Great write-up Ben. Guides like this are extremely helpful to people who have no experience dealing with codecs, media center or downloading.
Two quick points though:
1) Windows Vista with TV Pack and Windows 7 both break DVRMS-Toolbox so anyone who is using the beta won't be able to do this.
2) There are slightly easier ways. If you use uTorrent's exclusion rules you can ensure that you only get divx files. Each show can be downloaded into it's own directory and you can use an app like myTV or Media Browser to catalog your shows as opposed to the built in "Recorded TV" area. Of course this assumes that you're using Windows 7 which I guess there are people who aren't. To me though, if you're a Media Center user, the video resume feature and divx on extenders is enough to make the switch.
Maybe a lot of people would want to use recorded TV, but if you're like me and archive a lot of shows (25 shows, 1400 episodes) it gets a little bulky. 3rd party apps work great for this.
Again, awesome write-up and it'll be quoted a lot!
1) The TV Pack breaks the MC add-in part of DTB, not the parts we're using here. Although I haven't tested this on the TV pack, I see no reason why it shouldn't work.
2) If I was interested in Divx, then that would work too, but for me I'm talking x.264 encoded mkv files and for those, not even 7 will handle them -- yet.
You have a point about collectors though, add-ins like myTV are probably the way to go. Personally, I watch and delete and don't save anything, so the Recorded TV UI that comes with MC is perfect, so it was a core requirement that I could continue to use it.
If you navigate to Videos instead of Recorded TV then you can, but that is as long as you don't try to watch them on an Extender and you don't mind not being able to fast forward, rewind or resume later. Ohh, and you have to manually add an image and there isn't any metadata.
With this process you can play the files on extenders and find them with the rest of your recorded TV. Plus it gets the data for you and of course you can fast forward, rewind and resume.
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Great write-up Ben. Guides like this are extremely helpful to people who have no experience dealing with codecs, media center or downloading.
Two quick points though:
1) Windows Vista with TV Pack and Windows 7 both break DVRMS-Toolbox so anyone who is using the beta won't be able to do this.
2) There are slightly easier ways. If you use uTorrent's exclusion rules you can ensure that you only get divx files. Each show can be downloaded into it's own directory and you can use an app like myTV or Media Browser to catalog your shows as opposed to the built in "Recorded TV" area. Of course this assumes that you're using Windows 7 which I guess there are people who aren't. To me though, if you're a Media Center user, the video resume feature and divx on extenders is enough to make the switch.
Maybe a lot of people would want to use recorded TV, but if you're like me and archive a lot of shows (25 shows, 1400 episodes) it gets a little bulky. 3rd party apps work great for this.
Again, awesome write-up and it'll be quoted a lot!
Thanks for the feedback.
1) The TV Pack breaks the MC add-in part of DTB, not the parts we're using here. Although I haven't tested this on the TV pack, I see no reason why it shouldn't work.
2) If I was interested in Divx, then that would work too, but for me I'm talking x.264 encoded mkv files and for those, not even 7 will handle them -- yet.
You have a point about collectors though, add-ins like myTV are probably the way to go. Personally, I watch and delete and don't save anything, so the Recorded TV UI that comes with MC is perfect, so it was a core requirement that I could continue to use it.
@ Ben.
Great write up. But I'm a little confused, I can playback x.264 (mkv) files no problems in my Windows Media Center (Vista).
I remember running some mkv.reg file to get it working.
Ma2T,
Well kinda.
If you navigate to Videos instead of Recorded TV then you can, but that is as long as you don't try to watch them on an Extender and you don't mind not being able to fast forward, rewind or resume later. Ohh, and you have to manually add an image and there isn't any metadata.
With this process you can play the files on extenders and find them with the rest of your recorded TV. Plus it gets the data for you and of course you can fast forward, rewind and resume.
Ben,
Thanks for the explanation, it all makes sense now. Great job on the guide, very cool process.
I'm in England, and it's almost as if I was in the U.S, and set up recordings from U.S channels.
Cheers