Evolution of Windows Media Center

With the public availability of Windows 7 beta announced at CES 2009, Media Center aficionados are eagerly waiting for the updated Windows Media Center experience in the new OS. For me, Media Center has been the big reason to upgrade home PCs to Windows Vista, and looks like that will continue with Windows 7.

I love the easy-to-use electronic program guide (EPG) - and my son refuses to watch TV any other way now. The built-in DVR functionality is great, the ability to easily search for TV shows and record one instance or entire series, and being able to view the recorded TV shows from a laptop outdoors or any other computer on the home network is impressive. Although none of it is earth-shattering or revolutionary, it's a great user experience, very well done, and getting better with each version.

Here's a a look at the evolution of Windows Media Center:




Another trend visible at CES: many new models of televisions you'll be able to buy in 2009 will have Media Center Extenders built-in. This means the same, well-designed Windows Media Center interface will now be shipped with the TVs - with no additional external boxes to buy or cables to run.

I also had no idea you could easily synch recorded TV from the Media Center to a Windows Mobile phone, as shown in this video.

What is an Azalia controller?

Last night I got my Media Center PC back from repairs with a brand new motherboard, new hard drives, and a new TV tuner. Yes, that's almost like a new computer— one of those rare occasions when I've bought extended warranty for a computer and actually found it worthwhile.

After installing Windows Vista I tried to setup Media Center, but it failed to display any video or play any sound. The error— no sound device, a non-starter for Media Center PCs.

Vista's Device Manager did not show any sound cards/devices! Did the repair department at Fry's Electronics (parts of this electronics/computer retail chain are quite annoying to deal with, particularly their business processes that seem to be straight from the early twentieth century, or at least a few decades behind, including a total lack of customer service... ) replace the motherboard with one that does not have a sound card?

After fiddling around with the BIOS for a little bit, I realized the "onboard Azaliza controller" was disabled. Yes, I pass through that screen in the BIOS configuration for a few times with no clue what it was! Azalia is the development codename for Intel's High Definition Audio Specification, a replacement for the Audio Codec '97 (popularly known as AC97) spec for on-board audio.

Although I'm a big fan of cool-sounding product code names that can generate plenty of excitement amongst product teams, customers, and the media, this one certainly had me feeling like an annoyed and confused user. Wouldn't it be a good idea to switch to a meaningful name when shipping the product— particularly a BIOS that generally comes with little or no documentation besides what's on the screen?

Did you know about Azalia controllers? Do you have your stories of product names or code names that made no sense and proved to be annoyances? Feel free to post them in the comments.

HOW TO: Remove the Public Folder Store

This is a fairly common question - you're trying to remove the Public Folder store on an Exchange 2007 server and get an error that some Public Folder replicas still exist. You're certain you've removed all Public Folder replicas from that server. What next?

Here's a little procedure documented in How to Delete Multiple Public Folders from Your Organization that takes care of this.

Note: This procedure should be performed only if you're removing the last (or only) Public Folder Store from an Exchange Organization. If there are other servers in the Organization that also host Public Folders, using this procedure removes the folders from the Public Folder hierarchy.

Remove all Public Folder replicas from the server using the following command:

Get-PublicFolder -Server "SERVER NAME" "\" -Recurse -ResultSize:Unlimited | Remove-PublicFolder -Server "SERVER NAME" -Recurse -ErrorAction:SilentlyContinue

Next, remove all System Folders using the following command:

Get-PublicFolder -Server "SERVER NAME" "\Non_Ipm_Subtree" -Recurse -ResultSize:Unlimited | Remove-PublicFolder -Server "SERVER NAME" -Recurse -ErrorAction:SilentlyContinue

To verify all Public Folders have been deleted:

Get-PublicFolderStatistics -Server "SERVER NAME" | fl

At times the replica clean-up may take a little while. If you still see replicas after running this command, run it again in 10-15 minutes.

Removing Public Folder replicas using MoveAllReplicas.ps1

If Public Folders are hosted on more than one server, use the MoveAllReplicas.ps1 script to remove replicas from a server, as illustrated in KB 927464: How to remove Exchange 2007 from a computer.

The MoveAllReplicas.ps1 script resides in the Scripts folder in the path where Exchange Server 2007 is installed. It's an easy-to-use script that takes 2 parameters— the source and target server names. The source server is the server you're trying to remove the Public Folder replicas from. The target server can be any other server in the Organization that hosts Public Folders— presumably a server that's in the same location to avoid replicating PFs over WAN links.

MoveAllReplicas.ps1 -Server "SOURCE SERVER NAME" –NewServer "TARGET SERVER NAME"

Once this is done, it may take some time for Public Folders to replicate to the target server, and for these to be removed from the source server. To verify there are no replicas on the source server, you can use the Get-PublicFolderStatistics command.

Chat with your Windows MediaCenter!

As reported by Engadget.com, you'll love this concept and way geeky app to remotely tell Windows MediaCenter to record a tv show - just chat with it over MSN Messenger!

Stuck in a car with no way to record a tv show? You can now do it over a Windows Mobile phone (signed in to MSN/Live Messenger of course!). The idea of having an interactive dialog with a bot that can give you your tv guide listings and walk you through recording a particular show never occurred to me, but as the author suggests this is the next best thing to actually being able to call your Windows MediaCenter PC on the phone and simply talking to it.

As a sidenote, having worked at Nuance - the leading speech (recoginition is one part of it... ) company - not very long ago, I feel strongly about speech apps, and I'm super-excited about Exchange Server 2007's Unified Messaging (Outlook Voice Access, AutoAttendant, et al) capabilities.

Talking to your MediaCenter PC can't be too far away, given reports of Windows Vista's built-in speech interfaces (no, I have't had a chance to test any of that yet.... ). However, till such an app comes into existence, you can go to brains-n-brawn.com to find out how the /mobileRecord bot for Windows MediaCenter works.