Back for the first week of March and while news is slow, we’ve decided to take a look at some of the great plugins that are available both within the 10 foot interface, and that simply compliment Media Center.  Whether we’re talking about metadata retrieval, content management or adding new functions, the apps we cover during this show are just a sample of what’s out there.  You’ll find links to all the applications we discuss right below.
We didn’t have a whole lot of email this week and we’re hoping …

We’re finally back after a one week hiatus and hopefully it’ll be the last one we take for awhile.  We hope no one missed us too much.  This week we start off by running through the comments, questions and emails from the last show.  Thanks again for all of your feedback!
Once we get through the weekly stuff, it’s on to this week’s topic:  ripping and encoding DVDs.  You’ll find links for all of the software we discuss down below in the show notes.  Much like everything else with HTPCs …

Back again folks!  Thanks for joining us on this week of not such good news for Media Center enthusiasts.  But, like any good enthusiasts, we take our lumps and keep moving!
There is some good news this week amid all the turmoil however.  The best (for me) being that it’s now possible to convert non-MCE supported video containers to DVR-MS.  Not only can you flip MKV and AVI formats to something native to Media Center, but the conversions are high quality and the software is free!  Anyone who’s paid for …

Those of use who use Media Center in our homes as more than just a DVR have this love/hate thing going on.  On the one hand, we love Media Center.  The interface, the functionality, the DVR capabilities, all of it.  We also hate the fact that Microsoft has, so far, decided that extenders should be half-hearted affairs that just can’t do everything the PC can.
Well the times they are a changin’ and you can thank Ben Drawbaugh and Andres Echevarria.  Working together the two have come up with a …

For being the slow time of year, there sure is some great Media Center related news out there.  It’s only about one month until CEDIA kicks off and hopefully we’ll have even more to talk about then.  For now though, we get a chance to talk about some 3rd party applications as well as a new feature that’s coming to Windows 7 Media Center.
For me personally, the biggest news this week is that Show Analyzer has gone public beta.  That means that everyone can start skipping those commercials.  Just …

I hate codecs.  I hate that I have to play games to get certain files to do certain things on my HTPC.  It drives me nuts that every time you install a codec pack it rarely uninstalls cleanly and you have a machine that is bug ridden just because you wanted to get a certain file type working.
Personally, I’ve become a minimalist.  As long as my HTPC can playback Media Center native files (DVR-MS, WTV) as well as AVIs and MKVs then I’m set.  What happens when you need …

The story broke a little while back that Divx was releasing a tech preview to provide support for MKVs within Windows 7.  The great part about this news was that not only would it provide support on your PC itself but because the preview introduced support for Media Foundation, this opened up Media Center extenders as well.
I finally had a chance to install the preview and do a little testing.  While I haven’t been playing with it too much, I wanted to get some information out to our readers …