Matt's Media Center Weblog

 

msft blogs
Aaron
Charlie
David
Michael
Peter

mce sites
Official MSFT
eHomeUpgrade
The Green Button
MC PC World
MCESoft

other blogs
Ben
ChrisL
Ed Bott
Ian Dixon
Peter
PVR Blog
PVR Wire
Thomas Hawk
Tim Coyle

helpful links
AVS' MCE FAQ
MSFT HW List
Matt's MCE Wiki
Newsgroup
Demos
Setup

 
 

Permalink to this day Friday, December 16, 2005

I'm going to be in Las Vegas from January 4th to 8th for CES.
12:48:38 PM  Permalink to this item []

Permalink to this day Monday, December 12, 2005

Q: How do I set the remote control address on a Media Center IR Keyboard (Kirk)

A:

  • Press OK+MORE (LED flashes at 1Hz)
  • Press a number key from 1 to 8(LED flashes twice to confirm success)
  • Turn off keyboard power (wait 10 seconds or press any key to discharge the capacitors quickly)
  • Turn on keyboard.

4:02:49 PM  Permalink to this item []

eHome 2005 Holiday Party

Last Thursday was the eHome Holiday party. Here's a few of us leaving, left to right:

Mark's date
Tom, program manager
Mark, designer
Nishant, tester
Katrina, writer
Veronica, program manager
Ryan, developer

The night was actually a lot of fun. We started with a pre-funk at the Chapel and after a drink headed down to the Science Fiction Museum for the official festivities. While we were stymied by only two free drinks, the DJ this year was much better than last year's 80's cover band. After gossiping with co-workers for three hours a substantial number of us headed off to Neighbors were we partied into the fee hours of the morning. I think the last of us trickled out of Neighbors at 3am. The next day we all took advantage of the 'free' morning off we got and some didn't even make it in at all (I made it in). Next year we'll all have to remember to read MSN Careers, Office Party Etiquette before heading out.
11:19:13 AM  Permalink to this item []


Permalink to this day Wednesday, November 30, 2005

CNET, New FCC report advocates a la carte TV pricing:
Martin told the forum that the FCC will soon release a report that concludes that offering TV programming a la carte is economically feasible and in the best interest of consumers.
Until we get true Internet TV downloads it would be great if we could get a la carte TV pricing. Why pay for channels I don't want to watch? It just doesn't make any sense.
10:48:44 AM  Permalink to this item []

Permalink to this day Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Since some of you were interested to find out I owned movies and DVD. I should disclose the other features I own.

So I am the program manager for the following features in Media Center:

  • Accessibility support - High contrast skins, MSAA,...
  • Caller ID
  • DVD playback UI
  • LUA - Limited User Account interaction with MCE
  • Media Discovery - How do you discover local media? Networked media? How does Media Center fit into your home networking setup?
  • Messenger - And other communication/sharing scenarios
  • Movies - Movies Portal, My DVDs, DVD changer connectivity, integration with VOD partners like Movielink
  • Parental Controls
  • Settings - So exciting.
  • Text input/IME - How do you enter text in Media Center? How do you triple tap in other countries?
  • TweakMCE - Power toy that gets 10,000+ downloads a month

(There are one or two other areas that should be on that list but I don't want to get your hopes up for Vista.)

Each of those features has a feature team made up of a developer, a tester, a designer, a usability engineer, a product planner, a user assistance person, and finally a program manager. As the program manager for those feature teams I drive the vision around the feature and we work together to pitch ideas to the larger team, get them approved, then get them built, tested and finally shipped.
12:04:31 PM  Permalink to this item []


One of my Media Centers at home is an HP z555 and I recently was forwarded this article by David Powell, Making the switch: Tivo to Media Center and he's got lots of tips for optimizing things such as the video card, Extender and the z555's airflow:
One last thing on cooling: a friend reversed the two fans (CPU fan and the side fan) inside the z555 and it now runs much, much cooler.

Since my z555 is in a fairly open space I don't have heat problems, but I imagine many of you might if your z555 is in a cabinet, so if you're the intrepid type you might want to try reversing your fans.
10:27:06 AM  Permalink to this item []


Permalink to this day Monday, November 28, 2005

FYI, someone I know ran into issues with DVDIdle Pro and My DVDs:
Having DVDIdle Pro installed when you insert discs in to the changer causes the unique ID that’s generated to somehow be different than what is generated without the software installed/active. Because of this, none of the discs show up with metadata (beyond the volume ID). Disabling the software and “watching” the disc will cause a new ID to be generated (and xml file created) but it never shows up in My DVDs. The only way to have it show up is to eject the disc and re-insert it.

4:23:31 PM  Permalink to this item []

Permalink to this day Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Off to Whistler for the weekend. See you all on Monday.
2:22:12 PM  Permalink to this item []

Permalink to this day Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Ian Dixon has launched The Media Center Show Awards 2005 with lots of interesting categories, including 'Best Microsoft Employee Media Center Blog', go vote :).

It's really great to see how far the community has come in the last year. It wasn't too long ago that I could read every blog post that mentioned MCE, every article, every plugin, every forum. But now there's so much going on that I can only dip in every once and a while and see what's going on. The community has definitely taken off. Keep up the good work folks!


1:15:10 AM  Permalink to this item []


I'm off to Springs Lodge in Leavenworth, Washington for a corporate retreat for hot shot new college hires for the rest of the week. Should be a grand old geeky time. And yes, I will try very hard to resist the koolaid. (Though I will be bringing a bottle of something to spike it with.)

They tell us there's no Internet, so see yeah.

(I'm bringing my new iPod video and will report back on how watching the first episode of Lost on the bus ride works out.)
1:06:26 AM  Permalink to this item []


© Copyright 2005 Matt Goyer.
I work at Microsoft in the eHome division on the Windows XP Media Center Edition team as a Program Manager.

Disclaimer: The posts on this weblog are provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

December 2005
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
        1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Nov   Jan

Matt.Goyer *at* microsoft *dot* com

Please include a good subject line in your email! And I will read all emails but may not be able to respond to them all.

Click here to visit the Radio UserLand website.

Click to see the XML version of this web page.

Updated: 12/16/2005; 12:48:54 PM.