Xbox Media Center Extender

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/xboxmediacenterextender.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/xboxmediacenterextender.htm</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Bring your Media Center PC experience to your Xbox® and turn it into the ultimate entertainment center with the Windows® Media Center Extender for Xbox! Enjoy digital music, photos, videos, and TV shows on televisions throughout your home. With a wired or wireless connection to the Media Center PC (sold separately), the Xbox console now allows you to enjoy the digital entertainment media from your PC when and how you want. The included remote control and IR receiver also support DVD movie playback. Just grab the remote, drop in the Media Center Extender DVD in your Xbox, and get ready for an entertainment revolution! A whole new world for your Xbox awaits…"</i><br /><br />Looks very cool, and ultimately this might be the way I connect my media to my TV, though I'm still mulling over some options (more on that this week).

[Felix Torres]

It does add up to an all-in-one living room solution, no?
Games, movies, audio, and photos, all via one box.

And with the XBOX at $150 the combined price is cheaper than the dedicated extender boxes without DVD playback.
Two weeks to go. :-)

I intend to look at it very closely and my office mate is 90% certain to go this way, too. Anybody with an XBOX is a likely candidate, as long as they can get XP MCE running on their Media Server box, so this is likely to drive MCE penetration up from its current 3% market share...

[[email protected]]

Could this stream music, videos and photos off a regular PC? Without the recording and so on ofcourse. I'm not likely to get a MCE PC for a while but I would love to check out this in the meanwhile!

[Felix Torres]

Could this stream music, videos and photos off a regular PC? Without the recording and so on ofcourse. I'm not likely to get a MCE PC for a while but I would love to check out this in the meanwhile!

Not sure.
Probably not.
The official MS solution for regular PCs is Windows Media Connect and the way they describe it it doesn't sound like the Media extenders will work without XP Media Center Edition 2005.

However, MCE *will* install on a regular PC, minus fancy tuner and stuff.
So you could upgrade your PC to MCE and then hook up to the xbox.
Worth doing if you already have the XBOX.
(If you don't, its debatable; might be better to go with a third party Digital Media Receiver.)

That's one of the things I'll be looking into once the extender kit comes out.

I have an ATI all-in-wonder card so if I can get MCE to work with it, I'll be home free.
But if I can't, I'll just leave the remote tv viewing off the feature list.
The rest of the package is compelling enough, I think.

[Jason Dunn]

Could this stream music, videos and photos off a regular PC?

No. You need to have an MCE PC, which is one of the reasons why I might not use this solution.

[[email protected]]

Thanks guys.

I sort of suspected this. Are there boxed XP MCE for sale without hardware? I mean officially, not the semi-kosher "buy a licence with this essential ps2 mouse hardware".

[Jason Dunn]

I sort of suspected this. Are there boxed XP MCE for sale without hardware? I mean officially, not the semi-kosher "buy a licence with this essential ps2 mouse hardware".

Nope. The only way to do what you want is to buy and install MCE 2005 from NewEgg. Honestly though, it's not any different than an "official" release from Microsoft. It's the same OS.

[Darius Wey]

I sort of suspected this. Are there boxed XP MCE for sale without hardware? I mean officially, not the semi-kosher "buy a licence with this essential ps2 mouse hardware".

Nope. The only way to do what you want is to buy and install MCE 2005 from NewEgg. Honestly though, it's not any different than an "official" release from Microsoft. It's the same OS.

Exactly. All Windows XP versions are based on the same source code anyway. You will find that while you have XP Home and XP Professional, XP MCE tends to be a mix of the two. MCE tends to lack some features that Professional would otherwise have - e.g. Group Policy Editor (GPE), Encrypting File System (EFS), etc.; however, it still has some key features from Professional such as IIS 5.1.

I believe the primary reason for this approach is due to the fact that past versions of MCE didn't do too well in terms of sales, so it makes sense to essentially provide a "toned-down" version of the OS to make it cheaper for the distributors, and hopefully, this approach can help drive sales up.

[Jason Dunn]

I believe the primary reason for this approach is due to the fact that past versions of MCE didn't do too well in terms of sales, so it makes sense to essentially provide a "toned-down" version of the OS to make it cheaper for the distributors, and hopefully, this approach can help drive sales up.

Nah, the OS was never sold by itself - the ONLY way you could get the OS was to buy a whole new computer from HP, Dell, Gateway and a couple of other vendors. Now they've broadended it to "white box" vendors so that anyone can build a computer and sell it with MCE 2005...and the side-effect of that is that people can now buy the OS. :-)

[Darius Wey]

Nah, the OS was never sold by itself - the ONLY way you could get the OS was to buy a whole new computer from HP, Dell, Gateway and a couple of other vendors. Now they've broadended it to "white box" vendors so that anyone can build a computer and sell it with MCE 2005...and the side-effect of that is that people can now buy the OS. :-)

Hehe...that's what I meant - "sales", in reference to computers packaged with the MCE OS. But this new approach should be positive, not only for MS, but the vendors as well. :)

Funnily enough, you can get half of the MCE 2005 dedicated enhancements off the web anyway, and install it onto your XP Home / XP Professional installations. So effectively, anyone can "MCE" their XP to an extent. :P

[dgage]

I had a Tivo and while I loved the interfrace and experience, I found it too limiting to me in terms of expansion(mine is hacked) and use of videos. I decided to go with SageTV and have been using it since before 2.0 went beta earlier this year. I have 3 Hauppauge PVR-250s so I can record 3 shows at the same time if need be. I also have 3 Hauppauge MediaMVPs that I use as a little set top box on our TVs. Up until this past weekend, the MediaMVP was the weak link as it has an awful interface out of the box. Some users have developed custom skins for the MediaMVP based on SageTV, BeyondTV, and MythTV but they still felt limited. However, this past weekend a user came out with a full interface for SageTV on the MediaMVP and I have been extremely happy ever since. Combine that with the SageMCE interface and I have a very nice set-top box experience with full scheduling capabilities from a $70-80 piece of hardware. Check out these links.

Sage MVP Client
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=8035

SageMCE Skin
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=7946

David