Media Center Extender Features

In the next few sections, we'll cover some of the basic features that are found in the Media Center Extender User Interface. Here are the major sections of interest.

Online Spotlight

The Media Center Extender allows you to view online content profiled on the Online Spotlight section. I personally don't find this all that useful from the television set since I can readily access ESPN, CNN, and MSNBC on my TV which I normally can not do on my PC. Here's a picture of what the Online Spotlight provides.

My Videos

You can select videos that are stored on your Media Center PC to be played back on the Extender platform. The Media Center Extender supports the following video file formats:

•  Microsoft Windows Media Video 9 main profile

•  WMA standard audio

•  Max resolution of 720 x 480

•  Max bit rates of 4Mbps

•  WMV may be Windows Media DRM-protected

•  MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 standard definition

•  MPEG-1 layers 1 and II audio

•  Standard Definition DVR_MS (Recorded TV) at all quality settings (Fair through Best)

Unfortunately, Media Center Extender devices are not able to decode DivX or XviD encoded videos. You will need to transcode these videos into the WMV format if you want to play these videos back – this is a definitely drawback to all of you with large DivX collections. If you are one of these individuals then you are better of with other types of media playback devices or even hooking the Media Center PC directly to a TV set.

My Pictures

You can use the Media Center Extender to display pictures stored on your Media Center PC. This is actually a great feature because you can run slide shows and have music play in the background at the same time.

My TV

You can access the PVR capabilities of a Windows Media Center PC via the My TV menu item. Here is a picture of what My TV looks like once you've clicked through the menu selection.

You'll notice that all the menu items that are accessible on the Media Center are also accessible via the Extender. This is not true unfortunately to the content recorded by your Media Center PC. Any broadcast with the Copy Generation Management System-Analog (CGMS-A) flag set will not be streamed from the Media Center . This includes shows recorded on HBO and Cinemax. So how can you watch these shows? Well you'll need to go back to your Media Center PC and watch it there. Microsoft claims that they will enable streaming of CGMS-A content in a firmware update for the hardware based extenders in the near future. It is unclear what Microsoft will do for the software based Extender for the Xbox.

Here are two videos showing us trying to play back an HBO movie. You will need DivX 5.x to play back these video files.

Clip 1 and Clip 2

In the meantime, this is a real letdown for content recorded on premium channels such as HBO – and we all know that some of the greatest TV shows available nowadays are found on cable stations. It's unfortunate that Microsoft has hobbled streaming of media content to extender devices and we hope to see Microsoft change their ways soon.

Aside from this issue, playback of recorded video on the Xbox extender worked flawlessly. There was a slight lag in response times in fast forwarding and reversing through the video. I wish that the Microsoft Media Center interface would support the type of fast forwarding found on TiVo devices. On TiVo, if you fast forward through commercials and you inadvertently run past into the beginning of the next segment of your show, TiVo will automatically start playback of the video a few seconds behind from where you actually ended the fast forward. This is an incredibly useful feature that we hope Microsoft will integrate in later versions of their software.

The quality of video playback was acceptable although a bit lower than what was found on the Media Center PC. The color depth of the streaming video was lower than the original recorded quality and there was some pixilation. However, the overall experience was good enough for the most part. Only users who want high quality video output will be disappointed with what they see here.

Here are two video clips of us playing back prerecorded TV:

Clip 1 and Clip 2

[Home] [Previous Page] [Next Page]