So, I think it’s time to go back to the basics for a new post.

Media Center is a Program.

Or rather it’s a collection of programs that are Media related. It’s a windows interface that makes watching TV, recording TV, Watching DVDs or BluRays, streaming movies direct from Netflix, playing photo slideshows or playing music from your TV or any computer or room in your home.

It’s a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) on steroids! It can do anything that the DVR you rent from your cable company can do, but it can do it faster, better, easier and CHEAPER. I’ve gotten rid of all the cable boxes in my house and replaced them with a single Media Center Computer and a couple Extenders.

Media Center has been available since 2002, where it came as a special edition called WindowsXP MediaCenter Edition. (referred to as MCE by users) MCE was available only as a complete operating system. It was usually available only on PCs built by Hewlett-Packard or Sony as an entertainment system. There were 2 major upgrades to MCE that added functionality, versions 2004 and 2005.

The next version was publicly available in Windows Vista. It came in Windows Home Premium and Windows Ultimate editions of Vista. (It was referred to as VMC by the community) Yes, it was there all along, and I bet you never even clicked on the icon, right? There was 1 major upgrade to VMC, it was called the TVPack. TVPack added a few new functions, like Internet TV and a new file format that supported HDTV.

The current version of Windows, Windows 7 also has Windows Media Center (Now called WMC) included in more editions, Ultimate, Home Premium, Professional and Enterprise. If you have one of these editions, then you HAVE Media Center.

Watching/Recording TV

The main and most popular function of Windows Media Center is its use as a DVR. You can get your live TV signal into the PC in a number of ways.

If you live close to your local TV stations, you can purchase an OTA(Over The Air) tuner and an antenna. You’ll be able to get all your local channels, that are in range, IN HIGH DEFINITION and FREE! Yes, I said FREE. There is no charge for OTA programming. OTA tuners come in 3 basic types, Internal card, Express Card or external USB. There are also 2 types of TV signal, NTSC which is no longer available in the U.S., and ATSC which is the current Digital signal type. If you are going to purchase an OTA tuner for the U.S., make sure it is ATSC. OTA tuners can receive/record 1 or 2 channels per tuner, depending on the tuner. If you want more channels, you can add more tuners. You can have up to 4 of any one type of tuner. So, you can have 4 OTA tuners AND 4 CableTV tuners, giving you a total of 8 channels you can watch/record AT THE SAME TIME! Can your Cable Company’s DVR DO THAT?

Here are a couple of tuners from Hauppauge available from Newegg.com:

Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950Q TV Tuner Stick/Hybrid Video Recorder with Remote Control 1191

Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 Dual TV Tuner / Encoder 1229

Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1500 Notebook Express Card 1195

 Once you install one of these tuners, you’ll need to run the Media Center Setup in order to use it. When the setup is complete and the guide data is downloaded, you’ll be able to watch TV or schedule it to record. Remember that the computer needs to be ON in order for the program to record.

The next most common way of getting a TV signal is CableTV and there are a couple ways of getting cableTV into the PC. If you have an OTA tuner that supports Clear QAM, you can plug your cableTV cable right into the OTA tuner and get some of the unencrypted cable channels through that tuner. But most cable companies are now encrypting almost all of the channels, so this may or may not work for you.

 Another way is to connect the Video Out from your cable box, to the Analog IN of the OTA tuner, you will also need an IR Blaster(That little red plastic piece you stick on the front) for the cable box, so that WMC will be able to change the channel. This works OK, but you can’t get HDTV this way, any programs that are HDTV from the cable box will be downscaled to standard definition.

The BEST way to get a TV signal from cableTV is to buy a PC CableCard tuner. The most popular CableCard tuner out right now is the Ceton InfinTV4, which lets you receive 4 cable channels at the same time, in HD, with full Digital Audio. The only downside to CableCard is that there is no OnDemand available for it. You’ll need to rent a CableCard from your cable company, they charge anywhere from $3-5 for the card, but since the Ceton Tuner can receive 4 channels with 1 card, that saves you the rental of 3 other cable boxes!

Did I say no OnDemand? Not entirely true. It is true that you can’t get the OnDemand from your cable company, but if you have a Netflix account, you can stream movies directly to your MediaCenter. The quality is very good too.

Playing Music

MediaCenter makes an excellent music player too. If you have MP3s, WMAs or other non-protected types of music, MediaCenter will let you play them, right from your TV with a WMC remote.

Playing Movies

MediaCenter contains a pretty good DVD player. You can just stick a DVD into your DVD drive and WMC will ask if you want to play it. If you want to create a movie library of ripped movies, you’re in luck! MediaCenter can play a ripped DVD directly from the hard drive and has a decent management application in the MovieLibrary.

If you want to play or rip BluRay movies, it’ll take a little more work, but it’s not very hard to get it to work.

See my post on Ripping, Storing and Playing BluRays here.

Pictures and slideshows

So you have hundreds of digital pictures? Put them all in the MyPictures folder on the hard drive and guess what? They show up in the Photos menu in MediaCenter. It’s that simple. If you put them in folders in MyPictures, they’ll be in separate folders in the Photos menu, so it’s easy to sort and find the right pictures.

Another cool feature in the Photos, is that you can create a playlist of music from the Music Library and use it as a soundtrack to a slideshow. How cool is that?

Using MediaCenter and TV from other locations in the house

I did say that I got rid of ALL the cable boxes in my house, didn’t I? Yep, MediaCenter can be “Extended” to other rooms by the use of devices called Extenders. There used to be single purpose Extenders available from a couple companies, but they’ve all stopped producing them. Why? Because the xBox360 has MC Extender built in, it’s cheaper and a better quality than any of the other extenders.

So, instead of putting a cable box in a room where you want to watch TV, you can put an xBox, connect it to the MediaCenter either wired or wireless and Voila! You can watch TV, Play Music, Play Slideshows and oh yeah, you can play xBox games on it! You can’t play any ripped DVDs or BluRays from the xBox without some work, but xBox also has the ability to play streaming movies direct from Netflix.

What about another computer? Can you watch TV from another PC? Well that’s been a bit of a sticking point with Microsoft, they have been avoiding making another PC an extender. But there are some things you CAN do. If you share the RecordedTV, Music, Photos and Movies folders, you can set them as search folders on another computer that has MediaCenter. So you can watch RecordedTV, play music, watch movies . . . but you can’t watch LiveTV from another PC unless you install a tuner in it. Personally, I only watch recorded TV so this wasn’t an issue for me.

So, now that you know what MediaCenter is and that you probably already HAVE IT, what’s stopping you from using it?

To put it simply, all Television Stations in the United States must stop transmitting an Analog  Over The Air (OTA) Signal and switch to an entirely Digital Signal. The main reason for the switch is "Bandwidth". The Analog signal that has been used since the invention of television is very inefficient. In the "Space" used by an each "Channel" of an Analog Signal we can fit many Digital "Channels". Not only can we fit many Digital Channels, but each Channel can contain Sub-Channels using what is known as "Multi-Casting".

If you are already receiving Digital Television, you may have noticed that the Channel Numbers have changed. You are used to seeing Channel "5", but what you see now is "5.1".  What's this ".1" business? Well, that is the Multicast number. Each Channel can have up to 4 Multicast Channels, so you can possibly have Multicast Channels 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4! 

Cool huh?

But, what's on these other Multicast Channels?

That's up to the TV Station. The ".1" Channel is the main Channel, that is, it's what is normally broadcast by the TV Station. The ".2, .3, .4" channels can be anything the Station wants to transmit. Some TV Stations broadcast Weather Radar, Sports, or Alternate Programming on those Sub-Channels.

That's cool too, right? So, what do you need to do to get this new Digital stuff?

If your TV was made in the last 5 years or so and has a Digital Tuner. Maybe nothing. You can just scan for channels and see what you get. (See your TV User Manual to learn how to do that). If your close enough to the TV stations you should be able to get any Channels and Multicast Channels that they are broadcasting. If you're further away, you may need a powered antenna or even a roof antenna to get a good signal.

Want to see what channels you should be able to receive at your location? Check out AntennaWeb, type in your address and AntennaWeb will tell you what stations you are in range of, or what type of antenna you would need to receive that Channel and what direction to point the antenna.

What if I don't have a Digital Tuner in my TV?

In that case you will have to buy a Digital Converter Box. The Government is giving out coupons for a $40 discount on the converter boxes. You can apply for the discount here https://www.dtv2009.gov/ApplyCoupon.aspx. The coupons are on a first come, first served basis and with less than 2 weeks left, you'd better Hurry!

So what does the Digital Converter Box do?

The converter box is basically a new Tuner for your TV. It will scan for and receive the Digital TV Channel signals and then convert them into a signal your Analog TV can use. It has it's own antenna and remote control. It works in a similar fasion to a CableTV box. You set your TV for a certain channel (usually 3 or 4) and connect the Converter to the antenna input for the TV. The Digital Signal is then Down Converted from the Digital signal to an analog signal.

If the signal is Down Converted to Analog, what kind of picture quality can I expect?

Even though the signal is Down Converted, the picture quality will be much better then what you are probably used to since you are starting with a much Higher quality picture to begin with.

I have a DigitalTV or I purchased a Converter Box, does that mean everything is in High Definition?

No. Your new Digital TV or Converter box is Capable of Receiving High Definition TV (HDTV), but not all stations are transmitting HDTV programming. All older programs that were not recorded using HD will be broadcast in the old Standard Definition TV (SDTV) quality.

My TV is not capable of displaying HDTV, how will the HDTV picture look on it?

There was a lot of discussion on how to deal with displaying an HDTV picture on a non HD TV set. Whether to show the whole picture in Letterbox format and have black bars on the top and bottom of the screen, or to Pan & Scan the picture to allow it to fill the screen. The industry decided that it would be best to show the Letterbox format. Here's why.

Let's say that you are an advertiser and you make a High Definition commercial selling some product. You put text over a picture of you product. 

Notice the black border top and bottom, this is what the picture would look like in Letterbox. Looks great that way and the advertiser would be happy with it.

But, what happens if the TV station decides to convert the signal to Pan & Scan to fit your screen?

9 Dodge Challengers for $995.99!! What a bargain! No wonder the auto industry is in such trouble.

As you can see in this simple example, although you may like the picture filling the screen, a lot of important information may be lost in the conversion process.

I have CableTV or Satellite, how does the conversion affect me? 

 It doesn't, or rather, it doesn't have to. Since the Cable and Satellite companies use their own Bandwidth (The cables and/or satellites) they are not required to do anything. The purpose of this transition is to free up space on the airways, not on the cables or satellites that are owned by those companies.

But my Cable/Satellite company says they are converting to digital too. Why? If they don't have to.

That is the choice of the company. They are not required by law to convert, but for the same reasons that the government wanted to convert to digital, the Cable/Satellite companies also want to get rid of the old analog signals. By converting as well, they will be able to carry more programs, channels and other information like internet access for homes and businesses.

I hope this little blog helped you understand the conversion. For more information check out the website.

http://www.dtvanswers.com/

There is also a great video done by Channel 5 WCVB Boston on how to setup your converter box.

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/video/19602262/index.html