I remember the day when I first saw a TIVO... Besides being one of the best implementations of Linux I had every seen, I saw an appliance approach that just made sense. Shortly after that, I was sitting in a Microsoft WinHEC session when I saw Microsoft Media Center for the first time. It was at that moment I realized what TIVO was missing... What was it? What every good geeks longs for... Extensibility!
That right... I could make it do what I wanted. Microsoft had empowered me. AGAIN!. Ok... I admit it... I drank the Microsoft Kool-Aid long ago, and yes I know you can hack TIVO. With all this new 'supported' power, what did I do? I made a DNR plugin of course. Microsoft has written a lot about the 10-foot user experience, and Media Center appears to be the embodiment of all that user interface research. If you have not explored this space, it is worth a look. Want to know more... Check out this episode of MSDN TV - http://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/episode.aspx?xml=theshow/en/Episode053/manifest.xml
UPDATE!... On the 21 Feb 2006 issue of DotNetRocks, Carl Franklin was kind enough to give me a small mention about seven minutes into the show... Thanks guys... You Rock!
Another UPDATE!... On the 01 April 2006 I completed the construction of my very own media center... This was a lot of fun and a real challenge...! Now I will never miss an episode of Good Eats!
Click Here to see some of the construction work.
Tags: mce, side projects