Casey Chesnut has another great application for Media Center.

/mobileRecord is a neat Windows Live addin that enables you via Windows Live Messenger to schedule recordings for your Media Center PC, even using a Windows Mobile device.

Its a great idea and as usual Casey details the development of the application.

So checkout the article on his site, and there is a demo mode if you just want to play with it and not install the client side stuff

Charlie Owen has posted a video walkthrough for Vista Media Center

It shows how to setup the TV options in Vista Media Center and he explains what is happening during the setup (and why its going it!)

He also shows the new views for recorded TV,DVD's, music and pictures

Checkout the video at Windows Media Center 'Diamond' Walkthrough

And if you want to see how it looks on an extender checkout my video of Vista on a XBOX 360

Looking at reaction to the announcement of Apples new extender type device called iTV (I bet ITV the UK TV company will love the name!) there is one thing that hasn't been talked about and that is the opportunity for 3rd party developers.

The thing I love about the XBOX 360 as an extender is that I can write a 10' application for Media Center in HTML and have that work on my TV via my XBOX. My RSS reader is a good example I can check the latest news from my sofa, so while my wife is making a coffee I can get all the latest motor sport news without moving :)

With Vista the development story gets better with WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) applications and MCML (Media Center Markup Language). Developers will be able to get the full power of Media Center on the XBOX 360.

I don't see that being an option for the iTV box, so it misses much of the benefits of a Media Center extender.

I do hope that we will get to see more Media Center Extenders for people that don't want a XBOX 360 (built in to a HD TV would be great) but for me the 360 is the best part of my Media Center setup.

For more reaction to iTV on Charlie Owen's blog

As I have said before I love Youtube and Yougle is a Media Center UI for Youtube and Google Videos

Hear more about Yougle from the developer on a future show and check the new features on the update. Download it fro free from HERE

New features:

• Added Grouper Compatibility
•     Added a 'Fullscreen Only' option that allows you to jump straight from the video list to full-screen display. Use the '*' key to save/remove movies from favourites.
•     Added Adobe Flash detection, to warn users if they have not installed Flash on their Media Center (or on IE)
•     More 'Media Center Like' behaviours and appearance, including fading of control groups that are not active.
•     Rescaled the layout to be more reasonable on widescreen displays - it scales in a similar way to other Media Center menus
•     Repositioned and rescaled the Flash window in non-fullscreen playback to center it properly in unusual resolutions and widescreen TV's.
•     Adding a favourite or renaming a video now refreshes the movie properly when pressing 'Back'
•     Minor issues resolved when searching all video sources
•     A number of text input control changes...
•       -Change to upper and lowercase when editng text using the channel buttons
•       -Help text under all search controls
•       -Text controls do not attempt to start the search when they are clicked with the mouse
•       -New text input contols now support non-alpha keys and punctuation, as well as being more attractive graphically.
•    Made changes to improve performance, particularly in searches.
•     Removed an error message that could appear when pressing 'Back' in fullscreen mode.
•     'Back' no longer possible when you delete a video from Favourites (avoids confusion)
•     Made changes to ensure adding new video sources and adding new interface control types is very simple.

The Media Center Show #74(MP3 - 19.4mb- 56mins 28secs)
LISTEN HERE

This week on the show we will be looking at developing application for Vista Media Center with WPF, Windows Presentation Foundation (formally knows as Avalon) with Microsoft’s Jossef Goldberg and Unni Ravindranathan. We will be looking at what WPF can do and how to get started developing for Media Center.

The Media Center Show with Orb Networks

See the variety of equipment and setups that Media Center users have posted,the pictures are on my site HERE and there is an RSS feed for the pictures

Send your questions and feedback to mailto:isdixon@gmail.com(feel free to send your questions in mp3)
or you can send your questions and comments in to the show Skype Line “MediaCenterShow”

Don’t forget your to check out Media Center Show Gear

The forums are at Iandixon.co.uk/forums

Show Times:

00:30 Coming up this week
01:36 Email - dual screen setup
02:41 Email - Tuner problems
03:50 Email - Extender questions
04:59 Email - DVD streaming to an XBOX (see this thread)
06:20 System Monitor for Media Center
06:50 A Message from Onevoice
07:54 Welcome to Jossef and Unni
08:56 Background on WPF
10:50 Channel9 Video on WPF
12:00 WPF Tools
16:24 Working with designers
23:50 Browser based XBAB applications
28:20 WPF Applications
31:54 Where to go to get started
33:50 Download Vista, Visual Studio, Media Center SDK, Expression Tool
38:40 Media Center tips
41:00 Testing WPF Media Center apps in IE
43:08 Deploying WPF applications
46:10 Media Center Sandbox
47:00 Big Screen Photo WPF application
47:40 MCML development (full 2 part show coming up on this!)
49:37 XBOX 360 use
52:36 See you next week
53:00 Music - Wedding day from my new CD

You can now download Vista RC1 from Microsoft. So get playing with Vista Media Center.

This weeks show has more info on developing apps for Media Center with WPF

Windows Vista RC1, English 32-Bit Edition
• Windows Vista RC1, English 64-Bit Edition
To download with akamai downoad manager use:
• Windows Vista RC1, English 32-Bit Edition
• Windows Vista RC1, English 64-Bit Edition

Update: Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is now available for Customer Preview Program (CPP) participants only. If you are not registered but would like to receive RC1, the CPP will open to new participants in the coming weeks. Please check back periodically for updates