Floppyhead - Digital Media and Home Theater Computers

With the release of Vista and its media center software, a new era of high definition content was supposed to have been ushered in with the introduction of digital cable tuners. These tuners were supposed to turn your computer into a high-powered Tivo. Reality did not live up to the hype. The [...]

At least we do not have to wait for Fiji to get incremental updates to Media Center. Hot on the heels of Vista Service Pack 1, Microsoft has released the June 2008 Cumulative Update for Windows Media Center for Windows Vista. This update rollup is intended for computers that are running Windows Vista Home [...]

VmcNetflix is a Vista Media Center plugin that allows you to sync with your Netflix account to stream movies to your media center. While the plugin has always been free, the developers have decided to make the software open source. Some of the features of the plugin include:

Download WatchNow movies to a “Watch [...]

I have been looking for a way to prioritize my tuners in Vista Media Center. Why do I want dictate which tuner is used as the default? Mainly to avoid digital rights management. I currently use the HDHomerun as a QAM tuner to receive unencrypted HD channels on my computer. This [...]

With Cyberlink’s PowerDVD Ultra no longer playing hard drive based HD movies from ripped HD-DVDs and Blu-ray discs, the only way to watch such movies is to “mount” an ISO image of the disc and then watch it using PowerDVD. Not an easy thing to do while in Vista Media Center. MyMounter, brought to you [...]

Vista Service Pack 1 fixes several items in Media Center. This Service Pack is more an incremental step in the evolution of Media Center and not the next leap in features. Besides a roll-up of hot fixes, SPI adds the following features:

Adds support to enable new types of Windows Media Center Extenders, such as [...]

SageTV has been adding all sorts of media center features to its product line, including clear QAM support and HD media extenders. They are completely out-innovating Microsoft. With all the features they are delivering, there is one lingering problem: SageTV does not support digital cable tuners and CableCards (i.e. cannot watch.record premium HD [...]

Did you know that your cable company most likely provides your local HD channels via clear QAM (i.e. without encryption)? The availability of these channels, through what is know as Clear QAM, is usually not too publicized by your cable company. Clear QAM essentially is unencrypted digital cable without a set-top-box. The [...]

Extremetech has an article on how to turn your Xbox 360 into a media extender. As I have mentioned before, the Xbox 360 is the only version 2 media extender to work with Vista’s Media Center.
From the article:
Once you’ve configured the Xbox 360 and your PC, you can share almost any media on your [...]

Microsoft has announced details on the new Xbox 360 Arcade, the replacement to the initial Xbox 360 Core. The Arcade will retail for $279.99, which will be cheaper than the announced price of several stand alone media center extenders. It makes you wonder how media center extenders are going to differentiate themselves [...]