Ben Drawbaugh has a great tutorial on how to automatically download and import HD content in to Windows Media Center. The solutions is a bit complicated but it looks like once the setup is done its pretty automatic. The content comes from BitTorrent and uses my of my favourite tools DVRMSToolBox. Checkout the post for the details and the great thing about this guide is that it will work with extenders.

We don’t try to hide how much we like Windows Media Center around here but that doesn’t mean we hesitate to complain when warranted, and one of our biggest complaints has always been the limited codec support — especially when it comes to Extenders. Well we’re happy to say that we’ve found an acceptable work around, one that does require a little initial let work, but after that it is all automatic. The process is actually simple and in the end you’ll have a hard time being able to tell which shows were recorded with Windows Media Center, and which were downloaded — and of course they’re in HD. The bad news is that the legality of downloading HD from the internet isn’t exactly crystal clear, but if you aren’t scared of BitTorrent and you’re looking for a way to fill in the gab left by the HD channels your provider doesn’t offer, then click on through.

How it works
We’re going to start with a quick overview of how the process works. First we set our favorite BitTorrent program to automatically download our favorite shows using the magic of RSS. Then we query TheTVDB.com for the metadata for the recording which includes things like the original air time, the description and the genre. Finally we use DVRMSToolBox to automatically process the x.264 MKV file (also works with Xvid), converting them to MPEG-2 while at the same time retaining the Dolby Digital Surround sound. And finally, it wraps the audio and video into a new DVR-MS file in the Recorded TV folder — since Windows 7 support h.264 we won’t have to re-encode, and yes we’ve already gotten it to work.

Continued on Engadgethd