Daniel has a MCE Database Query tool and asks:

It would be cool if some of the MS bloggers on the media center team would talk about some of the internals of MCE.

What would you like to know?

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I’m disappointed that Digital Home Canada’s Canadian PVR Roundup did not include any mention of Media Center, espcially in the standalone PC category.

But sure enough if you go to Best Buy.ca and search for Media Center you’ll find they’re not selling the most compelling Media Centers.

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Adam Stone’s MCE blog. Now if only Adam would stop writing his entries in Microsoft Word and cutting and pasting them in because it’s breaking the validation on his feed (I also wish Newsgator wasn’t so strict about their XML parsing).

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On Friday I was at an invigorating talk given by a senior Microsoft employee who went on and on about the importance of blogs and I must admit I felt a bit guilty that I hadn’t been blogging much recently so it’s time to turn that around.

To start, let me tell you about what I work on… As you know I’m a program manager on the Media Center team in eHome. This means I am the ‘PM owner’ for a number of areas. While I didn’t necessarily own these areas in Media Center 2005 I’ll indicate what concrete features in that version that I’m now responsible for moving forward:

• Movies - TV Movies Portal
• DVD - DVD playback user experience
• Settings - Someone has to be the gate keeper and keep the other PMs from adding needless settings
• Accessibility - How MCE works with a screen reader and for people with limited vision
• Connecting to other PCs and content servers in the home - The ‘Media Discovery’ modules invoked through the context menu in Music, Pictures and Videos
• Communications - 10′ Messenger and Caller ID
• Text input - The control box as well as our IMEs
• TweakMCE powertoy

And a few more areas that you will find out about soon enough :).

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F-Stop, Dell Requiring a DVD Drive for Windows Media Center:

I was at the Dell site looking around and noticed that when I went to customize a system I had the option of upgrading to Windows Media Center – but only if the system was configured with a DVD drive. Am I reading this right – will Dell only sell Media Center with a DVD drive?

Actually, it’s, us, Microsoft who requires that OEMs configure their machines with DVD players.

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ABC, Teen’s tree house goes high tech:

It’s the dream of almost every little kid — to have a tree house in the backyard that you can actually live in. Well, that’s what a Deerfield teenager has done. Alan Mellovitz, 18, has built himself a tri-level home complete with every electronic gadget imaginable.

Including a MCE. Watch until about 1:33 in the video.

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I’m sure by now you’ve all read the announcement that the Niveus Denali Edition will be available from Magnolia and Tweeter. If you’re interested in seeing one in action and you live in Seattle then you’ll want to stop by the Niveus Media Denali Wine and Cheese Event at Magnolia Hi-Fi.

Wednesday June 22 – Seattle Store 6308 Roosevelt Way NE

Thursday June 23 – Bellevue Store 14404 NE 20th Street

Time: 6-9pm – stop by anytime

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Yesterday afternoon we launched ABC Family in US Online Spotlight.

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Jason Bradbury posts a link to a video he made, DIY Smart Home: Movie #3:

Designed as part of a seminar and spruced up for the web with a touch of narration, Video 3:Windows Media Center offers an overview of Microsoft’s operating system and a preview of two new devices from UK PC manufacturer Elonex.

Is this the first MCE videocast? If not, send me links to the others :).

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Steve’s a home theater installer and went a little nuts with Media Center, MCE = Media Center Everywhere (via Sean in email):

The TVs don’t use Media Center Extenders to access the MCE interface and content. The s-video output of the video card and the sound output of the sound card of our media server running MCE 2005 goes into a Leviton modulator that outputs the MCE audio and video as a channel, 78 in our case.

Check out his photos on Flickr.

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