Actually Critical Failure would be more like it

Having not used our Media Center PC as a Media Center PC for quite a while, I was incredibly frustrated when I tried to use it and had the Media Center functions fail with a wide array of cryptic and just plain unhelpful errors. Most of them "critical".

It seems that I blindly (and foolishly) installed the service packs that have become available over the past months, never checking to see if Media Center itself still worked. Which it clearly didn't.

Lots of time and web/newsgroup searching later, it appears as if somehow some of the bewildering number of dlls became unregistered (or perhaps the wrong ones were registered - one can never be quite sure what's going on in the world of COM).

To the rescue, however, comes MceRepair which, according to the author's blog will:

• Repair the ACLs to get COM+ Services working again (see KB909444)
• Repair the registration for .NET Framework v1.1 libraries (should fix the "Entry Point Not Found in mscoree.dll" error during registration).
• Reinstalls all MCE Windows Services
• Re-registers COM components of MCE
• Reinstalls managed assemblies into the GAC
• Recreates native images for managed assemblies (ngen)

Sure enough, running this, rebooting and restarting Media Center fixed the problem(s).

Thank you, so much.

Also helpful, if you're unfortunate enough to find yourself in the situation of trying to get your Media Center PC working again, is this link:

Aaron Stebner's WebLog : Media Center guide download errors and suggested fixes

Sensei George passes on a link to a good how-to article on building a home theater based on a PC. Specifically, one dedicated entirely to living-room use.

And this is probably the best advice if you decide you want to build (or buy) one of these - don't use it for anything else, or you won't end up using it as a media center. Certainly our Media Center PC is pretty much always in use by the kids for "other purposes", which precludes it's use for Media Center tasks.

The link:

Building Your Home Theater Around the PC (Tom's Hardware Guide)

I've just finished upgrading the motherboard in my PC (an ASRock K8 Combo-Z board, which is cool in that it has both a Socket 754 and 939). Predictably, in doing so I crossed the critical threshold which causes every bit of software I own to require "re-activation".

I wasn't too worried about this because I've actually bought all of the packages. And, in fact, I haven't had any problems except for the Media Center Extender for Xbox.

Each time I tried to reactive Media Center Extender, I received the highly informative "Error 45080", and instructions to call a toll-free number for re-activation.

OK, so I finally had a few minutes to do this. After reading off the 9 groups of numbers to a machine, I was told that there was a problem. I was transferred to a human who, after I again read off the 9 groups of numbers (several times, with a reboot in between), told me there was a problem and the code was invalid.

Right. So I know this is valid, because I've got the disk. The human on the phone gives up and transfers me to technical support. After a few minutes, I'm disconnected because "all lines are busy".

Rather than going through the 30 minute process again, I decide to try an uninstall and reinstall of Media Center Extender for Xbox on the theory that the code that it's showing, which I need to give to customer support, is somehow referencing the old hardware configuration.

Voila, this time the Internet based re-activation works fine and I'm done. No need even to phone back to customer support, which suits me just fine.

Well I'll be darned. This is actually a (modified) Remote Desktop connection between the Xbox and the Media Center PC. Modified, in that a "separate channel is used for streaming video and audio".

So basically, the disc that goes in the Xbox is the Remote Desktop client, and the Media Center UI and apps are all running in a restricted user account on the Media Center PC - you can see the account with the XP administration tools.

This all seems like a reasonably elegant solution to me, although you'll want to have lots of memory and a fast ethernet connection to make it perform well.

Media Center records live television using the "dvr-ms" format - which is fine for playback on the Media Center PC, but not, for example, on my iBook G4. Here's how to convert it to a more pervasive format.

The dvr-ms format, according to the Microsoft description of it, "allows the creation of key PVR functionality, including time-shifting, live pause, and simultaneous record and playback".  It also allows for the inclusion of digital-rights-management functionality:

The ability to access *.dvr-ms files by using DirectShow depends on the copy protection policy set by the content owner and/or broadcaster. Microsoft Windows XP Media Center determines the copy protection policy by reading the broadcaster's copy protection flag (CGMS-A). If the content owner and/or broadcaster has set the policy to protect the content, playback will be restricted to the Media Center PC used to record the content.

...which is an unfortunate indication of things to come.  You can play dvr-ms files on other XP systems, BTW, by installing Q810243 - Windows XP SP1 Update: Watch TV Shows Recorded by Media Center PCs on Other Windows XP PCs.

On non-XP systems (like my iBook), however, you can convert dvr-ms to wmv (Windows Media Video) using an excellent tool called DVR2WMV, which you can get here, and which is mirrored here in case you can't connect to the first link.  Basically, this tool will look in the folder Media Center uses for recorded video, and allow you to convert it to wmv format.

The resulting, converted files can be played in Windows Media Player including, happily, Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OS X.

Here are some stats for conversion of a 15 second clip:

Original file size: 14mb
Time to convert: 50s
Converted file size: 3.43mb
Converted file size (Pocket PC format): 690kb

If you're interested in the quality, you can download the normally converted file here (3.43mb) and the same clip converted for Pocket PC here (690kb)

On a whim, I recently bought a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 - a PCI card that lets you view and capture TV.  Basically, it was on sale, and I thought it might be interesting to have a go at building a PVR.  Little did I know, at the time, that this purchase would lead me down the road to a (successful) Windows Media Center 2005 installation.

There are a number of commercial and free PVR software solutions out there.  Some are quite good, all have scheduled recording capabilities and make use of XMLTV to retrieve program listings.  Most ended up (for me) working quite well, and I obtained many hours of reasonably high quality recordings of movies and television programs.

What I didn't want to do, though, is either:

• Watch TV on my PC (I spend enough time there already)
• String video and audio cables from my PC over to the TV

What I wanted was a simple solution.

I thought - OK, I have an Xbox, it's hooked to the TV and stereo, why can't it stream the recorded programs?  The short answer: it can.  If you hack your Xbox, you can install any number of open source apps that will let you do exactly that.  But hacking your Xbox means either an unbelievably arcane set of software exploits or soldering in a mod chip.  Worse, there's a chance after doing the hack that you'll be unable to use Xbox Live afterwards.

Coincidentally, at the same time I was poking around for a usable solution, out comes Microsoft with the Media Center Extender for Xbox.  Perfect.  All you need is a Media Center PC, and the extender will let your Xbox stream video, audio, etc, etc out to your TV.

The key phrase here is "all you need is a Media Center PC".  Right then, lets go.

Building the Media Center PC

First off, you can't just walk into Best Buy and pick up a copy of Media Center 2005.   Microsoft doesn't sell this to consumers, just OEMs and "System Builders".  You can, however, purchase a copy from suppliers such as Directron, with these conditions:

This product is an OEM package designed for system builders. It must be purchased with an entire system or a major system component of any quantity. The remote control by itself is not considered as the essential hardware. Major hardware includes memory, hard drives, optical drives, motherboard, video card, processor, mice, keyboards, and power supplies. Failure to purchase this product with a major hardware component will invalidate the order during processing. (8) Examples of components that are not considered essential are external modems, networking devices, cameras, printers, and scanners

Not a big problem.  buy a $1.99 Logitech Mouse along with the $129 Media Center and you're good to go.

Also, importantly, if you want to control a set top box (like a satellite receiver), you'll want to get the Media Center Remote which includes the IR cable to do this.

The next problem, is supported hardware.  For the record, my system consists of (the important parts):

Processor: AMD Athlon XP1800+
Memory: 1GB RAM
Video: ATI Radeon 9600SE (with the latest Catalyst drivers)
TV Card: Hauppauge PVR250

This configuration works.  The processor is probably a little underpowered, but runs fine.  Be careful about the video card - the more recent, the better.  As an example, a previous NVIDIA MX2-400 didn't work at all for live TV.  It's fairly difficult to get reliable hardware recommendations.  Again, because Media Center is designed for OEMs and System Builders, there isn't a whole lot of (reliable) information out there).

You'll also likely need to buy a DVD Decoder that works with media center.  This is what allows Media Center to display live and recorded TV, play DVDs, etc.  You need a supported DVD Decoder.  I ended up having to buy the NVIDIA DVD Decoder for the princely sum of $19.95 US.

You can check to see if you have a supported DVD decoder after installation of Media Center using the Microsoft Windows XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility.  If the decoders you have aren't supported, you can purchase and install the NVIDIA one at this point.

OK, so the final checklist (over and above a "regular" PC):

• A reasonably fast processor
• A recent video card (you can pick up a Radeon 9600 SE card pretty cheaply if you need to)
• Lots of RAM (although 512MB is supposed to be OK)
• A supported TV card
• Media Center itself
• The Media Center Remote
• A supported DVD Decoder

Installation

Installation consists of two CDs - one is a regular seeming XP/SP2, followed by another that seems to contain the pieces that turn XP into Media Center.  Installation was completely smooth, and I was up and running in no time.

I should mention at this point, that at install, I didn't have a "recent video card" or a "supported DVD Decoder", and so I had to go through the pain of finding both, after the disappointment of not seeing live TV or videos :-(  Happily though, adding both of those items fixed things up perfectly.

One important bit of information about the TV Guide.  If your TV card has a tuner built in, and if it's able to do the tuning (i.e., you're feeding it an antenna signal), you'll have no problem using the guide as-is.  If however, like me, you have a satellite receiver which the card (obviously) can't tune, you'll need the infrared setup (the Media Center Remote) and it will need to be connected before Media Center setup will let you pull down guide listings for your satellite provider.

For all intents and purposes, XP Media Center looks and behaves like a regular XP installation - that is, the usual Start menu, etc.  To access Media Center functionality, you need to start the Media Center front end from the Start menu.  This is basically a portal from which you can access live TV, recordings, TV guides, and other (to me) less important items like "My Music" (I'd rather use iTunes, thanks) and "My Pictures".

The front end, though, is reasonably well thought out and fairly snappy in its performance.  No problem at all figuring out how things work.

Media Center Extender for Xbox

The most interesting part of this whole project to me, was the ability to pump recorded and live TV, via the LAN, to the Xbox for output through the television and stereo system.

The extender ($99 CDN) comes with two discs and a remote control (and, amazingly, the batteries).  One disc is the extension to XP Media Center itself, and you need to install this on your PC (and it requires activation).  The other disc goes in the Xbox.  This is just like popping in a game, but what you end up with (after it finishes making a LAN connection to the PC) is the same Media Center front end that you see on the PC, but on the Xbox instead.

You can access all of your recorded and live TV, recorded videos, music, etc, etc.  The extender lets you include arbitrary directories on your PC (and presumably network shares, although I haven't tried this yet).

The extender works amazingly well.  My only complaint is the startup time when it's inserted into the Xbox, which seems to be about 15 seconds or so.

Finally

Would I recommend this?  So far, yes.  It's a little bit of an odyssey to do yourself, but if you're inclined, there are a number of pre-built Media Center PCs out there.  If you already have an Xbox, definitely invest in the Media Center Extender.

More to come (I've created a new Topic area for Media Center) as I discover more interesting features and tweaks, and problems to overcome...