New Life for Old Friends

I'll admit when I first got my Media Center PC I thought that Media Center was the coolest thing around. Here was a great way to finally watch AND record TV on my computer, something for some reason I always wanted to do. There was also a pretty cool program I picked up along the way called MyTVtoGO and started using it a little to record shows and drop them onto my PSP. That wasn't really a long lived thing. Eventually the 360 dashboard picked up and I pretty much put Media Center to the side, not really having a need for it. As a matter of fact when I did some cable cleanup I even disconnected that cable from the PC, TV to PC disconnected.

Fast forward to the present and boy that has changed. I am always on the search for ways to do more with technology and media and in a sense make my media world better and easier (which always means more work and complicated). I came across a program I once used called Pocket DVD Wizard and it reopened some doors. Initially it was a way to start putting some more movies on the iPhone but then I realized it worked with the PSP as well. Well for some reason it didn't want to work well with all the files I was throwing at it for the PSP (the iPhone was fine) but that led me to updating to the PRO version of the PSP Media Manager and I started to convert and send movies to my PSP with ease once again.

Of course this was movies and my kid likes allot of his cartoons. Luckily the latest version of the PSP Media Manager works with dvr-ms files, you know the ones that Media Center creates, and as it goes PBS and the Disney Channel don't put commercials during their shows!

So tonight I hooked back up that cable to the PC and once again I'm recording a bunch of TV shows that will soon make their way to the PSP. It does help that I picked up an 8 gig memory card for $35 (they originally retailed for $300!!!).

I like iTunes but lets face it at $2 a show and a finite amount of storage anyway I can't really keep that up, and once the kids get to a certain age these shows go away so their not long term keeps. This way I can alternate new shows in once in awhile since the good thing about kids is they can watch the same episode over and over.

So Media Center and PSP welcome back to the world of media, glad you stuck around and were willing to come back and join us!

A Tale of (3) 360's!

For the first year of the Xbox 360's lifespan I ignored it, didn't see a reason to own it, I was happy with my current Xbox. Actually at some point I bought a second Xbox to use as a Media Center extender. For the original Xbox there was a rarely sold disc that you put in the Xbox and it played the Media Center extender software and connected to your computer. For the longest time I didnt update my computer anyway so I couldn't use the actual Media Center software included with the 360.

But time would pass and I would update my computer (the whole daylight savings time issue kinda forced me to do it) and eventually I'd add a 360. As time passed though the 360 dashboard sort of made the Media Center portion of the dash obsolete. The dashboard was easier to get to and it finally would support Divx and Xvid as well as many other codecs for video.

I really enjoyed using the 360 as a media player so much that I really wanted a second for the upstairs parlour. Turns out a friend would get the red lights and couldn't wait for his return so he bought a new one, when his old one arrived I traded a PDA for the 360 and just like that I had a second 360. Then as time would pass I would start to need yet another for the toy/computer room and as would have it my brother in law would get ther red lights (for like the 3rd time) and he didnt wait either. So $60 and two weeks later just like that I have a 3rd.

My 2nd 360 gets used all the time to stream movies that my kid loves to watch, its great to not have to constantly pull out DVD's all the time. The 3rd location gets used the same way and even more as a DVD player. I use the 2nd sometimes for games for the family but the 3rd hasn't been used yet. Ironically the 1st gets used little for media streaming as I tend to use the PS3 for that in the main location.

Its kind of weird that I have 3 gaming systems and 2 in particular that don't even play games to use as media streaming devices but they work and they work very well. If you said I'd have 3 360's at one point I'd say you were crazy, but its kind of really cool to have them now and that's not crazy at all!

The Twitter Bowl

The Steelers have defeated The Cardinals in the Super Bowl, the event is over. So how much fun was it? Turns out it was a lot of fun, because of Twitter!

Sure everyone hopes for a great and close game and of course the commercials and many people get together with friends and family to party. This year I didn't have a party and I didn't attend a party, well any actual parties. I stayed home and ate a barrage of food with my wife and two kids, but realized the party came to me via Twitter.

Whether it was thoughts on the game itself or the commercials or thoughts on movie trailers everyone had something to say via Twitter. Of course with responses that helped bring the party together. I have not twittered so much in such little time since I started my twitter account but tonight I had a blast and I twittered A LOT!

So thanks to social networking and twitter I didn't attend a party per say tonight but I partied for the entire game. For the record I was routing for the Cardinals, thought the G.I. Joe trailer rocked. laughed more times than I can remember, and thought Bruce and the E. Street Band ROCKED the half time show.

But if you follow me on Twitter, you already knew that.