Thursday, September 21, 2006

Tip: More than two tuners - Ramon Van Bruggen is a star

As you may know Media Center Edition natively supports a maximum of two tuners (well 3 if you also have an over the air HDTV card in the US)


For quite a while there have been a number of forum posts around the web (particularly on the Green Button) with walk throughs of a complex procedure to add more tuners, these have been beyond the average mortal though.

Thankfully Ramon Van Bruggen is about to change that with what like it may become the ultimate utility for adding more than one tuner. Its in early beta but is progressing very nicely.














Head on over to http://mce.ramonvanbruggen.nl for more information and to join the beta programme.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Tip of the day - Noisy XBox 360 Lay it down

Not all XBox 360's are created equal and it appears that some have noisier fans than others when in Media Center extender mode. One thing I have definitely noticed with our 360 is that it is a lot quieter when laid on its side (horizontally) than when in the vertical position. Not sure why this should be but, from reading a load of web posts, it does seem to be a common feature.


So if you have a noisy 360 lay it down.

IMPORTANT - never move your 360 with the power on and disc in the drive. if you do you may very well scratch the disc and even possibly damage the drive heads.

Friday, September 08, 2006

Bloggers you should know -Aaron Stebner

Aaron works for Microsoft and his blog is a fount of knowledge about both Media Center and Setup issues.

In particular if you are have Media Center 2005 issues its worth a look at Update Rollup 2 for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 troubleshooting guide

Aaron's articles can be a little technical for the novice but they are worth the effort.