For a while now, if you wanted to enjoy WMV HD movies or WMA Pro audio on your PC and get 5.1-7.1 audio, you needed to have a sound card that supported the format (eg. SB Audigy) and connect 5+ discete audio cables to a receiver that supported analog-in. If you connected a single, thin S/PDIF optical or coaxial cable to your receiver, you'd get only 2-channel stereo audio (PCM) out of your system.  The only way to get WMA Pro over your S/PDIF was to buy a $4000+ Pioneer Elite VSX-59TXi line receiver (pictured). Not exactly affordable for Media Center owners. Not to mention I wouldn't trust most furniture to hold this thing up- it's so heavy it takes two people to move around the demo unit we have at work :).

The good news is that Pioneer announced at CES they will release (in March), a complete line of stereo AV components with full support for WMA Pro decode, starting at a sub-$300 price point.  All of these support your traditional Dolby Digital, DTS, DVD Audio formats and then some.  It's great to see Pioneer driving new features down to a price point that historically has been only available to the home theater upper-crust.

Dear Podcasters (as in content providers, e.g. Adam Curry),

I am interested in what many of you have to say and have become an avid podcaster, listening on my trips to/from work.  I use my Smartphone (Audiovox SMT-5600) and Creative Zen Micro regularly to listen to your programs while in my car.  I often have to crank the volume ALL the way up to hear what you are saying. I get comfortable, then get aurally SLAPPED by a sound-bite or other large change in your decibels.  That's beyond unprofessional- it can be dangerous. I could be wrong but I believe professional broadcasting has specfications that guard against this.

Case in point: I was listening to Adam Curry's, "The Daily Source Code (1/20)" podcast in my car.  After a somewhat disarming introduction that made me identify with Adam (who I've always enjoyed), after hearing the vmail he appeared to receive, I was hooked by his intro.  Unfortunately the intro segment turned into a blaring sound that almost blew my car speakers out due to lack of proper audio leveliing. Adam uses the same intro segment, "The power of..." in every show but this time something was horribly awry.  I'm normally pretty forgiving but my car speakers don't seem right after this happened and honestly, my ears rang for about an hour afterwards.

I'm seeing this a lot in podcasting- this is a BIG problem.  I don't pretend to have worked in the professional broadcasting industry however listening to those that have, I'd like to hope we can do better than this.

In order for podcasting to be successful long-term, the Podcasters must step-up the professionalism of their product starting with audio quality - noise gates, normalization, and fidelity must be improved.  Broadband offers an opportunity to deliver a better product than FM radio.  I'm sure this isn't an easy solution but hope it will be taken seriously.

One idea could be for someone to write a DSP plug-in for WM Player 10 that evaluates the entire podcast and adjusts the audio level intelligently across the file, smoothing out peaks and upping decibels in low-areas of the broadcast. Think of it as an "image sharpen" filter for audio.

I have nothing but empathy for those creating the Podcasts and nothing but respect for Adam whom I've enjoyed since I lived in the Tri-State area so many years ago and Adam introduced me to new music on MTV- I'm sure this isn't easy and many are still learning.  But I hope that this is a priority to improve their product moving forward- I want to listen without fear of being, "Podwhacked". :)

Update: That was fast- Adam responded in email noting there's really not too much that can be done, "...unless someone makes some really good podcasting software."  Anyone out there working on good Podcast-production software?

I don't watch a ton of TV, but I do have two dual-tuner PVRs - a MSTV-powered Motorola STB, and a MCE. Why?  "Research"  Or maybe it's because tonight I hit the "perfect storm" for sci-fi buffs and household harmony is at-risk:

Star Trek: Enterprise
Stargate: SG-1
Stargate: Atlantis
Battlestar: Galactica (The new one)
all one night...

My wife wants to record CSI and some other program which conflicts with two of these.  So, I concede and record CSI in HD on the downstairs Comcast box, and get my programs wherever I want on the other TVs at a convenient time.

Realistically I only thing maybe two of these programs are worth watching but I'm an optimist.  I've been really impressed by the gritty WWII-style cinematics of Battlestar (although watching the original is worse than fingernails on a chalk board for me). My wife will watch at most, one of these programs before she Netflix's me and turns on some drivel like, "Wimbledon" (which I suffered through last night). At least it had a pretty good sound track.  But that won't save it from some serious damage in NetFlix's rating feature which should assure another movie like this doesn't show up for at least, oh, 12 hours. I'm waiting for NetFlix to invent, "Spouse Sparring Movie Night" where they pit your list of favorites vs. other family members. Ah well, maybe for

Last night after watching the aforementioned movie, I introduced my wife to a new friend, Homestar's "Strong bad" whom a co-worker introduced me to. I was rolling on the living room floor watching this.  She was calling me a fool.  I still think Strongbad Email is funny.  In the same category as "Dancing Hamsters" and "All your base are belong to us" funny but not quite JibJab funny.

DaPreview.net takes a certain executive highlighted at MacWorld to task for his disparaging comments regarding the Rio Forge vs. the Shuffle.  I haven't used both so I will reserve judgement, except maybe for the exorbitantly priced add-ons like the $29.00 arm-band for the Shuffle.

Slashdot reports on a professor at Cardiff University who has identified January 24th being the worst day of the year. What if we all take it as a vacation day and throw the curve?  Or maybe I'll just listen to Fuel's "Bad Day" over and over and seal the deal - it is a Monday after all... or maybe I'll just listen to my son laugh and forget it all :)

Ethan, one of the most passionate Program Manager's I know about Media Center, has just released his own enhanced Caller-ID plug-in for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. Called "MCE-YAC". With it, MCE serves as a client for YAC- "Yet Another Caller-ID" server for Windows which will distribute Caller-ID info from any capable modem on your home network to any PC.  Unique features include:

Update: Here's another enhanced Caller-ID plug-in that builds on the integrated caller-id feature in MCE called TAPI-REX

I just updated the site yesterday to the released version of DasBlog 1.7 now available on SourceForge which has fixed the comments-posting issue so post away. Email has been piling up so I thought I'd get a few regular questions addressed:

Why did you start this blog?
I started this blog as a way to share my passion for digital media and entertainment with family and friends and maybe a few similar-minded enthusiasts. I also wanted to keep at least some small part of my developer tool roots and still be able to tinker with web development.

Who reads this thing? What kind of traffic do you get?
I'm not sure on the former rather than the emails I get, and I'm starting to get them from all over the world which has been enlightening.  I have a queue of responses I'm still working on. As for traffic, on average, I've had about 4000-5000 visitors per day, steadily increasing over the past 2 years. But something happened that's spiked my readership to over 80,000 unique visitors this month. I wrote a behind the scenes blog entry on the CES keynote and felt obliged to follow it up afterwards.  As for my involvement in the keynote, I was asked and subsequently volunteered to come in from vacation (and my new job) to present on-stage at the keynote after doing the Digital Entertainment Anywhere event, launching my prior product, MCE 2005.  I told MS PR I was going to blog and they didn't ask me to edit anything I said, just that I keep it factual. Within 12 hours, I was Slashdotted for the first time. What a wild ride this past three weeks has been :).

Why don't you have an "About Me" page up? I saw you at the DEA event and/or CES and it was nice to put a face with the name.
How about I like obscurity and a sense of mystery?  Actually I've never really been a big fan of those CV/Resume/About the Author pages but I guess I'll have to get around to it one of these days. At least Brian Bailey, Thomas Hawk, and Robert Scoble think we all should... :)

Ok, so you mentioned before CES you were changing jobs. What is your new job?
I'm the Group Product Manager for Windows "Longhorn" Consumer - the next-generation of Windows. The job is keeping me busy for sure. Sorry, like Robert, I'm not going to really talk about Longhorn until the time is right. I won't comment on any rumors either.  All I can say is based on what I've seen so far, I'm excited and honored to be a part of the team working on it.

Do work with Robert Scoble, the "Microsoft Geek Blogger"?
Not directly. Robert and I go back 7 years, prior to his joining Microsoft. I first met Robert when I was a brand new product manager at Microsoft and he was managing events. While we don't "hang out" socially, we definitely keep in touch and I consider him to be a generally like-minded, passionate person. We don't always agree, but that would be boring anyway.

No, really.  Tell us about Longhorn...
When the time is right. Right now, I just need to focus on the job.

Lastly, I'd just like to thank everyone who reads this blog for their continuing support and constructive criticism -  of products, service, and even me.  I've been humbled by the enthusiasm and support of the blogosphere. Consider me an official convert now to the power of more transparency and more valuable community interaction through blogging.

I'm adding Peter Near's MCE blog to my blogroll.  Why? He just keeps cranking out great insights on the MCE landscape. He's recently written a great comparison of the Media Center Extender for Xbox vs. HP's Media Center Extender Set-top. He also wrote up a note about WinBook's new sub-$1000 MCE for the living room which includes a dual-layer DVD burner, something I've been meaning to do. It's great to see so many Media Center bloggers popping up and boy it's getting hard to keep track of everything going on. Nice work Peter.

Matt points us to an ultra-cool use for Media Center - in-car.  Hossweb.com has just about done it all to his 2002 Ford Expedition including touchscreen support for Media Center through his navi system.  He has a comprehensive demo showing how he does it, including demonstrating little-known features such as 30 minute rewind on FM tuning in Media Center 2005. Wow, this demo video and the install is thorough... looks like he did it with Windows Movie Maker 2.1

Video Demo (WMV)

Update 2: Video is back up.  Hoss notes this is a work in progress but it's pretty darn far along if you ask me.

Doc Searls notes in his recent post, "Why we need an iPod competitor":

Hell, Microsoft's [Music Platform] looks open next to Apple's iTunes/iPod system. And remember too that Apple designed, and will continue to redesign, the iPod as a hardware extension of the iTunes software/retail system. If Apple were Amazon, they'd make that sucker wide open to user participation; but they're not, so they don't. It's a closed system.

Doc goes on to point out the lack of support for podcasting. Doc might want to check out the latest generation of the Creative Zen Micro  with the new MTP firmware released this December- it's a top contender and the next-generation is the winner of Best of CES 2005. Until recently, the Rio Carbon was my favorite device, and it still just feels good in my hand, but this week, I took the plunge with a new Creative Zen Micro.  Here's why I think it's a good podcasting device and a worthy competitor long-term in the end-to-end experience:

Packaging
No more beige cardboard inserts serrated for folding and rapid delivery of a nasty paper cut. No 18 gauge plastic security packaging that requires high-end german cutlery to remove from it's "Polycoffin" (Did I just coin the phrase?). Just as the device was well thought-out, so was the packaging.  When I first bought my Powerbook and iPod, the packaging spoke to quality while being eco-friendly. But here I'm speaking to the Zen Micro. Open the box and you'll see what I'm talking about. This was a pleasant surprise- they're well on their way to understanding how to connect with the consumer, embrace cognitive dissonance and reinforce to the consumer, "You made the right choice, you're getting quality".

Industrial Design
The Zen is white as it's base color but with a wide assortment of color too, making it a more personal experience for me. I'm still gazing at the "puddle ripple" design on the back that looks near-holographic but integrated into the smooth casing. It has a removable 12-hour battery, and 5GB of storage so I can take my my podcasts and my music and my files with me. It uses a touchpad with basically the same technology as another portable music player, only a vertical scrollbar which does take some getting used to. The display is easy to read and with the new OLED-based Zen Micro Photo coming later this year, it will get even cooler. I had an opportunity to play with a prototype at CES and