DSC02016 Well we did the 2nd Media Center and Windows Home Server User Group meet up in the UK and it was awesome!  @iandixon, @garrywma and Andrew Cherry actually did all the work. The speakers explained some of the more advanced Media Center topics and some really interesting dev topics.  Amazing Day!

You’ll be seeing photos from me here and from others here on TDL and their own blogs, Ian’s already posted.  We videoed most of the sessions too and Garry will be posting them sometime soon, there’s about 5 hours of footage to edit to something watchable so it may take some time.  Ian got some superb material for the podcast too and he’ll be releasing that in an upcoming podcast, although probably best to check out his post for details.

Thanks to everyone who made it, you made the day superb and just like Pete Brown said it’s the community that makes Media Center what it is.DSC02034

I had some great conversations and got to see some really cool stuff.  We had Amulet devices there with their awesome voice control remote for Media Center – seriously folks this is amazing – it’s the best thing I’ve seen for Media Center since TunerFree MCE and it was just so impressive.  Passive showed off their super high end Evolve units which just look stunning and have B&O amps built in – they gave us a glimpse at building really robust Media Center PCs and a vaguest hint at some of their clientele.  I wish I could count myself among that select group.

DSC02172 Andrew Edney gave us a look at WHS Vail and Andrew Cherry gave us a great intro to building apps for Media Center and Garry showcased how simple it is to build Windows Phone 7 apps with the Windows Phone 7 SDK and other free tools.  I’ve got no excuse, I need to build a remote IP camera app for both…must get to that.  Pete Brown gave us a superb insight into what it’s like running a community like TGB, basically I think we all felt the love…not least because everyone left with at least a USB stick and one guy left very happy with a SONOS S5 and another with a ZuneHD and 10 more peeps left with Xtreamers courtesy of Tranquil and another 12 people got DVBLogic licenses!!

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Pete gave away some great Zune originals art work too, which I’d personally have loved for my office, but that’s one of the downsides to not being in the audience.  We also got free Pizza courtesy of the NxtGenUg.

Ok without further ado, here are some of the best pictures I took of the day (yep there are lots), they’re uploaded to Windows Live SkyDrive with Windows Live Photo Gallery – if you can’t see them then join the Digitiallifestyle.com Windows Live Group although everyone should be able to see them.

 

More next year.  Looking forward to reading the other guys thoughts, if you attended let us know about it in the comments…we’ll be getting out a survey soon too…

0 thoughts on ““that wasn’t a user group, it was an event!””
  1. Looks like a great event, sad that I couldn’t make it but want to say a big thank you for capturing the sessions on video, will watch everyone on my iPad.

  2. Stuart, how is it now….it says you just joined the group (telling me 46 mins ago) so can you see them now?

  3. The video is taking a while to edit and unfortunately the audio is not all that good. I hope to have something out over the weekend.

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