With discussions of charging for Media Browser now heavy, I have decided to start looking at alternatives for browsing my media collection and the only real choice for me seems to be going to a whole new front end – MediaPortal.  The Moving Pictures plugin is the closest thing I can find to what Media Browser offers and so I have begun getting comfortable with configuring it.

I do want to say that I am not against Media Browser becoming ‘pay-for’ software.  In fact, I believe it is 100% worthy of a price tag.  Unfortunately, I’m not in a good position to purchase anything like this for a while.  Especially with some of the proposed pay scales I’ve heard mention of (yearly subscription and per seat licensing would be way out of my price range considering I have multiple clients).  Hopefully, things will settle down later and I’ll be able to get a license or two.  I still believe Media Browser the best media organizer/presenter available.

Anyway, as I begin to learn the ins-and-outs of MediaPortal and the various plugins available, I’ll probably shift my content more in that direction.  I’ve been a total Windows Media Center user for several years now, so this will be a big adjustment for me.  Oh well, here’s to change!

A ‘bug fix’ release for Media Browser has been released.   Several issues have been resolved such as ImagesByName actor images.  There have also been a number of performance and cosmetic enhancements.

One major addition is a recent items ‘pagination’ effect which lists multiple ‘recent added’ items in a scrollable view format on the enhanced home page.  I saw this in the SVN the past couple of days and it’s NICE.

Full release notes are available here.  Download here.

It’s no secret that I hate Comcast, although I still use their Internet service.  A few months ago, I successfully removed myself from their  Digital Voice in favor of Vonage and ditched their severely overpriced cable TV service for DISH.

One good thing about Comcast around Atlanta is that their service coverage area is so large and populated that they are forced to rely solely on contractors for installation and maintenance (this can be very bad too…especially when you have problems).  In my case, I don’t pay for any TV, yet the contractors are lazy and don’t trap the line when you’re on Internet service only.  This allows for basic TV service which Comcast charges about $12 a month for, if I recall correctly.  More importantly, this opens the door for clear QAM signals to pass.

I use an HDHomeRun as my central tuner for all HTPCs.  It’s not used much, but does come in handy once in a while.  Ever so often, I will run a scan to update the lineup since Comcast changes it fairly regularly.  When I say they change it, it must be due to incompetence because today’s scan cropped up a typical 111 channels.

After removing a couple of duplicates, local service channels and OnDemand streams (yes, those are picked up), it settled down to around 80-85 solid channels.  This includes channels like Disney, A&E, History Channel, Discovery, TLC, Animal Planet, E!, BET, Cartoon Network, MTV, Nickelodeon, TruTV, Sci-Fi and the list literally goes on and on.  Most of those aren’t in HD (480p), but all local broadcast channels (NBC, FOX, ABC, etc.) are.  All are digital, nonetheless.

I don’t know how long Comcast will make these available for free to me, but I’m going to enjoy the ride…

So I just stumbled across another streaming web application called Zinc, and it looks pretty good.  It’s designed for TV viewing and states that it is Media Center-compatible remote friendly.

Zinc is a free product from ZeeVee.com and basically organizes all the free TV content online in one place.  It even can tie into your Netflix account.

I decided to give this a try and see how I could integrate it into my own Media Center menu, so I downloaded the Windows version of the application and installed.  During the install, it runs a hardware compatiblility test to make sure it’s up to the task.

I then decided not to take the first run and instead fired up MC Menu Mender so that I could incorporate Zinc into my Media Center menu.  I took a look at the properties for the created shortcut for Zinc on my desktop and just copied it into the path for the new entry point in MC Menu Mender, added the necessary arguments and copied the logo for Zinc off of the website.  Since Zinc states complete Media Center remote compatibility, I decided to not enable “Use wrapper” for now.  We’ll see how it goes!

Upon starting up Media Center, I was presented by my newly created Zinc entry point in the Pictures+Videos strip…right where I put it.

I gave it a click and voila!  Success!

The first thing I did was link my Netflix account, which prompts you for confirmation.

After that, I’m met with a poster view of available titles.  Take note of all the sorting options available in various parts of the screen.  It’s very nice.  I also noticed that navigation was very smooth and not clunky like most other web interfaces.

Upon logging out of Neflix, I’m met with the initial screen again.  So, I decided to take a look at some of the available channels (FOX, in this example).

All the available shows are presented with the number of episodes.  You can also add your favorite shows here.

Drilling down further gives you the episode views where they are sorted by latest release (newest to oldest).

After selecting an episode, I was prompted to install the Zinc player.  Why this wasn’t installed with the application I’ll never know.  But, for the sake of review, I do so.  Also notice the remote support at the bottom right.

Upon installing and presenting me with a sample for playback, I was ready to roll.

Nice.  The picture is pretty good and I encountered no stuttering or other artifacts during playback.

Next, I decided to take a look at the available settings.  Here you can set Zinc up with local media folders, add other applications for launch, set a few Zinc system settings (enable fullscreen, watched video status, clear cache, etc.), and grab updates.

I decided to add a media folder so that I could check out the local media option.

This began a scan for all available media and it began showing up under the Local Content menu (notice the available thumbnail at the top right – this is generated by Zinc).  I did notice that only AVI files had been detected during the scan.  It’s going to be a disappointment if it does not allow playback of MP4, MKV, etc.  AVI is actually a small percentage of my collection.  On the other hand, I don’t plan on using Zinc for local media.

There are other views available also.

Thumb view:

Thumb detail:

Finally, selecting Zv HDTV presents you with loads of videos related to Zinc and other ZeeVee products,  in case you’re interested.

Upon exiting I was returned to the desktop and all I had to do was hit the Green Button to bring Media Center back to the foreground again.

All in all, I’d say Zinc is one of, if not the, best web apps out there for centralizing streaming media.  I found it much easier to use than Hulu (which it includes also).  The biggest knocks against it for me were the lack of metadata for local media and the overall lack of content.  When I say lack of content, I mean it in comparison to some of the other options like SecondRun.tv.  There’s still plenty to keep you busy though.  Not being integrated within Media Center may also be a turnoff for many of you, but it’s really not all that bad.  Especially if you’ve tried the Hulu desktop application and tried using it with a remote.  First indications also lead me to believe it does not have local support for MP4 and MKV…at least. Other formats may also not be supported.

Check it out…it’s free!

Integrating within Media Center:

I just wanted to make a point on adding the Zinc application with MC Menu Mender.  Your path will be the exact installation path to the Zv.exe .  In the arguments box, you must enter -zviewer or it will not work.  The logo I used is this one:  Just download and use!

Many of you have a an HTPC, HDTV and  a receiver all controlled by some type of universal remote…am I right?  Well, I have a couple and one problem I’ve had since the beginning is with my living room HTPC and Samsung plasma.  They just do not get along.  If the TV does not power up and initialize before the video card does, I never get out of the ‘No signal’ display and have to do a sleep/resume cycle on my HTPC again in order for it to work.  I even added a custom power command on my Harmony 880 just to sleep and wake the HTPC and nothing else to resolve it.  It’s still annoying, however.

What is happening is, although ATi claims to have fixed this forever ago, that my HD 2600 card is not able to retrieve EDID information from the TV if it has not completely powered, warmed up and initialized before the card requests that information.  So, it remains stuck on ‘No signal’ since no handshake took place.  Setting the power up order for my devices and configuring some wait states helped  reduce the number of times it occurs, but it still happens with some frequency.

Today, I believe I have solved my problem.  I found a smal application called hdmiON that basically sends a command to reboot the monitor (TV in this case).  This causes EDID information to be resent, reinitializing the display and giving you a puicture instead of the dreaded ‘No signal’ message.

One problem is running it, however.  I don’t fully power down my systems, so I can’t simply throw a shortcut to this little application in my startup folder.  I need to run it upon resume from standby. So, I found another small application that fits that bill…it’s called Hibernate Trigger.  When running, Hibernate Trigger can be configured to run a program on sleep, resume or both concurrently.  I simply placed Hibernate Trigger in my startup folder so it runs on every boot, configure it to execute hdmiOn upon resume and then let it quietly run in the background.  Problem solved!

If you’re experiencing this issues, I suggest you give this a try!  Downloads available at the links provided.

That’s right.  As of just a few moments ago, the long-awaited 2.1 beta of Media Browser was released for public download.  There is a lot that comes with this new version, so you’re going to want to read about it here, here (old post) and here (pretty complete writeup including screenshots).  Then, finally download it here.

One of the biggest things I would like to mention here is that there is no upgrade for your watched status indicators.  It will pretty much start over again.

Enjoy!

ArcSoft launched a public beta yesterday for TotalMedia Theatre 3.  Download link to the patch and a list of fixes are available on their forum here.

So, as I’ve been using the SVNs for a while, having the ability to share the watched status (playstate folder) between my HTPCs was a paramount addition.  I have nearly 70 different TV series with hundreds of seasons and thousands of episodes, so keeping track of what I have watched is actually pretty important…especially if you like to mix up what you watch on a daily basis.

The Media Browser team answered the call by creating a new feature that has not yet been added by default in the XML configuration file, but can be added and will be obeyed.  It’s called <UserSettingsPath> and will create a new cache location wherever you set it to look with a sharable playstate and display folder.  Yes, display settings are also now capable of being uniform across multiple HTPCs by enabling this.

I just finished setting this up live (I had been testing it prior) and even after clearing my cache, I found that it worked flawlessly.  My bedroom HTPC is the most heavily used and contained the most accurate watched status directory, so that is what I copied to my UserSettingsPath location.  Display settings were already set by the test systems and were also correctly ‘changed’ when accessing Media Browser the first time since enabling this.

After playing around for a while, I started to wonder how long it would take users of Media Browser to start complaining that they want the shared watched status, but not display preferences?  I know it’s going to happen, so I thought up a pretty simple solution.   It involves one quick and easy step that does not even include the new UserSettingsPath setting.

1. Go to C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser\Cache and copy your playstate folder to a network location that all HTPCs can access (read and write permissions are necessary).
2. Once copied, delete the local playstate directory (entire directory, contents only will not do it).  Make sure Media Browser is closed so there is no directory lock.
3. Open a command line prompt (administrator priviledges will probably be required).
4. Run the following command: mklink /D C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser\Cache\playstate \\network\location\playstate
5. Take note of the italicized portion of the above command.  That is the exact location of your playstate folder (if using UNC, use UNC for all system.  If using drive mappings, make sure they are the same drive letter for all systems).
6. Repeat for each HTPC that you want shared watched status and unique display settings for.

That’s it.  What this does is make use of the shared playstate folder capabilities without using the UserSettingsPath option.  Your HTPC will be able to store its display settings locally, as usual, but will be using a universally shared playstate folder for updating watch status via directory junction.

I’ve done this in the past when sharing the playstate folder was not really supported, so now that it is, I can’t foresee any issues.  I have not tried it though and probably won’t.  I don’t mind shared display settings.

Anyway, give it a shot if it interests you and let me know how you made out!

Instead of just repeating what has already been said, I’ll just lead you to this post over at AVS Forums regarding the new Slysoft player.  It is expected to be available sometime this year.

It will be free (but will require AnyDVD).

So, today is the day that over-the-air analog tv broadcasts bite the dust.  If you’re on standard rabbit ears, you’re only going to see snow on channels 2-69.

Many lost signal on Februaryt 17th of this year, so technically, this is the second round to kill off what was left.

Welcome to the digital age!  Whoopee.