Damo's spot on the web: Computers and Internet

XBOX 360 & XP Media Center FAQ

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 12:23:05 GMT

I’ve recently spent a fair amount of time setting up my XBOX360 to work with my home office desktop running Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE). Along the way I’ve had to make some discoveries for myself so here I’ve compiled my lessons learnt into a series of guidelines and FAQs that will hopefully help others.

Q. Can I have my MCE PC be a member of a Windows domain and connect my XBOX360 as an extender device at the same time?

A. No. Even though there are techniques for joining a Windows XP MCE PC to a Windows domain and they do work, doing so will disable Fast User Switching which is required by the XBOX360 (or any other MCE extender) to access the Media Center application on the PC. It may initially work immediately after you have run the XBOX360 setup software on your PC but once the PC has been rebooted your XBOX360 will fail to connect. You can have one or the other, but not both.

Q. How do I get Windows XP Media Center Edition?

A. MCE is only available as an OEM operating system and so can usually only be acquired by purchasing a PC with MCE pre-installed by the vendor. However those with an MSDN subscription will find that MCE is included with the other OS variants such as Tablet PC and x64 edition.

Q. Do I need special hardware to run Windows XP Media Center Edition?

A. No, although it can be fussy about the drivers you use for certain components. Your video card will generally require an MCE specific version of the driver in order to function correctly and you may find the same applies for your soundcard. TV tuners require BDA drivers to work with MCE and you can find numerous models that have been specifically designed for use in MCE. I am using a Hauppage Nova-T-500 MCE Dual-digital PCI tuner.

Q. How does the XBOX360 connect to my PC running MCE?

A. Firstly your XBOX360 must be connected to the same network segment as your MCE PC. There have been reports by some users that you can get them to connect over bridged or even routed networks but results vary. If you can, use a wired network connection. Wireless tends to be problematic when streaming video unless your signal strength is consistently excellent. Microsoft recommends using 802.11a wireless gear instead of 802.11g due to problems with interference in the band that 802.11g uses from common household appliances, etc. The actual interface you see on you TV is streamed from the MCE PC via the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) just like terminal services or Remote Desktop. The video and TV is streamed over a different dedicated port to the MCE interface.

Q. Does the XBOX360 support MCE plug-ins and add-in applications?

A. Yes. Most MCE plug-ins will work without issue when accessed by the XBOX360. I am personally using My Movies, NewsGator MCE Edition and MCEBrowser without any issues.

Q. What video formats can I stream to playback via my XBOX360?

A. All video is streamed from your MCE PC to the XBOX360 and is then decoded by the XBOX360. This means only a set list of video formats can be showed by your XBOX360. Installing new codecs on your MCE PC will not help. The XBOX360 will support MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video as well as Windows Media Video (WMV). High definition in both formats is also supported. It will not support .VOB files ripped from DVDs. Trying to rename them to .MPG files and playing them back can cause the XBOX360 to crash, badly, so don’t try it. See below for details on how to playback ripped DVD files.

Q. I have lots of DivX/XviD files I won’t to be able to playback via my XBXO360. What can I do?

A. There are two solutions to this problem, both with their pros and cons. Firstly, you can use a program called Transcode360 to automatically transcode non-supported video formats into a format the XBOX360 can playback (MPEG-2) on the fly. It installs as a Windows Service and some extensions to the MCE interface. It allows you to select a video file from the MCE interface and then via the “Info” button on the remote choose a menu option that will be begin transcoding the file for playback on the XBOX360. The second option is to re-encode all of your video files into a format that the XBOX360 can playback, such as MPEG-2 or WMV. There are numerous tools available to do this, some free, others not. My personal preference is the second option as the resultant files are natively supported by the XBOX360 and result in a much better user experience for the rest of your family.

Q. Can I rip my DVDs to my MCE computer so that I can play them back on my XBOX360?

A. Yes. I won’t go into the legal issues surrounding the copying of DVDs so for this example let’s assume you have a non-protected DVD such as a home video from a DVD camcorder. I use a tool called DVD-WMW that provides a front end to various other tools that are needed to complete the process successfully. This program will extract the video and audio information from the DVD and encode it to WMV and WMAPro with full 5.1 surround sound support if desired. It provides plenty of options for fine-tuning the output and can even encode 2 different versions at the same time, perhaps one for the XBOX360 and another for your smartphone. I find that encoding with WMV at around 2Mbps produces a file of excellent quality at around ¼ the size of the original DVD file. You can then use the excellent and free My Movies plug-in to create a browseable library of your collection, complete with cover images, descriptions, actor information and more.

Q. Why does some of my music not display its album cover picture in My Music?

A. I’ve found that MP3 files aren’t as well supported by the Media Center library as WMA files. Try re-encoding your files as WMA (from the source if you can) for better results.

Q. Can I use Messenger on my XBOX360?

A. Yes. You need to make sure that Windows Messenger is enabled on your MCE PC (in Add/Remove Programs, Windows Components). You probably use MSN Messenger or Windows Live Messenger when on your MCE PC but Media Center only supports Windows Messenger so it must be enabled (although you can set it to not start automatically). To enter text into messenger use the XBOX360 on-screen keyboard or connect a keyboard to one of the USB ports. Most wireless keyboards will work as long as they don’t usually require software installation.

Teach those naughty wi-fi stealing neighbours a lesson!

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 04:25:53 GMT

I loved how this guy got back at his neighbours when he discovered they were stealing his wireless internet access:

http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html

MEDC & new i-mate SP5

Sun, 28 May 2006 11:35:15 GMT

I went along to the Microsoft Mobile & Embedded Developers' Conference in Melbourne last week and it was pretty good. I learnt some valuable tips for developing for mobile devices and even WinForms but best of all was the amazing deal Microsoft struck with i-mate to give evey attendee a brand new SP5 smartphone, worth about AUS$750! Incredible. I've had an i-mate Smartphone2 for about 2 years now and really liked it but the SP5 is in a totally different league. The three main points of difference for me are:

the screen
Wow, and I'll say it again, wow! The QVGA screen on the SP5 is just stunning in comparison with the Smartphone2. It gives the SP5 a resolution of about 160dpi which makes for amazing clarity and contrast. Just fantastic!
the size
The SP5 is a good deal smaller than the Smartphone2, and in the right places too. It is shorter and most importantly, thinner, making for a much more elegant profile.
Wi-Fi
Wireless access is just great! It sounds stupid, but I sit in bed and surf the mobile web on my phone now 'cos I can! And the same goes for work, where with a little more fiddling I hope to get messenger working through our firewall so I can stay online while in meetings. Sweet! I just need to compile a list of good mobile sites now.

New Webcam?

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 10:04:26 GMT

I think I'm going to buy a new webcam. The one I have is old and dodgy and the colour went on it a while back, so everything is sort of gray-ish blue now. So far I am leaning towards the Logitech QuickCam Pro 5000. I like the look of its feature set and I trust the brand. I still remember when Connectix brought out their first QuickCam way back when and how cool we (everyone in the computer shop) all thought it was; like a big golf ball on a funny wedgey trophy mount kinda thing.

My sister is currently living in Italy, and following her job to Spain in a couple of weeks, and bought herself a webcam recently so I need to upgrade to make sure I look good online

IE7 Beta

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 09:57:42 GMT

I've been using the IE7 Beta release at home and on my notebook for about 6 weeks now. I am not using it on my primary work PC as I don't want to introduce variables into supporting existing apps, etc.

So what do I think? Well firstly I'm a loyal IE user through and through. I've been using IE since version 3 and have never changed to another browser since. I may have installed a version of Firefox or Netscape on occasion for compatibility testing purposes but the browser I actually use when surfing the web has always been IE.

So I guess that limits the weight of my opinon somewhat but here goes anyway. From a developer's point of view there are immediately some cool things about IE7 I really like. For example the tabbed browsing feature implementation is really good and the way it handles various scripted DHTML window object method calls is pretty much how I wanted them to be. Explicitly opening a new window from javascript via window.open() opens a new window, not a new tab, and this behaviour is configurable by the tab settings. Also, switching betwen tabs is nice and quick, unlike using the tabbing in the MSN toolbar which can often display a second or two lag when changing between tabs as it sorts itself out.

I really like the new UI and toolbar/menu layout. I think it looks nice and clean and is very functional. I have only encountered a few of the new security features but what I have seen so far I like. I accessed a site a few minutes ago with an expired SSL certificate and the action that IE7 took was clear and very secure by default. Even when I chose to continue it highlighted the address box a nasty shade of red and continued to show a warning next to the URL (I would've uploaded screenshots but I haven't reinstalled Photoshop yet since my last rebuild).

I haven't used the RSS feed features yet so I can't comment on that. The Pop-up block seems to be getting better which each revision and so far I haven't seen a popup get through, although I'm sure there will be somewhere. The page zooming feature is pretty neat and would definately help when designing pages.