GeekTonic

GeekTonic Week in Review – July 18

2009-07-18T11:40:00.001-05:00

Kindle breaks through the news this week along with Windows 7 talk, WHS and SageTV.

Below is a quick summary of the past week's news and stories on GeekTonic.

Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 Beta Arrives – With MediaCenter Features
Big Brother = Amazon? The Kindle Books That Disappeared – Updated to reflect the fact that the books Amazon pulled were unauthorized. A new official statement from Amazon.
New Version of MyMovies for MediaCenter Coming September
Boxee Gets Updated
Save Money on Windows 7 by Skipping Pro and using Live Mesh
SageTV Adding Wireless N Option for HD Theater
Windows 7 Upgrade Process Will Suck a Little More than with Vista
Kindle Credit - Another Reason I Like Amazon
Blockbuster OnDemand on Samsung HDTVs
Media Center Movie Managers – Comparison
SageTV How-To: Edit a Show Title or Metadata or Import Video into Recorded TV
Ask The Readers - Firewire for Channel Changing – Are You Using It?
TV Premieres: What To Watch 07/12 - 07/18
GeekTonic Deals Update

Stay tuned for more in-depth content for Media Gadget Fans at GeekTonic.com.

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Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 Beta Arrives – With New MediaCenter Features

2009-07-18T11:35:00.002-05:00

Microsoft announced their Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 Beta this week. The update includes better Windows 7 support, improved netbook support and some nice new features for Microsoft Media Center users. It doesn’t allow you to use WHS as your one, MediaCenter “server”, but it is a step in the right direction.
The MediaCenter bloggers were abuzz yesterday about the new WHS Media Center features so we’ll focus on those today.
First you’ll need to install (or update) the Windows Home Server Connector software on your Windows Media Center PC. Once installed, you’ll notice a new Home Server selection in Windows Media Center menu.

The new Power Pack brings the following new features to Media Center:

You will now have Music, Photos and Videos shared folders from the WHS available to Windows 7 Libraries. This makes that content available for Windows Media Center as well as other Windows applications like Windows Explorer, Windows Media Player and others that use Windows 7 Libraries.
A new Media Center menu option on the main menu of Media Center called “TV Archive.” This menu item allows you to transfer recorded TV programming to your WHS machine. There is an option to select individual shows or entire series. A nice feature is the ability to transfer future, scheduled episodes of a given show as well.
As part of the “Move TV Recordings” function described above, you can also choose to compress/transcode those shows to save hard drive space. That includes compression into Zune and other portable media formats.
A new Media Center menu option on the extras menu to View WHS stats. Stats include: Storage available, hard drive stats, computers being backed up & their status, list of shared folders, media count, network health, and home server hardware & manufacturer info.
All of the new menu items do work on Media Center extenders

Other Power Pack 3 Beta Features Include:

Image-based backup
Windows Search 4 implemented for faster search and indexing times.
Better WHS support for netbooks with low resolution screens.

Sign up for the beta at https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer

If you would like to see the new WHS features for MediaCenter in action, check out this post by Adam at theDigitalMediaZone.com for a nice screencast.

Media Center Updates are Good Step – But More is Needed

I love the new updates this beta brings to WHS – especially the Media Center-centric updates. But it’s only a good first step. To make the WHS a true, Media Center Server, it really needs to be able to be the one, single Media Server for the entire HTPC setup – think WHS = digital media hub. What I mean by that is this: Microsoft needs to enable WHS to be the HTPC server for the home. This means allow the tuners to be installed on the WHS computer and not require another computer to do the MediaCenter work. Then you could add on one or more extenders to the setup without needing another PC. And if Microsoft implemented softsled (using a PC as an extender) it would be that much better.
SageTV has been doing this with their SageTV WHS software since 2007! Yes, 2007 and there are many happy SageTV owners using their Windows Home Server computers just like this. That is the ideal I think Microsoft should be going for with WHS – no not everyone will use it that way, but what better way to leverage two Microsoft products to build synergies!
via Windows Home Server Blog

Big Brother = Amazon? The Kindle Books That Disappeared

2009-07-17T15:20:00.003-05:00

UPDATE:
This evening this story evolved with additional facts. While the quote below from Amazon Customer Service was in fact true, it was missing one important additional fact. The two books WERE in fact unauthorized copies of the book. This of course changes things dramatically. While it still is a little unnerving to know Amazon can remove a book from your Kindle just like that, it is much more understandable.
Here's the rest of the story according to the WSJ:

The issue, says Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener, is that the Orwell books had been added to the company’s catalog using a self-service platform by a third party that did not actually have rights to sell the books. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.

The WSJ article goes on to quote an Amazon representative to say this:

“We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances,”

Exactly what I want to hear from Amazon. While they didn't communicate the situation all that well earlier in the day - I had the story wrong much as everyone else did including the New York Times where I first caught the story...

Now on to the original post:

Kindle owners take note – this isn’t a pretty picture…
A thread on the Amazon forums started this morning like this:

I've received emails today notifying me of refunds for $.99 for Animal Farm and 1984, and both have disappeared from my Kindle archived items. I didn't request refunds, and I also don't remember purchasing the titles - I'm thinking they were free downloads. It's been several months since I ordered them. Anyone else have any unsolicited refunds lately?

At first it was thought to be a mistake or an “unauthorized” copy of Animal Farm. But after a while the official Amazon Response arrived saying:

The Kindle edition books Animal Farm by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) & Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) were removed from the Kindle store and are no longer available for purchase. When this occurred, your purchases were automatically refunded. You can still locate the books in the Kindle store, but each has a status of not yet available. Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store.

So basically those who had copies of Animal Farm or 1984 (quite appropriate don’t you think?) on their Kindle’s were removed via wireless “whispersync” and those customers received credits on their accounts.

I guess you could look at this as a positive since most of those readers probably had already read the books and got all of their money back for free. But in reality it sends a very bad message to those that spent $299 or more on their nice, electronic book readers:
You do not own those books you are paying for and Amazon and the publishers can yank them right off of your Kindle whenever they choose. Kind of takes a little of the Kindle charm away doesn’t it? My wife (and now my dad) both will continue to enjoy their Kindle eBook reader, but I would imagine they’ll always wonder what “rights” will be used against them and the books they have purchased for their Kindle. Sad that I had to post this right after complementing Amazon… Kind of Orwellian isn’t it?
Amazon Kindle Forums via NYTimes

New Version of MyMovies for MediaCenter Coming September

2009-07-17T09:29:00.001-05:00

The developer of “My Movies” for Microsoft Media Center announced on the MissingRemote Forums that a new version of My Movies (3.0) is planned for September.

MyMovies 3.0 was written in MCML for Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Brian Binnerup the developer of My Movies has posted in the MissingRemote forums that a new version of My Movies will be coming in September and will be the first version that is a native Windows Media center application (written in MCML). Brian sent me a some work in progress screenshots (which I can’t show yet) and it is looking very nice.

Brian is going to be talking about the features of My Movies 3 on The Media Center Show when the beta is available in September so keep an eye out on the blog for details

“This might be as good as any place to mention the specific release plans.
My Movies 3, in MCML, for Windows Vista and Windows 7 will be released in a beta on September 1'st. The final version will be available late October with Windows 7.”

Brian went on to tell a few more details of the planned release in the MissingRemote Forums