Roku has a special on the SoundBridge M500. It’s $99 until Oct 28. Use promo code M50099.

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Problem: Microsoft remote control stops working

Solution: Take the batteries out, take a paperclip and touch the two upper battery terminals at the same time. Put the batteries back in.

Problem:After RU2 install some remote control buttons fail to function. Others do not fail.

Solution:

• delete c:\windows\inf\keyboard.pnf (that’s keyboard.PNF. The P is important)
• Open up device manager
• Right cilck on ‘ehome infrared receiver’ select uninstall
• Right click on any device and select ’scan for hardware changes’

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Green Button, Hack for enabling Movies TV Portal outside of the USA.

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How to get locally copied DVDs to show up in My DVDs

Disclaimer: Everything posted below is unsupported. We built and tested My DVDs to work for DVD changers, not local content. That it does, is a nice bonus :).

Assuming you have several locally copied DVDs on your hard drive you can get them to show up in My DVDs and play in Media Center. Here’s the basic method of getting this to work:

1. Enable My DVDs. Load up regedit.exe and find this key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\DvdSettings]. Double click on it and change “ShowGallery”=”Play” to “ShowGallery”=”Gallery”. Alternatively, here’s a little file to do this for you courtsey of Sean, ShowMCEGallery.zip.
2. Copy your DVD to your hard drive. I recommend that when you copy DVDs locally that you select the option to have them chunked at 1 gig and the output should by something of the form c:\my dvds\mattsdvd. Underneath c:\my dvds\mattsdvd you’ll find c:\my dvds\mattsdvd\video_ts and in video_ts you’ll find a video.ifo file in addition to several other files.
3. Get cover art. There are a number of places to find cover art. Once you’ve find the correct cover art drop the cover art in c:\my dvds\mattsdvd\folder.jpg
4. Add folder to My Videos. The My DVDs gallery searches the same path as My Videos so if your DVD is not showing up go to My Videos, press CTRL-D, and go through the Videos Media Discovery wizard and add c:\my dvds.

But wait, what about rich metadata?

If you want rich metadata you need to:

1. Create a mattsdvd.dvdid.xml file. In c:\my dvds\mattsdvd create a file called mattsdvd.dvdid.xml. It’s of the form:
   

   <Disc>
   <Name>Matt’s DVD</Name>
   <ID>00000000|00000000/<ID>
   </Disc>

   Where the 0..0|0..0 is the CRC64 id of the DVD. I’ll dig up more on the CRC64 hash function shortly. But in the meantime, it’s an ID calculated based off the original DVD. If you drop it in the dvdid file we’ll query our metadata provider and pull down the rest of the metadata for you and store it in our DvdInfoCache. If you don’t have it, continue to step 2 where you can create your own rich metadata file in DvdInfoCache.

2. If you don’t have the CRC64, make one up, put it in your dvdid file
3. Create a [CRC64].xml file. In c:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Microsoft\eHome\DvdInfoCache create an xml file named 00000000-00000000.xml (or whatever your made up CRC64 is. Instead of posting a sample because it’s rather long, you can download one here for Stephen King’s IT: 7e96a250-1c80bfc9.xml.

As you can see, this is not super straightforward, because to re-iterate, My DVDs is for folks with DVD changers. However, I totally expect a savy community member to take the above info and build a plugin which will automate the process of creating these XML files.

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CE Pro, Sony’s MCE-based Digital Living System: Right Product, Wrong Channel. Apparently the XL1 will only be available at retail and won’t be availble through Sony’s Custom Integration sales market line.

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Wow, blogging about MCE is getting really trendy.

David Fleischman, a Media Center project manager, now has a blog Tales of Windows Media Center Project Management. I worked closely with David on RU2. Frequently he would come by my office brandishing a golf club ensuring we were on track to ship on time. Thankfully we did! :)

He was also one of the three at Digital Life and may or may not have had a Flirtini at Pop Burger.

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Peter Rosser, a software design engineer on the Media Center TV team has a blog.

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On Friday, we launched Media Center Update Rollup 2. With the rollup you can now connect a DVD changer/jukebox to MCE. For devices such as the Sony XL1 and the PowerFile R200DL this support is plug and play. For other devices, if they implement the MediumChanger interface and install the appropriate driver they will also work with Media Center. Or if you don’t have a changer you can enable this functionality for locally stored DVDs (more on that later). So what does the feature look like?

Assuming we recognize your changer, we change the Play DVD item on the Media Center start menu to My DVDs:

Once you have a few discs loaded into the changer (on the current changers it takes about 1 minute to scan each disc inserted) My DVDs looks like this:

It looks and behaves very much like the other MCE galleries:

• Pivots on the left
• Context menu for each item
• Triple tap support

Here’s what the context menu looks like:

If you click through to a movie you get the Movie Info page:

You get information like, the director, cast, rating, genre, theatrical release year, synopsis and larger cover art.

If you need to edit the title, because it’s wrong, or we were unable to identify the disc, click ‘Edit Title’:

If you go back up to the My DVDs gallery, or to More Programs you can access Manage Discs which gives you a view of all the optical media in your changer enabling you to eject it or load it.

Upcoming posts on the changer:

• How to display locally stored DVDs in My DVDs with rich metadata
• My DVDs as a platform for software developers
• Where are we going with My DVDs in Vista

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There’s a new article up on the Microsoft Expert Zone, Connect an A/V receiver to your Media Center PC:

There are two key elements to a successful Home Theater PC environment: audio and video. This article focuses on the audio side of things. It explains how to connect your Media Center PC to your audio/video (A/V) receiver. Detailed information is provided about the process of connecting your Media Center PC to your receiver for three different speaker configuration types

The article was written by Nishant, the tester for the My DVDs feature in Rollup 2. If you have any feedback on the article, let me know, Nishant’s office is just a few doors down from mine.

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Big news tonight from the Sony Store at 550 Madison Ave, New York City. Sony and Microsoft teamed up to release the Sony VAIO XL1, a living room Media Center PC and 1394 200 disc DVD changer/jukebox.

PR News Wire, Sony’s Digital Living System Re-Defines the Digital Living Room:

Two sleek components comprise Sony’s Digital Living System: a high-end
multimedia PC and a 200-disc media changer/recorder. Both are designed to fit
into a home entertainment rack and the elegant silver and black casings are
sure to complement the rest of your home entertainment system.

Sony living room PC + 200 disc DVD changer for $2300.

PC Mag Review, 4 out of 5 stars, Sony VAIO XL1 Digital Living System:

Sony VAIO XL1 Digital Living System won’t replace your notebook or desktop PC, but it fast approaches Media Center nirvana.

I was just at the launch party and am now on my way out to celebrate. A lot of work went into this collaborative effort between Sony and Microsoft and I think the result is amazing. Not only do they have a living room PC and a changer, they also wrote plugins to view all your music CDs in the changer (and rip them all), archive content to blank DVDs in the changer, and surf the Internet with your remote control.

I took lots of photos and will post them soon.

In the meantime, you can find out more at Sony.com, The VAIO XL1, Digital Living System. And also there’s a Q&A on Microsoft.com, Microsoft and Sony Team on Digital Entertainment Content Management System.

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