The Media Center Sandbox: Unanswered Threads

UK Media Center and Windows Home Server Event, June 12

AndyC — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:53:52 GMT

Just in case you haven't seen this in any of the other places it's been posted so far:

We’re putting on a UK Media Center and Windows Home Server Event, taking place on Saturday June 12, 2010 at “The Studio” in the heart of Birmingham. Media Center and Windows Home Server enthusiasts, experts, and newcomers to the digital home scene are all welcome.

We have lined up a great selection of speakers for you to hear and products for you to see. Meet people from DVB Logic, Passive Technologies, The Green Button, Amulet Devices, and JFDI Engineering, as well as UK MVPs and other Media Center and Windows Home Server experts! Hear from the experts on how to put together a great Home Server and Media Center experience! Get hands-on with products from Tranquil PC, Evolve Media, and Niveus Media, Sonos, and more!

As if that wasn’t enough encouragement to attend, we’ve got great prizes too – we’ve got 10 xtreamers to give away, copies of Windows Home Server and Windows 7, T-Shirts, mugs, pens, and even socks! We’ve got a Zune HD worth around $200.00, and a Sonos multi-room music system S5 Zone Player worth £349.00, and with places limited to 120 people you’ve got a 1 in 120 chance of taking one home with you!

For the first 100 arriving there will be a free 2GB USB drive, so don’t be late! Places are filling up fast, so register soon to make sure you can attend. Registration link is here http://ukug2.eventbrite.com/, agenda is here http://thedigitallifestyle.com/cs/TDL/b/ian/archive/2010/06/08/agenda-for-the-windows-media-center-whs-user-group-meeting.aspx, directions are here http://www.studiovenues.co.uk/pdfs/birmingham_studio_directions.pdf, see you there!

Cheers,
Andrew

MediaTransport.PlayRate under Windows 7

eddyc — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 14:44:49 GMT

Under Vista, using MediaTransport.Playrate to set Fast Forward works fine for me on Music tracks. Under Windows 7, it seems to be ignored when Music is playing.

When I use the remote (or onscreen overlay controls) to invoke fast-forward during music, it works okay. Reading MediaTransport.PlayRate shows it always as value 5 (FF3, fastest playback rate). Writing this value (5), or FF1 (3), or FF2 (4), has no effect however. In fact, if the media playback was currently paused, it remains paused. Setting value 1 (Pause) or 2 (Play) works as expected.

What's odd is that everything works fine for Video playback - I can set all the fast forward and fast reverse settings and they behave.

Anyone else seen this?

PageId for the "Speaker Setup" Wizard Page

IntesetGuy — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:04:36 GMT

In WMC 7, is it possible to navigate directly to the "Speaker Setup" and "Display Configuration" pages? We'd like to shortcut to this page in our app.

XPath and XmlRemoteValue

timtation — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:48:02 GMT

It seems that XmlRemoteValue->Source does not fully suport xpath. Something like /title[@lang='eng'] fails without any messages.

I'm trying to build a hosted mcml app for windows 7. Thatswhy i think i can't use a custom class (c# dll) to represent the data model.

any ideas?

SlingPlayer Media Center add-in

skavan — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 06:38:46 GMT

Hi,

I have successfully reversed engineered control of the slingplayer ActiveX web-browser control. I've also built a test harness that supports responding to the media center remote.

HOWEVER, i have no experience in Media Center add-ins and am hoping other developers would be excited to jump in on the add-in side of the equation.

If you're interested please holler...
thanks!

Reference works in debug but not release

ebr — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:01:15 GMT

I've got a nasty problem. I'm trying to allow mcml in a separate assembly that is loaded at runtime to gain access back to itself inside mcml. Okay, that was a mouthful, let me try to explain.

We have a plug-in architecture that allows things to be added on to our app at runtime. It works very well. In the course of this, we allow the loaded assembly (plug-in) to provide mcml for us to run in the context of our application. That works well too (by using the source attribute of the host object).

Where I'm having an issue is a specific instance (our config page) where the plug-in has some mcml that is loaded by the main app and that mcml needs to reference an object inside of the plug-in. We can't pass the object directly into the mcml because it is generic and must have the same parameters as all of these types of mcml UIs. BUT, I do have the ability for my plug-in to register an object with the main app (just put it in a list) and then, the mcml in our plugin can reference that object via a method on the application object (that is one of the generic variables passed to the mcml).

I then simply type cast that reference to the proper type in the plug-in and then (should) be able to access specific methods and properties on that type. Here's what the reference looks like in the mcml:

(in the locals)

<us:MyConfig Name="Config" />

(in the rules)

Where us: is defined as our assembly and "MyConfig" is the actual class of the object. Now I can reference properties that are on MyConfig in the mcml with something like [Config.Property].

You still with me...?

This all works famously while running a debug build. Everything does just what I expect. But, as soon as I build a "Release" version and run that, it bombs out on the first reference to any member of Config and says it can't find "whatever" on MyConfig.

Any clues?

Calling all Media Center developers!

AndyC — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:39:49 GMT

One of the things that excites me about Media Center is it's extensibility - there is so much more that can be done with Media Center than just the built-in features, and there are a lot of very clever people out there producing add-ins to extend the functionality in all sorts of different and really inventive ways.

The biggest issue with all this - where do I find these add-ins? There are a few well known ones such as My Movies, but for the rest of the Media Center development community, getting in front of an interested audience can be very hit and miss. So, Ian Dixon and I have put together a new website and Media Center add-in to fix this! It's called madeformediacenter.com and is a central repository for Media Center add-ins and related apps. Developers can submit their add-ins to the site, and once activated they will appear in both the website and the madeformediacenter.com add-in.

You can find more details of this new service including screenshots here: http://iandixon.co.uk/cs/blogs/ian/archive/2009/11/17/introducing-madeformediacenter-the-app-store-for-windows-media-center.aspx and you can create an account by logging on to the website here: http://madeformediacenter.com

Once your account is set up, to publish your addin or app, click on "Publish App"!

Please let us have feedback on whether you think this is a good idea, and any suggestions for improvements or changes.

This is very much a version 1.0 - no bells and whistles yet, as we want to gauge interest before spending a serious amount of time developing it further. At the moment there is no payment infrastructure, so only free apps, or ones that can support their own payment infrastructure outside of the add-in are possible, but if there is enough demand we will implement it.
Cheers,
Andrew

PlayState bug - PlayState.Stopped never triggered using MediaCollections...

emigrating — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:39:43 GMT

Anyone else come across this?

PlayMedia(MediaType.Video, VideoFile.FullName, false) will work fine and when the video finishes playing (or the user presses the Stop button) PlayState.Stopped is set.

If, however, I setup a MediaCollection, fill it with MediaCollectionItems and do a PlayMedia(MediaType.MediaCollection, MediaCollectionObject, false) - PlayState.Stopped is never set and hence my eventhandler never executed.

Any workarounds for this and if so, what would they be?

Windows 7 Media Center SDK RTW is released!

quanwang — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:17:18 GMT

Hi Everyone,

Windows 7 Media Center SDK RTW is released to Microsoft Download Center:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/C/6/6C6B665D-6240-4958-A028-A944B8BD6860/WindowsMediaCenterSDK6.msi

Windows 7 is the required system for this SDK. Please read the chm file in the SDK to see what is new in this SDK.

Regards,

Quan Wang [MSFT]

DataSets

David Wright — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 18:08:43 GMT

Using the Z application as an example, I am trying to figure out how to write a new entry in the tbl_Movies.xml via the dataset. However, everytime I try, it seems to be writing the new entry outside of the dataroot.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

XML:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

<root>

<tbl_Movie>

...

</tbl_Movie> <--- Existing entries (all fine there)

...

</dataroot>

<tbl_Movie>

... <--- New entry (being written outside of dataroot)

</tbl_Movie>

</root>

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

C#:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DataTable table = dataset.Tables["tbl_Movies"];

DataRow row = table.NewRow();

row[".."] = ...;

...

table.Rows.Add(row);

table.AcceptChanges();

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have also tried table.Rows.InsertAt(row, 0); but either way the new entry is being written outside the dataroot.

How should I write this so that the new entry is written inside the dataroot?

Thanks in advance

Windows Mediaplayer - how to switching the current song within a playlist

tom — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:53:22 GMT

Hi there,

I have got the following code (striped down to the main parts)

WindowsMediaPlayer _windowsMediaPlayer = "initialized for the current session"
IWMPMedia item = "a valid track within the current playlist";

// set the current track
_windowsMediaPlayer.controls.currentItem = item;

// play it..
_windowsMediaPlayer.controls.play();

while this is working at a pc, it won't at the XBox. The "play()" throws an exception "hardware not available".

Is there another way to play a specific track within the current playlist?

Kind regards,
Sörnt

Remote control and security issue

Simo — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:10:52 GMT

Hi,

I do not know if this is the right forum but I have a strange behavior when starting my MC application from the remote control and I think it is a security issue.

If I enter the addin from a PC under standard or admin accounts everything works as expected, but if I try to start it via the remote control it crashes. Queries to the database do not succeed and the Media Center asks the user to quit the application.

I found out that if I try to launch the addin from an unprivileged application, i.e. an exe with manifest file defining it asInvoker, I get the same result.
Using the Standard User Analyzer I found out that the database creates a mutex objects and needs some privilege to do that (and I still don't know which one it is).

So, my questions are: what happens when you start the MediaCenter from the green button? Why is the ehshell process less privileged in this case and what can I do to bypass the privilege restrictions?

Thank you in advance for your help,

Simo

Changing music while running a photo slideshow

eddyc — Sat, 23 May 2009 10:29:32 GMT

Windows 7 MC is behaving differently to Vista when my plug-in changes the currently playing music while a photo slideshow is active.

Under Vista, the slideshow continues to play, and the "now playing" thumbnail in the lower left corner appears briefly to indicate what the new track selection is. This is nice behaviour.

Under Windows 7 (all versions up to RC), the slideshow is interrupted and instead the Now Playing music screen for the newly selected music is displayed. This is very intrusive.

Is there any way to revert back to the Vista behaviour? It only affects the slideshow display; at other points within media center (including when the photowall screensaver is active) the main display is not changed when new music starts.

I'm using host.MediaCenterEnvironment.PlayMedia to play the music. I tried adding my own entrypoint via MediaExperience.EntryPointId after starting the music -- this works fine when I select 'Now playing' via the start menu, in that my own application gets control, but it doesn't seem to affect what the slideshow does.

Thoughts and workarounds welcome.

OFF TOPIC: Codec Support Xbox 360

soultaker — Thu, 07 May 2009 09:54:37 GMT

With Windows7 right around the corner are there plans to support all flavors of the wmv on the xbox 360, specifically the following:

Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec V3	MP43
Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec V2	MP42
Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec V1	MP41

Cheers

WYSIWYG media center UI kit? /rant?

thermacore — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 12:59:01 GMT

as text comes off as a crappy way to communicate, my question isn't as forceful as it seems, but, why hasn't microsoft come up with a way to give us a "what you see is what you get" designer for media center? see, compared to wpf, media center has been around longer, and they already are in their third edition of expression blend. why isn't there a version that ties into media center, or a stand alone UI designer? maybe a UI plugin for visual studio?

i, for one, am a noob. i know this, and readily admit it. and right at this moment, i'm crawling into my flame suit from the impending flame war...

in expression blend i can quickly and easily create animations, applications, etc, without coding one single line of wpf. i know some of you purists are thinking that's not a good way to program, but it gets the job done. i've just started to teach myself how to program (i'm 31, VERY late in the game compared to some), and...i can hear the purists footsteps behind me...quite frankly, i don't have time to learn another language, between kids, work (obviously not related to computers), balancing time with your wife so she doesn't feel like you've left her for your computer...

and i know some of you are thinking,"well, maybe programming isn't for you", but i think that with a UI kit for something would ease the pain of learning mcml, because you can see how things are implimented easily.

so, how bout it, charlie, have you guys looked into it? i guess i can't speak for everyone else, but i have at least 10 good ideas for media center, but between trying to learn c#, c++, objective c, a UI kit would SIGNIFICANTLY streamline development for me.

personally, i love media center and the way the extenders handle it. with the beta of the new version, media center's damn near perfect (i wish i could add things to the stock MC components, ie. Zone controls to a multi zone music system in the Music tab). i think the "resume" function to the Videos system is a long needed change. i recently converted to the ati cablecard system in my house, ripped all my music and dvds, and i couldn't feel happier with my current setup. i'd like to add more lifestyle apps into MC, and like i said before, a UI kit would streamline things unbelievably for me.

again, i'm not trying to set a tone of picking a fight with anyone here, but i'm asking why this hasn't been implemented? is it because wpf apps can run on all versions of vista and media center is limited to 2 versions? is it becasue media center has a smaller percentage of users? is it because windows is targeting more of a business market than an entertainment market? is it because the people who learn mcml come up with higher quality apps? guys, am i alone in feeling this way?

If you've recently registered for this site

Charlie — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 08:13:48 GMT

If you've recently registered for this site please send me an email to charlieo@microsoft.com so I can approve you into the system.

Pioneer reciever status within WIN7 MCE

jacobjust — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 08:15:55 GMT

Hi everyone

I have got my pioneer reciever show status on screen with sound input, volume, sound source on overlay in other htpc software.

But in MCE it will not show in overlay ... no mather what i try.

So question is, how do i get my program to show the status in MCE window?

What i need is 1 line text to show for approx 2-3 seconds, then dissapear.

(All inputs i get from RS232 to my little program)

Any help very apreciated :-)

Regards

Simpler workflow for debugging media center plugins

sambo99 — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 01:39:48 GMT

FYI, I posted this blog post which outlines a simpler way to debug your MCML addins

Hope you find it handy

Z Sample Application wix problems

woolooloo — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 18:28:48 GMT

I'm trying to play with the z sample application (from SDK 5.3), but the .wxs file that comes with it doesn't seem to be compatible with the current Wix3.0 release.

It gives the following errors (summarized):

Line 607, DestinationName and DestinationLongName cannot both be specified. Further, DestinationLongName is deprecated. So I remove the DestinationLongName attribute.

Lines 897, 907, the DirectorySearch Id "EhomeDirectory" is a duplicate. So I append "1" and "2" onto the end of EhomeDirectory for each one to make them unique.

Wix now runs and creates a .MSI file, but when I run it, near the end it starts rolling back. The install log shows:

MSI (s) (94:A4) [13:09:04:074]: Executing op: ProgressTotal(Total=1,Type=1,ByteEquivalent=1300000)
MSI (s) (94:A4) [13:09:04:076]: Executing op: ServiceInstall(Name=DownloadManager,DisplayName=Z Download Manager,ImagePath="C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Z\DownloadManagerService.exe",ServiceType=16,StartType=3,ErrorControl=32769,,,,,Password=**********,Description=Manages file downloads for the Z Windows Media Center Sample Application)
MSI (s) (94:A4) [13:09:05:260]: Executing op: ActionStart(Name=ExecSecureObjects,,)
Action 13:09:05: ExecSecureObjects.
MSI (s) (94:A4) [13:09:05:265]: Executing op: CustomActionSchedule(Action=ExecSecureObjects,ActionType=3073,Source=BinaryData,Target=ExecSecureObjects,CustomActionData=Z_DownloadManagerService?ServiceInstall??Users?511)
MSI (s) (94:F8) [13:09:05:300]: Invoking remote custom action. DLL: C:\Windows\Installer\MSIB41C.tmp, Entrypoint: ExecSecureObjects
ExecSecureObjects: Error 0x80070424: failed to get security info for object: Z_DownloadManagerService
Action ended 13:09:05: InstallFinalize. Return value 3.
MSI (s) (94:A4) [13:09:05:326]: User policy value 'DisableRollback' is 0

Can someone help me get this straightened out?

videos not playing some times..

krishkv23 — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:42:57 GMT

hello all,

i am developing an application using MCML.. i am trying to append video in a page.. i have all the other controls like play, pause,stop and everything get working.. but the problem is the video is playing fine for the first time.. then when i go back to previous screen and try to play the same video again i dont see it playing.. it is not giving any errors.. but it is giving me black screen in the place where the video is supposed to play...

the video i am trying to play is in database somewhere else...

NowPlaying Focus

mjp14 — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:15:45 GMT

Ive found a couple older threads on the same question with no real answers. So I will ask again, is there a definitive way to detect whether the NowPlaying element has focus other than checking if every other visible UI doesn't have focus. That isn't really an easy option for me to implement..

N00b question regarding where to start

Dino — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 04:41:14 GMT

Gee - someone has to be first eh?

I wish to write an annin/app for Media Center, but wanted to get some input as to which option is best for me before I went too far down the wrong track. MCML, or XAML? And with XAML, aren't there 2 "options" - loose XAML, or XBAP app or something?

Here's my "wish list":

1. I'd like it to be either on the main menu (alongside TV, Media Library) etc if possible. If not, in Music as another option would be good. If that's not possible, then in Online Media as an Application is ok.

2. I'd like it to "share" the Media Center look and feel as much as possible (I'm re-writing a Jukebox application I wrote 10 years ago, and figured Media Center with remote control features would be perfect) but I'd like it to feel like it's part of Media Center as much as possible.

I've looked at a VS.Net 2008 Media Center app (MCML) and the sample Word Game one in XAML, and I think I need to go XAML to get the Media Center look and feel, but I've yet to find how to integrate it to Media Center - with the MCML one, the whole setup etc was included. Ideas? I've also posted this to the XAML forum for opinions there...

Cheers,

Dino

Click-To-Record negative value on prepadding/postpadding

kumkwai — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:52:24 GMT

Hi everyone,

After some tests, it looks like I can't specify negative values for prepadding/postpadding in a C2R xml.

It looks like Andyn had the same kind of problem :

http://discuss.mediacentersandbox.com/forums/permalink/3632/3635/ShowThread.aspx#3635

Can someone confirm me that this is a bug please ? or is there something special to do to use prepadding/postpadding with negative values.

[Precision : everything works fine for me if prepadding/postpadding have positive values]

Thanks in advance to anyone who would have time to spend to answer.

Why wont these images display?

MrBungle — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 01:00:34 GMT

Okay one more question and I'll stop bothering you guys.

For some reson these images will not load in media center:

These are from an axis video server. I noticed however, if I request these image in my browser first, then media center loads them...why is that?

Most other images do not do this for example this image, from an axis camera, works just fine without first requesting it in my browser:

Before you copy and paste these into your browser to test the url...try it in media center, otherwise it "appears" to work because media center resolves the cached image (because it was cached by the browser?).

XBAP application in Mozila browser

chetandeshmukh — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:07:58 GMT

Hello Friends,

I have some problem while opening XBAP application in Mozila browser. When I execute any XBAP application in Mozila browser it opens multiple browser continuously. We have faced the problem on XP OS as well as Vista OS.

Please let me know what are the settings we are supposed to do to avoid the problem.

Thanks,

Chetan Deshmukh