The Blog of G

This is one of those posts that’s more to help me next time I need to this more than anything else so feel free to just keep walking

If, like me, you purchased your Microsoft MCE Remote System as an OEM, it’s likely that you didn’t receive the instruction leaflet with it or you have lost it in the meantime.

So for those who want to program it (very limited functionality but useful) – I tracked down a guide that I used some time ago – hope it helps

Windows XP Media Centre Edition remote

The TV, Vol+ and Vol- buttons on the remote control can “learn” IR commands from other remote controls. This feature lets you use the TV button to turn on your TV and the Vol+ and Vol- buttons to adjust the volume on your TV or another device such as an audio receiver.

By default the Vol+ and Vol- buttons on the remote your pc system volume and the TV button has no command assigned until it “learns” one.

For best results don’t attempt this in bright or natural light.

1. Place the remote head-to-head (2-3″ apart) with the remote control from which it is learning

2. On the MCE remote press and hold the DVD MENU and OK buttons at the same time until the LED turns off. (~2 sec)

The remote is now in learning mode.

3. On the MCE remote, press and release the TV, Vol+ and Vol-, depending on which command you want it to learn.

The MCE remote blinks once to confirm the choice.

4. On the remote control that is teaching the command, press and hold the button that you want the corresponding button on the MCE remote to learn.

The MCE remote LED flashes twice to confirm the selection

If the remote did not learn the command, the LED blinks quickly four times.

To try again, repeat steps 1 through 4.

To restore the default remote control settings

1. Press and hold the DVD MENU button and the LEFT navigation button at the same time until the MCE remote LED turns off.

2. Press the OK button.

The MCE remote LED blinks twice to confirm that the buttons have been reset.

The TV button will have no command assigned to it and the Vol+ and Vol- will adjust the MCE system volume.

If the default settings were not restored, the LED will blink quickly four times. To try again, repeat steps 1 and 2.

It’s a question people ask, often with an air of disbelief, like why would you want to have a pc in your living room?

There are a lot of plus sides to it, not least of which is a 32″ widescreen monitor to surf the web with. But that’s only a small plus, first off what does a HTPC do for you?

Well a home theatre personal computer is exactly that it’s a computer for your home theatre, or in my case, living room. How does this add to your home theatre? for a start it’s 1 box for your DVD player, all your music, digital photo’s, TV recording’s and Home Movies. That’s what Windows Media Centre 2005 will do out of the box. Is it difficult to setup? not really, you can do it all from the remote once the operating system is installed.

For me there are 3 killer features…

1. My Photos – allows basic photo editing and slideshowing your photo albums
2. My Music – The Music collection
3. My TV – schedule and watch TV recording’s

The last of these gets the most use in our house, although having a photo slide show as wallpaper means both myself and Elly get to see those precious moments plenty.

I love the Music portion of Media centre, it was a bit time consuming to get all the info and album art sorted out but once thats done, it makes it so easy to find your favourite artists’ or albums. I’ll post another time about my personal experiences tagging over 20 Gb or about 10,000 individual audio files, it’s actually not as time consuming as you might think.

Where Media centre comes into it’s own is working hand in hand with our set top box for TV. it means outside of Grand Prix, neither myself or Ellybabes watch TV “live” anymore. Instead we record all our favourite TV shows and we can watch whatever takes our fancy at that particular time. So much better than spending 20 minutes flicking through channels till you find something worth watching.

This is really easy to do, just search by keyword till you find the program you like and select “record series” you can even tell it to record all showings on all channels or just new episodes, but once you take those 2 minutes to decide that, media centre just does it. The NTL set top box is far less reliable, needing to be rebooted at least once a week.

What if 2 shows are on at the same time? first media centre tries to find an alternative showing of either show, if it can’t then, it decides what to record based on the recording priorities the user sets. So for instance, we’re huge “Bones” and “Boston legal” fans, to make sure we don’t miss an episode these are top of our priority list.

Whereas “The Simpsons” which is on so many channels and almost daily, it’s near the bottom of the priority list as there always being re-shown.

What all this means is that when we sit down to relax and watch some telly what we want to watch is always on.

So is that it? well not entirely, there is a lot more to it than that and in a future post, I’ll touch on the why I chose Microsoft Media Centre and the benefits that it will bring when we move into our new home.

Wow, I spotted this on Gizmodo yesterday. An unconfirmed rumour of a new Logitech peripheral ideal for the HTPC user with a Media Centre PC. I just hope that it’s not Vista only. That would rule me out for the foreseeable future. I’ve heard to many storeys about DRM gone mad on the new Microsoft OS so I’m not planning on upgrading until I get a chance to check them out further.

Anyway, this little keyboard is a great idea, we’ve gotten used to having a wireless keyboard and mouse in the living room as well as the remote, but it would be nice to be able to put them away outta sight and still have all the functionality.

There was another problem with the HTPC…

What to do with the boxes?