At the MCHSUG meeting on Tuesday I was asked by a couple of developers what some killer applications would be for Media Center, I was a bit stumped at the time, but I spent some of the drive home listening to The Media Center Show (#202), coincidently Ian was interviewing Jas and Sam from Media Browser. So here we go, guys this is what I want:
Picture in picture, or multi picture support Why not start with a biggie. I want to be able to watch two or more programs at the same time, the football with Sky Sports News running in a corner for example. Or possibly two news channels at the same time but you get the picture. I don’t much care about audio, but my ideal solution would be to have each stream selectable with the selected one providing the audio.
IP Camera Support I want a good application, that uses MCML that has “toasts” for motion detection that includes the picture that’s been captured.
PlayTo Support, so that I can play media to other areas of the house from Media Center in Windows 7 – there’s a reason Microsoft hasn’t done this, it’s so developers can build an application on the platform.
The final big one I want someone to write a Flash transcoder…I said it on the day, we need this please, someone, anyone, anyone, anyone, Buller, Buller…Buller (and yes I know that’s a mixed reference)
If there are any developers out there that would like some help with design of any of the above, let me know.
Posted by Simon May, follow me on Twitter or if you like email me
The problems with transcoding and transcoders currently is the requirement to ‘do something extra’ to view the results.
The only serious way to provide a truely seemless approach would be to use the microsoft research detours library to hook the file system , transcode on the fly , and present to the extender in a format it will expect ( wmv / mpg etc ).
This would allow FLV format , or any format, to reach out to any device, without special steps.
The approach benefits in taht there is no ‘buffer file’ so no more early terminations etc , since to the extender the feed is the usual file read operation.
I want an MCE VPN application to be able to connect / disconnect and view connection status of VPN’s all within Media Center, pretty please you nice dev’s !
Speaking of IP CAM’s I set one up today for the first time it was a Vivotek PT3x4 model and I used a VMC add-in called mceNetCAM which worked really well!
I guess the application i want is one tha lets me manage my music video collection , the same way i do normal music.
Media browser goes a long way, but it would be cool to be able use .SRT to carry lyrics , use the track name to find the single covers ( after all most music videos are singles ) and save play lists.
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I’d like MCML control for my Squeezeboxes….
Me too!
some great ideas there simon. I would love that ip camera support to include a someone is at the door style popup on motion detect
actually that’s precisely why I want it!
The problems with transcoding and transcoders currently is the requirement to ‘do something extra’ to view the results.
The only serious way to provide a truely seemless approach would be to use the microsoft research detours library to hook the file system , transcode on the fly , and present to the extender in a format it will expect ( wmv / mpg etc ).
This would allow FLV format , or any format, to reach out to any device, without special steps.
The approach benefits in taht there is no ‘buffer file’ so no more early terminations etc , since to the extender the feed is the usual file read operation.
Shame no one wants to do a new transcoder.
Like the Ferris Bueller reference there Simon!
I want an MCE VPN application to be able to connect / disconnect and view connection status of VPN’s all within Media Center, pretty please you nice dev’s !
Speaking of IP CAM’s I set one up today for the first time it was a Vivotek PT3x4 model and I used a VMC add-in called mceNetCAM which worked really well!
http://mce-plugins.ch/
I guess the application i want is one tha lets me manage my music video collection , the same way i do normal music.
Media browser goes a long way, but it would be cool to be able use .SRT to carry lyrics , use the track name to find the single covers ( after all most music videos are singles ) and save play lists.
Just a thought.