Turns out you can access most of Windows Media Player via WSH, so that made it pretty easy to grab all of the metadata once everything was loaded into WMP – you just have to know where to look.  The XML layout for the Sage Webserver is pretty well documented, although the source code to Andy’s excellent MigrateMCtoSage utility made it much easier to figure out the bare minimums.  The hardest part was actually finding the XML writer for WSH.

Note that this should also work for AVIs, which is the other main container format supported by WMP.  However, AVI tagging is pretty abysmal in WMP, mostly because it doesn’t write the tags back to the file.  I have found a couple of apps to do this, but nothing I would wholeheartedly recommend.

Backup you wiz.bin file before proceeding – you need to shut down the Sage service to do this properly.

1. Download and unzip CreateVideoXML.vbs
   Optional: Open in a text editor and edit the output and temp files
2. Import your videos into WMP and clean up the metadata
3. Run CreateVideoXML.vbs
4. Open Sage Webserver and import the resulting XML file (by default: C:\Playlist.xml)
   1. Check the Import TV files box
   2. Check the Overwrite Existing Show Information box
   3. Check the Overwrite Existing Sage TV File Information box
   4. Check the Use imported Airing data to determine startTime option (THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT)
   5. Uncheck everything else

After import, your videos will show up under “My TV”.

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I jumped ship from Vista Media Center almost 6 months ago, and one of the biggest reasons was a  persistent bug with an identified cause resulted in many of my recordings having an incorrect duration, which made it difficult (although not impossible) to use the files.  To date, the problem has still not been resolved, because Media Center updates are tied to the OS release schedule, which does not permit quick release patches for non-critical bugs.  If they get it wrong, it’s a whole new cycle before they can send out another patch.

Microsoft already realizes that baking everything into the OS is not always the best idea, because it creates a bloated OS and reduces flexibility and limits the options for the individual apps (see here, here, and here).  Given the much richer experience I have had with SageTV since August, I think that applies to Media Center, as well.

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Not much to look at or in the description: “Mediamote is a remote control for Windows Media Center.”

Some more screenshots would be nice.  I’m curious how much data is pulled under the REC’D TV, Guide, Live TV, and DVD Menu buttons.

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The switch is “/VideoComplexity 0″, and it reduces the computing time to process the video.  I never noticed a difference between setting it to 3 or dropping it to 0, but YMMV.

“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Expression\Encoder 1.0\Encoder.exe” /Source “e:\HD_SOURCE.dvr-ms” /Target “E:\HD_TARGET.wmv” /VideoComplexity 0 /VideoProfile “HD Archive (CBR)” /Log On /Time

“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Expression\Encoder 1.0\Encoder.exe” /Source “e:\SD_SOURCE.dvr-ms” /Target “E:\SD_TARGET.wmv” /VideoComplexity 0 /VideoProfile “SD Archive (CBR)” /Log On /Time

I setup two different profiles (SD and HD), and had each bring the resolution down to 720×480 for SD or 720×404 for HD.  Of course, this was all automated with commericials removed by DTb.

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ehrec.exe ties up the tuners, so you can’t run an alternate media center while running VMC (or MCE).  Just stop disable the “Windows Media Center Receiver” service, and you should be good to go.

To access the services in Vista:

1. Open Windows Explorer
2. Right click on “Computer”
3. Select “Manage”
4. Select “Services and Applications”, and the “Services” from the tree

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Anticipating the iPhone, though, I need to find a way to do all of this with MP4 instead of WMV.  I have a command-line for VLC, so I’m good there (DTb will convert to MPEG2, so lack of DVR-MS support is not an issue).  However, DTb does not support tagging MP4 files.

AtomicParsley appears to fit the bill.  I’ll still have to cobble something together, though.

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Andy posted some code a while back to get metadata from a DVR-MS file, and I needed something similar for WMV.  Luckily, it seems to work on any file with metadata.  It won’t grab it all (e.g., season and episode), but it gets a lot of it.  Here’s the adapted code:

sub GetFileProperties(inFilePath)
    dim title, subtitle, folderName, fileName, createDate
    dim objShell, objFolder
    Dim fso, item, f

    Set fso = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)
    Set objShell = CreateObject(“Shell.Application”)

    folderName = fso.GetParentFolderName(inFilePath)
    fileName = fso.GetFileName(inFilePath)

    Set objFolder = objShell.Namespace(folderName) 
    set item = objFolder.ParseName(fileName)
    Wscript.Echo item.name
    Wscript.Echo objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 10)

    Wscript.Echo “(1) Filesize: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 1)
    Wscript.Echo “(2) File type: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 2)
    Wscript.Echo “(3) Created Date: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 3)
    Wscript.Echo “(4) Modified Date: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 4)
    Wscript.Echo “(5) Accessed Date: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 5)
    Wscript.Echo “(6) Attrib?: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 6)
    Wscript.Echo “(7) ?: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 7)
    Wscript.Echo “(8) User: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item,
    Wscript.Echo “(10) **Series Name: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 10)
    Wscript.Echo “(21) **Show Length: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 21)
    Wscript.Echo “(22) **Bitrate: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 22)
    Wscript.Echo “(23) ?: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 23)
    Wscript.Echo “(26) **Resolution: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 26)
    Wscript.Echo “(27) **Horizontal Res: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 27)
    Wscript.Echo “(28) **Vertical Res: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 28)
    Wscript.Echo “(29) **Episode Name: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 29)
    Wscript.Echo “(30) **Episode Description: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 30)
    Wscript.Echo “(32) **Audio bits: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 32)
    Wscript.Echo “(33) **Audio kHz: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 33)
    Wscript.Echo “(34) **Audio channels: ” & objFolder.GetDetailsOf(item, 34)

    set f = nothing
    set item = nothing

    set objFolder = nothing
    set objShell = nothing
    set fso = nothing
end sub

dim args
set args = wscript.arguments

GetFileProperties args(0)

set args = nothing
‘——————————————————————-

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The instructions are a bit lacking, so I’ve done a detailed step-by-step.  Part one is setting up the tuners with the HDHR Setup application.  Part two is setting up Vista Media Center.  Check out part one after the break.

1. Run the HDHomeRun Setup program:

2. Select the source as Digital Cable, and the Application as Vista MCE or Windows MCE (yes, it makes a difference):

3. Switch to the Lineup tab, and click the Edit button next to Digital Cable Channels:

4. Click the Scan button.  After awhile (maybe 5-10 minutes), all of the digital channels will show up.  In my screenshot, I had already selected the channels I wanted to keep.

5. Click the Advanced button to show the Guide Number column.  The columns displayed are:

• Tune: The actual Cable channel (as if you were tuning via a QAM-ready TV)
• View: Launch the channel in VLC
• Guide Name: The call sign of the station
• Guide Number: The equivalent broadcast channel of the station
• Remap: HDHR’s mapping to be used by Vista Media Center
• Enabled: Whether to have the channel available to Vista Media Center

6. Click the Zap2It Website button to open a channel guide.

7. HERE IS WHERE YOU DO SOMETHING: Go through each “Guide Name” and determine if it represents a channel you want to keep by looking up the call sign in the Zap2It website (literally, Ctrl-F the webpage).  If you do find a channel you want to keep, manually enter the Guide Number from the Zap2It website and check the Enabled button.  If you don’t want the channel, uncheck the Enabled button.

That’s it for the HDHR setup.  Now you need to do the guided setup in Vista Media Center, which I’ve detailed here.  If you want to know what all of this fiddling actually did, check it out here.

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Obviously, change your region if you need to:

If your analog source is different, set it accordingly here:

And, if you have a set-top box for cable, change that here:

I’m not sure if you will get this screen if you only have one analog tuner:

As an aside, if you see this screen, it means the HDHR is installed properly:

The only reason you would not check both boxes is if you are using each tuner on a separate PC:

Hint – you can avoid scrolling through the Terms of Service by pressing the right arrow:

If you run the guided setup multiple times in a row, this step will fail sometimes with an “Error 13″ or something like that.  Just wait a few minutes and try again.  I think Microsoft does some sort of throttling to keep you from hitting their servers too frequently.  That’s pure speculation, of course!

Select the channels  you want to have displayed in the guide:

That’s it!  Finally, the finished product:

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