Last night we had a Media Center geek a dinner in Bellevue. Thanks to everyone who came out!

Some of the questions I remember from the night:

Can I improve how the XBox extender looks on my TV?

The XBox Extender is optimized for display on a CRT TV. If you are not using a CRT television, so a plasma, LCD or possibly a DLP, you will want to get the TweakMCE power toy from the winter fun pack and turn off the TV skin.

Why can’t I play synchronized audio throughout my home?

This question was from the two home theater installers and we spent some time discussing what they were looking for and if it would be possible to build a 3rd party app to do it. The short answer is that I think there is currently not enough mass market demand for this feature.

Who do we design Media Center for?

This is a great question worthy of a long post. The short answer is that we design Media Center for a very broad audience. We want Media Center to be easy to use for someone like my Mom, but powerful enough that it does everything that I, a power user would want. We also work very hard to ensure that it looks good on not just a plasma or LCD display connected over DVI, but also that it looks good on a ten year old 27″ TV connected via coxial.

Why are my media libraries different on my Extender than on my MCE / Why do they get out of sync?

Answer to that is in my my Media Discovery post.

Questions about domain join

Answer here, You cannot join your computer to a domain in Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005

Does the HP z545 have a DVI slot?

Yes

How do I watch pay per view content?

Use Media Center to navigate to your pay per view channel. Start manually recording. Pick up your set top box remote and start the show.

If you had a question I’ve forgotten but would like to see writen up let me know in the comments.

Other notes:

• Charlie gave away three Hauppauge single NTSC tuner cards
• Charlie brought a Hush PC case (a fanless case) and we cracked it open to check out the heat sinks
• Michael showed us his RSS application
• Scoble gave away some Channel 9 guys

Other blogger writeups:

• Wangjianshuo’s blog
• Scoble

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John Elsbree an architect on the MCE team has written an Expert Zone article on, Tweaking Your Media Center PC’s HDTV Lineup:

Once you have Media Center configured for DTV, this article describes some additional adjustments you can make to improve your overall experience with your Guide lineup of DTV channels. For example, you can search for additional programming services that otherwise wouldn’t appear in your lineup. Also you may be able to locate missing program listings for some of your channels and adjust the antenna to increase the TV signal strength. Finally, you can learn how to correct some issues that may be preventing you from successfully tuning to certain channels.

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