Media Center PC

[BouncingSoul]

Anyone out there ever tried the Media Center version of XP? MS's site says that it can do live video capture if you have a cap card. Well I do and I think capture is a pain in @SS to do right so I was thinking this would be a cool and easy little way to do it. However if all it is a plugin to WMP10 I'll be mad cause I already have WMP10 but can't seem to find a way to view or record TV.

 

[NetRyder]

It's not a plugin for WMP. There is a separate front-end called the "Media Center" built into the OS, and one of its features is to capture and store live TV from a TV tuner card (much like a DVR box). From what I've seen and heard, it's as simple as clicking a button on the supplied remote control.

Incidentally, did you watch the "Digital Media Anywhere" keynote presentation that MS had in Los Angeles today? There was a live web stream this morning, but if you missed it, they're going to have a downloadable version available soon. I thought it was very cool how they've connected all these devices together to really allow you to have your digital media anywhere. I think the live demo would probably answer your questions about MCE. I'll try to post a link to it when it becomes available.

 

[BouncingSoul]

Sweet. Thanks

 

[NetRyder]

By the way, there's also a nice, in-depth review by GamePC that I linked to on the front page a couple of days ago. It's definitely worth a read if you're interested in MCE 2005.

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_con...11AAD5258BA927FF0AFF571B7E1EB940B3A18C81F69DC

Especially relevent to your question:

You can record a Live TV stream to your hard drive directly from the guide seen above, or when you're actually watching the show by hitting the record button on the remote control. Items will be recorded to your hard drive in a high quality MPEG-2 based format called DVR-MS. Unencrypted DVR-MS files can also be played back on third party systems not running Media Center Edition using most modern media players. Hitting the record button twice in a row will setup a recording schedule for that item, recording all future episodes at that time slot. Microsoft lets you customize how long you want to keep recorded shows and what quality settings you would like to encode with.

 

[NetRyder]

I promised I'd be back with the video of the keynote, so here it is:
http://blogs.msdn.com/mikehall/archive/2004/10/15/243227.aspx