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Windows Media Center Questions

post #1 of 9
8/29/08 at 7:40am
Thread Starter 
I've been wondering for a while now if any of these things are possible with media center:

- Automatically skipping commercials when recording
- Waking itself from sleep mode when a recording is scheduled
- Setting up a second PC as an Extender instead of buying one for $300
- Increasing the image quality of Standard-def TV (the quality looks much better with the cable box directly hooked up to the TV)


Anyone know definitively if these are possible?
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post #2 of 9
8/30/08 at 9:27am
I havnt real used WMC but I know it can wake its self up to record and then sleep afterwards.

As for you other questions, sorry I cant help any more.
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post #3 of 9
8/30/08 at 11:30am
hello again, yes you can configure WMC with a plug in to skip commercials, more info here:

http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/archi...16/585753.aspx

Oh and thanks for the rep!
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post #4 of 9
8/30/08 at 11:51am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by PinkPenguin View Post
hello again, yes you can configure WMC with a plug in to skip commercials, more info here:

http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/archi...16/585753.aspx

Oh and thanks for the rep!
That only skips during playback, I was hoping for something to skip them during recording!

I'll keep it in mind as a last resort though. Ty

Anyone else know the answer to the other 2 questions?
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post #5 of 9
8/31/08 at 12:29pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Manyak View Post
I've been wondering for a while now if any of these things are possible with media center:

- Automatically skipping commercials when recording
- Waking itself from sleep mode when a recording is scheduled
- Setting up a second PC as an Extender instead of buying one for $300
- Increasing the image quality of Standard-def TV (the quality looks much better with the cable box directly hooked up to the TV)


Anyone know definitively if these are possible?
I know media center can wake from sleeping to record. My Sony VAIO does it all the time. It must be configured to do so. Unfortunately I don't know how to do it or I'd tell you.
I'm pretty sure you cannot configure it to not record commercials though. Seems like someone "should" be able to write a program for that, but I've never heard that anyone has.
I've seen DVD players that upconvert standard def to Hi def, so far though I haven't one for PCs.
The extender question I don't know about. It seems like it should just a program, maybe see if one of the programmers could answer that.Like Licht.
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post #6 of 9
8/31/08 at 3:44pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by x2s3w4 View Post
I know media center can wake from sleeping to record. My Sony VAIO does it all the time. It must be configured to do so. Unfortunately I don't know how to do it or I'd tell you.
I'm pretty sure you cannot configure it to not record commercials though. Seems like someone "should" be able to write a program for that, but I've never heard that anyone has.
I've seen DVD players that upconvert standard def to Hi def, so far though I haven't one for PCs.
The extender question I don't know about. It seems like it should just a program, maybe see if one of the programmers could answer that.Like Licht.
Yeah its not really the upscaling on DVDs that I'm worried about, its the actual cable TV. With my box hooked directly up to the TV (no PC) the picture quality is much better. The PC blurs the picture a bit. I'm just wondering if that's a driver issue, hardware issue, or if its just Media Center itself.
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post #7 of 9
9/1/08 at 8:12pm
I'm pretty sure Media uses the task scheduler in Vista and it seems like that work pretty well. On my desktop, I have backup scheduled (using a third party program) and disk defrag. The only bone I have to pick is sometimes an OS update overnight will force a reboot of your system and it doesn't care what's open. Not really a problem for media center anyhow.


As far as a second PC as a media extender, I have asked that question here before and I think I found the answer. Seems like a lot of people want this, after all the whole point of media center is to get away from dedicated HW IMO. In fact if you look at the reviews for that Linksys extender on Amazon most report that it's riddled with bugs (or was when I looked).

http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/179665.aspx
Edited by alexh - 9/1/08 at 8:23pm
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post #8 of 9
9/3/08 at 10:39am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Manyak View Post
Yeah its not really the upscaling on DVDs that I'm worried about, its the actual cable TV. With my box hooked directly up to the TV (no PC) the picture quality is much better. The PC blurs the picture a bit. I'm just wondering if that's a driver issue, hardware issue, or if its just Media Center itself.
I have the same issue. I've been trying to solve it for a while now with no luck. I'm building a new htpc right now so once I get up and running again I'll give it another go. It would be great to get it to work because the difference between a regular box and a dvr is almost double.
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post #9 of 9
9/3/08 at 10:43am
Quote:
- Waking itself from sleep mode when a recording is scheduled
The OS will do this. You don't even need WMC running for this. There's a seperate service that does this.
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