Entertainment 2.0

As Ian Dixon reported earlier today, Media Browser has released a new beta update numbered 2.0.10.0.  Being dubbed (on Jas Manghera’s blog) Vanilla, beta 10 includes a new theme as well as some changes to the UI.  As well, various bugs have of course been fixed.

From Jas’s blog post:

Let’s jump right into it the second biggest news of the day first (no that’s not a typo). The Media Browser project going forward now requires Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5. Those of you have been putting off the .Net 3.5 update can download the framework here.

Users who already have .Net 3.5 installed (standard on Windows 7) can leverage the beta updates to automatically update to the latest version.

As of this writing I haven’t had a chance to install the latest beta but it will be on my system before the end of the day.  I always look forward to new MB updates and I’m sure this one will just as good as the previous ones.  Hopefully Josh and I will be able to get these guys on the show soon!

Click here to go to Jas’s blog, read the rest of the post detailing the updates and download the latest version.

I found an article through my Google alerts this morning that I wanted to share.  After visiting the site however, I realized that there’s more than one post on the blog that is well written and very valuable. 

Let’s talk about the app first.  Hacking 7MC has posted that Heatwave for Media Center has been updated and can now be installed in 7MC.  Having the weather right in the UI is great and I’ll be installing this later today on my main media center.  Heatwave has been around for a little while now so you can bet that this is a stable app.

As stated above, Hacking 7MC has a lot of great information.  Besides the Heatwave post, there are write-ups on playing FLAC files in 7MC, adding ClearQAM channels to your guide and others.

Head over to Hacking 7MC for some great info and be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed so you can get more info when it’s published!

Microsoft introduced their Internet TV service in Vista Media Center.  It’s still in beta but from using it for a few days in 7MC I can tell you that they’ve made a few improvements.  The first thing is that they’ve added it to the guide.  You can remove these entries if you want to but it does make it a little more convenient.  The interface once you click into these “channels” has gotten a little better.  It still looks the same but seems to move a bit smoother both locally and on the Xbox 360 extender. 

While there’s quite a bit of content available, a lot of what I saw was the same stuff I saw three months ago the last time I looked at internet TV.  Without the addition of some real content (not just network previews) Media Center is definitely going to loose the online content battle.  There are a few full length shows from History Channel and National Geographic but nothing that’s going to keep people coming back.

As far as usability, again, it’s smoother than in the past and there doesn’t seem to be as much buffering as I experienced in the past.  Once a show starts it seems to keep going.  I only noticed one hiccup during one of the concerts my wife was watching.

The only complaint I have is that MS needs to institute some sort of timer on the commercials it shows.  I shouldn’t have to watch the same commercial every time I switch videos.  At least put five or six minutes between the things.  Also, there are videos listed, particularly in the music video section, which are no longer available.  the app moves to the next video automatically but don’t expect to be able to watch everything.

Overall, you can see the improvements that have been made to Internet TV since it was first offered.  Unfortunately with systems like SageTV and other set-top boxes offering Hulu, TV.com and others, Microsoft is really wasting their time with this.  They need to step up in the content area or just kill it off.