Windows Media Center - Part 2

In my previous post about Windows Media Center (WMC), I shared some of its advantages. But it has more, and if you're not enjoying them, here are some things to consider:

It's better than Hulu
Hulu.com is great, and it's free, but it's not in high definition. If you have an HD tuner for your computer, everything you record can be in stunning HD. Hulu also forces you to watch commercials; WMC has a skip-ahead feature that works great to remove commercials.

It's better than Tivo
While it requires more tech savvy than Tivo (or some other video recorder), WMC has some distinct advantages:

• There is no subscription or any other fee; at $20/month, 5 years of Tivo costs $1,200
  
• You can burn DVDs of your favorite shows to save or share
• You can store a large library of shows to watch on your huge hard drive

You can add as much storage as you like to your computer by adding a second or even a third hard drive. Two terabyte hard drives, which can hold over 300 hours of HD broadcasts, can be had for around $100. Plus, any money you spend on your computer makes it a more powerful tool for many things while a high-capacity DVR can only do one thing. And with a DVD-burner, you can make a DVD that your aunt Matilda can watch on her DVD-player.

It's better than paying to watch shows on the internet
Hulu Plus, Netflix and Amazon all charge you to watch content that was once free over the air. And their image quality can't really compete with WMC. Of course, the trick is to set up WMC to record shows in advance. Then, you can watch them for free any time later. So, if you were born with the "planning" gene (or if you can learn), you can save money with WMC and have a superior experience.

What about buying a season of shows on DVD?
WMC is free. A season of shows on DVD costs around $30-$35. Now, while you do get extra features with the DVDs, you have to wait a year from the time the first episode airs before you can buy and watch them. And WMC can sort your recorded shows into series (sorting by title) then sort those series into episode order (sort by first air date). However, if you want a show that's only available on cable, you might avoid the cost of cable altogether by buying it on DVD.

Watching Windows Media Center in the living room
The biggest downside to WMC is that it is easier to watch on your computer (which is probably not in the living room and therefore less comfortable) than on your TV. But there are solutions for that problem:

• move your computer to the living room and connect it to your HDTV
• use your Xbox as a media extender
• use your Blu-ray player as a media extender
• add a large monitor and some easy chairs to your computer room

A media extender brings audio and video content from someplace else, such as your computer or the internet, to your TV. My Blu-ray player does this and it works fairly well. Adding a 22-inch (or larger) monitor to your PC (not to mention a decent chair) can really improve your computing experience and is well worth the expense.

Other features
The guide shows your current TV listings and listings up to 10 days in the future. It is searchable and you can easily record a single episode or a whole series. But what if you want to record something that isn't in the guide? You can add a search term to what you want to record, so that you can record everything with your favorite actor or your favorite sports team. If the network tends to run a little (or a lot) late, you can have WMC add minutes or hours to the end of the recording--so you never miss the end of the show. By adding a second tuner, you can record two shows at once on different channels, or watch one live while recording another (or even record two and watch a third recording).

Like most Microsoft products, this one is so loaded with features you may never discover them all. And if there's something else you need it to do, there is an army of developers out there with add-ons that probably do it.

Microsoft Windows Media Center

If you've purchased a Windows computer (in the last few years) then you probably got Windows Media Center with it for free. It is included in most versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. Gone are the days when you had to buy a special version of Windows XP to have it.

But what does it do? It:

• Lets you watch internet TV on your PC
• Plays DVDs
• Plays Music
• Shows Pictures
• Shows the TV listings in your area

And if you have a TV tuner card or external (USB) tuner then it lets you:

• Records, stores and plays broadcast/cable programs
• Watch and pause live TV

So, with an inexpensive TV tuner (mine is a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950Q) that can be had for $60-80, you can turn your (newer) computer into a high definition DVR (digital video recorder). It will even turn your computer on (if your computer's motherboard supports this) or wake it up from sleep mode to record a program you've scheduled. And, of course, when you play back the recordings you can quickly skip the commercials.

Watch Hulu without a Browser

Hulu.com has the most popular collection of current TV shows on the web. ABC, Fox and NBC have all contributed most of their content. Gone are the days when, if you missed a show when it first aired, you had to wait months and hope for a re-run. Now, just go to Hulu.com, find the show the next day and watch it. It kinda makes you mad that they didn't have this when you were growing up, huh?

But wait, there's more! While you can watch these shows inside your web browser, now there's a better way. Hulu's desktop application allows you to pull up a window and watch TV and movies in that window from Hulu.com. It is true that you don't need this application to watch this stuff, you can do it from a browser. But it is much nicer and cleaner this way. This is one of the top two or three coolest programs on my PC. After my web browser, that is. The desktop app lets you navigate more easily and allows you to instantly skip to any portion of the video. There is even a preview window that pops up to let you know what you're about to see while you continue to watch at your current position.

Free Movies and TV

I found out about this site, not from my computer but from my Blu-Ray player. This is one of the sites Sony gives you access to with my new Blu-Ray disk player. But you don't need any new gizmos to watch TV and movies there, you can use your computer.

Crackle.com has 105 TV series that you can watch including Seinfeld, Barney Miller (which was good for its time and seems better now) and Bewitched. In addition, there are 275 movies on Crackle. Now, you'll have to watch some commercials, usually about one every 10 minutes or so. And you're not going to see any recent stuff here. But, for that, you'd go to Hulu anyway. Crackle gives you more choices of vintage TV and movies.

See the Weather Graphically

We are wired visually. Things we see make so much more of an impression than things we hear. Weathersparck.com shows you the weather in the next week in a way no other site does, graphically. When I look at the graph of the future temperatures, cloud cover and rain (or snow), it makes a more lasting and meaningful impression. I instantly have more detail and yet it is presented in a way that is more memorable. This site also displays averages for the date, historical weather data and forecasts from four different sources.

http://weatherspark.com/

Cut Clutter from Sites You Browse

iReader is an add-on for the Firefox and Chrome browsers. If you use one of these browsers, you owe it to yourself to try this. I don't like add-ons for my browsers in general because they slow down loading and use memory. This one is a very worthy exception. It puts a little icon next to the web address in the address bar if it can work with a website (it doesn't work with all sites). Then if you click on the icon, a nicely formatted window overlays the site with the text of the site (and perhaps a picture or two). All the ads and clutter are removed. Download it here http://www.samabox.com/extensions/iReader/

Free online storage: SkyDrive

Why would you want to store your files online? Well, if your hard disk crashes or your laptop is stolen, your files could be lost forever. Plus, it is handy to share pictures, short videos and any other files with friends and family without emailing them. And once your files are online, you can access them from any computer on the 'net. View your pictures from the library, your friend's house or even your mobile device. (You don't have to download a picture to view it.)

The service that does this is called SkyDrive (a "hard drive" in the cloud, I guess).

So, slick as it sounds, what does it cost? Why, it's free, like all good things in life. So what are the limits, you ask. You are limited to 50 Mbytes per file and 25 Gbytes (gigabytes, that's 25,000 Mbytes). Since the average digital picture is somewhere between .5 and 2 Mbytes, that's room for at least 12,000 to 100,000 pictures.

So, who provides this free service and is it reliable? It's from Microsoft, so I think it should be around for quite a while. You begin by creating a Windows Live account. If you have a hotmail account, you're already set. From the Windows Live home page, (after you log in) click More and SkyDrive. I haven't tried this, but I don't see why you couldn't create as many accounts as you want and upload as much stuff as you want. Once it's uploaded, you can organize it and share with other people (or keep it private).

This isn't exactly a poor man's backup service, though. You have to upload each file by selecting it from a list. Nothing is automatic, so if you change your file on your PC, the change is not reflected on SkyDrive unless you upload it again. If you forget to upload, well, you forgot; nothing will cover you. And if you want to restore a file from SkyDrive, it's easy enough but SkyDrive doesn't know where your file came from originally, so you have to put your pictures back in your picture folder and your documents into your document folder, etc.

But these are nit-picky complaints. SkyDrive can be a godsend if you lose files or need to transfer files to or from another computer. Plus, it can help you to avoid storing personal files on your work computer while still giving you access to them any time.