Today I discovered a delightful little gadget that does a small job beautifully. It’s WebGuide, shown at the bottom in the image to the right.
What it does: among other things, it lists pending recordings for Vista Media Center; no need to fire up Media Center. In any case, I never found a way to do it as I wanted using Media Center, so this is a neat solution.
The only other gadget I’ve added to Vista is one for playing BBC radio, usually either Radio 4 or BBC World Service.
For all my criticism of Vista, Microsoft’s Media Center works very well as a personal digital recorder. Well enough, that it may be the best reason to own Vista. It’s far from perfect, but with a nice TV and good content now and then it’s a treat being able to watch what you want when you want. –In my case, I’m hoarding a few things until I’m no longer a student.
Media Center would be much enhanced if one could browse a decent TV schedule online, i.e., one with reviews, and select programs by clicking on them. This is not possible because the TV schedule in the UK is subject to monopoly control and must be licensed. The electronic program guide is little use as anything other than a schedule.
There’s a petition about this on the Prime Minister’s web site, I happened to discover a while ago, with a pitiful 400 signatures. Presumably the newspapers are not in favour?
This gadget makes one of Vista’s little habits clear: when asked to record a series it records repeats you didn’t even know were on, even months later, and this uses up disk space and means you have to filter out the duplicates later.
The last program scheduled in the listing above is a repeat of something I recorded months ago, a 5 minute program on Iraq.
In fact, I didn’t know I had this problem until I recently discovered another useful utility: De-Dupe DVRMS. It scans your recordings and suggests which may be duplicates. The file names typically contain the program name, the channel and the time and date. If recordings are bracketed — with 5 minutes added at the start and end — then the content is different too, and would be even if it were broadcast in digital form. This utility relies on program guide metadata in the file. It’s not foolproof, but it’s helpful for zeroing in on what to check.
I am not watching any more television but I am accumulating enough for long flights and rainy, “nothing on” days in future. Sometime, when I have time, I might figure out how to transcode for and sync with my video iPod, but I suspect I’ll get a little notebook PC first and I’ll prepare for travel by stashing a few recordings on memory sticks.
The only other desktop gadget I use is one from Infrant, now Netgear, showing the status of my network storage. All of these are on my 2nd monitor.
If something goes wrong I’ll know right away. The fan turns slowly in a lanquid and satisfying way. The real thing is working a bit harder.
Actually, I use one other application that’s not part of either Vista or Yahoo’s suites: Symmetricom’s SymmTime 2008. It’s a roll-your-own multi-clock display. Handy if you call people in different time zones and you like to have accurate time (from NTP servers).
I suppose our houses will be full of little virtual gadgets in a few years. So far the only one I’ve seen for sale is a rabbit whose ears can indicate if you have email, or, perhaps if your options are underwater and it’s time to jump from the nearest window ledge.
How long before Media Center understands spoken instructions? It’s overdue and doable surely. Now that would be “all singing, and all dancing.”
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