Brendon Davis » 7

Modify the number of TV Guide Rows

brendon — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 03:30:41 +0000

In Brisbane, there are about 12 Digital channels worth watching. I run my MCE at 1080p which leaves a lot of wasted space on the default Channel Guide page. Hack7MC has found a useful little tool that allows you to increase the number of rows shown. The how-to is easy to follow and the TV guide looks great once it is done.

RDP to MCE without effecting TV

brendon — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 03:01:28 +0000

One limitation of my setup at home is that all television channels go through the Media Center so when I need to do maintenance I have to interrupt my wife’s programs.

While not officially supported by Microsoft, there is an excellent modification that The Missing Remote has published. A simple batch file installs a different DLL for Terminal services that allows the console to remain logged on while up to 2 other users log into a separate RDP session.

Now I can do any management and monitoring or changes necessary without having to submit a “TV-Outage Request”. :-D Very cool.

Group Policy Center

brendon — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 01:10:48 +0000

Alan Burchill, one of the organisers for the Brisbane Infrastructure Group and a speaker at last year’s auTechEd has started up a web site for the thing he loves most. The Group Policy Center is now online and answering all those questions you didn’t know you asked.

On a serious note though, Alan and Lilia did an awesome presentation at TechEd and I’m sure this site will show the same level of awesome-ness. Rock on Al.

Interactive MCE Remote

brendon — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:31:18 +0000

What do you get if you cross a HTC Touch GSM Eddn. II, Windows Phone 6.5, a Bluetooth Adapter & Windows Mobile Sideshow…

Short answer, an awesome remote for a VISTA Media centre… Of course, I was planning on posting an awesome how-to on configuring the device for Win7 MCE but as it doesn’t work how I’d planned…

Now I know that Windows 7 isn’t officially released until the end of this week but what’s really disheartening is that the Sideshow team have posted that they do not plan to release a 7 Compatible MCE Sideshow gadget.

My aim originally was to have a remote control I could use to the Guide and check my scheduled recordings without having to disturb who was watching TV AND to control the music from the back porch.

Interestingly the pre-installed Windows 7 media player Gadget is able to manipulate the now playing music but only when you start playing music from MCE. The downloadable MCE Gadgets just completely fail to work.

All up the sideshow remote idea isn’t a complete failure. We can control music from around the house but the interface is painful and un-intuitive. I’m certainly going to keep an eye on what happens in this area.

Win 7 Starter

brendon — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:33:33 +0000

I have spent the past few days playing around with the Windows 7 install options to see how each of the versions actually run. Using the current retail RTM media Microsoft has published, it is possible to delete or modify a single file and select from the several SKU’s of Windows to install.

Interesting point to note is that the “Netbook” edition of Win 7 is only available on the x86 retail media. This means that both of the Enterprise and x64 retail media kits do not give you the option to install Starter.

After several attempts and a one faulty USB drive, I was able to install Starter. I am impressed with both the disk and memory footprint and also that I can run more than the previously restricted 3 applications. I stumbled across the official Windows team blog for for Starter Edition and it goes into where it is aimed.

My original intention was to install this on my wife’s HP Netbook but as I have found myself using a number of the features not available on this, will stick with the TechEd Ultimate install..

Windows 7 Installer Options

brendon — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:38:14 +0000

Thanks to Long for pointing out this article at My Digital Life. It outlines a simple process to set the Windows 7 installer so it prompts for which edition to deploy. My advice, give up trying to edit the original ISO files and simply copy the installation files onto a USB key or into a .VHD/ .VMDK which you can mount in your VM’s.

Step 1. Rename the \sources\ei.cfg to \sources\ei.old (or you can just delete the file)
Step 2. Install Windows 7

Anyone tried Windows Starter edition yet. (FYI, it’s only on x86 disk.)