It's finally here.  The new Halo 2 Skin for Windows Media Player 10 is ready for your downloading enjoyment at wmplugins.com. Professionally designed, Terry on our team worked with Bungie Studios' Joe Staten and company to bring this together with The Skins Factory.

And don't forget about the new RSS feeds for WMPlugins.com - now you can automatically get notified when new plug-ins are available for Windows Media Player 10 or browse lists such as top downloaded or top rated.

I received a mail today from Keith who just got his HP Digital Entertainment Center z545 and blogs about it.  In his own words, “Heck, Apple products are cool, but the DEC is easily the best looking consumer electronic (CE) device I've ever purchased.” 

What's even cooler is that he's posted a Photo Story (.zip file) unveil of his new acquisition. Keith has inspired me to create a Photo Story of my home setup- MCE, MCX, Roku Digital Audio Receiver with WM Connect (which I need to blog on later), Portable Media Center, Tablet and how it all comes together for entertaining this holiday season.

If you're looking for an HP Digital Entertainment Center to check out, you might try your local Best Buy.  Ryan (my son) and I spent some time down at the local BB in Bellevue where they're retooling the store and have an HP DEC Z540 (single tuner) in a living room setup in the TV/Home Theater Department. A rep from Intel was bringing people over from the PC area to check it out.  I can't guarantee they'll all have cable feeds and Internet connections to do a full test drive but call your local Best Buy and ask if they have it if you're interested in seeing it in person.

Oh, and DigitalJoy.com is now live with special Internet offers from HP on new Media Center PCs. The nationwide ad should be hitting tonight on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and ESPN's Sunday Night Football. My favorite part is when the cartoon blue bird lands on the finger of the Alien (yes, from Aliens).  If you don't know what I'm talking about, you soon will ;).  This is not your regular Microsoft ad or your regular Intel ad.

Speaking of which, I just upgraded my home desktop system with an Intel P4 3.2Ghz processor with HT technology.  Fry's was having a $209 fire sale that included motherboard.  My system is SCREAMING now compared to before (my old system was nearing 2.5 years old).  Why didn't I upgrade earlier you might ask?  I try to keep at least one real-world test system at home with mediocre hardware so I can keep tabs on what our experiences are like for mainstream as well as enthuasiasts.

Keep the emails coming :)

In your choice of colors.  I've played with it, and it's pretty darn good.  Probably next on my list after the Rio Carbon right now.  The removable battery is nice and the cheaper price versus another White.  Oh, did I mention it PlaysforSure with your choice of music stores? It also syncs natively in WM Player 10 or with a remote contorl with Windows XP Media Center 2005 PCs. Choice of color, choice of stores, $234-$235 at Buy.com.  What color is your Micro?

HP's new Dual-Tuner Digital Entertainment Center - the z545 is now available for order online at HPShopping.com.  While this unit doesn't support HDTV tuning/recording, it does a great job recording two live TV programs at the same time via satellite, digital cable, standard cable or antenna.  It's a super-sleek design. Trust me, this thing doesn't look like a PC from the front or the back.  HP did an amazing job making it simple to hook up and designed it like a consumer electronics device. Check out the Tom's Hardware Sneak Preview for pictures of the front and back as well.

Instant classic.  I was jaded and didn't want to like yet another cutesy Pixar movie.  But this wasn't too cutesy.  A little slow in a few places mid-way in but had parents of all ages and kids of many ages rolling.  Another big win for Pixar.  Congrats Brad Bird.

A little sneak peek...

digitaljoy.com on November 7th

I'll write more afterwards.

Find out Sunday during primetime: ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition or ESPN's Sunday Night Football.

One of our all-stars on the Media Center App Extensibility team is now blogging :).  Welcome CharlieO! Charlie has some great articles up on his blog with tips and tricks for creating not just good apps, but well designed apps for Media Center including his latest today, “Demystifying Scale in Media Center Hosted HTML Applications”.  If you're a developer and kicking tires on Media Center or doing full-scale app development, Charlie's is an RSS feed you have to subscribe to.

Welcome to the Blogosphere Charlie!

Let the frenzy begin.  I was Midnight Madness at the Redmond EBX store for the Xbox/Halo launch three years ago.  It was insane. This year, I'm taking vacation time to be a part of the experience and get a little gaming and will likely document it as a Photo Story.

But I'm also a soundtrack nut so I was psyched when my buddies Pete and Cameron from the Bungie/Halo team told me about the new Halo 2 Soundtrack.  They got some pretty big names including Incubus and Hoobastank lined up doing new music inspired by the game.  I'll be getting the soundtrack November 9th as well- I think it's going to be on MSN Music for download.

But why wait? have a listen to the first track here.

The Media Center apps just keep on rolling this week. Joshua Schipman at HTPCNews points us to the Game EX MCE Plug-in for Windows XP Media Center Edition. For those not familiar, MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Yes, you can play all your favorite old console games and others on your PC. Naturally you'll want to actually own any of the games you play, but this is a great tutorial and he comes away impressed with Media Center and Game EX front end saying, “Overall I would say this is one of the easiest front ends I have used to date.”

Keep sending your cool MCE apps my way! :)

Here's a quick tip for anyone playing back DVDs in Media Player (all versions), or owns a Media Center PC or a Portable Media Center: make sure your DVD decoders are up to date. DVD decoder manufacturers are continually improving their products and adding features such as faster-than-realtime decode which can dramatically improve performance when converting video for devices such as Portable Media Center.  A new utility from Microsoft makes it easy to check if your system is happy and healthy.

The Windows XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility (163kb)

It's like getting your car oil changed, particularly if you're running an older PC with MP10 and Portable Media Center.  I hope you find this Friday tip helpful.

First, PC Magazine's cover screamed “Toss your TiVo”, now PC World says, “Windows XP Media Center 2005 connects smoothly with video and audio equipment.”

Wow, it's really great to see when the product the team has worked so hard to deliver is so well received.

Engadget has an article about the new Monster iCruze and notes you can connect a certain portable music player to just about any car-stereo and bypass crappy FM transceiver solutions.  Gee, not all of us own BMWs you say...

Here's another idea: go to your local Circuit City, Car Toys, or any other car stereo installer, and plunk down less than half the cost of just this unit for a simple stereo jack that does effectively the same thing- plays your music.  Oh, and you're not locked into a single portable music player either.

While the display might be cool, I'm looking forward to the day when they realize support for more than only music player is a good thing and people wisen up to cheaper alternatives.

A few weeks ago, I noted NetFlix's drop in price which they're making good on and pined for a NetFlix HTML front-end for Media Center so I could kick back with the remote and as I see an ad for a new movie coming out on DVD, I could hop over to Netflix and add it to my queue.  I mentioned it shouldn't be too hard- just a little DHTML.  Then a few folks tipped me off to a cool freeware HTML add-in that does just this by Ryan Hurst. Using NetFlix's RSS feeds and the Web, Ryan has written a simple HTML add-in for Media Center that enables 10' browsing of your NetFlix account movie queue, Suggestions, New Releases, Top 100, Top 25 by Genre, details and more.

First be sure to read NetFlix's terms re: personalized RSS feeds. You can download Ryan's NetFlix HTML Front-End (or Weather link, or Recipe Finder and others) from here.

This is what I'm talking about: the power of the Windows platform for developing cool apps for Media Center.  Other PVRs are gated- they generally decide the experience you get. I love Netflix and if this is the direction that Media Center enthusiasts are going, there are going to be a lot of cool new experiences ahead.

Keep sending me your cool Media Center apps and post them to community sites like www.thegreenbutton.com

Omar Sahine has to be one of the most talented and passionate developers I've seen in a while.  He's the major author/contributor to DasBlog, which this site is based on, and he's building cool utilities like the Media Center Front Panel Display SDK you'll fine here. Using the SDK you can be informed of current Media Center state (such as name of tv show, current navigation location etc) and display that state on a number of devices.

Ugh.  I hate being sick but it gives me a few minutes here and there to catch up on posting. Here's a nice little utility just updated last week that reportedly allows Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 or 2005 to use the serial port on DirecTV Set-top boxes rather than an IR blaster for control.  Disclaimer: I don't know how well this works- I ditched DirecTV begrudgingly for Digital Cable in order to get local HD channels in my area a few months back when we moved. Let me know how it works for you.

I'm a bit of a remote control nut.  About this time every year, I get fed up with the remote I have and move to a new one - Madrigal/Microsoft remote, RCA Universal, Philips Pronto, Home Theater Master MX-500... my wife is about to pull her hair out.

So, putting household harmony at risk again, I sheepishly arrived at home a few weeks back with a new remote - the Logitech Harmony 688 - the big brother of the 680 remote recently announced for MCE05.

Setup was a breeze - all I had to do was use the Web service to identify my devices and blammo, download the config into my remote.  After setup, the first thing it does is ask about the power state of your devices- smart state technology means the remote keeps track of the power “state“ (on or off) for each device.  And it's completely customizable- I use two set-top boxes to do dual-tuner recording in MCE - naturally I want these left on all the time and the Harmony remote delivers.

One feature that is lacking is a “Green Button”  - a signature button consistent on all Media Center remotes that ship with Media Center PCs. However, a “Media” button does the trick by providing this feature.

It's not perfect and the controls do take some learning but I'm closer to home theater nirvana.  If you have a Media Center PC, check out the Harmony 680

[Ed. Note: Updated link to website]

Andrew Park showcases a few new Media Center 2005 PCs including the Alienware DHS and HP Digital Entertainment Center, noting

”...only Microsoft has delivered true integration of computing and video entertainment.“

You can read the whole article here.  One thing to note, the HP Digital Entertainment Center currently available at HPShopping.com is the z540 (single tuner).  The z545 Andrew previewed will be released soon from what I understand (sorry, not date available).

And just when you thought all the consumer goodies for Windows went out the door at the Windows Digital Entertainment Anywhere event in LA, there are more goodies in store: Microsoft Photo Story 3 for Windows, a new freely downloadable item made available to Windows XP users. It's like Windows Movie Maker but for your Photos :).

• Download Photo Story 3 for Windows
• More info and Samples

Note: site is still propping at time of this announce.

Photo Story 3 for Windows makes it easier than ever to share life’s memorable moments in new ways by adding motion, effects, music and more to your digital photos. The resulting slideshow-like video can then be easily shared in a # of ways. The files are small thanks to the new Windows Media Image v2 codec.  Anyone with WM Player 7 or higher can enjoy Photo Stories with a small automatic codec download; WM Player 10 is recommended and includes this new codec as well.

This new version addresses the top customer feature requests including:

Easy Capture and Touch Up

• Easier image import with resizable thumbnail browser and MSN Groups support
• Image touch-up tools built-in to fix top issues like red-eye, color and contrast without changing the original
• Automatically remove black borders from a single image or all your images with technology from Microsoft Research
• Built-in support for panoramic images

More features for personalization

• Add custom pan and zoom effects without limits - including superzoom
• 40 transitions - previous versions only supported crossfade, this version addresses a top request with features like diagonal wipes, flips, and page curls. Oh and did I mention the photo effects like Sepia, Black/White, Chalk and more?
• Improved titling- add titles or captions on any photo in your story
• Built-in soundtrack creator for royalty-free music from a wide range of styles
• Add multiple MP3 and WMA files to create your own soundtrack
• Write in your own cheat-sheet notes for narration

Easy Sharing

• One-click attach to email - uses your preferred email client
• Burn to CD using Windows XP's built-in CD burning
• Burn to DVD with Media Center Edition 2005 PCs or 3rd party apps like Sonic MyDVD
• Share in person on Windows Mobile devices including Portable Media Center
• Works even better with Windows Media Player 10 Mobile devices including the Audiovox SMT-5600 Smartphone from AT&T Wireless/Cingular and the Dell Axim X50 Pocket PC

So... what's your photo story?  Play with it over Halloween - use it for your party, your kids costumes etc and post a link here.

Wow, and just in time for the holidays, I received this mail:

Over the last five years, we've grown the Netflix community to over 2.2 million satisfied members. We appreciate your business, and our goal has always been to provide you great service.

Since our price increase in June, some of our members have expressed concerns about the new pricing. We've listened to this feedback and are pleased to inform you that we're lowering the price of your Netflix 3-at-a-time program from $21.99 per month to 17.99 per month.

You don't need to do anything. Your membership will automatically move to the lower 17.99 price. The lower price will appear on your next bill on or after November 1, 2004. You will still get the same great service and convenience, but now you will pay less for it. So please sit back, relax and enjoy your movies!

-Your Friends at Netflix

Thank you NetFlix, I'm keeping my subscription.  But how about supporting Media Center with a simple app that taps into your RSS/XML feeds so I can browse for new movies, update my queue, and rent all in one place? ;)

Furrygoat has a good tip on how to add additional codec (video) types to play back in Media Center which brings up another topic: additional codec support in Windows Media Player 10. That got me thinking it's time to talk about a new feature in MP10- easier discovery of 3rd party codecs. Windows Media offers stellar audio and video quality, but there are a # of legacy formats out there and codecs that others are using.

Whether Dolby Digital, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, TechSmith Snagit Screen Capture or others, there is a wide range of audio and video types out there that MP10 can play. This is an area of support frustration for consumers, so to address it, we added a feature to MP10.  When MP10 hits a codec type it doesn't recognize, you now get the opportunity to check WMPlugins.com to see if a codec is available, or you can easily browse for yourself.

You can see a list of currently registered codecs here. But we need your help.  We really want to fill out this list with known good codecs. Please let your favorite codec (audio and video) developers know that they can register their codecs for free at www.wmplugins.com. 

So the question becomes, how do you ensure a codec is of good quality?  WMPlugins.com is designed to be community driven, so we've added the ability to both rate codecs on a wide range of criteria, and write your own reviews - a top requested feature. 

So codec developers out there - be sure to register at www.wmplugins.com and enthusiasts, tell your favorite developers to submit their plug-ins for free today, rate and discuss your experiences. WMPlugins.com doesn't host downloads- it's just a referral site or catalog of sorts. Please help get the word out to help your fellow Player users and thanks.

Thanks to The Green Button, I just found two more cool applications for Media Center 2005:

mceWeather: Shows your current weather, forecast and sattelite-image of your city on your tv!

mceContacts: Now you have all your contacts, adresses, telephone-numbers right on your TV or monitor. Supports import from Outlook but I can't vouch for how well.

It's great to see more developers writing apps for Media Center.  Let me know if you come across any cool apps as well.

Something I've been pushing to get for some time has been RSS feeds for WMPlugins.com - the source for add-ons for Windows Media Player 10.  I'm happy to give a little early announcement :).  Now if you're running a Player/Digital Media enthusiast site, you can easily add a small HTML file that displays the latest on WMPlugins.com. Go ahead, try out the new Alienware skin, the MP10 Energy Bliss Viz or more.  Great for MP10 or Media Center.

Master RSS Feed (all 4 below)
http://www.wmplugins.com/RSSFeed.Aspx

Latest Additions to WMPlugins.com
http://www.wmplugins.com/RSSFeedLatestAdditions.Aspx

Featured on WMPlugins.com
http://www.wmplugins.com/RSSFeedFeatured.aspx

Highest Rated on WMPlugins.com
http://www.wmplugins.com/RSSFeedHighestRated.aspx

We're still ironing out some minor issues (eg. spell checking) but we hope you enjoy.  We'll have a page up next week that describes the RSS feeds and possibly some sample code to incorporate into your own site. Let me know what you think.