Much of this depends on how well it sells and what the general uptake is, especially in the tablet market.  Windows 8 is a big tablet gamble as by the time it comes to market the competition will already have had a three year head start, that’s simply enormous and not to be under-estimated.  There are also issues and hurdles about running desktop apps on ARM hardware (which is frankly the only way we’ll have Windows tablets with great battery life for some years yet) and if people can’t run all their favourite desktop apps, or if it is too complex and difficult to use them, will they even bother with Windows tablets at all?  After all, this apparent bonus over the competition, along with the ability to use any USB device may not exist on ARM and as such, Windows 8 won’t be any better than iOS or Android overall.

I’m beginning to wonder then if it might be in Internet TVs that Windows 8 is set to make its biggest impact.  Microsoft have said nothing about Internet TVs past announcing plans to bring Windows Media Centre to set top boxes and then going very quiet on the subject.  Think about it though, when Windows Media Centre gets its Metro makeover, not only will it continue to be a great 10 foot interface for your TV, but that newly designed start screen will also make a great thing to use from a TV.

But, I hear you cry, how would you control it and wouldn’t the lack of touch, mouse of type on a TV present a barrier?  Here I believe Microsoft will have things covered.  At CES this last week we have seen some smart televisions being controlled by tablets.  We also know that small keyboards for 10 foot TV use are commonplace, I have one for my own Media Centre which is the hub of my own living room.  Now though we also have Kinect for the PC, a way to interact with our televisions that’s not just revolutionary but that we’re also used to using and that will genuinely fit the Metro paradigm.

While Kinect might not be the most useful way to type a web address on your TV, for general navigation it’s perfectly good and nobody complained about a complex qwerty remote control for Google TV did they.  Kinect is going to revolutionise how we use computers, I have no doubt about this, but it will also help Windows 8 make sense to more people and put Windows 8 to use in more arenas than are currently planned.

Alas, as I mentioned earlier, Microsoft have said nothing about Windows TV and it’s a shame as the new operating system would fit in this entertainment space perfectly.  This doesn’t mean to say they’re not either thinking about it or actively planning it.  They do have a habit of turning up late to the party though and this is something that causes me worry.

I will be buying a Kinect for my PC (I have Windows 8 books to write after all, and will need one early on) but I will also now be buying a second for my TV in the living room.  Here I’ve been using Windows Media Centre since 2003 as my main way to watch TV and video.  In all that time I’ve bemoaned the lack of a proper 10 foot email and web client.  Windows 8 could well be it and so I’m going to give it a try.  It’s with people using Windows 8 and their hardware, new and old, that innovation takes place.  It’s how it all started with Kinect, and it might just be the start of a huge uptake for the next version of Windows.

MC7 Sleep Timer will not work with extenders. ClamAV and Panda will detect the plug-in as a virus. These are false-positives and MC7ST is not malware by any stretch of the imagination. When scanned with Webroot, MalwareBytes, and Microsoft Security Essentials, the plug-in was clear of any malware. I am very cautious about internet downloads and everything gets scanned several different ways before it is allowed to run. The download link is: http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/t/79019.aspx

It is recommended that you download directly from the creator’s Skydrive. It is also available through RapidShare, if you are a member. RapidShare has however been know to have malware issues in the past. The Skydrive download is definitely clean.

After downloading and scanning the MC7.zip file, open though your .zip file software with a simple double-click. You will be presented with the installer. Click Next and use the default location for installation or specify a location if you are using partitions or simply want to use a different location. The only reason to alter the default is when you are using a partitioned drive and you have moved WMC to a partition.

Click Next and complete the steps for installation as indicated. Click Finish when the installation is achieved. There will be no desktop icon for this. You can, of course, create one if so desired. You will find MC7ST in the Extras Library in WMC. Click the title and this will open the timer. You will be able to configure the desired settings from here.

MC7ST opens in full screen mode. You are able to create customized shutdown periods at intervals of 5 minutes or just choose 30 minutes or 60 minutes. You can also set a specific time for shutdown. It is easy to go back and change the settings on any given day. When you have set the shutdown interval, you will hear an audio confirmation.

As you can see, this is a simple customization menu. It is easy to use and allows you fast and easy control over the shutdown interval. Should you find yourself wanting to continue enjoying your media beyond the time you set, click Cancel Timer and it will be off.

This is practical and simple for any user. All that is required is your input.

A typical 30 minute TV show has between five to ten minutes of advertisements, which means that removing those ads from the video will save between ten to twenty minutes of playtime and storage space per hour.

Life Extender automatically removes TV commercials from recorded videos. The program works as a standalone application, and as a Windows Media Center addin.

The application scans the system for a directory that Media Center saves the recorded TV shows to. If it cannot find it it prompts the user to add the directory manually.

All new TV shows that are discovered by the scan are analyzed and scanned for commercials. The program then removes the commercials from each show which usually reduces the file size to three quarters, and replaces the original video with the ad-free version.

Lifextender by default uses the free mpeg commercial detector Comskip to detect commercials in the videos. The application furthermore supports the commercial Show Analyzer, which needs to be purchased before it can be integrated into the software program.

The recording is analyzed on various characteristics such as black frames, silences and changes in aspect ratio. Based on this information Comskip segments the recording in blocks and using heuristics, together with additional information such as the presence of logo, the scene change rate, Close Captioning information and other information sources Comskip tries to determine what blocks of the recording are to be characterized as commercials.

Lifextender has not been updated in the last two years. It still works in most cases, but lacks support for new formats like .wtv. The program is however compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

The processing speed per video depends largely on the computer’s resources. Expect five minutes or less per 30 minute TV show on most modern computer systems.

The program offers several comfortable options, like scheduling scans of the recorded video directory, blacklisting videos that should not be processed, including videos from other directories in the scan, and the ability to cleanup partially recorded and duplicate TV shows.

Lifextender is available for download at the project website. The program works surprisingly well considering its age. (via Instant Fundas)

DVRMSToolbox is an advanced alternative that is still actively developed.

Of course, ideally, you will want to install XBMC on a machine intended for multi-media use. It will work on lower-end video cards, but the interface will be somewhat slower. For a complete listing of supported hardware check out the XBMC hardware page. Now, let’s get on with the installation.

Ubuntu

I will give you a warning here: The most recently supported Ubuntu is 8.10. That does not, however, mean it will not install on anything later. I have XBMC installed and working fine on Ubuntu 9.04. With that in mind here are the installation steps for Ubuntu.

Open up your /etc/apt/sources.list file and add the following to the end:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc-hardy/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc-hardy/ubuntu hardy main

Save that file and then issue the command:

sudo apt-get update

Once the update is complete issue the following command:

sudo apt-get install xbmc

If you want to install extra skins, issue this command:

sudo apt-get install xbmc-skin-*

Figure 1

You will find the XBMC menu entry in the Sound And Video sub-menu of the Applications menu. When XBMC opens you will see a very user-friendly interface (see Figure 1).

Now it’s time for a less than user-friendly installation. Because there have been no rpm files created for Fedora, the installation requires a number of steps which will lead you to compiling XBMC. These steps will work for Fedora 8, 9, and 10 as well as CentOS 5.2. Here we go. NOTE: You will need to be the root user for this installation.

If you don’t already have Subversion install, do so now with the command:

yum install subversion

Once Subversion is installed, check out XBMC from subversion with the command:

svn co https://xbmc.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/xbmc/trunk

Now install the rpmfusion repository with one of the following commands:

Fedora:

rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm

and

rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rmpfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

CentOS 5 (32 bit):
rpm -Uvh http://apt.sw.be/redhat/e15/en/i386/rpmforge/RPMS/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.e15.rf.i386.rpm

CentOS 5 (64 bit):

rpm -Uvh http://apt.sw.be/redhat/e15/en/x86_64/rpmforge/RPMS/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.e15.rf.x86_64.rpm

Now the fun begins. This installation command is all one line:
yum install SDL* glew glew-devel libmad-devel tre tre-devel libogg libogg-devel libvorbis libvorbis-devel boost boost-devel bzip2-devel bzip2-libs fribidi* lzo lzo-devel mysql-libs mysql-devel jasper jasper-devel faac faac-devel enca enca-devel hal hal-devel hal-libs cmake gperf nasm libXmu-devel fontconfig-devel freetype-devel libXinerama-devel pcre-devel gcc-c++ sqlite-devel curl-devel mysql-devel libcdio-devel libmms-devel faad2-devel flac-devel libsmbclient-devel libXtst-devel

The next step creates a symbolic link for the libmysqlclient.so file. The command is one of these two (depending upon your architecture):

For i386:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/mysql/libmysqlclient.so.15.0.0 /usr/lib/libmysqlclient.so

For x64:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/mysql/libmysqlclient.so.15.0.0 /usr/lib64/libmysqlclient.so

Now cd into the XBMC directory (should be in the directory you are currently working in) and issue the following commands:

./bootstrap

and

./configure

and

make

If you see an error related to jpegint.h, then you might have to issue the following command:

cp XBMC/xbmx/lib/cximage-6.0/jpeg/jpegint.h /usr/include

If you have to issue the above command, then issue the make command again.

Finally issue the command:

make install

And XBMC will install.

On Fedora distributions you might have an issue with SELinux. If so you will need to issue the following commands:
chcon -t textrel_shlib_t '/usr/local/share/xbmc/system/players/dvdplayer/avutil-50-i486-linux.so'
chcon -t textrel_shlib_t '/usr/local/share/xbmc/system/players/dvdplayer/avcodec-52-i486-linux.so'
chcon -t textrel_shlib_t '/usr/local/share/xbmc/system/players/dvdplayer/avformat-52-i486-linux.so'
chcon -t textrel_shlib_t '/usr/local/share/xbmc/system/players/dvdplayer/swscale-0.6.1-i486-linux.so'

That’s it for the Fedora/CentOS installation. You should find XBMC in your Video menu. If you can’t seem to find a menu entry you can always enter xbmc in either a terminal window or the run dialog.

Final thoughts

XBMC is an outstanding media center software. It will play your CDs and DVDs flawlessly. If you have the hardware for this software, it is a much better solution than most other Linux video solutions.

XBMC has been expanded since then and it can now be installed on various platforms including Windows, Linux or Macintosh computers. It is intended to be used for media PCs (like the Xbox but with additional features) that stream the media to the television but it can be installed on any computer meeting the requirements obviously.

The interface has been designed with usability and wow effect in mind. Links to video, music, images, settings and plugins are available from the main menu. The first three entries lead to similar sections of the media center. The user has to first pick at least one data folder that contains files that can be read by the player. This takes a few seconds at most and it is possible to navigate with the keyboard, mouse or gamepad in the menus.

The media center will pick up metadata automatically but it can also search the Internet for additional information like movie posters, plot summaries or actors.

Plugins enhance the system further. They can add all kinds of new functions to the system like games, communication, news and service integration (Youtube, Apple Trailers, Podcasts).

That Xbox Media Center is apparently going cross plattform and a early alpha release is available for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. The funny thing is that you can download all three releases but not the Xbox release from the website because of legal reasons. I still think that Microsoft should hire those guys and make the XBMC the default media application of the Xbox.

It is clearly aimed at media PCs that are used in the living room but it can also be started from any computer that runs a supported operating system. Users who know XBMC from their Xbox will feel familiar with the interface because it looks pretty much alike, only that the gamepad navigation was replaced with mouse navigation.

XBMC is fully skinable, supports plugins that can be downloaded from XBMCScripts like tv guides, games, communication plugins and media plugins. It does come with two scripts, a Tetris game and Apple Trailers which provides access to the vast Apple movie trailers archive which means you can access nearly 1750 movie trailers from within the interface.

The media player plays pretty much everything that you throw at it and supports audio formats and pictures as well. It’s a great application, probably the best media center software ever released.

Well a little research revealed a Registry setting that would enable the option to enable the DVD library in Windows Media Center 2005. That DVD Library can store the DVDs that are stored on the hard drive in a Video_TS folder.

Here are the steps that are needed to enable the DVD Library feature. Exit the Media Center application and start the Windows Registry Editor by using the shortcut Windows R, regedit, enter.

Now navigate to the Registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \Media Center \Settings \DvdSettings and edit the value ShowGallery. Change the value from Play to Gallery.