Worm can opened: MCE Vista featureset (or lack thereof)

Wow, I am amazed at the flurry of activity this morning after Matt Goyer made a few posts about MCE in Vista and the removal of two (in my opinion very minor) features. So here’s what’s out there: No More Caller ID and Messenger (Matt Goyer)Thoughts on MCE beta feedback (Matt Goyer)Our loss is your […]

Why no Vista talk from me?

I’ve been conspicuously silent on MCE for several months now, and there are reasons that go beyond the usual “too busy”. I’m in a listy mood today so, here’s your list. Quite simply, Vista doesn’t work on my hardware. The 64-bit version thrashes my machine like you wouldn’t believe, making it unusable after a […]

Just switched to digital cable

I knew my analog cable at the old house was a little flaky – I had the cable techs out several times to try to clean up the signal. When I threatened to go satellite, they sent over the whole friggin SWAT team to work on the signal but still it had some ghosting issues […]

Command-line shortcuts for Media Center (ehshell.exe)

There are cases where you need to be able to launch MCE into a specific part of the application. This can be accomplished by calling ehshell.exe with the apprproate command-line switches. Use the following command-line syntax:%systemroot%ehomeehshell.exe /homepage:page /pushstartpage:true Where page is one of the following .xml files: Main Menu: Home.xml My TV: VideoHome.xml Fullscreen TV: […]

I really don’t like life without Media Center

As you may have read, we’ve been moving for about the last two weeks and one of the casualties of the move has bee, temporarily at least, my media center setup. I had the whole rack setup in the basement at the old house, which was once a work of art with wires all routed […]

Vista MCE – my favourite change

There are lots of articles out there right now with a somewhat detailed look at MCE in Vista beta 2, and heck I may even post one myself at some point. But, there is one major item that has been at the very top of my feature request list for years that they’ve addressed and […]

Wake up your MCE for extender use

One very annoying quirk of MCE and extenders is that you have to leave your MCE machine on all the time. This can become a bit of a power hog over time, so many would prefer that the MCE machine goes into standby and wakes up when someone wants to use it or an attached […]

Rethinking my MCE setup for the new house

I’m moving into a new home and have been giving thought to rearranging my MCE setup. Right now, and for years, I have my MCE machine in the basement running basically as a server and several extenders throughout the home as clients. I’m using analog cable only. Here’s what I have in mind for the […]

Partner program for extenders

Matt Goyer just posted some highlights from the WinHEC keynote, and I’m most interested in the partner program for extenders that was announced. We’ve been working with several companies to have products available to for launch, and today we’re announcing the Media Center Extender Partner Program. What that program will do is, it will allow […]

Something juicy in the Vista Beta 2 release notes

I’ve been sitting on this particular piece of information for quite awhile, and I’m glad that it is public so that there can be debate. But I’m not going to tell you what it is, I want to see who finds it first and what their reaction is without my tainting it. Hint: It’s the […]