffer files.

In Windows Explorer locate C:\Users\Public\Recorded TV\TempRec, which is hidden by default, and delete the folder TempRec.

Next, open a command prompt as administrator by typing “cmd” into the start menu and pressing ctrl + shift + enter. Now enter the following commands: cd C:\Users\Public\Recorded TV then mklink /d temprec D:\ replacing D:\ with the location of your new RAMDisk drive.

Thanks to Dcdyd for the tip and that should be all there is to it! You should now have a RamDisk for your Live TV buffer. For information on changing the duration of your Live TV buffer, which is 40 minutes by default, check out this guide on Increasing Replay and Pause Buffer Length in Windows 7 Media Center.

If you’ve ever paused a show in Media Center only to have the end of the show cut off once you resume watching it or have the show simply start playing again while you’re taking care of more important business, you likely need to increase your buffer size to avoid these problems in the future. Luckily solving this problem is relatively easy.

To get started open up regedit by typing “regedit” into the search box in your start menu and pressing enter. Next navigate through the hierarchy to get to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners

Then add the following as DWORD entries by right-clicking the right hand pane and selecting New –> DWORD:

1. BackingStoreEachFileDurationSeconds
2. BackingStoreMaxExistingBackingFiles
3. BackingStoreMaxNumBackingFiles

Now the default values for these entries is 300 seconds and 8 files. To increase the buffer length you can increase the length of each file or simply increase the number of files to be created. Using many small files can save hard drive space while using fewer large files may increase performance, though likely only marginally.

To edit the length of each file double click BackingStoreEachFileDurationSeconds and change the base option to Decimal. This will allow you to input a regular value instead of a hexadecimal code.

The length of your buffer will be equal to the number of seconds times the number of files able to be created (300 * 8 for example). Entering a value of 900 in this DWORD would increase the buffer length from 40 minutes to 2 hours. This can be a much better value for those of us who watch shows that run an hour or longer and frequently pause for long durations.

To increase the number of files allowed to be created edit the other two values in the same manner. The BackingStoreMaxExistingBackingFiles value assigns the maximum number of files that can be created for the show currently being viewed while BackingStoreMaxNumBackingFiles refers to the maximum number of files allowed to be created total before a cleanup is performed.

Next, restart your machine for the changes to take effect. That’s it, you should now have a longer buffer length in Windows 7 Media Center. I haven’t had time to test this on extenders but would hazard a guess that it would in fact work as the buffer resides on the main Media Center.

Be sure to return next week for a regularly scheduled Reader Question and Answer. If you’ve got a question for next week drop us a line below!

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