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An examination of the Windows Media Center package as it comes with the Windows 7 operating system

An examination of the popular Media Browser package that ads features and styling to Windows Media Center

Adding a TV Tuner card to your PC provides both Media Center and Media Browser with a whole new set of tools to work with

04 Recorded Tv

Setting the TV Tuner Card software to automatically record your favorite programs provides you with a library shows whether or not you were watching TV when they aired

05 Tv Series

The TV Card in combination with program data provided by your TV Station allows you to program a whole series with a single command - imagine an entire season of "The Simpsons" right there on your hard disk

06 Raid5

And speaking of hard disks - putting 3 or more together in an array attached to a RAID card can provide protection, performanace -- and maybe even both

07 Remote

Media Center component providers seemed to have come to a basic agreement on standards for their remote control - we look at a few of them

08 Extenders

Many of us gizmo guys have been forced to give up the dream of having a PC in the lounge. The spousal objections were just too strong. But help is at hand - using one of the many models of Media Center extenders we can enjoy many of the benefits of a media PC - now in the lounge as well

09 Filename Conversion

Although Media Center technology has expanded our entertainment horizons and at the same time made this diverse material easier to get, there still exist pockets of resistence where manual intervention is required. Re-naming files to confrom to the standard is one of those hold-out and we take a look at a techie way to automate the process

10 Ninite

And speaking of automating processes, here's a nifty little package to automate your next windows software installation

11 Last Filesystem

I've got quite a bit of disk space available on my home network, but I found out some time ago that it's no good having a bounty of space if you can't find what you've got. Tools like "Everything" are great (I use it at least once a day) but why not put it where you can find it as soon as you get it? In truth any filing system will do so long as you use it - and any system should be based on the way you use your computer, but I've offered up my own home-grown tried-and-true system for your consideration

12 Knowem

This is a fun little resource - type in your name and see how may social networks know who you are!

13 View Source

Here's one for the propeller-heads - it's a way to automate a download process using the raw text data from a web page. Pocket Protectors at the ready!

140Colors.Htm

As a web designer you're required to use color on your site (I don't believe I've ever seen a black and white site - something to think about) but if you're a guy you are more than likely to have some degree of color-blindless. Even if you don't you probably don't want to use words like "chartreuse" or "beige" or "passion pink". On top of that who can remember those stupid codes? (#00FFFF). Fortunately, the HTML people have provided us with "word equivalents" for 140 colors out of their 16 million possibles. This means that when we want red we can specify "red"

14 Css1

CSS is growing on me. I took a stab at understanding it several times before making this small initial step and I've made additional strides since that I hope to write about soon

15 Css2

One nice thing about using CSS over using tables in your HTML layout is that it's more flexible and (in my view) more attractive. Here's a little starter kit to get you going

16 Tv Setup

Returning to our roots, this piece is about fitting a TV card into your Windows Media Center setup. Even if you don't watch much TV, the technology is interesting in and of itself. If you do watch a bit of TV merging your PC technology with Broadcast functionality adds a new dimension to the mix and turns your PC into an intelligent DVR

17 Epg Setup 1

Taking TV technology to the next level, it's now possible to extract the Electronic Program Guide (EPG) right out of the air. Previously this information had been horded by the provider as a source of revenue, today the information can be freely available with a bit of software and some time to set it up

18 Epg Setup 2

Part 2

19 Epg Setup 3

Part 3

20 Call 4 Help

Tips and tricks for getting more information and faster problem resolution from your help desk.

21 Quick Edits

(The sections that follow ("in progress") are placeholder titles to remind me about the topics I'd like to cover but just don't have time to work on just now. This is a very short item to show you how to use the TAB key in Windows 7 to move between file names in the windows explorer window in "edit" mode eliminating the need to hit "F2" or the "right click", "rename", edit the file name, "enter" sequence.

22 Basic Setup

(In Progress) This section aims to describe the basic set of software tools that pretty much any computer user should and use. Included will be links to download the free or "free versions" of each.

23 Unix Help

(In Progress) Unix was my first operating system and I always keep a set of Unix tools on my PC for those times when Unix beats Windows 7 hands down. This article describes a few of these tools and the situations when they would be most useful.

24 Cmd

(In Progress) This article is the Windows Command Line counterpart to the Unix article just above.

25 Geek Zone

(Stalled) Can't really remember what I was going to do with this one.

26 Database 101

(In Progress) The next three items have been planned as a series of basic database training to describe what databases are good for, what they are not good for, how to design your database to fit the purpose, what to include, what to exclude, and how to design for expandability.

27 Database 102

(ditto)

28 Database 103

(ditto)

29 Raid Again

Proof-almost-positive that RAID hardware is the bee's knees.

30 Hot Win

Keeping your Windows installation cooler and cleaner by hiding those unslightly wires.

31 Cool Win

(InProgress) Tips and tricks to keep your windows installation running cooler

32 All My Movies

A cool little program to sort out your movie collection

33 Tmdb Api

(In Progress) a tutorial on how to link into the TMDb Movie Database - I hope this is going to turn into a stand-alone application one day.

Thought "Weeds" might get your attention ...

I Hate Ad Breaks!

There's not a lot to see on TV these days, but don't get me started. When I find a show I like I used to sit through it, but grizzled at every ad break as they came faster and faster - lasting longer and longer until I'd swear that the ads were longer than the show segments.

All that changed when I got my first TV series on tape -- Star Trek - the original series on VHS tape - magic - great picture quality and NO ad breaks!

Then came DVD with the resulting boost in picture quality with no rewinding and today I think we've hit another milestone - Digital Hi-Def TV series on Hard Disk.

In the same way that WMC reaches out to the Internet to collect movie metadata, so too can Media Browser link to the TV Database site (http://www.thetvdb.com/) for details on television shows.

Once it's set up, from the main menu you will see an option for "Box Sets":

The front page of this section of Media Browser reveals the list of available series (the Box Sets we have created previously - in this case just "Star Trek" and "Stargate" - you'll note that "Star Trek" is selected):

Drilling down from the Box Sets level reveals a list of the available shows:

Selecting one of the shows then takes you to the list of seasons.

While drilling down to a season will bring up a list of the available episodes

Anyone got a hankie?

I have to gush here a little bit - having this much data in one place and in such detail exceeds even my highest hopes for a comprehensive multi-media system back when I was still trying to capture a tv show with an 8mm camera.

I don't even care that much about Star Trek and rarely watch an old episode, but I'm completely jazzed by the fact that I've got the entire catalogue at my finger-tips. I spend more time looking at the data about the show than I do looking at the show itself. Go figure.

Nuts and Bolts

Operationally the setup is fairly simple, with the most important element being the top-level folder construction and naming.

At the very top you will most likely have a folder named "TV Shows" (you can call it whatever you want). Under that will be the various shows and these will include folders name "Star Trek" and "Stargate" - but here there is no latitude - the name for your show folder must match exactly the name used in the TVDB website. If you find a blank placesholder (which becomes a white rectangle when hovered) it will be because you have created a folder, but given it a name that TVDB cant' match.

I found it very satisfying to see that once the name was corrected on the folder, all of the data associated with that name becomes almost instantly available in Media Browser and Windows Media Center.

The names for the Season folders must also be correct i.e. "Season 01" "Season 02" etc. I'm not sure if capitalization is required, but I do know that 1-digit numbers will work, although things get messy in the Windows Explorer window once you pass 9.

Episode names enjoy a bit of freedom also, but watch out for folders containing episode names, but no numbers as Windows will sort the episodes alphabetically which will pretty much never match the order they were aired.

Files should be ".avi" format and should be named according to a format mandated by the providers (my favourite is the "Sexy" format: Season XX Episode YY – as in the file name "S03E01.avi" for Season 3, Episode 1. A tree structure might look like this:

Top Level Folder	Second Level Folder	Third Level AVI Files	Fourth Level Files

TV Series 1
	Season 1
		Episode 1
		Episode 2
		Episode 3
		metadata (folder)
			".jpg" image files
			".xml" metadata files
	Season 2
		Episode 1
		Episode 2
		Episode 3
		metadata (folder)
			".jpg" image files
			".xml" metadata files

Take a look at article 09 - Filename Conversion for more tips and a bit of software to help you along.

With a proper structure in place, Windows Media Center and its related add-ons will do the rest: collecting the metadata from the online TV Datase - including the episode names, images, cast, etc. – and populating the pages for you.

One shortcoming to this system is that many commercially sold TV Series DVD's maintain their files in DVD format – VIDEO_TS folders and ".VOB" files with 1 or more episodes on each disc. Unfortunately the current crop of organizing packages don't handle this form of storage very well. To get around this shortcoming, the DVD must be broken into its separate episodes and then each episode must be converted to a ".AVI" file. It's a time-consuming process, and there is some quality lost in the conversion from DVD to avi, but the end result is a well ordered TV Show catalogue with some disc space savings thrown in.

Another alternative might be to manually constructing the metadata files by hand or use shortcut files – this too can be quite time-consuming, and even frustrating if one or more of the "fetching" routines is left to gather metadata on its own from the Internet. The result can be that your hard manual labour is over-written by an automated process, and usually with the wrong data.

The Down Side

If TVDB can't find your show it takes a bit of manual work to get your collection organized. It may also be the case that too many titles can cause the system to become unstable -- more on this in time.