media browser

If you usually join us for our live show each week you’ll have noticed already that there wasn’t one. Luckily we have a really good reason for that! Josh and I had the opportunity to speak with Jas Manghera and Sam Saffron of Media Browser this week. We had to bump the show a day or two due to time zone restrictions but it was completely worth it. Sam and Jas share some of their insight into where Media Browser has come from and where it’s headed. Thanks to both of them for giving us the time to share it with you!

We should be back next week for the live show. You can join us on Wednesday night by using the Entertainment 2.0 page here on The DMZ. We’re still working on which streaming service will provide listeners the best experience but we encourage you to join us if you can.

Also, don’t forget we want to hear from you! If you have questions or something to share, you can leave us a voicemail at 1-877-856-4933. As long as it’s related to the show and family friendly, we’ll get you on the show. If you have pictures or would rather post a comment about your setup, you can use the Entertainment 2.0 drop to share those things as well.

The new Media Browser (2.1) has added a lot of great features. You can read about them over at Hack7MC in an article just published today. One of the new additions I’ve been playing with since Friday’s release has been the Podcast plugin. It’s easy to use and allows you to watch your favorite online RSS content right inside Media Center. (Just a note that audio podcasts work as well but you get a black screen during playback.)

I went on a quick search this weekend to try and find some content that will work within Media Center as well as on extenders. It’s a short list so far. The first thing I found was Revision 3. The Internet TV company provides a lot of feeds for their content in various formats. I subscribed to the Large WMV feed and, so far, every show has looked great on my 57 inch widescreen. I haven’t looked at the actual resolution but Rev3 has done a great job and the shows look really good even blown up that big.

The next podcast network I found was G4. The cable network provides quite a few feeds but unfortunately, they’re 4:3 and the resolution isn’t that great. If you like G4’s content then it’ll work for you but they could certainly take a page from Revision 3 on how to produce and provide great Video Podcast content.

The next place I went looking was CNet.

I’ve been waiting on this one and I’m very pleased to be writing this particular post.

I just received word during our live show that Media Browser 2.1 will be posted in the next few hours. Adding a ton of new features including new UI enhancements and Podcast support, this is the probably the most ambitious release of the popular Media Center plugin to date.

You can find all the information you need including links for download at Media Browser’s website and Jas, one of the developers will be posting the details of all the new features on his blog soon. Be sure to check the forums for help and tips to customize your plugin.

via Ogre

Currently, there is no way to replace the native movie library in the Movies start menu strip. Also, Windows 7 Media Center doesn’t allow for the addition of extra plug-ins to the default strips. What can we do to replace the default movie library menu strip then? We’ll remove the movie strip and simply replace it with a strip of our own creation which includes the Media Browser plug-in.

To get this done a few files have been created which can be downloaded here. The first one is a patch that will enable turning the default movies strip on and off through a registry setting. This patch has only been tested under the official Windows 7 beta 1 (build 7000) at this point but should work under any version. As always, it’s highly recommended that you backup your files (in this case C:\Windows\ehome\ehres.dll) before modifying any system files.

Also included are a number of registry files for altering the start menu strip setup. Two of the files allow for the turning on and off of the default movies strip and another set of files for turning on and off the new Media Browser movies strip. The last registry file will remove the default strip and add the new Media Browser strip at once.

To enable using these registry files you’ll need to download and apply this patch. For the patch to be installed it’s also necessary to take ownership of the (C:\Windows\ehome\ehres.dll) file. If you haven’t already, install the “Take Ownership” registry fix by double-clicking “take ownership.reg” included in the download zip. Then you will need to right-click the ehres.dll file and select “Take Ownership”.

Once you’ve successfully taken ownership of the ehres.dll file and applied the patch file included in the download zip you can now use the registry files included in the options folder of the zip to modify whether or not the movies strip is enabled. As well as turn on or off the new Media Browser Movies strip. To both enable the new movies strip and disable the old native movies strip apply the “Add Media Browser Strip and Remove Movies.reg” file to your registry.

Unfortunately, at this time it’s not possible to transfer the default movie trailers, play DVD or other movies strip entries to the new strip. But you can follow these directions to include other plug-ins in your new movies strip. The category for this new strip in the registry is “Media Browser”.

That’s all there is to it, now just sit back and relax knowing you’ll never need to explain to anyone why they “shouldn’t use that movie library use that one” and then where to find it.

One of the most popular movie library plug-ins for Media Center recently added a new theme to it’s default install called Vanilla. Hidden inside this new theme is the ability to add movie trailers to the information screen for each movie. It’s not very simple and you’ll need to download the trailers manually but this is definitely a nice feature to have. Be sure to have one of the recent betas (2.0.10.0+) and turn on the Vanilla theme.

So you want to have HD movie trailers available for your entire movie collection? Well, downloading them all by hand, one by one, can be quite the hassle. Thankfully, a new program, Get Trailers has the solution. Get Trailers will allow you to set a preferred resolution and movie folder then go out and grab all the available trailers for you!

To get started just download Get Trailers to your hard disk and run the program. The interface couldn’t get much simpler, though at this time some of the settings under the “Settings” and “Auto Download” tab are unavailable. Hopefully, these features will be enabled in the near future but for now they aren’t entirely necessary.

Can’t get enough of those high resolution movie trailers on Apple.com or Yahoo? If you’re running Media Browser there may be a cure. A simple program called HD Movie Trailer Downloader will give you a complete list of movie trailers available and give you the option to download them in any number of resolutions. The app is fairly handy for anyone looking to download recent movie trailers in HD to their box without sifting through the Apple or Yahoo websites.

To get started download the program from the HD Movie Trailer Downloader site and extract the files into a new folder on your hard drive. After that just run the GUI.exe file to launch the download utility. On the first run you’ll be presented with some options to fill in including the default folder in which to place downloaded trailers.

You’ll also notice an option for creating a MyMovies.xml file containing synopsis information, however, this option didn’t work properly with Media Browser beta 11 and should probably just be turned off.