For those of you who don’t know what Softsled is, it’s a software based extender that Microsoft never released.  It would allow you to watch shows from your MCE machine on another machine in your house using the MCE interface, including all MCE’s functions, including watching live TV, and controlling its guide.     

 

There are more than a few of us who have wanted a Softsled or something similar.  But Microsoft has refused to release it with no real explanation.  We only have rumors to explain the lack of release before now and that explanation was DRM issues that would be solved when Vista is released. 

 

Vista has now been pushed back until 2007 meaning we will have to wait at least a year for a solution, and then we have no real guarantee it will live up to what we want, or expect.  The only question now is do we wait, and then buy all new software, since the Vista Softsled would require Vista machines on both ends, or do we try to do something about it.

 

Some of you may have heard of http://www.onmac.net.  Its a site that was created by Colin Nederkoorn  to figure out how to get how to get Windows XP dual booting onto a new Intel based Mac.  He started a fund by putting in $100 and starting a website asking for donation to give as prize money to the first person too successfully dual boot XP and OSX on a mac.  narf2006 and blanka found the solution and received a check for $13,854.

 

Orb can do a lot, but the quality isn’t high enough, the interface is wrong.  Although live TV can be watched, the guide can’t be used.  Orb is meant as a soft Slingbox, not really a Soft MCE.

 

Do you think this is a problem that just needs to be tackled, could we set up a website asking for donations towards a prize for the answer to this?  Or is MCE set up so it can’t be done.  Would any of you be willing to front money towards a solution?  I know I would drop $100 to get the ball rolling on this. 

 

Scuffs, I think you are on to something with getting the community together to offer a prize for solutions we desire. Since Vista, and hopefully softsled, are less than a year from release I think we sould concentrate on another solution that will not be solved by Vista. I don't want to hijack the thread but we should focus on whatever app is in the most demand.

If there is enough support we could offer a nice little prize.

Although vista "may" ship with softsled, it wont solve the problem for MCE 2005 users.  It just means we have to buy all new software, and probably hardware to meet the Vista MCE standards.

The things that we need for MCE off the top of my head are

A) Softsled
B) QAM HD support
C) Multiple guides/sources on one machine
D) Picture in Picture
E) Choose which tuner to use to record which show on
F) Flexxx needs to fix his Video Play List Creator (I got it working on one machine somehow!)
G) Video pass through (Recording off VHS tapes for archiving, or playing Video games machines through mce)
H) Live TV Buffer alterations.  All tuners buffer when used, When recording a show you have been buffering it adds it on to the recording, other buffer changes...
I) Recording Radio
J) Turn off the ability to delete TV/Videos

Of these the most important one I see is are the top 4.  PIP would be real nice, but would only really matter when watching live tv.  It would be cool to be able to watch a recorded show on commercials and swap back as soon as it starts.  There are a lot of people out there with more than 1 connection type.  Letting people use them all with MCE at the same time would solve a lot of problems, but would need E to work properly.  If someone could get QAM HD to work there would be a lot of people out there kissing your feet We still couldnt get Pay channels to work but a lot of us could benifit from this.  But really the softsled looks to me like the most important.

There are a lot of posts out there that say what people want out of softsled.  Everything from using the tuners out of a "MCE Server" and accessing its guide, to watch live tv, too pooling the tuners and guides so you would have to choose which tuner you wanted to use then would get tied to that computer.  Also is softsled an MCE add on, or is it a stand alone program?

What do you guys think, what is needed most?  Softsled or one of these, or another alternitive?

I would also throw in $100 for SoftSled.  The answer in Vista is not only going to require new software but new hardware as well.  If your hardware can't support HDCP all the way to the monitor then you will probably be out of luck in playing recorded TV on your computer.  That means a new video card and a new monitor, which don't even exist yet.  The Vista solution is more than a year a way because of the hardware.

SoftSled can't be that hard.  It just has to be streaming video over a RDP connection.  MCE currently streams audio to RDP clients, and streams video to extenders.  We are not that far away.

Thanks,
WRK

Where did the whole DRM concept of the lack of Softsled come from? DRM should have little to do with why they didn't release SoftSled. At the time, the only protected contect would have been CGMS-A. You can already play Recorded content on other PCs (other than CGMS-A, which Microsoft could fix, I'm sure but might require not having it on a UAB, which could be countered by just streaming it), no need for DRM anything. Will new methods of protection be need if Microsoft is doing a Vista SoftSled, Yes. If they want content from CableCARDs and such to be moved, each host device will need to support a degree of protection. It's not likely that DRM is the reason we don't have SoftSled today.

Video over RDP itself isn't going to happen, that is unless you want 2fps for so. It can't handle the amount of bitmaps/whatever being generated on a video. Video is streamed to Extender using a different protcol. I'm sure this could also be done with Windows XP, but it's going to be somewhat of a challege to get that Live TV working.

I'd love to see SoftSled, but I can only imagine that Microsoft hasn't developed it yet for some reason we have yet to think (such as an issue that would make the concept not work)

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Chris Lanier
The Green Button Forum Moderator

MCE doesn't stream video over RDP - and softsled won't either - it goes over a secondary channel.

No, I'm 100% convinced it's DRM related. Vista's A/V layers are all about DRM protection to a level which XP could never ensure. Today it's CGMS-A content - but if Microsoft had just included Softsled in XP, for example, they would become the porthole to the Internet for all tv content - not the kind of thing a very large software company trying to be buddy-buddy with Hollywood would want.

There's a considerable part of current extenders that is designed to keep the video secure to the point that it hits the video-out - something Microsoft obviously felt important enough to take time in a rushed project to do - and something that is technically infeasible under anything before Veesta.

At the end of the day, if the content didn't need to be DRM protected through the PC, creating softsled is actually pretty trivial - it's a custom version of MSTSC - one of the thinnest applications Microsoft makes - with logic in it to overlay the streamed video window - which only appears in two different sizes...

Im busy at work but I so want to talk about this more.  Damn well Ill be home in a bit

I also think this is an excellent idea, although it can discourage sharing of idea's and working together to reach a solution, a cash incentive is the best motivator for people. Softsled is one of the things that MCE desperately needs, and as mentioned above not all of us want to shell out for a new graphics card/HDCP compatible display for every room.

From a technical standpoint, it is definitely possible - there is an extender for the original XBOX, and that is just a basic PC (733Mhz CPU with 64MB of RAM!). I think DRM is the reason it hasnt been done.

You can already access the MCE2005 interface over a remote desktop connection from another computer, it just stops working when you try to play any video so its really just the video-overlay transmitting over another protocol that needs to be sorted out. For a programmer it doesnt seem as if it would be that difficult surely? I am no programmer myself but I have thought about giving this a go in the past and this thread has me thinking I might start trying again!

It is important for anyone undertaking this to understand the repercussions of it. In order to get this working, you will explicitly have to reverse engineer (and break) the DRM which Microsoft put into the actual hardware-based extenders. This is a pretty hardcore violation of the DMCA.

I would like softsled as much as the next person - but it's not worth that.

why would reversing the DRM be necessary? I imagine you just need to read the DVRMS file as it is written from the TV tuner, all you have to get around is the locking of the file to MCE. Combine that with remote desktop and it should work. No breaking of DRM encryption would be necessary.

File access wouldn't be the ideal method.  The best SoftSled solution IMHO would be essentially an emulation of an extender.  This would be essentially a custom RDP client with audio and video streaming.

Now before all you techno-geeks break into the "no video over RDP comments", realize that I understand that the video and the audio stream over protocol extensions to RDP.  However, when I say that RDP supports audio and video streaming, I mean that if I generate a WinCE client from the CE SDK, I get the option of including an RDP client with additional options to support audio and video streaming extensions to the RDP client.  This is what I imagine the extenders CE version was generated with.  And yes, extenders are Windows CE.

I as well am not capable of programming this, but it seems it would not be hard for someone familiar with RDP clients to take on.  As far as cracking DRM and violating the DMCA, getwired's paranoia notwithstanding, I think it would not be necessary to crack any DRM.  The RDP extensions would stream the video, the extender emulator would use locally installed codecs to decode it.  If one has the DVRMS codec installed on the SoftSled machine, the DRM and everything else would be in the codec, correct?

Thanks,
WRK

That would be ideal - but that isn't the way extenders work. You cannot access the live TV feed - it is locked exclusively on the MCE system. Extenders bypass this by not leaving the MCE system - instead having it broadcast - over the wire (or wireless) in an encrypted form for extenders to decrypt.

Trust me. To remote this and not have to either completely hack apart the MCE shell (not that this is trivial or even possible to do) to "not remote" video the way it does for extenders, you will have to bypass encryption that Microsoft has built in.

If you are truly emulating an extender, then you are emulating a MS Terminal Services client which has very specific functionality built into it to allow for the extender to stitch video back together in the UI.

Yes, extenders use CE. Yes, they just have streaming A/V support - but they have more...

Extenders today use encryption. There is an ATMEL smartcard chip built into them (I'm relatively certain that the Xbox v1 Extender also has this built into it's remote receiver) which allows them to decrypt the video stream they are being broadcast. Without that, I can all but guarantee you that any unauthorized extender sol'n you come up with simply won't work - since MCE won't be able to verify it's authenticity. I'm relatively certain that the CE image also has other signature aspects representing it as MS-authorized... The pivotal point of this is that the video stream coming off of the MCE system is not wide open for consumption - it's encrypted. For a reason.

I am pretty sure that the IR reciever used for the xbox 1 media center extender is the same as the one used for the DVD kit. I have heard this from many reviews of the extender kit. I will have the xbox 1 extender kit within a few days and will be able to confirm this.

All that would need to be done would be to somehow allow access to the DVRMS file to more than one client. I cant see that this would be too difficult. And even if this violated any kind of DRM (which I am sure it could be achieved without doing so), I think there would be many people willing to try to do so. After all, the xbox media center application which is widely used by many is designed using the xbox SDK and therefore in violation of microsoft copyright - but plenty of people use that.