Blog :: CharlieO : Media Center

eBay Develops TiVO Sample Application

charlieo — Thu, 17 Feb 2005 05:28:00 GMT

Check out the Java TivoDemo for a TiVO box with the TiVo Home Media Engine (HME). I think it's great eBay is looking at the living room and ten foot presentations of their service. For you see...

I'm a fan of eBay although not a heavy user (I'm cmozen with 11 items bought or sold since July 7, 2001 and 100% Positive Feedback :-). Our most recent purchase was bedding for one of my children which was discontinued by the retailer but matched items my wife found on clearance at the retail store (Pottery Barn Kids, if yer interested). We were up pretty late and bidding was fierce down to the last few seconds -- very addictive and compelling.

So...an open appeal to the eBay development team (especially Dan Theurer) and others who build solutions using eBays toolset...

Take a look at the Media Center Software Development Kit (SDK), especially Media Center Add Ins. I think it would be super cool to have an alert in Media Center (and all Media Center Extenders connected for that matter) telling me I've been outbid, an item I've been looking for has just been posted or an auction where I'm the seller just ended or was 'Bought Now'. In fact, a good chunk of the work might already be done in the Web Services Client Add In sample which can be found in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Microsoft Windows XP Media Center SDK\Sample AddIns\WebServiceClient\ once you have downloaded and installed the offline version of the Software Development Kit.

Reminder: This blog will be moving soon to http://blog.retrosight.com.

An Introduction to Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005

charlieo — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 02:19:00 GMT

[Courtesy of my friend and colleague John Canning, who isn't blogging but should be -- especially about his world traveling photographic expeditions...]

Here is a resource we nailed for the 2004 version of Media Center and revised for the 2005 version. If you want a great primer on Media Center features, check out the Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Reviewers Guide (Adobe PDF). It's chock full of screenshots, illustrations and information. If you want to know all about Media Center before buying OR have already bought and want to know what you've got this is the resource to have.

Reminder: This blog will be moving soon to http://blog.retrosight.com.

Breaking A Scoble Rule: I'm moving my blog soon (but it will be worth your trouble)

charlieo — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 07:25:00 GMT

Robert Scoble has a rule (The Corporate Weblog Manifesto #12) which states 'Never change the URL of your weblog.'

Unfortunately, I started blogging before reading The Manifesto. Yes, I know: RTFM.

However, I see this as a definite success story about the power of blogging and the tools used to blog. I now want to write and share because the tools make it really easy to do so and the result is presented in a really nice, user-selectable format.

It basically boils down to this: I've outgrown the blogging service provided by http://weblogs.asp.net aka http://blogs.msdn.com and it's becoming a pain to upload files to www.retrosight.com while blogging elsewhere -- I've got enough passwords already. Frankly, FrontPage hasn't exactly rocked my boat for maintaining retrosight-- it was somewhat ground breaking back when it first came out, but certainly hasn't made it easier for me to communicate. When I saw and heard how the folks at http://www.blogbusinesssummit.com/ were using a blogging tool for a corporate website I knew this was the solution for my problem.

And so the fun began and continues...

I'm in the process of getting DASBlog up and running on my hosting service. I got it set up *really* fast on a Windows Server 2003 box in my office last week on our intranet, so I'm already a fan. Getting a hosting service to change permissions as necessary is a bit slower, even though they have already done it at least once for another blogger at Microsoft. C'est la vie.

So, when all is said and done I'll shift my blogging over to http://blog.retrosight.com sometime next week if all goes smoothly. Right now that link gives a glorious .NET server application error -- my apologies are offered -- eggs get broken to make delicious cakes.

So, to help ease the pain for both you and I: My first post at http://blog.retrosight.com will be worth your while, especially if you are A) developing for Media Center and / or B) have struggled with getting Media Center up and running using bits from an MSDN subscription and / or system builder kit.

Stay tuned...

Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection has Media Center Problems

charlieo — Mon, 24 Jan 2005 20:35:00 GMT

I took some time to respond to Thomas' blog this morning at MCE Television and LaCie Big Disk Problems. Thanks for taking the time to post your experience -- we do listen.

Ethan Finally Posts YAC Media Center Client

charlieo — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 20:14:00 GMT

I've been watching Ethan build this since pretty much day one, and it goes a long way to show how *serious* PMs take their work. Ethan (along with many others) is the primary driver for the Media Center API and this proves he eats what he specs. :-) Check out his Media Center Add-In: YAC.

Long Tail TV: Wishlist -- Can You Accomplish with Media Center Click-To-Record...?

charlieo — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 06:02:00 GMT

By way of Sean Alexanders' blogroll pointer to Thomas Hawks' reference to Chris Anderson (*really* loving this whole blog thing -- it's replacing my newspaper more and more -- paradigm shift anyone?):

Check out the Long Tail TV: Wishlist where Chris states "what I'd like is a dedicated browser plug-in that would make this much easier for recommendations found online. When I see mention of a TV show that I want to record, I'd like to highlight it and right-click (Mac users insert your own favorite shortcut here). A new option on the pop-up menu that appears would be "Record to DVR". If I select that, the app would do a quick search on the phrase, returning with enough information to let me choose the particulars of what I want."

Chris also mentions several online programming services (including the MSN Remote Record service currently in beta) as nice, but not quite the 'shell extension' he is looking for (most of these are tied to site specific TV listings and not for any arbitrary page encountered on the web).

Here's the good part: MSN Remote Record is based *totally* on the Windows XP Media Center Edition SDK feature Click-To-Record. So, for those of you out there thinking MSN has an exclusive lock on remote recording functionality for Media Center -- they don't.

What Chris wants (and I suspect others do as well :-) is totally doable -- we've got all you need already sitting there in Media Center for you to actually schedule the recording -- just waiting for an enterprising individual company or individual to put the plumbing in place.

Back from Holidays and CES and Got A Nice Surprise from Sean on New Online Spotlight Partners

charlieo — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 01:33:00 GMT

Well, I was going to blog about these new Online Spotlight partners over the weekend, but Sean beat me to the punch. Check out his blog for details on the Discovery Channel, Yahoo, XM Radio, Fox Sports and TitanTV. I'm so lucky my team gets to work with partners like this on a daily basis -- man, I love my job at Microsoft!

Add In Samples Communicating with Web Services

charlieo — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 04:59:00 GMT

Third in a series of responses to Media Center Development: What topic(s) shall I blog about next?

--> Dave Neigler: I'd like to see some samples using addins and html apps to communicate with web services (WSE2) hosted via http.sys (instantiated in a windows service). Since Media Center already runs on SP2, this seems like a viable model. Remoting samples could also be included as another mode of cross-domain communications. Also, what are the 1.0 framework dependencies for MCE2005 addins, and can this architecture offset them by moving the logic into the web service?

Download and install the Media Center Software Development Kit and you will find a sample Media Center Add-In which queries a web service and displays the return value in a MediaCenter.Dialog. This is the most basic Add In example for leveraging web services and by no means representative of everything you can accomplish; You have access to (nearly) everything in .NET Framework 1.0. You can learn more about the version of the.NET Framework we support here. For the most part, HTML applications in Media Center leverage web service resources much like they do in Internet Explorer; We share the same basic web browsing engine.

How can I create my own Electronic Programming Guide (EPG)?

charlieo — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 03:38:00 GMT

Second in a series of responses to Media Center Development: What topic(s) shall I blog about next?

--> Niels: An idea: In a number of countries (like Denmark...) we don't have tv-guides in MCE2005. So we are forced to rely on the build-in screen to start recordings. And its not very good (have to know channel number and so forth). So being a nerd, i want to make my own. But how do you go about doing that? The Television-class with a hosted html-application? Or how about making a webservice, that interfaces with MCE (for recordings and stuf), so that i can create a Compact Framework-app, that can start recordings...

This would be my approach...

1) Create the Guide UI with a Media Center Hosted HTML Application and license the guide metadata from a third party.
2) Use MediaCenter.FindProgram and MediaCenter.FindService to tune currently broadcast content from the Hosted HTML Application.
3) Use the Click-To-Record Feature to programmatically schedule the recording of TV programs and series from the Hosted HTML Application.

How do you skin Media Center to change the look and feel?

charlieo — Sun, 12 Dec 2004 07:37:00 GMT

First in the series of responses to Media Center Development: What topic(s) shall I blog about next?

--> Henry: How about telling us a way how to skin the MCE?

Officially there is no way to skin Media Center. [We do hear this request multiple times, so I know it's on a spreadsheet somewhere as a feature to consider for some future version of Media Center, and we go through a really exhaustive process to make sure the product we deliver is what a majority of people want. So keep hope alive: perhaps someday this answer will be different. To register your vote for this feature send an email requesting it to mswish@microsoft.com]

And before I note the next part: Posts at http://blogs.msdn.com/charlieo are provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confer no rights.

I don't suggest mucking around with binaries but theoretically it appears it is possible to skin Media Center at some level, and this person purports to have done so. Use at your own risk, YMMV, carpe diem, quid pro quo, e pluribus unum and all that jazz. This information comes to you courtesy of the MSN Search Beta.

But why go through the hassle? If you like skins, build 'em for Windows Media Player (more info in the Windows Media Player 10 SDK). Note: Creating skins for Windows Media Player pretty much guarantees you won't make Media Center blow chunks. :-)

Reminder: Media Center Geek Dinner Tomorrow Night (Thursday December 9)

charlieo — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 04:23:00 GMT

Michael mentioned this over at his blog and I have yet to pile on -- if you want the original details go here. Sean tells me I'm in for one heck of a fun ride, so I'm looking forward to this and hope to see you there. Like Mike, I'll be wearing a black Media Center jacket and I think we will be gathering at the Crossroads Public Market Eatieries so there are plenty of eating choices for everyone and we can expand as needed (plus, Starbucks is Right There). Note: I'm bringing along a few 'door prizes' and taking suggestions on how we decide who is worthy to receive.

Combining PlayMedia, onPlayStateChange, PlayState, MediaProperty and MediaProperties

charlieo — Sat, 20 Nov 2004 00:59:00 GMT

A common theme in media applications and services running inside Windows XP Media Center Edition is displaying metadata (Track Name, Artist, Album, etc.). Media Center APIs make it pretty easy to get this information without the use of an embedded Windows Media Player object in the HTML page. In addition, the service might want to detect what actions the user takes in controlling media transport (Play, Pause, Stop, etc).

The sample code for this post...

- Uses the PlayMedia Method with an audio playlist (.ASX) to play a couple of audio tracks (yours truly reading two toddler books for my youngest daughter to listen to whenever I'm not around :-).

- Traps and evaluates the onPlayStateChange event.

- Queries the PlayState property to display the current state of playback in the page, updated any time the playback state changes.

The sample code also does the following, depending on what you comment / uncomment in PlayStateChange.htm.

- Leverages the Experience.MediaProperty property to get specific metadata by property name from the currently playing media. (Line 43)

and / or

- Enumerates the Experience.MediaProperties array and displays the metadata from the currently playing media. (Line 46)

Geek Gathering at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Anyone...?

charlieo — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 05:47:00 GMT

Just a quick heads up in advance -- myself and several others from the Windows eHome team (makers of Windows XP Media Center Edition) will be at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas January 6 - 9, 2005. Great opportunity to sit and chat about all things Media Center if you will be there.

Media Center Development: What topic(s) shall I blog about next?

charlieo — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 05:21:00 GMT

I'm interested to know what topics you might like for me to cover here regarding developing for Windows XP Media Center Edition in the coming weeks. If you read this blog and want to see a particular topic covered, please provide feedback.

Further Scale Demystification...

charlieo — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 20:45:00 GMT

Working through some more stuff in purposeful design for the Media Center platform gave me the chance to enhance understanding of the mouse transport and navigation bars...

The design template (see the Demystifying Scale in Media Center Hosted HTML Applications post for pointers) is based on 360 x 270 so when focusable / actionable elements in your page are scaled *down* to this size the mouse nav / transport controls won't interfere with the navigation of the service / application. I'm not suggesting a certain percentage of users run Media Center in a window at this resolution (well, I know at least one who commonly does -- me -- when listening to music services or watching video content in a window which stays on top :-). Making sure you don't have actionable items in the mouse nav / transport space is the only way you can account for 100% of the Media Center usage paradigms in regards to mouse navigation.

So, I went and created more screen shots and one additional template for funsies...

      360 x 270 window for Media Center showing sample code with mouse nav / transport bars. Screenshot
      360 x 270 window showing Online Spotlight as an example of elegant and functional design with a bunch of actionable elements on a page. Screenshot
      To show the constant (non-scaling) size of this feature within Media Center: 500 x 375 640 x 480 800 x 600
      Design template superimposed on a screen shot of the sample code, showing how the two correlate. Screenshot

Couple of Photoshop files allowing you to quickly evaluate potential designs against the mouse nav / transport constraints. 360 x 270 480 x 270

To use these new templates...

1) Take any screenshots / concepts you have and resize them to 360 x 270 (4:3) or 480 x 270 (16:9).
2) Paste the result into a layer underneath in Photoshop (making sure to center).

Here's hoping this makes things clearer than mud...