The Media Center Blog

You may have already heard about this one since it’s said “Coming Soon” on their website for quite some time now but there’s finally a release date…well, sort of. More like a release time frame finally. According to a press release from CES, Ceton is developing “the next-generation Ceton cable TV card for Windows Media [...]

In case you didn’t already know, Microsoft is going allow anyone who has the desire to do so, to download the Windows 7 beta and take it for a test drive. Here’s the main part of a Microsoft press release:
LAS VEGAS — Jan. 7, 2009 — In a keynote address at the 2009 International Consumer [...]

Cox Communications here in Topeka, KS just added some more channels to my lineup. As of December 30th, 2008 I now have access to the following channels:

Fox News HD
Cartoon Network HD
Speed HD
FX HD

In addition to those new channels, they also split up the Golf/Versus HD channel into 2 full time channels. All total I now [...]

Sean Portnoy over at ZDNet is reporting that Ace Computers is going to be announcing a couple of budget CableCARD PCs at the upcoming CES that will enter the market at only $999…and yes, that does include a tuner!
The LMS 250 will come with 2GB of RAM, 500GB hard drive, DVD burner and an internal [...]

Read into it what you will but DirecTV has suspended the development of the highly sought after HDPC-20 tuner. To read more, head on over to Chris Lanier’s blog or Gearlog. Here’s the release that DirecTV sent out:
“DIRECTV has suspended the development of the HDPC-20 tuner project that was designed to integrate DIRECTV service into [...]

If you read my post entitled “My area is getting 8 new HD channels,” then you know I was pretty excited about getting some new channels and trying to be proactive about the lineup changes so that I wouldn’t have to wait long for them to show up in my Media Center guide. I found [...]

If you are interested in beta testing Windows 7 Media Center, here’s your chance. Pete Brown of Microsoft posted the following on The Green Button:

Greetings members of the Green Button community:
The Media Center team periodically posts a hardware survey to Microsoft Connect in order to update their records of potential beta testers.  
By completing the [...]

If you have TV Pack or Windows 7 installed you might want to take a look at a PlayReady update that’s just been posted on the Microsoft Download Center. Supposedly this version reduces start up and decryption times. For a little more information on the update, check out the AppScout website.

According to an update on the Cox website, my area (Topeka, KS), along with other areas in Kansas and Arkansas, is getting 8 new channels on November 18th. While I’m not too overly excited about any of the channels (Spike HD, MTV HD, VH1 HD, CMT HD, Planet Green HD, Lifetime Movie Network HD, Hallmark Movie [...]

Ed Bott has made a nice little discovery with the pre-beta release of Windows 7…a driver for none other than that elusive DirecTV HDPC-20 tuner for Media Center. While it has been a long time coming (first anounced in January 2006) it is nice to know Microsoft didn’t give up on it all together. Some [...]