Windows Media Center Team Blog

Enjoying the Holidays with Windows Media Center in Windows 7

PeteBrownMSFT — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:10:00 GMT

by Scott Sanders

Beyond my day-to-day job contributing to the development of Windows Media Center, it’s big part of my life at home as well. Around the holidays Windows Media Center is often at the center of family activities, parties, and even simple winter nights cozied up with my family in blankets, the fireplace lit in the family room, and a great holiday movie playing. Below I’m going to share my favorite ways to use Windows Media Center around the holidays.

Finding Holiday Specials to Record

Right around the beginning of December, I use several features of Windows Media Center to start recording classic holiday shows. Category search lets me search for holiday specials. From the Start Menu TV strip, select Search | Categories and choose an appropriate category. In the United States, this is Special | Holiday (it may be different in your locale).

You can also use Title or Keyword search with obvious words like “Holiday,” “Christmas,” “Easter,” or whatever you like.

An automatic way to record lots of shows for the holidays would be to create a Wish List recording by selecting Add Recording | Wish List or Keyword | Program Title, and entering an appropriate keyword.

Tip! You should set a limit on the number of shows that will record to prevent your disk from filling up.

On Demand Entertainment

If you’d like to find a list of specials on right now, you can use the Guide categories filter to restrict the list of shows to just Specials.

As a user in the United States, I also use Netflix quite a bit to stream new and old holiday movies on demand. You can search by keyword or just browse categories like Children & Family to find some classics.

Getting in the Holiday Mood

When I’m throwing a holiday party, I always have Windows Media Center playing music and running a slideshow of the past year in the background. Selecting the Genre pivot on the Music Library is a great way to narrow into your Holiday music, select Play All, and then Shuffle.

You can easily start a slideshow of all of your pictures by selecting Play Pictures or, if you’re more ambitious, you can create a combined playlist of just the photos you want and your favorite holiday music ahead of time.

Another way to enjoy your music is with a custom, holiday visualization. You can find several great holiday visualizations that work with both Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/visualizations.aspx.

Holiday Shopping Advice with Windows Media Center

Yes, that’s right. Windows Media Center even helps with my holiday shopping. Our Internet TV experience in the United States now includes Video Podcasts from Zune. Around this time of year, there are several that feature holiday gift guides, entertaining guides, and more.

Happy holidays!

About the Author

Scott Sanders is a Development Manager on the Windows Media Center team. Since joining Microsoft in 1999 he’s worked on several TV-related technologies including WebTV, UltimateTV, and most-recently Windows Media Center. He lives in Sammamish, WA with his wife and two (already tech-savvy) children.

Clubhouse Tags: clubhouse, media center, media center-windows 7, dvr-ms, pvr, music library, visualizations, zune podcasts, tips, how-to, guide search, slideshows, holidays

UK Users: Sky Player in WMC launches today

PeteBrownMSFT — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:10:00 GMT

Watch TV from Sky Live and On-Demand with Windows 7

A new world of high quality television programming is now open to Windows Media Centre users in the United Kingdom as Sky Player on Windows 7 launches today. That’s more than 500 movies available anytime from SkyMovies and thousands of programmes from 24 channels – all delivered to your PC, on your schedule. There’s plenty of great live sporting action, including Barclay’s Premier League, UEFA Champion’s League football and loads more.

Windows 7 and Sky makes TV on your PC easy

Sky Player brings Windows 7 users a huge range of entertainment, literally thousands of hours of TV and movies on demand, including live sports, drama, documentaries, kids shows, culture and news. Search for shows using keywords, browse programme galleries or scroll through the familiar on screen guide. SkyPlayer in Windows 7 is compatible with any Media Center remote.

See it in action

Click here for a video demonstration.

Already have Windows 7? You’re ready to go...

If you already have Windows 7, click here to launch Sky Player now.

Upgrading to Windows 7? Check out this Special Offer!

To celebrate the launch of Sky Player on Windows 7, Sky and Microsoft are offering three months of Sky Player for the price of two with any Windows 7 purchase. Those who already have Windows 7 can subscribe to the offer via the Sky Player sign in page in Windows Media Centre.

Notes

Sky Media Player is supported on the final release version of Windows 7. Users running pre-release versions of Windows 7 such as Beta version and Release Candidate 1 version should upgrade to the final release of Windows 7 to access Sky Media Player on Windows 7.
To watch Sky Player with Windows 7 you need an effective broadband connection of 2Mbit/s or more.

For more details or to sign up, visit www.microsoft.com/uk/skyplayer or http://skyplayer.sky.com/watch/windows-media-center/.

Port your recording schedule from Vista MC (pre-TV Pack) to Windows 7 upgrade

PeteBrownMSFT — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:24:00 GMT

By Danny Ton

If you have Windows Vista Media Center WITHOUT the TV Pack 2008 (Fiji) installed, and you want to do a clean install of Windows 7 instead of an upgrade, there is a fairly simple way to port the existing recording scheduled entries to the new installation:

Important note: This method is to port ONLY the schedule entries, and NOT other settings such as the recorded TV location, recording history, NOR the existing recordings themselves.

Back up the recordings.xml found under %programdata%\microsoft\ehome\recording to a flash or backup drive (one whose data will not be destroyed as you install the new Windows 7 OS).

Note: programdata is a hidden folder in the root of the OS drive. One way to get to it is by typing %programdata% into the Start | Search box and then hit Enter.

Do a clean install of Windows 7.
Create a new folder %programdata%\microsoft\ehome\recording and copy to it the recordings.xml backed up in step #1 above
Launch Media Center and go through TV signal setup.

At the end of the setup, all recording scheduled entries found in the recordings.xml will be imported into Media Center.

The indexing of the Guide can take a while, so please give it some time for the scheduled entries to show up under Recorded TV | view scheduled. You can also verify whether the series are imported successfully by checking under Recorded TV | view scheduled | series.

About the Author

Danny Ton has been a developer on the Windows Media Center team since 2006. He works on the TV signal setup and on-screen keyboard features of Windows Media Center. He lives in Lynnwood, WA with his wife and two kids.

Clubhouse Tags: clubhouse, media center, media center-windows 7, upgrade, pvr, recorded tv, tv on the pc

Digital Cable Advisor now available

PeteBrownMSFT — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:46:00 GMT

What is Digital Cable Advisor?

Microsoft announced at CEDIA that customers will now be able to add digital cable tuners with a CableCARD™ to any Windows® 7-based PC with Windows® Media Center. The Digital Cable Advisor tool is being provided by Microsoft to analyze consumer PCs to ensure that they are capable of a quality digital cable viewing experience.

The Digital Cable Advisor measures system parameters such as CPU speed, RAM, graphics card support for hardware acceleration, and digital connection capabilities. If the PC meets the minimum requirements, the tool enables digital cable functionality on the PC. Then, users can add a digital cable tuner with a CableCARD™. With a digital cable subscription from a TV service provider, users can access cable pay-TV, including premium content. This post describes the steps to assess and enable this experience on a Windows 7 PC.

Locating Digital Cable Advisor

Digital Cable Advisor is available as a downloadable application within Windows Media Center. You can easily locate the tool by opening Windows Media Center and navigating to the Extras Gallery within Extras (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 – Navigating to the Extras Gallery in Windows Media Center

Within the Extras Gallery, you will find a number of offerings from Microsoft and Microsoft partners. Locate and select Digital Cable Advisor (see Figure 2).

Figure 2 – Locating the Digital Cable Advisor in the Extras Gallery

Note: If you do not see the Digital Cable Advisor in the Extras Library, then confirm that automatic downloads are enabled in your Media Center Settings (Settings | General | Automatic Download Options). You can also choose the Download Now option from this location.

Installing Digital Cable Advisor

When you select Digital Cable Advisor, you will be greeted with an introduction page and the opportunity to install the tool (see Figure 3). Please ensure that you are not running on battery power when installing and running this tool. Some of the tests will not run on battery power alone.

Figure 3 – Introduction page

After you select Install, you will be prompted to confirm whether to download the tool to start the download process (see Figure 4.)

Figure 4 – Download confirmation

After selecting Download, the End User License Agreement for the tool is displayed. Read the agreement and select Accept to download the tool (see Figure 5).

Figure 5 – EULA for Digital Cable Advisor

An additional elevated-privilege prompt is displayed, then the download process begins.

Running Digital Cable Advisor

Please be sure that you are not running other applications when running the Digital Cable Advisor. Digital Cable Advisor will start automatically after it has been downloaded.

If any issues occurred during the download process or if the tool doesn’t automatically start, navigate to Extras | Extras Library in Windows Media Center to run the tool. If the tool was not successfully downloaded, try to download it again from Extras | Extras Gallery.

When you start the tool, the introduction page is displayed (see Figure 6).

Figure 6 – Introduction page

Select Next to start the tool and display the license agreement. This second set of terms relates to the updates that will be made to the system if it meets the minimum requirements. Read and agree to the terms of the license agreement to continue (see Figure 7).

Figure 7 – Terms of Service for system updates

After agreeing to the license terms, you are ready to test your system. Select Start Test to analyze your system (see Figure 8). If the system has already been configured to support a digital cable experience, a notice is displayed and the process is completed.

Note: Close all applications prior to running Digital Cable Advisor.

Figure 8 – Starting the test

The tool may take several minutes to run the tests to analyze the system. The tool's progress is indicated above the Start Test button (see Figure 9).

Figure 9 – Running the test

The tool will notify the user when the analysis of the system is complete (see Figure 10). Select Next to display the results of the system assessment.

Figure 10 – Completing the system analysis

Digital Cable Advisor System Analysis Results

If the system does not meet the minimum requirements, the results will indicate where the system has failed (see Figures 11 and 12).

Note: Most modern PCs and graphics cards provide the necessary level of support to provide a quality digital cable viewing experience. If the system fails any of the required categories, note the results and consult with a qualified computer reseller to upgrade the necessary components.

Figure 11 – Example of a graphics failure

Figure 12 – Example of multiple failures

Configuring the System to Support a Digital Cable Experience

If the system does meet the minimum requirements, you will be notified and prompted to update the system settings (see Figure 13). Select Update System Settings to configure the system to support a digital cable viewing experience on your PC.

Figure 13 – Updating the system settings

Next Steps and Additional Considerations

Once the PC has been updated with the necessary configurations to support a digital cable experience, a congratulations page is displayed along with additional considerations for ensuring the highest-quality viewing experience (see Figure 14.)

Figure 14 – Congratulations page

If the system does not meet the minimum requirements, update the necessary components and run the Digital Cable Advisor tool again from Extras | Extras Library (see Figure 15).

Figure 15 – Extras Library

After successfully completing the configuration process, you will still need to obtain a digital cable tuner, a CableCARD™ from your cable service provider, and a premium content subscription.

To uninstall Digital Cable Advisor

Open the Control Panel.
Under Programs, click Uninstall a program.
Locate and right-click Digital Cable Advisor, then click Uninstall.

Troubleshooting

Problem: Tool hangs during assessment.

If you experience a hang while the test try the following:

Check to ensure that you are plugged into a power source and not running on battery power only.
Close the tool, re-launch Media Center and rerun the tool.
If the problem persists close Media Center and attempt to run the Windows Experience Assessment.

a. Navigate to Control Panel | Performance Information and Tools (easily found via search for “Windows Experience Index”).

b. Select Windows Experience Index.

c. Select re-run assessment.

d. After completion, start Media Center and rerun the Digital Cable Advisor.

This document is provided “as-is.” Information and views expressed in this document, including URL and other Internet Web site references, may change without notice. You bear the risk of using it.

You may copy and use this document for your internal, reference purposes. You may not modify and redistribute this document.

Microsoft, Windows, Windows 7 and Windows Media Center are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.

All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Digital Cable Advisor Tool / ATI firmware status update

PeteBrownMSFT — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:46:00 GMT

Hello Media Center community:

With the release of Windows 7, we wanted to provide a status update on the forthcoming Digital Cable Advisor Tool and ATI firmware upgrade we referenced in our Digital Cable FAQ earlier this month. We and our partners had hoped to have both of these items ready by today’s Windows 7 GA. These are not available today as originally planned, but will be available in the very near future.

We are keenly aware that the enthusiast community is eagerly anticipating these updates, and are working hard with our partners to make these available as soon as possible. Apologies for the delays, and thanks in advance for your understanding.

Losing cable channels? Here are some options...

PeteBrownMSFT — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:45:00 GMT

by Ben Reed

Last weekend my wife, daughter, and I had dinner with some friends. They live in a rented townhouse and cable TV is included in their monthly rent. During the course of our conversations, they mentioned that they have been gradually 'losing' channels and their cable company had sent them one of the new digital converter set-top-boxes. They use Windows Media Center and have dual NTSC tuners to receive the analog cable TV channels 1-99. They asked me if there was anything that I could think of that would help them get their channels back.

After scanning for channels with a ClearQAM tuner and some work in the guide settings, I was able to add 92 channels to the 23 that Windows Media Center had automatically mapped. Not only do they have all their channels back, but they now have a total of 115 digital cable TV channels, including the local channels in HD, some additional channels they didn't have before, 15 digital audio channels, and they don't have to use the DTA converter box. They can continue to enjoy the benefits of using Windows Media Center and don't have to use the DTA box and an IR blaster.

So they asked me what other people would do to get their channels back if they didn't know me? I hope this blog post helps answer this.

Are you losing channels?

Here's the screen that they had been seeing when tuning to a channel that has been moved from analog to digital...

There has been a fair amount of noise made about 'the broadcast digital TV switchover,’ however, there has also been a switchover going on in the cable TV industry. Brier Dudley, of the Seattle Times, has written about this change in our area:

More on Comcast digital: TiVos, Media Centers, HD and "free"
and here:
Comcast on Media Center? Tips on getting DTA to work.

Some cable companies have been switching off some of their analog channels and moving them to digital. As a result, Windows Media Center customers who were using NTSC tuners to watch and record cable TV have been reporting that they have been 'losing channels'. There are several options available to these customers if they want to get their channels back.

There Are Options

First, they can use the Digital To Analog (DTA) box provided by the cable company to convert the digital channels to analog (NTSC) so their existing TV tuner can receive the channels. The main challenge with this solution is that it requires the PC to attempt to control the DTA box using an IR 'blaster'. This one-way control can sometimes be problematic as the PC has to make assumptions about the current 'state' of the DTA box in order to send it the appropriate IR codes to change channel etc. For more info on how to use the DTA box with Windows Media Center, Microsoft MVP Barb Bowman has posted detailed instructions here.

Second, Windows Media Center customers with Windows 7 could use a digital cable tuner with a CableCARD™ from their cable company. With the recent announcements about the enhancements to the digital cable experience in Windows Media Center, it will soon be possible to add a digital cable tuner with CableCARD™ to an existing Windows 7 PC. Using a digital cable tuner with CableCARD™, Windows Media Center customers can watch and record all the channels offered to them through their cable TV subscription, including all the premium channels, such as HBO, as well as all those in HD.

Alternatively, using an inexpensive ClearQAM TV tuner, Windows Media Center customers can get access to many of the channels they may have 'lost'. In the Seattle area, Comcast currently broadcasts a good number of channels using ClearQAM. These are digital channels that are not encrypted and do not require a set-top-box or CableCARD™ to decrypt. ClearQAM is natively supported in Windows Media Center in Windows 7.

Getting Started with ClearQAM

To get started, connect the TV tuner to your coax cable and plug the USB connection into your Windows 7 PC. Once the tuner has been recognized and all the drivers are installed, launch Windows Media Center. If this is the first time you have run Windows Media Center, you will be asked to click on Continue and then select either Express or Custom setup.

Then, from the TV menu, select live tv setup.

If you have previously run TV Setup, you'll need to go to the Tasks menu, select settings, and then TV. Once at the TV Setup menu, you should see your region set to 'United States' and select 'Yes,...' and then 'Next'.

Now, enter your ZIP Code and then select Next.

Agree to the Program Guide Terms of Service and select Next.

Agree to the Microsoft PlayReady™ PC Runtime EULA and select Next.

Wait a minute or so while Windows Media Center downloads the latest TV Setup information from the Microsoft servers - you'll need an active Internet connection...

Next, wait a minute or two while Windows Media Center examines the TV signal.

Once the scan is complete, you should see that Windows Media Center has found the clear-QAM tuner and signal. On the screen below, you can see that Windows Media Center has also detected that there is an analog signal as well. This is because I was using a hybrid TV tuner that supported both QAM and NTSC. Assuming Windows Media Center has found the correct signals, select Yes... and then Next.

Select Next to select the source for ClearQAM.

Find and select the appropriate TV Signal Provider for ClearQAM and then select Next.

Select Next to select the source for analog cable.

Find and select the appropriate TV Signal Provider for analog cable and then select Next.

Confirm that the correct providers have been selected and then click Next.

Wait a minute or two while the TV Program Guide data is downloaded - you will need an active internet connection.

Once the TV Program Data has been downloaded, Windows Media Center will start to scan for QAM channels. This can take several minutes. My scan took about 15-20 minutes to complete.

Here you can see that at 54%, Windows Media Center has found 16 clear-QAM channels to which it has automatically mapped to their appropriate guide data channel.

...and at 84%, it's found 23...

And that's it - 23 channels total, once the scan is complete.

Click Next to complete and finish the TV Signal Setup process.

Now, to find additional channels, navigate to Tasks and select settings.

Then select TV.

Then from the TV menu, select Guide.

Then, from the Guide menu, select Edit Channels.

From the Edit Channels menu, you can see all the channels found - both analog and digital. Here, you can see analog channels 2, 3, 4, & 5, along with digital channels 4.1, 4.2, & 5.1.

Click on Show Preview to display a preview of the channel you select.

Here you can see that the live TV show is playing in the background behind the menu for channel 4.1 - KOMO-DT.

Here, you can see that I've scrolled down to channel C91.1. Windows Media Center was unable to automatically map this clear-QAM channel to the appropriate guide data. As you can see from the preview, it's clearly showing ESPN2.

Select the channel and then click on Edit Listings.

Here I typed esp to jump to the listings that start with these letters. You could also just scroll through the listings using the arrow keys.

Next, I select the correct listing for ESPN2.

I then chose to combine this channel with channel 32. Channel 32 was the old analog channel number for ESPN2 from Comcast in the Seattle area.

Now, click on Save.

Next, select Edit Sources,

...and un-check the box next to Analog Cable as this channel is no longer broadcast on analog cable in my area.

Here you can see that some of the QAM channels have a lock icon next to them. These are the QAM channels that Windows Media Center has found that are encrypted. You would need a digital cable tuner with CableCARD™ in order to decrypt these channels in Windows Media Center.

Here you can see a musical notes icon next to some channels. These are digital audio channels for local radio stations.

I repeated this process for the remaining unidentified channels. All told, I was able to add 92 channels to the 23 that Windows Media Center had automatically mapped.

Here's a breakdown of the mappings that I found for their area. These won't necessarily be the same as yours...

	Channel Number	Mapping
1	18.1	KPST.TV
2	18.2	Spanish Language Channel
3	18.3	AAT TV
4	18.4	Auction BIZ TV Network
5	79.1	NWCN
6	79.2	ION TV KWPX
7	79.3	KOMO4 SD
8	79.4	KING5 SD
9	79.5	KONG
10	79.6	CBC
11	79.7	KCTS9
12	79.8	MY Q2
13	79.9	The CW
14	79.10	KBTC PBS Kids
15	80.1	KCPQ
16	80.2	KIRO
17	80.4	KWDK
18	80.5	Disney
19	80.7	TVW
20	80.9	KCTS+
21	91.1	ESPN2
22	91.2	Speed
23	91.3	Versus
24	91.7	Nick
25	91.9	CN (Cartoon Network)
26	92.3	truTV
27	92.4	Lifetime
28	92.5	A+E
29	92.6	Food Network
30	92.7	TNT
31	92.8	tbs
32	92.9	USA
33	92.10	VH1
34	95.13	NHL Center Ice
35	102.2	E!
36	102.3	Bravo
37	102.5	FSN
38	102.6	ESPN
39	102.7	HGTV
40	102.8	Jewelry TV
41	102.9	uwtv
42	102.10	uwtv2
43	102.40	Mtv2
44	103.1	BET
45	103.2	FX
46	103.3	Oxygen
47	103.4	Discovery Channel
48	103.5	TLC
49	103.6	Spike
50	103.7	syfy
51	103.8	AMC
52	103.9	Comedy Central
53	103.10	mtv
54	103.11	CMT
55	107.2	bio
56	107.3	History International
57	108.4	C-SPAN3
58	108.5	Bloomberg
59	112.4	G4
60	112.11	Comcast Weather Channel
61	112.13	CH1
62	113.1	NHL Center Ice
63	113.2	NHL Center Ice
64	113.3	NHL Center Ice
65	113.4	NHL Center Ice
66	113.5	NHL Center Ice
67	113.6	NHL Center Ice
68	113.7	NHL Center Ice
69	113.8	NHL Center Ice
70	113.9	NHL Center Ice
71	113.10	NHL Center Ice
72	114.5	Sprout PBS Kids
73	114.12	LMN
74	116.1	C-SPAN
75	116.2	C-SPAN2
76	116.7	CNN
77	116.8	Golf
78	116.9	HSN
79	116.10	QVC
80	116.11	Comcast
81	116.12	HLN
82	116.82	Animal Planet
83	116.83	Travel Channel
84	117.1034	Bellevue TV
85	117.1035	Local
86	117.1037	RCTV75
87	117.1040	PSE TV
88	117.1041	Local
89	117.1059	King County
90	117.1066	LinkTV
91	117.1067	TV Guide
92	117.1072	The Weather Channel

About the Author

Ben Reed is the senior product marketing manager for Windows Media Center at Microsoft Corp. In this capacity, Reed and his team are charged with developing the marketing fundamentals and insights for Windows Media Center. Reed is a member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. He has more than 14 years of technology industry experience and has been at Microsoft in various technology marketing roles for the past seven years. Reed has worked on every release of Windows since version 3.1 and is an avid Windows Media Center enthusiast, both at work and at home. He graduated with honors from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K., with a degree in electronic engineering. He lives with his wife and daughter in the greater Seattle area.

Clubhouse Tags: clubhouse, media center, media center-windows 7, tv setup, tv on the pc, epg, tv guide, guide setup, edit guide listings, settings, dvr

A peek under the hood: Windows Media Center's PVR in Windows 7

PeteBrownMSFT — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:00:00 GMT

by Richard Cook

A common question we see in the community is “why didn’t show x or show y record when scheduled?”

I thought that an article outlining some of the inner workings Windows Media Center for Windows 7 uses to determine what gets record and when. A caveat: the PVR is a complex beast so not everything will be covered. Also the type and number of tuners can affect how the PVR behaves.

In the descriptions below the machine will have NTSC and QAM tuners. So two shows can be recorded at once and the configuration will have SD and HD capabilities.

Alternate Shows

An alternate show is an airing that occurs more than once. Good examples would be ‘Dr Phil’ or ‘Oprah’ which air in the afternoon and are repeated in the evening.

Prototypical and Non-prototypical recordings

Going to the guide and choosing to record series ‘Oprah’ at 8pm generates a prototypical recording. This means that we will record this specific airing and then going forward get any other airings when they are on. It also infers that you prefer this specific channel and signal type (HD or SD).

A non-prototypical recording could be a keyword request rather than recording a specific guide entry. Oprah might be recorded via a Title Search. This would result in a series recording on any channel, any signal type and at any time.

Conflicts

Conflicts happen when more shows have been requested to be recorded than tuners are available for a given time period. So a typical system may have 2 tuners installed and if 3 shows need to be recorded at the same time, one of the shows will not be recorded. First of all shows will be recorded by their priority and then the PVR will attempt to see if an alternate airing is available. If there is an alternate then the conflict can be auto resolved. The show which couldn’t be recorded at the original time will get a blue ! icon indicating that it will be recorded sometime in the future. Or a yellow ! icon indicating that it will not be recorded. (This doesn’t mean it will never be recorded, only that the current guide doesn’t allow it to be recorded in the near future.)

[Spot the UI Bug for bonus points in the above screen shot]

However if the conflict cannot be resolved automatically via alternates, then the conflict UI pops up and the user makes the decision of which show to record.

Example PVR Functionality

Does the conflicting show exist elsewhere?

As mentioned earlier, the first thing the PVR scheduler does is to see if the conflicting show exists elsewhere. It looks for alternates in order of priority, higher priority shows should be recorded first. It also must consider future conflicts as well; by recording an alternate airing it is quite possible new future conflicts will be created. The technique used to calculate all of these dependencies is called branch and bound. This article will not discuss branch and bound since it is beyond the scope of this article. To limit the sheer number of permutations the branch and bound system PVR only looks three days ahead.

Jumping to other tuners

Using the conflict example in the screen shot below; there is a prototypical series recording of Oprah on channel 5. Another show has been scheduled to record at the same time on the same tuner. So Oprah has been “banged out” (! icon) on both 5 and 5.1 even though the QAM tuner is available. As you can see from the screenshot there is another airing on channel 5.1. The prototypical airing of Oprah was SD, so the scheduler looks for an SD airing first. In our example an SD airing of Oprah will be recorded later in the day. Rather than record the HD version which is on now. The reason is that the scheduler prefers Quality over Time and tries to keep the requested record quality rather than get the exact time.

There is a caveat to the above scenario: The above scenario only works if the airing of Oprah is a repeat. If this is a first run episode then the behavior is slightly different. Instead the scheduler would prefer Time over Quality and choose the airing on channel 5.1 at 4pm. The later airing on SD would be the schedulers’ second choice. The idea is that if you are watching a time specific show such as Survivor-Dancing-Idol-Apprenticeship, you would want the first showing where ever possible, rather than wait for the 2 a.m. rerun next day.

Partial Recordings

One cool feature of Windows Media Center in Windows 7 is its ability to get your requested show again if the original recording is considered a partial. Partial recordings can happen for a number of reasons; the most common is when the user changes the channel to watch something else. In this case Windows 7 Media Center will keep the partial recording and attempt to record the same show again in the future.

As you can see, once the record button get pressed, a lot of decisions have to be made under the hood. Even just writing the scenarios out in plain language is very verbose and open to interpretation. If there is interest perhaps my next article could outline our internal notation for describing such scenarios and expected results.

Hopefully this article was of interest to you and I look forward to writing more in the coming year.

About the Author

Richard Cook works on Media Center for Windows, more specifically the PVR feature set. He joined the team about 1.5 years ago after moving from the Visual Studio Debugger Team. Now his friends and family can actually relate to the software he helps to create, rather than just smiling and nodding blankly. He is also pleased that he can now do some cool demos of his work for firends and family at home.

Clubhouse Tags: clubhouse, media center-windows 7, pvr, dvr, media, recorded tv, tv on the pc

A Digital Cable FAQ

PeteBrownMSFT — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:38:00 GMT

by Joe Chauvin

We heard Microsoft made some announcements regarding digital cable at CEDIA Expo 2009. What were they?

Microsoft announced:

Windows Media Center includes support for Switched Digital Video (SDV).
A new tool is being made available that will allow you to add a digital cable tuner with CableCARD™ support to a Windows 7 PC.
You can enjoy more portability for digital cable TV recordings that are marked by the broadcaster as “Copy Freely”.

How do I enable a PC for Switched Digital Video support?

You will need the following items:

A Windows 7 PC with Windows Media Center (Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Ultimate, and Windows 7 Professional).
A digital cable tuner with CableCARD™ support (such as the ATI Digital Cable TV Wonder).
A CableCARD™ from your cable provider.
A firmware update for your digital cable tuner.
A tuning adapter for each CableCARD™ device, which is provided by your cable provider.

The tuning adapter USB port must be plugged into the PC, and the tuner must be installed according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
The following diagram shows how the tuner and tuner adaptor are connected to the Windows 7 PC:

What if I am using more than one ATI Digital Cable TV Wonder?

You will need a separate tuning adapter for each ATI Digital Cable TV Wonder. Additionally, you will need a dedicated high-speed USB port on the PC for each tuning adapter. It is recommended that you add a high-quality multi-port splitter to feed all of the digital cable tuners and RF-In ports for the tuning adapters. You can also use a USB hub to organize your USB devices.

Which digital cable tuners are available that support CableCARD™ and SDV?

Currently, the ATI Digital Cable TV Wonder is the only device that is available and has been certified by CableLabs.

Which firmware version is needed for the ATI Digital Cable TV Wonder to enable SDV support?

The 1.19.12 firmware contains SDV support.

How do I obtain the ATI Digital Cable TV Wonder firmware with SDV support?

This firmware will be available as an optional update from Windows Update. This update will also install components on your PC to enable SDV support.

How do I know if my cable system uses SDV, or if I need a tuning adapter?

The CableCARD support personnel for your cable provider will be able to tell you if your system uses SDV or if you need a tuning adapter.

Do I need to pay for a tuning adapter?

This is determined by your cable provider.

When will the 1.19.12 firmware be available?

This firmware is expected to be available by Windows 7 General Availability (Oct 22, 2009).

What other improvements are in the 1.19.12 firmware?

In addition to SDV support, the 1.19.12 firmware also contains improvements for stability and UPnP support. This firmware update will allow existing digital cable tuner with CableCARD™ customers to enjoy more portability for digital cable TV marked by the broadcaster as Copy Freely. Customers will be able to play digital cable recordings marked Copy Freely, such as those from local channels, on other PCs, devices, and portable media.

Can I use the 1.19.12 firmware with a ATI Digital Cable TV Wonder on a Windows Vista PC to enable SDV support?

No. SDV support requires new functionality that is only available in Windows 7 in Windows Media Center.

Why is SDV supported on Windows 7 only?

Due to the nature of the SDV specification, modifications to Windows Media Center in Windows 7 were required to fully comply with the SDV system requirements.

Can I use the 1.19.12 firmware with an ATI Digital Cable TV Wonder in Windows Media Center on a Windows Vista PC?

Yes. Except for SDV support, Windows Media Center users on Windows Vista or those running Windows Media Center TV Pack will be able to take advantage of the other 1.19.12 firmware enhancements, such as increased portability of recorded TV content.

How do I enable my existing PC for digital cable with CableCARD™?

Microsoft will release a tool called the Digital Cable Advisor that tests whether a PC meets basic performance and capabilities. If it does, the tool will enable the PC for digital cable support.

How do I obtain the Digital Cable Advisor tool?

The Digital Cable Advisor tool will be accessible from Extras within Windows Media Center. Run the installation program to install the tool into the Extras Library.

When will the Digital Cable Advisor tool be available?

This tool is expected to be available by Windows 7 General Availability (Oct 22, 2009).

Is the Digital Cable Advisor available on Windows 7 only?

Yes.

If the Digital Cable Advisor tool indicates the Windows 7 PC does not meet the requirements, what then?

The tool will provide prescriptive information regarding where the PC does not meet the requirements, and will indicate where corrective action is needed. The corrective action will need to be taken to be able to enable the PC for digital cable support. You will need to re-run the tool once you have taken the required action.

Can any Windows 7 PC meet the requirements?

Many PCs will either meet the requirements or they can be updated. In some cases, the PC may not meet performance requirements even with updates.

I have run the Digital Cable Advisor tool, what then?

You will need to attach a digital cable tuner with CableCARD™, and run the Windows Media Center TV Setup to set up Windows Media Center with a digital cable tuner and CableCARD™. Note that you will need a CableCARD™ from your cable provider. Some cable providers require a technician to come to your home to install the CableCARD™ and/or tuner adapter.

Where can I purchase an ATI Digital Cable TV Wonder tuner?

For information about ATI products, see the AMD website (http://www.amd.com/).

I heard about a multi-stream digital cable tuner from a company called Ceton. When and where can I get one of those tuners?

For information about the Ceton Multi-Channel Cable TV Card and its availability, see the Ceton website (http://cetoncorp.com/ProductsWMC.php).

About the Author

Joe Chauvin is the Program Manager on the Media Center team responsible for US Digital Cable support. He has been at Microsoft for almost 15 years, and has been on the Media Center team since before the first version was released. Prior to joining the Media Center team, he worked in the DirectX and MSTV groups.

Windows Media Center in Windows 7 - All over the world!

PeteBrownMSFT — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:37:00 GMT

by Mike Hayton

Hi there! My name is Mike Hayton. Since its my first blog entry, let me tell you a bit about what I do at Microsoft. I’m in the development side of Media Center (so the programmers that write the shipping code) and while there’s a people management side to my job, I still get to write some code.

The areas that my team are responsible for are:

Guide – this covers the underlying database of guide data; the downloading process (mcupdate.exe) the data store itself; the program guide data access layer, the guide grid and guide settings pages
TV First Run – this is the setup wizard like experience you go through when you’re setting up the tuners for TV
Search – the guide search mechanism (Windows Desktop Search is used under the covers)
Movies Guide & Library – I picked this part up late in the Win7 cycle.
Upgrade of settings from Vista to Win7.

Prior to Media Center, I was over in DevDiv (Microsoft-speak for Developer Division) and worked on Visual Studio.

I’m pretty excited about Windows 7 and its “general availability” on October 22^nd. I really like the changes made in Windows 7 to Media Center and hope that you do too. I wasn’t a big fan of the new large font size on the Start menu, but I’ve grown to like it and now running previous Media Center versions looks weird to me. If you’re reading this, you probably already know the changes in Windows 7 Media Center – If not, here’s a few links to some reviews (with pictures).

It been great to see so much interest in Windows 7 and the running of the beta and RC versions of Media Center. You might like to check this out:

This is a map with pushpins of countries that had at least one Windows 7 Media Center machine configured to watch TV. The data was collected on Aug 14^th and ignore the numbers on the pushpins – it doesn’t mean anything (but I couldn’t figure out how to turn the numbers off).

In order for the country to get a pushpin, there had to be a Windows 7 Media Center running on Aug 14th, connected to the internet, have automatic downloads enabled, and have TV tuners and TV set up. Data comes from the mcupdate that sends up the country you picked in TV setup, when it makes its daily check with the Microsoft servers for new information to download.

I should stress that no personally identifying information is uploaded by mcupdate, and that the scope of data is limited. The call contains country code, time zone, version of client and that’s about it. Also this data relies on the country you chose during TV setup. One pushpin I left off was Antarctica – I assumed that someone accidentally chose the wrong country during TV setup.

Still, it is very gratifying to see that even before Windows 7 is released, it’s being used worldwide – from the Holy See (Vatican City State) to Honduras, from The Netherlands to New Zealand.

If you’re using Media Center in a country that’s not got a pushpin (or you’re in Antarctica) feel free to leave a comment and tell us where you are and how you’re using Windows 7 Media Center.

About the Author

Mike Hayton is originally from New Zealand. His team works on the: guide, search, movies, TV set up, and settings portions of Windows Media Center. Mike frequently answers questions in TGB’s “Ask the TV Team” forum under the tag of mikehayton.

All about touch in Windows Media Center in Windows 7

PeteBrownMSFT — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:00:00 GMT

by Anthony Young

Motivations For Touch

In Windows Vista, Media Center’s support for Touch was somewhat limited. We supported taps, which translated to left mouse clicks, and press and hold, which translated to right mouse clicks. Flicks weren’t really supported.

Early in the Windows 7 planning process, we decided touch input was important for the OS, and wanted to be able to provide a great touch experience with Media Center. So when we learned that the Natural Input team was providing new APIs for touch, gestures specifically, we felt that would be a perfect fit for Media Center. Our user interface really lends itself to touch and gesture input.

Check out touch! There are a number of videos online previewing Touch in Windows Media Center in Windows 7. Here are a few:

Windows Touch –Windows 7
Windows 7 Media Center Touch Interface Preview
Touch Control makes Window Media Center Awesome

Laying the Groundwork

In order to leverage the new Windows 7 Touch capabilities, a lot of groundwork was needed. First, we had to add code to handle the new gesture messages that get sent to our window. You can learn more about these messages here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd940543(VS.85).aspx. After handling and interpreting the messages, we also had to route the input messages to the appropriate visual targets. This process is similar to how we route mouse input through our UI.

Next, we had to make some changes to a few core components. Because the gesture messages come in so frequently (about 60 messages/sec), we had to modify our work dispatcher and layout/render scheduler to handle the load. This was a significant change, which impacted the entire product. So we had to take extra precaution not to break any existing features, including 3^rd party applications.

With the internal message plumbing done, core components updated, it was time to have some fun!

Start Menu

On the Start Menu, you can pan vertically through the strips or horizontally through the tiles. The UI was completely rewritten to support this. Out of all of the UIs, the Start Menu was the most challenging to update. This is because the visuals on the screen change, depending on what has focus. As a category moves into the focused state, you’ll notice that we adjust its position (x and y), increase its opacity, and increase the space between it and the strips that are before and after.

If you’re using a remote or keyboard, scrolling the items is a discrete operation. We animate the transition from the current state to the final state. Our animation system takes care of interpolating the values between the “from” and “to” state. But when you use a panning gesture to scroll your list, it isn’t as straight forward. For example, if you panned 20 pixels downwards, the categories should begin to appear as if they are transitioning to their new state. This means the item that is selected should start moving slightly to the right, its opacity should start to decrease, etc. And the item that is moving into the selected position will start to morph into the “incoming” state.

Panning horizontally had similar challenges. As you pan, the selected item moves out of the lens, and we adjust some of the spacing between the items to keep things neatly positioned.

Guide

The Electronic Programming Guide, like the Start Menu, supports panning vertically and horizontally. I think it’s my favorite place to use gestures in the product. For example, if I need to get to channel 680 to browse what’s on this evening, I can pan, give it a nice toss and watch ‘er go!

Also like the Start Menu, there were challenges translating discrete “scroll up, scroll down” commands to “move 17 pixels left”. Because the guide contains so much data, we had to make sure we’re only pulling more content when absolutely necessary. But we also had to make sure there wasn’t a delay in panning or retrieving data either.

Browse Galleries

From a scrolling versus panning perspective, the Browse Gallery was pretty straight forward. As you scroll though the gallery with the remote/keyboard, the items move uniformly, and you can only scroll horizontally. Also, our scroller already had support for scrolling by an exact pixel amount (more or less). So we were able to map a pan “offset” to a “scroll by amount” operation.

If you’ve spent a considerable amount of time in a Browse Gallery alternating between mouse and keyboard/remote input, you probably noticed that the scrolling behavior is slightly different between the various input methods – mainly, how close to the center we scroll an item when it has focus. There is quite a bit of markup that handles all of the idiosyncrasies related to this. So, when adding panning support into the mix, we had to be very careful not to throw off the balance of the Browse Gallery universe.

Search Results and Other Lists

The last area we updated to support the panning gesture was our standard list view that is used throughout the product. This list is mainly used by our Search pages. It’s also used on many of the Settings pages to display a list of options. Updating the list view was pretty straightforward.

Increasing the Usability of Media Center with Touch

In an effort to make Media Center more usable with touch input, we made several changes to the UI, although most of them didn’t have a visual effect. We increased the hit test surface for all of our control buttons (i.e. Back, Green Button, Transport Controls, etc.). This means that if you were to tap close enough to the Back button, chances are it will register as a click.

We also added support for a new gesture, Press and Tap. We map this gesture to a right-click command (which is the standard mapping of this gesture in Windows). This was done to address the issue of Press and Hold not being very predictable. The way Press and Hold works is, you press down with one finger. And while that finger is still down, tap with another finger. This causes a right-click event to fire at the location of the first finger.

We also increased the size of the transport control buttons, and made the volume buttons auto-repeat when pressing down. This made a lot of folks very happy. As an added bonus, it also works with mouse (it already worked with remote).

Looking Forward

In future releases, Touch (and perhaps other forms of natural input) will be even more integrated into Media Center. Our team has plenty of ideas of how we can leverage natural input going forward. Pretty cool stuff! Give it a try and let us know what you think!

In my next post, I’ll talk about how 3^rd parties can leverage Touch in their applications.

About the Author

Anthony Young is a developer on the Media Center Framework and Shell team. He has been on the Media Center team for two years, and at Microsoft for four years. He lives in the Redmond area with his wife and kids. Outside of work, he enjoys playing video games, basketball, and cooking (oh, and grilling on his Big Green Egg).

Clubhouse Tags: clubhouse, media center-windows 7, touch, review, story, media center, windows media center

A top-of-trees look at music and photos in 7MC

PeteBrownMSFT — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:21:00 GMT

by Matt Skibbs

Because the music and photo experiences in Media Center for Windows 7 have changed quite a bit from Vista, I wanted to do a brief overview of some of the changes and discuss how to take advantage of the new functionality. I know that many TGBers have been using a pre-release version of Windows 7, and already familiar with these features :) For those of you still using Vista, here’s a look at what’s coming up:

That’s My Mom’s Most Favorite Media!

Play Favorites lets you quickly jump in to listen to your favorite music or watch a slide show with your favorite photos, directly from the start menu, without having to browse around the galleries. It is very flexible and can be configured to suit your needs by generating playlists from highly rated content, recently added media, existing playlists, auto-playlists, etc.

Personally, I love to use recently added and highly rated content – I get a great mix of new content and old favorites this way and I never have to worry about a playlist getting stale. Play Favorites has replaced Play All in the Start Menu, but if you’d like to use Play All you can still find it in the music gallery. We’ve also made performance improvements from Vista so that Play All is very snappy on large libraries (Play Favorites is too)!

Mmmmm This IS a Tasty Music Experience

The Music Now Playing experience has new layouts and animations, plus some new functionality. The foreground album art will be high resolution (~400x400), if your track contains high-res embedded album art, and it looks substantially sharper than Vista when blown up on a big screen.

We’ve introduced a few new background modes for the music experience that pull album art from your local and mapped watched music folders:

Album art grid that slowly scrolls downwards (Only available on the PC & 360)
Album art grid that does not move, with random tiles swapped in-place
Normal blue background with spotlights

If you’d like to manually select a specific Now Playing background mode, you may do so at Tasks | Settings | Music | Now Playing. From the Now Playing experience, you can right-click or select “More Info” on the remote to jump to Settings easily.

You Got the Wrong Slide Show. I’m the Ambient Slide Show, Man.

We’ve added a great new photo experience on the PC, the Ambient Slide Show, which will fly over a wall of thumbnails and randomly zoom in on one of them then either move to another tile, swap images in-place, zoom-out, etc. The Ambient Slide Show can be started via Play Favorites on the Start Menu (see next section), from Play Photos within the Music experience, or automatically as a Media Center screen saver.

If you’d like to modify the screen saver settings, visit Tasks | Settings | Pictures | Slide Show Screen Saver. The classic slide show is meant for more traditional viewing and can display photos in a specific order. It also lets the user interact with the current photo (rate, view details, rotate, next, previous, etc.). The Ambient Slide Show is meant to be a background experience that offers a very elegant way to randomly view your photos, but does not support any user interaction – think of it as a really slick screen saver that is great eye candy for casual viewing!

No One Ever Rates on Their First Click. Yeah, but What if he Does?

While in the Music experience or Classic Slide Show, you can now hit 0-5 on the remote control to rate the current item – very convenient! A new browse pivot for ratings has been introduced in the galleries, so that you can easily find media that you’ve rated. I find that I tend to rate a lot more media since it is so easy now, which was the goal of this change. Now that we can configure Play Favorites to generate dynamic playlists with your highly rated content, the more content you rate the better Play Favorites will work!

One Playlist to Rule Them All

It’s pretty easy to access your favorite content in Windows 7 using Play Favorites, but what if you want to save different music and photo combinations – such as a slideshow of your trip to Los Angeles with a specific sound track? In Windows 7 this is simple to accomplish, you can now add both music and photos to playlists that you create:

Go to the Picture Library and navigate to the <slide shows> pivot.
Create a slide show.
Name your slide show.
Select Picture Library or Music Library.
Browse for photos or songs
Click Add More and find additional media
Repeat steps 4-6 as needed to generate a list that contains both songs and photos
Click Create when you have all of the photos and music you want selected.

If you have any questions or comments, please post them below -

Thanks,
Matt

About the Author

Matt Skibbs is a Software Development Engineer on the Media Center Core Team and works on Media Experiences. Matt was a Media Center enthusiast prior to joining the Media Center team over a year ago. He lives on the Seattle eastside with his West Highland Terrier that is named after Tobias on Arrested Development.

Clubhouse Tags: clubhouse, windows media center, media center-windows 7, music library, photos, slideshow, review, media center

A peek at the plumbing: Windows Media Center's connected services

PeteBrownMSFT — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:31:00 GMT

by Steve Husak

My name is Steve Husak and I work on the Connected Services Infrastructure (CSI) team along with TGB famous people like Jeff Tucker – MSFT, chrisboedy and the “mysterious” csise. CSI is the group within Media Center that designs, develops, deploys and maintains the web services and data processing that provides metadata to Media Center to enhance the experience. Some specific areas include the EPG Guide, Sports & Movies Portals as well as backend services that bring it all together.

I am the dev lead of a team that works on these services and the support around them. Our services are running around-the-clock to keep your Media Center as up-to-date as we can. I thought I’d take this opportunity to take you through the high-level concepts of our data processing pipeline to give you an idea of how we process and enhance the data along the way as it makes it through our system to yours.

Our General Architecture

The CSI architecture is based on a Pipeline Processing design pattern. It is easy to think of this pattern like an assembly line. Small subsets of work are done and passed along down the line until the work is complete.

Each portion of processing is referred to as a stage, and a pipeline is comprised of at least one stage. Some of our pipelines may consist of 2-3 stages, where others can contain upwards of 30-40 to get to data completion. The coolest part of this is that we can have one stage serve multiple other “pipes,” so that if we get data in one area, after some processing, we can leverage that data in other areas.

A good example of this is our movie data. The movie data in our pipeline is used in many different other stages to either set flags, import descriptions, gain cover art links, etc.

Between all these stages that comprise a pipeline is a complex scheduling, dependency checking and versioning system that keeps things in sync and only starts data processing when either versions change or based on a specific time. The installation of our system when installed, resides in several Microsoft Data Center and contains additional services for monitoring, configuring and running our applications in a “data center” way. We call this part of our system the infrastructure.

Data Collection

The first part of our system is our data collection stages (or as we call them DCS stages). The DCS stage’s main purpose is simply to get data from an external source. These are then processed on a schedule go out to our various data partners to get the data in its rawest form. Our system can get data files through many means including HTTP, FTP, UNC file, WebDAV, and even RESTful and SOAP services.

Data Loading

Data then progresses to the data loading stage (or, you guessed it, DLS stage). The DLS stage’s goal is to get the data that’s been collected by our DCS stage and get it into a SQL database as fast as possible. Since a majority of our data comes in as XML or CSV-style files, we use some specific bulk-loading operations to get this data in as quick as possible. Once the data is loaded we can easily share and use the data through the SQL database in many other places. The DLS will “publish” the data and other stages can then “subscribe” to it, such that they get the data only when it has changed.

Data Processing

The data processing stages (DPS) are where the magic occurs. It is within this stage where we take the data and mold it into various formats our web services and eventually the Media Center client itself can use. The bulk of our processing occurs within this stage. These stages usually also take the most time to complete due to the nature of the processing going on.

During the DPS stage, we do an operation know as interlinking where we can take different sets of data, find a commonality among them and interlink them together. So if we get EPG data from one provider, we can interlink it with data from another separate partner (like Movie data) and using some fuzzy algorithms and matching, we determine with a rate of certainty that the data entities are the same.

It is within the DPS stage, for example, that we match up movies that are in the EPG to movies that are in the Movies Portal and merge that information in such a way to attempt to give a seamless experience from EPG to the Movies Portal. Likewise, the EPG benefits by getting the cover art for the movie and enhanced metadata to provide cast and crew, filmographies of contributors, etc.

While seemingly simple, the registry holds data that is very valuable. It allows us to know for instance that Jennifer Lopez the musician = J’Lo = Jennifer Lopez the actress and all the Movies, TV Shows and Music that she has contributed to.

Data Propagation/Extraction

The last part of the data processing pipeline is data extraction and/or propagation. These stages are distinct in function but similar in purpose. Propagation is what we use to move our processed data in a database to a read-only copy that our web services use. This is a multi-step process that takes two stages to accomplish.

The first of this is the publication copy stage (PCS). The PCS stage simply copies the database that will be used to the SQL Servers that serve our web services. After a database is copied, indexing operations occur to prepare for the second part of this process, the publication activation stage (PAS). This stage performs the task of notifying our web servers to use the new data. This is all done in a fashion that is not disruptive to anyone using the services at that time.

In some cases our data services aren’t databases for the web services to use, but rather, simply files that need to be downloaded by the client. While databases are used for maintaining file pointers and status, the extractors (that’s what we call them) take the data from a database and produce the files that are downloaded by the Media Center client.

For EPG, our systems actually create these “packages” everyday such that they all contain 10-14 days (or what our provider has given us) of data in the future so that no matter when your Media Center downloads, it has the most data we have available at that time.

Conclusion

That’s the overview of our data processing system. There is a lot I glossed over, but as you can see, there is a lot going on to get the data from our data providers to your Media Center PC. My team is continually looking for better and faster ways to produce data. We move to newer versions of SQL server and Windows when they become data center “worthy.” We refine our algorithms and tune our SQL continuously to squeeze more data in less time through our pipes.

Please let me know what else you would like covered in a future entry from a technical stand-point on the services and data processing that is performed for Media Center. Also feel free to send me any questions you may have. I’ll do my best to address them if I can!

About the Author

Steve Husak is the Dev Lead on the CSI team for Media Center. While at Microsoft for over 10 years, Steve started working in Product Support Services, moving to Windows SDK/.Net SDK and finally settling into the coolest area of Windows – Media Center for the past 5 years. Steve works remotely from the East Coast in Virginia juggling time zone differences as well as two active kids, his wife, several animals and a huge backlog of Recorded TV and Xbox games to catch-up on.

There's no place like HomeGroup...There's no place like HomeGroup...

PeteBrownMSFT — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:18:00 GMT

by Christian Tan

What is HomeGroup?

HomeGroup is a new feature in Windows 7 that allows multiple computers running Windows 7 to seamlessly share documents, pictures, music, media and printers. Windows 7 Media Center (7MC) has tapped into this new feature to provide a smoother experience for sharing media between Windows 7 computers. While users can access pictures and music through W7MC within the HomeGroup, I am going to focus on sharing recorded television content.

My friend Sean knows that I am on the Media Center team and asked whether he should consider upgrading to 7MC. He has a Media Center computer set up in his den, a HTPC (Home Theater PC) in his living room, and a laptop which he uses frequently for his business trips. He told me he has always wanted to install a television in his bedroom but his wife is adamant that that is not going to happen.

Since he still wants to watch television in bed, I suggested that he consider using HomeGroup. With 7MC, he can lie on his bed and use his laptop to watch the television content previously recorded on his HTPC in his living room. Sean works on his laptop in bed all the time, so he was really excited at my proposal. Also, since he travels a lot for work, I told him he can use 7MC to easily browse and copy his favorite shows onto his laptop; to watch them later on his long plane rides.

How do I Setup HomeGroup?

Before you setup a HomeGroup, make sure you have the computers networked together with a router or similar device. Setting up HomeGroup is rather straight-forward. In fact, you might have already set it up when you first installed Windows 7.

If you are installing Windows 7, be sure to choose ‘Home network’ in the Set Network Location dialog, as this is the option that will guide you through the HomeGroup setup. After you choose the ‘Home network’ network location, make sure that the Pictures, Music and Videos options are checked.

If a HomeGroup has not already been set up, a password will be generated for you. You will use this password to setup your other Windows 7 computers to this HomeGroup, so write it down.
On the other hand, if you have previously created a HomeGroup on your network, you will be asked to join that HomeGroup and be prompted to enter the HomeGroup password.

If you have forgotten the password, or would like to change the generated password to something easier to remember, select ‘Control Panel’ from your ‘Start Menu,’ and select Choose homegroup and sharing options. In the HomeGroup Control Panel that appears, you can view/print the HomeGroup password, change the password, manage the content you wish to share in the HomeGroup, or leave the HomeGroup entirely.

It is interesting to note that HomeGroups are attached to home network locations. While you can only be part of one HomeGroup at a time, you can also leave and join other HomeGroups. For example, if a student has a HomeGroup setup in her dorm room, when she visits her parents, she can leave her HomeGroup and join their HomeGroup instead, allowing her to easily share her photos on the HTPC setup in the living room.

How Can I use HomeGroup within Media Center?

Once your Windows 7 computers are setup in the HomeGroup, you can access the different galleries (Music, Pictures, and Recorded TV) on any computer, from any computer within the HomeGroup. For example, if my friend Sean wants to access the Recorded TV content on his living room PC, he simply navigates to the Recorded TV gallery on his laptop, selects the shared pivot, and then selects the computer by its name (in this case pc-livingroom).

Above: The shared pivot in the Recorded TV Gallery showing the different HomeGroup computers

Above: The name of the remote computer is displayed in the top-right corner of the gallery

Picking pc-livingroom in the shared pivot takes him into the Recorded TV gallery of the remote computer in the living room. The gallery looks almost identical to the host computer’s; so how do you tell which gallery you are at? If you look at the top-right corner of the gallery, you will notice the computer name, which tells you which Recorded TV gallery you are currently browsing in.

Once you are in the remote computer’s Recorded TV gallery, you can sort the recordings by original air date, or group them by title using the different pivots, like you were doing before on the host computer. If you select a recording, the details page will appear and you may notice slight differences in the commands available to remote content.

The play button will stream the show to your host Windows 7 Media Center. Like your host Media Center, not only can you play and pause the remote content, you can also rewind, fast-forward, skip-forward, and skip-backward. This streaming enables my friend Sean to watch his recordings in bed, while not putting his marriage in jeopardy. It is important to note that if the content is copy-protected (DRM) you will not be able to playback the content. Such content is denoted with a warning icon on the thumbnail

Besides playing the content, you can also use 7MC to navigate and copy the non-DRM content over to the host computer for later viewing. This works well for Sean as he likes to catch up on episodes of his favorite series on those long plane rides. Copying the content is as easy as clicking the make a copy button. If you accidentally clicked on the make a copy button, you can cancel the copying by clicking on the Stop button on the Copying Remote Content dialog. If you click the OK button, the copying will occur in the background.

TIP!

You can queue-copy a couple of recordings by dismissing the Copying Remote Content dialog, navigate to another recording and make a copy of that content while the first show is still being copied in the background. The second show will start the copying process once the first show has completed copying. Here is another tip for you: let’s say you started copying a really long program, dismissed the Copying Remote Content dialog, and wanted to abort the copying process, you can still do this by clicking on the make a copy button for that program and then clicking on the Stop button of the dialog that appears. This will terminate the copying for that particular program.

Above: The Copy Remote Content dialog

If you wish to return back to the host computer’s Recorded TV gallery, go back to the shared pivot and select recorded TV. You can also choose all computers to see all the recorded content in the HomeGroup. Similarly, you can access Pictures, Music and Video using the shared pivot in their respective galleries.

Why Is There No Delete Button?

You might notice that there is no Delete button on the details page for the remote content. During the design phase, we debated long and hard over this, but finally decided that we need to honor the fact that the content is on another computer and we should not delete it unless we are on that computer. Media Center assumes that content recorded on Bob’s computer belongs to Bob, and Sally, who is watching the show via HomeGroup, should not be allowed to delete the content since we cannot be sure if Bob wants that program deleted from his computer or not.

What Are These Library Files I Hear About?

Windows 7 has a new file-type called Library (.library-ms) which, like the name suggests, is a file that aggregates similar contents which may be located in various file locations. For example, if you keep your pictures in many different locations (say in C:\PublicPhotos\, E:\PrivatePhotos\, C:\FamilyPhotos\, and so on); you can add these various locations to the Photo library file. When you access that Photo library in Windows Explorer, you will be presented with all the photos, but they will be in one “place.”

Recorded TV content is no exception. The Recorded TV Library file is located at C:\Users\Public\Libraries\ but you can also access it through the navigation pane of Windows Explorer. When you click on the Recorded TV icon in the navigation pane, all your recorded content will display in the main window of Windows Explorer.

To manage the folders of this library, click on the ‘location’ link above the folders in the main window of Windows Explorer. The Recorded TV Libraries Location dialog that appears is where you can add or remove a folder to the library. When you add a new folder to this library, not only will the contents of that folder appear in this library in Windows Explorer, the recorded contents of the newly added folder will also become visible in the Recorded TV gallery in Media Center.

Above: Recorded TV icon in the navigation pane of Windows Explorer (left) and Recorded TV Libraries Location dialog (right)

You may have noticed that there are slight differences in how Pictures and Music are presented in 7MC and HomeGroup, as compared with Recorded TV. This is because Recorded TV has always been machine-based, while Pictures and Music are user-based. This is also the reason why parental controls for television content are tied to the machine instead of the user. So while there may be several Photo libraries and Music libraries on one machine, depending on the number of users on that machine, there is only one Recorded TV library file per machine.

Where can I read more about HomeGroup?

I hope you enjoyed this overview article on Media Center and HomeGroup. Try setting up your own HomeGroup and feel free to comment below to let us know how you use HomeGroup with Media Center. I also encourage you to read more about HomeGroup especially the two articles below.

Engineering Windows 7 - I highly recommend reading this article that discusses the details and design of HomeGroup.
A Look Inside HomeGroup - This video gives an overview of HomeGroup and some usages of the feature.
How Libraries & HomeGroup Work Together in Windows 7 – This is a nice account of how Libraries work with HomeGroup.

About the Author

Christian Tan has been with the Windows TV team since 2006. Prior to joining the PVR team, he was working with the CableCARD tuner devices and assisting with its certification. One of his feature areas is the Recorded TV experience in HomeGroup. He is currently wrapping up with Windows 7 and thinks that it is the best Media Center Microsoft has ever released. He lives in Seattle and loves to explore different cultures. He cannot wait for his next adventure abroad.

Which tuner should I use for Windows 7?

PeteBrownMSFT — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:50:00 GMT

by Tony Mangefeste

As we near Windows 7, a common question I receive is “Which PC-TV tuner should I buy to ensure the best possible experience in Windows 7?”

The definitive answer is to seek out PC-TV tuners that have the Windows Media Center – Advanced Qualification (AQ) certification. The AQ builds on the Windows 7 Logo program to ensure that a PC-TV tuner works with Windows Media Center. The tests verify interoperability with WMC, and our hardware partners are committed to using the program to differentiate themselves from hardware devices that are not as fully qualified.

If you visit the Windows 7 WHQL Catalog, thanks to the WHOS team for deploying it, you can get a list of Tuners which have passed AQ certification. The current list also includes Remote Controls.

You can then search the catalog for your device, or use it to make a purchasing decision for yourself, your friends or your family.

Be sure to check that list often. The WHQL program went live on May 5^th, and between then and Windows 7 GA the list will continue to grow as our hardware partners focus on ensuring that their hardware is 100% compatible with Windows Media Center. We hope everyone will benefit from a higher quality experience than they had with previous releases of Windows.

Questions? Post them below.

With Regards,

Tony

About the Author

Tony Mangefeste is a Program Manager working on broadcast television for the Windows Media Center Team. His work includes partnering with PC-TV hardware partners including chipset vendors to ensure the highest possible interoperability with Windows. He is a high-definition enthusiast, and one of his favorite TV activities is watching American Idol with his family.

Clubhouse Tags: clubhouse, media center, windows media center, media center-windows 7, review, tv tuners, windows 7 compatible, aq certified

TGB Update...one year later

PeteBrownMSFT — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 11:11:00 GMT

by Jeff Tucker

As the one year anniversary the Microsoft acquisition of the thegreenbutton.com website came and went earlier this month, I spent some time thinking about what has changed over the past 12-18 months. I can still remember the meeting when I first convinced Media Center leadership that taking responsibility of TGB hosting and operations was 100% absolutely the RIGHT thing to do. I also remember sitting in the hospital while my wife was in labor with our son, and I am on the phone with Daniel, the previous owner of TGB, trying to close the deal… but you’ve probably already heard that story here. :) I am happy to report that their faith in my vision has proven beneficial to both Media Center and the TGB Community. If you don’t agree, I’d love to hear from you.

So how has it changed, you might ask? First and foremost, Microsoft participation in the community is at an all time high. Pete Brown is dedicated staff that plays a critical role in facilitating communication between the feature teams and community, and several Media Center team members across various disciplines have commitments and accountability for engaging with the community on a regular basis. Not only that, but more and more TGB feedback is having a direct impact on feature prioritization and design decisions, and high ranking TGB users are also being included in pre-release feedback programs.

Another obvious benefit is the fact that the site is now funded by Microsoft, and as this blog is being written we are preparing for both hardware and software upgrades for the site. While these upgrades are admittedly overdue, the completion of this work was competing with some fairly important priorities like deploying a new service infrastructure for the TV Pack release, the Digital Transition, Windows 7, and various service updates for our XP/Vista clients. Not an excuse… just the reality of the situation. The good news is that even though the upgrade was delayed, the site has continued to be highly available, stable, and free of ads. The conversation on TGB is as healthy as ever, which was, at the end of the day, our primary goal.

As you are reading this, we have completed the upgrade of the hardware and software. As part of this upgrade, you might have noticed the new feedback form for EPG data quality issues. This form is the first of its kind, and it is built upon a new feedback infrastructure that will allow community members and future Media Center clients to send us valuable information and help us improve the quality of our services. This investment should signify our continued interest in improving communication with our community, and the shared benefit is that it will improve our ability to provide an outstanding user experience. Over the next year we plan to improve and scale out this infrastructure, and I encourage all of you to leverage it and let us know if you have ideas for additional requirements. We also plan to add new features to the site and improve organization of the available information.

I won’t lie… you shouldn’t expect a huge amount of investment in new site features over the next few months. The engineering team is still very focused on Windows 7, and we’ll be giving that priority through the end of the year. However, you CAN expect to see continued Microsoft participation in the forums and blogs, as well as secured funding for hosting and operations. We will also continue striving for high quality, and you will see an increased focus in resolving service and data quality issues by my team (Chris “Boedy” Boedigheimer, CSISE, etc.). There are many discussions within Microsoft and TGB about interesting new site features like a knowledge base, wiki page, feature wish lists, etc. Know that we are well aware of the asks, and we will be planning for somewhat regular updates to the site. Scope and schedule for the updates will depend on our priorities, but there will ALWAYS be some amount of focus on improving TGB and the relationship between the product group and the community.

I’ll be back with another blog later this summer (after my vacation), and I’d like to encourage you to send me ideas for topics. Media Center services like EPG and Internet TV are always hot topics on these forums, and I’d like the TGB Community to drive the topics of my blogs.

Cheers.

~Jeff

About the Author

Jeff Tucker is the Lead Program Manager for the Media Center Connected Services Infrastructure team. This is the team responsible for the metadata services that power many of the Media Center experiences like EPG, Internet TV, and others… even TGB.com. A +10 year veteran of Microsoft, he is a strong advocate for the TGB Community within Microsoft, and is himself a home theater enthusiast. He lives in Redmond, Washington with his wife and son. In February, 2009, Jeff sat down for an interview with Pete Brown on TGB, Media Center and the Superfriends.