Green Button member, Gelano, has written an app that will get the CRC64/DVDID for you. This is a useful tool if you’re trying to get local DVDs to show up in My DVDs.

Now’s a good time to talk about DVDIDs hit rates. The DVDID is generated by looking at various parts of a DVD in order to generate a unique identifier. Since DVD studios put out multiple versions of a DVD the bits on the disc can vary, this in turn means each version has a different DVDID. Since one movie can have multiple DVDIDs it makes it harder for us to ensure we have every DVDID mapped to it’s corresponding movie. It’s because of this our US hit rate for DVDIDs is about 80%. Which is actually both really good, and an improvement. When we first started this project it was done around 60% but with a combined effort from our group, the metadata group, AMG, and Sony, we submitted lots of missing DVDIDs and AMG has added lots more. For instance, our group actually hired someone to run a DVDID tool on all the DVDs in our internal DVD library.

So what if your DVD is not being identified? You can submit it to Microsoft.

• Load WMP
• Go to DVD Now Playing
• In the bottom right there should be a generic DVD cover art box and above it a ‘Find DVD Info’ link. Click on the link.
• Follow the steps that the link takes you to

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We’re very close to getting a new TweakMCE out that will install with MCE 2005 RU2. I know some of you are very anxious for this but please hang in there. The reason for the delay is that we’re working very hard on Windows Vista Beta 2 and we haven’t had the spare cycles to dedicate to cutting through the red tape to get this out the door. I’m sorry, this is my fault, we should have pushed this out earlier before the beta 2 crunch.

The good news is that we’ll launch a new powertoy with TweakMCE that gives power users access to an often requested feature.

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International Herald Tribune, The End User: Innovation from BBC . What’s interesting about this article is the discussion of the economics of TV distribution from Ashley Highfield, the BBC’s director of new media and technology. The cost of transmitting a year’s worth of one channel’s content is:

• Several million dollars for standard distribution
• $1.24 million for satellite transmission
• $22,000 over the Internet

As we make the shift to IPTV and net TV will the savings be passed on to consumers?

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