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A while ago, while searching for a Twitter plugin for my Vista Media Center, I stumbled across a little application that has made my Media Center even more powerful. Of course the application of which I speak is MyNetflix.

Back in January I opened up a Netflix account after they announced their Watch Now feature would offer unlimited streaming. I wrote about the service at some length and ended by saying “If Netflix moves this service into the Media Center, like Vongo and Movielink have, I believe they have a chance to corner the streaming movie market.” And it has been done! Admittedly it hasn’t been accomplished by Netflix themselves, but that really isn’t the point. The feat was accomplished by Anthony Park’s via MyNetflix and I don’t think Netflix could do it any better.

I’ve been using this software since version 2.1 and I loved it then. Every once and a while I would get an error (beta bugs) but when it worked, which was most of the time, it made me a very happy camper. A couple of weeks after I had installed version 2.1, Anthony released beta version 2.2 adding a couple of new features included search, which took this plugin over the top. Version 2.2 has since come out of beta and I can’t recommend it enough.

So why am I gushing about this app? Well for starters this program look fantastic. One thing that I can’t stand about some plugins is how damn ugly they are (live365 I’m talking to you). MyNetflix looks nearly identical to the Media Center interface, minus the moving wallpaper. Movies have cover art and full descriptions including: MPAA rating, genre, starring, user rating, and director. MyNetflix is on par with Microsoft’s own Internet TV beta in the looks category, but a little bit ahead in navigation.

Navigation is something that MyNetflix excels at. The entire interface can be easily navigated with a standard Media Center remote including search. I have a Gyration Remote which, for whatever reason, doesn’t allow me to enter text with the number pad, like my HP Media Center’s remote does. The fact that Anthony took problems like mine into account while designing the search feature is the sign of a true genius. Navigation is rather zippy as well–once the program loads–which is where MyNeflix dominates over Microsoft’s Internet TV.

If all this plugin did was allowed me to do was view my queue and add new movies to it, and looked great doing it, I would still install it, but MyNetflix doesn’t stop there. MyNetflix also allows qualifying accounts to access the Watch Now feature of Netflix from within Media Center, which is what makes this my dream app. After I set up Explorer in a usable fashion, I didn’t mind navigating Watch Now on Netflix with my Gyration remote, but now that Netflix is in my Media Center I us it twice as much.

For some time now the Media Center has been the hub of my home entertainment experience. The addition of MyNetflix has guaranteed its’ place in my home for a long to to come. There is always something worth watching on Netflix and now it’s easier then ever to find that something. If you have a Vista Media Center and a Netflix account you owe it to yourself to install this application.

After living with her for a couple of days now, I’m pleased to say…she’s perfect, in every single way.

I’m taking as many pictures as I can, some of the best are here.

Enjoy

I’m a bit of a Media Center lover. I have Vista Home Premium boxes connected to the televisions in my living room and bedroom. Until recently I would leave Media Center barebone for the most part. I would install OABsoftwares RSS reader to enjoy video podcasts on the tele, and do the ‘dvd library‘ registry hack to take full advantage of my DVD collection, but that was the extent of my Media Center modification.

About a week ago I was searching for a Twitter application for Media Center–which I never found–when I stumbled across a couple of plugins that I found very interesting. One of the plugins I came across was MceFM, released by Atadore, based near Geneva, Switzerland, which allows you to enjoy Last.fm radio station from the comfort of your Media Center.

MceFM is currently in Beta 2 so I’m not going to be too hard on it because it’s just a baby, but at this stage of development I’m not a fan. I had a number of problems within the first five minutes of installing this application, not least of which was logging in.

After installing MceFM a new icon appears the ‘music’ tear of the Media Center menu system, so naturally that was where I headed. Clicking the MceFM icon brings up a very shabby looking, symmetrically centered, menu screen, with the choices: Play, View Queue, and Options.

‘Play’ will ushers you into an even uglier screen with a couple of radio buttons and a text entry form (at least it isn’t symmetrical as well). One problem with this screen is that, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the radio button to switch from ‘Artist’ to ‘Tag’ with the Media Center remote. The only way I was able to select the ‘Tag’ option was with a mouse. Annoying, but big whoop, I aways search by artist anyway. After typing in the search term, be it a artist or tag, one’s instinct would be to hit the enter button to “enter” your data. Instinct wouldn’t get you far with this program. Enter will do nothing for you, nor will the down arrow (even though the Play button is directly below the text field). In fact, the only way to get to the play button is to hit the left arrow not once, but twice?. Once you manage to hit play your station will begin to stream within a few seconds at which point the “View Queue” screen becomes useful.

The View Queue screen shows you the next five songs that are about to play, that’s it. You can’t scroll up or down, or get more info about the artists, it just shows you what is up next. View Queue is boring so lets talk options.

The Options screen allows you to add you Last.fm user data and a MceFM License Key. The Option screen is plagued with the same navigation bugs as the Play screen. Unlike the Play screen, however, the Option screen is completely useless. Entering Last.fm user data will give you no more functionality then leaving the fields blank, and the License Key box must be for the pay version of this software to come. There is no need to ever visit the Option screen in MceFM 1.0 Beta 2, in fact there is no need to visit the MceFM icon at all.

The way you’re suppose to us the MceFM software is to go to your Music Library, select an artist, click info, scroll down to and click ‘more’, then hit the MceFM icon. Yep that’s intuitive…(beta)…Ok I’m over it, I don’t mind the clicking around in Media Center as long as I can do it with my remote. The first time I tried this, by selecting ‘Pinback‘, it worked just fine and I thought it was great. Then I tried it on a couple other bands and all I would get is an error message. I’m not sure what is causing this error, it seems like the more obscure the band the less likely MceFM will work: The Sea and Cake works-The Redneck Manifesto does not. Or maybe it has something to do with Meta data, who knows, but it’s hit or miss at best.

When I was able to get radio stations to play I had a couple other problems with MceFM. The most notable problem with this software is that it doesn’t scrobble any of the tracks that are played. Scrobbling is the whole reason I started using Last.fm in the first place, what is the point of listening to music if I have no record of having listened to it. What I mean is, Last.fm radio is a tool for me; I type in an artist, listen to similar artists, and if I remember liking something I can go back, look at my history, and find out what it was I was listening to. If all my history says is Listening to “Piglet’s Similar Artists” I have nothing to look back upon.

The other problem I have is with the audio itself. About ten seconds before the end of each song the audio will skip. It does it on every track and it kinda bugs me. I went to the forum and noticed that someone else was having the same issue, so maybe this little bug will be fixed in the next version.

All things considered, this plugin is worth what I payed for it ($0), but it’s going to take some huge improvements to make me ever want to buy something like this. Since it doesn’t scrobble it is of little more use to me then the Live365 plugin that is pre-installed in Media Center.

I guess I really shouldn’t call this a monthly music review since the last one was many moons ago, but lets press on. I stumbled across a band this month that I enjoy enough to write about, and that’s saying something. The lucky band is LITE.

LITE are an instrumental quartet from Tokyo, Japan that formed back in 2003. This band seems to have wrapped up everything I love about post and/or math-rock in one ten song album, and named it ‘Filmlet‘. These guys pull off some finger numbing riffs then break it done into very catchy if not soothing melodies. There is a lot of strummy guitar work that builds intensity while they play off each other. Overall this album makes me move when I’m listening to it, and that’s all I can ask for.

The only thing that I think is a tad under par about this album would be the sound of the drums on occasion. I don’t think the drums sound bad, it’s just that the guitars sound so much better. At times the drums just sound tinny and out of place, lacking the ambiance of the surrounding melody. Don’t get me wrong, for the most part the drums sound fine, it’s just at some points they take on a odd tone.

Something of note, for fans of such great bands as firehose and jane’s addiction, LITE recorded a split album with Funanori in February 2007. Funanori, is a new project by Kaori 505 Tsuchida (The Go! Team), Mike Watt (firehose, minutemen, the stooges) and Stephen Perkins (Jane’s Addiction, Banyan). Unfortunately for me I found out this split– ‘A Tiny Twofer’–was available at eMusic, only after I had already purchased it from Amazon.

Play ‘Filmlet’ (Mac, PC)

What I like about Hulu:

The big thing that Hulu has going for it is that it works on both Mac and PC with little to no hassle. I’m also using Netflix’s streaming service which is only available on PCs and requires a plug-in install that I’ve had trouble with on one computer.

Hulu also has a fairly large content catalog. There are some great shows there. The episodes of Firefly, NewsRadio, and Doogie Howser, M.D. are enough to keep me content, in front of the television, for days on end.

Unfortunately, that’s about all Hulu has going for it.

What I dislike about Hulu:

I can’t stand the site itself. I Hulu on a Media Center computer connected to my television and it’s almost unusable. Starting from the Browse screen easies some of the navigational strain…momentarily. As soon as I click through on a show I want to watch, all I see is a damn picture. I end up scrolling down four pages just to find the episode I want to watch, if there is even a full episode. Which brings me to my next complain.

There are a lot of shows listed on Hulu that have only a couple episodes or none at all. When I first browsed the site I was amazed at what I was seeing: Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy. Unfortunately, between these three shows there are a total of eight full episodes. Futurama doesn’t even have one full episode so why even bother? These shows look good on the home page but that’s about all they’re good for.

I don’t think the video looks that great on Hulu. I’ve heard the same people that badmouth Netflix’s video quality praising the quality of Hulu. I’m not sure how this is possible, they look the same to me, but I’ve had Hulu skip and stutter more often then Netflix.

Hulu doesn’t support Media Center remotes at all. Even if I could click the OK button to pause the show I’d be happy, but there is nothing. I don’t expect to be able to navigate the entire site with a remote, but giving my remote a smidgen of functionality would be nice.

When it comes down to it, I really don’t like Hulu. I’ll probably keep using it to watch NewsRadio and Doogie but if those show end up on Joost or Netflix I’d much rather watch them there.

First of all there is a little install process that must be done prior to enjoying your video content. This would appear to be a trivial task but, as with most things in my life, it didn’t work for me the first time around.

I tried installing the plug-in on a freshly installed and fully updated version of Vista Home Premium and was informed in my Explorer 7 browser that Windows DRM services were not working properly, and that there was a piece of software I could use to reset them. I ran the software which informed me that it had failed to reset my DRM services. “No big deal” I think, “I’ll just restart my computer, that will surely fix this little software misunderstanding.” This however was not the case.

After restarting my computer was plagued with warnings of digital tuners not being found and cable box software not running properly. This is all new to me, I don’t even have a digital cable or a box for that matter. I finally clear all the warning and reopen Explorer to enjoy some streaming goodness. “No sir, you will not!” says IE 7, every time I tried to play a movie the browser would crash.

At this point I figure it can’t hurt to give tech support a call, since I can’t find a link for the plugin on the Netflix site–so I can attempt to reinstall it. Unfortunately my tech lady couldn’t help me and gave me the hours and phone number of someone who could. I never called, I just started browsing the site and adding movies to my queue.

After a half hour of taking in what Netflix had to offer, my better half woke up to get ready for work, allowing me access to the other Vista PC in the house. I ran through the process again on this computer and had no problems whatsoever. The explanation I can find for my initial complications would to be that I had two tabs open, with Netflix in each. I believe this may have hung up the installation process part of the way threw hindered its’ completion (just a thought).

At last I’m ready to start streaming, and now from the comfort of my bed. I navigate to the instant play portion of the site and click play on the first thing I see “Pan’s Labyrinth” and seconds later it starts to play…then it stops. “What the shit,” I say ” this sucks sack!” I pause the stream hoping it may catch up, but it never does. I decided to give a little 30 Rock a shot and in seconds it starts up and away it goes, never skipping or showing any signs of lag.

After the pilot of 30 Rock I moved on to something a bit more demanding, a full length, 16:9 movie: Nightwatch. I press play and again it starts with little delay and never spits or stutters. I’ve heard people say the quality isn’t that great–and compared to HD I’d have to agree–but I think it looks better then a DVD played threw a PlayStation 2 (that’s good enough for me).

Even after all my installation hick-ups I think this service is great! The only thing that really disappointed me was the lack of a Media Center interface. I had heard Leo Laporte say something about watching Netflix streams from Media Center on TWIT this week, and kind of thought that was how it worked. This does not appear to be the case. It seems that the instant view service only works in Explorer which makes navigation a bit of a pain, and near impossible with a Media Center remote. Fortunate for me, I’ve a Gyration Media Center remote that acts as a mouse (much like a Wiimote) as well as a universal remote.

If Netflix moves this service into the Media Center, like Vongo and Movielink have, I believe they have a chance to corner the streaming movie market. Until then I see it as a bonus to an already great movie rental service.

If all goes well RadioShow CrowTango should be showing up in the podcast section of iTunes in the near future.

Enjoy

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