Contents tagged with MediaCenter
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My Xbox 360 is so D**n Noisy
:rant on
I've had the Xbox 360 for almost 2 years now or something like that, and it's a wonderful console to play games on. Last year I configured it as a media extender and hooked it to my Vista Ultimate box sitting in my office with a Tv-tuner so that I can watch live TV and recorded TV shows on the Xbox.
Everything would be all and well if it wasn't for the amazingly loud noise the 360 gives off. I know about the noisy fans and the DVD drive, and people say they DVD-drive is the worst, but I'm not so sure. The noise from the spinning DVD drive doesn't bother me that much, becasue when me and my son play games, we crank up the volume on the surround system anyway :)
The sound from the Xbox when watching a DVD movie isn't too bad either, because the DVD revs down and the fans too it seems like.
No, what bothers me is the annoyingly loud noise from the machine when using it as a media extender. As soon as I press that green button on the remote and the media center program starts, the fans in the Xbox revs up to a maximum and it sure must be louder than 60 decibel. It almost sounds like a hair dryer for crying out loud. Watching TV late at night with the volume turned down is impossible, you won't hear what they say on the show.
I've been peeking at various Xbox modding articles about how to replace the fans, the DVD drive, adding sound dampeners and what not, but I'm not so sure it helps. Some people say it doesn't help a bit. The only thing that seems to work is to rip out the fans completely and replace with water cooling or bigger external fans. Also, some rumours say Microsoft will detect a modded fan and ban you from Xbox Live, but I think that's an urban legend.
There's also talk about the lates versions of the Xbox 360 console being more quiet than the earlier versions, but how quiet is that?
No, the wife acceptance factor and my own patience will probably have me go back to using a standard cable tv receiver with a recordable disc in it. I was happy to get rid of all the extra equipment from the living room and only have a TV, the Xbox and the surround system but as I said - the noise from the console is just too much.
Any good ideas for what I can do before I dust off and reconnect my old equipment?
:rant off
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Mediacenter Development
In my previous post I wrote something about trying to code something for Mediacenter on Vista, and I did that. I spent a couple of hours and downloaded c# Express and the MC SDK and followed the getting started guide that was included with the SDK. It worked :D
The markup language for MC (MCML) is a bit weird though, and it will take some time getting used to. If you're not going to write MCML every now and then, it will will probably be slow going and loads of trial and error for you. There are some tools (included in the SDK) to help you verify your markup, but it's not like coding (X)HTML or XAML... you've been warned :D
Anyway, I spent 30 minutes and tried to develop a "background" app for Mediacenter, which popped up a message with an image on the screen, and it was pretty easy - I just used the dialog() function with a timeout, which feels a bit like cheating, but it works.
Next step is to have my logitech quickcam ta a snapshot whenever someone rings the doorbell. Either that, or have the doorbell trigger something else which the MC background program can act on. I don't want to make a motion detector, but perhaps I can set up a microphone to detect the doorbell ringing? *weird solution* Should be possible with some minimal activex code I guess... I don't want to replace the doorbell if I really don't have to.
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Resources for Developing Media Center Apps on Vista
The guys that run the Windows Media Center Sandbox blog posted a nice one listing all the resources they talked about on the Hanselman #82 webcast a short while ago. It's a long list of SDKs, tools and samples and looks just like the right stuff to look at if you're interested in developing something for your Media Center setup.
I believe you need to have Vista to use the lastest SDK though, so if you're still on XP Media Center, maybe it's time to look at an upgrade? I just upgraded my XP MCE (yesterday) and it went pretty well except for a few driver problems I had with my HP printer, EPSON scanner and integrated SoundMax audio. I also had to upgrade the drivers for my tv-card (FloppyDTV) but I managed to find Vista drivers for everything eventually!
I'm about to download everything I need to develop something very small for MC and see if I can make it play on my XBOX 360 extender. Scott talked about hooking up a webcam to the door bell and display the picture on the screen. Sounds like a cool idea, but maybe just a bit too complex to start with. I have no idea how to trigger a program from a door bell on a Windows machine in the first place. I used to do stuff with IO ports on my ZX Spectrum some 25 years ago, but I have no clue how to do IO now... ;)