Media Center
I’m not easily impressed, but my jaw is hanging open today after installing two Sonos S5 Music Players to cover my home with end to end music. I’ve used computers, Media Center Extenders and all kinds of hardware and software in the past to move music around my home, but I always had to cobble together pieces and use separate devices and controllers to get what I wanted. What did I want? Well, everything imaginable. The list below is not in any particular order:
1. The ability to stream from ANY of my computers (using Play To or anything else) to more than one music player/renderer simultaneously.
2. To be able to control the volume above individually or together.
3. Play Pandora Radio and other Internet sourced digital music
4. Use existing/create new playlists
5. Use iPhones, iPads and iPxxx whatever to control and manage the device as a remote control (including graphical menus).
6. Use the system as an alarm clock with choices to wake from alarm, music, Internet music, whatever
7. Wireless connectivity in my Living Room
8. A system that was upgradeable.
9. Quality sound
10. Expandability
I’m still stunned that I found a system that does ALL of the above. (And I’m betting I discover more features – I’ve only had a few hours experience with this all, so my exploration and discovery has only just begun).
I’d forgotten that I’d converted many Battlestar Galactica Recorded TV files recorded using Windows Media Center to mp4 files and stashed them away on a NAS drive.
I just had one of those A HA moments and uploaded one of them to my iDisk in the cloud (which comes with my MobileMe subscription). I had been thinking of iDisk as a place in the cloud to stash files, but not as a streaming server. I downloaded the iDisk app to my iPad (and to my iPhone) and yup, I’ve got another place to store media files that can be served to my computers and iPxxx devices over the Internet. Apple supplies 10GB of cloud storage space (compared to the 25GB Microsoft supplies with SkyDrive, but MS doesn’t seem to have an App in the App store <G>).
Here are a couple of captures from my iPad:
Some of my Canadian friends might be pleased to hear that Netflix intends to cross the border officially later this year. You can pre-register now if you are interested at http://www.netflix.ca.
Update: if you are a Rogers customer, this may have triggered lower usage limits. CBC news is reporting that Rogers is lowering their download limits.
Here’s what you’ll see if you access the site from a Canadian IP address.
CBC news has posted info, including the fact that this will be streaming only (no DVD’s by mail). “English only to start, French to follow over time”.
I don’t know if Media Center access to Netflix for Windows 7 Canadian users will be turned on at launch, but am trying to find out.
One comment, if you are a HD snob (and I have no qualms admitting that *I* am), the content is pitiful. And the content for PC’s and Mac’s (a subset) is shameful.
Here’s one I did not expect to work but did. I’ve been able to use Windows Media Center to display non DRM’d High Def content over WiDi (since the TV HD is at best 720p, it will work.. higher 1080p is not support.. maybe someday).
I’d ripped a bunch of movies at 720p to stream to my iPad using Air Video and other options. I was browsing the network folder over RDP that housed these mp4 and double clicked The Day After Tomorrow without really knowing what might happen. My expectation was that since RDP has been so bad at streaming media of any kind that it would be dreadful. To my surprise, it actually worked smoothly and well, including video and audio in sync.
Here’s a shot of my TV where you can see the RDP session and the movie in a Windows Media Player window.
And here is it when I expanded to full screen
I admit that I prefer the Windows Media Center interface over RDP as that losses the menu bar and gives me full screen. But this brings up interesting possibilities of traveling to a friends house with my Push2TV adapter and WiDi enabled laptop and having access to a remote library over the Internet. Probably won’t work as well over the Internet, but I’m up for trying.