Yeah but for Xbox 360 users who spend 95% of their time in MCE, it would be more seamless to have this plug-in do it.  I still haven't uninstalled Transcode360 since the DivX support because I hate having to switch from MCE to Dashboard and back.

tsh:

Yeah but for Xbox 360 users who spend 95% of their time in MCE, it would be more seamless to have this plug-in do it.  I still haven't uninstalled Transcode360 since the DivX support because I hate having to switch from MCE to Dashboard and back.

I agree that I'd much rather have a seemless extender interface, but MS has already proven that they don't care about MCE users as much considering they've added support for certain formats in the dashboard but not the extender as it is. They know they'd reach a greater audience by not putting it in the extender. It'd be in their best interest to have it accessible by both however, but considering this is netflix's service and not their own, I doubt they'd really invest that much effort in having multiple ways to access it.

I hope someone at Netflix is not only reading this right now, but has Visual Studio open working feverishly on the Silverlight version 2 streamer.  It's not too much to hope that new MS plugin will support whatever MS DRM is in those Netflix streams in the MS IE control in a MS media center plug-in on the MS extender right?  At MS left hand always talks to right hand talks to third leg right?  Or am I living in crazy world? :)

By the way, is it certain that DRM is preventing the current watch now from working on the extender?

tsh:

I hope someone at Netflix is not only reading this right now, but has Visual Studio open working feverishly on the Silverlight version 2 streamer.  It's not too much to hope that new MS plugin will support whatever MS DRM is in those Netflix streams in the MS IE control in a MS media center plug-in on the MS extender right?  At MS left hand always talks to right hand talks to third leg right?  Or am I living in crazy world? :)

By the way, is it certain that DRM is preventing the current watch now from working on the extender?

I will be testing this soon.

Count me in the "2005 & VMC" camp.  I put in some serious time investigating the potential benefits"of developing in MCML and came to the opposite conclusion of some of the others here.  I found the learning curve was pretty steep, and anything you learn about MCML is only peripherally portable to development in any other environment (since MCML is proprietary to Microsoft's VMC application).

Further, the Media Center Sandbox forums make it clear that the MCML & managed code development possibilities are rather limited to a set of very low-level "drawing components" and require you to "roll your own" controls.  I.E. if you want to draw a button, create a horizontal scrolling list, or emulate any of the 100's of subtle UI features of VMC, you're pretty much on your own (there's no set of UI objects you can drag & drop into the Visual Studio IDE, for example).

I'm sure for someone who's dedicated to developing many add-ins for VMC, the MCML + "VMC managed code" environment is no harder than any pseudo-UI-driven language.  However, for someone like myself who was interested in developing a single add-in for my Windows environment (and who initially though that developing in MCML might be easier than just writing in straight C# + using many of the suites of pre-built controls available), it seemed like I could devote myself to learning a framework/technology/language that had broader applicability outside of VMC.

Personally, I think the WPF approach has a lot more merit, at least if I was going to invest my spare time into coding up a Media Center add-in - it has a beautiful UI development model, you'll learn a more portable set of development skills, and the results of your coding can be leveraged by other non-VMC media applications too (e.g. MCE 2005, MediaPortal, Sage/Beyond, etc.).

I hope this is taken in the spirit in which it's intended - to make sure you're aware of the stumbling blocks that others have encountered, so that you don't inadvertently chase the same blind alleys, but can explore more productive options.  Good luck with this and I'm very much looking forward to the outcome!  [Glad to help out with it if I can, too.]

You might want to read the first post in this thread again, ParanoidCanuck ;)

Project Status :
2/14/2008 - First WPF test Build complete. Runs on MCE2005 and VMC

There's no need to argue about it anymore. The MCML version, called MyNetflix, was already released on Monday by Anthony Park.

Thanks JennyFur :)  I was hoping that's what I was supposed to infer from that post, but when I saw an overwhelming number of "Vista only" posts, I wanted to make sure that the author didn't think everyone was in agreement on that assertion.

And congrats to Anthony for pulling off the MCML version - an excellent addition to the platform no doubt.

ParanoidCanuck:

And congrats to Anthony for pulling off the MCML version - an excellent addition to the platform no doubt.

My congrats go to Anthony as well, but as a Vista user I would still go with gobanjoboy's at this point (assuming he releases it soon and it works) just because it is using the real Windows Media Player activeX controls.  That means full control using a remote and real integration into MC.  Anthony's plugin at it's current stage (as well as the MediaPortal and SageTV plugins) are instead using a fake Internet Explorer window to play the movies.  I'm sure all of these plugins will be improving a lot thanks to the clever authors.  But again, if "NetflixMC" were released today, it looks like it would be the best choice by far.

Well it does not look good for Extender users. I am unable to get the netflix media to play on my extender. Keep in mind I am not talking about the Netflix webclient but the netflix windows DRM stream it's self. I keep getting error:

"Windows Media Center Extender cannot find a license to play this content. Return to your computer to acquire a license for this content."

I have downloaded the license on the media center and the stream plays fine there but will not play on the extender. Looks like Netflix has some odd settings for the Windows DRM. I am not sure if this can be gotten around. Will keep looking into it as time goes by. Maybe once they come out with the Silverlight client for Mac or a client for Xbox Live the streaming DRM will be setup different. I only have a version 1 extender so I can't speek for version 2.0 but I am willing to bet it is the same.


If only I had acccess to the MCX1 login.

gobanjoboy:

Well it does not look good for Extender users. I am unable to get the netflix media to play on my extender. Keep in mind I am not talking about the Netflix webclient but the netflix windows DRM stream it's self. I keep getting error:

"Windows Media Center Extender cannot find a license to play this content. Return to your computer to acquire a license for this content."

I have downloaded the license on the media center and the stream plays fine there but will not play on the extender. Looks like Netflix has some odd settings for the Windows DRM. I am not sure if this can be gotten around. Will keep looking into it as time goes by. Maybe once they come out with the Silverlight client for Mac or a client for Xbox Live the streaming DRM will be setup different. I only have a version 1 extender so I can't speek for version 2.0 but I am willing to bet it is the same.


If only I had acccess to the MCX1 login.

Here is a quote from the Development Considerations for Extenders for Windows Media Center in Windows Vista

Digital Rights Management (DRM)

• The same DRM level (up to 2000) as the Windows Media Center PC

  The only additional limitation on the Extender is that non-silent license acquisition, in which the user must navigate to a separate page to acquire the license, is not supported. If you have DRM-protected content, you should work with your license issuer to set up a process to issue your licenses silently.

Looks like this is why Netflix streams down't work on extenders. if you do not have a active session in IE before trying to play a netflix stream, DRM pops up a login screen acquire its license.

A thought I just had. if your going to buy a media center extender.. looks like your better off buying the cheapest xbox. Check out these interface capabilities specs...

The table below summarizes the animation capabilities of Windows Media Center devices for the three available types of Extensibility applications. Limited fidelity means the low frame rate and lack of audio synching described above.

Technology	Host PC	Xbox 360	Third-party Extender
Windows Media Center Presentation Layer	Full fidelity	Full fidelity (Because of DirectX)	Static (skips to last key frame)
XBAP	Full fidelity	Limited fidelity	Limited fidelity
Hosted HTML	Full fidelity	Limited fidelity	Limited fidelity

I think the xbox360 is only full fidelity with WMCPC if it has a harddrive installed because then it loads the interface locally instead of streaming it from the media center, so the cheapest xbox wouldn't do. I may be wrong tho.

Numzie:

I think the xbox360 is only full fidelity with WMCPC if it has a harddrive installed because then it loads the interface locally instead of streaming it from the media center, so the cheapest xbox wouldn't do. I may be wrong tho.

You could be right though.

Gobanjoboy - any idea how close you are to a released version?  As you can tell by the popularity of the thread....we're all pretty eager to get it.

---

There's a lot of people out there who are like slinkies...pretty much useless...but they make you smile when you push them down the stairs.

Is this version going to allow remote control of the watchnow video player?  Big koodos to AP with getting this to work at all, but I would like to be able to control the playback with the remote.