Yep, the popular weather plugin for Vista has been modified to support 7MC. x86 and x64 download versions for Heatwave v1.2 are available here.

Here is a list of a few other additions to this pre-release version:

• A widescreen layout is now included. If you don’t like it, it can be disabled in Settings on the Appearance page.
• There is a day/night (sun/moon) forecast indication next to the location title. If you don’t like it, it can be disabled in Settings on the Appearance page.
• The layout of the main page has been tightened up a bit (the data refresh times have been lost in this version, however will return in a later version)
• The various times will now be formatted according to the system time format
• The temperature ranges are now presented in high-low order. You can flip them back to the way they were in Settings on the General page.
• Changed the formatting of temperature ranges to make negative temperatures more legible

In order to make things even easier for you, I’ve decided to rework the plugin index once again.  I am now using a table format that allows auto-sorting by simply clicking on each column header.  I have just updated the main plugin table with the new one and the remaining tables are being worked on now.  I hope to have most of it finished today.

I have also removed the tiny thumbnail images in place of a text link for viewing screenshots.  This helps tremendously in load times.  It also keeps the table from dynamically resizing during loading.  You’ll also notice a few other changes here and there, but primarily my reason for changing was so that you can easily find the latest plugins added by sorting with the “Added” column.  Right now, everything will start with a base date of 10/1/09, but as we move along you’ll find this to be quite useful.

Hope the new layout is beneficial to you!  Check it out!

Update:

I just noticed that yesterday happened to be the site’s busiest day since its inception.  Thanks for visiting!

I’m still too busy to do anything fun and exciting in the HTPC world, but I did happen into a couple of nice things over the past couple of days.  Yesterday, I had an old Dell GX280 released to me from work.  It’s nothing spectacular, but will make a nice replacement to my son’s HTPC, even though it is a slightly underpowered in comparison.  It’s a SFF  (small form factor) model, so it will be a much better fit (plus MUCH quieter).  It’s outfitted with a Celeron D336 (2.8GHz), came with 1GB of PC-3200, slimline DVD and has built-in Broadcom Gbit LAN (which is nice).  Hard drives have to be destroyed here for recycled systems, so I’ll have to find a SATA drive for it.  I’ll also bump it up to 2GB of memory, relocate the HD2600XT (it came with a low-profile bracket, which is a plus) and throw Win7 on it.  I just hope the PSU it came with can handle it.

I also finally got my caller-ID working on HTPC2 (bedroom HTPC) this morning.  I use a combination of a YAC server with Andy VT’s Vista Caller-ID Add-in.  It has always worked great on all of my HTPCs except that one.  I had hoped the upgrade to Win7 would fix it, but I was still getting the same problem (something in the .Net stack was blocking the connection…I’m no coder, so I can’t begin to explain it).  Anyway, maybe it had been a long time since installing it and I forgot, but installing the desktop client service, disabling the tray application and running the Media Center add-in fixed it for me.  I thought the add-in package installed the service, but maybe it doesn’t (or maybe something is blocking the service install on this system so the add-in has nothing to connect to…I don’t know).  All I know is that it is working now.  This is the only caller-ID combo I could get to work effectively for my setup, so it maybe real happy to get it going in the bedroom since 95% of what we watch is on that HTPC.  The one from VistaCallerID.com did work, but the server setup doesn’t provide for multiple listeners…which I need.  OABSoftware’s Caller-ID Server/Client offering worked great when sending test calls, but it didn’t receive anything externally, so that was a bust.

Finally, and I mentioned it a little bit above, I did officially upgrade my bedroom HTPC to Windows 7.  I went with the 32-bit after a little bit of deliberation, but considering the p965 chipset it’s on only supports 4GB, I didn’t see the need to induce any 64-bit codec headaches.  I’ll write more on my experiences with it later, but so far I am pleased (especially since Advent’s Media Center Studio and the Win7 DirectShow Tweaker utilities worked so well).

Anyway, a little bit of sunshine for me despite all the rain.

Advent, the developer behind the wildly popular MC Menu Mender for editing Vista Media Center menu strips, has just released his Win7/7MC version of the application – Media Center Studio.

Personally, I’m waiting on Mikinho’s offering which is supposed to be released sometime tonight.  His application is supposed to allow for menu manipulation without any resource editing as in Media Center Studio.  You can track its development at TGB here.

I do plan on giving both a try, however, so check in sometime tomorrow for some screens and maybe a quick comparison.

Windows Media Center 7 will get an updated Netflix interface according to this article over at AppScout.com.  There was quite a bit of excitement when it was introduced a few months ago for Vista, but lost a lot of its luster when it was found to not support extenders and, well, just not have that many options available.  The 7MC version still doesn’t support extenders (although a plugin does exist for the XBOX360) and I don’t think it will support anything the old Vista version does, but it is touch-screen enabled.  Yay.

There’s a video on the page I’ve linked to.  If you want to watch it, skip ahead about 1 hour to get to the parts you actually want to see.