MCE 2005 makes you keep on paying...

[Nick]

Why do I say this?

Well, this weekend saw me doing a somplete wipe and install onto my new Intel powered dual core rig, which is going to be my work machine and also my media center.

This is perfect for me as I can have the Media PC running in the office and use the XBox 360 as an extender so there's no fan noise from the PC whilst the missus is watching 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding'.

The Windows MCE 2005 Edition install went as smoothly as one could hope, with the usual utter rubbish of not having video encoders to allow playback of TV through a media extender. I'd run into this one last time and sorted it by going off to ATI's website, hunting fruitlessly for ages for the encoder and then eventually buying NVIDIA's encoder which is easily found on THEIR website.

Of course, having paid for an encoder I thought I might as well use that one but then decided to see if ATI had something... MCE drivers are easily available and an update for the encoder can be downloaded too... but you still can't BUY the bloody thing... and if you can, as I'm sure some smart arse will soon post a link for, I couldn't easily find it....

Anyway, I installed the already owned NVIDIA drivers and suddenyl MCE was talking, walking and doing its TV thang.

So, I then set about copying all my essential files over from backups and realise that the MY Documents folder is 147Gb!!

What the HELL is in there to make it that large?

The answer is all the Recorded TV stuff that the missus has decided she needs.

So now comes the fun of me deciding that I want it OFF the PC.

Now, follow my thought process here.

I own a media PC. I run MCE 2005. I want to burn my recorded TV to DVD so I can delete the huge files off the PC. Should be a simple operation, yes? Just burn the files and away you go.

So, using Nero 7, I slap in a dual layer disk and find that the recorded TV files are in .dvr-ms format, which means that MCE can play them, Windows MediaPlayer can play them but no other bugger can do anything with them at all.

If I go into MCE proper and try and burn them, all I can do is make a DVD data disk. Why the HELL do I want to make a data disk in MCE? That's what the XP front end of MCE is for! I'm in MCE 'cos I want to make a bloody disk with media files on it... not copy over a load of old emails!

So I drop out of MCe and spend an hour pleading with Nero to figure out a way to burn the files. Which it refuses to do.

I search on Google for an answer and can't find one.

In desparation I load up MediaPlayer 10 and am midly happy when that says it's fine to burn these two espisodes of Green Wing to disk and away it goes.

10 minute later I slap the newly burnt disk into my DVD player to check all is well.

All is not well.

The DVD player does the digital version of "WTF??" and spits the disk out as being incompatible. I swear it even made a 'Ptooey!' noise as it did it!

So I slap the disk back in the PC and up pops Media Player and starts playing the files no problem. A quick explore of the disk shows the files are still in .dvr-ms so although my PC can play the files, nothing else can.

I need something to convert the files... Another load of Googling later and I end up back at the slightly less than helpful MS 'Knowlege' base pages, reading through tons of articles trying to find one that mentions my problem.

Eventually, on page one hundred and eleventy twelve, I find the answer.

I need some software called MySonic DVD. This, apparently, has the encoders to convert dvr-ms files to DVD files, you know, thos VIDEO_TS thingies.

But guess what? It doesn't come with MCE 2005 (or doesn't come with all versions of it) and you've got to buy it.

So having bought MCe and (wrongly) assuming it's all I need to use a media extender, I now have to buy MySonic DVD to be able to record to DVD from MCE, something I (again wrongly) assumed MCE would be able to do 'out of the box'.

I think 'out of the box' is quite an apt phrase here as they seemd to have left some rather essential software out of the bloody box!

But inspiration is born of desperation and I dimly remember seeing a MySonic DVD disk somewhere... Sure enough, a quick rummage through my disk holder and I find the disk in question. It came as part of the software bundle with our camcorder we bought last November... so I'm laughing, right?

Nope.

After installing the bloody MySonic DVD suite, which took bloody ages, I boot it up to find that the 'Edit Recorded TV' function is disabled until I go and update MCE.

Hang on, I HAVE updated MCe, there's no updates to get! So why is this pissy little bit of software telling me I have to update? I hit the link in the update message and am greeted with a 404... So I Google for MySonic and go to the website in search of an update for the MySonic software.

Now, the current version of MySonic DVD is something like 6.8... my version, which I got with a camera I bought at the end of last year (8 months ago), is 4.5.... Anyone want to guess what happened to support for version 4.5?

Yep. There isn't any anymore.

And, in an obviously cynical attempt to squeeze MORE money out of me, there's no driver or update archive to grab old updates. It's either pay for a new version or bugger off. So I buggered off.

I now at least know what I'm after and another Google brings up LOADS of folks all moaning about the same thing.

Except one enterprising fellow has decided to host the 4.5 updates. He's not hosting the full software, just the updates. So you can't get MySonic DVD for free, you need to ahve the 4.5 version installed already and he's just hosting the various updates you need to get it working in MCE. What a star!

So now I have MySonic DVD updated as far as support went before deciding they could make some more money by doing a new version but it STILL doesn't work and is now insisting that my MCE needs updating... so all that Googling and hunting was to no avail.

Well not quite. It appears that the update did include a new decoder so now MCE 2005 can re-code the dvr-ms into proper DVD files AND burn them to a DVD!

I only discovered this when, in pure exasperation, I went back into MCE and looked again at the options for burning files and, where before the only option was for data, I now had the option for video! Yay!

I pick the same two episodes of Green Wing, tell MCE to get on with it and it tells me that the files are a tad too large so can it drop the quality. Fine, fine, fine... just get on with it.

TWO and a HALF HOURS!

Yes, that's two and a half hours that it took to recode the damn shows and squeeze them onto a DVD. Still, at least I have a disk that works in the DVD player... but I also have all the adverts and the bits before and after the recording becuase MySonic DVD won't load the files up to let me edit them... despite what the bloody help files in MySonic say...

So, I gave up on the software and took another route altogether.

Here's the drop dead easy way to backup your recorded TV to DVD.

When your VCR blows up, get a DVD recorder instead.

Plug the XBox 360 into the DVD recorder (or use the superb Bluedelta Smart-SCART PLUS and just record the show as if you're watching normal TV. Using the puase function on the DVD recorder you can edit out all the adverts and the crud you don't want.

You'll save yourself a packet in not hunting around for answers that aren't there, software that doesn't exist and, most importantly, you'll be sticking two great big digital fingers up at the software companies that want to screw you for another £25 just to do something the original OS should bloody well do in the first place!

Right, time to buy more blank DVDs...

[pak000]

bah - gbpvr, comskip and comclean are all you need,

or

mythtv


won't work on your dvr-ms format, but anything else that comes out is mpg

[Lee H]

LOL Nick - sounds like you've had a bad weekend in regards to technology

I know what you mean though - I have loads ( over 300 Gb and rising ) of DVR-MS files on my system and really need to back these up as well.

[5lab]

theres a simple reason for it

ms dont want you to be able to create dvds of stuff you've recorded off the telly. it'd breach copywrites left right and centre. its illegal to make recordings of stuff off telly for anything other than time shifting purposes, for which you don't need to be able to record a disk playable on other boxes. mce and xbox 360 is all you need for media extending, you want to stick the dvd onto a completely different hardware platform

[Nick]

So how come the MySonic DVD software will let you do it, through MCE too? (even though it does take bloody hours)

And I thought that recording a TV prgram purely for personal use wasn't illegal?

If it is, then everyone on this planet is guilty... well, everyone who has ever owned a VCR or has taped an audio cassette to play in the car...

[pak000]

yes it is illegal (you are allowed to make a copy from tv so that you can watch it later, but then it is supposed to be erased), as it is with making tapes to play in your car from a cd you own. The thing is the people that owned the rights used to let it all slide, however changing times along with the massive amount of sharing have made the people that enforce the copyright reasess how they deal with copying

[kalniel]

Yeah - as 5lab says, time-shifting stuff so you can watch something at another time is specifically permitted:

The making for private and domestic use of a recording of a broadcast or cable programme solely for the purpose of enabling it to be viewed or listened to at a more convenient time does not infringe any copyright in the broadcast or cable programme or in any work included in it.

I think there's also EU law that specifically stats temporary copies are fine (ie for your internet browser cache).

I think there is even an oddity which means transfering music to another media is technically infringing copyright - it was addressed by an EU point I think, but never incorperated into the UK legislation (which as you can see from the above, only covers broadcast works.

But in the end law is only 50% of the worry - enforcement is the other (no, they don't enforce the shooting scotsmen with bows and arrows law ), and the media transfer I don't think has ever been enforced.

Of course, all forum based legalese advice (including this one) should be taken with a large pinch of salt

[Lee H]

Of course, all forum based legalese advice (including this one) should be taken with a large pinch of salt

LOL don't you know too much Sodium Chloride is bad for your health.

[pak000]

not so much potassium chloride iv

[5lab]

So how come the MySonic DVD software will let you do it, through MCE too? (even though it does take bloody hours)

And I thought that recording a TV prgram purely for personal use wasn't illegal?

If it is, then everyone on this planet is guilty... well, everyone who has ever owned a VCR or has taped an audio cassette to play in the car...

yeah, they are all guilty, but that doesnt mean new companies wont try to stop it.

afaik mySonic isnt written by microsoft, as such, they have no control over the functionality it provides.

[Nick]

I'm not so sure about that as it seems that to make a data DVD, Sonic is used as the encoder there too, which is how I ended up with a DVD with dvr-ms files on it in the first place.

That was before I went off hunting for the MySonic encoder ie, that Sonic interface was built in to MCE.

As for the legalities... that doesn;t seem to bother MS...

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...ebruary07.mspx

And I'll just quote the important bit...

If your Media Center PC has a DVD burner, you might want to burn recorded shows to DVD so you can watch them on a portable DVD player or in your car's backseat DVD player. You couldn't do this with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, but you can with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. To create a DVD with your shows, follow these steps:

The steps then take you through how to do it...

[kalniel]

LOL don't you know too much Sodium Chloride is bad for your health.

And trusting forums for legal advice isn't?

[Bob Crabtree]

I suppose that at this stage of the game, it would be a little cruel to point out how very quick, easy and convenient it is on a new-gen Macs to burn TV shows to DVD if, that is, you are using Elagato's eyeTV 2 TV-tuner software and pairing it with Roxio's Toast 7 disc-burning program?

Thought so.

No need for a linkie, therefore, to HEXUS.lifestyle's recent review of the Intel-powered Mac mini?

Nor, indeed, to the specific page on which this is detailed.

Okay, Mac OS doesn't even provide any TV-tuner-related capability but what you get for burning DVDs of TV programmes by combining Elgato and Roxio software is rather lovely and, I'm presuming from what Nick relates, a whole lot better than the Windows XP MCE 2005 method.

That said, it might be kind of useful if folk expanded a bit on their alternatives to using what MCE offers for the burning of TV programmes to DVD.

Oh, and just for the record, Roxio (itself formerly Adaptec's software arm) is now owned by Sonic Solutions - the company behind MySonic DVD suite.