Live TV Streaming (SoftSled Anyone?)

My brother has been streaming live TV to his xbox 360 and I am jealous. I don't understand why Microsoft added this feature to extenders and not to full media centers. So to make a long story short, I started fiddling with VLC media player. Using VLC I was able to stream live tv from my bedroom's media center to my living room's media center machine. The best part is, I can stream the video and still use media center in my bedroom. VLC used about 32Mb or memory to perform the stream but the picture quality is outstanding IMO. I know about ORB and other software that does similar things, but I wanted High quality video, accessible through media center's interface without having to go through an outside server.

VLC was a bit of a pain to setup and I had some audio driver issues. But now that it's done and working I couldn't be happier. I'll post a full tutorial on how I accomplished this soon.

MCE Skipper

Media center does not have seekbar functionality built into it. So, this plugin shows a seek bar very similiar to that of windows media player 10 that can be used from your couch with your remote control. It has a sleek interface in my opinion. Check these screenshots:





I have tested this plugin on MCE 2005 and Vista

Usage:
Once your video is playing, click the i (more info) button on your remote or right click with your mouse, then choose More...

Limitations:
1. MCE 2005 does not allow me to get the duration of the currently playing video. So the Seekbar will default to a 1 hour lenght. If your current video position is longer that 1 hour the seekbar will grow to accomodate. But if your video is less than 1 hour, the seekbar will not shrink. So be careful when seeking videos less than 60 minutes, it might jump to the end of the video.

2. The play, skip forward, skip back buttons on the bottom don't do anything... they are just there for the good looks :)

Download

BookMarkIt! Vista

A couple of posts in the comments to this blog wanted BookMarkit! to work on Vista so this is for you guys. I am dual booting vista now so I downloaded the Vista MCE SDK and started coding. I only have one Vista machine to test it on, so I am relying on you guys to let me know if this works. I didn't add any new functionality just made it vista compatible.

If you are running MCE 2005 don't install this version :-)

Download

My DVD's Dead

Sorry to say, I ihave scrapped the My DVD's for avi project. Unfortunatly, It just takes too long to load. So the project is dead. Sorry if I got anyone's hopes up

My DVD's for avi's

So i must be bored again, cuz I am thinking about creating another plugin. MyDvd's is a feature that comes with rollup2. Read more here: http://blog.mattgoyer.com/categories/mediaCenter/2005/10/20.html

I wrote a My Movies type plugin but never released it because hosted HTML apps blow on a media center. They never quite look right. My DVD's on the other hand looks great. The downside to My DVD's is that it is only for DVDs. So I am thinking about writing a plugin to trick media center into playing avi's through My DVD's. Chances are nobody reads this blog, but in case someone is, what do you think of the idea. Is this a worthwild venture, or just alot of code for no reason?

Fast Forward and Rewind in DiVX/XViD

Yea man, Damien Bain-Thouverez wrote a plugin to send IR signals from your remote directly to FDDShow to enable fast forward and rewind on DiVX and XViD's in MCE. Kick ASS!!! I've been looking for this functionality since day one! I even wrote plugins to simulate this behavior, but nothing as nice as this.

So here's the bad news: It's only for Vista MCE. I still have 2005 and I am jealous. I sent Damien an email, to which I hope he responds. I am hoping we can collaborate and get this functionality in 2005.

Let's wait and see...

For you Vista people, here is his website: http://damienbt.free.fr/index.php

Free Remote Mouse 2.1

As per some requests I updated Free Remote Mouse.
It has the same download link as before.

Basically I made it so that it will display a message box when the remote mouse is enabled/disabled. Also, I spelled argument correctly this time :)

Old Problems Explained:
In the old version you might find that you have to hold the button down for an eternity before the remote mouse becomes enabled. I'm going to try to explain this. If you use your keyboard and simply press "0" three times the remote mouse will enable/disable. The problem is the IR receiver when using the remote control. Sometimes it doesn't send consecutive signals to the box the way a keyboard would. This varies per machine making it even harder to code accuratly. When you find yourself holding the "0" button forever what you are actually doing it enabling then disabling then enabled and disabling etc... when you release the button, it's potluck, whether its actually disabled or enabled. In the new version a message box will be displayed, hence no potluck. I recommend finding the best method for your pc. Whether it's tapping 0 a couple times or holding it down for 3 seconds. I don't recommend holding the 0 button down forever because then you might find yourself in a parade of message boxes.

Anyways, nothing free is perfect but it's getting better.

Download the new version here: Download

Real World

I'd like to apologize to those of you who have asked for updates on my software. The real world has taken a hold on me and I have so many proects right now it's hard for me to keep up. I am eligable for a free Vista upgrade so as soon am micro$oft sends it to me I will definitly start developing for vista mce. Free time just isn't as easy to comeby as it once was.

I got a webhost :)

Big shout-out to yoavf from the Australian Media Center Community for hooking me up on his webhost! Now I can share my apps once again!

I need a web host :-(

I am in the need of a webhost for my little applications. If anyone has a website and would consider giving me access to an ftp folder to store this stuff, drop me an email.

I don't want to use rapidshare or anything like that, unless someone knows of something else free without the ads and timers.