Predominately, I’ve been mostly talking about MKV support in order to allow the vast majority of people who have large Anime collections acquire an ability to be able to play their media in Media Center. I haven’t talked about the DivX Plus Tech preview for one main reason. They have no subtitle support with their software. I guarantee you though, once DivX labs finishes what it is they are working on, It’s going to be beautiful. If you don’t have Anime, or any media that requires you to use subtitles for you to understand it, go a head and check it out. It works really well and uses less resources, at least with my attempts, than any other setup of codecs I’ve ever had. Here is the link! http://labs.divx.com/mkvwin7preview
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NullTie and Media Browser
MediaBrowser.tv is having a contest for anyone who wants to create a video that showcases Media Browsers abilities. So here’s mine.
Media Browser and the Xbox 360
The first step in using Media Browser on your Xbox 360 is to add it as an extender within Media Center. If you don’t know how, go ahead and watch the video below. It contains not only setting up your Xbox 360 as an extender, but also securing that the permissions for your Xbox are set accordingly. After you setup your Xbox, navigate your way to C:\Users\. If you setup your Xbox correctly, you should see a user that begins with “mxc1”. Either copy down to the clipboard the entire folder name, or write it down. Once you’ve done that, navigate over to C:\ProgramData\. It’s a hidden folder so either manual type in the address, or change the folder options so you can view hidden folders. Right-click on the “MediaBrowser” folder select “Share with > Specific people…” This should bring up an “Add Users” Dialog box. Either paste or type in the user name that you wrote earlier and click “Add”. This should turn that user name into a fancy “uuid”. Click on “share”, then “done”. After you click done, make sure to change the permissions from “Read” to “Read and Write” for the user you just added. Thats it! If you have any questions, go a head and leave me a comment and I’ll try to get back to you! Thanks for reading/watching!
CCCP and Media Center
So far on my grand adventures of attempting to get CCCP to work with Media Center, all I’ve come up with is fail. What I have been able to do though is isolate which codecs where necessary for me to be able to play all my media and install them. For me at least, these codecs have been able to play whatever I throw at them……for now…
- AC3 1.63b – www.ac3filter.net
- Haali’s Media Splitter – x86 can be found at www.haali.net | X64 can be found at http://haali.net/mkv/mkx.y.9.exe
- VSFilter x64 – http://download.hack7mc.com/download.php?id=39
- FFdshow – x86 and x64 can be found at http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/download.php
For some of the these codecs, x64 versions are still in beta or pre-release stages, their fore, download at your own risk. If I find any problems with this setup, I’ll make sure to post it here.
Windows Media Center and MKV
The second video in my “Customizing Media Center” is up and going….so lets talk about it.
In the Last video I talked about setting up Media Browser, but this time I wanted
to go over MKV support. Now there are many ways to do this. If you’re relatively new to installing codecs you might want to consider installing a codec pack. One of the most simple ones to use, that also includes 64-bit support is shark 007’s Windows 7 codec pack. You can find this a www.shark007.net/win7codecs.html
Another method of getting MKV support is by installing Haali’s Media Splitter. You can get the 32-bit download by going to www.haali.net/MKV. If you use this method though, this just installs the splitter, you will still need to install any other codecs you might need to play audio or other video formats. Remember MKV is just a container, you still need other codecs to get the audio, video, and subtitles to function properly. Just as a note, there is a beta of the 64-bit version of Haali’s media splitter and I’ll put a link to it in my blog at nulltie.wordpress.com.
One thing that I didn’t mention in the video is that Divx-labs is working on an MKV plug-in as well. If you are interested in it, head on over to http://labs.divx.com/mkvwin7preview. They offer 32 and 64 bit support, the only downside is that the projects is still in beta and subtitles are not supported. Which isn’t a bad thing because once they do, I guarantee that their plug-in will be the best on out there.
If you want to learn more about Media Center MKV support, either drop me a line
at my blog or check out the friendly people at www.hack7mc.com. See you next time!
Media Center: Media Browser Install
Today I uploaded the first of a series of videos intended to help Windows 7 users make the most out of Media Center. Media Center on Windows 7 has become so versatile that it’s no wonder why it’s being talked about as the Ultimate Home Theater PC component. So this first video mainly talks about installing and configuring Media Browser, hope you enjoy it!
Windows 7 Media Center Customization
As a premiere for my first blog I would like to tackle the task of attempting to discuss some of the very interesting features that I’ve had the opportunity to use. First off if everyone remembers that Vista x64 did not play nice with the Xbox 360. At least in my attempts, I never got it working. I was honestly about to give up on Microsoft ever being a “decent” OS builder because they advertise that mostly all their technologies work and function together seamlessly, but at least in the 360 and Vista x64 department, they totally didn’t work. So when I installed Windows 7 RC what do you think I found? I found that the Windows 7 x64 edition actually syncs up with the Xbox 360! To me at least, that was amazing. So then I decided to test a few things out, I decided to test out which codecs Media Center (MC) actually understood straight out of the package. As expected all WMV and AVI worked perfectly. After a quick trip to CCCP, that was quickly changed and Media Center was playing everything. then came the moment of truth, what is actually going to stream over to the Xbox 360. After a long-held breath, I found that mostly everything worked. I say “mostly” because I have so much media that I haven’t had the chance to go through it all. The only thing I have noticed that doesn’t work are MKV’s with .ogm audio as the codec. I’m not sure why and I’m still researching what the problem is. Now it came time to customize Media Center and if you didn’t know you can do this, I recommend doing this pronto.
Note: These picture were taken from my computer, but appear exactly the same on my Xbox360 when used as a Media Center Extender
1. Startup logo, customer background
2. Movie selection screen. Show most current movies
3. The collection of my movies, each movie has their own movie poster and as the focus is changed from movie to movie, the background also changes.
4. Initial movie screen shows movie information, acquired from tmdb.org and IMDB.
5. This is the actor information, just showing that the actors images can be viewed. You can also select an actor and all other movies the that actor is in will be displayed.
6. The anime selection screen.
7. Each anime has had a poster downloaded.
8. I choose Bleach to illustrate what a Series would look like. All the episodes are separated into their own seasons based on tTVdb.org. The background also changes depending on the focus.
9. This is what it looks like when a season is selected. Each episode has its own name, and it also has a thumbnail image taken from that specific episode. There is also an episode summary.
10. Once an episode is selected, you can venture forth into other series as shown here.
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