A few months ago I finally gave up on Windows Media Center and switched my home media setup to Kodi. After some early challenges I am now mostly happy with my new setup, and today I finally decided to migrate a large collection of old recorded TV from MCE to Kodi.
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Posts Tagged: media center
0Fixed: DVBLink MCE Client first tune fail
One of my many HTPC clients has had a strange problem — the first time it is tuned into a channel it fails with the common (and meaningless) Play Ready error. Changing channel once always seems to bring it back to life however. After much digging around I finally found the very straightforward solution
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0Fixed: DVBLink media center playready message
I’ve been using DVBLink to share TV around my home for several years. Of all the issues with it, the most dreaded is the “Play Ready” error on Windows Media Center clients. The problem is this error message is meaningless — it is generated by Media Center, and just means it can’t get a signal from the tuner. The failure could be anywhere behind the scenes. Recently my 2 main clients started throwing this error completely out of the blue.
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0Play BluRays and DVD’s in MediaCenter with MPC-HC
I’ve long run Windows Media Center on my HTPCs in combination with DVBLink and MediaBrowser. However, recently we have been watching more physical disks than in the past, and I have found various issues with Media Center. Usually I have MPC-HC configured as an external player, but doing this for physical disks proved less than simple. Eventually however, I have managed to get it working flawlessly.
1How to set remote control jump keys for MPC-HC
As I’ve documented in the past, I have several HTPC’s running Windows Media Center. I also use MediaBrowser for TV series and movies ripped from disk. I’ve found that MediaBrowser works much better with an external player than the internal player — performance seems to be superior — so I use Media Player Classic Home Cinema. I also have several Media Center remote controls for use with the various HTPCs, and one of the most frequently used pairs of buttons are the “jump” or “skip” buttons which in media center jump the current playback forward by 30 seconds or back by 30 seconds. This is really handy for skipping adverts in recorded TV. However, under default installation settings these keys don’t work when playing videos in MPC-HC. After much trial and error I finally figured out the correct configuration
0Get Media Center 8 free
If you’ve got Windows 8 Pro, and wish to add Media Center to it you need a key from Microsoft. In future this wont be free, but you can get one free until 31ਸ੍ਟ੍ਰੀਟ Jan 2013 thanks to a Microsoft offer. I have registered for mine, even though I don’t run Windows 8 because I may want to use it in future so why not!
0Media Center Themer 1.45
Media Center Themer 1.45 has been released. This finally brings support for adding items to built-in menus, making full Media Center menu customisation possible. v1.45 is also compatible with Windows 8. This finally relegates Media Center Studio to history.
0Updates: MediaBrowser 2.6 and TunerFreeMCE 5.0.8
In the last few days my 2 favourite plugins for Media Center have been updated. I highly recommend installing both updates — Whilst TunerFreeMCE has only had a minor version update, Media Browser has added several significant new features.
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0Three more strikes against Windows 8
In case the Metro UI isn’t[intlink id=“2543” type=“post”]repellent[/intlink] enough, Microsoft have admitted 3 more things that should make anyone considering Windows 8 think twice.… Read Full Article
1Solution to Media Center Library Error
A couple of days ago I started getting an error on my HTPC when I tried to change library locations — either adding or removing. Media Center shows the error which says “A necessary component of windows media center did not start properly. Restart windows media center”. I understand this error can also affect Media Center Extenders… Read Full Article
“Hi James I realise it has been a long while, but I just checked this on windows 11 (build 23H2)…”