Windows Media Center and their Extenders

If you've purchased a Windows Vista based PC over the last year or so, you probably have a cool application that you might not even be aware of (or somewhat aware of). It's called Windows Media Center and starting with Windows Vista, it became much more widely distributed to home consumers. Windows Media Center turns your PC into a fully functional DVR capable, multimedia libray and playback machine. More importantly, Windows Media Center turns your PC into a viable Home Theater PC. Windows Media Center (or MCE for short - this is carryover from when Media Center was known as Media Center Edition under Windows XP) is available on any system running Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate.

Before Windows Vista was available, Windows Media Center was actually a separate OS SKU from Microsoft. You saw a Windows XP Media Center Edition, a Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 and finally a Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. Back in the early days, you had to either purchase a computer with MCE installed OR you had to be a system builder - someone who put together computers - to get a hold of MCE. Once you had MCE, you needed to make sure you had the right hardware to make everything work. However, with Windows Vista, Media Center is now available to a much wider audience and thus much more compatible with all sorts of hardware out there.

So really - what does this all mean? Why do I even care about Windows Media Center?

Now before I go on, let me explain briefly what a Home Theater PC is to those of you unfamiliar with the term. Home Theater PC (or HTPC for short) is a term used for any computer (Windows, Macs, or Linux based) used in a home theater environment (sounds simple enough right?) - whether that environment is in your den, your living room, or your bathroom. With a PC connected to your television set, you can now enjoy digital content, which used to be stuck to your monitor and PC, right there on your big-screen television set. With an HTPC in place, you can enjoy everything from watching and recording television, to viewing downloaded videos, to listening to digital music, to viewing digital still shots from your camera right from the comfort of your couch, bed or whatever suits your fancy.

Yes.. that's a big strange to hear or read. Microsoft and a kickin user interface but it's true folks. Windows Media Center has arugably THE BEST user interface for home theater PCs. The folks on the Media Center team set out from the get go to deliver what is known as a "10 foot user interface." This means having an interface usable from a distance of at least 10 feet away - typically something you'd find in the living room.That's why the user interface is big and clean. The letters are sharp, the graphics are snazzy, and the interface is.. EASY TO USE.

So you know MCE has an awesome user interface, but what else does it do? Well here's a laundry list of features delivered by Windows Media Center (some of which requires additional hardware):

• Watch, pause, and record Live TV
• Listen to digital music
• View digital photos
• Create slideshows from digital photos and have digital music play in the background
• Watch videos (as long as you have the necessary decoders to watch the video)
• Electronic Programming Guide for TV shows
• Movie Guides
• Online content from third party providers - everything from music videos to news to sport scores to streaming video
• Listen to the Radio (assuming you have an FM tuner)

As I mentioned before, Windows Media Center is just a piece of the puzzle - although it's a BIG piece. If you have a modern PC, chances are, you have nearly everything you need already to create a kickass home theater PC.

About the only thing that most casual computer users really need to get in addition to what they already have is a TV tuner. This only becomes a necessity IF you want Windows Media Center to also act as a DVR system. If you already have a DVR system from your cable company or from TiVo, then you probably don't need to have one for your PC. Yet.. if you want to watch TV on your PC, or better yet - record TV and watch it when you want on your PC or on your TV screen, then go out and get yourself a TV tuner.

What's great about TV and Windows Media Center is the built in electronic program guide (EPG) that comes with MCE. You get a comprehensive list of all the shows available from your cable provider and then you have options to watch live TV, setup recordings for TV shows, or watch pre-recorded shows at the same time live TV shows are being recorded. Everything you can do in a typical standalone DVR box, you can also do within Windows Media Center.

Now if you want a kick ass setup in your living room, you'll want to see what technologies you can bring into your PC. Some things to consider include:

• DVI or HDMI capable video card. HDMI would be better since most modern HDTV sets have an HDMI connection. If you have DVI, you could get yourself a DVI to HDMI cable however, you'll need to either 1) figure out a way to merge the audio signal to your HDMI cable OR 2) deliver audio video optical/analog digital
• If you want Blu-ray playback, make sure you get a video card with HDCP support - most modern video cards will offer that
• Storage upgrade. If you're like me, then you'll record nearly every TV show under the sun - at least all the reality TV shows. All those shows need a LOT of disk space .. plus we haven't talked about how much music or pictures you might have. So do yourself a favor and upgrade to a 500GB HDD or a 1TB drive.

I'll talk later about Extender for Windows Media Center which in many ways removes the necessity to get an HDMI/DVI video card - but it also restricts some playback options.

There will be some of you who upgraded to Windows Vista on an older PC system. That's perfectly fine too but I do want to warn you that Vista and Windows Media Center are resource hogs. In particular, Windows Aero is a resource hog. MCE itself loves multi-core goodness so if you're still operating on a single core processor system, do yourself a favor and think about getting a PC upgrade. My latest Windows Media Center box is actually a refurb'd HP Slimline Pavilion system that I purchased for a mere $399 at Buy.com - and guess what? it's rock solid!

To summarize, a good Windows Media Center system will have:

• At least dual core processor
• 2GB RAM
• 300+ GB of HD (if you record television shows in high definition, get at least 500GB if not more)
• HD Audio (integrated will probably do)
• DVI or HDMI capable video (integrated is fine - just make sure you can play back HD content)
• HDCP if you want Blu-ray playback
• TV tuner if you want DVR functionality. More than one TV tuner if you want to record multiple shows at once.

You have the hardware and you obviously have the software, where do you go from here? You've got two major choices with Windows Media Center.

1. Directly connect the PC to your receiver or HDTV set via DVI/HDMI/Component cables

2. Keep your PC hidden away and connect to the system using Extender for Windows Media Center devices (also known as Windows Media Center Extenders)

Option 1 is the most straightforward approach but arguably the one that can annoy you the most. Why you might ask? Unless you're competent with putting together a home audio system, you might get lost in the details of connecting and configuring everything. Ironically, connecting the pieces will be easier than configuring the PC afterwards.

On the connection front, you'll need to hook up audio and video from your PC to either your home theater system or directly to your PC. The ideal scenario is to connect everything via HDMI. If you have a DVI connector on your PC, get yourself a DVI to HDMI cable at your local computer or electronics store. Most computers and video cards do not come with HDMI connectors although that's slowly changing. For those of you without an HDMI connector, you'll also need to route audio from your HD audio out to your TV or receiver. Ideally connect via the S/PDIF connector if you have one. Otherwise if your PC decodes signals into 5.1 channels, then you can connect the channels directly to your receiver or TV set. Another way is to combine the video and audio output from your PC to a single HDMI cable but you'll usually need to purchase an external component to make this happen (Gefen has a DVI + SPDIF audio to HDMI box here)

Now once you're connections are made, the next step is probably the most annoying. You'll need to configure Windows to look just right on your television screen. You'd think that a 1366 x 768 monitor should be set to 1366 x 768 on the Windows desktop. It's true to a certain degree but you'll still need to deal with overscan issues and that's where you'll want to play around with various graphics utilities. NVIDIA and ATI now come with built in utilities to try and remedy this situation.. but if you're not happy with the results, you can also take a look at PowerStrip - an excellent video card/graphics settings utility.

Wow.. sounds like a royal pain doesn't it? Well it is.. but once everything is working, well.. it works.

Option 2: Yes.. there is another option out there. It involves something called Windows Media Extenders (or more recently coined "Extenders for Windows Media Center). What's an extender? It essentially is a device that connects to your PC via a network connection and displays the same Windows Media Center interface to whatever display it's connected to. Thus, you can house your PC in say.. your den or office or wherver and then connect a Windows Media Center Extender device to your living room television set. The Extender device would connect to your PC via a wired or wireless network and you'll have nearly the same effect. Your Windows Media interface will be right there on your television set.

A single Windows Vista PC can have up to five Media Center Extenders connec to it. This also means you can house a heavy duty PC in some hidden room and then stream content to all of your other rooms whether it's the living room or bedroom or den or kitchen. The same content will be available for streaming in different rooms thanks to the art of networking and remote desktops.

So.. if I can have multiple extenders throughout the home, why would I want to connect a PC to a TV set to begin with?

Flexibility. An HTPC gives you the most flexibility when it comes to playing back content. A Media Center Extender device will typically only support the major audio and video formats.. and they typically are very Microsoft centric. Thus if you have a lot of MPEG4 or older DivX encoded videos, you probably will not be able to play them via Extenders (unless your extender supports DivX which some do). It's important to note that the most popular extender is in fact the Xbox 360 console simply because the Extender is built into the game box. However, Xbox 360 Extenders can only play back WMV, DVR-MS, and MPEG2 encoded videos. It CAN play back MPEG-4 content - but only through Windows Media Connect and not acting as an extender.

Will this really all matter to you. it depends on your multimedia collection. If you're like me, then you pretty much have standard file formats lying around. My entire music collection is in MP3. All my videos are encoded in MPEG2 or DVR-MS which is also MPEG2 with additional meta information. All of my photos are in JPEG. Thus, a Vista machine hidden in my office room and multiple Media Center Extenders work just fine for me.

I did forget one small thing of course. Once your hardware is ready you'll need to do a little software setup. Windows Media Center is basically a wrapper on top of Windows Media Player and it's library functionality. In fact, if you have Windows Media Player already managing your multimedia content, then you're all set for Windows Media Center. However, if you're not using Windows Media Player to manage your videos, music, and photos, then you'll need to do so.

Yes.. it can be and ultimately it probably is. However, you can start small. Here's one way to begin dabbling with it all:

TBD

So that's it for now. Stay tuned as I'll be adding more to this article later on in the week (I need to go back to work now!) In the meantime, you can read about a recent project I built with the Mac mini here.