Posts Tagged ‘Media Centre’

The New Media Extender

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

Having  used media extenders for  some time (and not being overly impressed with them) I was eager to try the new xBox 360 250Gb – also known as the xBox 360 slim.

I gotta say this unit impressed me! Quite. Reliable. Quiet. Plays everything I can through at it including MKV and some dodgy AVI movies. Did I say quiet? Brilliant! There was only one little hiccup which was relating to MKV playback. Although the unit can play back MKV files natively it does need an update to handle AAC audio formats. This was an issue because most of the MKV files I tested had AAC audio formatting. Interestingly with out the update the xBox would not see the MKV files at all. Once the update was installed – viola! – all the MKV files were there.

Being an xBox novice (yes there are some of us still out there!) it did take me a bit of navigating to find how to update the xBox. However I found the settings quite easily and it is a simple matter of changing a couple of settings to make the xBox boot up into Media Centre mode straight up. You can even turn off the xBox controller so the kids can’t hijack what you are watching – it will use a normal media centre remote which follows the RC6 remote protocol (pretty much a standard these days).

The really cool thing is the way it interacts with Windows 7. Unlike previous media centres whose movement and scrolling was very jerky, the xBox is smooth as silk, emulating the Media Centre interface beautifully. All the transitions between menus and options are smooth and the response from the extender is almost as quick s the media centre itself. Buffering movies was also quicker than a normal extender too.

Overall, it is stylish, very quiet (that has been the problem with previous xBoxes), simple to use and powerful. The Media Extender has just been perfected!!

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Windows 7 Beta 1 – First Impressions

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

With the release of Microsoft’s new operating system in beta, I thought I would give it a go and see how it performs in it’s current form.

I created a new partition on one of my drives and did a fresh install of Windows 7 Beta 1. The install process was virtually identical to Vista – no surprise there. However as the system rebooted in to the Windows 7 GUI (graphic user interface) for the first time disaster!! A black screen. The system was still running, but there was no image.

I grabbed another monitor and rebooted. No change. In the end I found that the boot loader has a setting that runs the GUI at a low resolution 800 x 600. Viola! I had a screen and could get to the desktop. From there I ran Windows update which downloaded two driver updates – ethernet card and Nvidia driver for the graphics card.

After the updates the system worked fine – I could change the resolution to my preferred setting and everything worked OK.

Onto the media centre. The first thing I notices was the changed layout. Like all things different from what we are used to I was not too sure about the new layout, but the more I use it the more I like it. Having switched between Vista and Windows 7 and can say that the Windows 7 Media Centre interface is very intuitive.

Why? The Menu titles are clearer and in a stylish, thin font. The layout of the menus is slightly different with the more common menu items easier to get at. Also the menus are left justified, rather than centred as in Vista. The only thing that I found I did not like was that you can not continuously scroll through the menus. In Windows 7 once you get to the last menu it will not continue. To get to the other end of the menus you need to scroll all the way to the other end. A small thing, but annoying. Hopefully it will be fixed before the final release.

The big thing for Windows 7 is the fact that most codecs are pre-installed. That means that DVD’s, DivX and avi’s will play straight away with out the need for a codec pack. The exceptions to this are MKV files and Blu Ray. There has been much discussion about blu ray and Windows 7 so I will not go into it here, except to say that native blu ray playback is unlikely for some time to come.

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Plugins – Big Screen weather 2

Monday, November 17th, 2008

Once you have started using your ASENT media centre you start to do one of two things:

1) Wish there was some other useful information/tools available

2) Wonder what there is that will help you do point 1

The most common thing that people want with their ASENT media centre is a weather plugin – a way of checking the weather without leaving your couch. There are several on the market, but the best I have found is “Big Screen Weather 2”.

You can down load it here. Subscription cost $US 20 per year. What you get for that is access to the BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) information which is used in the plugin. This includes weather info, 7 days forecasts, weather maps, satellite imagery, tide forecasts plus other really useful stuff.

The user interface is super slick and integrates beautifully with your ASENT media centre. The remote controls the plugin seamlessly – everything is accessible and nothing needs to be manually configured (as with some other plugins). You can choose any location in Australia or the US and there is forecast data for many locations around the world – very handy if you travel a lot.

All in all an excellent (essential?) plugin. And it’s Australian made!

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