• Windows Media Center Edition Update

Update Rollup 2 for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. XP Media Center Edition 2005 troubleshooting. Reinstall the Sonic Encoders.

I’ve been using for a little while now, and I am smitten. What’s more, my wife loves it too, and our MCE box has become one of the most used pieces of electronic equipment in the house. However, since I installed MCE, last April, I have never been able to figure out how to dump recorded TV onto DVD – that is until now. Until recently, I only saw the “Data DVD” option. For those of you unaware, MCE likes to record TV in a bastardized form of, called. Microsoft never do anything just for the fun of it, and I am certain that their decision for using a non-standard media format has a lot to do with preventing users from saving recorded TV to DVD, as well as to provide DRM ability.

Windows Media Center Edition Update

A native install of MCE will let you record the DVR-MS files directly to a data DVD, to be played on another MCE unit, but not as a DVD to be played on a standalone player. Fortunately, there is a third party encoder, called Sonic Encoder, which will stream DVR-MS direct to DVD in MPEG2 format, for playing externally. A few OEM releases of MCE come shipped with this encoder, but the rest of us using retail or developer versions have to obtain the encoder via some other means. After doing some digging on the web, I found the following link to a site that has sonicencoder.msi for download: I am doubtful that this link will remain active for long, in which case drop me a friendly email, and I could be persuaded to send you a copy (please try downloading from the link first, before contacting me). As I write this post, I am in the process of writing an 1h25 minute show to DVD. So far the process has been running for about 40 minutes and is about a quarter of the way through – a little slow, but comparable to other media transcoder packages. The show is an XVID file, stored on a network drive, which will cause a detrimental affect on performance.

I’ll see if regular DVR-MS to DVD is any faster later. This entry was posted in, and tagged on. Post navigation. I’ve downloaded the file and installed both the files that came in the zip-file. When I started MCE again and chose to create a DVD, I did get the new choice of creating a Video DVD. I chose the files I wanted to burn, MCE told me that in order for the files to fit it had to reduce the quality, I accepted and everything looked like I was set to go.

But when MCE was supposed to start burning the files, it ejected the DVD and just told me an error had occurred. I’ve tried several types of DVDs now, but it’s the same result. I know that the plugin worked somewhat, because now I’m able to burn data DVDs of my recordings, which wasn’t possible before. Any hints or help would be appreciated.

My toshiba laptop came loaded with xp media center. I tried deleting windows messenger from my system and windows deleted several components instead (including, alas, some sonic encoders).

I reinstated games, paint etc, and edited the registry to get my cd/dvd rw drive icon back, but since then i can’t get my cd/dvd player to burn, it will only read like a dvd-ram. When i try reinstating sonic cd and dvd burning from the windows components add/remove box it asks for file authorscript.dll can anyone here get me that file from your systems, please? Since the computer came preloaded i can’t get the file from the xp disk. I’d be so grateful.

As impressed as we were with Windows XP Media Center Edition when it first launched, it's no surprise that the Microsoft OS has not taken off by storm. Distributed only to OEMs for use in custom built systems, this wasn't an OS you could go out and buy. Even though some managed to get it (through MSDN and other less legal routes), there were relatively steep hardware requirements keeping that barrier to entry nice and high. You had to have a hardware MPEG-2 encoder card, which at the time of the release of MCE was far from common (since then times have changed, mostly thanks to MCE). You had to have one of the fastest CPUs available on the market, which at the time was around a Pentium 4 3GHz.

And you had to have the MCE remote control setup, which also wasn't readily available to end users. Things have changed however, and while it was still difficult to get a hold of the copy of the OS, the rest of the items became much easier. Places like Newegg began selling the Media Center remote control, with the stipulation that you had to buy it with some sort of hardware to make it look like you were buying a PC with it. And the price of CPUs went down, as the power of CPUs went up. The introduction of the Athlon 64 provided a nice, very powerful, very capable alternative to the Pentium 4 with one very important feature - an on-die memory controller.

The on-die memory controller would prove to be very helpful in making the Athlon 64 an extremely high performer when it came to Media Center PCs. In between MCE's maiden launch and today, Microsoft released a much-needed update to the OS: MCE 2004, which provided bug fixes, performance enhancements and introduced a few new tweaks and features to the OS.

But it was clear that MCE 2004 was not an example of perfection, rather an example of the direction Microsoft was going in. There were still numerous features missing from the MCE equation, things like HDTV and multiple tuner support were left unaddressed, only to be serviced in the latest version of Microsoft's Media Center OS - MCE 2005.

Today marks the official launch of MCE 2005 and although there have already been reports on what's new in the updated OS, we've taken an in-depth look at it to not only evaluate the changes made to the OS, but also to finally investigate the performance of the OS and find out how fast of a system you truly need to run this beast of an OS. There are many details within and tons of screenshots, but we strongly suggest that our as we will not be rehashing most of the information covered in that article. Sunday, October 17, 2004 - 'Windows MCE will never be any use for people serious about video until it allows you to select what codecs you want to use for encoding from all the DirectShow codecs installed on your system. Having to use the proprietary MS stuff with all their DRM garbage is unsuitable.' You're clearly one seriously misinformed individual. MCE isn't an interface to multiple video formats and types and simply wonld not function correctly if it were. Understand this: An MCE PC has one or more TV tuners and video capture cards in it and they will function exactly like any other PC with that hardware.

If you want to record in the format of your choice with an XP MCE PC, no one is stopping you. Fire up your application of choice, select your codec and complain to the software maker that they don't have their own integrated EPG and automatic scheduling capabilities. Honestly, how would you expect EVERY format to support embedded CC and on the fly sequence removal? How could you expect hardware encoding support for any directshow enabled codec? You can't just throw a pre-encoded MPEG2 stream from the hardware into any encoder and expect real time results.

Thursday, October 14, 2004 - Thanks glenn. I'm in Australia so TiVo or the like is not currently an option (although I've heard rumours it'll be here within another year). The main problem with it is the program guide. Australia is officially supported by MCE2005, and I'm very interested in just what that means.

So far it looks like no Australia specific music or movie internet services are supported, but I can't find anything to say definately either way. I'm so desperate I'm even considering ringing up Microsoft and going through the quagmire that is customer relations there. But the good thing is, I'm fairly certain (although again, not seen it in writing yet) that the program guide system will work. We only have 5 free-to-air channels and a couple of pay-tv subscription services (that are really the same service packaged differently) so it shouldn't be too hard for them to keep up to date. Looking at the performance I'm not seeing a hugley compelling reason to go any higher than a Sempron 3100+ although that might be something that would change once I actually get my hands on it and experience it. All interesting stuff.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - jamawass - There is an IR blaster connected to the remote USB reciever. There are two ports on it, but the old remote only came with one blaster, the new one which is actually cheaper then the old one comes with two. If you have one you'll understand (or a linux based competitor). The flexibility is awesome (just think about it, it's a whole computer.

Not only do you have all the flexibilty advanteges of MCE, you have a full blown OS underneath) compared to a Tivo. It's also MUCH MUCH faster then a Tivo. As for stability, it all depends on the computer you build it on. You can't tell it's a PC if all you have is the remote. Mine has run for nearly a year, nonstop.

You can even put it in S3 (Suspend to ram) and it will still wake up and record when it has to, just like Tivo. Really, HTPC serves a very different market then Tivo. It has a million more uses then Tivo + DVD Recorder. For me I have an old high end CRT data projector in my living room, and the cheapest thing I could connect to it when I first got it was a computer. Haven't looked back, even as transcoders have gotten much better and cheaper.