Here’s a quick way to find out which of your Recorded TV files are protected.

Instructions

Open Your Recorded TV library  in Windows Explorer. This library may include files from multiple locations if you’ve added folders to your TV library through Media Center. Display the files in Detail view. Right-click any column heading, and then click More on the shortcut menu.

In the pop-up window, scroll through the list of file details and select Protected. Click OK to apply the change.

You may need to scroll to the right to see the Protected flag, which appears as a column of Yes/No values. Click the column heading to sort by the Protected flag and see all your protected shows together.

With all the protected shows sorted together, it should be easy to select and copy the unprotected shows to your new HTPC. Now clear your calendar to watch all of those copy protected shows before completely retiring your old Media Center.

Instructions

Turn on SkyDrive photo uploading. First, you’ll want to enable SkyDrive photo uploads on your Windows Phone. In the Pictures app, tap More (…), then tap Settings. Scroll down and turn on Automatically upload to SkyDrive. Note that if you don’t want location information for your pictures uploaded to SkyDrive, you can turn off Keep location info on uploaded pictures.

This SkyDrive setting will only apply to pictures you take after turning it on. Pictures already in your camera roll will not get uploaded to SkyDrive.

Install SkyDrive on Media Center. On your Windows Media Center PC, download and install SkyDrive for Windows while you’re logged in to your PC with the account you use for Media Center.

Add the Camera Roll to your Library. If the SkyDrive folder doesn’t open automatically after you complete the installation, open Windows Explorer and select the SkyDrive folder (it should be in your Favorites). Right-click the SkyDrive camera roll folder, point to Include in Library in the shortcut menu, then click Pictures.

That’s all there is to it! Take a few photographs with your phone to test it out. Then open Media Center, go to the Picture Library, and enjoy your photographs. As you take pictures on your Windows Phone, they’ll sync automatically to your Media Center PC and appear in your Picture Library.

]]> http://thedigitalmediazone.com/2012/04/28/media-center-quick-tip-%e2%80%93-syncing-your-windows-phone-camera-roll-to-media-center/feed/ 1 http://thedigitalmediazone.com/2012/04/27/using-a-tivo-slide-remote-with-windows-media-center/ http://thedigitalmediazone.com/2012/04/27/using-a-tivo-slide-remote-with-windows-media-center/#comments Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:00:46 +0000 Mark Terborg http://thedigitalmediazone.com/?p=11901 Wouldn’t the TiVo sliding keyboard remote be great if you could use it with Windows Media Center? Well now you can have all of that keyboard goodness and still use the best DVR on the planet: Windows Media Center. Let us show you, step-by-step, how to configure this keyboard + remote with Media Center.

One benefit is obvious: it has a built in keyboard. There are many other benefits and even some drawbacks to using a TiVo Slide remote with Media Center, so we’ll cover those first.

One benefit of using a TiVo Slide Remote with Media Center is obvious...it has a built in keyboard!

Advantages

• Bluetooth. No need to point the remote towards the TV when pressing buttons (except power and volume, unless you blast the volume codes with an IR Blaster)
• Speed. Compared to my old Logitech Harmony 650,  the TiVo Slide is extremely fast. There is pretty much no lag between button presses unlike the Harmony’s pause between IR blasts.
• Keyboard. This one is obvious. Any time you need to type something in to either search for something or jump down the list of recordings, movies, etc., you can just start typing it in instead of pretending you are using a cell phone from the 90s.
• Reprogramming buttons is very flexible using the step-by-step guide below.
• Good Range. The range is approximately 30 feet.
• Buttons are pretty well laid out and you should be able to distinguish them without looking.
• Buttons are back-lit when it is dark and you press a button.
• Price. At the time of writing this article, the TiVo Slide remote is around $40 on Amazon.

Disadvantages

• Remote Desktop into your WHS2011 box (mstsc in the start menu)
• Open up the server Manager
• Right click on “Network Policy and Access Services”
• Select “Add Role Services”

• Tick the “Routing and Remote Access Services” check box
• This should check both “Remote Access Service” and “Routing”

• Click “Next>”

• Confirm these settings and click “Install”

• Click “Close” to finish
• Back in Server Manager expand the Network Policy and Access Services
• Right Click on Routing and Remote Access and select “Configure and Enable Routing and Remote Access”

• Click “Next>”
• Select “Custom configuration”  Be careful here, if you select “Remote access” as one might think, you will get a conflict with NPS later in the process and it will disallow Remote Desktop once the services get started.  If that happens you can Remote Desktop into the server and disable the “Routing and Remote Access” service before it starts so you can reconfigure VPN.

• Tick the box next to “VPN access”

• Click “Finish” to finish the installation
• You may get a warning about conflicting with NPS,  That should be fine. Click “OK” to dismiss it.
• A dialog will pop up asking you to start the Routing and Remote Access service. Go ahead and click “Start service”
• The server is now set up, but it does not know what IP address to hand out to the client.  You can either point it at a DHCP server or configure a static pool of IP address to be assigned.  Here we will perform the later.
• Back at the Server manager right click on the “Routing and Remote Access” under the “Network Policy and Access” heading
• Select “Properties”
• Under the IPV4 tab and the IPv4 address assignment select “Static address pool”
• Click “Add…”

• Define an IP range with between “Start IP address” and “End IP address” that is outside of the range of your router’s DHCP

• Here is an example of my Linksys E200 DHCP range.  You will need to specify an IP address range outside of the range that the router uses otherwise you could get collisions.

• Click “OK” to save the IP address pool
• Click “OK” to save.
• Your VPN server is now set up and started!
• Not so fast.  You need to allow access to a user before you can use it.  You will need to do the following per each user you want to grant access
• Open the Computer Managment console
• Expand “Local Users and Groups” and select “Users”

• Right click on the user and click properties
• Select the “Dial-in” tab
• In the “Network Access Permission” section select “Allow access”

• Click “OK” to save these settings.
• The user should now be able to access the VPN server once you set it up on the client PC side.

Port Forwarding

• You’ll need to forward port 443 for SSTP VPN to access the VPN server.  Head over to http://portforward.com/ to get specific instructions on how to forward a port on your specific router.
• You will also need to ensure that VPN passthrough for SSTP is enabled.  On most routers it should be enabled by default.

• Open the network and sharing center and click “Set up a new connection or network”

• Select “Connect to a workplace” and click “Next”

• Select “No, create a new connection” and click “Next”

• Select “Use my Internet connection (VPN)”

• In the “Internet address:” box type the address of your homeserver, if you are using Microsofts DNS then that would be <Server_Name>.homeserver.com
• Type in anything convenient in the “Destination name:” box

• Click “Next”
• Fill in the credentials for the user you granted access to earlier

Credentials

• Click “Connect”
• You should get a success message of “You are connected”

• Once this is set up, you will only have to hit connect and provide the credentials to connect
• You should now be able to use the network as if you were at home!

And with that, sound off in the comments if you have any issues with this long, overly-complex process.

TotalMedia Theater prompts you to choose a player every time you insert a DVD

Credit goes to Entertainment 2.0 listener Mike for getting us to dust off this old hack and adapting it to the latest version of TotalMedia Theater. To eliminate the prompt screen and always use Media Center to play DVDs and TotalMedia Theatre to play Blu-ray and HD DVD media, you’ll need to use the Registry editor, regedit.exe. If contemplating that raises your blood pressure, you may want to just put up with the prompt. If, however, you feel plenty comfortable mucking around in your registry, then follow these directions. But remember: you can seriously screw up your system if you don’t know what you’re doing here. Tread cautiously. As with any system update, it’s a good idea to create a restore point before making changes like this.

First, find and delete the following registry branch:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\AutoPlayHandlers\Handlers\ArcSoftTotalMediaTheatre

Then find and delete the ArcSoftTotalMediaTheatre key in the following branch:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\AutoPlayHandlers\EventHandlers\PlayDVDMovieOnArrival

After making these changes, Media Center will no longer prompt you to select a player for DVDs—it will just play them the way it always did.

If you’re using your Xbox primarily as an extender, you may just want to consider having it launch Media Center automatically each time you turn it on. The attached video shows you how to Launch Media Center from the new Xbox dashboard and how to automatically launch Windows Media Center on startup.

Instructions

Skip Through the Guide with Remote Shortcuts

Skip forward and backward by three or twelve hours at a time in Media Center’s guide by pressing the Fast Forward and Rewind or Skip and Replay buttons on your remote, respectively.

Show a Specific Network’s Programming Lineup

To see all the shows a specific network has scheduled for the coming days, use the navigation arrows on your remote to move to the left and select a specific network.

Filtering the Guide

Using navigation arrows on your remote control to move to the left in the guide to the Categories, where you can choose any category and filter your provider’s content.

Using these tips together, you’ll find that your use of Media Center’s guide will be more effective and efficient.

Instructions

Select Media Only in the Tasks strip

Click Yes to confirm the change

At this point, Media Center will switch to full screen if it wasn’t already, and a lock icon in the upper-right corner will indicate that it’s in Media Only mode.

To exit Media Only mode, select Exit Media Only in the Tasks strip. Note that Media Only mode doesn’t prevent keyboard users from accessing the start menu or task switching to another running program—it just removes the window control buttons from interface, which is most useful for touchscreen applications.

Instructions

Select Settings under Tasks

Select TV

Select Recorder

Select Recorder Storage

Set the TV Recordings Drive. Under Record on drive, use the + and - buttons to flip through the available drives and choose your new drive. You can select any internal or external drive, but not mapped network volumes.

Set the Maximum TV Limit. If you’re dedicating the new drive to Recorded TV storage, then use the + button next to the storage limit to select the highest setting. The graph at the bottom of the screen will show how many hours of standard and high definition television you can store on the new drive.

Save your changes. That’s it! Windows automatically adds the new drive to your Recorded TV library, and all new shows will be recorded on it. All of your old shows will still appear in your Recorded TV library.

Source: Barnesian

Many Windows Media Center users have complained that Microsoft’s time service against which Windows’ time gets synchronized is unreliable. Whether the time itself is accurate or not, one thing is certain—syncing against the default service fails a lot! You can improve the reliability of your time service updates by changing to one of a number of different services offered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Instructions

Open the Date and Time control panel and select the Internet Time tab. One quick way to get to this is to click the clock in the notification area, and then click the Change date and time settings link.

Click Change Settings to open the Internet Time Settings window. Provide your administrator credentials, if prompted.

Open the Server list and select a NIST time server. If Synchronize with an Internet time server is not already selected, click it now.

Click Update Now. Wait for a response from the service.

Click OK to close any open windows.

It’s worth noting that changing the service may not be enough to fix your problems. Windows doesn’t update the time often enough to keep some PCs on schedule. If your PC’s clock runs a little fast or slow, you may also need to explore creating a scheduled task on your computer to trigger the synchronization more frequently. Here’s a tutorial we found on how to make Windows 7 synchronize time more frequently.

In this example, we’ll disable the Home Server menu that Media Center Connector adds to the Start menu. It’s not that we don’t want access to the Home Server plug-ins—but it may not be desirable for them to be so prominently displayed in the Start menu for your household or sitter to fiddle with.

Instructions

Select Extras Library in the Extras strip

Select Manage Extras

Navigate to the top of the Extras Library screen and select Manage Extras.

Select Start Menu

Disable Start Menu strips

• Clear the Home Server checkbox (or any other add-in’s checkbox) to exclude from the Start menu.
• When finished, select Save.
• Press Back to return to the Extras Library.

At this point, the Home Server strip is gone from your Start menu. But what if you want easy access to the add-in even though you don’t want the strip in the Start menu? You can add a tile to your Extras strip:

Add extras to the Start Menu

• Navigate to the desired add-in in your Extra Library and press Info or More.
• Select Add to Start Menu.

That’s it! When you return to your Start menu, the Extras strip will include a tile for the add-in. (In this example, we added a TV Archive tile.)

You may notice that after installing updates for your add-ins, you’ll need to go through these steps again, but this tip should help to keep your Media Center’s Start menu nice and tidy.

Instructions

Select Settings under Tasks

Select DVD

Select Remote Control Options

Set your preferred button behaviors

• Under When I press Skip and Replay, select Skip forward and backward.
• Under When I press Channel Up and Channel Down, select Skip chapters.
• Finally, select Save.

If you change your remote options as above, your skip forward and back buttons will now function for DVD playback as they do for TV viewing—as 30 second skip and instant replay. To jump between chapters, use your Channel Up and Down buttons now. If only we could get Total Media Theater on board….

Guide Colors:

• Purple – Movies
• Green – Sports
• Light Blue – Kids & Family
• Orange – Specials
• Yellow – News

Instructions

First select Settings under Tasks

Select TV in the Settings menu

Select Guide

Select Guide Page Options

Check Apply colored backgrounds to shows, based on their category

Now look at your guide!

Cheap HTPC is a Champ

Two weeks ago I decided to create a HTPC on the cheap. The goal was simple build a powerful HTPC for under $500. I put together full list of parts that you can read about in HTPC on the Cheap Part 1. The main points are 2 TV tuners, large hard drive, smoking fast AMD Athlon II X3 processor, and a motherboard with a Radeon 4250 built in. This machine should be able to play 1080p content, Netflix HD, Amazon VOD, Hulu, and just about anything else you would want from a HTPC. I have already had an Acer Aspire Revo machine as my main HTPC for just about a year now and I even created RevoHTPC.com to showcase how I completely configured it, but after just 2 weeks with this new HTPC I am basically blown away. Here is a full breakdown of everything I have gone through.

Setup

Building a computer can be a challenge if it is your first time. Luckily this was my third time putting together a computer, and all of the parts just fell into place. One issue I did have was with the power supply inside the case. It only had 1 Sata power connection, so I did have to run to my local Fry’s electronics to grab the 4pin to Sata power adapters which added an additional $6 to the configuration. If you are only going to be using 1 drive then you would be fine, however I have 1 drive as the main OS drive (80GB) and 2 1TB drives. One drive is dedicated to recorded television shows, and the other is all my music and video files until I have a home server up and running again (waiting for Vail to officially release). Loading up Windows 7 was easy and painless as usual, and I found an amazing tool online that allowed me to transfer my setting from my Revo to this new machine, which is mcBackup. This tool simply allows you to save your configuration and then reimport it. There are more features to mcBackup such as automatic backups every night, but I just uninstalled it when I was done. After setting up all of my tuners inside of Media Center I went ahead and installed Hulu Desktop and the Media Center Integrator. I also installed the Revision3 media center plugin, Media Browser, Netflix, and Internet TV.

Inside of the Bios I adjusted the UMA buffer for video to 512MB. By default this is set to auto, however we really want 512MB of RAM dedicated to the Radeon 4250 since we are using this as a main HTPC, and not a normal computer. I only ran into one little issue, which was that I couldn’t get 5.1 audio to pass through the HDMI. The Biostar A880G+ said right on the box that is supported 6 channel audio so I was extremely confused after installing the driver from the included CD and the official AMD HDMI audio driver. No matter what I did it just wouldn’t work. I talked to Josh about the issue and he pointed me over to the Realtek website where I found the ATI HDMI Audio Device R2.55. After uninstalling all of the old drivers and installing R2.55 Windows still displayed 2 channels for audio. Then I went into media center and configured the speakers and it pushed out 5.1 just fine when watching movies or television. I did attempt 5.1 with VLC, but it still only output 2.0 audio, which is a let down. I am thinking that the problem most likely has to do with my sound bar that I am using, Sony HT-CT100, which is a 3.1 system that accepts up to 7.1 audio. Perhaps when I move and get a full receiver and surround sound system I can test it out again, but that will not be for a while.

Besides these few tweaks everything fits into the case that I purchased. And it is sitting happily in my entertainment center. If you are just getting started on HTPCs check out the Beginner’s Guide to HTPCs over at the missing remote.

Normal Usage

I am inside of Windows Media Center about 99% of the time when using my HTPC, which means it needs to be snappy, responsive, and just work. I must say with this processor WMC is super fast, the menus fly, the guide works splendidly, and the movie gallery is smooth. I mean this thing is really fast and really makes you love the media center user interface. Inside of the bios there is a setting to automatically adjust the fan based on the CPU temperature and turning this on made the machine completely silent. If the CPU gets too warm 37C or higher then the fan ramps up and you can hear a quiet hum. I have only ever had this happen once when I closed the front door on my entertainment console. It was back down to normal temperature in a few minutes. When recording a show and watching a 1080p movie the core CPU temperature was only 33C.

Now as far as CPU usage it is really amazing how little is being used and how fast this machine is. My standard test was recording an HD show and watching a1080p movie CPU usage hovered at 2-8%, which is absolutely crazy. Pulling up Netflix and watching HD content only tagged the CPU at 30%. The real big test however is to see if this machine can handle a lot is to have an extender and watch television on both of them at one time. I hooked up my Xbox 360 and the first thing that I noticed is that it worked really great and was fast and responsive. CPU usage was alright averaging around 40-50%. It should be said that the extender used up an additional 200MB of RAM. It is looking like the 4GB of RAM is really helping out and is recommended. I tried to play all sorts of content to really see if I could bring down this machine, and it was basically impossible.

Playback

Basic playback of television was extremely smooth and never had any issues at all. Even if I brought up the mini guide on top of live television there was no stutter at all. Playing movies and videos was flawless as well, there is absolutely nothing to complain about here. There was nothing I could throw at this machine that it couldn’t play. Even 1080p movies inside of VLC played back great. The Radeon 4250 pairs with Athlon II X3 is just a great combination.

Streaming Services

Netflix

I decided to renew my subscription to Netflix just for 1 month to test out this new build. One big problem with my Acer Aspire Revo was that it could not handle Netflix HD. Since Silverlight is not yet GPU accelerated it really took down the CPU and would just choke. This wasn’t the reason I left Netflix, it was mostly because I ran out of interesting shows and movies to watch and there was no reason to keep paying $8 a month. However, now that I have been gone for a while from Netflix the circumstance has changed and there are a lot of new shows and movies, and Netflix HD streams absolutely perfect on this machine. Not only does it stream perfect, the user interface inside of WMC is really fast and responsive. It is a pleasure to flip through and see what I haven’t watched yet and just add it to my queue.

Internet TV

Internet TV is a feature inside of WMC that offers a lot of content from CBS and other sources. The steam is usually just standard definition video with some commercials and is all Flash based. Everything was pretty flawless as well.

Hulu

Good old Hulu Desktop has been my best friend on the Revo ever since Flash 10.1 came out. Hulu has a huge collection of television shows for free. I am not a huge fan of the entire user interface, however it was very snappy and High Quality streamed perfect.

Power Consumption

One question a lot of people asked me when I put up the first article was how much more power this new machine was going to consume. So I went out and purchased a Kill a Watt so I could monitor power usage in different circumstances. The standard use case would be that the HTPC sits idle, then you have just watching television, and then recording a television show and watching 1080p content. I figured that for around 17 hours a day the HTPC sits idle, 4 hours of normal usage, and 3 hours of heavy usage. Of course this can vary every day, but I figure this is a good estimate.  I decided to make a super crazy Excel spreadsheet to measure everything I possibly could on both my Revo and this machine and I was really surprised by the results. The Revo I had could never go above 60W, but I also had a whole bunch of other attachments including 2 hard drives and a USB hub. The new HTPC has a 420W power supply, and the CPU itself is 90W so I knew there was going to be a difference.

There are a lot of different things that I measure, but the most important are the Watts (current power being used) and KWH (Kilowatt Hour, which is how much power the machine uses after 1 hour). Most power providers simply charge you a standard rate for each Kilowatt you use. I have APS here in Arizona, and I am on an odd power plan where it cost 16 cents per kilowatt (9am-9pm weekdays) and then 5 cents all other times. If you do the calculations it looks like the Acer Aspire Revo would cost me around $35.50 for a full year while the new HTPC would cost me around $53.25. I am completely comfortable paying just $17-$18 more a year to have this HTPC. If you want a full breakdown you can download the full Excel spreadsheet here.

Conclusion

Overall I am extremely happy with this new HTPC. Everything just works and works very well. It is almost night and day from the Revo. I was always happy with my Acer Aspire Revo, however I am thrilled about this new setup and I don’t think I can go back. If anyone has any more questions please feel to leave comments and I will respond.