Jason over at Digital Media Thoughts sent me an email about his new article on The Powers and Perils of a Platform.  Jason talks about the trouble he had when a Media Center 'plugin' went bad and couldn't be uninstalled.  It's not clear if it was an HTML application or a managed code add-in, but based on the description I'm assuming it's the latter.  He ran into problems when trying to manually uninstall the application so I thought I should post something on what to do when an add-in goes bad...

In Media Center 2005 add-ins can do pretty much what they want to do without restriction, if one starts to misbehave the best thing you can do is to disable it:

1. Start Media Center
2. Click on Settings
3. Click on General
4. Click More Programs Options
5. Click Edit More Programs
6. Deslect the app to disable and click Save

This will disable the app from starting and hide anything entrypoint it's registered throughout Media Center.  It won't uninstall the app, but it will prevent it from running.

MSN Remote Record is live and out of beta.  In simplest terms it's a way of browsing the same TV guide as your Media Center PC uses and then remotely instructing your Media Center PC to record something.  Pretty clever stuff.  There's a small download for your Media Center PC and then it looks pretty easy to use.

Try it and let me know what you think.

All the keyboard shortcuts for Media Center for those times when you just don't want to use a remote control are documented here.

Update: If the page doesn't display, try again later, it's propagating around servers or something like that I'm told

Betanews reports that Gateway/eMachines will be offering a new Media Center PC for $599!  The specs are pretty impressive for such a cheap computer:

• AMD Athlon 64 3400+
• 1GB DDR SDRAM
• 200GB hard drive
• ATI Radeon Xpress 200
• 8 in 1 media reader
• Rewritable dual-layer DVD drive
• CD-ROM drive

Wow.  No mention of a TV Tuner, monitor or remote though... 

I've never bought an eMachines computer before, but that seems like a great deal for a pretty powerful system.

I've had a couple of questions by email that I should answer (note I've paraphrased some of these):

What fonts should I use for my HTML Media Center application and can I use Flash?  The SDK is where to go for design guidelines for HTML applications (the short answer is to use a sans serif font).  Yes, Flash can be used in HTML Media Center applications - Napster and MSN Music both use Flash.

How can I add an application to the Start Menu?  You can't.  Well OK, you can, but we recommend that only OEMs use this functionality as there is a limit to how many applications can appear on the start menu and adding a new app will stomp on existing applications.  If you intend to distribute your application you shouldn't do this, but if you really want to know, the details are in the SDK here.

I've seen the Media Center software for sale online is it OK to buy it?  I'm no lawyer so I'm not going to comment on this.  Media Center is an OEM product and only available with new PCs is the official answer though.

Two months ago, Sony released the new Jessica Simpson single in MP3 through Yahoo! Music. This week, Variety (via PaidContent) reports that Disney-owned Hollywood Records will release Jesse McCartney's full album in MP3. It seems that some major record label execs may finally be coming to their senses:

'We're trying to be realistic,' said Ken Bunt, senior VP of marketing at Hollywood Records. 'Jesse's single is already online and we haven't put it out. Piracy happens regardless of what we do. So we're going to see how Jesse's album goes (as an MP3) and then decide on others going forward.'

Kudos to Yahoo! for making progress on this front, even if this is just a baby step in the right direction by the major record labels. DRM won't stop or even meaningfully slow 'Internet piracy.' And after years of pushing for improved compatibility with DRM formats, the record labels have witnessed more, not less, balkanization of music services and devices. If the record labels really care about making sure their customers can play music on the devices of their choice, the only solution that plays-for-sure is an open, unencrypted format like MP3.

(Cross-posted at DeepLinks)

It's the latest digital media murder mystery: TiVo Series2's TiVoToGo enabled limited portability of recorded content to PCs and other devices, but the TiVo Series3 HD did not include this feature when recently released. In other words, if you want to upgrade to HD, you have to downgrade your TiVo's features.

You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to guess that this story somehow involves Hollywood, the FCC, and 'digital rights management' (DRM) restrictions. EFF has opposed these restrictions every step of the way, and, in an EFF white paper released today, we'll explain digital cable DRM's sordid history, how digital cable and satellite DRM may affect you, and what you can do to fight back.

In short, get ready for copying limits on cable and satellite content that won't stop 'Internet piracy' but will stop you from making legitimate use of lawfully acquired content. You'll be forced to only buy devices with limited features, and restricted digital outputs could break compatibility with your current HD displays and receivers, even though you may have already invested thousands of dollars in them. Innovators will have to beg permission before inventing new digital devices that help you get more from your satellite and cable content.

Unfortunately, TiVoToGo's disappearance is just the tip of the iceberg. But you can still take steps to fight back -- use EFF's Action Center to stop cable providers from making DRM even worse, and check out the other action items on our cable and satellite DRM page.

(Cross-posted at EFF's DeepLinks)

I'm back home from @media 2006, which as you probably know took place in London last week. I'd like to follow suit with the many other people who have posted their reflections on this year's conference.

Like last year, @media 2006 was a success. I enjoyed myself thoroughly during my four days in London, mostly thanks to the fantastic people I met and spent time with.

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Posted in:

• Life
• Web Standards

...For nearly five years, George W. Bush and other members of his administration have been proclaiming proudly that they have been tracking terrorist financing through international financial institutions.

...The House of Representatives passed a resolution saying it 'expects the cooperation of all news media organizations.'

In a few days I'm leaving for London to attend the @media conference. I hope it will be as much fun as last year was, but it's a bit different for me since this year I am one of the speakers. I'll only be sitting in on a panel (Strategic CSS Project Management), not holding a full presentation of my own. I'm still a bit nervous about the whole thing, and looking at the names of the other speakers gives me a surreal feeling.

If you're going to @media and see me standing in a corner trying to make myself invisible, come and say hi. I promise I won't bite. Well, unless you start talking about alt tags ;-). I am a very approachable kind of person most of the time, but I do tend to be a little shy among people I don't know. In other words, don't wait for me to start any conversations.

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Posted in:

• Life

A client recently reported that there was a problem with their print stylesheet causing content to be cut off at the right margin. I had a look at it and couldn't see a problem until I tried printing from Internet Explorer. There was a problem alright.

It was really puzzling since all the print CSS for that site does is basically hide parts that are irrelevant when printing. There shouldn't be any conflicts with other style sheets either since the screen style sheets use a different media type. But I was wrong - in some cases IE will apply CSS that it shouldn't.

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Posted in Browsers, CSS.

I've decided to take all the questions I get by email and answer them on Fridays in one post, so do please continue to email me any questions you have.  That said, here's this weeks questions:

How can I keep the Media Center window on top so I can work on other things?  In Media Center go to SettingsGeneralStartup and Window Behavior and select 'Media Center window always on top'.

How can I associate an HTML application with an add-in?  Register both the add-in and the HTML page together.  Instead of registering the HTML app and the add-in you need to register them both as a single application with multiple entrypoints - one entrypoint for the add-in and one for the HTML page.  This will make them both part of the same application and so from a background add-in a call to ApplicationInfo.IsForeground will return 'true' when the HTML page is currently being displayed.

MSN Video Download  apparently went live today with a choice of two membership types  Premium and Basic.  Premium is $19.95 a year and has more content than the free Basic membership.  Not wanting to commit myself to a membership yet I signed up for the Basic membership, thinking I could load some videos on to the miniSD card in my smartphone....

Sign up was easy, I used my passport account, agreed to the terms and installed the download software.  The download status page showed content was downloading from Fox Sports.  In order to sync content to my phone I needed a smart playlist so I followed the instructions to download one.  This was the first problem, the instructions used Windows Media Player 9 and I'm using Windows Media Player 10, a little strange, but not a huge problem.  With the smart playlist in place I thought I'd be good to go...

That wasn't going to be the case though.  I started by trying to play a video in Media Player directly and got prompted for a username and password which was being requested by 'admin.theplatform.com' not 'msnvideodownloads.com'.  I tried my Passport email address and password which might not have been a great idea, but it didn't work anyway.  Meanwhile I could see that Activesync had been trying to sync the content to my phone so I checked the Sync page in WMP.  Nothing had been synced, instead  there was an error message 'Windows Media Player can not synchronize the protected file.  Protected files can not be converted to the required quality level or format'.

Now I have almost half a gigabyte of content (and it's still getting downloaded) and I can't watch any of it.  If anyone gets this working I'd love to know how.

I've had lots of questions recently and no time to really get answers and post them up here.  If I haven't answered you question it's because I don't know the answer and haven't had enough time to get to the bottom of it yet.

First of all I had a couple of questions on MSAS which I don't know that much about.

Can I tell which tuner is being used when a recording takes place using MSAS? No, you can not.  What you can do, which may or may not help is use OnTVRecordStateChange from a background add-in which will give you a GUID and you could track which was in use - this won't help if a tuner is being used for live TV though.  Here's a code snippet on how to use OnTVRecordStateChange:

void IAddInEntryPoint.Launch(AddInHost host)
{

host.Television.OnTVRecordStateChange += new Microsoft.MediaCenter.AddIn.TVRecordStateChangeDelegate(TvRecordStateChangedHandler);

...

}

public void TvRecordStateChangedHandler(object obj, Microsoft.MediaCenter.AddIn.TVRecordStateChangeArgs TVArgs) {

if (TVArgs.Started)

mcHost.HostControl.Dialog('Recording started on tuner ' + TVArgs.Tuner, 'TV Recording',1,10,false);

else if (TVArgs.Stopped)

mcHost.HostControl.Dialog('Recording stopped on tuner ' + TVArgs.Tuner, 'TV Recording',1,10,false);

}

Can I use remote desktop to connect to a Media Center PC? Yes.  You can even use Media Center, but it won't play video over a RDP connection

Can I use animated backgrounds in an HTML page? Not really a media center question, but I don't see why not, use an animated gif.

Could I create an add-in that played a selection of WAV files with a gap between them? Yes, using Playmedia and Playrate you could contstruct an addin to do this - waiting until the playrate was stopped, then wating however long you want before playing the next file.  You could also use More With This  to make this work with any folder of audio files.

Can I use ASP.NET for development?  Yes.  You can use any web technology that outputs HTML.

Can I use WinForms for development?  Yes, but if you're running as a .exe you won't have access to Media Center APIs.  If you're running as a .NET applet in a webpage you'll have access to the Media Center APIs from the HTML page and will have to communicate between the page and the .NET applet to use the Media Center APIs - non-trivial to do, but not hard.