Furrygoat blogs, “While I don't work in the eHome group, I decided to take the lead from Sean and Matt and go ahead and Flickr a set of pictures for the Furrygoat Theater. Enjoy.”

Nice setup - I've set up a Flickr Group for Media Center so others can Flickr their setup as well if you want.

Update: Thomas Hawk has posted his own Media Center setup with over 1TB of external storage.  Don't forget to join the “Media Center” Flickr Group

Update #2: The Media Center Flickr group now has an easier URL at http://www.flickr.com/groups/mediacenter/.  Go ahead and post your setup. 

While I'm actually a pretty private person, Matt's recent post of his own Media Center setup inspired me this weekend to take a risk, and post a series of pictures of my own Digital Joy setup at home, using Flickr and annotating how I've set it all up.  We have a saying internally that we need to “Live the Digital Media Lifestyle“ and understand what our customers must go through to set up, and enjoy our products. It's not enough to play with it in the office.  In fact, eHome leadership refers to the “SAF“ - “Spousal Acceptance Factor”, when testing builds with new ideas, and products at home. Naturally there's a LOT of research that goes into this as well- adopt a family programs, usability research, studies, and more.

So while the mock-ups you traditionally see might be nice, here's my real setup, in my real home. Be nice, as we just moved in recently (ok, 6 months ago but we've been busy). Feel free to post comments, suggestions or questions here or on my Flickr site.

Speaking of Flickr, I've been playing with it for a few weeks now and I have to say I'm impressed by a number of the usability elements they've incorporated into the service as well as the Flickr API platform (or at least what others have done with it).  I just might have to move my Moblog over. Now I'd just like to see more Windows apps written for it (as Chris points out in IM an initial uptick in Mac apps).  It would be fantastic if someone would write a Flickr-based Media Center app. I see this as a big opportunity as digital photos and instant slideshows are such a popular experience in MCE.

It looks like Christoph Buenger is at it again, updating his useful add-ons for Windows XP Media Center Edition.  New versions of mceWeather (v2.0) and mceContacts (v1.1) are now available for download complete with multi-lingual support. 

Thanks Chris for the tip on the update.

PVRBlog notes:

A lot of people received a PVR like TiVo, Replay TV or a Windows XP Media Center for Christmas and are thinking "OK, now what?"  We at PVRBlog, aside from wishing you happy holidays, want to provide a sort of introduction to using your new device.  Inside this post we'll be linking to tips and guides for your new PVR to help you get started.

They've actually done a pretty good job of lining up resources including calling the Media Center Expert Zone portal “comprehensive”. They even point to my little site here as well- thanks :).

More details on the Motorola 6412 DVR over at PVRBlog as well.  All I can say is I've been very impressed by the experience overall with Microsoft TV Foundation Edition powering the box I've been using, even if it's single-purpose. Still, the Movie Finder feature in Media Center is hands-down the best and I really wish I had it on the Comcast DVR.

Oh- if you do get one of these boxes and use a Logitech Harmony 688 remote, you'll likely have to learn the Page Up/Page Down buttons. The recorded profile didn't seem to have these.

Tip of the day for Media Center 2005 users: Don't forget to go grab the Tweak MCE 2005 Powertoy for free. You can really tweak out a bunch of settings with it.

Wow, I knew the MSN TV folks were going to do the live webcast in their 2' browser, but if you go into Online Spotlight and select MSN TV, you can watch live coverage of the ball drop in Times Square on MSN right now with 3 different camera angles.  They're also taking email requests at timessquare@hotmail.com put NEW YEAR'S MESSAGE in the subject line

• Watch Live 2' Desktop Version
• Watch Media Center Version (go to Online Spotlight, select MSN TV and click the top story) 

I'm off to hang out with my son and get ready for a party tonight.  Happy New Year's everyone!

This looks really cool - eHomeUpgrade has a sneak preview of OneVoice Technologies' new Media Center Communicator, complete with voice navigation of Media Center, an Email client, SMS Text support, VOIP, video chat and more.

I haven't tried their application yet but I'm interested to do so.  In fact, if any of you are working specifically on Media Center applications and are interested in meeting up at CES, please let me know- drop and email with basic details and I'll do my best to try to set up a meeting with our team.

Chris Lanier wrote an interesting piece entitled, “Why can't the WMP team be more like the MCE team?” While I'm flattered to be in the company of my fellow bloggers, I should note that until very recently, I was the Group Product Manager for WM Player, as well as Media Center and have been blogging on WM Player for a while now :).  A great example of how the blogosphere has helped the Player team was the request I put out last February asking for others to donate their large media libraries for perf testing.  Sure I received the obligatory, “Oh no!  What's Microsoft going to do with that data!” responses but in actuality it was a great turnout that helped the team improve perf pretty dramatically over 9 Series. (which can always be better).

I agree, it would be great to see more people blog on the Player team but truth is, blogging is a bit like speaking on-stage. Not everyone is comfortable doing it and the value vs. risk isn't always seen immediately. It's a calculated risk. So some prefer to talk to me, let me know about what's going on and we decide how best to approach.

Zach and I put out the first blogging plug-in for any Media Player, for WM Player 9 Series and that's what got me hooked.  In fact, Zach is the reason I started blogging, way back almost 3 years ago now.

Here are some other Media Player blogging highlights over the past year for me:

• Blogged the Windows XP Video Decoder (MPEG-2) checkup utility co-developed by the Player team
• Blogged how to add new codecs to WM Player and MCE, including how other codec developers can get their codecs auto-recognized by WM Player and listed in the WMPlugins directory
• Fought for, and announced the RSS feeds for WMPlugins.
• Shared Thomas Hawk's comments on the Player
• Blogged WM Player 10 Tech Beta
• Blogged on WM Player 10 Error Codes

You can see more by going to my WM Player category. And I agree with Thomas, I believe he meant newsgroups are less than optimal place to discuss WM Player.  It's difficult for me personally get a high quality feedback or interaction despite multiple attempts .  I still do it from time to time- mostly reading and making announcements.  But to hold an ongoing discussion or carry a voice and establish a report with others, blogging has been much more beneficial.  For others on the team, the message boards at WMPlugins.com are a better choice. But the team does read, forward, and discuss regularly.

While I can't answer Thomas' question about future versions of WM Player (heck, we just launched WM Player 10!), I am interested to hear your thoughts on prioritized lists of features/fixes you'd like to see in future versions.  You can always send to me here in comments or in email.  Also the more detail you can provide about how you use the Player (how much music, predominately for msuic, video, streamed etc), the better as this helps the dev team to better understand who you are as a customer and how best to incorporate your feedback.

So, I'm not just an MCE guy, I'm still a part of the Media Player family as well.  In fact, more to come on my new job- not quite ready to talk about it yet, but perhaps after CES ;). 

Matt Goyer, TDavid, and Thomas Hawk have had a nice round of discussions going regarding TDavid's post, “Reasons why we returned Windows Media Center 2005”.  I love seeing this kind of dialogue, even when parties don't necessarily agree.  Microsoft spends massive resources on real-world research, structured feedback, and usability as well as tracking press response to products but rarely do we get this level of feedback so directly and honestly. 

TDavid asks, “Who is the MCE 2005 for? ...Unless Microsoft answers these relatively easy questions from a marketing standpoint... “

Short answer- two main audiences:

• Digital Media enthusiasts (Photos, Music, Video, TV) who want the best version of Windows for their home PC, with the most flexibility for enjoying around the home or on the go.
• Home Theater enthusiasts looking for the most full-featured, best quality home theater or living room PC that combines TV, photos, music, and video in a familiar way.

Let's face it, Media Center isn't necessarily for everyone and TDavid is fully justified in why it didn't work for his family.  Why?  Because it's his family and you should pick the products or technologies that fit your lifestyle (yes, a key tenet in our message of choice for music too). However the latest Media Center release does seem to appeal to a much wider and growing range of customers.  It's a shift in thinking and a solution that's not right for everyone.  But Living Room PCs, Media Center Extender and the kit for Xbox were designed to hit different price points so people can add-on to their Media Center experiences as they add home networks, or an HDTV, or a Portable Media Center- Media Center PCs act as the hub enabling all of these.

Just like the thought of using a mouse, connecting your PC to an online service, or a BBS, or the Web, or downloading Music and playing video on your PC were all new concepts that required a change in thinking, the same holds true for PCs available today and moving forward.  The good news is that we already know how to use a remote control :) 

I'm the first to say, no product is perfect.  You should see the hardcore mails that go around internally during product design, development, and after.  What would I like to see improved? Here's my short wish list:

• HDTV via Digital Cable and Satellite.  Like Thomas Hawk, this is #1 on my list. Don't forget to keep calling your cable/satellite providers and ask for support for Media Center :)
• Better Photo support - Thomas did a great writeup which has been circulating the team. Specifically I want ratings too, RAW file import support, one-click photo and video import, and metadata tagging.
• Bookmarks!  Now that I'm into Podcasting, I would like bookmarking for my audio and video files or set by playlist so I can pick up where I left off.  The Sync engine in WM Player 10 and MCE are great, now I just want someone to write a Podcasting app that does this- it's entirely do-able (Doppler, are you listening?  Email me, I'll beta test ;) )
• Crossfading and Normalization settings in MCE's 10' UI.  If you set these in WM Player, Media Center picks them up and will mix your songs like a radio station and avoid large volume changes.  There's your power tip for today :).  Matt knows I pushed hard to get this into the TweakMCE Powertoy he did but it didn't make it in - maybe next time :).
• Let me rate everything - TV, Photos, Music, Video, and a unified feedback mechanism for 3rd party services. Just let me rate songs as I'm listening to them with 1-2 buttons on the remote. It shouldn't matter if it's a video on Napster, a song on MSN Radio Plus, or a movie on CinemaNow, it should be easy to everyone to tap into in a trusted way. Perhaps I'm sick, but I have over 250 movies rated on NetFlix over the past 3 years.  I want to do the same for my media and have it persist.

Ok, that's my short list.  Be sure to continue sending me your feedback via email or via comments here.

So my strong recommendation is that if you're interested in a Media Center - take it for a test drive. Go to your local Best Buy and you'll find a Media Center kiosk just waiting there for you to try out.  See if you're comfortable with the experience, the features.  Drum up questions- ask the salesperson and if they don't know, ask ME here! Get out of the demo loop and try the product both as a full-screen Media Center as well as a windows app on a traditional Windows desktop.

So to Matt, Charlie, Zach, TDavid, Thomas, Chris, all of our MVPs, and of course Robert Scoble- thanks for all the great feedback over the past year and let's keep the ball rolling into 05.  I hope this little blog has been helpful and will continue to strive to improve.

Why oh why the Portable Media Center wasn't nominated for gadget of the year (or the Rio Carbon), but I'm excited to see that Media Center PC's get their own category in this year's 2004 Engadget Award Nominations.  I have to say, I'm really impressed at how Engadget has so quickly become a reputable source of gadgetry and such as well-known site, arguably the most popular gadget news site on the Web.  I visit 3-4 times a day and it's an addiction.  Happy New Year folks at Engadget and thanks for a great year. Be sure to visit and vote.

Steve Ballmer just sent a mail to Microsoft employees regarding the Tsunami and efforts underway by MS to address including matching employee donations.  Robert Scoble notes you'll now find a link on MSN.com and Microsoft.com (we offered up the Media Center placement for this use - you should have seen the swell of emails on the topic with folks working together to get this up as quickly as possible, my hat is off to everyone. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has also donated $3M to tsunami victims.

Please, give what you can to those in need in light of the recent events.  A few of us are symbolically donating our wages during CES. I encourage those who can, to please do what you can.

I'm not going to write any more on this topic- a lot has been said.  My thoughts and prayers are with all who were impacted by this horrible tragedy, especially the children.

Here's a link to the Microsoft CES 2005 homepage and live webcast for the Bill Gates keynote next week. You can even add a reminder to your Outlook calendar.

Over at eHomeUpgrade, Thomas says, “one of the most exciting features is the "my pictures" area.” As digital photography continues to explode in popularity more and more people will turn to plasma/lcd displays as the primary way in which they view their and others' photographs.

Thomas goes on to outline 8 really well thought out areas we can improve MCE's Pictures experience and beyond. The way he does this is constructive, helpful, and easy for me to send on to the development teams for discussion and consideration.  Thanks Thomas.  I only wish more people took the time to provide well articulated and prioritized feature requests and suggestion.  I've tried multiple times in years past in the newsgroups to no avail.

If you have suggestions or feedback for the team, I'm always listening and forwarding what I can.  Feel free to drop me email or post comments here.  Others on the team read the blog here, even if they don't post themselves.  It's a bit like getting on stage, not everyone is comfortable blogging about what we do. :)

From Kevin, C|Net's Top 100 of 2004 gives the HP m1050y MCE PC the award for "Most Innovative PC" and also has a separate category for "Best Media Center PC" (the Shuttle XPC GS7500M)

It's amazing how few people around the office know about this little gem but it seems to sell out continually at the company store. Microsoft has a new line of Fingerprint Reader biometric login products including a stand-alone reader, a mouse, and a keyboard.  The I got the stand-alone USB version as a Christmas present (thanks Mom), and set it up in under 3 minutes.  It's designed for logging into PCs and web sites without passwords. The real test for me was my wife however.  I didn't tell her about it.  She was prompted to set it up when she first logged in, and she LOVES it.  It's so much easier for her to log into her account.  Now they don't recommend using it for protecting financial logins etc. however if you're looking for a fast, friendly way to log into your home PC and have multple family members logging in, this is great.  Same for general website logins too.

Phillip's latest Engadget podcast was enough to get me out of my Podcasting shell and I'm hooked, even if I have great disdain for the term.  What convinced me?  Well, I ran into Lenn Pryor, an old friend a few weeks ago and I've been listening to Adam Curry's podcasts in the background for a few weeks.  Doppler does a good job with Windows Media Player 10 sync and that helped (still need a browser in the app though for surfing vs. searching podcasts though)

But what really convinced me is that I finally got a 2.5mm to 3.5mm stereo adapter for my Audiovox SMT-5600 (less than $4 at Vetco in Bellevue for those in the Seattle area) and now I'm listening to the latest in my car on the drive to/from work (remember, ~$70 gets you an Aux in cable on most car stereos- installed! CarToys in Bellevue did mine, zero damage or mods to car).  Listening to podcasts in your car is the killer app for me.

If you have a Media Center PC and you're not playing with Orb Beta, you're missing out.  I've been playing with Orb for a few weeks now, watching live TV on my Smartphone, streamed from my Media Center PC at home.  It still has some kinks to iron out (eg. discovery of recorded TV stored on another drive etc.) but I enjoyed showing Christmas photos I forgot to sync.  I've tested it out on the local GPRS network and it works great.  More field tests to come from CES.

Speaking of CES, I'll be on stage again with Bill :).  I can't talk about what I'm going to be showing yet, but it will be very cool.  I'll also be in the MS booth between partner meetings to help answer questions about Media Center and what we're showing.

More to come.

Forgot to blog this- this is a must-have for anyone with a Media Center extender and demonstrates the commitment of the dev team to continue to invest in Extender.  Includes bug fixes and adds support for CGMS-A protected content (basically playing back HBO on a Media Center extender). I installed it today and it was seamless.

Update for the HP model.

Update for the Linksys model.

Enjoy

More photographic proof that the VW Bug and Apple's design teams seem joined at the hip.  Something tells me we wouldn't catch Bono in one of these:

Last week at mass, my priest noted he saw a license plate frame that said, “It's not a beetle, it's a really big purse“. Looks like VW has learned something like 91% of these cars are sold to women.

Courtesy of Autoblog

Courtesy of Apple's Website.

Still not interested in either. ;)

Hot on the heels of “Grumpy Santa“, Boing Boing turned me on to this retelling of, “It's a Wonderful Life” in 30 seconds...  with bunnies...

Absurd?  Yes.  Funny?  Kind of. Even better is The Exorcist or Alien. This  is one twisted and talented Flash animator.

I just caught wind that MSN has secured the exclusive webcast to the New Year's Eve ball drop in New York's Times Square this year.  You can see a promo spot for it here.  They'll have 3 different cameras to pick from and exclusive content. I'm curious how many people watch this?  For those of us on the Pacific coast, it makes more sense since you don't see a lot on (that I've noticed) until the local festivities. 

See it New Year's Eve at http://msnvideo.com/newyears

Doing some last minute holiday shopping?  Here's a suggestion.  Earlier today I received an email from Jeremy at LiveDigitally.com about my blog and suggesting I take a look at the Slappa CD/DVD case review they just posted.  Remember those Samsonite commercials where the gorilla beat the crud out of a suitcase?  Well, these guys put this CD/DVD case to the test, including dousing the case in lighter fluid and torching it.  Given a few weeks back a house in our neighborhood community burned down, this seemed more plausable to me (than say, sitting on it on a couch).  You'll have to read the rest of the review to see the state of the CDs. 

Now, what I really want to see is them start torching the add-on cases you see for protecting portable music players (with the players in them) to see which ones survive. Or how about crash-testing a BMW to see if your iPod really skips? It's a slippery slope. ;) 

Ahh those JibJab guys- they're well on their way to becoming the Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks/South Park of the Internet.  They gained notoriety this fall with their, “This Land is Your Land“ satirical take on the election, and now they're back with their own spin on Santa Claus with, “Grump Santa”.  Looks like they've also inked a deal with Yahoo.  Congrats to the JibJab folks. 

Click here to view the new video at Yahoo or here to visit the original JibJab site. And Happy Holidays.

If you're like me, you probably have multiple PCs with Photos, Music, Video etc. on them.  For me, it's more of a backup strategy- if one HDD fails, I want to have all my media and storage is cheap.  Sure, I could get a Mirra device or similar but a cheap ~$30 solution that works great for me is Smart Sync Pro, a software package that enables me to automatically sync my important documents, photos, music, home videos, and yes, even Recorded TV programs from MCE's around my home network automatically.  It watches network folders for updates to metadata (such as # of times played in WM Player, a feature you can enable in Tools|Options) so when I use Auto Playlists on either of my PCs, I get the same listing of songs.

Setup isn't for the faint of heart but it works great. I have a co-worker who turned me on to it and uses it for complete system backups to an external drive he keeps off-site. Check it out- you get a 30-day evaluation period.

I've been playing with the new MSN Toolbar Suite (Beta) now for the last few days and color me impressed. Check out the video demo at Channel 9. Now, I'm not the kind of person who loses track of my files on my PC but I often need to find something quick such as a photo or email. MSN takes the hassle out of finding photos, email, and documents. Across your PC, in Outlook and Outlook Express. In particular the Desktop Search feature is essential for any mainstream user (my parents- read up now!).

Also, Scoble has a round up of comments on the toolbar from across the blogosphere here. Here are a few real-world scenarios where I think others I know will benefit:

• Dad - Dad is big into geneology and has traced our lineage back to Scotland in the 17th centrury (and still going). He has a ton of research in email documents and photos as well as word documents and excel spreadsheets. If he's looking for all details related to a particular member of our family, he can pull that quickly. If he wants details from the Web on the village our family came from, he can do that to, all in the same toolbar.
  
• Mom - Mom has a lot of medical information on her PC and it's often hard to sort through. MSN Desktop Search will help her find everything she's looking for in short order.

One feature I think would be neat is if the system over time tagged files you searched for with ratings based on level of interest (similar to Auto Ratings in Windows Media Player 10 which rate up based on the # of times a song is played). Then backup software could take advantage of those ratings and back up your most important documents based on # of times accessed as well as searched for. Bubba, you listening?

The Acrobat plug-in is a bit of a hassle, but hey, what is one more download.

Good job MSN Toolbar Team

I'm back from LA and getting over my cold so here are a few belated updates.

Creative Zen Micro Firmware Update
Creative has released a new firmware for the Zen Micro - now available for download.  Fixes include:

• Improves battery life when the player is charged with an AC adapter already plugged into a live power outlet
• Improves touchpad sensitivity
• Resolves the removable disk detection issue after the memory space is changed in Removable Disk mode
• Removes extraneous sound occuring during playback of .WAV files

You can download here from Creative's Nomadworld.

Courtesy of dapreview.net

Rio Carbon Static Noise Fix & new firmware (11/5)
For Rio Carbon owners, you may notice static noise when moving the Earphone jack with some headphones/adapters with a metal base.  Rio is aware of the issue and two solutions are now available:

• Cheap and immediate- cover the jack with a small piece of tape, avoiding the metal on metal connection
• Cheap and not-quite so immediate- Rio is making an adapter available for existing customers that fixes the problem.  Just call them up on the tech support line.

Courtesy of Engadget. 

I missed this update on the Rio Carbon firmware as well:

• Fixed issue where unit would restart in Voice Record mode and freeze.
• Added Alert to Carbon display that's triggered whenever Carbon is plugged into a front USB port that's having problems communicating with the Carbon. This could be due to insufficient power on that USB port.
  
  "Alert: Rio Carbon is having problems with this USB port. Please try another."

You can download it here.

Courtesy of Riovolution.com

Michael and Charlie are putting together a Media Center Geek dinner at 6pm December 9th at Crossroads Mall in Bellevue.  They'll be wearing Media Center jackets. I think this is a great idea.  Hopefully we can get a few new Media Center PC form-factors there so people can take a look at them.  Chances are slim though with all the work around prepping demo systems for CES right now :).

By the way, Charlie is asking for more suggestions on what to write about re: MCE app development over on his blog. If you have questions, Charlie has answers and a number of good tips on stuff.  Personally, I want someone to write a WSDOT Traffic Cam app so my wife can see how late I'm going to be at a glance. :)

That reminds me...we've been thinking about doing a Media Center App Challenge - identify 2-3 big ideas/categories for app dev't for MCE and offer prizes (cash or products) to those that are voted the best.  I wonder, what should be the challenges?

Just in time for the holidays- a few surprises from the Windows XP Client team. A new Winter Fun Pack has just been released with add-ons for Media Center and more. Of particular interest to Media Center and Media Player 10 users:

Tweak MCE 2005 - A new Media Center 2005 Powertoy and add-on app that enables power users to control settings such as Skip Interval for “Trickplay”, Reaction timings, enable Universal Remote controls, UI timeouts & notifications, and even enable 16:9 support on Windows Media Center Extenders. There's just too much to list!

Whitecap (Holiday Edition) Visualization - From Andy O'Meara, creator of the popular G-Force Viz for MCE, this new viz is very cool and includes a number of holiday shapes and visualizations.

Yule Log Visualization - The classic visualization of a warm fireplace, the fire crackling and flaring to the music.

Winter Ice Storm Visualization - A wintry scene comes alive with snow and ice in this popular viz from years past.

Holiday Auto Playlists - I personally think this is the most under- rated feature in MP10.  These Holiday autoplaylists scour your media library to create music playlists based on a wide set of keywords for popular holidays including Hannukah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa. Great for taking holiday music on your portable music players or Portable Media Centers too.

Download the new items as a part of the Winter Fun Pack 2004 available today. If there's something you'd like to see in future packs, please let me know and I'll pass it along to the team.

MSN is currently in beta testing with their new blogging service, MSN Spaces.  If you've ever been afraid to blog, not sure where to start or looking to try something new, check it out.

Features include:

- Rich Web-based editing
- Send pictures directly from your Cameraphone (Moblogging)
- Music Playlists - post personal music lists and playlists you can import from WM Player 10 and let people rate your playlists.
- Book Lists - Recent books you're reading or have read and recommend
- Sample for free and download (not for free) music tracks/playlists from MSN Music
- Catgories
- Comments
- Stats
- Trackbacks
- RSS Syndication - noticably absent is an RSS tag but I suspect this will get fixed

I see a number of unique features here.  The servers appear to be a little slow (no doubt due to the number of Slashdotters banging on it right now.  I'm thinking about making my personal blog available on this site. You can check my test site out and a somewhat dated picture at http://spaces.msn.com/members/seanalex

Learn more and download here.

My Movies is a free MCE (Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition) add-on application to function as remote operated DVD index for both your online and offline DVDs. Browse your DVD collection by titles, actors, directors or genres - all with covers and images. Screenshots

Not bad-I've played with prior versions but this looks pretty good for cataloging your DVD collection.

For the Halo 2 fan who REALLY needs to prove what a bad-ass he/she is not just on the Web, in IM, or on Xbox Live but also needs to do it with an Excel spreadsheet, Sam brings us this, the “Halo 2 RSS Excel Workbook”.  A data-driven spreadsheet that uses the Bungie.net website's RSS feeds to offer the ability to:

-Easily view your previous games stats
-Slice and dice your Halo stats by many categories including map and game type
-Chart your stats to visually see how you kick ass
-Calculate overall averages: kills per game, deaths per game, etc... 

Thank you Sam for once again showing me why I suck more at Halo 2. Or maybe I can find a certain Pivot Table combo that proves I really kick ass at something in Halo 2 other than dying. My prediction- we start seeing data-driven Powerpoint slide decks entitled,  “Why I kick your ass in Halo 2”. 

Engadget brings us public word about Alienware's new DHS 2 Living Room PC going toe to toe with the HP Digital Entertainment Center. Looks like a Gyration Keyboard and Mouse round the system out.  I have yet to play with one but I'm sure I will soon. :)

Chris Pirillo notes among other things this holiday season he's thankful to Microsoft and calls out a number of us by name.  For whatever it's worth, we're thankful for Chris for the feedback, both good and what can be better.  Keep it up and I'll see you soon. More thoughts on what I'm thankful for shortly.

Chris Lanier details updates coming to the NVidia NVDVD decoder. Media Center and Portable Media Center users will note a # of improvements including support for ATSC (HDTV) transcode to PMC it looks like.  Get all the details here.

Wow, Popular Science's “Best of What's New“ Grand Award for Gadgets goes to PlaysforSure! Okay, they call it WM DRM 10 but the fact is that PlaysforSure is the consumer logo for the end to end consumer experiences enabled in large part by WM DRM10.

This is also the same technology that enables you to download tracks from MSN Music, transfer them to up to 5 PCs of your choice, burn it up to 7 times, and download as many times as you like to your portable music player.  I'm suprised this doesn't get more air-play.  I think a certain i-music player only supports 3 computers.

Let's see, PlaysforSure devices are showing up in Esquire's Gift Guide, PopSci, and even MCE is showing up in the December issue of Good Housekeeping. You're going to be hearing a lot more about PlaysForSure and cool devices in the coming weeks and months.  Not all ball and chains come in black- some come in white- or others :).

A new update is now available for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 that resolves an issue where the Electronic Program Guide (EPG) may not display indicators that show which programs are scheduled to record.  (KB888316) You can download it from Microsoft.com here. I do not believe a Windows Update version is available at this time.

Much to my wife's glee, I just finished Halo 2.  This game seemed much more epic and cinematic than the original.  Whatever you do, keep watching AFTER the credits.  Without spoilers, what surprised me the most were some of the names in the credits, particularly Ron Perlman, and Orlando Jones.  You didn't see any airtime on the fact that both lended their voices.  I wonder, were they just Halo fans who wanted to be a part of the new installment? 

A friend of mine, let's call him “CP” works on the Bungie team.  Back when he first started, I was able to beat him in the original.  After an evening of H2 the other night, it's clear that he has bested me many times over.  Time to practice I guess. :)

Here's the scenario- a co-worker tells you that ABC's new TV show “Lost“ is great and you need to watch it (which you should, particularly in HD).  But you always forget to set it to record when you get home.  Solution: Set your MCE to record the series directly from your office with the MSN Remote Record Service.  From Mark Salloway's MCE blog (ok, I'm on vacation!):

Some guy called Dark Helmet broke the physics engine in Halo 2 and figured out how to fly. In his new movie appropriately titled, Learning to Fly, he shows us how to do it complete with captions. The video is long but fun especially at the surprise ending. Created with a Dazzle Analog DV Capture Kit and Windows Movie Maker 2.x :)

A new plug-in for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 enables you to control your HomeSeer Home Automation System so you can control your heating/cooling, lighting and more.  Again, I cannot vouch for their system as I don't have this in my own home but this is the third such home automation system I've seen in the past two months for Media Center.  I'm curious what you think- it there a mass-market for home automation?  If technology continues to go wireless for these types of solutions, it just might become easy enough and affordable. For me, a whole-home music/video distribution system would be ideal. What would you like to control with a home automation system?

Last Saturday, I got an email forwarded from Robert Scoble from a Design Producer at ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.  They had contacted Microsoft as a “local” company to help a family in Kingston, WA.  After a short 9:30am conf call on Monday, we learned about the family and the team's request for assistance w/ a 24 hour deadline for delivery.

While I'm contractually bound to not discuss details until after the airing (early January and I will write more then), I can say that I'm just so impressed by how in a 24 hour period, a large v-team across multiple groups and companies was able to secure a wide range of donations for the family. One of my favorite memories was of how our team of 10 volunteers did everything from pitching in to assemble and move in furniture, to technology installations.  

I have no idea if you'll actually see any of what we did.  That wasn't the point- it was just a great way to kick off the holiday season and help a neighbor. No one complained, even when we missed the ferries and got home at 3:30am the day of the reveal only to turn around again at 6am. No celeb pictures or autographs.  Everyone was singularly focused on getting the job done in time. The Production team was top-notch, and most importantly, it was for a great cause. The is a “real“ Reality Show and yes, Ty, Preston, Michael, and company are as nice as they seem on TV.

Oh and starting this week and by circumstance, ABC's Extreme Makeover is available in Enhanced TV for Media Center.  Check it out in Online Spotlight- live chats, polls, and facts as you're watching the show. I would like to say this was all connected but it wasn't.  The volunteer work came about directly as a result of accessibility via Robert Scoble's blog.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this holiday a better one for one family.  No more comments until after the show airs :).